Sabitri stood at the tram stop for a long while in the oppressive dusk, carrying her small painted trunk. Finally, she boarded a tram that would take her to the men’s college. She could think of no other place. She opened her handbag—so light—and looked down at the frighteningly few rupee notes in there. Her trunk was light, too. Paro had followed her to her room and rummaged through it—Let’s see what you’re stealing—and taken the silk saris. She’d taken some of Sabitri’s own things as well. A buffalo-horn comb that Durga had given her. A tiny bottle of rosewater Sabitri had saved up for months to buy. Sabitri had been too heartsick to protest.
The men’s college loomed eerily in the gloom. She slipped through the gate, thankful that the gateman wasn’t there to stop her, and ran up the stairs. On the second story, at the end of a corridor, there was a small room with a plaque on it, WOMEN’S COMMON ROOM. She had gone there once, exploring, with her friends. It was piled with dusty furniture and smelled of mice droppings. But there was a bolt on the inside, and a small toilet. She could stay there for the night. Tomorrow—ah, she couldn’t handle the thought of tomorrow yet.
When she reached it, the door to the common room was padlocked.
The strength went out of her and she slid to the floor, unable to hold in her sobs any longer. Terror and rage. But foremost was the fear of what might happen to her tonight when the night watchman came by. Would he throw her out on the street? Would he do worse? Beneath it all roiled the humiliation. What would her parents, her relatives, her village, say if they knew that she had been kicked out of the Mittir home like a dog? No one would care that the love she and Rajiv had felt for each other was pure and beautiful. Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family’s name. Could she have strayed any farther from that?
The second half of the saying, the part her mother had left unspoken, struck her like a slap:
Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family’s name.
Wicked daughters are firebrands, blackening the family’s fame.
She had been weeping too hard to hear the footsteps. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she flinched and cried out, throwing up her arms to protect herself. But it wasn’t the night watchman, as she had feared. It was her Maths professor.
He’d been working on his research, he said, in one of the classrooms—something he often did, since the hostel where he stayed was very noisy. On his way out, he heard a woman weeping and came to see what the matter was. He was shocked to see her in such a state. What had happened?
She hid her face. How mortifying, that he who had always looked at her with admiration should see her like this. She made a vague gesture—please go away. But he lowered himself to the floor beside her, his lanky knees drawn up. The unexpectedness of it made her look up. His eyes were distressed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Clearly, he had never been in such a situation before. She felt a hysterical laugh spiraling up and had to hide her face in her sari.
His hand—tentative, nervous—touched her shoulder. “Don’t cry like that, please. Maybe I can help—”
Something in his voice, in those awkward, patting motions. A plan formed in my head. I held on to it like a drowning woman. I did not allow myself to think of anything, of anyone else. Tara, can you blame me? I lifted my face to him and smiled my prettiest, saddest, falsest smile.
He took her to a cousin’s house, his only family in Kolkata. “Here’s a student of mine,” he said, “homeless because of a rich woman’s selfish whim. Please keep her until the end of the college year. I’ll pay—”
“An unknown girl, Bijan?” His cousin was dubious. “Who knows why those people forced her to leave their house? Maybe she’s a thief—”
“I told you—she lost an important card game where she was the rich woman’s partner. The woman was furious because she had to hand over a lot of money. She threw Sabitri out into the night. If I hadn’t found her, anything might have happened! I can’t force you to help her, but if you don’t, understand this: we will never speak again.”
The inflexibility in his voice surprised me and frightened his cousin. She gave in.
He came by each evening to help with my studies, for I was dreadfully behind. When he was not around, the cousin was cold to me. Perhaps, with a woman’s instinct, she saw into my crooked core. She warned him, but he would not listen. Granddaughter, he had love enough for the both of us.
Each day Sabitri checked the papers surreptitiously. One morning she saw it: “Mittirs of Shyambazar Celebrate Wedding of Their Only Son to Beautiful Coal Mine Heiress.” There were photographs. The heiress was beautiful indeed. With a gritted heart Sabitri threw herself into her studies. She made herself meek and helpful in the house until she won the cousin over. Everything happened as she had planned: she passed her classes; Bijan asked her to marry him; the cousin urged her to agree. When Sabitri wept, they thought it was from grateful joy.
