The Selector of Souls (60 page)

The night is as dark as if the whole world has been sucked back into Anamika’s cave. But fireflies dance across the terraces, and a single light shines in Chunilal’s old room, guiding Damini uphill as she leads Sister Anu, Leela, Kamna and Mohan home. Sister Anu has accepted Damini’s invitation to share their roti and potato-pea curry without any saab attitude of bestowing a favour.

But after they have all washed hands and feet beneath the water pipe, Damini says, “You all go into the cookroom. I’ll sit outside.”

“Why?” says Kamna.

“I am unclean.”

“You?” says Leela. She glances at Sister Anu and titters behind her hand.

“But you just washed,” says Sister Anu.

“Yes, but tonight blood came again. I have not felt bleeding for years.”

Sister Anu says, “If the goddess sent you your menses, how can you be unclean? And if you are unclean, then I will sit outside with you.”

“Oh no, you’re a guest. You go in.”

“Not without you,” Sister Anu says, a stubborn set to her chin.

“I’ll stay outside too,” says Kamna. She turns to Leela, “Ma-ji, you go in.”

“Huh, I should cook all alone like a servant and give you all food outside?” says Leela. “No, you all prepare to sleep hungry tonight.”

“Even Mohan?”

“No, I have to cook for him.”

“But we’re all hungry, Ma-ji!” says Kamna.

And so Damini steps over the threshold, into the kitchen.

Nothing shrivels, nothing dies. Leela checks the milk—it has not soured. It may later, but for now …

Sister Anu sits with them in the half-circle around the coal-stove, wiping her eyes in the smoke. “Your body and clothing seemed to glow all the way home,” she says. “And your face is still … radiant. Do you know why you were chosen from all who were present?”

“You think Anamika Devi should have chosen an English-speaking woman, na? I think Anamika-ji said, ‘Here is Damini, she has a pair of ears to listen, she has a pair of hands to work; I can use her.’ Goddesses are like saab-log. They think like-that-like-that.”

“I thought goddesses only visit other families, not ours,” Leela says. She slaps a roti onto the hot iron tava.

“It runs in our family,” says Damini. “But not by blood. I got it from your father’s mother. Some things are passed down by spirit and example, too.” She begins to chop onions to sweeten the daal.

She is not surprised Anamika’s voice came through her—the mantra called her. But how did Mem-saab’s voice and others she did not recognize come through her? And why? Is this what the goddess meant so long ago when she came in dream? “What comes through you changes you. What comes through you, creates you.” How can she know if she has changed? The one who opens the gateway may not remain the same being as the one who has gazed through it.

“You really don’t remember, or you were just saying that for Aman-ji?” says Leela.

“I was there,” Damini says, searching for human language to describe what happened. “But I could only watch and wonder who was speaking. I had good bhagya that their ears opened.”

“Yes, but were they hearing?” says Leela.

Damini sighs. “Whether it means we will treat our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and granddaughters as if the goddess can
come through her anytime, I don’t know. Even if those who don’t believe Anamika Devi spoke, would hesitate to disobey. Lord Golunath witnessed everything Anamika-ji showed us, and he is the god on the hill, the god men worship for justice. Lord Golunath said we should bring the goddess from her cave.” That thought falls like a raindrop onto water, and an idea ripples through her. “But for that, we must make her a body.”

“She already has her pot,” says Leela. “And that,” she nods at the pink poster which has found its way to a corner at the far end of the cookroom, “can be her image. I can put it in our shrine with all the other gods tomorrow. Or I can make her a special temple for her pot and this poster outside on the terrace. Why does she need a body as well?” She reaches for a potato from a sack beside her and begins to peel.

“A carving will tell her how we are now, and what she is for us,” says Damini.

“She can see how we are,” says Leela. “She knows what she is for us.” She looks at Sister Anu for support. “A carving is expensive. I sold the chickens a few days ago, and soon we may have to sell a cow.”

“Maybe,” Sister Anu says in soothing tones, “she has no form. Maybe she’s just energy.” Jade-coloured peas spring from their shells into the aluminium bowl in her lap.

“Oh no,” says Damini. “If all her forms disappear, she’ll be as dead as the spirits. Then who will name and protect us—you saw the world she showed us, the world that is to come if all women’s shakti disappears.”

“She is everywhere,” Leela says, “but her jee must be in that poster. Because she doesn’t look like me at all—she’s laughing.”

“Then I hope one day you’ll be like her,” says Damini. “But Anamika Devi is not only for us, she’s also for men. And men will not see us as we are if they only worship the poster picture. Look how they worship Rekha and Madhuri Dixit in filums, but not the women beside them. It’s not only men today—Lord Ram preferred to worship a clod of earth instead of Sita Mata. This is the problem:
men have to be told everything and then shown it again. I say Anamika must have a carving.”

Kamna places a pea against her middle finger, draws the finger back and lets fly as if playing marbles. “We should tell Samuel what we want and he’ll carve it,” she says.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Sister Anu says. “He certainly needs the money.”

“No money,” says Damini. “We’ll pay in potatoes, and in peaches next spring. Samuel may do it, or he may not. Anamika Devi did not help him when he suffered, and neither did his Jesus-god. We must ask gently. I’ll tell him that if we make no difference between sons and daughters, men and women, Anamika Devi can bring Lord Golunath’s ener-jee into the world.”

Leela bites her lip. A firefly dances into the room, and circles her at shoulder level. “Real justice?” she says.

