IF CHANDA DEVI CAN SEE GHOSTS, transform her beef-eating husband into a vegetarian, and predict crocodile attacks, she can definitely speak to god, the islanders believe. Rumor has it that Girija Prasad is married to a god-woman who controls crocodiles and elephants the way she controls her husband.
People arrive at her doorstep with fruits and garlands as offerings. A mother-in-law brings in her pregnant daughter-in-law. After the disappointment of eight granddaughters, she appeals to Chanda Devi to use her divine powers to give her a kul deepak, a “torch-bearing male,” to rescue her lineage.
Chanda Devi examines the old lady from chin to toe and from ear to ear.
“I’m not the one who is pregnant,” the mother-in-law wants to say. “I’m not the problem.” But she doesn’t. No one can risk the ire of god-people.
“The Devi has blessed you with all her nine avatars,” Chanda Devi says. “Should you ill-treat any of them, her wrath will know no bounds.”
“But why must my son work to feed a son-less family, especially this pregnant cow?”
“You can think of the answer in your next life, when you are born as an earthworm. All earthworms are eunuchs. Male, female, it makes no difference to their lives. That’s why the goddess makes all those who torture women earthworms in their next life.”
That night, it is the mother-in-law who cooks dinner for a change. She serves all her granddaughters and washes their feet as penance. She asks them for forgiveness. She had decided to do so when she stepped out of Chanda Devi’s porch to find an earthworm on the slippers she’d left outside, shriveled black under the sun.
The Forest Department also seeks out Chanda Devi, to cure an elephant who has trampled two mahouts in three weeks. Though the elephant is a raving lunatic, it is easier to replace mahouts than a productive animal. Left to deal with a psychotic pachyderm, Girija Prasad’s juniors turn to his wife for guidance.
“I only speak to free spirits,” Chanda Devi announces before unshackling the elephant, frightening the officials further. She spends the afternoon stroking the animal’s trunk and belly, feeding her bananas, and giving her buckets of water to drink. On her way out, she tells them that the first mahout had been drunk on country liquor and that the second one had stubbed out a bidi on the elephant’s foot. “If there is a next time, your shackles won’t be able to stop her.”
No one drinks or smokes at work anymore. Girija Prasad laughs in disbelief at this new development. His wife has achieved what he couldn’t in a year.
Chanda Devi finds her schedule busier than her husband’s. In the morning she is pacifying the souls of men who drowned on Mollycoddle Beach. In the afternoon she is inaugurating a mithai shop. And amidst all this, she is accosted by the gravest appeal of them all.
The administrators of the islands fear that errant ghosts of British officers, generals, hangmen, clergy—in short, all the villains in the soap opera of colonization—may have cast evil spells on their project of building a new nation. That is the reason why everything is going wrong: Files get mysteriously misplaced and bad decisions are implemented despite the high caliber of officers (men who find it difficult to work for more than four hours without taking a nap). They want her to visit Ross Island, the erstwhile British headquarters, and chain the evil-eyed, curse-uttering, cake-eating, cigar-smoking ghosts to the sinking island.
Life at Goodenough Bungalow has trained Chanda Devi in the art of turning a blind eye to ghosts of all nationalities, just like Girija Prasad has learned to turn a blind eye to his wife’s eccentric behavior. But she cannot refuse the administrators’ request. It may cast a shadow on her patriotism.
Ross Island is a tiny island, replete with swimming pools, ponds, bakeries, movie halls for silent films, ballrooms, and churches. It even had a marketplace where the memsahibs could buy native fruits alongside Marmite and fresh scones.
As with most ideal plans, this one too fell apart. The earthquake that destroyed Lord Goodenough’s inspection bungalow in Port Blair also cracked Ross Island into two. Like an iceberg, the majority of the island sank, tilting the rest toward oblivion. When the Japanese bombed it in World War II, it was for the sheer pleasure of aiming accurately at a speck, as the place was ravaged already.
It is on this bombed-out speck that Chanda Devi confronts some of the palest ghosts of her life, waltzing unhindered through their daily rituals. Unlike the intrusive ghosts of Goodenough Bungalow, the ones here are too proud to acknowledge her presence, giving her the luxury of watching them, wide-eyed, for hours. It isn’t the passage of time that they document but the exact opposite. They have practiced their routine for decades, defying events like death and India’s independence. They have even learned to ignore the ghosts of the present—the living.
