Jasoda

  That night, Jasoda cooked for one more person and sent a full thali with Himmat.

  ‘Tell your mother,’ the stationmaster snapped at Himmat, ‘I don’t take bribes. Take the food back.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Himmat told him.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because I’m not permitted to eat unless you have your meal first.’

  ‘Tell your mother I will not be blackmailed.’

  ‘Maybe, but I am the one who’s caught in the middle and has to pay the price. Please eat. She’s a good cook.’

  It was merely a matter of time before Jasoda got paid for cooking the stationmaster’s meals and soon she and her family also got to use the toilet and bath facilities in the second-class waiting rooms.

  The clock on the station façade had just struck two at night when Himmat heard a split-second scotched cry of pain. It was so brief, he thought he must have been having a nightmare and went back to sleep. But it recurred not once but three or four times, though it was throttled even faster. When he opened his eyes reluctantly, he saw his mother lying with her knees drawn up. She seemed to be pushing something with all her might while breathing heavily. He drifted back to sleep and suddenly saw a match struck and a flame flare up and die. His mother was leaning forward as she lit another match. There was a gooey something in her lap and she was looking between its legs. She folded a wet face towel lying next to her and clamped it on the baby’s face.

  He got up and called out to his mother. ‘Let her be, Maa,’ he said. ‘Please, just this once. I’ll take care of her.’

  Meal timings were dependent on train arrivals and departures. It was past eleven-forty-five at night and the family was just about to commence a late dinner since, starting with the Rajasthan Express, all the other trains were three or four hours late. Pawan, Kishen and Himmat would have to rush through the meal to cater to the Kashi Mail, which was due in eleven minutes. They were all sitting on the floor and Jasoda was serving bajra rotis when there was a knock on the door. This was odd to say the least. The only visitors they had were suppliers and they came in the daytime. Pawan opened the door. A man with his face covered walked in.

  ‘May I have a word with you in private?’ he asked Jasoda.

  ‘This is the only room we have,’ Jasoda answered.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Pawan asked him.

  ‘I ask the questions here,’ the man said and stood with their mother just outside the door.

  ‘So what I heard is true. You now have a daughter.’ The man had lowered his voice but there was no missing his words.

  ‘Would you care to join us for dinner?’

  ‘Get rid of her. You should have done that as soon as she was born.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  ‘No. It’s not. Either you do it or I will.’

  ‘Do what? Kill the child?’

  ‘Oh, there are other ways. One could leave her on a platform at the next junction. Or give her to an orphanage.’

  Himmat was holding Janhavi in one arm and a large knife from his mother’s collection in the other when Jasoda and the man came in again.

  The man stretched his hands out. ‘Come, I will take you on the Ferris wheel and we’ll have a lot of fun.’

  ‘I think it’s time you went back to your Palace,’ Himmat said softly.

  ‘Not another word from you unless you want to be whipped.’

  ‘Try me.’

  The stationmaster walked in. ‘Everybody on Platform Three. The Kashi will be steaming in in another two minutes.’

  It was soon after the first birthday of the baby girl that Jasoda’s business got a boost from an unexpected quarter. The stationmaster called Jasoda over to his home on the other side of the station and proposed that he would become her unofficial partner and put in money in her business. They would open two stalls, one on Platform One and another on Platform Three. The annual ten-day Prathama Devi festival was just a month away. The locals believed that she was the first of the goddesses and that Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Durga, Sherowali and every other goddess was her incarnation. Anywhere between seven hundred thousand to a million people would be visiting the city. Every lodge, hotel, pavement and park would be taken over by the hordes. Two things were certain. They came because they believed that the goddess would never refuse a true devotee. And they all needed to eat at least thrice a day, bless them. Jasoda would have to expand the menu and make sure that she was seen as Annapoorna, the goddess of victuals. The stationmaster had more ideas but he forestalled all questions by recommending patience. ‘Let’s first see,’ he said, ‘how our new venture fares.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Jasoda told him. ‘I’ve just one request. I want a regular supply of tamarind. Can you guarantee that?’

