This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach, page 29
‘Yes.’ Puri’s tone showed that he was in no mood for jokes.
He changed back into his street clothes, put his shoes on and called out to his mother, ‘I’ll be back soon,’ and went downstairs.
Puri, already quite distressed by Kanak’s strange behaviour, was even more troubled by Tara’s actions and her unrepentant attitude. That he could not share his pain with anybody rankled with particular intensity. He wanted to deal with Tara’s improper and shameless behaviour without telling his parents. It was not easy for him to hide his concern and frustration from the others in the family.
Pushpa was threading her needle. Snipping the thread from the spool with her teeth, she asked, ‘Where’s Tara—still on the roof?’
As birds flying in the sky instinctively know about the approach of rain and storm, a mother too can feel the moods and whims of the children she has known and cared for since their birth.
‘They must have quarrelled, what else!’ Bhagwanti replied. ‘Both may seem to have become adults, but in temperaments they’re still children.’
‘Hai, why would they quarrel?’ Pushpa wanted to know.
‘Oh, perhaps the brother said, “Let’s go this way,” and the sister replied, “No, let’s take the other way.” That’s enough ground for a falling-out.’
‘I’ve never seen them quarrel.’
‘Wah, they quarrelled so badly when they were small that I’d lose all patience with them. He would beat her without reason, and she’s just as strong-willed. She’d bite him and swear at him like mad. They may seem mature and highly educated now, but their natures haven’t changed. Tara is the secretive type; she doesn’t say much, but she doesn’t forget things and nurses her grudges for a long time…’
After he passed out of high school and went on to college, Puri stopped hitting Tara, even when he was very angry with her. Usha had turned eleven, and she was there if he wanted to slap someone. When Puri was sent to prison, Tara regarded his courage and patriotism as reflecting credit on the family. Whenever she sent the family letter to him in prison, she addressed him as ‘Respected Bhaiji’ or ‘Honoured Bhai’. When he came back from prison, instead of calling him ‘Jaddi’ as before, she began to use ‘bhai’ or ‘bhaiji’ to address him. The squabbles, playful scuffles and horseplay of the past were now happy memories. They agreed on most things. Brother and sister formed a united front against the narrow-minded and conservative outlook of their family and of the people of the gali. Tara respected him for what she thought to be the exceptional brilliance of her brother.
She came downstairs from the roof after half an hour. Her mother gave her one look and said, ‘Come here.’
Tara was removing clothes to change into from the slung rope that was their collective wardrobe. She asked, ‘What for?’
‘Come here, I said. How’re you feeling?’ She held out a hand to touch Tara.
‘I’m all right. I just have a headache.’ Tara went to her and let her mother touch her arm.
‘See, she has fever!’ Her mother raised her eyebrows. ‘Pushpa, feel her arm and tell me.’
Pushpa agreed with Bhagwanti after feeling Tara’s arm, ‘Yes, she’s running a fever.’
‘She must have been wandering around in the sun. Her brother is just as thoughtless. He should remember that girls can’t gad about all over the place like boys.’ Bhagwanti said. ‘Go to the veranda and lie down on the charpoy. Your face is so pale. Why did you go out in the first place?’ A thought occurred to her, and she said, ‘If you couldn’t walk, you should’ve asked your brother to hire a tonga.’
Tara did not feel like explaining. She changed her clothes, tied her dupatta tightly around her head, and lay down. ‘It’s good if I have a fever,’ she thought, ‘it saves me the bother of answering every silly question.’
Puri returned home around eight. The curfew was to begin at 8 o’clock. As she gave him dinner, his mother said, ‘Tara has a fever. The two of you should take care not to be out and about so much, away from home. You’re not kids any more.’
Puri thought, ‘I know what’s behind her so-called fever.’ To answer her accusation, he said to his mother, ‘She’s the one who insisted on going out. And most of the time she stayed at her friend’s house, and hardly went anywhere else.’