The newlyweds went to the village to pay their respects. Sabitri’s parents were astonished but not displeased. Her father was relieved that they had had a quiet temple wedding in Kalighat for which he did not have to pay. The relatives swung between respect for the professor son-in-law and envy at Sabitri’s good luck, once again undeserved. Durga was delighted that Bijan wanted Sabitri to continue her studies.
But Tara, I didn’t do that. Within a year I was expecting a child. I dropped out of college, and though Bijan encouraged me to go back once the child was born, I no longer wanted to. Once again, I had been seduced by a different dream.
Bijan had published his research in a journal, something very intellectual that Sabitri didn’t understand. What she did understand was that several companies wanted to hire him. They were willing to pay him highly. Give him a prestigious title. Bijan would have preferred to live in their one-bedroom flat and continue teaching. Sabitri set to persuading him otherwise.
Her strategy lacked originality, but she was aided by the fact that he had never been with a woman before. Additionally, he was in love. She cooked him the dishes he most enjoyed, the comfort foods of a man who had grown up poor—rice, yellow mung dal, fried brinjal. From her own life, she knew them well. After dinner she put on a thin cotton night-chemise, which showed off her figure—she had recently taken on this Westernized habit—and laid their daughter, Bela, freshly changed and powdered, in his lap. How he loved that child! He could play toe-games with her all evening, making funny noises that set her giggling. Sabitri sat next to them, leaning her head on his shoulder. It was so peaceful that she almost forgot what she was there to do.
A sentence here, a phrase there, a small, plaintive smile, the slight press of a breast against his arm. That’s all it took, because he wanted to give his wife and child the best of everything. Did he guess the game Sabitri was playing? If so, he forgave her. He joined a giant oil corporation with tentacles everywhere and found that he did not dislike it as much as he had feared. He discovered he had a special talent for solving problems. He was too honest, blunt in his answers, but the management loved him in spite of that. Or perhaps because of it. These were rare qualities in the corporate world. He was promoted, then promoted again, then sent to their headquarters in Delhi to be groomed for higher leadership.
Did I love him, Granddaughter? I’ll answer by saying I was the best possible wife. Certainly I loved our life in the capital, a flat in a wealthy colony, a motorcar, respectful servants who believed that I had been born into affluence. I took classes in English conversation and comportment, and learned that I, too, had a talent. I built a reputation for hosting the best parties. I knew how to charm the most taciturn guest into chatting. I never skimped on the alcohol, even if it meant we had to eat rice and lentils for the rest of the month. I created desserts that became the talk of the town. I wonder if Bijan realized that many of his tough deals fell into place because of my dinners.
After seven years of service, Bijan was sent back to Kolkata with yet another promotion. Sabitri was both delighted and un
easy. The sooty, sprawling city of her first humiliation and heartbreak had a hold on her like no other place. The smallest triumph here meant more than the hugest victories elsewhere. They lived on the top floor of a tall building, and sometimes it seemed to her, as she stood on the balcony and looked down on the treetops, that the city had spread itself at her feet. But the past still rankled. Sometimes, after dropping Bela at school, she would ask the driver to take her past the men’s college. The memory of that night when she wept outside the Women’s Common Room was like a half-formed scab she could not stop picking at.
When on a visit to the village I learned from my mother that Leelamoyi was now a widow and in ill health, alone in the old mansion because her rich daughter-in-law refused to live with her, I formed a plan.
I lie, Tara. The plan had been in me for a long time, like a dormant virus, waiting.
When Sabitri told Bijan that she wanted to visit Leelamoyi, he approved. “I’m glad you’ve decided to forgive her. After all, if she hadn’t forced you to leave her house, we wouldn’t be married!”
She nodded. There was no point in telling this straightforward man that she was impelled by a darker motive. She sent a note, accompanied by an expensive basket of fruits, and received a reply in Sarkar Moshai’s spidery handwriting. Leelamoyi would like to see her.
