“Using the forgiveness chair,” says Damini. “Goldina said I should.”
Sister Anu feels on precarious ground. “Is it helping you?”
Damini shakes her head. “Abhi nahin,” she says. Not yet. “I have less thoughts in my head than a potato. I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to eat or drink. I don’t want to talk. I have Dipreyshun.”
She closes her eyes, as if she might sit there forever.
Sister Anu doesn’t know what to say. She stares at her fingers, blackened with soot from the door handle. Mist is circling, descending with the evening. A cold wind is whistling through the pines. Rain will be next. Damini’s despair oozes from the confessional like a miasma.
“After the SDM moved Suresh to a jail far away beyond Shimla,” Damini says, “I applied for my pension again. I told the government my son cannot support me from jail. The postmaster told me it will take a few years because I don’t know anyone to bribe and fast-en up the process. How will I live in that time? I have sold my silver toe ring, my silver nose ring, even my gold earrings—all that I got for my sister-in-laws’ weddings. And after all that my son has done,” she gestures at the blackened earth that was the chapel, the damaged clinic beyond it, “you won’t want me working for you anymore.”
“Not because your son did this,” says Sister Anu. “I was going to—oh, jaane do!—never mind.” Nothing will be gained from mentioning her intention, even before the church burned, to let Damini go. She tries to sound encouraging, “You know so much about medicinal plants,” she says. “You could even work with scientists in Shimla. I remember you gave the ojha’s wife a sweet leaf, madhupatra. And you told Father Pashan it was better for him than artificial sugar.”
“I gave the ojha’s wife a sweet leaf I can’t taste myself.”
“Since when have you been unable to taste sweetness?” Sister Anu shifts to diagnostic mode.
“I don’t know—December, 1992.”
Sister Anu knows what happened in December 1992, at the Babri Masjid when that Muslim shrine was demolished by Hindu fanatics. Sister Anu is not surprised that Damini felt the trauma as everyone else, but her reaction should by now be blunted by time. She says gently, “Then think what sweetness is, and how you must find it again.”
Damini looks over Sister Anu’s shoulder at the devastation. She says, “I went to ask for a phone number in Kasauli jail where I could call Suresh. The police made me wait outside with the sweeper-women for hours. Then they told me he already had one visitor—you! You wanted to taunt him?”
“No, I prayed for him. Lord Jesus teaches us to forgive.”
“Ha! It’s easy to forgive others.”
“No it isn’t. I could be angry that you have been selecting unborn girl babies to die. I could be angry because you knew Suresh was Moses’s father but allowed me to take the boy to Shimla for adoption. And I could be really angry and hurt because your son burned down our chapel and your grandson killed our priest. Or I can say: you and I must change something in Gurkot.”
Damini thinks about this for a moment.
“Was he all right?” she says.
Sister Anu could describe Suresh’s squalid 14 square metre prison cell without bed or mattress shared with seven others; the jail superintendent who demanded a “donation” before he would let her visit an under trial prisoner; how Suresh bragged that he was occupying the same cell where Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, once occupied in 1948; the 400 grams of wheat, 90 grams of cereal and 250 grams of vegetables he is allowed each day. The brutal discipline of guards who follow a nineteenth-century British manual; the lifer convicts who, he said, made his life miserable … but sometimes it’s kinder not to describe. So she says, “Suresh said to tell you he could come to trial in only four to five years. Three, if he has good bhagya. And he can also be let out of jail for a few days if he is needed to perform your last rites.”
“Did you see his food?”
“Yes, he ate rice, daal, and some vegetables in front of me.”
But she knows Suresh wouldn’t have been given as much to eat if she had not been present.
At the beginning of her visit he said much that was unrepeatable. She had expected to feel anger, even rage, but his fears of annihilation by non-Hindus were so paranoid and his loneliness so extreme, she felt only pity. “He said activists are working very hard to change his conditions, so maybe he will be moved to Tihar Jail in Delhi or a jail run by a private company. And he said to tell you he has been doing meditation and has been given devotional music cassettes. And some discourses of Swami Rudransh.”
