This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (35 page)

Next day, Mohanlal had to go to his office in the secretariat. He was still afraid of going out because of the disturbances, but was also afraid of being absent from his desk. For him, there was something to fear everywhere.
Sheelo came with him as far as the Uchchi Gali. Once there, she pleaded with her mother to take her and her son to Bhola Pandhe’s Gali.

Tara was still moody. Sheelo’s mother expressed her worry to Tara’s mother about her daughter’s scar. Bhagwanti, her voice heavy with worry, told her
jethani
about a matter of even greater concern, ‘Bhahinji, I’ve been trembling inwardly with fear that her mind may have been affected by the fall. Although the doctor did say that her wound was superficial, and needed only one stitch she’s been silent since that day.’

‘Hai hai, sukhkhi saandi. May her enemies suffer disgrace! You shouldn’t even think about such bad things,’ Sheelo’s mother said. ‘You couldn’t find a girl with such a brilliant mind on all seven continents. Some bad person has put the evil eye on her. Have you turned seven pods of dry red chillies round her head and thrown them into the fire to ward off the evil eye, yet?’

‘God help us.’ Bhagwanti’s eyes became watery with tears. She looked at Sheelo and said, ‘Let’s see if she talks to you. If anyone tries to talk to her, she just says that it hurts her to talk, and turns her face away. I’m so scared that her brain may have been damaged in some way…’

Sheelo went to the veranda and sat next to Tara. She had heard about the incident from Tara’s mother, but asked Tara again to tell her about how she fell and hurt her forehead. Tara replied, ‘My mother has already told you. I don’t know any more. I just fainted, they tell me.’

‘But why did you faint? Why weren’t you eating? Nobody faints just like that.’

‘Well, if it happened, it happened. What else can I tell you? Don’t ask me questions. Tell me about yourself,’ Tara pleaded with her.

‘What’s there to tell about me? Listen, I didn’t tell this to chachi, but the elder sister of your fiancé came to our place from Sheesha Moti…’

Tara signalled with her hand to ask Sheelo to stop, ‘Talk only about yourself.’

‘Hai, you two gossips are sitting here!’ Pushpa came onto the veranda. She sat down on the chatai with Tara and Sheelo, and said in a low voice, ‘Come to my place. We’ll sit and chat there.’

Tara looked at Pushpa with eyes that begged: Let it go! Leave me alone!

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Sheelo asked suspiciously.

‘Can’t talk here. Let’s go to my place. I came to ask you both over,’ Pushpa said.

‘Leave me out of it. Don’t insist,’ Tara pleaded.

‘Why, am I your enemy?’ Pushpa whispered to make sure that Bhagwanti and Sheelo’s mother could not hear her. ‘The way you’re clamming things up in your heart, who knows what you might do? Let us sisters talk among ourselves. You won’t even talk to us?’

Sheelo wrinkled her brow in puzzlement and looked at Tara and then at Pushpa.

Tara had to give in. Pushpa said to Bhagwanti, ‘Bahinji, get the sewing machine and the cloth out. We’ll be back in no time. Sheelo wants to have a look at my munni.’

Bhagwanti said to Pushpa, ‘Make sure to hold her arm as you go down the stairs.’

Pushpa told Sheelo of the incident of Tara trying to borrow the bottle of kerosene as Tara listened. She asked Sheelo, ‘If she’s so desperate now, what might she not do at her in-laws? Or, what if she swallows something tomorrow? Tell me, how she’s going to be able to bear living with Somraj? Now that we know about it, we can’t push her down the well to her death. Can’t your mother do something about it?’

Sheelo sat with chin on her drawn-up knees in dumb silence. She just stared at the floor.

Pushpa goaded her for an answer, ‘Tell me,
adiye
.’

Sheelo let out a deep sigh and remained sitting without speaking. Tara sat with her head bent in embarrassment.

After sitting quietly for several moments more, Sheelo looked at Tara’s averted face, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. Tara looked at Sheelo when she heard her sob, and also began to cry.

Pushpa too wiped her tears, and reminded them, ‘Crying won’t solve anything.’

Sheelo said nothing. She turned towards the wall, bent her head into her chest, and wept bitterly. Tara too began to sob. She bent over Sheelo, and trying to take her into her arms, said, ‘How long will you go on crying over my bad luck? Stop crying.’

In a cradle nearby, Pushpa’s baby daughter screwed up her face, closed her eyes, and thrusting up her tiny feet and fists, burst out crying.