As on every other night, Puri was working on the history textbook on the roof in the light of a table lamp. He had shaded the lamp in such a way that its light would not disturb the others sleeping on the roof. His mind was so uneasy after the day’s events that his eyes would read a paragraph of text in English, but his brain would not register a single word. When he tried to write, the pen clung to his hand without touching the paper.
‘It’s not good for you to sleep in the open if you have a fever! Why don’t you listen to me?’ He heard his mother say.
He shaded his eyes from the light and saw that Tara had come up to the roof and was lying on a charpoy. Tara answered her mother, ‘Must you always make a mountain out of a molehill? I have hardly any fever. I just can’t breathe in that stifling heat downstairs. I’ll feel better up here.’
‘Achcha, cover yourself with a thick sheet. I’ll bring you one.’
Puri’s lips tightened in disapproval. ‘What does she want to achieve by this display?’ he wondered. ‘Women! So much deception and slyness behind that façade of frailty! I’ve just seen two examples. How Kanak first pretended to give her heart to me, then got me to accept money doled out by her father so that she could put me down. She is acting as if Model Town is as far from Gwal Mandi as some foreign country. Makes her father dance to her tune, and now she tries the same thing with me. Deception, thy name is woman! And Tara! What’s she up to, in her sly way, behind her pretended modesty and innocence, and her opposition to marriage? Couldn’t find anybody but a Muslim to get entangled with! Wants to blacken the family name! What cheek she showed to me! Such insulting behaviour! I’ll make sure that she gets rid of that attitude.’
Once again, Puri could not concentrate on his work the next morning. All his problems seemed to be closing in on him. Kanak had made him feel that he was not worthy of her love because she belonged to a higher social class, and Tara was sullying his and his family’s honour. He had no money, no social standing, not even a job; the only thing he could cling to was his reputation. He wanted to keep it intact, and Tara was bent upon dirtying it. A man is less concerned about his own philandering becoming public knowledge as about the disclosure of the misbehaviours of his womenfolk—mother, sister or wife. Kanak had hurt him and slipped out of his reach. His impotent rage against Kanak could only be vented upon Tara. His growing ill humour was clouding his mind.
Through that state of fogginess and confusion, the words that Asad had used shone like a flash of lightning, ‘Someone other than a brother might understand the problems of a sister.’ What does Asad claim to be, a husband or a lover? The utter gall of the man! He’s challenged me! I must do something immediately …’ He put his pen down and pressed his hands to his temples.
In summer, the schools began at 6 a.m. Masterji, Usha and Hari were at school. Puri’s unquiet mind could not focus on his work, and that made the heat below the corrugated tin roof seem all the more unbearable. The rivulets of perspiration running down his back, had not bothered him before, as he worked under the roof barsati, but they felt unbearable today. He stopped working at 9 o’clock and went downstairs. He got his towel and an angauccha to wrap around his waist while having his wash, and was going to the common faucet on the ground floor aangan when his mother called out to him for his help, ‘Just look at the girl! How much more will she torment me! Had nothing to eat last night. I bought this beedana and banafsha sherbet from the bazaar especially for her. Having an empty stomach in this heat will surely make her sick. What’ll I do then? But she refuses to touch it!’
Puri turned around and saw Tara lying on a charpoy in the veranda. Her mother was standing near the head of the charpoy with a glass in her hand. He went to the veranda. He put both his hands on his hips to give himself an impressive posture, and called out in a commanding tone, ‘Why won’t you drink this?’
Tara got up without saying a word. She took the glass from her mother and drained it in a single draught. She put the glass on the floor, lay back down on the charpoy, and covered her face with her dupatta.
His mother was not pleased at his roughness. She said softly, ‘She’s not well. Don’t speak so harshly to someone who’s sick.’
She picked up the glass and went away. Puri stood in angry silence next to the charpoy. After a few moments he said to Tara in English, ‘I know you’re not asleep. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
Tara rose and sat hunched up at the foot of the charpoy. Puri sat on its edge, resting his weight on his hands. Keeping his voice down, he again asked in a firm tone, ‘What’s the idea of this silent treatment?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Tara replied, her head bent.
‘That’s how I see it. What problem were you talking over with Asad?’
