The Selector of Souls

  She tells herself all actions are ordained, that no one but the gods are to blame, just as Krishna told Arjun in the Gita. But whenever she does, her own forefinger comes before her. Again it pushes the wad of chewed tobacco between those tiny lips.

  Jalawaaz Fertility Clinic paid her a commission today when she brought the young woman to their general physician. And today the nurse let Damini watch as she applied jelly to the probe and rubbed it on the young woman’s body.

  Damini, who was a pair of ears for so many years, has learned that goonj—echo—can turn into pictures. The ultrasound looked into the dark box of the young woman’s womb and the wavy black and white pictures answered all the young woman’s unspoken questions. Will I be safe in my home after this child? Will I be respected, will I get enough to eat, and will my old age be comfortable or will I go begging? Will my husband send me home and take another wife? Will we be paupers and have to begin again from scratch?

  When the doctor told her she could prepare to distribute sweets in celebration, the young woman understood her child was a son. She took the minibus home to protect the baby rather than strain herself walking uphill on the ghost-trail. But after shopping in Jalawaaz, Damini couldn’t bring herself to spend an additional ten rupees for the minibus fare—every morning, Chunilal swallows the pills provided by Dr. Gupta, and the cow-and-elephant dung potion provided by the ojha with equal faith, but neither appears to be working. He no longer has energy to finish the feeding trough.

  Riding in a jeep is such luxury, but it does feel strange to be driven by a woman. Sister Anu is speaking of Bread of Healing.

  “Aman-ji should have named the clinic after my Mem-saab,” says Damini. “Sardarni Roop Kaur.”

  “The lady I saw you with at the lawyer’s office?”

  “Yes, Aman-ji’s mother. I stayed with her thirty years, till she—died. She was deaf, and I was her ears.” After a moment she adds, “Mem-saab wanted the Church land and buildings to be used for a clinic and a school.”

  “And we are grateful to Amanjit-ji and your Mem-saab,” says the Jesus-sister.

  Damini looks out the window at the peaks vanishing into immense emptiness. “Sometimes Kiran-ji asks me to come to the Big House when they have parties. I don’t sweep; I serve at table and help in the kitchen.” Call it her duty, to check on the welfare of Mem-saab’s family. It’s good for her own as well, not only because of the money, but because sometimes Potato-face gives her some meat curry for Chunilal, and Kiran gave her an old salwar-kameez that she adjusted to fit Kamna. So far, Kiran has not asked her to iron. She treats Damini as a temporary worker, not even a wage-earning labourer like the other house servants. “I give Kiran-ji massages because …” Damini clasps her hands before her stomach. She glances at Anu meaningfully, so as not to mention pregnancy before a man. “Kiran has decided to spend the next seven months in the hills,” she says. She mimics Kiran’s flat voice, “ ‘Delhi is so-oo crowded and smoggy.’ ”

  The Jesus-sister suppresses a smile.

  Amanjit Singh prefers the hills these days, too. Khansama told her that Timcu refused to return to Canada and is still living on the ground floor in the Embassy-man’s old residence. He says Timcu wants market price for Mem-saab’s house, but the house price rises weekly, far more quickly than in Canada, as more and more people want to live in the posh area of the capital. The two brothers now communicate only via lawyers.

  Anu nods. “I saw Aman-ji’s car go by early this morning. He must be checking on the cottage buildings.”

  “I heard he sold one to a retired general,” says Damini. “And another to an En-Ar-Eye.” She means a non-resident Indian. “The buyer lives abroad and didn’t even come to see it before buying.”

  Shafiq Sheikh says, “Amanjit-ji will arrange a three-day prayer ceremony in the new cottage.” He seems impressed by such piety.

  Aman may try escaping the cycle of rebirth with pious deeds, but he’ll return as a toad for his treatment of Mem-saab. “All Sikhs do that ceremony, not only Amanjit-ji,” says Damini. “We take turns reading the Guru Granth Sahib from beginning to end.”

  “Aren’t you a Hindu?” says Shafiq Sheikh.

  “Yes, but I am also a Sikh, because of my Mem-saab.”