Pushpa got up, looked at her daughter, and said, ‘Let me change her, and give her a bath. The heat must be bothering her. Didn’t get time to bathe her.’ She picked up her daughter and went over to the aangan that was covered with a grille.

Tara held Sheelo close and said, ‘Enough! Don’t cry any more! If you do, may you see me dead.’

‘You might have really died! You’d almost made sure that I wouldn’t see your face again. To hell with you, you wretch!’ Sheelo cursed angrily. ‘I’ve never hid anything from you. And you couldn’t trust me even a little bit! Are you that full of having a BA degree? Go to hell! I don’t ever want to see your face again! Kill me! Kill all of us!’ She slapped her forehead in rage.

Tara put her hand over Sheelo’s lips, and hugged her hard, pinning her arms. She then held her cheek over her mouth to stop her from speaking.

After she regained her composure, Sheelo said, ‘First swear on my baby that you’ll tell me the whole truth. Only then will I speak to you.’

Tara said lovingly, ‘May he live a hundred years! Don’t say that! I’ll tell you. What is there to hide now?’

‘How did you hurt you forehead? Tell me the truth.’

‘My brother said something, and I had to do something to stop him.’

‘What did he say?’

Tara told Sheelo why Puri had asked her to go with him. She too had wanted to see someone, and had gone to keep her appointment from her friend’s house. As she came out of the restaurant with him, her brother was passing on a tonga. He accused her of having been caught in the act of trying to elope.

‘Tell me honestly, and you’ve sworn on my baby, were you really going to elope?’ Sheelo stared hard into her eyes.

Tara hung her head and kept silent.

‘You never gave me any hint of this.’

Tara said nothing.

‘Do you really want to elope?’ Sheelo asked after some thought.

Tara shook her head.

‘How is that? You want to go left, then you want to go right! Then why did you advise me to elope with Ratan?’

Tara said nothing.

‘Why don’t you want to? Tell me the truth. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to Ratan. Had I known all this I’d surely have run away with him. Now it’s too late. But I’ll do anything to help you. Love is no sin. When Lord Krishna saw that his sister Subhadra was in love with Arjun, didn’t he himself tell her to elope with her love? That’s the tale in the Mahabharata, we all know that. Just tell me the truth. Don’t worry about what I might think.’

Tara shook her head.

‘Damn you to hell! You’re really weird. You gashed your head, you had the guts to set fire to yourself, but you don’t have the guts to run away with him. You’ve just told me that you were all set to run away. I say, elope if you want to. You’re still unmarried; that would be no sin.’

Tara kept her silence.

‘Is he willing to keep you?’ Sheelo asked after a few moments.

Tara again shook her head.

‘Be damned to you, then, and him too!’ Sheelo said irately. ‘Shame on you for loving such a wimp, and shame too on a man who says he loves you but hasn’t the guts to stand by you. Somraj is a hundred times better than he is. He’s mad about you, and that’s why he says that he won’t rest until he’s made you his own. He asks how you can change your mind after saying “yes” to him. Says that he said “yes” only after knowing that you had said “yes” first.’

Tara did not want to defend Asad in front of someone who did not know him. Nevertheless, she tried to explain to Sheelo, ‘No, he does have guts. He just says that we should let this Hindu–Muslim conflict cool down a little first.’

‘Forget that!’ Sheelo said scornfully, ‘That conflict is never going to end. It’s been there since I was born. There will be Hindus and there will be Muslims, and so will be the problems between them. Shame on that weakling of a man! He’s bothered about the conflict, not about you. And that’s what you call love! Love is when you’re blind to everything else, to the whole wide world. Love is when you cross the river holding on to an unfired clay pot, like Sohini in the legend, without thinking about risking your life.’

Tara attempted to pacify her, ‘It’s not like that. Actually, I just don’t want to get married. I want to study for my MA degree. Who needs marriage?’

Bhagwanti called from across the gali, ‘
Nee
Pushpa, are those girls going to be stuck there forever? Tell them to come back now.’

‘They’re coming, bahinji,’ Pushpa called back, and came to sit with Tara and Sheelo.

‘You’re crazy!’ Sheelo said. ‘Who questions the need for marriage and family? People are born, people get married. That’s life, and if we’re born, we have to live. We’ll suffer if that’s our fate, but why be afraid of that? Some women have the bad luck of being widowed while they’re young.
Just like Biddi bua; it’s all the result of our actions in our previous life.’

‘Biddi bua’s case is different.’ Tara made an attempt at explaining her viewpoint, ‘Nowadays some women take another track, they become doctors or professors. Others don’t marry at all. They don’t suffer any consequences either.’