‘No problem.’
Puri’s anger surged up again at this obvious lie, but he suppressed it, so as to be able to pry out her secret, ‘Was he telling a lie? He said in front of you that you were upset. What did you tell him?’
Tara gave no answer.
‘You can’t just keep mum.’ He chided her. ‘You went out with me. I have to know what happened because the members of this family, and I too, have a certain responsibility towards you. You must have told him something—must have said what was bothering you.’
Tara did not want to talk about the incident. She said, ‘Nothing in particular.’
Puri thought for a moment how to rephrase his question in order to trap Tara, and asked in a level tone, ‘It’s my duty and the family’s too, to help you solve your problem. You need money? Is something wrong with you, physically?’
Tara shook her head in denial.
‘What’s so secret that you can tell it to him, but not to me?’ He pressed on.
Tara, caught in his web, had to own up, ‘You know everything.’
Puri made a show of thinking, and said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. Explain yourself.’
Enraged by his persistent needling, she replied, ‘It’s easy for you to say that you can’t remember. Didn’t you say that this match was no good for me, that we should let the engagement be broken? That you didn’t have a good opinion of Somraj? And now you’re asking Ma how you can help in preparing the trousseau. Why would you want to remember what you’d said earlier?’
When they were young, Tara had responded to Puri’s punches and blows by biting him and by cursing him that he might die and leave his wife a widow. When she could not fight back physically, she would scream and cry so that their mother would intervene. In the previous four or five years she had become so shy and reserved that people seldom heard her complain. Her brother often talked proudly of the sharpness of her mind and her good manners. Now this same brother was trying to entangle her in the web of his questions, and she had fought back by calling him a coward and a liar! Puri was alarmed by her reaction.
To counter the bitter truth she had blurted out in anger and to deny the charge of not carrying out his duty towards her, he took a few moments to collect himself, and said, ‘You’re accusing me of not keeping my word. How could I object after seeing you willingly help them in getting together your trousseau?’
Staring into her brother’s eyes, Tara let out a deep breath of despair, as if life itself would go out of her body with that breath. Stunned into silence, she just looked at him in disbelief. Her eyes said, how could you twist the fact of my helplessness?
Puri could not resist a touch of Schadenfreude, ‘My opinion of that man Somraj is a secondary consideration. If you didn’t want to get engaged, you should have refused before they formalized it.’
‘Didn’t I oppose it?’ Tears filled her eyes as her body shook in anger.
To overcome her attempt to fight back, Puri said in a distracted way, ‘I don’t know. I was in prison at the time. Don’t hold me responsible. They couldn’t push me into an engagement even with an offer of a dowry worth thirty or thirty-five thousand rupees. If you had refused to go along, the engagement would never have taken place.’
‘I would have, if you hadn’t misled me into thinking that you too were against this marriage.’
‘Did you expect me to go on objecting even when I could see you helping with your trousseau?’ Puri asked.
Tara, her eyes brimming with tears, gave him a look of surprise and incredulity, but Puri was not moved. He felt he had recognized the devious, licentious nature of woman. He was now punishing one woman for sullying his own and his family’s honour, and, at the same time, ridding himself of the guilt of not protesting the injustice being done to her. He pressed on, ‘Your refusal of this marriage is a complete deception after you first accepted the arrangement, and made the family take out the loan that we could ill afford. And to top it all, you blame me for not supporting you. You just wanted to play a game, you want flirtation, not marriage. Does that come naturally to a woman?’
Tara joined her hands to beg him to stop, ‘Forgive me. I’ve nothing to say. Don’t mind me. Whatever becomes of me, just let it happen.’
Puri had wrestled the adversary that had dared to defy him to the ground, but his opponent was resisting him by answering him back. He hit again, ‘I still want to know, what was the purpose of discussing this problem with that fellow? What has he to do with this? What can he do about it? Have you no concern for the family honour?’
In self-defence, Tara retreated behind a wall of silence.
Puri said, ‘I want an answer to my question.’
Tara gave none.