  “So you can believe in one god and many at the same time?” says Sister Anu.

  “Yes, why not?” Damini fishes in her bag and holds up the bottle of Dettol she just bought. “See, brahman—all of god—is like this. Very strong, like Christ-god or Allah or Vaheguru. Kills many germs but it can hurt you, too. So you take a small amount, add water to make it less powerful—like making smaller gods. Smaller gods kill fewer germs, but they still kill them, and they don’t have enough power to hurt you.”

  “I never thought of it that way though I’ve been studying god and germs for a long time,” Sister Anu says, smiling. “What other medicines did you buy?”

  “Black pepper and tulsi leaves for cough; gram flour—I make a paste with yogurt, for my granddaughter’s complexion. Better than Fair & Lovely. Honey to prevent allergies; kumari leaves for skin problems; coriander seeds for headaches; tamarind, pomegranate and gooseberries to improve appetite. And I gathered some madhupatra to sweeten tea so you don’t have to buy sugar or jaggery. It also makes you speak more kindly …”

  ANU

  DAMINI IS JUST THE WOMAN SISTER ANU HAS BEEN LOOKING for—a traditional healer who also knows about germs and cleanliness.

  When Dr. Gupta comes to Bread of Healing, the queue snakes off the veranda with people sitting on the steps, hunkering down waiting on the path and the clearing. But when Sister Anu checks if women are taking prescribed medicines, she finds they don’t yet trust the doctor’s advice. Women come to the clinic once problems become so bad they cannot work, often accompanied by husbands, fathers or brothers who speak for them and describe their symptoms. Seeing Damini working at Bread of Healing might give them confidence.

  “Can you speak Pahari?” says Sister Anu.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Can you help us register pregnant women?” says Sister Anu.

  “For cleanings?” says Damini.

  “No,” says Anu. “Not abortions.”

  “No license?”

  “We are Catholic,” says Sister Anu.

  Shafiq Sheikh chimes in behind her, “They believe it’s bad karma.” He’s putting it in terms Damini can understand. Anu should have thought of that.

  Damini says, “You mean you’ll fry in hell for it?”

  “Yes,” says Sister Anu, a little surprised. She would rather Damini knew about Lord Jesus and his love of life, but hell and damnation are just as effective starting points.

  “But it’s like weeding—not all seeds can take root,” says Damini.

  “No,” says Sister Anu, rising in her seat as she steps on the clutch. “Human life is more precious than potatoes and cauliflowers.”

  “Achcha,” says Damini.

  Sister Anu takes her eyes off the snaking road to glance at Damini. Achcha can mean anything. She decides this funny old woman agrees. “We need to make sure every pregnancy and birth in the area is registered,” she says. “And every child needs a birth certificate right away.”

  “What use is a cirtifitak?” says Damini.

  “It’s needed for school, now. It’s required for life.”

  “Right away? Immi-jately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Surely not before thirteen days. Better still, forty. Child may not survive.”

  “Nowadays, children survive,” says Sister Anu. “Our clinic doctor has been counting how many babies die in the first year of life in Gurkot and five other villages. The number is much lower than last year.”

  “How many of your children are alive?”

  Shafiq Sheikh says, “Nuns can’t have children.”

  “Nuns don’t have children, so that they can do social work,” says Sister Anu gently, spinning the steering wheel counter-clockwise to round a bend.

  ?
??Very sad that you have no children. I have a son. He does social work too—he’s a teacher in Jalawaaz—but I hope he will have many sons.”

  Damini’s son sounds commendable to Sister Anu. But Shafiq Sheikh asks with a note of suspicion in his voice, “He teaches in a government or private school?”

  “Private,” says Damini. “The one near the temple. He teaches tribals and sweeper-caste people to be Hindus.”

  “He wants them to vote for the BJP?” says Shafiq Sheikh, referring to the nationalist Hindu party. Sister Anu shifts into first gear for the climb.

