Agastaya maintained that no time in Gangtok was quite as beautiful as October. The skies cleared, the rains retreated, and the clouds were too scant for the mountain range to disappear behind after a few hours of visibility. The sun shone with all its might, as if knowing that it would be frail and sickly once November set in. The temperature was just right—warm with a hint of chill in the evenings. October was festival time. When the Nepali and Gregorian calendars decided to cooperate, Dashain mostly took place in the month. Every so often, Dashain and Tihaar both occurred in October. This was one such year. Dashain had gone, but it was Day One of Tihaar, the Nepali Diwali, which shared some of its characteristics with the Indian festival of lights, while various features, such as the worship of crows and dogs, were unique to the Nepali-speaking Hindu world. Today was Kaag Puja, to celebrate which offerings were set aside in the sun for crows to feast on. Pigeons, pheasants, and sparrows, too, basked in reflected reverence and found easy morsels of food on building terraces. The Kaag Puja wasn’t as resplendent as the Kukkur Puja following it, during which such affection was showered on dogs. Even stray dogs, much maligned and an absolute menace to Gangtok, were garlanded and their foreheads smeared with tika.
When his cab approached the vicinity of Gangtok town, Agastaya didn’t spot any gargantuan display of festivity—no marigold-garlanded windows, no colorful lights, and no fireworks. He asked Bhagwati if she remembered past Tihaar celebrations being this muted. Bhagwati muttered that everything seemed subdued probably because it wasn’t dark yet. The driver, whose interjections every time he gathered what his English-speaking passengers were talking about Agastaya was now used to, explained that the more ostentatious celebrations would begin the next day.
For now, Gangtok was trapped at a crossroads—convalescing from Dashain and fastening its seatbelt for Tihaar.
Agastaya wondered aloud if the driver would help them with the luggage up the hundreds of stairs they’d have to tackle to reach the house. The driver responded by making a turn where the stairs used to be and slowly going uphill.
“Didn’t you know about this?” he asked, looking back at Agastaya, who was nervous about the vehicle skidding. Neither Bhagwati nor Agastaya had seen the new driveway leading to the house.
“Aamaa did tell me about it,” Agastaya said, bowled over by the narrow path and the genius with which his grandmother had engineered both the design and execution. “She mentioned it a million times, and yet I forgot.”
“It’s one of her big stories, isn’t it?” Bhagwati said. “It’s her favorite topic when we make awkward conversation on the phone.”
“How she managed to do it, I am still to understand. I am impressed. Do you remember those stairs?”
“Yes, I first talked to Ram on them. Eighteen years later, I am in a different Gangtok and belong to a house that has its own driveway.”
“The legality of which is questionable.”
“As with everything else on Aamaa’s list of accomplishments,” Bhagwati said, following Agastaya out of the car.
Prasanti was toweling her hair when they entered the house.
“Not a day older than when you left,” she said to Bhagwati. “A lot older than I remember you,” she said to Agastaya.
“I can’t believe I’m actually seeing you again,” Bhagwati said. “Are the others here?”
“Yes.” Prasanti giggled. “Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?” Agastaya towed the bags in.
“Only Manasa came.” Prasanti laughed. She didn’t help Agastaya with the luggage. “The oldest-looking of the bunch came without her husband. Come sit. Aamaa has gone for a meeting.”
“She can still work in her old age?” Agastaya said.
“The meeting is with a minister,” Prasanti proudly informed them.
“Have you put on weight, Prasanti?” Bhagwati asked.
“Yes, I look better,” Prasanti replied.
Manasa’s entrance lent wings to the servant’s feet, and she vanished into the kitchen.
“What was that?” Agastaya asked, amused.
“She’s been given a lot to do—only half of her chores are complete,” said Manasa. “Aamaa is out for a meeting.”
“I’d be lying if I said I expected her to stay home to welcome us,” Agastaya said. “We heard it was with a minister.”
“I don’t think so.” Manasa sat down on one of the sofas around the coffee table. “Whom did you hear it from?”
He pointed toward the kitchen and laughed.
“You should know better than to believe her. She’s become even more disrespectful and still does nothing around the house.”
“We could sense that,” Bhagwati said. “She didn’t help us with the luggage at all.”
“At least she was here when you arrived. She ran away when I came. Perhaps a good thing because I’d have lost my temper at her incompetence. How was your flight?”
“Average,” Agastaya said. “The way flights are.”
Comments on weight gained and receded hairlines should have been bandied around with gusto, but they weren’t. Agastaya wished someone would remark on his balding pate. That would clear the path to talking about Manasa’s appearance. The abundance of lines on her face was everything graceful aging was not.
Manasa punctured an uncomfortable silence with a call to Prasanti. “Prasanti, where’s the tea?”
“I have two hands, not seven, condo,” Prasanti replied. “And of the two, one is swollen because of all the work you made me do.”
Manasa and Bhagwati chuckled.
“See? I make you laugh even when I work!” Prasanti shouted.
“Don’t force me to throw some more clothes at you to wash,” Manasa said, and then she narrated the story of the bed sheet to her siblings. “Aamaa is like a stubborn child. I find it absurd that she treats the stupid factory in Kalimpong like it’s a palace when she doesn’t even live in it. This house is filthy.”
