Buddha's Orphans, page 35
He didn’t fuck her because voices sounded outside, discussing something about the evening, and, hearts pounding, the two scrambled to get up. They opened the door slowly. A few feet away, two men were smoking and arguing. Mohini and Yudhir sneaked outside, then casually strolled to the shrine, with smiles on their lips.
A few days later in a seedy hotel in Baghbazar, down the street from Tundikhel, they made love. The neighborhood, at the edge of the fields where jyapus grew spinach and radishes, was known for heavily made-up women standing outside their doors and making lingering eye contact with men, and married men swiftly ducking in and emerging half an hour later, with a satisfied gleam in their eyes. The shoe shop owner next to the hotel had smiled suggestively at Mohini and Yudhir as they walked up to their room. As they made love, Mohini mentally addressed Father, Do you like this, Father? Do you think my husband would like this? And in the middle of their lovemaking, she cried, from the incredible pain that was pulsing between her legs, also because she really didn’t want to hurt her parents, but that’s what she was doing.
Mohini bled profusely that afternoon. The bed sheets stained, and she became afraid. Yudhir spit on his handkerchief and smudged the stains as best as he could. Then he sang to her, a sad song that made her want to cry. It hurt her down there, a sharp sting every few seconds. She felt raw, bruised, and already a fullness inside her, akin to what she imagined pregnant women feel. She didn’t tell Yudhir about this, but the thought occupied her even as she listened to him speak, with a cigarette smoldering between his fingers, about how he knew people in Radio Nepal who could give him a break and have his songs be broadcast nationally.
“I know I am better than a lot of other singers you hear these days.” And he recited names that meant nothing to Mohini—she knew only some of the songs he mentioned. She agree that all Yudhir needed was one song broadcast on the radio, and the public would clamor to hear him day and night. He nodded, distracted, as he inhaled, then said something about how he would produce record after record, and might even go to Bombay to become a playback singer in Indian movies. “Sometimes I think I sing better than Mukesh,” he said, so innocently that she had to suppress her laughter. There he was, still in his underwear, exposing his hairy thighs and claiming to be better than the most famous singer on the radio; even she, who didn’t get to watch Hindi movies, knew that Mukesh was like a god. Her hand on her belly, Mohini told Yudhir that she’d never thought Mukesh was good, anyway. She meant it half in jest, but he nodded again without looking at her, dragged on his cigarette, and threw the smoke to the ceiling in a moody way. “Or maybe I should buy a few Bhagyodaya chithha tickets,” he said. “Test my luck. You know how much the jackpot is now? One lakh fifty thousand rupees. I could buy all of Radio Nepal with that kind of money, and I could sing to my heart’s content.”
She couldn’t help but smile fondly at him. The late afternoon sun had barged in through the drapeless windows, and the shouts and screams of children in the neighborhood had gotten louder. Sounds of an argument somewhere nearby—a man pleading about something, a woman insistent, softly adamant—played like background music to the pleasing lull she felt surrounding her. He stubbed his cigarette and looked into her eyes. “You’re going to get married soon, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Maybe you and I should elope together,” he said. He wasn’t serious, of course.
“Where?”
“Bombay.”
She nodded, also not serious. “That makes perfect sense. You will start singing for Hindi movies, and I’ll also get a job and raise . . .” She stopped before she mentioned the baby. The baby was more hers than his, it seemed, and there was no point in telling him about it.
“Actually, that does make sense,” he said, quickly and excitedly. He sat up, crossed his legs beneath him, and leaned toward her. “Have you met this man you’re getting married to?”
“Yes, he’s a good-looking man.”
“Really?”
“He’s a man, not a boy like you,” she teased.
“A good-looking man from a moneyed family, eh?” A hint of jealousy crept into his voice, which made her happy, made her want to tease him more.
“He has a manly face.”
“How rich are they?”