  Damini nods. “I say, Doesn’t matter if they vote BJP or Congress. All politicians do is make big promises during elections. Afterwards, they only care about saab-log. Anyway, my son will take me to live with him as soon as he gets married. I have to find him a girl—it’s very difficult these days. Girls the right age, from good families, all seem to be taken. You know a good girl?”

  “Good Muslim girls,” says the driver.

  Damini turns to Sister Anu. “Maybe you know a good woman from a kshatriya family?”

  “But you’re also a Sikh,” Sister Anu says, “Sikhs don’t have high and low castes. Everyone is the same level—no?”

  “I don’t make differences. Everyone is equal-equal,” says Damini. “But everyone else does, so what can be done?”

  “I don’t know any girls for your son,” says Sister Anu. “But since you don’t make differences, would you like to work with me in the clinic? I need a community health worker.”

  “What is the pay?”

  “Seventy rupees a month. You would explain medications, make sure they take their medicines, help me make patients comfortable …”

  “You won’t make me clean toilets, na?”

  “No, our helper comes every day after cleaning at the Big House.”

  “Goldina?”

  Sister Anu nods and steps on the clutch and brake together.

  “I don’t know … I look after my son-in-law. He’s very sick—many months now.”

  “Has he seen Dr. Gupta?”

  “Several times.”

  “His name?”

  “Chunilal.”

  “I know him. Dr. Gupta enrolled him in a special test programme for new medicines. How is it I have never met you?”

  “His daughter, my granddaughter Kamna, takes him to the clinic.”

  “Kamna! Such a sweet girl. I’m teaching her to drive.” The jeep’s wheels squeal faintly as she veers around a bend.

  “That girl!” Damini says. “Wants to do everything, learn everything. One day she’s dancing, next day driving. No one is going to give her a car. Instead, please find a boy before she’s left unmarried. A kshatriya—that’s what we want.”

  Sister Anu says, “Have you asked what she wants?”

  Damini hesitates. “She’s a girl yet. What can she know about wanting?”

  “Ask her, at least,” says Sister Anu in coaxing tones, as the jeep arrives at the storehouse.

  Damini gets out, shuts the door and then leans through the passenger window. “You said a right thing. Even a girl should be asked what she wants. I have thought this, but I never heard anyone say it. And you are saying I can get money for doing what I do every day for my son-in-law for free.” She tents her hands and bobs her head. “I’ll come to the clinic tomorrow.” Using her umbrella as a hiking cane, she disappears over the verge of the hill.

  As the jeep climbs the short drive from the road to the whitewashed chapel and adjoining buildings, Shafiq Sheikh says, “That woman. Her husband died of electric shock—be careful.”

  “Why?” says Sister Anu, not wanting to play the usual blame-the-widow game. “Did she give her husband an electric shock?”

  “No, Sister. I’m just saying …” Shafiq Sheikh’s arms flail, as he searches for a remark that will please. The best he can come up with is, “I heard her lecturing a drunkard once.”

  Well, he’s Muslim; he’d approve. He once gave Sister Imaculata a fatherly lecture when she bought a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream.

  “Do women in the village like her?” asks Sister Anu.

  “She’s the only healer in Gurkot,” he says. “Though everyone feels sorry for Chunilal that all these months he is still looking after his mother-in-law.”

  Local women will talk to a local woman like Damini, they will trust her.

  Sister Anu brings the jeep to a stop beside the clinic. Above, the chapel bell tings gently in its belfry.

  Tomorrow is Sunday. This little knoll will be crowded and colourful with Sikh men and women attending the small domed gurdwara at one end of the quadrangle and Christians coming to Father Pashan’s mass in the chapel at the other. Sister Anu dips her head to the crucifix over the door before entering the clinic.

  She unpacks the medicines and locks them in the steel cupboard in the nurses’ station and only then allows herself a few minutes to read Rano’s letter.

  Wish you had an email address. Email is like fax, but quicker. I reread The Optimist’s Daughter when I started using an email programme called Eudora, for Eudora Welty, but the programme doesn’t live up to her name. We use punctuation to make smiley faces :-).

  Having a child in the house is the best form of birth control—did you know? I do miss my multiple orgasms, but I love having her.

  Multiple orgasms? What does it feel like to have even one?

