Arresting God in Kathmandu (13 page)

Lamfu had finished his tea and was dozing again, this time with his head against the wall and his mouth open. Aunt Shakuntala leaned in the doorway and watched him. He seemed not to have a care in the world. She envied the man, his lack of worries.

Someone passing by outside shouted, “Namaste, namaste.” She opened the gate and recognized her neighbor, Mister Pandey, as he was called by everyone in the neighborhood, because he always wore suits and ties. He was a first-class officer at the Agricultural Development Bank. “Namaste, Mister Pandey,” she said.

“All’s well, Aunt Shakuntala?” he asked. “How is Mohandas-ji?”

“Who knows?” she said.

Mister Pandey chuckled and shook his head. “I just passed him at the tea shop.” He seemed about to say something more but changed his mind. “And how are the children?”

She told him they were fine. After some more pleasantries, Mister Pandey left, and Aunt Shakuntala watched him go down the street. What a gentleman he was, and how quickly he had risen through the ranks in his office. He hobnobbed with all the powerful people in the area. For a brief moment Aunt Shakuntala wondered how her life would have been had she married Mister Pandey instead of Mohandas. The thought made her feel guilty, and she quickly dismissed it. Mohandas was her husband, and that was that.

The mailman, a thin man with whiskers, appeared, but he passed by, giving her an almost mournful look.

“Postman-ji,” she said loudly, and Lamfu jerked his head up. “You haven’t delivered any letters for five weeks.”

The postman turned and said, in a sad voice, “If there were letters, I would have given them to you. What should I do, hajoor? Set up a letter-manufacturing company?” For a man with a sad face, she thought, he had a cruel manner.

Lamfu was studying her intently, as though trying to figure out what she was really like. She grew self-conscious and could not resist saying, loudly, “I told you, my husband is not here. Now leave!” She pointed toward the road.

Lamfu gave her a reproachful look and, placing his hands on his knees, stood. As he left, he said, “Tomorrow.”

She went in and lay down on her bed, thinking of various reasons for Shanti’s not writing to her—she had flu; she was in the midst of her final exams—but an ominous feeling swept over her. It was unlike Shanti not to write. Ever since leaving for the capital, Shanti had written every two weeks. Her letters were full of details about her life in the bigger city, unlike Sanu’s letters, which described the weather and his classes. It was as if Shanti relished those moments of writing to her mother about her friends, the restaurants in the city, the movies she had seen, and, sometimes, about a boy who had teased her or wanted to take her to a restaurant. Whenever Shanti wrote about boys, Aunt Shakuntala became anxious. She knew Kathmandu girls were modern and did not think twice about associating with many boys. Shanti was very pretty, with a long oval face and large eyes, and before she left for Kathmandu the neighborhood boys used to follow her on her way to school. What if Shanti had become involved with a big-city boy? Every time this thought occurred to her, Aunt Shakuntala had to calm herself. Her daughter had always spoken disparagingly of the boys who hung around her like fleas. And she revealed everything to her mother, didn’t she?

Her husband came home that evening, whistling some religious tune and looked at her mockingly when he found her in bed. She had slept, she realized to her shame, for three and a half hours. She told him in anger, “Who do you think you are? Some kind of king, with servants at his disposal to take care of any lunatic you deem worthy of worship? What do you think this house is—made a home by my blood and sweat? A hotel where I am the cleaning woman?”

Her husband continued to regard her with half a smile. When she finished, he muttered under his breath, “Silly woman,” and walked into the kitchen, looking for something to drink. Aunt Shakuntala fell back on the bed.

Later, she went to sit beside him on the veranda and watch the sunset. He was staring into the horizon and did not even acknowledge her presence. She pretended to ignore him for some time, adjusting her hair and prying out dirt from under her fingernails. When it seemed as though he was not going to pay her any attention, she cleared her throat and said, “The postman did not bring any letters today.” She waited for his reaction, but when he said nothing, she added, “I haven’t heard from Shanti for months.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” he said, his voice barely audible.

“I think something has happened to her.”

“Sanu would let us know if something had happened, wouldn’t he? Now stop this nonsense.”

She felt helpless, vulnerable. She needed to talk to him about the children. After all, he was their father.

