Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Navneet-bhenji opened her eyes. She looked full into Prabhjot Kaur's face, her eyes still hazy and abstracted. Then she blinked twice. 'Arre, why're you looking like that, bachcha?' she said. 'Don't worry. She can be infuriating, but you'll go away from this house also.'

Prabhjot Kaur had to swallow twice before she could speak. 'Away?'

'Yes,' Navneet-bhenji said, and drew her close. She nestled her in the bend of an elbow and whispered into her hair. 'Haven't you heard? A girl is born into a house, but her home is somewhere else. This house doesn't belong to you. Your home is elsewhere.'

Saying this, Navneet-bhenji stretched and sighed luxuriously, and Prabhjot Kaur felt, through her own head and into her toes, her sister's pleasure in life, her eagerness for the future, her happiness at leaving, at being gone, and yet Prabhjot Kaur felt only an inexplicable loss, and foreboding. And the rough, ashy sound of the pot being scrubbed mingled with her sister's pulse, which throbbed under her ear.

She covered her head with Navneet-bhenji's dupatta and tried to sleep. When Mani came in an hour and a half later, and flung her bag full of books on the floor, Prabhjot Kaur understood that she had seen Ram Pari and the children, who were still camped by the gate, and that she was incensed and ready for battle. But Mata-ji gave Mani such a look, all twisted brow and bulging eyes, that even she quailed, and quietly came and sat down next to Prabhjot Kaur. She picked furiously at a toenail. Then she said, 'We'll have to wait for Papa-ji.'

But Papa-ji was in no mood for struggles. He was exhausted, and he lay back against a masnad and combed his fingers through his beard, and Prabhjot Kaur could see that even though Mani had put her case squarely before him, and had done it well, in a few short, precise sentences, he was thinking of something else. 'That's difficult,' he said. And then he cupped his eyes. Mani was leaning forward, her fingers twisted and twisting in a kind of net. 'That's difficult,' he said, and then got up. He walked towards his room, and had already forgotten about Ram Pari and her difficulties, this was clear. Mani threw back her shoulders and raised her hands in defeat. Prabhjot Kaur drummed her heels on the floor. What to do, what to do? The silence continued, widened. Ram Pari came in at dinner time to make the phulkas, and the only thing that Prabhjot Kaur could hear were the slap-slaps of her hands on the atta. Her brothers were home, but even they ate quietly. Everyone looked worried, except for Navneet-bhenji. Finally, when the dishes had been cleared away, Mata-ji was nibbling on a little thimble of gur, which she held in two fingers above a cupped left hand. Ram Pari came and stood by the wall, leaning against it. She had a hand cocked on a hip, and one ankle crossed behind the other. 'Bibi-ji,' she said. 'I'm going.'

'Go,' Mata-ji said, and Prabhjot Kaur felt something twist and give in the exact middle of her chest.

Ram Pari was half-way across the courtyard when Mata-ji spoke again. 'Where will you go?'

Prabhjot Kaur could see how still Ram Pari was. Her shoulders were thin, dark rectangles, pinned against the moonlit white of the wall behind, against the sharp edge of the roof. She said nothing.

Mata-ji was looking at the tiny piece of gur left on her finger, as if she were weighing it, considering its possibilities. 'All right,' she said. 'You can stay for one night, behind the house.'

'Yes, Bibi-ji.'

'But only one night. Hear me?'

'Yes, Bibi-ji. One night.'

Ram Pari left quickly. Prabhjot Kaur knew that she was hurrying to get out of earshot before anything more could be said, and she herself couldn't bear the thought of any more talk. She felt suddenly limp, tired, as if she had walked all the way to school and back with a great bag hanging on her shoulders. She settled forward, slumped for a moment against Mata-ji's knees, then got up herself without being told to and got ready for bed. But in spite of wobbly knees and dragging eyes, she clambered up on a stool in the corner of the room where she slept with Mani, and craned her neck out of the window at an angle, so that she could see the busy crowd of dark figures bustling about at the back of the house. There was broken light from two windows, that was all, but Prabhjot Kaur saw how Ram Pari and her children were making their home. They had bundles, none of which Prabhjot Kaur could remember seeing during the long day, but from these bundles they now pulled sheets and rags, strips and tatters, which, arranged on the ground close to the house in a rough, jagged circle, became a habitation. Prabhjot Kaur saw how the shadow of a wall alone could be a shelter. She went to sleep filled to the brim with this new knowledge. She remembered all the drawings she had made of 'My Home' in her long life, and now she knew that all those simple boxy houses she had drawn were somehow a lie, and there was some satisfaction in looking back and thinking what a silly-silly child she had been.

The next afternoon, when Prabhjot Kaur got back from school, she went straight around to the back of the house, and there were two thick sheets nailed to the back wall at the upper end and weighted with broken bricks at the other, forming a kind of half-tent, under which the baby dozed. The other children were scattered in disarray around the garden, which wasn't quite a garden yet but mostly dusty earth, two forlorn trees and a wall at the far end. Prabhjot Kaur stepped close to the mouth of the tent and leaned in. Two poking-out bricks had been made into a little shelf, on which sat a bright picture of Sheran-walli-Ma resplendent on her tiger. From a nail hung a cloth bag which contained clothes. Another two nails held a gunny sack with grain in it. In the furthest recess, in the shadiest part of the tent, there was a small mountain of little bags, and against it the baby slept. Prabhjot Kaur thrilled violently, in the little green world behind the sheet, feeling newness jump up her arms in ecstatic little leaps. She was filled with admiration. How competently so little had been made into so much! How brave it was, all of it! She looked down at the baby. He had a thin bracelet on his right wrist, and a black string around his left arm with a taveez hanging from it, and a penis exactly like a little downturned water-tap. Prabhjot Kaur resisted the urge to pick him up and cradle him, and turned around instead. From a foot away the oldest of the girls was watching her, her hands behind her back. She had a dirty and very long plait that came down over her shoulder and hung in front of her, and alert black eyes, and one protruding tooth on the left side of her mouth. Prabhjot Kaur thought she must be about fourteen, but felt – instantly and without question – older than her. 'What's your name, girl?' she said.

'Nimmo,' the girl said.

'Do you know how to read, Nimmo?'

Nimmo shook her head. In half an hour Prabhjot Kaur had learnt, by heart, all their names – Nimmo, Natwar, Yashpal, Balraj, Ramshri, Meeta, Bimla, Nirmala, Gurnaam, in that order – and that none of them knew how to read, that not one of them, not even one of the boys, had ever seen the inside of a schoolroom. Prabhjot Kaur was horrified, because here was the illiteracy of our country, literally in her back veranda, but she was also secretly pleasured, because here was clear direction, a necessary task. She knew what she had to do. She would set about teaching them. But there was the question of how long they would be allowed to stay, whether or not Mata-ji would stick to her one-night policy and ruthlessly force them out into the wide world. Inside the house, Ram Pari was cutting onions, and Mata-ji had her hands slathered in besan, and there were pakoras sizzling madly in the karhai. They were gossiping about the widowed neighbour four plots down, who had a son given to bad ways and alcohol. They seemed quite content together. Prabhjot Kaur tiptoed around all evening, terrified, unable to bring up the one-night question for fear of reminding Mata-ji of it, and unable to forget it. But when bedtime came, and she stuck her head out of the window, the other family was still there, that round cluster of shiny heads in the dark. It was all quite baffling, Prabhjot Kaur thought as she waited for sleep, her head full of plans. People had stances, they threw out opinions, they made ferocious noises, but decisions were often made in a flurry of competing silences, and what was not said mattered more than what was. The world grew more complicated every day, she thought.