  ‘Tamarind?’ The stationmaster looked puzzled, and then annoyed. ‘This is not a school trip where the kids want to suck on sour tamarinds till their teeth curl up and fall off. We are going to cater to adults.’

  ‘You do your job and I will do mine. Just make sure there’s no shortage of tamarind, at least three kilos a day during the Prathama festival.’

  Jasoda was accomplished at making the most of almost nothing to cook with and yet lace it with piquancy. She began to experiment with the dishes she had seen Ratna and her Marathi friends cook for their families. Her menu now included bhakarwadis, sabudana khichadi and wadas, upma, wada pao, pao bhaji, sheera, chhole, ragda, bhel and panipuri. But the ace in her menu was the tamarind sauce. It was Pawan who came up with a name for the eatery: The Tamarind Mantra – Khatta Meetha Teekha.

  During the festival, the children had to skip school and help out along with the temporary staff that had been hired. They were lucky if they were able to knock off at night for three or four hours. Jasoda was sure that the work was beyond Kishen but he was eager to contribute his mite and to everybody’s surprise, he could handle simple tasks like delivering the freshly cooked food to the two outlets on the platforms.

  Janhavi was three years old when Jasoda’s Tamarind Mantra – Khatta Meetha Teekha, or KMT as it was popularly known, started a big branch at the State Transport Complex for interstate bus passengers, next to the railway station, and sometime later, an upmarket restaurant in the Prathama Mall that had come up recently. The family had moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the town’s first fifteen-storey high-rise. Jasoda was loath to agree that the girl had been the harbinger of good fortune. In any case, Janhavi had little interest in her mother or her views. As far as the child was concerned, her mother, brother, sister, father, teacher, friend and foe were all rolled into one person: Himmat.

  Sangram Singh had been keenly aware of the passage of time. The Oil Baron (the title was coined by none other than Ranjan Dasgupta as was the family tree that could be traced all the way back to Rana Pratap’s time) had to have an heir apparent. It was high time he got married and fathered a family, an all-male ‘first’ family. For the past year, he had been on the lookout for a young woman from a noble family who would bear him a son and heir. He had narrowed the list down to fifteen, then to ten and then further cut it down to three. It was laborious work, researching over two hundred families and zeroing in on the unmarried women. Some of the spinsters were between sixty and seventy-five years old. It was important to find out why the three he had zeroed in on and who were between twenty-eight and thirty-two, were still in the market. Was there a speech defect, did the lady have the dreaded Mars in her horoscope?

  That, however, was the easy part. The problem was the middleman, the rapacious Brahmin priest, Trishul Shankar. He knew every ancient noble family from Kathmandu to Kanyakumari and he was also privy to all the dirty linen that should have remained in the closet. He was a one-man marriage bureau, a walking-talking encyclopaedia on the important families in the country. The only problem was that he would surely be just as well-informed about Sangram Singh, and those important families too would want the full lowdown on the Oil Baron.

  Sangra
m Singh had a fairly good idea about the plus and minus points of the three ladies. Kumari Kamalanayani of Shyamnagar did indeed have lovely lotus eyes and was almost of the right age, just a few months short of thirty, but she seemed more dead than alive and what was worse, was highly educated. Kumari Chitrangadha, the daughter of the former Prime Minister of Sonaghar, was ravishing, haughty and just about the most desirable candidate. He waited for her answer. The priest hinted that she wasn’t worthy of him and he should forget her but Sangram Singh wanted to know just what her response was going to be. It took a month of cajoling and withholding payment to make Trishulji finally come out with the truth: she simply wasn’t interested in the Oil Baron. Kumari Madhurima from Gwalior was not exactly what he was looking for. She was over thirty, thirty-two to be precise, and a little plump but that was okay. She was also a trifle excessively well-endowed where it mattered. Sangram Singh could see himself rocking and rolling on top of her like a small craft on a brisk sea. Her two elder sisters were married and had children who were in their middle teens. If the priest was to be believed, she was a docile creature and would certainly be grateful for the offer of marriage. Her father, Sardar Gaurav Singh of Jainagar, on the other hand, would need some coaxing since Madhurima Devi was his youngest daughter and his favourite and he did not want her to land up beyond the back of beyond. That was perhaps Trishulji’s diplomatic way of telling Sangram Singh that Sardar Gaurav Singh, who was almost as highly regarded as the former Maharaja of Gwalior or Udaipur, did not care to be connected with Paar’s first family. Or perhaps it was the priest-broker’s standard tactic to raise his fees.

