Buddha's Orphans, page 4
“Raja must be crying,” she told Ganga Da in the taxi.
“Jamuna is caring for him.”
Outside Tri-Chandra College, traffic had slowed. The police were chasing some students onto the campus grounds. “What’s happening here?” she mused aloud.
Without much emotion, Ganga Da watched as a policeman whacked a young man repeatedly on the back with his baton. “Rabble-rousers all,” Ganga Da said. “That’s exactly what they deserve.”
“This king is turning out to be quite stern, isn’t he?” Kaki said. It was something she’d heard people whisper in Ratna Park. She herself didn’t understand much of what was going on, but she’d suddenly begun to notice buttons, with King M’s photo, on the lapels of government officials who stopped by to munch on her corn; those buttons resembled the one with the Chinese Mao that Kaki had found a couple of years ago and given to Raja. The boy had asked one such official, “Dai, do you have a king’s button you can give me?”
“Het!” The official, a short, plump man with a protruding belly, clad in daura suruwal and wearing dark glasses as King M always did, had scolded Raja. “You think this button is something cheap? To be worn by every vagrant on the street? See here.” The official pointed his pudgy fingers at the king’s profile. “This is our king, understand? They say he’s an incarnation of Lord Vishnu himself. You can’t touch our king with your filthy hands.”
The man’s words had stung Kaki, and she could see how crestfallen Raja looked; she had half a mind to not give the man his corn, which she’d just spread with her special chutney. But all she did, as she handed him the food, was say, “Dai, why do you say such a thing to a young boy? Haven’t you heard? Raja sabko sajha. The king belongs to everyone.” After the officials left, she pulled Raja close and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you that button. Somehow.” But she didn’t know where to look, or even whether such a button was sold in shops. But the next day, after Dindayal returned from work, he called Raja, asked him to open his palm, placed something in it, and closed it. When Raja uncurled his fingers, there it was, the button. Kaki exclaimed and asked Dindayal where he got it, but Dindayal merely smiled.
For days Raja wore the button on his shirt, thrusting his chest forward so that Kaki’s customers would notice it. “Raja sabko sajha,” he chanted as he ran circles around Kaki’s corncob station, rapidly wheeling a discarded bicycle tire borrowed from another boy whose mother sold knickknacks on another corner. Then one day Kaki discovered Raja chewing on the king’s button in their room. “Eh, eh, mula,” she shouted. “What are you doing? You can’t do that to the king.”
But Raja, ignoring her, kept chewing.
Kaki grabbed him by his arms and shook him. “What’s wrong with you? Dindayal Mama goes through so much trouble to get you that button and you disrespect him like that? Apologize to him right now.”
“I don’t want the button anymore,” he said, and hurled it into the corner.
“A few days ago you were crying for it, and today you don’t want it?”
“That king’s helper said I was a bad boy. I don’t want it.”
“Which man?” Then it dawned on her that he was referring to the plump government official. “What does it matter what he said?”
Dindayal went to the corner, picked up the button, and looked at Raja forlornly. “Look what he made of our king. Look.” He brought it over and showed it to Kaki. The king’s face was crushed, one of his eyes distorted.
“You rascal, they’re going to lock you away if they see this,” Kaki said.
Dindayal laughed. “Look, the king looks like he had a pretty bad accident.”
Vaishali, who was cooking in the corner, came over, and she laughed with her husband. “Appears that someone took a hammer and smashed his face in.”
“Yes, you keep talking like that and they’ll take both of you, along with this boy, to the slammer.”
But Raja wasn’t laughing. He was sitting with his head down, looking bereft. Kaki watched him for a while, her anger gradually melting away. That night after supper—Raja ate little—she held him close and asked, “What’s wrong with my son?” But Raja wouldn’t answer. His chin sagged liked an old man’s, and his eyes had gone misty. She rocked him in her arms and spoke to him gently.
Finally he said, “Where is my mother?”
“I am your mother.”
“My real mother. When is she coming back to get me?”
Kaki was stumped. Finally she said, “She’ll come, Raja, she’ll come. I am here for you. What you need, you tell me. I’ll give it to you.”
“I want my mother.”
She rocked him, and for a long time he kept his eyes open, not saying anything. Then he fell asleep.