“It’s always her way of doing things—what’s new there?” Agastaya said. “If she didn’t like it, she’d let us all know.”
“You shouldn’t tolerate that,” Manasa said. “She needs to be put in her place.”
“Too much drama,” Bhagwati said.
Prasanti sashayed in, bearing three cups of tea.
“I don’t take any sugar,” Agastaya grunted.
“I can’t make another cup,” Prasanti replied, matching him in gruffness.
“Prasanti, go make another one,” Manasa said. “And learn some manners.”
“She’s become even more terrible,” Bhagwati observed.
“Somebody needs to beat her until she cries,” Manasa said. “Since when did you become so foreigner-like, Agastaya? No sugar in the tea, huh?”
“It’s been a number of years. No sugar for me.”
Yet another awkward silence was brewing. It was Agastaya’s turn to terminate it. “I am still jet-lagged, so I’ll sleep,” he said.
Agastaya had escaped to his old room from the first major meeting without having to skirt around any talk of marriage. Bhagwati had made an attempt in the car, but, to give her credit, she’d stopped immediately after he made it known that he wasn’t keen on discussing the topic. His sister had clearly come with a desire to make him bare his soul. She hadn’t succeeded, just as he had been a failure at getting her to talk. How complicated adulthood was. It had so many dangerous curves, so many restricted areas that, if trespassed, the adults could find themselves squashed in. Had they been children, they’d have probably called each other names, fought and made up a dozen times throughout their journey to Gangtok. As adults, they could barely muster enough courage to ask questions that mattered.
What would it be like to bring Nicky into the middle of all this? People, especially women, loved the man. Would he become as big a hit with his grandmother and sisters as he was with the ladies of New York? Were Nicky to be here, would people suspect something was going on between the two of them? Agastaya was erudite, intelligent-looking, humorless—a man who would look like a doctor even if he decided to wear a jumpsuit and carry a purse. The glasses, the hairline, the graying around the temples of the hair that still remained lent to his persona a kind of sexlessness—guardian-like, avuncular. It surprised strangers when Agastaya, just to see their reaction, declared that he liked men—not because he was the last thing a stereotypical homosexual looked and acted like, but because he was one of those people about whom no one thought sexually. Nicky often said that he felt as if he was dating an older brother. Chances were that if Nicky, who was good-looking in a rugged, manly way, did accompany Agastaya here, no one would guess they were lovers—they were just too odd a couple to arouse people’s suspicions.
How brave the eunuch servant was to live life on her terms. She was her sexuality, reveled in her in-betweenness, lusted openly, lived unapologetically. Gender, sex, sexuality—they meant nothing to her. How fortunate she was to be so transparently, so blatantly, unmistakably gay. Would he have had it easier were he more like her and less like himself? Would a lisp have helped? A prettier face? Fuller lips? Longer hair? Had he deliberately toned down any flamboyance? Was he ever loud? How many aspects of his personality were repressed? Did the repression double up now that he was home? Was Hanuman, the Brahmacharya god, like him a homosexual? Did the god, too, try his best to stir longings in himself for women? Was Dr. Agastaya Neupaney a hypocrite? Did his homosexuality have something to do with the unisexual nature of his name? If the fourth a in Agastaya—seldom gender neutral, almost always feminine—didn’t trail him, would he have become a different person?
He was a successful doctor who lectured at NYU while Prasanti was an uneducated servant with nothing to her name. He had traveled the world while Prasanti had never been on a plane. He was super-specialized while Prasanti could barely do the dishes right. He was annihilating tumors while Prasanti had no role to play outside her employer’s house. Yet Prasanti was a superior human being. She loved who she was, wouldn’t change how she had been made, didn’t care about how she was perceived. When he became like this eunuch servant—as sure of himself as she was of herself, as impenitent, as devoid of hangups—he’d consider himself a human her equal. Until then, he’d live the way he had always done—cautiously masked, afraid of being discovered, detached from reflections that would keep him up at nights. At least the jet lag quieted his thoughts and was quickly putting him to sleep. If only every night were as simple.
•
Bhagwati had a story to set straight. The claustrophobia that she had experienced in the house as a teenager now returned in waves. She felt suffocated the minute she stepped into the sitting room, bright and airy as it was. She guaranteed herself, as she tried swallowing the nausea building in her, that this feeling of incarceration would only increase once Aamaa came into the picture.
This room was where it had all started. Here was where, on a rainy May afternoon, after a hailstorm had cloaked Gangtok in white, Bhagwati first cast eyes on Ram Bahadur Damaai, the man who would later be her husband. He had come to talk to Aamaa on an assignment for some obscure Nepali newspaper in Bhutan. It had a devoted underground readership, he said to Chitralekha.
Ram asked Aamaa pointed questions about her wealth, of which Chitralekha was reticent to talk; about her social obligations, of which she coined apocryphal details; of her education, the lack of which she proudly proclaimed and the importance of which she dismissed; and about Nepalis in Bhutan, the indifference to whose plight she could barely mask. At that point, Bhagwati would have never guessed that she’d spend the rest of her life with this sanctimonious journalist.