“Ooofff! Is Swami Rudransh sitting in prison with my Suresh? Is Swami Rudransh sending bail for him? When he was still in Jalawaaz jail, Suresh told me not to worry, that his boss in New Delhi will send bail for him.” Damini closes her eyes. After a while, she says, “How will I know when the chair gives me forgiveness?”
How to answer?
“The chair works if a priest is with you,” Sister Anu says gently. “When he is here, you sit in the chair and tell him what is troubling you. Afterwards, he tells you what you must do to be forgiven by god. But since Father Pashan is no more, would you like to talk to me? I cannot impart the grace of forgiveness as god or Father Pashan could, but maybe my listening will help. We can’t change the past, and the present is what it is, but we can change the future.”
Damini opens her eyes, “Because of my deeds in this life, I will return as a crow in my next. Or a rat. Or an insect.”
Crows and rats and other animals, Sister Imaculata said during novice classes for Sisters Anu and Bethany, don’t have souls, which means you can’t return as one. But since Christians have so often expanded the definition of animal to cover women, homosexuals, Jews and the colonized, and since Hindus have so often expanded the definition to cover women and outcastes, Anu prefers to believe that if humans have souls, crows and rats and insects must have them too. She tries a different approach. “Father Pashan once told me god loves us even if he does not love our deeds. God is with us in our suffering.”
“Even if we commit the worst paap?”
“Even if,” says Sister Anu.
And so Damini tells Sister Anu what Sister Anu suspected. There was indeed a baby, Leela’s child, a girl child. And Damini sent her back to brahman. And things have gone wrong and more wrong ever since.
“The Gita says that if our intentions are good, and we do our dharma, the outcome will take care of itself,” says Damini.
“And were your intentions good?”
“Leela said when I left her and went to Delhi, she began to learn not to want what she cannot have.” Her voice falls almost to whisper. “She said if Chunilal had not refused the girl a name, she would have fed her. That’s when I realized I was doing what Chunilal wanted, not what Leela wanted. So I was angry with Chunilal, all the time he was so sick, all the time I bathed him, massaged him, shaved him, fed him when he could no longer eat. I had stained my karma not for Leela’s sake as I thought, but for his. A man has his dharma in each of the four stages of life, but a woman has only one stage: to tend the men of her family, then her children, then her in-laws. So little by little, I got this Dipreyshun.”
“Do you feel better now that you’ve told me?”
Damini looks around. “Even the mountains look deaf, today. Even the mountains are full of accusing eyes. Again and again I see my finger—mine!—pushing the tobacco between those two small lips.” Her head drops, she clasps her hands between her breasts.
“Is there more to tell?”
“I feel my strength is falling lower and lower. Any lower, and it will dive into the riverbed of the Meethi Darya. No, this chair has no magic for me. And telling you is not enough.”
“Damini,” says Anu, “I have seen you help people. I heard you refuse to harm Kiran’s baby girl—only a good woman would do that.”
“That’s what I thought. But how can I be a good woman if the son I made tore d
own a masjid and burned down a Christian house of god, and raped a poor woman? So when I began thinking all this, Dipreyshun came.”
“If you want to feel better all the time, you have to do better deeds.”
“What to do?”
“First, don’t take any more women to Jalawaaz Clinic for the ultrasound.”
“Then I’ll have to select which soul can stay and which should be returned to brahman.” She hides her face behind her hands. “I don’t want to do that ever again.”
“But parents are sending boys and girls back to brahman before they are born.”
“Before birth is bestest time.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Then one power button drives both mother and child, like a radio and cassette player.”
“We Catholics believe it is paap to kill even before birth.”
“Then you Catholic-types please don’t have a cleaning if you don’t want it. But a mother who wants a cleaning should not have to walk five hours to get one, or have to explain to anyone why she needs one.”