“We should call Rabindra and ask him to check on her,” she said. Rabindra, a distant relative, lived in Kathmandu and had agreed to keep an eye on Sanu and Shanti.

“Shakuntala, don’t fret. Your children are grown up now. Don’t treat them as if they’re suckling babies.”

“I am a mother,” she said, a lump rising in her throat. “If I don’t worry about my children, who will I worry about?” She hoped that her trembling voice would have some effect on him.

He continued to assess the sunset, but suddenly he said, “All right. I will talk to Rabindra.” Then, in a voice that was almost tender, he added, “You worry too much.”

She discovered, three days after her husband talked to Rabindra, what was wrong.

Early in the morning, the daughter of their neighbor Ram Charan came to get Mohandas. Somebody from Kathmandu was on the phone for him at her father’s house, the only one in the area with a telephone. Right then, Aunt Shakuntala knew that something terrible had happened. She woke Mohandas, who hurriedly put on his trousers and ran to Ram Charan’s house. Aunt Shakuntala waited on the veranda, pacing, praying that he’d come back to tell her that everything was all right. When Mohandas did return, after what seemed like hours, he stood in front of her, hesitating, and then said that Shanti was pregnant. By some boy at the college, whose whereabouts were now unknown. Shanti had broken down in front of Rabindra in her small room in the dormitory. She was already in her fourth month. She had stopped writing home because she was scared. She did not know, she had said, that doing it once could make her pregnant. The boy had promised to marry her, but he’d gone away.

Aunt Shakuntala’s knees felt weak, and she sat down on the cold veranda. Had the neighbor, Ram Charan, heard the conversation? she wanted to ask, but the words became stuck in her throat. The sun had moved up the horizon, and in the distance a truck rumbled on the highway. Mohandas stood beside her, his hand on the railing. She wished she could go back to bed and wake up a different person.

An hour later, Mohandas left for Kathmandu to bring Shanti home.

Aunt Shakuntala stayed on the veranda, watching schoolchildren with their heavy backpacks walk past the house. What was to be done now? They would have to make sure that no one, not a single soul outside the family, learned about Shanti’s condition. The thought of her daughter’s figure swollen and deformed brought the taste of vomit to Aunt Shakuntala’s throat. Of course the baby would have to go; there was no question about that. They would find an orphanage. She certainly did not expect any resistance from her daughter, but if Shanti wanted to keep the baby, Aunt Shakuntala would give her such a thorough beating that the girl would never mention it again.

During the next two days, Aunt Shakuntala kept to herself. When Ram Charan came to inquire if everything was all right, she told him that Shanti was having some health problems and Mohandas had gone to fetch her. On the streets, she avoided people’s eyes, her shame causing her to assume that people knew the secret.

Lamfu came by every morning, even though Aunt Shakuntala had told him that Mohandas had left town. It was as if Lamfu hadn’t heard; he seemed content to just sit on the veranda. Every two hours or so he would smoke a bidi, and the pungent smell would drift into the bedroom and sting Aunt Shakuntala’s nostrils. She would tell him to stop, and he’d obliged, smiling as he put out the bidi. Then he would lie against the wall and doze. There was something so innocent about his face, his being so oblivious of what people thought of him, that Aunt Shakuntala was envious. She gave him tea every morning, and he drank it eagerly, with loud smacking noises. The gratitude on his face touched her, and once or twice she even offered him slices of bread.

The afternoon before her husband was to return, Nandini, Aunt Shakuntala’s niece who lived down the road, came for a visit. She was a thin woman with dark circles under her pleading, sunken eyes.

“Where’s Mohandas, Mama?” Nandini asked after slowly looking around the house. She had a penchant for family drama, and Aunt Shakuntala was apprehensive.

“Oh, he has gone to Kathmandu,” she said. “How’s the baby?”

“He was coughing all night. I took him to the doctor, but he’s not any better.”

In the kitchen, Nandini helped herself to an orange Aunt Shakuntala had been saving for herself and then asked, “Have you gotten a letter from Shanti yet?”

Aunt Shakuntala had forgotten that she’d told Nandini, in a moment of frustration, that Shanti had not written lately. “Yes,” she said.

“There must be many boys at her college,” Nandini said, concentrating on the orange. Aunt Shakuntala knew Nandini was baiting her.