‘They’re not like us. Their customs and ways of life are different,’ Sheelo replied. ‘We have to live with our own kind. You’ve had education, so you’ve begun to think like one of them, but your family and your people are different. People like us have to go along with people like ourselves, and not break away. If someone chooses to become a
jogin
and renounce the world for her love, that’s another matter. Otherwise we must follow the customs of our own community.’

Tara kept quiet. Sheelo’s philosophizing was unusual for her. ‘What a naïve approach to life!’ Tara thought. It was as if the very bricks and mortar, imbued with the culture and spirit of the galis, were speaking through Sheelo. She remembered that Asad too had asked, ‘How can we escape from our circumstances?’ Sheelo is essentially saying the same thing. ‘Why did I remain quite for so long? Because I trusted my brother. If I raise my voice now, he’ll be the first to brand me a rebel. Nothing has happened to change the circumstances of my family and community. So how can those be changed in a hurry now? It’s possible for Zubeida and Pradyumna, because Zubeida’s mother has set the precedent. And Pradyumna’s family too is different; he lives in a bungalow, the son of a doctor. Doesn’t have to care for the opinions of any gali or the people of the neighbourhood.’

For some time, the three of them sat in silence. Sheelo said again, ‘Somraj and his sister came to my in-laws’ place. Both were mad. Who knows how they came to know of your refusal to get married? I think it’s the doing of Rampyari and Purandei. They’re both sneaky. All they do is tattle here, gossip there. Somraj blew his top, “I don’t have to get married. I don’t give a shit for this marriage, but I won’t let that girl off the hook. She has insulted me. Her mother and her
tayi
came to our house a hundred times and grovelled before us, to get us to accept the proposal. I let go dowries worth thirty and forty thousand for her, and she dares to look down her nose at me! I’ll be damned if I won’t take revenge for such a humiliation.”

‘I gave them a piece of my mind. I said, “We’re a poor family. Why don’t you admit that you’re looking for a big dowry, and just want some excuse to break off the engagement? Say what you like, but the whole gali and the
whole neighbourhood knows about my sister. If she says ‘yes’ once, she won’t say ‘no’ afterwards even if someone cuts her head off. She never said ‘no’ to the marriage, but she did beg her family to let her finish her BA. My father asked, ‘What do you need a BA degree for? Your fiancé doesn’t have one.’ My sister replied, ‘My fiancé is like a god to me, it doesn’t matter if he has a BA or not.’”’

Pushpa broke into laughter, ‘You’re bad. You really know how to tell the tale!’

‘Hai, I swear to you, what else could I say?’ Sheelo said. ‘They were bent on shaming her in the bazaar. I stopped him in his tracks, “Tell me about yourself. Everybody praises my sister and says that she’s blameless and pure like a devi, but what about you? Maybe you’re mixed up with someone else, maybe you’ve chosen another girl. If so, you’d better come clean. My poor sister will just accept it as her lot in life. You men are all the same.”’

Sheelo said that Somraj’s sister replied, ‘There’s nothing to it. Somraj turned down a number of offers before agreeing to your family’s proposal. Why shouldn’t he feel annoyed? He has reason to be.’

Sheelo went on, ‘I still say that Somraj is a hundred times better for you. He’s upset that he’s fallen for you. Adiye, who better for a woman than one who loves her? If he doesn’t have a BA or an MA, so what? My husband has a BA, but what has come of that? All he does is push a pen in some office. He almost peed in his pants yesterday when I asked him to bring me here.’

Tara was silent as before.

Tara’s bandage was removed after three days, and a small square of adhesive plaster was stuck over the wound. That too came off after a couple of days. A tiny star of reddish-brown lines, was left behind on her forehead as the symbol of her protest. To Puri the scar was like an eyesore. It reminded him of her accusations of his cruelty, and her proclaiming her own martyrdom. Tara was shifting the blame of her own wickedness onto him. This stain on his honour and dignity troubled Puri; it was an irritant that took his mind off his work time and again. Isn’t suppressing the truth by the false pretence of non-resistance, he wondered, crueller and more heinous than suppressing the truth by the use of violence? He had to yield before his sister’s manoeuvring only because of his kindness and concern for her. Otherwise she could have banged her head as much as she wanted! And the dishonour to the family’s name? If she had committed suicide so that
her shenanigans would not be exposed or had she eloped, and that too with a Muslim, how would his family have faced up to their relatives and the people of their gali? His anger over her action to blacken the family’s reputation took a permanent hold on his heart.