“But surely you see that just because a mother wants a cleaning doesn’t mean she needs one. Or that she will make a right decision.”
Damini is silent for several moments. Then she says, “What is right? How am I to know?”
Sister Anu lowers her voice to make her own confession. “All right, I can agree that cleaning an unborn child from Leela would have been better than neglecting the child till she died of starvation or fever, or killing her. And it was cruel of Father Pashan to tell Goldina she will go to hell if she had a cleaning, when he knew she was raped. But we don’t know whether the women you took to Jalawaaz wanted their babies cleaned out or whether family pressure drove them to get a cleaning because they were told the child was a girl.”
“Pressure … yes. My Mem-saab—though I knew her so well, I could not tell if she took her own life by her own hand, or if Aman and Timcu drove her to do it. She was a woman who needed a mirror to see her own bangles—very beautiful, you know, but couldn’t believe she was. That’s why she got Dipreyshun. A man and his family don’t have to say or do anything. We all know what will happen to us if we don’t do their wishes. So women in Gurkot say, Either I suffer or the baby suffers.”
“Then we should help husbands and fathers understand that girls are gifts from god.”
“Girls are expensive,” says Damini in a tone of warning.
“Girls and women work as hard, sometimes harder than men. Look at your Leela, and your Kamna. They don’t get paid, so people say their work is not worth anything. But tell me, what would have happened to Chunilal and Mohan if they didn’t have Leela and Kamna?”
Damini hunches into herself as if racked by internal pain.
Sister Anu says, “Is your life better now than when you were a girl?”
Damini looks up at the evening sky as if trying to see the past. “Yes, twenty paise out of a rupee better.”
“Is Leela’s life better than yours?”
Damini tilts her head—yes, then shakes it—no. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“The only way we can know is to let each girl’s story happen.”
Sister Anu waits. Eventually Damini presses her sari-pallu to her eyes and says, “What can I do, now?”
“I don’t know,” says Sister Anu. “But whatever you do must be done soon, because this chair will soon be gone, and then there will be no forgiveness and the SDM will come to know you have been helping women get abortions if their babies were girls … and he will have to follow the law.”
“You’ll tell him?”
Never being pledged to secrecy of confessions as Pashan was, Sister Anu has the power to reveal. “Our deeds are karma, Damini. God and all the gods know what we do. You know your own deeds. And look how bad you feel—even the forgiveness chair has been unable to help.”
“He’ll put me in jail. You know what policemen do to women in jail? And what will happen to Leela without Chunilal, Suresh or me to help her?” Damini’s chin quivers. She twists the free end of her sari around her finger.
“Damini, think how many grandmothers, mothers and mothers-in-law live with guilt, as you do? Only you can persuade women of Gurkot to stop ‘stopping’ girls. Or find a way to stop everyone in Gurkot from ‘stopping girls.’ You have to help girls and women survive.” Sister Anu pauses. “And if you don’t show me some effort, some change, yes, I will tell the SDM.”
DAMINI
DAMINI EASES HERSELF FROM THE CONFESSIONAL. SISTER Anu reaches out, helps her find footing on the blackened stone. Damini surveys the damage. All caused by Suresh, her Suresh.
Would Sister Anu really report her to the SDM? Would she let her be arrested for homicide and put in jail? She told the Jesus-sister because she wanted to be understood. She shouldn’t have. But she needs a cure for Dipreyshun. Couldn’t Sister Anu just give her a pill?
She would like to honour some of what Sister Anu believes, though for her life begins when a child breathes, not in its time in the womb. And true life begins when a child’s story begins. But what she has been doing has brought her no peace, only ghosts …
Everyone is always finding terrible impossible tasks for her to do, new mountains for her to climb.
“Look!” Sister Anu interrupts her thoughts. Fireflies spark in unison, synchronizing with no authority. They pulse as partners, creating a field of light over the charred ground.
“Why are they acting together?” asks Damini. “Is any more mighty than the rest?”