  He assured Sangram Singh that he could and would perform miracles. He would ensure that come what may this marriage would take place. Indeed, he managed to convince Madhurima Devi that there would not be too many offers after the one from Kantagiri and anyway marriages were a matter of luck. Even those which were supposed to be made in heaven could end up in hell. The priest reported that when the spinster’s parents asked her what she would do in that godforsaken place, she replied without looking up that she would transform the desert into a garden. Now that the lady had said yes, it was a tough call for Sangram Singh. What guarantee was there that his bride-to-be was not past conceiving? Of course he could divorce her if she did not deliver but it would mean he too would be that much older.

  Himmat played chess with Janhavi and taught her that arithmetic was nothing but games and riddles. Maths would not be her favourite subject but she was a highly competitive person and nobody was going to get the better of her when it came to the marksheet. She was fluent in English since it was the only language in which her eldest brother conversed with her. He read to her every night and soon she was devouring Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Birbal stories. She was obstinate to the point of being self-destructive. Yes, even if it meant that she was the one who got hurt the most.

  Himmat was currently persona non grata. He had mandated that each of the four siblings was to clean the toilets once in four days. There were two toilets, now that they had moved to a two-bedroom apartment in the same building. Today was Janhavi’s turn. Brother and sister had a run-in every four days. One thing was clear to Janhavi. The days of acquiescence were over. Not that she had bowed to her brother’s wishes more than a couple of times. Her mother was livid that her elder son should even think of asking his siblings to do something that had been the job of the lower castes for thousands of years. But Janhavi was not interested in her mother’s preoccupation with caste. What she knew for certain was that she had better things to do.

  Every time it came to a test of wills it seemed Janhavi won hands down and yet Himmat invariably made her feel the loser. Even now he didn’t say a word. He just picked up the plastic brush, poured some Domex solution in the toilet bowl and scrubbed the insides hard, pulled the flush, knocked the water out of the brush and kept the brush back in its holder. It was infuriating to see him tamp his temper down and walk off after washing his hands with soap. The damned slimy bugger, now why couldn’t he just swear at her (she certainly could help him there, she knew more cuss words than all of her mother’s customers put together) or strike her with the flat of his palm instead of letting the whole thing fester?

  But today was different. She was going to sort this matter out once and for all. ‘I’m not going to clean the toilet today, tomorrow or ever. What are you going to do?’

  Jasoda did not look up from her cooking and the other two brothers pretended to be busy but they were all aware that this was going to be the mother of all showdowns between two people who seemed to have one heart between them.

  ‘Can we talk this over?’ Himmat asked.

  ‘No, no talking. You decide.’

  Himmat thought about it for a while. ‘You don’t clean the toilet, you don’t get to eat that day.’

  Janhavi looked to see if her mother had anything to say but she was busy packing the stationmaster’s breakfast.

  ‘Fine. You can have my meals from now on.’

  She turned around, opened the door, walked out and banged the door shut.

  It was not the wedding of the year nor the one that was talked about the most. No film stars showed up at the palatial residence of Sardar Gaurav Singh. But the nuptials were performed with such affection and loving care, it would leave behind the kind of memories that would give the bride succour through many a crisis. It was not merely a wedding but also the bidai for the First Lady of Paar. The former Sardars of all the big, medium and small states and their ladies were there to congratulate and wish Madhurima Devi and her husband a long and happy marriage and many, many heirs.