Once the interview was over, and he had sufficiently impressed Aamaa for her to deign to ask his name, he replied, “Ram Bahadur.”
Bhagwati, who didn’t understand why she chose to linger, tried hard not to laugh at the antiquated name. It was a name that belonged to her parents’ days. Her generation was full of lesser-known variations of well-known gods—names like Bhagwati, Manasa, Agastaya, and Ruthwa. Ram, Lakshman, Sita, and Shiva were too ancient to belong in her age group.
“Ram Bahadur what?” Aamaa had asked.
“Ram Bahadur Damaai.” He was unflappable.
“Such a nice, long, pointed nose on such a fair face—you look as good as a Brahmin,” said Aamaa. It was a remark that only Aamaa could get away with. Aamaa also needed a lesson that her idea of beauty—the long, pointed, aquiline nose and a forehead the size of Palzor Stadium that she spoke of so gushingly—had lost favor among Bhagwati’s generation. No one wanted a nose too prominent these days.
“What difference does it make?” Ram had defensively asked.
“None in this day and age,” Chitralekha said, but she rose without waiting for the tea that Prasanti had been asked to serve.
Ram showed himself out after informing Chitralekha that the piece on her would be out in the next issue and that he had various other important people to interview. He added with an acerbic smile that he was sorry he couldn’t stay for tea.
Once her grandmother withdrew to her office, Bhagwati ran out of the house, out the gate, and to the stairs that led to the main road. She slipped twice on the melting hailstones.
“Wait, wait!” she shouted.
Ram turned.
“I am sorry she behaved that way,” Bhagwati said, out of breath.
Ram looked taken aback. “Who?”
“My grandmother—what she said about you looking like my caste.”
“You don’t have any reason to be sorry for that,” Ram said. “A lot of people mistake me for a Brahmin.”
“It must make you angry. Brahmins are ugly.”
“You aren’t.” His candor surprised her less than hers did.
“I know. That’s because I don’t look like a Brahmin.”
“And what do you look like?”
“I don’t know—a Punjabi?”
“Punjabis are hairy.”
“And tall.”
“Are you?”
“What?” Bhagwati said. “Hairy or tall?”
“You’re just tall.”
By the time they parted ways, she had offered to take him to the monasteries around town. It had been over two months since she completed her Class 12 board exams, and she was at that beautiful juncture in life where lazy day after lazy day stretched out in front of her. A number of her friends were preparing for entrance tests to engineering and medical schools, but Bhagwati had faith that the Sikkim quota and her grandmother’s connections would get her a good seat in a reputed college. She had been waking up the last few mornings not knowing what would occupy her day. The least she could do for this stranger Aamaa had humiliated was show him her town.
Ram declared that the Rumtek monastery, the pride of her state, was unkempt. The Ranka Monastery was better, but he didn’t feel as spiritual there as he did at the Paro Taktsang in his own country, he confided. The Enchey monastery wasn’t anything too special. To Bhagwati, all this was new. She had played tour guide to her mother’s family from Kathmandu, her grandmother’s clients from Kolkata, and a missionary couple from Belgium, and no one had belittled Gangtok’s beauty the way Ram had.
“Gangtok is nice, but it’s too unplanned,” Ram said, once they were on MG Marg. “You should see Thimpu and Paro.”
“I don’t want to.” Bhagwati was combative. “There’s beauty in the chaos of Gangtok. From what I hear about your capital, every house looks the same. Every street is a clone of another.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, it is. I like that the building up there looks like a matchbox, that another looks like a biscuit house from a Blyton book.”
“Never heard of those books,” Ram said.
“That’s because we in Sikkim read, unlike people in Bhutan.” Ram probably hadn’t read Enid Blyton because he hadn’t gone to a posh school as she had.
“Sorry if I offended you,” Ram said. “It’s just that I don’t care about monasteries. Take me to a temple.”
“Why? So you can compare our temples to yours and find ours lacking?”
“No, because our temples aren’t anything like yours. Ours are a bit of a joke.”
“Really?”
“Yes, so many Hindus and no temple anywhere as well funded as the poorest Buddhist monasteries,” Ram said, before informing her of the plight of her fellow Nepali-speaking people in the neighboring country. Bhagwati had never felt more ignorant in her life; she had never been guiltier of her charmed, apolitical existence.
For the temple visit, she’d wear a yellow kurta—it behooved her to look traditional. She’d perhaps even cover her head with the red chunni when she did her obeisance. For a millisecond, the idea of a sari was appealing, but it would be difficult to deal with the stairs to the Thakurbari temple. Also, wearing a sari would attract too much attention, and she needed to be discreet. Her grandmother assumed she’d be at the Community Library all day.
“You look like an actress,” Ram said with a laugh. He had been waiting for her outside the gate to the temple. Bhagwati knew she looked great. The whistles of passersby—louder, more aggressive, and more frequent today than any other day—were testament enough. Some lottery seller serenaded her with a new Bollywood song doing its rounds with the censor board.
“And you’re wearing what you wore yesterday,” Bhagwati said.