The next day she bought for him, from a toy store in Asan, a rubber duck, which he squeaked delightedly all around Rani Pokhari.
The taxi had pulled away from Tri-Chandra College and was now speeding toward Lainchour. Ganga Da seemed lost in his own thoughts.
“How long have you been married?” Kaki asked.
For a moment, Ganga Da didn’t answer, as if the topic was hard for him. “Four years.”
“And no children?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe giving birth to a child would cure her.”
“You sound like my Bala Maiju from Tangal,” he said. “That’s what she keeps telling me.” He went on for a while about Bala Maiju, his maternal uncle’s widow. She was his closest relative in the city. He missed her but hadn’t been able to visit her lately. “I need to go see her soon,” he said.
As soon as the taxi halted outside Ganga Da’s door, Kaki hurried inside and found that Raja was sitting on Jamuna’s lap on the living room floor, a magazine open before him. “A man on a horse, see?” Jamuna was saying. A half-eaten packet of arrowroot biscuits lay next to them. “I’ll teach him how to read,” she said to Kaki, smiling, and Raja too smiled.
“Jamuna Mummy says she’ll buy me ice cream every day,” he said.
For Kaki, the problem at Ganga Da’s was not the work, which was as easy as he’d promised. Early in the morning Kaki made tea with milk, which the milkman delivered in the dark. “Give the boy two or three glasses of milk every day,” Ganga Da had advised, and so she did, astounded that only a few days ago they’d have been lucky to afford one glass of milk every other day. After the morning tea, Kaki headed to the Thamel vegetable market, bills and coins bound tightly in a knot of her dhoti. Sometimes Raja accompanied her, but often he’d just be waking up, so she let him be.
But as she shopped in the Thamel market she began to grow anxious. Who knew what Jamuna could be doing to her boy? She could twist Raja’s arm roughly enough to break it or pinch his nose so hard it’d bleed. With her shopping only partially done, Kaki rushed home, only to often find Raja in the woman’s lap; she was reading him a children’s book that Ganga Da had purchased for him. “Say it: Kapoori ka.” Jamuna was urging him to learn the alphabet. He’d pronounce the letter, then pick a colored pencil and attempt to draw the word.
Ganga Da, sitting on his bed, remarked, “Yes, yes, that’s the way, now loop it into a big, fat belly.”
Then Ganga Da laughed, which made Jamuna laugh, and Raja looked embarrassed and said, “What? What?” He turned to Jamuna and said, “Jamuna Mummy, why are you laughing?”
The first time Raja called the woman Mummy, Kaki had objected. “Don’t call her Mummy,” she said on that first day, when Raja beamed at the possibility of a daily ice cream treat. She’d heard some rich children call their mother that, and it seemed that this single word distanced Raja from Kaki.
“You are Kaki,” Jamuna said. “I am Mummy, and he is Ganga Da. We’re all happy, aren’t we all?”
Ganga Da took Kaki by her elbow to her room. “Let him call her whatever she wants,” he whispered to her. “You and I know the truth.”
“I don’t want her to get ideas.”
“It’s just a word. You’re still his mother. If Jamuna is happy, it’ll make your work easy.”
“What if Raja really believes she’s his mother?”
“Look, the boy is very clever. He knows he’s an orphan, that even you aren’t his real aunt.”
Ganga Da was right. Raja was too aware of his own history to fall into the trap of mistaking Jamuna for his real mother. It was also true that Raja’s presence soothed the craziness inside Jamuna. Mummy. It’s only a word, Kaki told herself. It doesn’t mean anything.
Kaki’s Jealousy
RAJA CLUNG TO JAMUNA from early morning to night, and within weeks he began treating Kaki as if she was indeed only a servant in his house. He didn’t even bother Kaki when he wanted to eat; he went straight to Jamuna, who in turn asked Kaki to cook him kheer or give him buttered Krishnapauroti bread. When Kaki implored him to come to her, he ignored her or walked away. The only time she could hold him tight was at night, and only after he fell asleep, because while he remained awake in bed he pushed her away and cried out for his Jamuna Mummy, who then came running from her room and embraced him. Jamuna stroked his forehead and consoled him with her gibberish. Once, Jamuna took him to her own bed, where he spent half the night before Kaki went to fetch him. “Let him sleep here,” Jamuna whispered, looking pleadingly at Kaki. “If he sleeps with you, the snakes will come.” Nonetheless, Kaki reached over and pulled him away from her in the darkness.
