Nine

“Duty is the most important thing to remember all your life. Duty to your dead ancestors, your father, your husband and then your son, and if you are fortunate, your grandson. It is the women who fulfil their duty without complaining, without even thinking they are doing it…” said Badibua.

“Yes, I too did my duty,” whispered Nanni. The women were surprised to hear her voice because she hardly ever spoke. Was she going to tell her story today? They waited. Almost all the vegetables had been done, the rice cleaned, and as soon as Badibua gave the signal, they would start the cooking. Nanni would have to be quick with her story or else wait till next year. Just as they were fretting about this, Nanni obliged.

NANNI’S STORY

The first day Nanni had to cook was when she was a three-day old bride with henna still dark and fragrant on her palms. She was sitting on the bridal bed, her head aching with the scent of rose petals which lay scattered all over the bed sheets, the pillows and the floor. A few stray petals, curling at the edges like pink claws, clung to her hair and when she tried to remove them her heavy gold pins – the ones her mother had tied her hair with – pierced her head and she began to cry. Home suddenly seemed so far away yet she could hear her mother’s voice as she shouted at the servants to get the food ready for the wedding feast as she put the golden pins in her hair one by one, grumbling about how much they had cost. “But let them see we are not paupers like them,” she had hissed, the pins clenched between her teeth. In this house where her mother said she would have to live till she died, there was just one old servant. She was still brushing off the rose petals when he had come into the corridor outside her room and coughed. “What is it?” she had asked finally after he had coughed and cleared his throat many times, because she was not sure whether she was supposed to speak at all and that too to a male servant. “Bhabhi has fallen ill. Dada is asking if you can cook something or should he ask someone to come from the village.” Nanni, her head dizzy with the perfume of stale roses, took the decision that was to ruin her life for ever.

She got up, tripped over her heavy bridal sari, and said in a clear 16-year old voice. “I will make the food today. Tell Bhabhi to rest.” Then she took off her sari, folding it carefully like her mother had shown her. Most of her jewellery had already been taken off by Bhabhi and locked up in a tin trunk, with a curt “I am keeping them safe for you, tell your mother.” She took off the remaining chains and two heavy bangles and hid them under the mattress. She knew she had to keep her mangalsutra necklace, her nose ring and six toe rings on as long as her husband was alive. Then she quickly dressed in a plain cotton sari, a pink one with yellow flowers, pulled the palla over her face and opened the door. There was no one outside so she uncovered her face fully and looked around. There were two doors on either side of her room but both were locked with big padlocks. She could hear someone snoring, the sound was coming at regular intervals through a half open door at the end of the corridor. She decided to go towards it.

The kitchen was a dark hollow with a tiny window covered with a red curtain that made everything look darker that it was. The mustard oil jars lined up on the shelf gleamed like blood, the onions had a strange pink colour and the white marble chakla too looked as if they had pounded meat on it. A brick stove stood in one corner, the embers were just about to die out. Nanni pulled out a few pieces of wood from a pile next to the window and as she fed the dying fire she saw through tear-filled eyes her mother’s kitchen at home. The gleaming floor which was polished with coconut fibres every morning, the brass vessels that shone like gold and the line of 30 glass jars each filled with a special pickle. Her father refused to eat the same pickle everyday so her mother gave him a new one, every day for thirty days and then repeated the cycle because he had forgotten what he had had by then.

“We were never good enough for them,” her husband said as he chewed the bones with his eyes shut. She hated the way he talked and ate at the same time, his words always slurring with curry and malice against her family. His hatred for her, crushing, mingling with his saliva, poured into the food she had cooked for him. She had not minded at first because her mother had told her to be quiet and well-behaved all the time, however aggravating the situation may be. “Remember you are our daughter. Raja Dinkar’s granddaughter. Do not bring shame on us.” She had sat silently through hundreds of meals, listening to her husband berating her family, each meal would bring out a new dislike, a fresh grudge he held against her father, her mother or her brothers. So many years had passed, both her parents were dead, her brother had renounced the world and become a sadhu yet Harish would not let go. Like a rabid dog he kept yapping at them, chasing their memory, recalling each word they had said to him, digging out hidden insults. When his mother had been alive, she would join in too and together they would eat and spit venom at her. She had a sharper tongue and sharper memory and could even say on which date at what hour her father had let them down. “Remember,” she would say, wagging a finger stained with food, “remember the day your uncle got married, it was when the wheat crop had failed on our farm, the day you got chicken pox. It was at lunchtime that the great sahib arrived. Just a box of sweets, plain burfee. No money, no clothes, nothing. The mean goat. What was he going to do with all his money, I asked him. Has he taken it with him? Has he? Has he?” she would say, jutting her chin out at Nanni and pointing for another serving of dal.