“Should I’ve worn the daura-suruwal?”
“Why not? I wore a kurta.”
“It’s frowned upon in Bhutan—remember?”
“Is anything not frowned upon in your country?”
“Almost everything—for us Nepalis. To live in a house as big as you do would only be a dream for the Nepalis of Bhutan.”
“Our house is old and disgusting.” Bhagwati wished she could show off the factory in Kalimpong to Ram. If the house in Gangtok impressed the poor man, the Kalimpong factory would reduce him to speechlessness.
“No, it’s not. It’s big.”
“Aamaa doesn’t care too much about living in a beautiful home. She doesn’t like spending time or money on the house.”
“My house in my country may be even smaller than your sitting room.”
“Do you even think of it as your country?”
“Of course, it’s mine.”
“Stupid country. Stupid you.”
“And you? A heroine? Because everybody’s staring at you?”
They rang every temple bell they could find. Some clappers swayed too high for her to reach, so he lifted her to them. She’d hang on to the bell while trying to wriggle out of his arms. Both laughed.
“This one seems to have been made for giants,” Ram said, as he jumped to strike a bell’s clapper. It was too high even for him.
“Let me carry you,” Bhagwati said.
“Can you?”
She crouched and asked him to hop onto her back. Straining her shoulders, she lifted him to the bell, which he rang once, twice, three times.
“I rang all the bells—that’s a first,” Ram cried.
“Tomorrow we should go to a church.”
“I think some unhappy girl is walking toward you,” said Ram.
It was Manasa—frantic, panting, in her pajamas.
“Where were you?” Manasa asked. “I looked everywhere for you.”
“We had come to the temple.”
“Aamaa is searching for you.”
“This is Ram,” Bhagwati said. “Aamaa knows him.”
“Aamaa is furious.”
“She thinks I was at the library—why should she be furious?”
“Your results are out.”
Bhagwati hadn’t passed her boards. At Tashi Namgyal Academy, patronized by the elite of Gangtok and inarguably the most glamorous school in the state, failure in board exams wasn’t a regular phenomenon. Maybe one or two unsuccessful students blotched the school’s perfect records every few years, hurling themselves to infamy while the toppers graced front pages in the Sikkim Express. This obsession with examination grades, a very South Asian malaise that had now permeated Sikkim, lasted for weeks and months. The failure’s family would be pitied and the failure stared at. She wasn’t a great student but not failure material, friends and neighbors would titter about some unfortunate girl.
And that had been true for Bhagwati. She was no budding genius such as Manasa or Agastaya, but she wasn’t as academically disinclined as Ruthwa either. No one would think of her as the type who failed. In fact, she herself couldn’t believe it. The granddaughter of the great Chitralekha Neupaney had failed an examination.
“She’s going to kill me,” Bhagwati said. “A failure in her family—she’ll hate me for the rest of my life.”
“She will,” Manasa said. “Don’t go home now, please. Don’t.”
“What if there’s an error in the result?” Bhagwati asked.
“Yes, the principal called Aamaa to let her know that he has requested a reevaluation.”
“But that could take weeks,” Bhagwati argued.
That’s how Bhagwati ran away. It was going to be temporary—a quick disappearance until Aamaa’s wrath subsided. Ram became the person with whom she escaped because it was convenient.
She had no intention of eloping, of getting married. She just wanted to escape the humiliation of failing an examination.
She ran away because she knew not running away would destroy her. She was up against Gangtok’s gossip mill. Her getting inadequate grades in an exam would be entangled with tales of affairs, alcohol, drugs, pregnancy, and depression. She’d forever be the girl who failed.
Ram and she first went to the Green Hotel, where Ram was putting up, grabbed his bag, and reserved a taxi to Phuntsholing, in Bhutan. During the journey, Bhagwati frequently looked back, sometimes in fear and sometimes in hope, to check if they were being followed.
Life, as she knew it, was over.
Once on the other side of the border, she called home, praying Manasa would pick up.
“Some people saw you with a man,” Manasa whispered. “They told Aamaa you eloped with him. Aamaa is convinced that you ran away with a Damaai.”
A month after the entire town of Gangtok pronounced her married, Bhagwati got wedded to Ram. She didn’t love him then. The love came much, much later. She got married because she couldn’t continue burdening Ram—his relatives were already asking questions.
Two days later, Manasa—the only person in the family with whom Bhagwati corresponded—called to let her know that Bhagwati’s reevaluation result was out. A 62 in math, by all means a respectable score, had earlier been mistyped as 26. The 36 in physics was still a 36, but that didn’t matter. She could fail one subject and yet pass the boards.
Bhagwati hadn’t been a failure, after all. She was married, but she had passed the examination that had pushed her to marriage.
Was her grandmother’s absence at home now a deliberate snub? She wouldn’t put it past Aamaa. The granddaughter would have to thaw the old woman. Perhaps Bhagwati’s attempts would translate better in person than they did on the phone. She wondered if she hankered so much for forgiveness because she knew it would never come. Even if it did, how would Aamaa dispense it? Would she declare her granddaughter exonerated? Would she shower on her an old person’s blessing that was so revered around here? All Bhagwati needed was for things to return to normal. What this normal was, Bhagwati couldn’t quite tell. Was it her relationship with Aamaa pre-elopement? Was it the bond her grandmother shared with Manasa?