“No, all the same. But mostly they do as others do. See now there’s one who is not following the same taal.” Indeed, one firefly has begun flashing at a different rhythm.
A ripple of light swells across the charred field from end to end as the fireflies adjust to a new rhythm. “See? One changes,” says Sister Anu. “And the rest follow.”
Damini snorts. “It’s easy for fireflies. You think if I change everyone will follow me? No, ji! Men have to be told everything.”
“Then you better find a way to tell men. Tell them girls have feelings like them.”
“But we don’t want to be like men. Men should learn to be more like us. But how funny it sounds to say a manav, aadmi or purush should become an aurat, istri or theemi. No one will understand. Everyone will laugh!”
“Say insaan, then,” Sister uses the word descended from Persian. “All of us can try to be humans first. Just beings. All I know is, you better find a way to say it that everyone in Gurkot understands.”
Damini steals a sidelong glance—Sister Anu looks determined to do just as she says.
She sighs. “Men, women—all of us have lost our true honour because we think our sons are gold. I tried to indulge my son and son-in-law so they would look after me in old age. I forgave my son the first time he attacked a house of worship, and that made him more bold. I was so afraid my son-in-law would send me away or tell people Leela’s baby girl was mine, I did bad things. If you promise not to tell the SDM, Sister-ji, I promise to find a way to heal men and women here.”
Sister Anu tilts her head, agreeing.
“But,” says Damini. “I can’t just tell people of Gurkot straight out. We are mountain people—we don’t trust the straight way.”
Jalawaaz
November 1996
ANU
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE FIRE, SISTER ANU IS BACK in the office of the sub-district magistrate, summoned to be informed that a more powerful god, the district magistrate, has issued a stay order on the operations of Bread of Healing, pending a government inquiry. The court, unlike the SDM, and perhaps with a little help from Amanjit Singh’s close friendship with the State of Himachal’s chief minister, has decided “such” things do happen in the SDM’s district. And that charges of rioting, intent to hurt, trespass and “outraging the morals of a woman” can all be upheld against Suresh. Inquiries can go on for years. The SDM cites the most famous—the gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, the massacre of Sikh
s in Delhi, both inquiries in progress since 1984, the Babri Masjid inquiry in progress since 1992. While the investigation continues, he wags his finger at Anu, “I assured Aman-saab that I will warn you, you Christians better not retaliate. You tell your Christians to be like your Jesus. Explain to them that these young men were misguided. They knew not what they did.”
Sister Anu replies, “Those men knew exactly what they did. Since we have no chapel and no priest, I can’t give our congregation the sermon you want.”
“Ah yes, you can’t preach. So backward state of affairs. Throughout India, women can preach—only you Christian women can’t. My wife, she is constantly preaching. I don’t listen, but I say she can do it.”
“It would help Christians believe justice is being done if you arrested more than one man. It took more than one man to bring the petrol from Jalawaaz, and someone other than Suresh set the monkey’s tail on fire.”
“Only two more witnesses have come forward, so we arrested several bachelors. Now maybe others will speak.”
“Why bachelors?”
“Because this is what happens when men have no sex.”
“You’re saying their brains stop working if they don’t get sex?”
“Semen builds up, Sister-ji. As a nurse you should be knowing this.”
It’s fruitless to argue with the SDM. But at least there will be an inquiry.
“You know this Suresh,” the SDM says, “was a social worker and a teacher.”
Sister Anu nods.
“He worked for the Bajrang Dal. Excellent Hindus. Little fanactical, but verrry good-intentioned. Inter-related to RSS.”
“No I didn’t know that.” Sister Anu grips the table, lightheaded at the implications. The banana and oatmeal she ate for breakfast churn in her stomach.
“We’ve learned the several names of Suresh’s boss in Shimla. We have learned the name of his New Delhi leader. He even gave us his license plate number.”
A bad feeling comes over Sister Anu. “Who is it?”
“A big saab.” He reaches for a toothpick holder, slides a toothpick between his fingers, and picks between his teeth.