That morning, Granddaughter, I dressed with care. I wore a silk sari with a thick gold border and my best jewelry. I made your mother wear a lace dress and shiny new shoes even though she complained that they hurt her feet. (But it was only a mild complaint because she was a biddable girl. Who would have guessed that she’d give me so much grief in later years?) This I did because I knew that Leelamoyi had no grandchildren.
As the car approached the Mittir house, Sabitri found that her hands were shaking. She hid them in the folds of her sari. The house looked shrunken; paint was peeling in parts; here and there, broken shutters hung dangling. There was no darwan on duty, so the driver had to get down and push open the rusting gates. She stepped out, holding tight to her daughter’s hand and carrying a platter of Leelamoyi’s favorite sweets.
The driver was reversing the car, going back to the office. He needed to take Bijan from one meeting to another. “Come back as soon as you drop Bijan Babu,” she instructed him. “I don’t want to stay long.”
She rang the bell, but no one came. When she pushed at the door, it opened with a creak. Ahead of her was the stairway. How many times had she climbed it, wearing those saris that were hers and yet not hers, her heart beating light and rapid because she believed she was moving closer to her dream. The memory of that foolish young self overwhelmed her with tenderness and shame.
There was dirt on the staircase, crumbled stucco. She held up the edge of her sari and warned Bela not to touch the banister. Familiar, familiar, the second floor, that long corridor filled with anticipation, the airy windows through which bright trees peeped, that milk-white ocean of a bed.
Today the windows were shut. Through the haphazard light that seeped in between shutters, she saw a form on the bed, widow’s white melting into the sheets, so still that for a disappointed lurch of the heart she believed that death had robbed her of revenge.
But no, the form struggled to sit up. She patted the bed for Sabitri to join her, called to a maid to fetch snacks for the visitors. Leelamoyi may have dwindled, but her voice was still autocratic.
“So this is your daughter?” She frowned at Bela, who was playing quietly, as was her habit, with her dolls. She did not compliment the child, though Bela was beautiful, even more so this day, with bright ribbons in her wavy hair. But Sabitri would not allow herself to be upset. She adjusted her sari, making sure her gold bangles tinkled, and said brightly, familiarly, “But Auntie, you must have many grandchildren by now!”
Leelamoyi’s face grew dark as iron. She launched into a tirade about her daughter-in-law. What a mistake they had made in choosing that spoiled, useless rich girl. Couldn’t produce an heir. Refused to live with the Mittirs even though they remodeled the entire third floor for her, Western-style toilets and all. Turned Rajiv against his parents so that he moved out within six months of marriage—abandoning the home of his forefathers, can you believe that?—to live in a fancy new house in Gariahat that his wife’s father bought her. That’s what caused Mittir Moshai’s heart attack, Leelamoyi was sure of it.
The maid did not arrive. Leelamoyi shouted invectives, wandered into other spaces. “That girl, a witch, a murderer, can you believe, she took all the wedding jewelry when she left, my own jewelry that I had gifted her! When I tried to stop her, she said, hire a lawyer if you want it back. And Rajiv—he didn’t even have the guts to stand up to her and support me.”
Rajiv had made a mess of the hospital, too, Leelamoyi went on to say. Oh, life had given her more than her share of trials. But at least he stopped by to see her once in a while. Where was that idiot maid, that Khyama, who should be bringing snacks? No, she said with a scowl, Paro was no longer with her. She offered no details.
Sabitri smiled the kind, charming smile she had practiced. She assured Leelamoyi that they did not need a snack. They had had an ample breakfast. She directed Leelamoyi’s attention to the platter. Look, Auntie, your favorite sweets. The older woman scrabbled for a sandesh, then another one. She smiled slyly and confessed that she had high blood sugar; the doctor had decreed that she must not indulge. But what other pleasure was left in an old woman’s life?
“Durga,” she said with a sigh, “you always did make the best sweets. You should have opened a shop of your own.”
A dizziness assailed Sabitri at being called by her mother’s name. Her smile fell away. Once again, Leelamoyi had forgotten who she was. How could you avenge yourself against such oblivion?