Bhagwati missed Ruthwa. His irreverence would have come in handy here. The youngest of the siblings would make light of the whole situation, call attention to Manasa’s graceless aging, and draw comparisons of her face with Bhagwati’s. He’d probably ask Bhagwati if the secret of her beauty lay in a healthy sex life. He’d throw in a joke about sex with the untouchables being good for your skin. There’d be a play on the words touching and untouchable or an analogy only her banished brother could come up with. It would do everyone a lot of good for Ruthwa to be here. She wondered if he was still traveling between one ex-lover and another, perhaps still trying to write.
She found Prasanti flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine in the kitchen. The room looked smaller than when Bhagwati had left it. In fact, everything in India seemed minuscule. The telltale signs of her grandmother’s increasing opulence were visible in the sizes of the refrigerator and dishwasher, which sparked memories about the job from which she had just been let go. Even she, who lived in America, didn’t have a dishwasher at home.
“What function does it serve here?” she asked Prasanti, who stared at her scrutinizing the machine.
“It’s no use,” Prasanti answered. “The minute I switch it on, the power goes off. I have to do all the dishes by hand.”
“You mean, clean the dishes of two people?” Bhagwati asked. “You’re lucky.”
“Now, with the arrival of all you people, there’s even more work to do. Manasa thinks I am a servant.”
“You aren’t,” Bhagwati quickly added. “You’re part of the family.”
“Which family member would be so badly treated? You should have seen the number of dishes I washed this morning.”
“You did dishes for three people this morning, Prasanti.” Bhagwati laughed. “I clean the dishes of so many people.”
“How is four people many people? You people are just four. And I hear in America even the husbands help. Is that true?”
“Mine does.” Bhagwati wondered where the openness came from. She’d nearly made an admission to her servant that their professions were similar.
“You may think it’s easy to wash two people’s dishes, but you don’t know about your Aamaa’s eating habits. She’s a true Maharani—wants a different bowl for a different vegetable. Sometimes, seven, eight bowls surround her plate.”
“Dishwashers are overrated. The dishes don’t come out as clean as they do when you use your hands.”
“And then the hands look like this.” Prasanti demonstrated—each nail was painted a different color.
“Also, you don’t have to clean the house every day,” Bhagwati said.
“Sure, I don’t,” Prasanti replied.
“Do you?”
“Not every day but every other day.”
“Lying. Aamaa doesn’t care about cleanliness here.”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“How’s your life?” Bhagwati asked. “You look happy.”
“I am fine. Growing old. Looking better. Looking after your grandmother, whose grandchildren don’t care about her. She’s not the young woman you left when you ran away, you know.”
“I know,” Bhagwati said. “Does she take good care of you?”
“I am a servant. She treats me better than a servant. I’d say I am like a poor relative to her, which is better than being treated like a servant.”
“I am seeing her for the first time since my marriage.”
“Yes, I know,” Prasanti said. “Your marriage with the untouchable. How are your children? Are they more Brahmin or Damaai?”
“They’re humans,” Bhagwati said.
“Like I am, condo,” replied Prasanti. “Second-class humans.”
“Who says you’re a second-class human?”
“It’s in the way people treat us.”
“You have a job, a nice home, and a family,” Bhagwati said, feeling sincerely sorry for Prasanti, even though the servant’s categorizing her children in the same group as eunuchs unsettled her. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Yes, I have some money and gold,” Prasanti said.
“That’s more than what I have,” Bhagwati confided.
“Won’t I need all that when Aamaa dies? She’s in her eighties and won’t live forever. I’ve got to think of the future for myself, too, don’t I?”
The absurdity of bartering stories with a servant didn’t escape Bhagwati. Their shared struggles in their similar professions must have engendered this new level of connection. At least the conversation with Prasanti was free flowing. The eunuch divulged information liberally and asked questions she needed answered. There was no palpable discomfort as was evident in her sister, no guardedness that characterized her brother’s conversations with her, and none of the resentful taunts that Bhagwati was sure would start once Aamaa was home.
•
Manasa had already exceeded her sleep quota for the day by the time Agastaya and Bhagwati arrived. Once her brother excused himself, the prospect of making small talk with Bhagwati all by herself was more than she could handle, so she, too, extricated herself from the sitting room. She was back at home, in a familiar setting, with people from her past whom she was reluctant to make a part of her present. Her siblings and she had become painfully proper with one another. She was more herself with her husband’s family than she was in her old one.
She had only five more days to go—five never-ending days. She’d then return to being nanny to her father-in-law. The thought of Himal’s inability in dealing with Bua’s handicap fueled her with momentary pleasure, but she quickly stopped herself from feeling too smug—her husband was in Kathmandu, and a retinue of female relatives would relieve him of his filial duties. Himal had a comfortable life.