Damini nods. The promise will be almost too daunting to speak, and the sweeper could take it far beyond her meaning. He might think all those ordained low can have bhagya like the twice-born.

But if there can one day be justice for girls, there can also be justice for Samuel and Goldina.

“Father Pashan would tell us to work for justice,” Sister Anu says fervently. “He too would say we must make no difference between high and low.”

Damini looks out at the ridges of the mountains, at the clouds folded between.

There are differences. Sister Anu has lost her clinic but already her employer has another job for her in Shimla. And she has a living husband—what kind of husband is just her bhagya—who may still take her in. Women like her from the city—Hindu, educated, speaking English—always have somewhere to go.

A
MARIGOLD MAKES A BRIGHT ORANGE SPLASH ACROSS
the putty base of Imaculata’s computer monitor—placed by the convent’s computer technician to propitiate the unseen. He must have exorcised the latest viruses and replenished the daily offering of backup disks, too. The computer file structures are much like the Church’s hierarchies, and its inner mechanisms seem governed by a much faster version of Canon Law. Sister Anu opens Netscape and touch-types as if playing a piano.

No stamps required—email is making stamps obsolete. Rare stamps in Dadu’s collection are turning even more rare. Sister Anu points the cursor at SEND, and clicks her mouse-button, staccato.

A
FTER EVENING PRAYERS AND DINNER
, S
ISTER
I
MACULATA
draws a Tibetan shawl over her knees and pulls her rocking chair close to the fire in the nuns’ recreation room. Sister Anu leaves the others gathered around a game of dominoes and takes a chair beside her. The scent of pine from the red and green tinselled tree in the corner mingles with the deodar wood burning in the grate.

“Are you all right, Sister?” Sister Anu had read the bishop’s letter when it fell from Imaculata’s hands a week ago: he said he endorsed her prayer meetings and applauded her service and zeal during the temporary absence of a priest but reminded her that no nun should lead a congregation to believe that transubstantiation had indeed happened by her hand. “The wafer and wine do not become the body and blood of Christ by the hand of anyone but an ordained priest.” In effect, he says Imaculata has committed fraud, and this led “inevitably” to excommunication. Sister Imaculata is barred from receiving the sacraments and participating in worship, but can continue as lay principal of the convent.

“I haven’t lived in India all these years,” Imaculata replies, “without learning worse things can happen.” Her chair creaks with grim regularity.

“But it’s truly unfair, Sister!”

Church tradition is a stream in progress, just as Sister Imaculata said to Anu only two years ago. It changes direction in its own time. But …

“The bishop holds the Church and its reputation above the individual,” says Imaculata. “It’s our fault—we turned our Pope and his priests into gods.”

“How can they justify it to themselves?”

“Jesus,” says Sister Imaculata, “never said only men can be priests. There aren’t even any women chancellors in the dioceses—it’s mostly men listening to men. We’ve let them believe they’re infallible.”

“I have organized a petition to the bishop on your behalf,” says Sister Anu. “Sister Clare is the only nun who refused to sign it.”

“Yes, and all this week she has taken her meals at another table,” says Imaculata. “The others are disobeying the bishop, I think, since they’re not shunning me. They were at my prayer meetings. They know I didn’t, I would never …”

She falls silent.

“Is it true about your visa?” says Sister Anu. The news flew through the convent today: the Indian government, pressured by the anti-missionary rhetoric of the RSS and its Hindutva organizations, has refused Sister Imaculata’s application for extension of her Indian visa. And since VIPs with enough clout to override the refusal have discharged Sister Imaculata from their tribe, sympathy is now all the Shimla congregation can offer.

“ ’Tis so, yes. I must learn to live in Ireland again. That will be strange after all these years here. I was looking forward to meeting my old colleagues in one of our nun’s retirement homes someday. But I can’t now.”

“Oh dear Sister … I wish … I mean, I want … How will you live?”

“I thought of renting from one of my brothers. He had a modest two-up, two-down before Ireland became the Celtic Tiger. But it’s now valued at more than a million pounds, and he values himself accordingly. I wrote to one of my nieces to see if I could stay in her
bed-sit, and she replied today by email. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘and please could you teach me all about Hinduism?’ I don’t know anything about Hinduism. What can I teach her? So – I’ll have to see.”

Will what Anu is going to do add to Sister Imaculata’s troubles—or help? “May I read you a letter?”

Imaculata nods. Sister Anu clears her throat, clears it again. In a low, even tone, she reads a letter asking permission to leave before taking her final vows.

In solidarity with Imaculata, she is refusing to serve VIPs’ and VVIPs’ children any longer, refusing to pontificate about social justice from within the luxury of the convent. But this is not in her letter. If it were, the sister would simply tell her to go and work with Mother Teresa.

And the lines on the page do not say that if the divine appeared to the ojha and Damini, Sister Anu’s service and prayer have been irrelevant. They do not say that the bright warm light she saw only a few years ago now seems unattainable, though she has sometimes experienced flashes of connection when she plays the piano. They do not say Sister Anu has been unable to give up her belief in reincarnation and worse, she among all the nuns cannot believe Christ is the only god, the only way.

The lines on the page do not say she must also be the one nun in this order who cannot, does not, believe in heaven and hell because she has seen the hells men make on earth. They do not say she believes that dogs, cats, crows and rats have souls because she knows at least one man, maybe two, who will surely be reborn as animals. And the lines on the page make it no longer necessary to confess her lie or acknowledge she is still married to a man who will be reborn as an ant.