The Royal Ghosts, page 17
“You two are deluded,” Shova said. “Nothing is going to change my mind.”
Shivaram fought the urge to slap his daughter; he’d never laid a hand on Shova, and he couldn’t see himself doing it even now. Instead, he stammered, “Go prepare yourself for Rajiv babu. He’ll come, you two will talk, then you’ll leave with him.” He took a deep breath. “If you disappointment me again, Shova,” he said, the words seeming to float from his mouth, “you can’t call me your father anymore.”
Shova didn’t respond, didn’t move.
He turned and walked out of the house. It was already a quarter to six, so he didn’t have much time before Rajiv would arrive. He wandered around the neighborhood, replaying the conversation he’d just had, hoping that actually seeing Rajiv in person would change something in Shova. When his anger dissipated, he returned to the house and stood by the gate.
Soon Rajiv pulled up in a taxi, and Shivaram ushered him into the house. Urmila was standing outside Shova’s closed bedroom door. Her eyes indicated that she hadn’t had much success in talking to their daughter. Urmila and Rajiv exchanged greetings, and Urmila offered to make tea, but Rajiv declined, saying that he’d rather “just get this over with.” Urmila tried to open Shova’s door, but Shova had locked it. “Rajiv babu is here, Shova,” Urmila said. “Please open the door.”
They waited, then Shivaram called, “Open the door, Shova. Don’t act like a child.”
There was no sound from inside.
“Well, that’s it, I guess,” Rajiv said with a rueful smile.
“Wait,” Shivaram said, and he pushed his shoulder against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He took a few steps back and was about to ram the door when Rajiv raised his hand and said, “Enough! What is this, a circus? I’ve had enough. I understand now.”
“Don’t say that, son-in-law,” Shivaram said, pressing his palms together in supplication.
Rajiv rushed toward the front door. “She can start the divorce process. That way she’ll be able to do what she pleases.”
Shivaram and Urmila sat stunned in the living room after Rajiv left. Finally Urmila said, “What else can we do? We’ve tried hard. But if she’s not willing—”
“Stop,” Shivaram said, holding his head.
Urmila went to the kitchen and began cooking dinner. Shivaram stayed on the sofa, leafing through a magazine but not seeing anything.
After nearly half an hour, the door to Shova’s room creaked open. She stood there holding a suitcase in her hand. “I’m leaving,” she said.
“Shova,” Urmila said, “don’t make such a rash decision.”
“Let her go,” Shivaram said.
“She’s my daughter. I can’t just let her go like this.”
“I don’t want to see her face anymore.” His whole body felt hot.
Shova walked slowly to the front door, as if she half expected her father to get up and try to stop her, but Shivaram stifled his desperation and continued flipping the pages of his magazine. Urmila kept pleading with her until Shova slammed the door shut behind her.
Later Urmila called Shova’s friend’s house, where she said she’d be staying. Bimala assured Urmila that Shova had indeed arrived, and Urmila briefly talked to her daughter, then told Shivaram that Shova had been crying on the phone. Shivaram said nothing. When Urmila said that Shova would undoubtedly get homesick and come back in a few days, Shivaram flicked on the television and turned up the volume.
For days Shivaram didn’t say much, at home or at work. When his colleagues asked him about Shova’s situation, he said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
Damodar came to the house one morning. “What happened? Rajiv tells me it’s all over, that there’s no possibility of reconciliation now.”
Shivaram said, “He’s right.”
“I still have hope,” Urmila said. She confessed, as she had to Shivaram, that she’d gone to visit Shova twice since she moved out. Their daughter had already gotten a job at a newspaper, and she was planning to take night classes to complete her master’s degree. “She’s getting back on her own feet. Maybe that’s what she needs right now, and maybe she’ll eventually come around.”
Damodar and Shivaram shook their heads. “You know they’re actively looking for another bride for Rajiv?” Damodar said.