“Very rich. They have many servants in the house, I hear, so I’ll live like a queen. That’s what Mother says. Also, the cutlery they use is made of pure silver.” The last part she made up.
He laughed. “Only the Ranas and the Shahs and the darbaris in the palace can afford silver cutlery in this country.”
“You want to bet?” she said. “I dare you to go to their house and look.”
“Why don’t both of us go then?”
The thought made her laugh again, the idea of she and Yudhir climbing the wall of the groom’s compound and peeking into their kitchen, which she imagined as spacious and airy, with the servants on the floor, peeling, cutting, slicing vegetables and meat for dinner, two fires burning in the corner. But the thought of being trapped in a house like that made her somber.
“What’s the matter?” Yudhir asked.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “Between you and me.”
He studied her face, then said, “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” She repeated it again. No one had asked her that before. “I don’t want to get married right now.”
He shook his head impatiently and flicked cigarette ash to the floor. “I didn’t ask you what you don’t want. I asked you what you do want.”
She didn’t know. After a while she said, “I want to spend time with you.” I want to discuss important intellectual topics with you, she thought, then asked him, “So, what do you think of the Rashtriya Nirdesan Mantralaya?”
“What?”
She spoke slowly as if addressing a child, or a deaf or dumb person. “The king’s National Guidance Ministry.”
“What’s that?”
She laughed heartily. “Don’t you pay attention to what’s happening in our country? Don’t you care?” Then she echoed something she’d heard Father say. “It should matter to all of us what the raja-maharajas do.”
Yudhir waved his hand in the air to indicate that he couldn’t be bothered with that sort of thing. It disappointed her, this dismissal of what she thought he’d find impressive.
“I know you want to spend time with me,” he said impatiently. “That’s a given. What else do you want?” A smile spread across his face. “Do you want to marry me? Is that what you want?”
It was as if he were teasing her, and it made her sad. Also, she’d end up marrying the man Mother and Father had chosen for her—this much she knew for certain. “It’s my destiny,” she mumbled.
“That’s bogus. Completely bogus thinking.”
“Easy for you to say,” Mohini said. “You’re a man. Look at me. What can I do?”
“Elope to Bombay with me,” he said, smiling.
“Don’t joke. My mood is off now. I won’t see you after I get married.”
“I’m not joking,” Yudhir said. He took a long drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke in her face.
She waved the smoke away and climbed out of bed. “I hate that smell,” she said, and went to the window. The sun assaulted her eyes, and she quickly stepped back. Once her eyes adjusted, she again looked out. On the street below people walked, shopped, or lingered on the sidewalk, smoking and chatting. She saw two women in bright saris and ample makeup, their midriffs showing, outside the steps of the hotel, watching and smiling at men walking by. The Ghantaghar bell sounded, and with a start she realized that it was four o’clock. But the normal anxiety that clamped her stomach was absent today, and she knew that she would linger for a bit longer, perhaps for another half an hour, then head home, and even if Father was home, he wouldn’t flog her because he’d be afraid of her bruises showing so close to the wedding. Her wedding. She pictured herself circling the pyre, the priest’s monotonous chant ringing in her ears all morning, her husband’s eyes settling upon her on the wedding night.
“How will we get to Bombay?” Mohini asked, without looking at Yudhir.
“You leave that up to me. So you’ve changed your mind?” He blew cigarette smoke to the ceiling, then turned his head to look at her.
“What happens if you abandon me once we get there?”
“Do I look like the type?”
