The Selector of Souls (3 page)

“How true, how true,” she replies, hanging up Mem-saab’s dressing gown.

If Amanjit and Timcu still had a sister, maybe they would be kinder. And if Aman and Timcu had been younger when Damini came, maybe she could have taught them more gentleness. But like Mem-saab, she gave these little maharajas too much love, too much forgiveness.
She passed down their clothes to Suresh and gave them all the blessings and hopes she should have given to her own children.

Leela understands. She knows that but for their fear of Sardar-saab, Piara Singh’s brothers would have thrown Damini out. But here, an amma gets chai in the morning and two meals a day.

Damini chooses three salwar-kameezes from the cupboard and shows them to Mem-saab, along with chiffon dupattas. If the salwar, kameez or dupatta is a slightly different shade, Mem-saab will look bad.

Piara Singh’s brothers were a shade different from him—just enough to make the whole family look bad. But their karma caught up. They had many misfortunes, while Damini has survived when so many said she would end up selling her body for money. She has her ears, she has strong hands and bhagya.

Mem-saab points to a rose and grey silk. Damini lays it on the bed.

Aman has a business that exports fine silks like these. And women’s clothing that would barely cover a child. Another business sells plywood, furniture, crates, cricket bats, hockey sticks, cedar oil and varnish. And Timcu—instead of becoming a doctor so he could cure the pains that strike his mother every time she climbs the stairs—Timcu is an astrologer in Canada, divining if prices will go up or down and will there be too much of one thing and not of another. Even his Damini-amma knows prices go up and there is never too much of anything in this eon of greed called Kalyug. So much money spent on Timcu’s education, and the man cannot even tell Damini if Suresh will love her when she can no longer give him money.

Foolish mothers like me make astrologers rich
.

A knock at the door—Khansama’s standing outside, steam rising from the tray in his hands. He has changed his kurta.

Damini takes the tray and elbows the door shut. She places it on a small table in the sitting area and helps Mem-saab to her sofa-chair. Damini adjusts the table before her, pours milk into the bowl of oatmeal, adds raisins and honey.

Mem-saab’s spoon stops halfway to her lips. “Where’s he now?”

Damini can hear Aman opening and closing drawers, then a creak as Sardar-saab’s mirror tilts for the first time in seven years. He’s trying on a dead man’s silk ties and turbans. “Unpacking,” she says.

“Stand here while I eat.” The order is a plea. There are things Aman cannot say to his mother in the presence of a servant.

When she has finished, Damini helps her to dress and then calls, “Khansama, tell Zahir Sheikh to bring Mem-saab’s car.” Her driver will take Mem-saab shopping before the May sun beats down at full strength.

Damini takes her towel upstairs to the terrace. She uses the squat-toilet in her wash area behind the half-wall, and then sits before the tap. She pulls a basin of soiled clothing across the floor, and waits for a thin stream of water.

Aromas of scrambled egg-bhurji, toast and butter rise up the stairwell as she kneads Mem-saab’s heavy silk salwar-kameezes, then Mem-saab’s transparent dupattas. Rising, she moves past the half-wall to hang the clothes on the line.

Returning to the wash area, Damini half-fills a plastic bucket, pulls her kameez over her head and steps from the legs of her salwar. The water, sun-warmed from the tank at the other end of the terrace, wakes the skin of her forehead and shoulders.

Piara Singh never lived with these rounded shoulders, this slight pot-belly, these grey strands between her legs. But those legs are as lean and strong as when her husband was alive, her breasts still heavy, sagging only a little.

Somewhere below the canopy of gulmohar trees that screens her view of the driveway, Aman is shouting for Khansama to stop a taxi on the main road. Damini towels dry.

The taxi-man honks as Damini steps into a clean salwar and ties its cord at her waist.

Aman clatters down the stairs, shouting at Khansama. Why hasn’t the cook placed his ice water Thermos and his briefcase in the taxi yet? How many times does Khansama need to be reminded?

She pulls a clean kameez over her head and smooths it till it falls below her knees.

She can’t see Khansama or Aman. “Answer me, don’t just stand there—are you or are you not a moron?”

Some English words require no translation.

Khansama, have a thick skin
.

Aman leaves. The house crouches in waiting silence.

“That suitcase was heavy.” Khansama takes a stool beside Damini, and leans back against the red gas cylinder of the two-burner hotplate.

Damini chews slowly on her morning roti, then takes a sip of chai. “How much did he pay you this time?”

“Full five hundred rupees.” He fans himself with the notes.

Just for carrying a suitcase? Payment to forget Aman called him a moron.

“You’ve forgotten your cap. Mem-saab will find your hair in the curry tonight,” says Damini.

Khansama rises and rummages in a cupboard as if he hasn’t heard her. He forgets sometimes that he is just a servant. He forgets even more often that there can be honour only from serving those who have honour.

When Sardar-saab was still in this life, Khansama made rogan josh and chicken jalfrezi swimming in layers of pure butter-ghee. His curries, Sardar-saab used to say, were better than those in five-star hotels. And sweet rice, and phirni fragrant with rosewater. He should have been told, “Hmm, these are good but you can do better.” But Mem-saab gave him so many compliments, now everyone has to suffer his swelled head. He sits idle most of the day now, and describes
flavours and dishes he dreams of cooking—since she became a widow, Mem-saab doesn’t order meat or sweets unless she has guests.