  Your baby is growing into a beautiful young woman. Yesterday she bought her first lipstick—yes, I know we weren’t allowed to wear any till senior year in college, but this is Canada …

  Remember how everyone in India told me Jatin was such a catch. A Canadian! In truth, he’s just a worker on the line, swirling dark chocolate into white. But I cheer him on. He calls me on his lunch hour every day, and then he calls Chetna. On Valentine’s Day last week, he sent me a dozen roses.

  And a little further down …

  I use Hindi words and god names as passwords—LordRam, LordGanesh, LakshmiDevi, LordHanuman—uncrackable! I excel at DOS commands and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, and train others in the branch. Three nights a week at Basics of Computers is paying for my IVF.

  So Rano is continuing IVF though she has Chetna. Why does she need to bear a child to be happy? Can’t she just adopt another? Anu can’t fathom it.

  Yesterday a trainee asked, “I see the A and the C-drives. Where is the B?” I explained there used to be a B-drive, when computers had two floppy drives and no hard drives. “No hard drives?” he said, amazed. I felt ancient—just because I remember a time before hard drives! Have you felt old yet, Anu?

  At work, praise has come my way, but I was passed over for promotion today. I am too good at what I do, and management wants me to keep doing it. Mr. Xhu, from Hong Kong, was promoted instead. He could tell I was upset especially since I do exactly the same work. We started the same day, but I know his starting salary was about ten thousand more. Over dim sum, he explained: male programmers won’t take direction from a woman. Didn’t I see that? I didn’t. I said, “Most computers used to be women, women computed for corporations and universities and calculated for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos to create the first nuclear device. Now we try to be like computers and give them Turing tests to see if they can pass for women.” He said did I know it has only been about fifty years since Canadian judges declared women are people? What’s fifty years? In his opinion it may take fifty more before men don’t mind being managed by women. Men, he said, are just naturally domineering. “There will come a time,” he said, “but this is not it.” “When will it be time?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said. “But till then, women must endure.” Then he pointed out that both of us may have been members of a majority in the old country, but are now minorities in Canada. “Minorities should not create disharmony,” he said in pleading tones. “Mr. Xhu,” I said, “If I wanted to be treated like this, I could have stayed in India.”

  Yet India is the song that’s always playing at the back of my mind.
In this vast land, I miss India’s millions of unnecessary people. Miss the dust, the hubbub, even diesel fumes.

  Jatin stands on guard for “Canada O Canada”—but then he was only a few years older than Chetna when he came here.

  Still, the India I imagine is no longer there, just as you are no longer in Delhi. I haven’t seen you in Shimla, so I can’t imagine you there. There’s always some elsewhere, a place where I am not. Like the past and future, it is not necessarily better. I am not in all the places on Earth that I could be at this moment—I’m here. Me. But in my head, I’m back in Delhi with you. Yet, you’re no longer there.

  When I read Pop’s letters I can’t believe the same man who carried us on his shoulders, and taught us to drive can make such snarky remarks about people who aren’t Hindu. Have I become so Canadian and multicultural, or is his attitude part of aging?

  Multiculturalism must be successful indeed if Rano now finds her father’s prejudices remarkable. Sister Anu folds the letter, lifts it to her nose. Canada smells like this; Chetna smells like this.

  New Delhi

  March 1996

  VIKAS

  A BUGLE SOUNDS THE END OF THE FIRST CHUKKER. IN the final match of the last Sunday tournament of the season Vikas’s team, the National Polo Club, is down 0-1. He straightens in his saddle, leaning back slightly to check his bay. He raises his mallet, rests it across her black-maned crest, and turns toward the sideline.

  Both open-air and covered stands are full today—army, navy and air force brass; ex-maharajas; corporate sponsors. Men who control New Delhi and the country, or will someday. Many probably wearing Ralph Lauren shirts with polo players—as if they play! The kind who used to rag him unmercifully when he was a fresher at Delhi University. The über-educated, with their foreign degrees, for whom the motherland is never enough. He could have been one of them—his marks were always high, till that second division in his final college year …