Mohini faced him. “It’s been only a few days since I’ve gotten to know you,” she said, and it was true. But already she liked him so much. Even his aloofness she’d come to love: how at times he simply seemed removed from everything around him. He had the detachment of a passerby who had nothing at stake, who could witness events unfolding without bias or prejudice, allowing everything to take shape in its own time. Such a sharp contrast to her parents, who were so involved in her every move, every gesture, which was then analyzed, scrutinized, pondered, and—condemned. Her husband would be no different, she’d already deduced, by the aggression she’d seen in his eyes. From one hell to another, she thought. The word hell released more bitter feelings. Here was this man, luxuriously smoking a cigarette on a filthy bed in this questionable hotel in this alley where good girls from good families would rather die than venture into, and by his mere presence he was offering her something new, a door cracking open to a place where you could just linger and taste and touch and laugh without judgment. On the bed, he was now gazing at the ceiling, the cigarette butt so tiny that it was close to burning his fingers. Yudhir was apparently lost in lines of a song—he began to softly croon mournful lyrics bemoaning the cruelty of a lover, and Mohini felt like laughing because in her world it was not her lover who was cruel to her, but everyone else.
Missing
RAJA’S TALK of his mother unsettled both of them, throwing them into a pensive mood. They hadn’t discussed her in years, and when they had, they’d mentioned her only in passing, usually prompted by Ranjana’s pesky questions. When Ranjana was a child she was unwilling to believe that her father didn’t know anything about her grandmother, and she threw tantrums when Raja told her he had been raised by two surrogate mothers. As she grew up, Ranjana expressed more interest in the grandmother she’d never known than she did in Muwa, who lived in the same city.
Yes, Muwa, incredibly, was still alive, still drinking, still living with Sumit. After Nilu Nikunj went to Sumit, the house survived in his hands only for a few years, after which it was sold to a philanthropist who wanted to set up an orphanage. Most of the money from the sale went to the repayment of Sumit’s own debts, Nilu had learned. He did have enough remaining to afford a modest home in Bhainsepati, where he and Muwa now lived. Sumit hadn’t kicked Muwa out onto the street, as Nilu had expected. In fact, Nilu could tell that in his own way he was fond of Muwa, made sure she ate well and took her medicine, dusted seats for her and brought her a sweater on chilly evenings in the garden, even though he did nothing to prevent her from drinking. Muwa was approaching age seventy-five, and she’d begun to stoop; every few months she had to be rushed to the hospital. Years of drinking had corroded her organs, but she still walked by herself, and still spoke, albeit in a voice so raspy that it sounded as though she had chronic laryngitis. Every day Nilu expected a call from Sumit, telling her that her mother had passed away. Every few months she went to visit Muwa. The bitterness she’d felt toward Muwa all her life was replaced by a mild contempt, alternating with unexpected surges of compassion. Perhaps it had to do with age, a sense of resignation that certain things in life, in people, remained the same. Muwa walked around the house with a cane, wrapped in a shawl, a cigarette between her fingers. Some days Nilu found her in the garden, inspecting the flowers with trembling hands.
Raja went for a stroll, and Nilu begun to think about what he had said—that his thoughts turned to his real mother when he looked at Ranjana. Nilu was filled with a sense of foreboding, as if Raja’s mother, after all these years, had decided to infiltrate their lives by laying a claim to Ranjana to compensate for the claim she had forfeited—her own son. Nilu faulted Raja for having mentioned his seemingly unstable mother and Ranjana in the same breath; Ranjana was the most levelheaded daughter anyone could ask for. She had been absolutely no problem, even during her early teenage years. Now she was already nineteen. Still, she was far from home, and lately she did sound as if she was carrying a weight that was hard to balance on her delicate shoulders.
The more Nilu attempted to dismiss her anxieties, the more a sense of doom pressed upon her. She opened the window and let in some fresh air, took deep breaths to fill her lungs, to drive away the pressure settling on her forehead. And swiftly, as though it had never left, the familiar heaviness swooped down on her—the anguish that had been her life in the aftermath of Maitreya’s death. Except this feeling had nothing to do with Maitreya, with whom she’d made her peace; it concerned her daughter, the pragmatic, loving Ranjana whom both Nilu and Raja knew would be a solace for their old age, someone who had already healed not only their heartbreak over Maitreya but also their marriage. All of this had vanished in an instant because of Raja’s silly comment, which he had likely already forgotten along his walk, as he paused to chat with neighbors. When he returned, Nilu was going to tell him how annoyed she was. “For twenty years I haven’t felt like this,” she’d say to him. “And you go and say something that you yourself cannot make sense of. And here I am, broken in pieces about it.”