It was easy to forget that she was here to celebrate her grandmother’s eighty-fourth birthday—to commemorate eighty-four years of Aamaa wreaking havoc on humanity. It didn’t feel festive at all. Bhagwati and Agastaya could hardly be trusted to liven up a drab affair. Manasa understood that Bhagwati’s life was too complex for her to celebrate a silly birthday with reckless abandon, but Agastaya should have been the most jovial of them all. He led such an unencumbered, uncomplicated life. He was free to do as he pleased, had no children to look after, and no father-in-law’s pee dribble to wipe off the toilet seat.
When Manasa emerged from the guest room for dinner, Agastaya and Aamaa were seated at the dining table. She wasn’t going to be spared the brisance that would result from the reunion between her sister and warmongering grandmother, after all.
Manasa chose a seat next to her brother and helped herself to a ladle each of murai and aloo dum. Hardly had she mixed a spoonful of the puffed rice with the fenugreek-heavy potato curry when Chitralekha said, “And this one doesn’t eat at all.”
“I am not hungry,” Manasa retaliated. “And why, exactly, has your pet made such snacky food for dinner?”
Bhagwati quietly trudged in. “Oh, everyone is here,” she said to no one in particular as she took the chair farthest from her grandmother—the one at the opposite end of the table. Manasa felt sorry for Bhagwati. Her sister couldn’t muster the courage to greet her grandmother.
“This one will starve herself to death—and that one doesn’t want to get married!” Chitralekha shouted. “These are my grandchildren.”
“Is that what this is all about?” Manasa asked. “You have a problem with Agastaya, and you just drag me in?”
“He says he has no time for girls. He’ll be here a whole month.”
“No, I’ll be here only for a week,” Agastaya said. “I have to go to Delhi, Bombay, and other places after that.”
“Only for a week?” Aamaa wrinkled her nose. “What’s that? Why did you come at all, then? A week will vanish in no time.”
“I know. But it’s work.”
Aamaa looked at no one and moved her lips with her mouth still shut. “If you’re staying only for a week, then we’d better all go to sleep now. We don’t have too many hours to spare for our family members.”
“Why would we sleep this early?” Agastaya boldly volunteered. “Tonight is talk night.”
“I don’t know about that.” Aamaa got up. “I am going to sleep. I am old and frail.”
“Aamaa, nobody sleeps at seven,” Manasa said. It hadn’t taken Aamaa much time to start her shenanigans. Manasa had warned her grandmother to be nice, and Aamaa, the woman of her word that she was, had kept her end of the bargain by ignoring Bhagwati. How was Manasa to know that her grandmother had a bone to pick with Agastaya, too? Manasa was stupid for not considering that—her grandmother had scores to settle with everybody.
“I will. I am an old woman. My grandchildren visit me after years and will leave as soon as they come. One grandson, and unmarried.”
“Shut up, Aamaa,” Manasa said. “You have two grandsons.”
“Just one,” Chitralekha said, starting to get up.
“Stay there, Aamaa.” Manasa was aware that she was raising her voice. “Just sit down. Not everything has to revolve around you. I am sure Agastaya has reasons for not staying too long. It may have something to do with how overbearing you are.”
She saw Bhagwati and Agastaya exchange anxious glances.
“Look at that.” Aamaa jumped at the opportunity. “Look at that. That’s how she treats me. That’s how she’s been talking to me since she got here. I feel no better than a servant.”
Manasa was about to speak, when Agastaya kicked her under the table.
“She doesn’t mean it,” Bhagwati said in a quiet, trembling voice. “Let’s all be happy. We are together after so long. This is a proper reunion.”
“How can I be happy when my granddaughter is a Damaai?” Aamaa replied. “I need to go. All this wealth I’ve earned, but for what? A grandson who’s unmarried, God only knows why, a granddaughter who’s married to a Damaai, and another granddaughter who treats me worse than she treats Prasanti. Why did I even work hard after your parents died?”
Aamaa picked on Bhagwati because she was the weakest; she could never strike back. “It was a fight between you and me, Aamaa!” Manasa shouted. “Why bring Bhagwati in? Stop finding fault with her for what she did so many years ago. Are you jealous that she has a live husband, whereas you don’t?”
Prasanti, never one to miss any commotion, made an appearance. She stood protectively by Aamaa.
“Take me away, Prasanti.” Aamaa held the servant’s hand. “Take me away to my room so I can sleep and wonder where I went wrong in rearing my children.”
“Prasanti, you’ve become prettier,” said Agastaya, in what Manasa understood was a sad attempt to make light of a situation that wasn’t going to get any better.
Prasanti glowered at him. “And you have less hair on your head than I have on my chin.”
“Where does she get her mouth from?” Agastaya said, and then added in English so the servant wouldn’t understand, “Somebody needs to wash it out with soap and water. I’d gladly volunteer.”
“Yes, talk in English,” Prasanti said. “Come, Aamaa, let’s go.”
“Prasanti, you can clear all the dishes from the table,” Manasa said. “Just make sure the daal stains are properly wiped out so I don’t have to spend hours scratching them out from the bowls.”
“Will you make me work until midnight?” Prasanti thundered out of the room. “I’ve been working all day because of you.”