An elaborately dressed couple catches her eye. The woman, in a velvet gown and lace gloves, holds a parasol in one hand and her husband’s arm with the other. The man is covered from head to toe in befitting finery, complemented by a waxed mustache. “In this heat!” Chanda Devi exclaims. The couple climbs up a spiral staircase, flowing from one level to another with an ease that comes from several lives spent in practice. But the staircase leads nowhere. It broke off with the island. The banquet the couple had dressed to attend now lies upon the seafloor. Chanda Devi stands agape as the couple steps off the cliff and floats down into the sea, like leaves caught in a breeze. She sees them swim back to the shore and walk out in clothes as dry as their expressions.
In the garden by the miniature lake, Chanda Devi sees a man wipe imaginary dust off a chair. He then stands on it and ties a noose to a tree branch above. He slides his head in and knocks down the chair with his feet. Even though Chanda Devi knows that he is a ghost, the sight of his body swinging from the rope sends a shiver up her spine. Gradually, his eyelids ease, his mouth closes, and the wrinkles on his forehead vanish. After a while, he squeezes his head out of the noose and falls down like a clumsy monkey. He gets up, dusts his pants, and sets the chair straight. He wipes the seat once again, ties the noose once again, and hangs himself once again. Dying, it seems, is a hobby for some.
While other souls moved on to new identities and continents, these souls clung on to rituals and moments like kids hanging on to their lollipops. They had experienced the futility of change. Lives could change, but their preoccupations would remain the same.
Some had found the loneliness of a hundred births in just one.
When she comes back home, Chanda Devi inspects herself in the mirror. She pulls the skin below her eyes down with her fingertips. The viscous pink around her eyes is comforting. She pinches her flesh hard. She is relieved to find that it leaves red bruises. These are all signs of life.
Later that night, Girija Prasad is dreaming of ostrich-sized peacocks running in a desert of sand and gold when, suddenly, huge hands appear from the sky and grab one of them. He wakes up, startled, only to find Chanda Devi hugging him in her sleep with all her strength. He lies awake, trying to read the tremors on her face. He wonders what they may be, the visions her eyelids hold back.
Chanda Devi lives in a painting, and each day the artist adds more white to her complexion. The rhythm in her womb is new to her. It follows the father’s heartbeat. Like the father, it yearns for something heavier and fleshier than the leafy fare she consumes. Ever growing, ever demanding. She cannot keep up. She can only look at the tattered Japanese ghost and empathize. She is perpetually hungry.
There is only one doctor in Port Blair, a senior English gentleman who survived the World War and independence and continued to live here for a very simple reason: He was the only doctor on the islands. On his insistence, the Japanese had sanitized parts of Cellular Jail and turned it into a makeshift hospital. On his insistence, the Forest Department is bringing a veterinarian from the mainland, since he cannot cope with the treatment of both humans and elephants.
The doctor gives Chanda Devi’s paleness a name: anemia. “The water in the islands reduces the iron content of the blood somehow,” he tells her husband. “That is how most of the women and children perished on Ross Island, even some of the men. They died of a mysterious condition called death by paleness, later shortened into ‘pale death’ for telegrams. It was just good old anemia.”
“My wife didn’t suffer from anemia earlier. She’s enjoyed good health since she arrived.”
“The pregnancy has made her vulnerable.”
The paleness forces Chanda Devi to hold the armrest when she gets up. She often feels dizzy. Girija Prasad doesn’t allow her to cook anymore and assists her in her baths. He is afraid to leave her alone, so he works from home.
Though he should be overjoyed, he is afraid. The only one he can look to for assurance is the one he is most concerned about.
“What do you see when you black out?” he asks Chanda Devi.
“I see red. Flesh red. When you close your eyes under the strong sun, your eyelids look like they’re on fire. I see something similar.”
The doctor suggests she eat red meat and chicken soup, but even Girija Prasad will not entertain the suggestion. Instead, he picks tomatoes, spinach, and beetroot to make fresh juice for her twice a day. He feeds her a spoonful of black sesame seeds. There is nothing in nature that nature itself cannot cure, he believes.
By her fourth month, she is less pale, observes Girija Prasad, who maintains a daily chart of her complexion, dizziness, nausea, weight, and moods. She manages to squat over the Indian-style toilet without fainting, but her mood is still somber.
“This complexion suits you.” He tries to cheer her up. “I could put in a request with the goddess to keep it this way, but I’m afraid I may not be entertained. My carnivorous past will not go down well with Hindu deities.”
Chanda Devi smiles. He means it in jest, but he means it nonetheless. Her husband, she can see, is in anguish. He wants to pray, but he doesn’t have faith.
