Jasoda

  Jasoda had begun to spend sleepless nights. Should she stay in Mumbai, which her children now thought of as their home (truth to tell, so did she), or should they go back to Kantagiri where the children’s father was? It was no longer a hypothetical question. She would have to choose one or the other soon. She kept running into folks who had similar stories to tell about Paar. If one was to believe them, Paar was turning into a highly desirable destination, though the story-tellers themselves were not about to head back home.

  Then about a year later, Jasoda was at Chowpatty, walking along the sands, when she came across a family that had packed its belongings, balanced them on their heads and was setting out for Mumbai Central where they intended to catch the next train to Sharana.

  Half and half is how Jasoda thought of herself. She was convinced that not just her mind but even her body was in halfand-half mode. Half of her was convinced that it was time to go back home to Kantagiri. The other half smirked and asked her whether she was just plain irrational and stupid. Go back to what? It had not made an iota of difference to her husband Sangram Singh when she had left home. So for whose sake was she so hellbent on going back?

  ‘What about you, Pawan?’ she had asked her second son. ‘Would you like to go back home? Everything has changed there. Kantagiri is no longer a village. There are cars everywhere just as in Mumbai. They say the railway line will be extended all the way to our home.’

  He had smiled one of his beguiling smiles and held her hand. ‘Any time you’re ready.’

  She realized her mistake almost instantly. Pawan would promise her anything to please her. Life, as far as he could make out, stretched out to the next moment and no further. The important thing was to get by without displeasing anybody while getting your own way.

  There was no point asking her youngest, Kishen. He had not laid eyes on his father, his father’s home or his town and he had no interest in them. He was not a difficult child, even though his brain had been damaged at birth, but he liked a set routine. It made him feel secure. When they were by themselves she had told him stories about railway engines that travelled all day and night, and that their tails were thrice as long as the garden where they lived, and how much fun it would be to sit inside a tail and watch the world speed past him. Here one minute and gonegonegone the next minute.

  ‘Yeeeesssss, I want to sittttt in the t-t-t-tail and be gonegonegone,’ he had screamed with joy while his tongue kept hitting invisible speed barriers. She was conscious that she was like Pawan when she talked to Kishen. She tried to make him happy whichever way she could, even if that meant lying to him. How was she to explain to him that he had a father who had not seen him? What made things worse was her guilt since she had not been able to whisk him quickly out of her uterus, even though she had been a midwife for so long.

  It was Himmat who confounded Jasoda with his response. ‘Why would you want to go back to that man? He treats you worse than a slave. I doubt if he even remembers who you are.’

  ‘It so happens that that man is your father.’ Jasoda slapped Himmat. ‘You will speak of him with respect.’

  Himmat stared at his mother. ‘If you prefer to lie to yourself, that’s okay with me.’ There was no defiance in his voice, just a statement of fact. ‘You have a job here. They make you work hard but they also pay you well. Same with me. I also go to school. It’s no great shakes but I am one of the luckiest people I know. Outside school I have two of the best teachers. I can’t ask for more.’

  Jasoda knew that Himmat was making sense. Every night she tossed and turned on her makeshift mattress. What should she do? Stay in Mumbai or go back home to Kantagiri? Shouldn’t she and her family spend at least a few more years here? Maybe they should never go back. And the next minute she was full of guilt. Her husband was all alone there. What did he do for lunch and dinner? He was not the best of husbands but how could you fight what was predestined? The one article of faith that had been burnt into the lining of her brain without anyone speaking of it was that a wife’s place was with her husband and not hundreds of miles away. Besides, she was failing her duty to her children. They needed a father as much as a mother.

  She stopped talking about returning home and settled down to the life she had made in the city. The food stall where she worked was growing so fast, her salary had nearly doubled. She had introduced a dish called sweet-and-sour potatoes in tamarind and jaggery sauce and it had been a superhit. The owner of the stall was grateful to her and was talking of making her a partner.

  Jasoda and her children were on their way to Kantagiri.

  It had not been an easy departure. Her employer had refused to give her her dues because he couldn’t find anybody else to take her place. She argued and fought with him but he wouldn’t relent. Why would she want to leave when forty per cent of the business was going to be hers? Sure, there would be some woman or the other who would be more than willing to take on the job but he knew from experience that she wouldn’t last. Most of them gave up in the first month; in fact, they gave up within the first week itself because of sore and swollen fingers and eyes. No, she had better find someone, train the person, make sure he or she stuck it out till the fingers and eyes had stopped reacting and then maybe he would give her her wages.

  She had made up her mind and there was no stopping her now. Kishen was not going to be a problem. And Pawan too. She knew he would ditch her at the last minute. That left Himmat. He may have been reluctant to go back but when push came to shove, he was not likely to let his mother down. Mr Batliwala had come to see her and tried to reason with her. He told her that her eldest son was a gifted student, and that there was a strong chance that taking him back home would put an end to what could prove to be a brilliant career. She was not sure what that meant but there was no dissuading her.