“Look what you all have done,” Aamaa said. “Look at how difficult you make my life. If you treat her that way, she will leave, and no one will take care of me. As it is, all you people have left and can’t even spend a month here. At least let the servants be.”
Aamaa was now blaming them all—she was seeking refuge in the plural. Manasa knew she did that because her grandmother was afraid of singling her out. “Stop channeling on Prasanti all the affection that should have been given to us,” Manasa said, getting up from her chair and roughly pushing the table. “Stop fighting for her.”
She walked out, too, with Aamaa close at her heels. They both retreated to their rooms.
“Where are we sleeping?” Manasa heard Bhagwati ask. “Prasanti, Prasanti, are we sleeping in our old rooms?”
“Why do you need to sleep at seven in the evening?” Prasanti snapped.
“Because I am tired,” Bhagwati said. “Where do I sleep?”
“Go sleep with Manasa, but she has just locked her door, so I guess you will be sleeping with the driver.”
The reply needled Manasa more than anything else that had happened the entire day. She dashed out of her room and. grabbing a broom, went looking for Prasanti, who, perhaps sensing more trouble in store for her, had vanished into the streets, returning only when the garrulous gossip of coolies around an improvised fire, a tad premature for October, outside the Neupaney Oasis had started.
•
Slouched on her king-size bed with pachyderm patterns that dwarfed her tiny frame, Chitralekha turned to the wall when Prasanti timidly walked in later that night.
“You didn’t defend me when all of them butchered me,” Chitralekha complained.
Prasanti stayed quiet.
“They’ve begun treating me like I am a toddler. What did I do wrong? All I think about is their well-being. Is it wrong if I ask my grandson to get married? Is it wrong if I ask my granddaughter to pay attention to her marriage?”
“Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me, you stupid girl? Or have you become like the rest of them? Will you go off elsewhere?”
“Talking about people going elsewhere, did you hear about Mr. Bhattarai getting Bride Number Two for himself? Apparently, he couldn’t look after his retarded wife on his own.”
Chitralekha clucked exaggeratedly, encouraging Prasanti to continue with the gory details.
“Yes, all these years of marriage gone down the drain. Just like that—like the sun in the evening. He has taken up with a woman thirty-five years younger.”
“How do you know?” Chitralekha nudged, ignoring yet another of her servant’s similes that made no sense. “Last month you were talking about his affair with Rakesh’s mother.”
“Oh, I know everything,” Prasanti said. “What will she do now? His maid told me that he painted pictures of Rakesh’s mother. But now she’s back with her husband, while he runs around trees with his child bride.”
“Yes, men these days—they have no respect for anyone,” Chitralekha said and then loudly added, “But it’s not just men. No matter men or women, sons or daughters, grandsons or granddaughters—they are all the same. No one pays attention to their parents’ needs. When the grandmother is a poor widow, people care even less.”
Prasanti squatted on the tiled floor with a sigh. “And then, Bhola says the child bride might even be pregnant. The poor girl is barely developed. How can she be pregnant? What will she feed her child? The mad wife’s milk?”
Chitralekha, in splits now, asked Prasanti to shut up.
“And, yes, I am more developed than the child bride.” Prasanti looked down at her chest. “Maybe I could feed her poor child. Would a child fed with a hijra’s breast milk be a hijra?”
Then, with a twirl of her chunni, the scarf she used to cover her insufficient cleavage, Prasanti leapt up. She oscillated from one foot to the other. Rhythmically, she shook her entire body and gyrated. She jumped up and down, pulled her pants up so it looked as if she was wearing nothing under her kurta, spun around the room, fluttered her eyelashes, cocked her eyebrow suggestively, clapped, let go of the rubber band that held her hair together, threw it at a hysterical Chitralekha, smiled coquettishly, wriggled her entire body, and pranced around the room with enough intensity to bring a bewildered Agastaya into it.
“What’s the celebration about?” Agastaya peeped in. “I thought it was an earthquake.”
“No, it was a volcano,” Prasanti replied. Chitralekha was still laughing.
“We have a lot to do,” Agastaya said. “The Chaurasi is only a few days away. Don’t you have work to do, Prasanti?”
“I don’t want a Chaurasi,” Chitralekha said as she swaddled herself in a quilt and reclined again. “I don’t want a puja when no one cares. The only person who’d cry at my funeral would be this hijra. No one else brings me happiness.”
“Prasanti, can you see if Manasa wants anything?” Agastaya said. “You need to get things ready for the Kukkur Puja tomorrow.”
“I am not going to look around for dogs to worship when there are so many dogs in this house,” Prasanti said. “I am staying here because you’ll make Aamaa cry again. I know all you people.”
Chitralekha had made an effort. She had tried behaving herself. She couldn’t be faulted for not trying, but it had all gone wrong. She had rehearsed so many times the meeting that would take place with Bhagwati. In front of the bathroom mirror, in front of her Godrej mirror in the bedroom, even before the windowpane of her office, she had acted and re-acted the scene that would play out once her granddaughter showed up. Sometimes, Chitralekha was unforgiving. At other times, she was cold. Yet, on a few occasions, she announced that the past should remain in the past. She was always the most at peace after the last performance.