Khansama places a small steel bowl before Damini—sugar for her second cup of tea. Damini swirls the square granules with her forefinger.

She lost her sweet tooth a year and a half ago on a December day when she saw Suresh on TV. There was her son—or someone just like him—at the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya, clambering up the half-demolished sides of a masjid. The masjid was built by Muslims recently, only seven centuries ago. Who but his mother could have recognised that beloved face twisted with anger, those hands wielding a metal truncheon? Certainly no one in Ayodhya.

Suresh had been transported from Delhi along with 200,000 others by leaders in Nehru caps and sadhus in saffron robes. He looked fearless and brave on TV, shouting slogans as he and his fellow pilgrims leapt into the fray and tore down the Babri Masjid. As if fighting the whole Mughal Empire, more than three hundred years after its collapse.

But later, shame churned in Damini’s stomach like the milky ocean that birthed the world. Such disrespect for a sacred place. Had she taught him that? Had she forgiven him too many small paaps along the way?

She should, she could, she will, one day, ask Suresh if he was there. Can a mother mistake another woman’s son for her own? Impossible. But if he was there, Suresh had committed destruction that is only the right of Lord Shiv.

At that moment her taste for sweetness vanished.

Khansama raises his rupees to a shaft of sunlight that knifes through the chic-bamboo blinds. The notes are worn in the centre, but acceptable.

“Only a fool accepts dirty money,” says Damini—then regrets speaking so sharply to a man who has already been called a moron today. He may not be a moron, just a witless donkey.

“He says he will bring his wife and daughter and they will move in here too,” says Khansama.

“Here?”

“Where else? You too are becoming deaf.”

“Get a few years and some wisdom and your ears will ignore echoes from empty vessels: there are only two bedrooms on this floor. The second is not large enough for three people. If Aman moves in downstairs, Mem-saab will lose her income.”

“Aman-ji says he will build more rooms upstairs.”

On the third storey? Then where will Damini relieve herself? Where will she bathe? She’ll have to share the wash area with Khansama’s family. Or will Mem-saab allow Damini to share her bathroom if the sweeper cleans it afterwards? After all, Mem-saab’s Japji prayer says there’s no high-up, no low-down, all equal-equal. Damini may not be saab-log like Mem-saab, but she is a kshatriya. A warrior descended from rajas, not a sweeper. So maybe she can share Mem-saab’s bathroom. That is difficult to imagine.

Much has changed in thirty years—people in towns and cities eat from chai-stalls and in restaurants and who knows if a brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, sudra or outcaste cooked their food or ate from the same plates, or drank from the same glass? Respected people use public bathrooms that might have been used by lower castes. Newer buildings don’t have two doors into the bathrooms, and outcastes enter from the same door as Hindus with caste.

But even in this Sikh household, where caste is banished by decree of ten gurus, when Timcu cut his hair and stopped wearing a turban to marry a no-caste gora woman in Canada, Sardar-saab would not write to him for several years.

Mem-saab, a generation younger than her husband, is a better Sikh. She wouldn’t treat Damini like a sweeper. Damini has accepted the ten gurus as her gods and become a Sikh for Mem-saab’s sake. Damini’s husband’s name, which she writes as her second name to get his pension, was Singh—just like a Sikh. And a few times, when
Mem-saab had no appetite, Damini persuaded her to eat a little from her own plate, as sisters do.

Hai!
Sometimes Damini needs more gods than one, and more than ten gurus for inspiration; maybe she should become a Hindu again.

“Are you finished?” Khansama says, pointing to the steel bowl with the sugar.

Sardar-saab used to say never trust a clean-shaven man. Potato-face looks happy; to those who follow him, Aman can be the smile of Lords Ram, Krishna and Ganesh in one.

“No,” she says, pouring her share of sugar into her tea, though she cannot taste it. She will not share anything to sweeten his life. And no more of Mem-saab’s salt than she can help, till she knows the price of Khansama’s heart.

Mem-saab returns from her shopping without parcels or bags, eyes red and swollen. She stops several times to rest as she climbs the staircase.

Damini calls for Khansama to serve lunch. She stands by Mem-saab as she eats and then prepares her bed for her afternoon nap.

Damini had a sleeping mat on the floor in a corner of Mem-saab’s room until the anti-Sikh riots ten years ago. That night, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot by a Sikh bodyguard and Congress Party officials used voter lists to lead mobs of angry young Hindu men to Sikh dwellings. Mem-saab’s Sikh driver was going to risk his life to inform the well-informed police, but Mem-saab ordered him not to go—if she hadn’t, he might have been arrested and shot with the rest. As it was the police seized licensed weapons from Sikh men, even veterans, then stood by as mobs burned homes and smoked out Sikh men, women and children. For three days and nights, Mem-saab kept her Sikh driver safe behind her gates, as Sikh
women and children fought alongside their turbaned menfolk. On the third day, he begged to come out of hiding. He said he had to protect his family. Mem-saab told him to take her car so he’d look like a saab. But a Hindu mob tore him from the driver’s seat, hacked him to pieces, and set her car alight.