“She spends all her time with her books,” Aunt Shakuntala said casually as she poured water in the kettle for tea. “She wants to be an engineer.”

Nandini came close to her and whispered, “Did you hear about Jayaram’s daughter Bijaya?”

Aunt Shakuntala shook her head.

Nandini looked left and right and said in a low voice, “They took her to India to get rid of the baby.”

“I didn’t know she was pregnant,” Aunt Shakuntala said, a cold fear clenching her stomach.

“Oh, yes, everyone knows. It was a bus driver. You know how that Bijaya was, sashaying her hips for every low-life in town. I used to tell her mother: Watch your daughter. Now I say they deserve it. But to kill the bastard baby?
Chee, chee.
Whole family name down the drain. Who’d marry her now?”

Nandini continued with the town gossip until Aunt Shakuntala feigned a headache.

That evening she sat in the kitchen, watching the water from the white rice run down the side of the pot on the stove. She thought about her dreams for her children, how they would grow and become educated and establish names for themselves. They were not like her, she acknowledged. They knew so much, much more than she did at their age. Now Shanti had crushed her dreams.

Her husband came home early the next morning, with Shanti at his side.

Aunt Shakuntala forced herself to look at her daughter, her belly. There seemed to be a slight protrusion, but it was hard to tell, because Shanti was wearing a white shawl. Soon, she would start to show. The skin above Shanti’s eyes was chapped, and her lips had a bluish tinge. Her eyes were pale and sunken, almost like Nandini’s.

Shanti stayed by the door, as if she were a new servant. Aunt Shakuntala turned to face the window, not knowing what words would come out of her mouth should she attempt to speak.

“Come, no use standing there,” Mohandas said to Shanti, not unkindly. “Go to your room.” And the daughter, swathed in shame, made her way to the room she and her mother used to share. With that single act, she left no choice for her mother but to sleep in her husband’s bed, the man she had not slept with for years.

In bed that night, Mohandas’s figure, tall and angular, lay so close to Aunt Shakuntala that she felt strange. While she knew his mind inside out, his body was unfamiliar to her.

After he fell asleep, Aunt Shakuntala set her feet down on the cold floor and walked to the next room. Through the door, halfway open, she saw that her daughter was not sleeping. Barely visible in the dark, she was sitting on the bed, her head between her knees, which were pulled up tight. Sensing someone’s presence at the door, Shanti looked up, her eyes wide and dry.

Her daughter’s eyes reminded Aunt Shakuntala of a frightened animal’s. She went back to her room.

The next morning she woke earlier than usual and bathed beside the well in the backyard. Her neighbor from the adjacent house greeted her. “Such a nice morning, isn’t it, Aunt Shakuntala. Such clear skies and sharp air.” Aunt Shakuntala did not share the enthusiasm; she had hardly slept last night.

After her bath, she went to the prayer room and conducted puja half-heartedly. Even the statue of Lord Ganesh, with his long elephant trunk, appeared dull and lethargic today. Shanti was awake; Aunt Shakuntala had peeked into the room before going to the backyard. She heard Mohandas whistling in his room, and she went to him without completing the puja ceremony.

“We’ll have to make preparations,” she said, as he put on his trousers. Seeing her husband get dressed was a rare sight these days.

“Preparations?” he asked.

“For Shanti,” she whispered. “She should not go out. The neighbors should not see.”

“Oh.” Mohandas looked thoughtful for a moment but then started whistling again.

“We will have to get a midwife from another town,” she said.

He stopped whistling. “Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

“What does it matter? It won’t stay with us,” she said, slamming the door shut so that Shanti wouldn’t hear.

“It won’t?” Mohandas said, combing his hair.

“Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I am not saying anything,” he said calmly, ignoring the rise in her voice. He pointed toward Shanti’s room. “What is
she
saying?”

Aunt Shakuntala went to the kitchen, where, as she prepared the morning meal, she made no attempt to quiet the banging of the dishes.

As the weeks turned into months, Aunt Shakuntala forbade Shanti to step out of the house. Shanti responded by sulking, but, to Aunt Shakuntala’s surprise, she complied.

“You can’t hide it,” Mohandas told Aunt Shakuntala. “What’s the use?”