A Burning(21)

“I wish we had a party!” Kalkidi moans. “Don’t we smell so nice?”

“Smell it,” Americandi demands when she sees me. She hands me the bottle. “Pure rose and…and…!” She thinks for a moment. “Some other things. Doesn’t it smell costly? Even Twinkle Khanna wears this perfume.”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, and sniff the air around me. It smells like roses and chemicals. It smells like a disguise. Beneath it, there is sewage and damp and washed clothes hung to dry. There is indigestion and belching and the odor of feet.

For a moment, I wonder how Americandi has the means to buy expensive perfume. Then, of course, I know.

On the floor, I see a thick new mattress. On top, folded, are a soft blanket and clean sheets. Now I hear the crinkle of paper behind me, and turn to see Kalkidi holding a bar of Cadbury chocolate. Americandi holds up a dozen more bars.

    “For the children!” she says, and a mother looks like she will cry.

Her purchases agitate me. I could have bought a few things for myself. Oils and soaps, some cream biscuits to eat. A better mattress, a sheet with polka dots. I could have given most of it to Ma and Ba. Ba’s medicines are not cheap. What have I done?

Late into the night I think about this, regret raising its head like a snake in the bushes. Is one story in a newspaper going to persuade anyone?





LOVELY


ONE MORNING, ON THE way to a blessing ceremony in a nearby village, the boys in front of the tailor’s shop are staring, so I am teasing: “You want to visit my bed, just tell me!”

They are ashamed and giggling at the floor, holding scissors in their hands.

In this life, everybody is knowing how to give me shame. So I am learning how to reflect shame back on them also.

At this pre-marriage party, where we are coming to bless and earn money that way, we are climbing up to a roof where, under one old towel drying on a string, there is an old woman, the bride’s grandma. With her knees folded on the ground, she is pumping air into an old harmonium and playing the keys, which are the color of elephant tusks. The thin gold bangles on her arms are clinking softly as she is pumping and playing, pumping and playing. In the gentle winter sun, in the breeze, I am seeing her as a young woman, learning to play harmonium. The morning is softening for me.

    Then Arjuni Ma is singing, and I am stepping in the center and loosening my shoulders, pinching a bit of sari in my left hand to lift the hem away from the ground, and with my right hand making stars and suns in the air. Arjuni Ma is singing an old romantic classic. I am turning this way and that way, and with my turns my sari is flowing like a stream, catching the light. I am using my eyes to match the expressions in the song, I am really “emoting,” as Mr. Debnath would say. Now my eyes are loving, now they are seducing, now they are looking shyly at the ground, as if Azad is sitting right here too among the women. Since I was telling him to marry a woman, he is not coming to see me even one time. What a mistake! I was thinking I would be feeling noble, but no, I am only feeling sad.

Though this is a private ceremony, some donkey villagers are standing in the doorway, spilling down the stairs, laughing and pointing, taking pictures of me with their mobile phones. What can I be doing? This is my job, to perform.

The bride-to-be is shyly sitting on the ground, looking at the dancing. She is wrapped in a starched yellow sari, and eating peeled cucumber dipped in pink salt.

When I am getting tired of dancing, and sweat is starting to pour down my back, I am bending and taking the bride’s chin in my hands, saying, “God keep this beautiful girl in rice and gold.”

Finally the mother of the bride, who is standing in the doorway, is seeing me admiring the girl’s looks, and she is complaining, “This girl is getting so dark! You tell her, please. She is always riding her bicycle in the hot sun, no umbrella, no nothing.”

    So I am giving the bride a sideways look and saying, “Why, child? Now you put some yogurt and lemon on that face! Look at me, dark and ugly, do you think anybody wants to marry me?”

“Yes!” the girl’s mother is saying. “Are you listening? Listen to her. She is telling you these things from experience. It is for your own good.”

So this is how my job is. You can be making fun of me, but tell me, can you be doing this job?





PT SIR


“MORE ANTI-NATIONAL STATEMENTS HAVE been uncovered,” shouts a reporter standing at the Kolabagan railway station, “after the Your News, Your Views team studied Jivan’s Facebook page. She posted seditious statements, no doubt testing whether—”

PT Sir’s wife picks up the remote and lowers the volume.

“This student of yours!” she complains. “This case will go on forever. You went to the police, you did your part. When did we last do something fun?”

So, after dinner, PT Sir and his wife leave the house and walk to the local video rental shop, a one-room operation called Dinesh Electronics. Inside, before shelves of lightbulbs and wires, the owner sits viewing his own stock, surreptitiously stored on tiny USB sticks, no bigger than half a thumb. These recordings of the newest movies he rents out.

“Try this one, sister,” he suggests to PT Sir’s wife. “Something Happens in My Heart When I See Her! In demand this week, I just got it back from a customer. New actress in it, Rani Sarawagi. And filmed fully in Switzerland!”