“Brother-in-law, isn’t there anything you can do to stop them?” Urmila said. “They are still a married couple, and it’s wrong for Rajiv babu to move on so quickly.”
Shivaram laughed bitterly. “When will you learn? A young doctor with a growing practice, a respected family—other parents will line up to introduce their daughters to him. Why should he wait around when Shova doesn’t even want to look at him?”
Urmila had no answer, and the three of them stood there silently. Damodar promised that he’d talk to Rajiv, although his tone conveyed that he too thought the matter was hopeless.
Urmila visited Shova regularly on her way to work and back, and Shivaram turned a deaf ear to his wife’s updates about her. One evening after dinner, Urmila said that she’d broken the heel of her shoe on her way to Shova’s flat that afternoon, and she needed to go to a cobbler.
Shivaram went on reading his book. Then he looked up at her. “What did you say?” he asked her sharply. “What about cobblers?”
She was sitting on the sofa next to him, darning a sweater for him, and she kept her head down, but he noticed that her ears had turned red. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Let’s hope this sweater won’t tear again.”
“You need to find a cobbler?”
She didn’t respond.
“Is there something you’re hiding from me?”
“I’m not.”
Shivaram took her arm. “Something is up. Come on, tell me!”
Urmila gazed at him, then said, “If I tell you, you’ll get mad. I shouldn’t have said anything—it just slipped out.”
“Is it about that cobbler’s son, that Mukti, again?”
It took her a few seconds to get her words out: “I saw him at Shova’s flat the other day. Don’t get angry, please.”
“What was he doing there? Did you tell him to leave?”
“What could I say?” she said. She tossed him his sweater. “If this tears again, we’ll buy you a new one.”
Shivaram flung the sweater aside. “Things are only getting worse with her. Soon people on the street will be laughing at us.” It struck him that he’d never worried about what others thought of him before the scandal with Mukti. He expected Urmila to challenge him, but all she said, in a commiserating tone, was “Who would have known that things would turn out like this?” She stood and picked up the sweater from the floor. “But we, and especially you, have to handle this calmly. She’s our daughter no matter what she does.”
Early the next morning, Shivaram told Urmila he was going out for a walk. Still half asleep, she nodded and went to take a bath. He headed straight for Tangal, where Shova’s flat was located. Just before her wedding, Shova had stopped by Bimala’s place to borrow a blouse while Shivaram had waited outside, so he knew where she lived. The house was tucked away in an alley, and he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He felt his heart beating rapidly, partly at the thought of a confrontation with Shova, partly in anticipation of simply seeing her again. It had been several weeks since she’d moved out. When he knocked on the door, Bimala opened it and took a quick step backward. “Shova’s still asleep.”
“Can you wake her? I need to talk to her.”
She led him to a rattan chair in the corner of the living room and went to fetch Shova, who soon appeared in her nightgown. Shivaram recalled nights during her childhood when, disturbed by a nightmare, she appeared at her parents’ door, asking if she could sleep with them. A lump rose in his throat.
“Daddy?”
Careful not to seem too aggressive, he said, “I thought I’d drop by for a cup of tea.”
Bimala said she’d make it, and walked off.
Shova stood there, her arms crossed. “You’ve probably come to fight with me, haven’t you?”
Shivaram shook his head. He felt weary, his head thick. “I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t know what to think about anything anymore.”
“You just aren’t listening to me or trying to understand me, Daddy,” Shova said. “That’s what hurts me the most.”
“I don’t know how much more you want from me,” Shivaram said. “I married you to probably the most eligible man in town. And now I hear you’re spending time with that Mukti again.”
“Ah,” Shova said. “Now I know why you came. Not to talk to me but to scold me again, tell me what a disappointment I am.”
She was right, he supposed. Strangely, here in her flat, her space, it felt as if his authority was beginning to diminish. “I’m your father,” he said, “and I do care about your happiness. I’ve come here to talk about the choices you’re making and how they’ll wind up making you unhappy.” He spoke slowly, thinking about each word before he spoke it.