But it wasn’t Raja’s fault; she knew her vexation at him was misplaced. He was merely expressing something that had been bothering him lately. She was overreacting.
Nilu went to her room and opened her big steel cupboard. She took out the metal box where she kept her daughter’s letters and sifted through them to see if she could spot any cause for concern, any passage that had made her pause when she first read it. Nothing. All the letters spoke brightly about Chicago, the apartment she shared with two roommates, her classes, the university, the great body of water nearby. She mentioned that she missed Nilu’s cooking, but which child living far away from home wouldn’t?
Nilu rearranged the letters in the box and put it away in the cupboard. She went down to the garden and sat in a chair, waiting for her emotions to change. As the sun began to set, she heard Raja at the gate, back from his walk. He had a hint of a smile on his face, perhaps from having joked with the neighbor next door. Her speculation that what he’d said affected him less than it affected her, turned out to be true.
“How far did you go?” she asked.
“Oh, just up to the mound.”
He began recounting the dog problem of Satyalji, their loud, guffawing neighbor, but she cut him off. “We need to call Ranjana. Urgently.”
The panic in her voice startled him. “Why? What happened?”
Nilu had to look away and feel her breath in her chest before she could respond. “Something has happened to Ranjana. We need to call her.”
Now it was Raja’s turn to be filled with dread. “What? Did you hear something? Someone called from America?”
Her eyes fell on the flowers she’d planted and admired only yesterday—a batch of bright yellow roses that appeared to have lost their luster overnight.
“Nilu! Why are you not speaking? Something bad happened to Ranjana?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and stood up and went inside. It seemed she was punishing him, but for what, she didn’t know.
Raja followed. “Hoina, why are you acting like this? Why are you keeping me in the dark?”
As she went to the kitchen and poured water in the kettle for tea, she controlled the shaking of her hands. She felt Raja’s presence behind her, and she didn’t know what to say to him.
“Tell me what happened,” he asked again, this time a bit more gently.
“Let’s call her,” she said, turning to face him.
“Did someone tell you something?”
She shook her head and moved to the living room, where she sat on the sofa, picked up the phone, and began dialing. The number to Ranjana’s apartment in Chicago, which she shared with her two roommates, came to her easily. Raja stood next to her, watching. The phone rang three times before one of the girls answered, in a drowsy voice—it was very early there. Nilu asked to speak to Ranjana. The last few times she’d called, one of the roommates would pick up the phone and tell Nilu that her Ranjana was at the library. Nilu still couldn’t tell these girls’ voices apart, even though one of them was a red-headed American and the other was a Japanese girl who had immigrated there when she was a child.
“Who is this?” the girl asked.
“This is Ranjana’s mother, from Nepal. Is this Angela speaking?”
“Oh, hello.” Her voice was suddenly alert. “Ranji isn’t here.”
Nilu had never liked the shortening of her daughter’s name to Ranji, and now in the roommate’s American accent it seemed even stranger. When Nilu had asked Ranjana why she allowed her roommates to call her that, she’d responded that it was an easier name for them, and that it really didn’t matter, did it, what she was called? “Where is she, then?” Nilu asked Angela. “She’s never home when I call her.”
“I need to . . .”
“Is she at the library again? What is she doing so early at the library?”
“Mrs. Basnet, I need to tell you something. Actually, it’s been nearly two months now since Ranjana moved out of here.”
“Moved out? To where?”
“I don’t know. She’s never told me.”
“Two months? But that can’t be true,” Nilu said. “She’s never mentioned anything like it, and she’s been calling me.” Was this roommate making a fool out of her? Was Ranjana in on the joke, instructing the girl? “Let me speak to Ranjana!”