  Mr Batliwala sat down with Himmat and chalked out a weekly regime which the boy was to follow. They would be communicating with each other daily.

  ‘You will take the laptop you are using in the office. I’ve checked if Kantagiri has a wi-fi network. The news is good. They are setting up an advanced system because the Americans had laid that as a precondition for investment. You might hate going to school in your part of the world even more than the evening school here but let me never hear that you missed a day.’

  As in the past, the Batliwala curriculum would be much broader than that of any school in the country. Gadgil Sir would be in charge of the maths course. Himmat would continue to assist Mr Batliwala’s office in filing and cataloguing cases and affidavits and his salary would be paid directly into his account as in the past.

  ‘It’s your money, you’ve earned it. But I would rather you didn’t dip into it unless there’s a crisis. I will invest it for you so that you will have enough later on for higher education.’

  On the day before their departure, Mr Batliwala bought Himmat a cellphone. ‘Use it sparingly. Send me an SMS if there’s something urgent and I will call you back the moment I am free.’

  ‘What are you going to do about Heera?’ Himmat had asked his mother. It was the one subject that Jasoda had been studiously avoiding but her eldest son had trapped her and she knew that there was no escaping that looming question mark.

  ‘Nothing is what I’m going to do. She’s not my daughter. Let her mother take care of her.’ She had tried to fob off her son with that flippant answer but it was obvious he was not impressed. Besides, it was not going to solve the problem. Later that night she picked up the conversation where she had left it. ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  Himmat shook his head. He had spoken to his mother about Heera but he was well aware that he was as much the problem as the girl. How was he going to manage without his shadow?

  ‘We’re leaving tonight. No more postponing,’ Jasoda told Ratna. For the past fortnight, Ratna had pleaded with Jasoda, ‘One more day, just one more.’

  Ratna was about to protest but there was a finality to Jasoda’s voice which would not brook any argument. br />
  Jasoda had woken Kishen and Himmat around two in the morning. As expected, Pawan hadn’t returned, even though she had warned him about their departure. She had already packed up their meagre belongings and they were nearly past her former employer’s eatery when they heard a tiny voice and the patter of fast feet.

  ‘Wait, Himmat Dada, wait. Don’t leave me. Please wait. I’m coming with…’ Heera took a tumble and fell hard on her face.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Jasoda had warned her children, ‘you will not say a word to Heera. If she wakes up and runs after us, we will not stop. Is that understood?’

  The child was still down when Jasoda reached her and picked her up in her arms. She was bleeding from her nose and had scraped her knees badly.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ She was disoriented but she knew her mind.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘I saw you leaving me.’

  Three days later, Himmat and his family had left. Jasoda resorted to a trick all the women from her village knew and she herself had had to use when Sameer, the one who had disappeared and haunted her days and night without let, would become excessively obstreperous. She purchased a little afeem outside the Babulnath temple, stirred it in a rasmalai syrup and offered it to Heera as a parting gift.

  As the train departed Mumbai Central at six-twenty-five in the morning, Himmat saw his brother weaving in and out of the crowd on the platform, chased by three tall men. Himmat hung on to the pole at the doorway and extended his hand as the train gathered speed and then Pawan’s hand was in his and he was in.

  PART THREE

  There was no sign of their home. Not even a broken-down plinth, a segment of the rear wall or a partially dismembered staircase. Jasoda and her family were almost the last people to abandon Kantagiri and by then even the vultures had taken off. So, it was a mystery as to who could have razed the house to the ground. It was as if someone wanted to erase all traces of it from memory. But the more urgent question was, if their house was gone, where was the man of the house?

  It didn’t take much guesswork as to where Sangram Singh would be. There was only one place he had gone to every day of his grown-up life and Jasoda immediately dispatched Himmat to the Palace to inform her husband that his family was back. Himmat stood bemused when he reached the Alakhnanda Palace. It was the same but it had also changed. The marble tiles on the long series of steps had been replaced with new ones. The Kantagiri flag was fluttering in the wind and the façade had a scrubbed, polished look. Uniformed guards stood at the main gate of the compound wall. But there was something else which Himmat couldn’t quite put his finger on. It struck him a little later that it was staring him in the face. The Palace looked so striking because it was standing on a bed of green lawn. Even as he watched, workers were laying squares of readymade lawn at the south-western corner of the Palace.

  Himmat approached one of the guards at the security post at the gate. ‘I’m looking for my father who used to work at the Palace. His name is Sangram Singh. I would like to see him.’

  ‘Do you have an entry pass?’

  ‘No, we’ve just come back from Mumbai after seven years.’

  ‘Didn’t your father accompany you?’

  ‘No, sir, he kept working for His Highness, Parbat Singh.’

  ‘Too bad. His Highness died a few years ago. And Kantagiri and Paar have a new master.’

  ‘If that’s the case my father would definitely have joined his service.’

  ‘If he’s working here his name is bound to be in the employee register in the security booth. Go, take a look. We can call him during the lunch break.’

  Himmat went over to the office. The Palace employed eighteen men and women. There was no Sangram Singh in the list of retainers in the register.

