Anuradha Roy - The Folded Earth

I only knew Gappu, our local washerman. “You mean that pretty girl who grazes his cows with a baby strapped to her back in a shawl?” I said. I knew her more as a cowherd than as Gappu’s daughter-in-law.

“Yes, yes, the same one. That baby … now that baby is not by her husband. Her husband died years ago, when she was very young, just like you. Her child from that marriage is about twelve now. Just days after the husband died, this girl — everyone calls her Gudiya, because she looks like a glass doll — she took up with the fellow’s brother. That man had an eye on her even when the husband was alive, and when the husband died, the brother — they call him Vikki — he barely waited till the ashes had cooled when he began to seduce his sister-in-law. Before they could change the sheet, the next man was in her bed. I am not making this up, the older sister-in-law told me — you know that woman who is at the public water tap every day gossiping about the universe as though she’s got nothing else to do?”

“So it was good in the end, wasn’t it?” I said. “The girl seems happily married now.”

“Aah — but they are not married, you see!” Ama said with a cackling laugh. “No, no, Vikki is too shrewd for that. Gudiya’s husband was a peon in a Gormint office in Haldwani. When he died, Gudiya started getting a fat pension — I’ve heard it is two thousand rupees now. You think this Vikki would let himself lose that? Oh no. He knows only widows get the pension. So he just took Gudiya to a temple and told her, ‘Now before God we are married, but if any Gormint babu asks, you must say you are a widow.’ And every year she goes to State Bank and has to put her thumb print on a paper to swear she has not married. Then they release her pension for the next year. Even the bank babus know it’s a lie, but what can they do?”

“So what?” I said. “Everyone breaks laws.”

“How do you trust a man so greedy he wants his wife to be called a widow? Now you look at our Diwan Sahib. He’s old, he has that house and money, just wait and see, there’ll be vultures circling him till he dies. People who haven’t cared a bit for him. All these years, who looked after him? You did, I did, Himmat did. But you wait and see what happens. Old men without children start sprouting relatives faster than weeds after rain. It’s not easy knowing who to trust. And women alone? We never know when — did I tell you about that girl in our village? She put her hand into the tin to measure out rice like every other day and before you knew it she was screaming and writhing on the floor and there was a snake — as thick as my arm — who had her hand its mouth.”

Veer and Ama disliked each other equally, I realised. One evening a discussion about Puran’s deer exploded into a nasty argument when Veer insisted that Diwan Sahib get rid of Ama and her family. “What purpose does it serve,” Veer demanded to know, “to waste all that space for some peasants to turn it into a squalid slum and for their cattle to breed dirt and flies and destroy every inch of the garden?”

Later, when I tried to calm him down, he said, “You don’t know a thing about that woman and her damned family. I’ve seen them here since I was a kid. They were all over the place, as if they owned it. There was that drunk of a son. He bullied me when I came for holidays, he stole from my uncle, he beat his wife to death here — ten feet from your cottage — how would you have liked that? The police came, there was a real stink. My uncle almost got charged just for being the landlord even though he was nowhere near the house when it happened. I was hardly ten, but I’ve never forgotten the sound of that woman screaming. I’ve tried for years to make my uncle see reason and make them go. He could pay them off. But the old man is such a mule.”

When the poison ran so deep it was no use reasoning. I did not want Ama to be evicted any more than Diwan Sahib did, nor was I going to have an argument with Veer. “Speaking of mules,” I said, “did you ever find out if mules need shoes? And elephants and bullocks? And zebras and wildebeest? Maybe we could discuss this while you walk me home?” I slipped my fingers into his and wove them together.

* * *

Ama was not the only one with barbs to dispense: everyone was discussing Veer and me. Mrs Chauhan gave me a knowing look when I met her on Mall Road one evening and said, “Arre, Maya Memsa’ab, you are looking ten years younger! Tell me the secret, and I will buy it too!” Maya Memsaab was the name of a Hindi film based on Madame Bovary , in which a bored wife entertains herself with a series of love affairs. Mrs Chauhan nudged me towards a sign that her husband had just had nailed to a tree. It said, “Fighting Fire is Our Desire”. She read it aloud, gave my hand a conspiratorial squeeze, and left, suppressing giggles behind her palm. The General had a view as well. One morning, I went to the cemetery, to talk things over with Michael as I sometimes did. I sat by his headstone, chin resting on my knees, absent-mindedly plucking at the grass by my feet, when the General, who had come to visit Angelina’s grave, came upon me. “Ah, Maya!” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here any more … it’s been long enough, you’re too young to be moping over the past. Move on, my girl, move on. High time.”

Diwan Sahib’s response took me by surprise. I had assumed that he would be happy about Veer and me, but he became curiously resentful. One afternoon, I went to get his newspaper from Negi’s shop, and the boy there said Diwan Sahib had relayed instructions that the paper was not to be given to me; it was to be delivered straight to him. I asked Diwan Sahib why he was changing such an old arrangement, and his face turned sulky. “Why not? When you forget to come every other day? I can live without your august company, but I do need my daily paper.” He started keeping tabs on me and noting how little time I was spending with him. If he saw me looking better dressed than usual he would say in sardonic tones, “Where’s the untidy hair, poked through with a pencil? You look like a society lady now, all shining and combed.” When I wore a new kurta one day, he said to Mr Qureshi: “Our wild Himalayan rose is turning into a memsa’ab.” Another day, mellow after a long evening’s drinking, he said in a thoughtful tone, “If you went climbing, Maya, you would know: unknown territories need caution. One step at a time and lots of reconnaissance.”

Trekking and exploring suddenly featured a great deal in conversation. Veer said lightheartedly, when our murmurings on the rug in the forest edged towards the future: “Life’s a trek too, isn’t it? You meet people on the way that you like, spend days with them under tents, and then your time with them is over. But you don’t stop walking the route; you have to go on. Look at you, you’re the best example.”

What was he trying to tell me? I was not sure I wanted to know. We were too new and fragile, too skinless to be exposed to daylight just yet. What Veer’s life had been before me, I did not care about. I only knew that I could no longer do without him. Ama’s disapproval was a given, of course. But whatever had Diwan Sahib meant about trekking and caution? I had no idea if he himself knew, now that he was drinking himself insensible every day.

I could think of nothing but Veer: he was with me every minute. I became more than usually distracted in my classes. One morning, Miss Wilson slammed a wooden blackboard duster down on my table and said, “This is too much, Maya! I told you twice yesterday to inform Mr Chauhan that the school will not be used as a voting centre. Don’t you hear a word I say? Now you go and handle him. He’s already come with some orderlies and he’s selecting classrooms.” Sometimes stirring a vat of jam at the factory I would go on and on stirring while my mind and body were far away, under the lacework of deodar in the forest, until one of the girls would say, “Maya Mam?” and take the long ladle from my hand.