“How do you know that? Do you live inside my mind? My body?”
He shook his head. “I’m just your father. That’s all I know. Just tell me, Shova,” he said gently. “What’s wrong with Rajiv? Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t dislike him. I just don’t feel anything for him.”
“Then why didn’t you object before you got married?”
“As if you’d have listened.” After a pause, she said, “I looked at your face, and you were so thrilled about me getting married, especially to a doctor. So I told myself that I’d learn to love Rajiv, but every day, no matter how hard I tried, I felt nothing for him. Not a single thing.”
Shivaram began to feel weak. “What do you want me to do, Shova? You advise me on how to proceed. You tell me what to do.”
Shova smiled ruefully. “As if you’d agree to what I’d say.”
Shivaram swallowed. “Tell me and I’ll do it.” He sensed where this conversation was headed, and it terrified him, but there seemed to be no backing out now.
“Really?”
He nodded.
Shova sat down next him and took his hand. She searched his eyes, and with difficulty he held her gaze. “All right,” she said. “Mukti and I want to get married.”
Seconds ago, he’d imagined her exact words. Still, when she said them, they sounded unreal.
“We’ve already discussed it,” she said. “All this time he’s remained unmarried because of me.” When Shivaram didn’t respond, Shova said, “I’m telling you what I want, Daddy.”
“Have you been in contact with him all this time?”
She shook her head. “He came to see me just a few weeks ago.”
“And you’ve already made the decision?”
She nodded. “Mukti works as a teller at the Arab Bank now,” Shova said. “He plans on getting a master’s degree soon too.”
Shivaram pretended to think, but all he could do was listen to the pounding in his chest. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t be a part of it, Shova. I can’t have people say that I had an active hand in ruining my daughter’s marriage so that she could wed a cobbler’s son.”
“He has a name, Daddy.”
“I know, but that’s not the point.” He stood. “You two go ahead and do what you want to do. Just leave me out of it.”
Bimala appeared with tea but immediately turned around and left the room.
“So much for your promise to do whatever I ask you to do,” Shova said.
“Forgive me, daughter,” Shivaram said, then opened the door and walked out.
Glumly, he headed home. A part of him wanted to go back to Shova, talk to her more, but he knew that if he returned to her flat now, he’d end up submitting to her and regretting it later, so he gritted his teeth and kept walking. Yes, she was stubborn, but maybe she forgot that he was too. He simply wasn’t going to put his stamp of approval on her flagrant strike against what was proper: she was already planning to get married, and to a cobbler’s son, when her first marriage hadn’t ended yet. He could already see people staring at him, at Urmila, his colleagues snickering as he walked by. Damodar and Anita would be furious, and they’d probably never speak to them again. If he didn’t participate in the wedding, he decided, people would say less, say that he’d at least attempted to protect his dignity.
At home, Urmila had already eaten and was getting dressed for work. She adjusted her sari in front of the mirror and asked, “Aren’t you going to be late? Your food is ready.” Then she turned to look at his face and seemed to guess where he’d been. “What happened?”
He gazed out the window of their bedroom. “Did you know she was going to marry him?”
She came to him, and he could smell the sweet perfume she always wore to work.
He turned to her. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I can’t fight with her,” Urmila said. She wrapped her arm around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. “What do you want me to do? I feel like I’m caught between you two, and to be honest, I’m suffocating.”
He let her hold him for a while, then gently disengaged himself and trudged down the stairs.
In the days that followed, Urmila went to Shova’s flat every day, and sometimes when Shivaram got home from work, she was still gone. Urmila would always arrive before long, though, breathless and looking exhausted, and say that she had to stop at the market or that she ran into someone she hadn’t seen in a while. She never mentioned Shova or the wedding, but it was easy for Shivaram to guess where she’d really been.