Her cowardly granddaughter had finally come. Eighteen years after doing what she did to the family, Bhagwati, the girl who ran away, who threw away everything for the Damaai, had the courage to face her grandmother. Sadly—and it was always the parents who were at a disadvantage—it was the grandmother who couldn’t face her granddaughter. Chitralekha could barely look at Bhagwati, and there she was—her granddaughter—stuffing her face with mouthfuls of murai as if nothing had happened. In another era—perhaps in some other place in the same era—Bhagwati’s mere presence at the table would have driven everyone else away.
At dinner, Chitralekha developed a renewed sense of alertness with regard to Bhagwati and hadn’t been able to eat. She heard her granddaughter chomping. She could hear Bhagwati’s spoon scraping the plate. She heard the thud with which Bhagwati placed the glass on the table. She could feel her naatini shaking her legs. Chitralekha saw Bhagwati’s head turn. Yet, grandmother couldn’t look granddaughter in the face. After all these years, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Bhagwati and she had a few days under the same roof—she’d have to face her granddaughter sooner or later. What would she do then? Cry with her? Wail for her granddaughter? Weep for herself? Sob for the unborn offspring of her granddaughter’s children?
Chitralekha was born during the First World War, well before India attained independence, well before the Indo-China war, well before Sikkim was swallowed by India in what historians referred to as a smash-and-grab annexation, before the Sikkim kings were rendered impotent, well before the American queen of Sikkim left the king, well before Basnett’s downfall. She was a relic. How could someone as ancient as she be expected to understand love—that convoluted love Bhagwati immersed herself in? Chitralekha, too, had loved her husband. She had loved her son. She had even loved her daughter-in-law. Yes, she couldn’t be accused of not having loved. It was just that she loved within limits, loved where it was wise. How could this woman, who embraced, propagated, and preached pragmatism, have brought up a child who had chosen to disregard all rules of life for love? Chitralekha had been a failure. She may have built an empire, but she was a failure. Her granddaughter was a fool in love.
Chitralekha asked her servant to massage her head, and, punctuating her acridity with giggles and squawking, carried on about half-caste grandchildren, a grandson-in-law she couldn’t even allow inside the house, and two unmarried grandsons, one of whom she would never see again. After running her fingers through Chitralekha’s white hair, Prasanti quietly sewed marigolds into a garland while she listened. Chitralekha could sense that even her servant didn’t agree with her.
“So, are the neighbors in good health?” It was their code for Give me a report on the rest of the world.
“Gurung Aamaa says all her children are equal to her. I said she was lying.”
“No, she’s lying,” Chitralekha said. “You cannot love all your children, or your grandchildren, equally.”
“That’s what I said to her fat, ugly face. She called me names.”
“Everyone calls you names. What’s new there?”
“She called out to Keepu, who supported her. Even Keepu said she loves all her children equally.”
“You believe everything these stupid women say. They are both housewives and haven’t stepped out of the comfort of their homes in decades. What do they know about the world?”
“But shouldn’t they know what they are talking about when it comes to loving their children?” Prasanti asked. “Wouldn’t they know better about loving their children because they stay at home rather than work?”
“If it suits you to think like a moron, think that way. Parents do not love their children equally.”
“That means you don’t like them all equally?”
“Yes, it depends on who the weakest is. You have the most affection for the weakest, for the one you’re afraid will be destroyed by life.”
“Among your children, that would be Bhagwati, right?”
Chitralekha stared hard. “But she’s different.”
“Why don’t you like her? She is the weakest. You just contradicted yourself.”
“You know nothing about castes, Prasanti,” Chitralekha said. “It’s time for you to shut up.”
“She’s the only one who has said nothing to you. The others treat you so badly. She doesn’t say a word. I know I am only a servant, but I think you should make amends with her. She’s a good person, and I think she’s really hurting.”
“Yes, you are only a servant,” Chitralekha said. “And it would serve you well to behave like one. Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I saw her crying in the kitchen this morning.”
“She’s crying for the trouble she has brought on herself and the family. She deserves to cry.”
“I felt really bad.”
“Go away, Prasanti.” Chitralekha sighed. “Get lost before I kick you out, you badarnee.”
No one could fault her for lack of effort. She had in her almost eighty-four years of rigidity, eighty-four years of life. She was a product of her time. Those phone conversations with her granddaughter had been so much easier than seeing her, but Chitralekha would continue trying. It’d take her longer than she thought, yes, but she’d give it her all.
Where was sleep when she needed it? She would turn eighty-four in a few days. She felt eighty-four today—more ancient than she usually did. Was that the bell that just rang, or was it her imagination?
“Aamaa.” Prasanti was panting.
“What happened? I asked you not to be here.”
“Guess who I just saw?”
“Who? The Sharmas’ new son? The monkey-faced idiot?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Don’t get angry.”
“Why would I?”
“You’ve shouted at me a few times already.”
“Because you deserve it. Stop wasting my time and tell me who you saw.”
“It’s Ruthwa—he’s here.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“No, he is here, I promise—should I let him in?”
Her not being able to face Bhagwati wasn’t such a big problem anymore.