That first day when she had cooked, twenty years ago, she should have poisoned them all. His mother, father, brother-in-law, uncle, and him. But she had been young and foolish and wanted so much to please them all. Her mother had been a great cook and she wanted to show them how well she had been taught by her. She wanted to manage the house, look after the old people and most of all she wanted her husband to love her. That first meal she had cooked, her eyes blind with tears from the smoke, her hands shaking with fear, had stunned them. “You little sparrow. How did you cook so much?” her husband said later when they were alone. The rose petals now suddenly seemed fragrant as they lay together sharing the same pillow. They had been so pleased with her cooking that day that for the next twenty years she was sent to the kitchen to do all the cooking. “A wife’s first duty is to feed her husband well,” they said to her as the entire family, thirteen of them, sat down to eat. She got up at dawn, coaxed the kitchen fire into life, ground the spices and began the first meal of the day. The old servant felt sorry for her and tried to help but her mother-in-law would not let him touch the food. ”I have been cooking for the family for thirty years and now it is your turn. Do not think you are a princess just because your father claims to be so rich. All lies. We have yet to see the colour of his money in this house.”

The old lady had died five years ago, keeling over at a wedding feast after eating three bowls of kheer. “She went straight to her maker, a short, sweet death,” said the neighbour in whose house the feast had been held. Harish did not seem as distraught as she thought he would be without his beloved mother, who had never left his side from the day he had been born –a breech baby with a head full of black hair. She slept next to them all throughout their married life and the only time they had been alone had been a few days after her wedding. Then after that the old lady had moved her bed into their room, thrust her bundle of saris into Nanni’s dowry chest. Her father-in-law had been alive then but he stayed out most nights. Nanni had heard the aunts whispering about another wife somewhere in a village beyond the hills. When Harish wanted to make love to her, he would touch her with a pillow and they would tip-toe to the other room. She had loved the secrecy and Harish had seemed so romantic during their stealthy, hurried but urgent lovemaking. Later during the day he would come and stand near the kitchen door and watch her as she cooked. They spoke in whispers and laughed with their hands on their mouths. But that was such a long time ago. Harish was a different man then with another face, another voice. Now she hated his touch and even wished his mother were alive for then he would not spend hours smothering her in their bed, his weak helpless body trying and failing to make love to her.

Though now they had two servants, Harish would not eat if she did not cook the food. “You cannot let them touch the food. I will die if I have to eat food cooked by those two dirty scoundrels. I would throw them out if I could walk to the door,” he screamed each time Nanni let one of the servants into the kitchen. “I am shackled and bound to the kitchen. He will not even have tea made by anyone else. He seems to know at once. He sniffs the food like a dog and then if I have not cooked it he will throw the plate away. He has broken so many plates and glasses. Now I use steel plates for him,” she told her mother one day, breaking years of silence about her life. “I wish you had made me a bad cook then maybe they would let me be,” she whispered stroking her mother’s hair as she lay on her death bed. “Feed him, child, feed him all the richness, all the sweetness that he has not given you till the gods see it fit to take him away,” her mother said and turned her face to the door to meet the spirit of death who had been waiting for her.

Nanni sang softly, her hands gleaming as she churned the yogurt for the lassi Harish would have for his breakfast. Butter and cream, sugar and khoya, almonds and pistachios – there were so many rich things one could put in a glass of milk. So many wonderful and delicious things that would slowly and gently choke the life out of him. He would not even feel the hands of death gripping him till it was too late and his arteries were clogged with all the sweetness and richness she had poured into his greedy mouth. “I have told you a hundred times not to put whole black pepper into lassi, you bitch can you not hear me? Or have you gone deaf like the rest of your family, the miserable cripples?” he said and threw the glass at her. For the last two days he had been lying in bed with a toothache. One side of his face was swollen. Could the butter and ghee be working their magic already? No, it was too soon. He would die slowly after many years but he would die by her hands, by her cooking. Nanni sliced the almonds finely along with the black pepper in the new glass of lassi which she poured into another tall glass to make it froth. As her bangles tinkled she remembered how he had loved to see her doing this. “You move like a swan rustling its wings. I want to crush you in my arms,” he had whispered. His mother was outside supervising the servant as he cleaned the wheat and they had quietly gone up to the attic and made love.