He felt in Tara’s silence an insulting defiance and refusal to accept his authority. With his pride stung at one time by two women, the desire to take revenge was raging like a fire in his mind. He had rendered his adversary helpless and mute. Now he wanted to draw blood from the defeated opponent and to hear the cries for mercy, to slash with the sword of vengeance. He chose his words carefully before going on, ‘I know the truth even if you don’t tell me. I’m not lacking in imagination. You both had on your faces an expression of being caught red-handed. I know that you both were eloping.’
Tara jerked round and bashed her head on the corner post of the charpoy, and raised her head to bash it again.
Puri put his arm around her to pull her back, and threw her on the charpoy. She gave a slight moan and lay motionless.
‘What’s happened? What’s happened?’ Bhagwanti cried, as she came running from the kitchen. Puri examined Tara’s face as she lay unconscious. Blood trickled from a gash on her forehead.
His mother asked with alarm in her voice, ‘What’s happened? Did she fall? Hai, my daughter!’ She began to weep seeing the blood.
Puri shouted at her, ‘Stop your howling! I’ll explain what happened. First bring some water in a cup and a piece of clean cloth. The wound isn’t serious.’
His mother tore a strip from an old garment, and carried it in, along with some water in a cup. Then she sat on the floor beside the charpoy and began to cry. Puri again spoke to her sharply, ‘What is the use of crying? I told you it’s only a scratch.’
Puri washed Tara’s forehead with a wet rag, then bandaged her forehead with it. Not much blood was to be seen on her forehead; most of it had seeped into her hair.
Tara was still unconscious. Ratan’s mother came over when she heard Bhagwanti cry, and asked with concern, ‘What’s happened?’
Puri replied, ‘She was talking with me. Said she was going to the roof for a minute. Fell in a faint as she stood up. Must have passed out.’
‘Hai, why didn’t you grab her? Don’t you know she hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday evening? Had a fever too. Anybody can faint in this heat if they haven’t had anything to eat. You boys have no feeling for anybody.’ His mother shed tears as she gently stroked Tara’s hands and feet.
‘I tried grabbing her as she fell. How could I know that she’d just collapse? I’ll ask the doctor to put some ointment on her wound when he returns home. It’ll heal in a couple of days.’
‘I hope it doesn’t leave a scar.’ His mother was worried about her daughter’s looks, even in her grief.
As Tara came round, her mother asked her tenderly, ‘Hai, did you pass out? Why didn’t you call me if you’d no strength to go up to the roof? Come on, hold on to me, I’ll take you upstairs.’
Tara realized that she was supposed to have got up from the charpoy to go to the roof, but had passed out and fallen, injuring her forehead. She accepted the story as true.
What could she say? She was not worried about a scar on her forehead, but the thought of why she had to cut open her forehead sickened her. What else could she have done to silence her brother as he levelled those accusations? Even if his accusations were true, what else could she, a woman, do to save face? He, of course, wasn’t concerned with losing face when he sent a message through her to another woman, Kanak, under the pretence of a casual visit. ‘His, and the family’s honour, would continue to hang in the balance unless I was sacrificed to save it. That’s what he meant by his big talk of fighting for truth, justice and his country, and for the sake of Hindu–Muslim unity! But who cares how I feel or what I want? And if I do say what I want, where could I go? Men can spend the night roaming the streets, or on a bench in a park … And how would I face anyone with this telltale scar on my face showing that I was trying to escape an injustice?’
Meladei had the medicinal herb shilajit in her home for such emergencies. A tiny amount of it was given to Tara in a cupful of warm milk mixed with some ghee.
Puri too was shaken by Tara’s gashing wound. He felt a pang of remorse at being cruel to her. He was at a loss what to do next. Kanak’s face, streaked with tears and showing remorse, swam before his eyes. He went down to the aangan to take a bath. As he lay down after having his meal, thoughts of the previous evening returned to his mind: Such hypocrisy! To disarm and put down others with the threat of harming oneself! What a weird, conceited way of arguing! Doesn’t it amount to suppressing truth and justice by accusing others of violence? … What a cunning use of satyagraha!