In bits and pieces, Kaki was learning from Ganga Da how he’d ended up marrying Jamuna and how he’d first learned of her mental disease. At the time of his marriage, he’d just started his job at the National Planning Commission, where he was now a second-class officer. In the years since his father’s death, his mother, clad in the white dhoti of the widow, had turned to scriptures and prabachans. The proposal for Jamuna had come through a distant relative who’d known Jamuna’s family for years. “Ganga’s and Jamuna’s names refer to two of the holiest rivers of India,” the man had said with a smile, “whose confluence is a sacred spot; thus this marriage is dictated by the heavens.”
Within days of Ganga Da’s wedding, his mother left for Banaras to live in an ashram, something she’d wanted to do since her husband’s death. The next morning Ganga Da was reading the newspaper in the bedroom, the glass of tea Jamuna had brought steaming beside him, when he heard a loud clatter in the kitchen. “Jamuna?” he called. There was no answer. He assumed she’d gone to the toilet outside and resumed his reading. Soon he heard what sounded like a child whimpering. Could be the neighborhood cat, he wondered, but then there was the distinct sound of a human chuckle. A tingle scurried up Ganga Da’s spine. He looked out. The toilet door was open, swinging a bit in the morning breeze. He went to the kitchen. Pans scattered all around her, Jamuna was seated on the floor against the wall, her eyes raised toward the ceiling.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t look at him. “May Lord Pashupatinath protect us all,” she said.
“Stand up,” he said as he went to her and lifted her by the arm. She began to chant a hymn. Kicking a pot out of the way, he took her to their bed. Helping her lie down, he asked, “What happened? Are you not feeling well?” He felt her forehead, but her temperature seemed normal.
With her lips slightly twisted, she stared at him. Something about her eyes—she wasn’t really looking at him. He felt disoriented. “How long have you been like this?” he asked, his voice shaking.
She turned away from him to face the wall. She lay on the bed like a statue, her back to her husband. After a while, he sat down. He hoped this was a joke and that in a few minutes, or perhaps by the time he returned from work, she’d punch him on the arm and say, “Did you think that you were shackled to a madwoman for life?”
But when he returned from work, she was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. He called her name, and she gave him that empty look.
As time passed, Ganga Da learned that he couldn’t, and neither could she, predict when her illness would flare up or when it would subside. At night he’d wake to discover that she’d locked herself in the storage room next to the kitchen. Fearing that she’d harm herself, use a knife on her wrist or swallow rat poison, he pounded on the door. It would take her a while to finally open it, and by that time he’d be exhausted, with a tightness in his throat and chest that lasted through the day at work. Then there were days when she’d stay in one spot for hours, motionless, her face blank. She wouldn’t brush her teeth or bathe, and sometimes she even urinated where she sat.
When her disease, her rog, as she liked to call it, subsided, her face became transformed. She laughed more, hummed as she cooked, and pleaded with Ganga Da to take her on outings, perhaps to Budhanilkantha or Gokarna or to the movies. In the darkened cinema hall she’d slip her hand into his, especially when a romantic scene appeared on the screen. Watching the Indian movie Sangam, she’d pinched his palm when Raj Kapoor, perched in a tree, played bagpipes and teased Vyjantimala, who was swimming sensuously below him in a pond, asking her when the Ganga of his heart would be united with the Jamuna of hers. At home that afternoon, as Jamuna made rice pudding, she hummed and sang, “Mere man ki ganga or tere man ki jamuna ka, bol Radha, bol sangam hoga ki nahi.” When she brought Ganga Da the pudding he pulled her into bed, even though it was still daylight outside.
He took her to doctors who explained that they were not psychiatrists, and since there were none in the city he’d have to take his wife to India, to the well-known mental hospital in Ranchi. As soon as Jamuna heard Ranchi mentioned, she balked. “I’m not going to that loony bin. You go,” she told her husband, and her behavior became worse than ever, to the point that Ganga Da had had to tie her wrists for an hour or so until she calmed down.