  ‘Father’s not at the Palace,’ Himmat told his mother. ‘Which means he’s not in Kantagiri any more.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Jasoda asked.

  ‘Because they have the full list of employees, both permanent and temporary, at the security booth, and his name wasn’t there.’

  ‘Where would he go? The Palace is his umbilical cord.’ Even as she spoke she was aware that she was trying to reassure herself rather than her son about her husband’s whereabouts.

  She had insisted on coming back home only to find herself and her family homeless. Had she made the right decision to return with the family to Kantagiri? It was too late to have second and third thoughts about it. It was evening when she left the three boys at the new bus stand. There was so much building activity going on, the place was unrecognizable. She walked over to the Alakhnanda Palace. Himmat was right, there were security guards at the gate who wouldn’t allow her in. She had walked past the place hundreds of times in the old days but it had not really registered in her mind. The royal family lived there. They were higher beings from an alien world. Her husband served them, though she had no idea what his job was. Now that it had been restored and refurbished and the lights on the first floor were glittering, it looked like a vision from a fairy tale.

  Himmat had told her, and so had the guards, that her husband was not there but where else could he be? Had something happened to him? She walked around the Palace wall hoping to find a gate or a hedge she could climb over but there was not a chink she could slip through. How long could her family survive in Kantagiri if she didn’t find her husband? She could perhaps find a job at one of the construction sites but she wouldn’t be able to support her children on what she alone earned and Himmat was too young for such hard labour. She had gone more than halfway around the Palace when someone emerged from an almost invisible break in the hedge, behind which was a short wicket gate. She let the man recede into the distance and walked in.

  What now? She was standing in front of a large heavy wooden door on the ground floor. Should she go in? Just look at her clothes. What if they caught her for trespassing and put her behind bars? She pushed the door, it wouldn’t give. She gave it one more try and the deadweight groaned and backed just enough to let her through. The darkness in front of her was like a brick wall. Best to stand her ground and not move. Far away to the right there was a beam of light. She walked softly and peered. Two men, neither of them her husband, were busy cooking. One of the men opened the lid of a pan and inhaled deeply. There was no mistaking the delicious aroma of mutton pulao, cardamom and saffron. She realized she had not eaten the whole day and neither had her children. The cook put the stainless-steel pot of pulao and a large bowl of curd on a tray, placed it in a recessed shaft and pushed a button. The tray shot up out of sight. Where did it go?

  She retraced her steps and could now make out an ill-lit staircase that seemed to go on forever. By the time she made it to the top, she was feeling faint and out of breath. She leaned against the banister and realized that she was standing at the centre of a corridor that stretched forever on either side. The room in front of her to the left was brightly lit and had three sets of wide double-doors. When she had got her breath back she ventured in from the door nearest to her. It was the longest room she had ever been in. A table, a few paces shorter than the room itself, occupied the central space. The ceiling was at least two storeys high and four clusters of the most elaborate chandeliers hung from it. On either side, full-length paintings of the Paar royalty looked down with majestic superciliousness. She recognized Parbat Singh; his father, the King; and the Queen Mother. She had seen them drive past her home or at public functions to celebrate Shiva’s or Krishna’s birthday or at the local festival of the goddess, Prathama Devi. There was one spot where, instead of the life-size portrait of a member of the family, there was an embarrassingly erotic painting of a courtesan-like woman seducing an ancient rishi. She was trying to figure out who this shameless woman was when her eye slipped down to someone sitting at the far end of the table. He was dressed like one of the royals in the framed paintings and was having a meal in solitary splendour.

  There was no backing off now. The ma
n had seen her. Should she kneel or prostrate herself on the floor? What should she do? She drew her odhani down to cover her face and leaned forward to do at least a namaskar but knocked her head hard against the corner of the table. Something was amiss but she couldn’t figure out what was bothering her. His Highness was watching her as the bearer served him the mutton pulao. With an offhand gesture the seated royal dismissed the help.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The man’s voice was low but full of menace. ‘How dare you enter the Palace? How did the security guards allow you in?’

  It was absurd but she had the impression the voice was familiar, that she had known the royal for years.

  ‘Go and stand outside the door and wait for me.’

  By the time Jasoda got back to the children at the bus stop, the sun was already peering over the rim of the horizon. The younger two were asleep but Himmat was watching out for her.

  ‘What took you so long?’ The older boy was barely able to repress his rage at being kept waiting.

  Jasoda looked at him absent-mindedly.

  ‘You found him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how come his name was not on the roster at the security post?’

  ‘I guess that must be because he’s a very senior official there now.’

  ‘Good, so we have a place to stay. I will wake up Pawan and Kishen.’

  ‘No. He stays in the Palace.’

  ‘In Alakhnanda Palace? Then we can move in with him to his quarters.’

  ‘I don’t think so. We’re not to disturb him. He has far more serious matters to attend to.’

  Himmat looked at his mother quizzically. He was about to ask her something but changed his mind at the last minute.

  ‘Maybe he’ll help us find a place to stay in Sharana,’ she said uncertainly.