“I have to leave now,” Sabitri said. She had intended to mention that her car would be waiting downstairs, but she no longer had the energy.
“Stay a little longer,” Leelamoyi implored. When Sabitri apologized, she gave an angry laugh. “Yes, yes, I know. No one likes being around sick people. Even my own son is always in a hurry to leave. . . . At least help me sit up straighter before you go.”
Sabitri felt a great reluctance to touch her, but out of old habit she found herself obeying. She placed her hands gingerly under Leelamoyi’s armpits and pulled. It was like lifting a sack. Traces of sweat were left on her fingers. A smell of staleness, like rotten eggs. It was all she could do not to rush out to find a tap and wash it off.
“Turn on the radio,” Leelamoyi ordered. A program of devotional songs came on. “Who would have thought I’d turn religious! Age does strange things to us. Ah, you’ll come to it, too, soon enough. Bring the girl near me. I want to see her hair.” She put out a greedy hand.
Downstairs, sitting on a bench in the dark passageway, I couldn’t stop trembling. The car wasn’t back yet—I knew it wouldn’t be. But Granddaughter, I couldn’t have stood that room, its bitter odors of disease and rage, for another second. It had been a mistake, coming here to gloat. I had wanted Leelamoyi to regret that she didn’t let Rajiv marry me, to see that I would have made a far better daughter-in-law than the one she chose. But now I felt only shame. Shame, and disgust at myself for using my daughter in this game. I promised myself I would never set foot in this house again.
One good thing had come out of all this. I’d exorcised a demon. I would no longer lie awake at night, remembering Leelamoyi’s twisted face as she called me a whore. I would no longer hold conversations in my head, all the things I’d been too young and afraid to say at that time. I am a good person. I did nothing wrong. He loves me. I love him. I will make him happy because I am the only one to whom he can say what’s in his heart.
There was another thing, Tara. As Leelamoyi spoke of Rajiv, I began to see him differently. All these years I’d been blinded by the longing we feel for what is snatched from us. Now I realized that he had been weak and pampered, too weak to stand up for me. He must have known that his mother h
ad thrown me out of the house. But he hadn’t even inquired after me. Even if he was in a different city, it would have been easy enough to ask a friend to go to the college and find out what had happened.
A fumbling at the door. The driver had arrived, thank God. Sabitri started gathering Bela’s dolls.
But it was not the driver. It was Rajiv—as though she had conjured him up with her thinking. She recognized him at once, though he was heavier now. He wore expensive clothes, more expensive even than the fine white shirts of old, which Sabitri had sometimes unbuttoned so she could lay her head upon his chest. Once, to celebrate a promotion, she had taken Bijan to New Market to buy him a shirt like that, but he had shaken his head with a laugh. Something that expensive would burn my skin. He had walked out, not caring that the salesmen stared at him.
Sabitri pulled the edge of her sari over her head. She would leave now. Leave and wait on the road. That was best. But as she passed Rajiv, she glanced up. She couldn’t help it. Ah, that face, those once-loved lips. How the useless past tugged at you, unsteadying the breath. Was that discontent in his heavy jowls? In the droop of his mouth, a sorrow? Surely it was disillusionment she saw in the circles under his eyes.
Nonsense. She was imagining things to suit her fancy.
“Tri!” Rajiv exclaimed, peering at her. His face, filled with incredulous hope, was young again for a moment before the years came rushing mercilessly back. “God, God, is it really you? No, don’t go, please, give me just a minute.” But he need not have begged. The special name he had coined for her had struck her at the core, rendering her immobile. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought of you. How I’ve imagined—hoped—that I’d see you again—” He stammered to a stop. Were those tears on his lashes? He still had those ridiculously long lashes, like a girl’s. “You must have been—must still be—furious with me—” He grasped her wrists with a suddenness that sent a wave of remembered fire up her body. He was kissing her hands, his lips on the pulse at one wrist, then the other. How long it had been. “I can see you’re happily married—with a lovely child.” There was hunger in his voice. “I don’t want to cause trouble. Just give me another minute of your time—a chance to apologize. To explain what they did to me. Please—”