Although he didn’t take her to Ranchi, Ganga Da tried other treatments. He took Jamuna to people known for their miracle cures: a healer at the base of the Swayambhunath hill; the college girl in Thamel who became possessed by a powerful Newar goddess at the chanting of a few mantras; Patan’s Ama, who was reputed to heal patients declared untreatable by the doctors at Shanta Bhawan Hospital nearby. But Jamuna’s condition, instead of getting better, got worse. Toward the end of their second year of marriage, it became further exacerbated by her failure to get pregnant.
Ganga Da’s mother visited, unannounced. She told him that she had come to Kathmandu to transfer all their property to his name—the house and nearly one lakh rupees that Ganga Da’s father had left for her—as she now wanted to renounce all earthly matters and devote herself to God under Swami Nityananda’s tutelage. She asked Ganga Da and Jamuna why they hadn’t yet given her a grandchild. The next day Jamuna entered the living room carrying something cradled in her arms. It turned out to be a doll with a bald head and a big hole in its chest, which Ganga Da recognized as belonging to the neighbor’s daughter. Jamuna unbuttoned her blouse, reached inside, and pulled out her breast. She pressed the doll’s face against her nipple.
The next week, after completing the documents for transfer of property, his mother left for Banaras, and she never returned.
Even Ganga Da was surprised by how quickly the boy and his wife had taken to each other. Since Raja’s arrival in their home, Jamuna had begun taking care of her appearance—keeping her hair combed and even applying light makeup to her face in the morning. She spent all day with Raja, and when the boy went out to the neighborhood to play with his newfound friends, she paced the yard, went to the gate to peer out, sighed, then scolded herself. Or she simply sat near the gate, waiting for him, her eyes impassive. Most days when he returned home, his face coated with dust, she took him to the bathroom, where she helped him undress and take a bath. “No, Jamuna Mummy, no,” he cried when she rubbed soap on his hair and face, which made his eyes burn.
“Just one more round, then we’re done.” She coaxed the boy through it. Watching her, Ganga Da often wondered if this was the same wife who’d recently cried uncontrollably over a mangled doll. Out of the corner of his eye he could also sense that Kaki, who’d be chopping vegetables on the kitchen floor, was listening to the two in the bathroom. After Raja’s bath, Jamuna would make the boy lie on the carpet in their bedroom and massage him. She’d rub her palms with oil and draw circles on his belly with her fingers, making his shriveled penis jiggle. He’d ask her to tickle him more, and she’d oblige, running her fingers up to his armpits.
One day, as Jamuna tickled him, Raja said, “Tickle Ganga Da.”
Unable to bear this, Kaki came to the bedroom door and shouted, “Badmash! Watch what you say.” She glared at Jamuna.
Raja shouted again, “Tickle Ganga Da!” Her hands smeared with oil, Jamuna chased her husband. Simultaneously laughing and getting angry, Ganga Da ran around the house. Raja, on his stomach now, rested his chin on his palms and watched them. Jamuna, as quick as a cat, pounced on Ganga Da in the hall, tackling him like a wrestler. She then lifted his shirt and tickled him, her fingers plunging down into his pants.
Kaki spun out into the yard. Ganga Da, feeling ashamed but also aroused by his wife’s touch, poured his anger on her. She giggled and smirked, then slid closer to him, touching him through his pants. “But you like this, don’t you?” she whispered.
“Go to her and apologize,” Ganga Da whispered to his wife. Out in the yard Kaki was sitting by the water pump. Sulking, Jamuna went out and talked with Kaki. Ganga Da couldn’t hear what she said, but finally Kaki came back in and, without meeting anyone’s eyes, resumed her work.
Ganga Da tried to get Raja enrolled in boarding school. He, Kaki, and Raja visited two possible choices, but they were turned away. One school was simply too full, and the principal there bragged that the movers and shakers of the city had placed their children’s names on his waiting list. At the other school, after learning Raja was an orphan, the principal said that he needed the names of the boy’s parents in order to enroll him. Ganga Da argued that as long as the fees were paid, it ought to make no difference to the school who the student’s parents were. Kaki, naturally, didn’t have any documents concerning Raja’s birth. “He’s more than my own blood,” she told the principal. But the principal pursed his lips and shook his head.