Harish drank the lassi noisily, gulping it down, his throat bobbing like a frog. He had not been always like this. When he was young his eyes were shy and timid and he held her hand on his heart while they slept. Every night she would crush badams in his milk and he would caress her fingers when he drank, not taking his eyes off her face. Even when his mother was in the room, he tried to touch her under the quilt, making her giggle. Now she wished him dead. Every night she saw his body lying on the floor, his thin, unshaven face buried in marigold flowers. When he died she would cry with real grief, her heart would break for the Harish she had known many years ago.

“Butter, fried things, ghee, milk, cream, all banned,” he said, slapping his forehead. “The doctor said I have a very high cholestrol and it is all your fault, woman.” Harish could eat only boiled food, porridge and dry toast from now on. But that was not possible. “A wife’s duty is to cook for her husband,” they had told her over and over again for so many years. She must cook his favourite food. He was her husband was he not? She had to look after him or what would people say? Doctors know nothing, just greedy for their fees. “Feed him, feed him all the richness all the sweetness,” she could hear her mother singing to her at night. Ghee will make his heart so strong it will burst out of his chest, butter – golden yellow butter she would churn herself – would make his blood so warm and rich that his body would not be able to tolerate its weight. All her cooking skills would now finally be put to test, she would make one rich dish a week to suck the strength out of his veins, one dish to poison his blood, one to clog his veins which run with so much hate for her and her family, I will cook for him one death dish a week, slowly and slowly he will die, not by my hand but because it is the will of the gods. I will look after him like a good wife.

The oil floated on top of the curry as she put the spoon in. She stirred it and then spread a big spoonful on the rice. Then she added a pinch of salt – extra salt was good for him, a bit of ghee and then began mixing the curry and the rice with her hands. Once the proportion was right she made seven equal sized balls and placed them on the steel plate. It was easy for him to eat if she mixed the rice for him. His hands shook a lot these days and he dropped all the food down his clothes. She made gentle cooing sounds as he ate, coaxing him to eat more and sometimes he looked at her with fear and love as if she was his mother. She fed him with her hands because he was too frail to lift the spoon to his mouth. The richer the food, the more she loved feeding him. Each mouthful she gave with her loving hands she hoped would send him closer to his death. “The spirit of death waits for you, I can hear her footsteps down the corridor,” she whispered in his ears each night before he fell asleep, his body exhausted by rich greasy curries garnished with burning hot garam masala, sweets floating in cream, fried oily potatoes and a pan filled with coconut, betel nuts, aniseed and thin slivers of dates wrapped in silver foil. The fragrant zarda lulled him to sleep and the lethal curries churned in his stomach to give him nightmares.

Harish slept with his eyes open, his mouth slack as if waiting for more food to be poured into it. He left the room, taking care that Nanni could not see him floating out of the window into the sky. He loved her still but when she sat before him, her breasts soft against his arms his body shook with a terrible desire which frightened him. Her gaping mouth looked at him as if she wanted to devour him like a witch he had once seen hiding in the forest many summers ago. The woman had stood still watching him and then touched his face with her long fingers. He ran home, crying silently all the way and when he looked at his face in the mirror, there were blue scars where she had touched him though he had felt no pain. Nanni was a gentle girl once and her eyes looked upon him with love. Then slowly she began to grow. At first her eyes grew large and then her hands reached to the floor. He had to control her by shouting and beating her or else she would kill him once day. Her breasts were huge now, almost as big as her body. When she sat next to him feeding him like a good wife should, he could not breathe. He tried to push her away but each day his arms grew weaker and weaker. She sucked all the strength out with each mouthful she thrust in his mouth with her long, soft fingers. He had to fly away each night from her terrible power, to look for a safer place where she could not follow him, where she could not feed him with her long witch’s fingers. He could hear whispers at night and even when he shut his ears and crawled under the bed, the voices followed him. Nanni spoke to him so gently when he was awake but at night she was the witch who would scar his face with her white nails. He wanted to shout at her, grab her neck and shake her like he used to when his mother was alive to protect him, but his body would not obey. He lay like an animal who had given up hope, swollen and white and the witch’s hands made blue marks all over his body. Nanni’s face, her glinting eyes grew bigger when he tried to lift his head to look at her. He had to push her away but his speech slurred when he tried to shout at her. If only he could catch hold of her once, break her into pieces, he would be safe. But she towered above him now, weighing him down with her breasts. But she would not harm him. She was a good wife and it was her duty to look after him, to feed him till his dying day.