The Selector of Souls (51 page)

Shafiq Sheikh is holding the jeep door open. A few paces away, Mohan is holding an imaginary jeep door open. Damini drops to her haunches beside the basket and rests her hand on Moses’s blanketed head, then withdraws. Sister Anu hears a sniff and notices a silver shine in Damini’s eyes.

“You want to come with me?” she says to Damini.

Damini shakes her head. “Again Dr. Gupta said we must go to a hospital in Shimla with Chunilal. Tomorrow Suresh will drive us all in the truck.”

“I’m very glad to hear this,” says Sister Anu, who has offered to take Chunilal herself several times. “I talked to Goldina again today. Did you?”

“Yes. She says Father Pashan grew up in an orphanage, and he’s a good man. She feels Moses can do no better.”

“Are we sure Moses can do no better?”

Damini seems on the brink of objecting and Sister Anu waits.
But eventually the older woman sighs. “Adoption will be best.”

Mohan steps away from his open imaginary door to pick up the baby basket. He swings it gently. “I go? I go?” he smiles, practising his English.

Moses wakes up, begins to squall.

“No, no.” Sister Anu responds in English, humouring him. “I’m taking the baby to Shimla. Put him in the car, Mohan.”

“Idhar, Idhar!” Damini directs Mohan to the opposite door.

“Taking baby to Shimla. Put him in the car, Mohan,” says Mohan, delighted. He places the baby’s basket on the seat.

In the nuns’ recreation room at the convent, everyone crowds around, voices rising an octave to coo over Moses. These childless women have no trouble dandling him, burping him. “Will he live in India, London or America?” coos Sister Rose.

“Oh, he’ll become a movie star in Bombay!” says Sister Sarah.

Sister Anu’s spirits soar. At that very moment, Sister Lorena says, “You have a parcel.”

It’s from Rano.
The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood—she will read the novel in private, later. And here’s a photo of Chetna in bharatanatyam regalia, dancing her arangetram. How she wishes she could have watched Chetna’s debut. Her eyes are ringed with kajal and she looks so much like Mumma. Another photo shows Chetna standing in the woods, dressed like an astronaut, with a pole in each hand. Rano’s writing on the back says “cross-country skiing in Penetanguishene last winter,” as if Anu knows where that is. A third shows Chetna smiling triumphantly, a jug in one hand and a platter stacked with what look like naans in the other. Rano’s caption says Chetna made pancakes with maple syrup.

Canada is too far away. Children should be adopted closer to home, and a mother allowed to watch her child grow up. I have to find a place for
Moses where Goldina can visit him. He needs two mothers, as Bobby and I had
.

Rano writes that she is exploring a new IVF technique to make a sibling for Chetna. That Mr. Xhu is leaving the bank because he is making a mint of money selling something called domain names for newborn websites, and she may finally get a promotion into his position. But Sister Anu will read all that after she has mastered her tears. Then she will write,

Two days later, refreshed by prayer and uplifted by mass and discussions with Sister Imaculata and Father Pashan, Sister Anu will return to Gurkot and Goldina. She will carry a Document of Surrender and other adoption papers with her, marked with arrows where Goldina’s and Samuel’s thumbprints are required.

S
UNLIGHT DRIFTS INTO DARKNESS, BUT
M
OHAN IS
nowhere to be found. The schoolroom is dark—maybe he walked home with Bethany.

Sister Anu waits, half-listening to the radio. Prime Minister Deve Gowda is reiterating that India has no plans to build a nuclear weapon. He reminds the world that Madam G.’s 1974 nuclear test was merely for peaceful purposes. Officials have been making such statements ever since India reversed its long-standing support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But, says the PM, “India reserves the option to test if our security situation changes.”

Anu closes the clinic door, waits a few more minutes—no sign of her intrepid sekurti-guard. She drapes her shawl about her shoulders, crosses the clearing and walks down the drive to the road.

A conch shell is blowing; either a festival or funeral procession is coming round the bend. Then she hears a chorus of “
Ram Naam Sat Hai! Ram Nam Sat Hai!
” Fifteen or twenty men appear, chanting Lord Ram’s name. Each carries a large branch on his shoulder. A shrouded body floats in the middle of the procession. A young man, since the shroud is undecorated. He must have died just hours ago and, since there is no cold storage, his body must be pyred immediately.

“Who is it?” she asks, as the men come within earshot.

She spies a bewildered-looking Mohan at the foot of the bier, and realizes a second before she’s told that it is Chunilal. The procession continues past her, and then to her great surprise, she spies Damini, Leela and Kamna following the men at a distance. Damini stops before Sister Anu.

“Suresh drove us from one hospital to the other in Shimla till we worried we wouldn’t have enough money for petrol to get home. The hospital-wallahs said no beds were available, but we could tell they didn’t want Chunilal to die in their hospital. They told us he was a hopeless case. When we showed Chunilal’s pills to one of the doctors he said they were ‘like sugar.’ He said Chunilal might have survived if he had actually received a testing drug. Instead, he was taking sugar.” Anger combats resignation on Damini’s face. “Even if I had tried his pills I wouldn’t have known because I can’t taste sweetness.”

“I should have tried one of his pills,” says Leela. “But I never thought …” Her voice trails into tears.

“A saab would have received proper medicine. Our ojha at least gave Chunilal a tonic made from cow
and
elephant dung,” says Damini.

Sister Anu could explain that drug companies don’t need to prove a new drug is better than anything currently available. All they need to prove is that a new drug is better than taking a sugar pill, or better than doing nothing. But what would such an explanation do for Chunilal’s family now?

