Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

The English was what brought the tears. The words reminded me of how Pitaji came home drunk after work once or twice a month. Ma, thin arms folded across her chest, stood in his bedroom doorway watching him fumbling with his clothes. I tried to be behind Ma. This was after Pitaji was caught with me. I had to watch. To leave was the same as saying I had nothing to do with all this.

Usually Pitaji was silent. But if he was very drunk, Pitaji might call out to me, "No one loves me. You love me, don't you, my little sun-ripened mango? I try to be good. I work all day, but no one loves me." He spoke in English then, as if to prove he was sober. The "little sun-ripened mango" was something he used to call me before we were caught. Eventually Pitaji began crying softly. After a while, he appeared to forget that he was being watched. Sometimes he turned out the lights and wept in the dark.

Those nights Ma served dinner without speaking. When Rajesh saw what was going to happen, he might take his food to the roof Sometimes Kusum was there. Mostly it was just me.

There were beautiful lines in the story Ma told to explain everything. Lines like "In higher secondary, a teacher said, in seven years all the cells in our body change. So when Baby died I thought, it will be all right. In seven years none of me will have touched Baby" Ma did not eat dinner. She might stand still as she talked, or she might walk in circles around me. "I loved him once," she usually said many times before she began talking of Baby's getting sick, the telegrams to Beri for Pitaji to come, his not doing so, her not telegramming about Baby's death. "What could he do?" she might conclude, while looking at the floor, "although he always cries so handsomely." I knew, of course, that everything was about me.

When Pitaji woke from his drunken sleeps, he asked for water to dissolve the powders he took to purge himself by vomiting. On my wedding night, while Pitaji spoke of love in English, it was the soft wet vowels of his vomiting that I remembered.

Rajinder bolted the door of the room where we spent our first night together. There was a double bed in the center of the room. Near it was a small table with a jug of water and two glasses. The room had yellow walls. The mattress smelled faintly of mildew. I stopped crying. I was suddenly calm. I stood near the bed, a fold of the sari covering my eyes. I thought, I will just say our marriage has been a terrible mistake. Rajinder lifted the sari's fold. He looked into my eyes. / am lucky^ he said. He was wearing a white silk kurta with tiny flowers embroidered around the neck. With a light squeeze

of my elbow, he let me know I was to sit. He took off his kurta, folded it like a shirt, put it on the table. No, wait. I must tell you, I said. The tie of his pajamas was hidden under his drooping stomach. Hair rose in a cord up his belly. At his chest it spread into a stain. What an ugly man, I thought. No. Wait, I said. He did not hear or I did not say. Louder. Tou an a very nice man, I am sure. He took off his pajamas. His penis looked like a slug resting on lichen-covered rocks. He laid me down on the bed, which had a white sheet dotted with rose petals. I put my hands on his chest to push him away. He took both wrists in one hand. No loving tonight, I said, but he might not have heard, or I might not have said. I wondered whether it would hurt as much as it had with Pitaji. My breath quickened from fear. Rajinder's other hand undid my blouse. I felt its disappointment with my small breasts. The ceiling was so far away. The moisture between my legs was like breath on glass.

Rajinder put on his kurta, poured himself some water. After drinking he offered me some.

Sleep was there as soon as I closed my eyes. But around eight in the morning, when Rajinder woke me, I was exhausted. The door to our room was open. One of Rajinder's cousins, a fat hairy man with a towel around his waist, walked past to the bathroom. Seeing me, he leered.

I had breakfast with Rajinder's family in our room. We sat around a small table eating parathas with yogurt. I wanted to sleep. Again Rajinder's mother talked the most. Her words were indistinct. I would blink and my eyes would remain closed. "You eat like a bird," she said, smiling.

After breakfast we visited a widowed aunt of Rajinder's who had been unable to attend the wedding because of arthritis. She lived in a two-room flat whose walls, floor to ceiling, were covered with posters of gods. The flat smelled of mothballs. As she spoke of carpenters and cobblers moving in from the villages to pass themselves off as upper castes, the corners of her mouth became white with spit. I was silent, except for when she asked me what dishes I liked to

cook. As we left, she pressed fifty-one rupees into Rajinder's hands. "A thousand years. A thousand children," she said.

Then there was the bus ride to Rajinder's village. The roads were so bad I kept being jolted awake. My sleep became fractured till I dreamed of the bus ride. In the village there were the grimy hens peering into the well and the women for whom I posed demurely in the courtyard. They sat in a circle around me, murmuring compliments. My eyes were covered with my sari. As I stared at the ground, I fell asleep. I woke an hour later to their praise of my modesty. That night in the dark room at the rear of the house, I was awakened by Rajinder digging between my legs. Although he tried to be gentle, I just wished it over. There was the face, distorted above me, the hands which raised my nipples so cruelly, resentful of being cheated, even though there was never any anger in Rajinder's voice. He was always polite. Even in bed he used the formal you. "Could you get on all fours, please?"

Winter turned into spring. The trees in the park beside our home swelled green. Rajinder was kind. When he traveled for conferences to Baroda, Madras, Jaipur, Bangalore, he always brought back saris or other gifts. The week I had malaria, he came home every lunch hour. On my twenty-second birthday he took me to the Taj Mahal. When we returned in the evening, he had arranged for my family to hide in the flat.

Rajinder did not make me do anything I did not want to, except for sex. Even that was sometimes like a knot being kneaded out. I did not mind his being in the flat. The loneliness I felt, however, when Rajinder was away on his trips was not based on missing him. It was only the loneliness of being a person in the world. I do not think Rajinder missed me on his trips, for he never mentioned it.

Despite my not thinking of Rajinder when he wasn't there, he was good for me. He was ambitious, and watching his efforts gave me confidence. He was always trying for a degree or certificate in some-

thing. Anything can be done if you are intelligent, hardworking, open-minded, he would boast. Before Rajinder, I had not actually believed one event pushes into another. I took a class in English. Because I studied it two hours a day, I progressed quickly. Rajinder told me there was nothing whorish in wearing lipstick. Wearing lipstick and perfume began making me feel attractive. Along with teaching me to try, Rajinder took me to restaurants where foreign food was served, to plays, to English movies. He was so modern he even said "Oh Jesus" instead of "Oh Ram." The world seemed slightly larger than it had been before.

Summer came. Every few days, the luu swept up from Rajasthani deserts, killing one or two of the cows left wandering unattended on Delhi's streets. The corpses lay untouched for a week sometimes, till their swelling tongues cracked open their jaws and stuck out absurdly.

For me, the heat was like a constant buzzing. It separated flesh from bone and my skin felt rubbery. I began to wake earlier and earlier. By five, the eastern edge of the sky was too bright to look at. I bathed early in the morning, then after breakfast. I did so again after doing laundry, before lunch. As June progressed, the very air seemed to whine under the heat's stress. I stopped eating lunch. Around two, before taking my nap, I poured a few mugs of water on my head. I liked to lie on the bed imagining the monsoon had come.