The news of Shova’s imminent wedding spread, of course, and Shivaram soon had to weather barbs and innuendoes at work as well as in his neighborhood. One evening, as he and Urmila were watching television after dinner, someone knocked on the door. It was Anita, and she spoke softly to Urmila in the doorway. “Although you and I have had our differences, I still thought of you as my own sister-in-law and a friend, but now I see how wrong I was.”
“Get out of here,” Urmila said. “You have some nerve coming to my house and talking to me this way!”
Anita continued speaking softly, as if it were beneath her to raise her voice. “You know what? It’ll take a year for the court to approve the divorce, and Rajiv babu says he’ll file charges against Shova if she gets married before that.”
“Enough!” Shivaram said. “Please leave, Anita.”
Urmila shoved Anita out the door and locked it. She and Shivaram looked at each other but didn’t say anything until they heard Anita’s footsteps down the stairs. Then she said, “The gall. Let’s see if he even does anything.” But she paced the room—clearly she was worried, and Shivaram too became anxious that Rajiv might follow up on this threat. Urmila had told Shivaram that Shova had already filed for divorce in the district court, but he knew that remarrying before the approval, which often took months, was a crime under the law.
Anita’s words turned out to be empty, because the very next day a messenger delivered an invitation to Shivaram—to Rajiv’s wedding, the word “chulhey” handwritten on the card to indicate that the whole family was welcome. It was meant as a taunt, of course, but Urmila laughed when she saw it. Shivaram also felt relieved: Rajiv’s getting remarried without the divorce papers meant that he was equally culpable and that no one would be taking anyone to court. “Anita will say anything,” Urmila said to Shivaram, and he merely nodded.
In order not to lose the game of one-upmanship with Rajiv’s family, Urmila responded with an invitation to Shova’s wedding. Shivaram watched her as she licked the envelope and set it on the pile with other invitations that would soon be sent out. He’d already peeked at the invitation, and Urmila had tried to tell him about the wedding plans, always speaking in a hesitant tone, as if she were furnishing information about a distant relative: the ceremony would take place in the Guheswori temple; there would be a dinner party later that evening; there would be no wedding band because both Mukti and Shova felt that would be a frivolous expense. Shivaram learned that Mukti’s father had agreed to bear all the costs of the wedding, and that Urmila had only helped Shova buy her saris. That the groom’s father was paying for his daughter’s wedding burned Shivaram a bit, but he reminded himself that he had no reason to fund something he had been against from the start. He also gathered from Urmila that Mukti’s parents had initially objected to Shova, saying she had already been someone’s wife, but Mukti had remained obstinate, and his parents were forced to submit to his wishes. “He’s as strong-willed as she is,” Urmila declared.
The day before the wedding, Shivaram left home early in the morning and went to Samakhusi, where the cobbler lived. The neighborhood was much more crowded than when he’d visited last, and for a while he had trouble locating the house, which now was two stories instead of one, the bottom floor entirely given over to a shoe shop. A thought entered his head that at least Shova wouldn’t be poor. Then he told himself that he was being ridiculous—money or no money Shova would be treated like an outcast for the rest of her life.
He slipped into a tea shop across the street and looked out at the house. Colorful ribbons had been strung across the place in celebration of the wedding. A few women carrying baskets entered and exited the house through a side door, and at around eight-thirty, Mukti emerged from the front door. He had a small goatee now, and wore a leather jacket and carried a helmet. He walked over to a motorcycle, got on, put on his helmet, and zoomed off. That man would be Shova’s husband tomorrow, and everyone would have ammunition for a lifetime of taunts and putdowns.
A little later, Mukti’s father appeared in the yard, smoking a cigarette. He shouted to a boy on the balcony, who began throwing down rolls of what looked like strings of small lights. One of the women nearby said something and laughed, and Mukti’s father went to her, grabbed her by the waist, and began dancing with her in the yard. The other women soon set down their baskets and, clapping their hands, joined them.