  Sangram Singh was aware that it was not his aura or his credentials which had drawn so many of the Sardars and their wives to his wedding. They had come because they would never dream of insulting Madhurima’s father, whom they consulted about legal quandaries and their endemic squabbles about money. Most of them were wary of Sangram Singh. At the most they enquired politely about his well-being or how the oil exploration was progressing. But Sangram Singh now had access to Gaurav Singh and if he played his cards right, his father-in-law would be the conduit through whom he would gain new friends and influence. He was sure that, given time, he could develop a relationship with this decadent lot.

  There were three days of celebration and feasting and traditional dances as well as a good deal of jerking and twitching to Bollywood music which extended into the dawn of the third day when the actual marriage ceremony took place. When it was time for the newlyweds to leave, Madhurima’s father took Sangram Singh aside. ‘What you are about to do, Sangramji, is to pluck my heart out and walk away. If that sounds like a line from a bad Hindi film, it is still the truth. Oh, I’ll survive, make no mistake about that, but take good care of my daughter. She bruises easily even though she will not show it because she is a proud woman. You will perhaps change her name as is the Hindu custom but I beg you not to tamper with all that is good and pure gold in her. She is gentle and thoughtful and caring. Look after her well and she will return your kindness and care a thousand-fold.

  ‘As with my other daughters, Madhurima too has been given a substantial inheritance. It is in her name and not yours because it is not a dowry. But I would urge you to understand that if there is someone on whom you can never put a price, it is Madhurima. She is priceless. And even in these times when we are all supposed to be equal, she is a true Princess. Give unstintingly of your love to her and she will make you the most loved man on earth.’

  No one had mentioned the disappearance of Sameer in all these years but both Jasoda and her two older boys wondered how a second child from the same family could vanish without a trace. It did not fit the most elementary paradigm of probability. These things don’t happen in pairs. You can’t get smallpox twice; nobody dies twice. And yet the children had once again lost a sibling. Janhavi had been missing for six days. The house felt like a morgue. Nobody talked. Jasoda still worked sixteen hours a day. She co
uldn’t understand why she missed the girl like an amputated limb. After all, she had nearly got rid of her. Was her husband right? Should she have eliminated the girl even at that late stage? The little hussy was blackmailing the whole family as if they had thrown her out of her home instead of her abandoning them.

  Himmat and Pawan had been through every lane and by-lane of Sharana, checked out the bus stand and then caught trains to the neighbouring towns and the next few train junctions. Often late at night Jasoda too joined the two brothers in their hunt for their sister. Both Himmat and Pawan had hundreds of pictures of her on their cell phones and showed them around and got enlargements made and pasted them all over town. The stationmaster too had alerted his brother station-heads all the way to Ahmedabad. Himmat had registered a ‘missing girl-child’ case with the police. Both Pawan and Kishen went over at least thrice a day to check whether the police had any news of their sister.

  Himmat had not eaten since the day Janhavi had had a spat with him. His mother had tried to reason with him but to no avail. He was convinced it was due to him and his inflexible sternness that his one and only sister had walked out. Even Pawan, who behaved as if he had not a care in the world, would call out for Janhavi in his dreams and wake up with a start. The worst affected was Kishen. Try as he might, he could no longer speak. He had always had a speech impediment but now his tongue had retracted and he would often choke on his food. He was older than Janhavi but without anyone asking her, she had taken over his care. He had his bad days but she knew how to handle him with a mix of affection, cajoling and firmness.

  It was past eleven in the night and the door was half open when the girl walked in, swinging a bramble branch. Her hair was matted thicker than a jute sack. She was smelling like a guttersnipe and had an ear-to-ear smile. Jasoda had half a mind to whack it off her face but her daughter was already hugging Himmat and kissing him all over his face.