She sits on the bamboo chair with her legs slightly apart to make space for her belly. Though she is firmly seated, with her back against the cushion and her elbows on the armrests, nothing stops the dizziness. The pull of the earth is stronger than ever. It compels her to leave everything aside and lie down until she loses consciousness. She has begun to have a peculiar nightmare: She is sprouting roots as she sits in the garden, unable to extricate herself from the soil.
She wants to respond to Girija Prasad’s compliment. She wants to be witty enough to bring a smile to his face and faith to his heart. But words have leaked out of her thoughts, like the energy that bleeds out from her womb onto the ground. As she sits, she sinks farther. Her eyes well up even as she smiles.
Girija Prasad plucks out a handkerchief, ironed and bleached, from his pocket. He leans forward and dabs away her tears. He takes another look. Her eyes have welled up again. He dabs at them once more. This time, the tears are large enough to leave a wet patch on the cloth. So he uses another corner. He wipes his wife’s tears with all the corners of his handkerchief until there are none left and her eyelashes are dry and stiff like hay. He waits. He watches. Only after Chanda Devi has regained her composure does he fold his handkerchief three times and place it back in his pocket. He leaves the room to pick vegetables for her evening glass of juice.
To extract an entire beetroot without harming the plants growing in its proximity or ripping the stem off is always a challenge. One must use a sickle to unearth the root before using force. A meticulous and patient gardener, Girija Prasad is immersed in the enterprise. Yet he can’t help but dislike the uncertainty descending upon him this evening. Seeking solitude, only to find in it the value of companionship. Sowing seeds, only to uproot. The purpose of life, Girija Prasad had hypothesized early on, was to be purposeful. But if Girija Prasad cannot claim confidence in his role as a husband, how will he be as a father?
Fatherhood, even as he stands at its brink, still seems as distant, formless, and incomprehensible as the moon on an early winter’s evening. It exists light-years away in a cosmic space, where books, academia, or natural history cannot go, only raw strokes drawn in charcoal.
Girija Prasad has begun to draw imaginary trees. Their trunks have a waist-like slenderness, bulging at the knots. Branches as delicate as human fingers soar in all directions, some joining the land to sprout again, others reining in the clouds. All sorts of fruits and flowers can be found on a single tree, from daffodils and lotuses to orchids, from apples and watermelons to the humble coconut. Anything is possible, because everything is.
When Girija Prasad holds his son, he cannot discern his features. The head is the biggest part, followed by the slightly bloated belly. His eyes are slits, stitched together. As for the hands and feet, they are minuscule. Girija Prasad has seen bigger sepals on flowers. Both the feet fit in his palm.
His son is a shriveled, pale raisin with the skin of an aged being. One so ancient, it is difficult to ascertain whether he is at the beginning or the end of his life. Girija Prasad holds his son’s miniature hand in his own.
He was alone with Chanda Devi when her waters broke, five and a half months into her pregnancy. He was alarmed to find a spot of blood on the mattress. The spot grew into a patch in front of him. The patch spread farther. Soon, the bed was drenched with blood. He picked his wife up and placed her in a tub of lukewarm water. He held her hand throughout, even after the doctor arrived. When it had all ended, when there was no doubt that their fragile dream had evaporated, he left her in the doctor’s care. He threw the bedsheet and mattress away. He scrubbed off the blood that had seeped through to stain the wooden frame. He brought her back to a clean bed. Once she had closed her eyes and entered a world where she ventured alone, Girija Prasad picked up the infant and cradled him.
He holds his son’s hand. He counts all his fingers and toes. All twenty of them. He seems to have developed beautifully.
“Miscarriages are common. As common as childbirths in these islands,” the doctor tells him. “But the blood loss, if not addressed, could further her weakness.”
Girija Prasad makes vegetable juice for his wife, like on any other day. He leaves her semiconscious to drive up to Mount Harriet with his son in his lap. He fears that once Chanda Devi wakes up, he will be forced to give his child a traditional Hindu cremation. As his father, it will fall upon him to set his fragile body on fire.
Alone, he uses his hands to dig a small pit near the rock where they first held hands. He buries his son in a womb of soft, wet earth—the kind one strives to sow seeds in. He covers him with a blanket of soil.
But he cannot bring himself to cover his face. What if he opens his eyes and lets out a cry, choking on the soil?
Girija Prasad’s shirt is drenched with tears. Tears wept for everyone and everything he has ever loved and will love.