Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Everyone was nervous around Ben's whiteness, and so the conversation remained at the level of facts. Ben explained his work.

Someone asked him if he knew that Indians had invented the airplane. He said it didn't surprise him, and there was a pleased murmur in the room. People spoke one at a time.

When enough of a crowd had gathered, Kusum began handing out gifts. Everyone was impressed by the wrapping and the little taped cards with their names on them. Somehow when the gift wrap was carefully eased off and the requested portable phone or the iron with the automatic off was discovered, there was a sense of surprise. A blood-pressure measurer was passed around. "Thank you, Mr. Ben," said people who felt uncomfortable applying the ji to a white man's name. A few acknowledged Kusum, but quietly, so as not to offend him. Koko Naniji received an elegantly thin shortwave radio, and she was so pleased that she clapped her hands and refused to let anyone touch it, even to put in batteries. "This is a good gift," she said to Ben, "but not enough for an educated girl who can go out and earn money."

Someone translated for Ben and he joked, "You haven't been getting my checks?" He acted so shocked that when this was translated back, Koko Naniji was convinced that somebody had been taking the envelopes in which the checks arrived.

Kusum had known that the vast majority of the compliments would go to Ben just because he was a man. But the meagerness of the praise she received left her impatient.

The gift-giving had released some of the tension in the room, so that multiple conversations, conversations over people's shoulders and between talking faces, started. Women came up to Kusum and offered her information about the vast extended network of relatives. But the girls she had grown up with had long since married and left the house. Those who spoke to her were either women so much older than she, or women who were introduced as the mother of some child or as capable of making an incredibly thin cauliflower paratha, that politeness kept Kusum from saying much.

Eventually lunch was served. Kusum sat on the floor next to Koko Naniji. The joy of the radio was still with her, and after the

batteries were put in, Koko Naniji was delighted enough to tell a lie: "I dream of you all the time."

"What do you dream?" Kusum asked, puzzled.

"Things," Koko Naniji answered, looking at the radio in her hands and flipping through its stations. Kusum was disappointed despite herself at this halfhearted flattery. "Will you have one or two more children, daughter?"

"He doesn't want to," Kusum said, and then, deciding she should not act as needy as she felt, changed her answer to "We don't want to."

"A daughter is other people's wealth. If I had had sons, I would own my own house."

"I earn more than he does."

Urgently Koko Naniji said, "Don't tell people that. They gossip."

Kusum had not hoped to find much satisfaction from Koko Naniji and so did not continue asserting herself "Anita wants me to adopt Asha and take her to America."

"The way we took you."

This suggestion of quid pro quo angered Kusum, and without thinking she said, "I was a servant in this house." Immediately regretting her words, she tried to distract Koko Naniji from the topic. "Rajesh says not to trust Anita."

"That wretch will say anything. He's gotten rich with his restaurants and so he acts better than everyone."

"Asha is strange."

"You're not running an orphanage. Make her work." Koko Naniji smiled slyly as she said this. Kusum was so hurt she felt lonely.

K nita's shrieks were jabbing in and out of Rajesh's shouts.

/NKAsha stood on the gallery in front of the flat. When Kusum

and her family stopped just inside the compound's main gate, Asha

called, "Carolyn, you want to see two monkeys dance?" A few of the

compound's denizens were standing in the courtyard, talking to one

another and regarding Asha. Now they turned their gazes on Kusum.

"The reason I wanted to be a grown-up," Ben said with a sigh, "was so I wouldn't have to listen to people fighting."

"I am going to stop them," Kusum replied. The rage she had not felt at Koko Naniji now made her light-headed.

"Let's go to a hotel," Ben said.

"You stay here."

Kusum hurried up the stairs to the gallery.

Anita was sitting on the sofa in the living room and Rajesh was standing near the common-room door. On the low table between the sofa and the love seats were two teacups and a plate of biscuits. "Fatso. How much more will you eat, fatso?" Anita was screeching.

Kusum came into the living room. "The whole world can hear."

"Let them die," Anita answered in a scream.

"Rajesh," Kusum said.

"I keep quiet while she goes on."

"I'm not stopping."

"What happened?"

"He wants me to pay for the food when we live together. I have to cook his food, of course, but I can't eat what I cook unless I pay."

"I want her to pay half the electricity and water, but she won't, so I say, pay for something, pay for the food."

"You're forcing me out of my home," Anita shrieked.

"This flat is mine also."

"What did you pay for it? What I have done and suffered."

"What did the will say?" Kusum asked.

"You. You," Anita hissed, shaking her finger at Kusum. "I don't have to follow that dead animal's will. This is not your business."

Kusum could feel the blood pulsing behind her eyeballs. "Where are the saris?"

"What saris?"

"Ma's."

"That was seven years ago. They were cheap cotton. Were you going to spend your days starching them?"

"They are fighting about saris," Asha called to the audience listening in the courtyard. "Saris that Ma left." Then she translated this into English for Carolyn and Ben.

Kusum looked at Asha standing in the sun on the gallery. Kusum hissed, "All the saris were bad?"

"Now they are whispering," Asha cried. "Unfair."

"Come in here," Kusum said.

"Neighbors, they want to keep secrets."

Kusum turned away from the gallery. "All the saris were bad?"

"They were mine."

"No, they weren't," Rajesh interceded.

"Ma wanted us to share."

"Why should I care about Ma?"

"You hate Ma, too?" Kusum was astonished at this, because she had never given Ma enough thought to imagine her capable of being disliked.

Before Anita could say anything, Rajesh spoke: "Ma was a saint. Ma loved all of us."

"Ma loved nobody."

"All you are is anger and unhappiness," Rajesh spat.

"What do you know about my life?" Kusum said.

"Who's talking about you?" Anita asked.

"What I've done? What people have done to me?" Kusum continued. Asha summarized this for the crowd. "Show me some kindness for even thinking about taking Asha. That lunatic who's shouting everything to the neighbors." Asha translated this as well, and Kusum felt her own cruelty.

"You want thank yous. Thank you. Thank you. Those saris were mine, but if you take Asha to America, I will say thank you all my life."

Ben entered the room. His whiteness brought instant silence. He sat on the bed. The silence continued. Carolyn remained on the gallery with Asha. Rajesh sat down on one of the love seats. Kusum settled beside Ben.

"Kusum." Ben rarely used her name, almost always preferring an

endearment. "You don't wear saris. What would you have done with them, tear them and make bandages?" At first Kusum thought she had not heard him. The joke felt like an insult, like being called a fool before people who were trying to swindle her.

He opened his mouth, but the look on her face must have stopped him.

Anita laughed.

"The world you live in," Kusum said slowly to Ben. "What's a joke there, in your world — that's the only reality in this world. It's the only reality one can think about, that one can imagine." Then she turned back to Anita and, wanting to cry, hissed, "My saris."