Sister Anu joins the funeral procession.

A
WOMAN’S DHARMA DOESN’T INCLUDE ACCOMPANYING
a dead body to cremation. But Damini remembers how terrible she felt when she couldn’t go with Mem-saab and how important it was not to leave the girl baby alone in Anamika Devi’s cave. She needs
to accompany Chunilal too, though it may not be her given role in the movie of his life.

No one has objected, in deference to her years and henna-orange hair. But her chest feels sore as she walks, and worries chant through her head.

Leela joined the procession to support her mother, afraid someone might say something rude about Damini’s being there. Then Kamna joined so as not to leave Leela alone. Sister Anu becomes the fourth woman.

Damini tasted anger as she helped Leela lower Chunilal’s body to the floor for death. She bathed and cleaned his stiffening body so Leela wouldn’t have to. She added her bitterness to the sweet pind Leela offered to his departing atman, and anger sounded deep in her throat like a prowling snow leopard as she helped remove Leela’s marriage collar and all her jewellery, then trekked downhill last evening to tell Supari, Tubelight, Chimta and Matki and other neighbours, related and unrelated, that Chunilal’s atman had returned to the formless.

Halfway to the cremation spot, Suresh and Chunilal’s caste-brothers place his body on the ground and make another offering of pind. Kamna looks at Leela uncertainly. Leela glances meaningfully at Damini: this would be a good time for them to leave.

Damini shakes her head, determined.

No matter how angry she was at Chunilal, caregiving brought closeness, as it had with Mem-saab. Chunilal gave Damini shelter; thanks to him, she did not need to sell her body: she will not leave him now.

The procession descends to a lonely spot with a full view of the ranges throwing their shadows upon each other, the valleys plunging between. First Suresh, then each man comes forward and places his branch on the ground, over a rectangular pit.

There should be a pandit at this point to chant Sanskrit mantras. But rumours of AIDS have flown on the wind and the nearest pandit
at Lord Golunath’s temple could not be persuaded to attend. Leela sits cross-legged, with Mohan and Kamna beside her as the pyre is prepared. A pandit should tear at the mouth of the white shroud Damini and Leela placed over Chunilal, and pour ghee in the opening. A pandit should be here to light Chunilal’s body from the head, but no pandit is present.

Suresh beckons Mohan to tap his father’s skull. Mohan shrinks back and gnaws the back of his fist.
“Na—na—na—na!”
Suresh grips him by the arm and leads him to the body, stick in hand as if he will beat the boy. Eventually Mohan manages to crack his father’s skull. Suresh raises his own stick at the boy and Mohan hits the skull again. Suresh raises the stick again, Mohan hits it one last time.

Then he runs back to his mother and sister. He hides his face in Leela’s lap, trembling all over. Kamna rubs his back and slips him an orange. He sits quietly after that, peeling it, examining its lobes and flicking them into the void of the valley behind him, as Chunilal’s body burns.

Damini wraps her shawl around her shoulders and drapes it over her knees. She saves her remaining bitterness for Samuel, because it is easy to blame Samuel for refusing to prepare Chunilal’s body. Samuel may have learned that Chunilal is Suresh’s brother-in-law. But even if he had, Samuel’s role as an outcaste is to bridge the gap between living and non-living. He shouldn’t make others do his dharma; he should be here. But hearing of AIDS, Samuel has refused to touch Chunilal’s body.

These sweepers … hearts of stone
.

Sister Anu covers her head with her shawl, sinks to her knees beside the pyre, joins mind to heart chakra, then touches shoulder to shoulder, and prays silently in her own way. She then joins Damini on a reed mat on the ground, across from Leela and Kamna, and reaches for Damini’s hand, just like Mem-saab used to.

After a while, Damini places her hand in Sister Anu’s open palm. Together they watch the pyre burn.

Two hours later, maybe three, the flames of Chunilal’s pyre still leap and flicker against the serene majesty of the snow peaks. Sitting cross-legged, Kamna and Leela are a large dark egg-shape against the evening sky. Kamna’s shawl-clad head rests on Leela’s shoulder as she strokes her mother’s arm. Suresh paces back and forth.

“You know Leela should be tested,” Sister Anu whispers to Damini, chin resting on her knuckles, elbow on one folded knee.

“She knows,” says Damini. “She was told in Shimla. But if she had been tested and it came out that she too has ayds, Chunilal might have felt bad, and worried that his children could be left orphans. So she didn’t have it done.”

“Maybe it would have been a good thing if he felt bad before he died. Father Pashan says telling our sins cleanses us.”

Damini shakes her head, “Not when a man is dying.” After a while she says, “Some of us do wrong things but don’t feel any different. Others feel bad all the time after doing a wrong thing.”

Silence gathers grief in its underbelly and spreads around them.

“You feel bad all the time?”

How does Sister Anu know that?

“Most of the time,” Damini says. “But I don’t stop working or complain or get Dipreyshun. Anamika Devi gives me shakti.”

“Damini,
shakti
is woman’s power, and that power creates, it doesn’t destroy. If you really cared about shakti, you wouldn’t lead women to the Jalawaaz Fertility Clinic for ultrasounds and cleanings.”

Damini sticks her chin out. “I listen to women, and follow what they want.”

Sister Anu folds her legs close, hugs her knees, and shakes her head. “So you think whatever a woman wants should always be done?” She uses the word
murrzi
, which conveys the kind of will and headstrong selfishness Damini expects in a man. But murrzi is the right one.
Ichcha
or
chahut
would convey only yearning.