The waif

"RANI! Get inside at once."

Dida's must be the loudest bellow in the neighbourhood, I thought in my ten-year-old head.

"Come on in and help Phoolmati prepare the chapatis. How do you expect her to roll out so many for the entire household without help?"

I loathed Dida's ear-splitting timbre. I loathed Dida. Period. Yet I had never dared ask why dada wasn't asked to help with the chapatis or other household chores. After all, dada was older.

Damn Daddy! Leaving his family at a time like this.

"Did your father pass away?' Piya had asked with the cruel innocence of children. I had simply shaken my head trying to step away - as discreetly as possible - from the strong mustard oil stench uncoiling from her two mouse-tail plaits.

But Piya was my only friend in that wretched town. The rest of my classmates, mainly boys, would mimic my "Convent-bred" accent and the way I would chew my food with my mouth closed.

"Like a cow chewing cud!" they would laugh.

"Come on in, lazybones. Phoolmati's hands look like sandpaper with all that flour on them, just waiting for madam to saunter in. Hurry up, please!"

I tried slinking into the kitchen as invisibly as I could.

"Wash your hands and feet. And thoroughly please!" There was no escaping my grandmother's chameleon eyes.

"Careful, didi. You will spoil their shape!" Phoolmati, shaping the dough into perfect little moons, had been admiring her handiwork.

"Hurry up the two of you, will you?!" Dida growled.

Damn Daddy! I cursed silently for the thousandth time.

It was Amma, red-eyed and weak with crying, who had made the announcement. It was his choice and we had to support him, she said.

"Renunciation, my food!" Amla aunty had spat the betel leaf she was chewing into the hexagonal tiles of the floor of our house. I found myself edging away as betel drops landed in the vicinity of my newly-bought slippers. Slippers Daddy had bought on my tenth birthday. 

"You might call it renunciation, but we know what it is." One could hear triumph tingling her throat. Everyone knew that Amla aunty was deeply jealous of Amma. Only Amma didn't believe it. Amma had always been good at denial. She had steadfastly maintained that Daddy would return soon. But when she was unable to pay the house rent for the third month in succession the truth had hit her like a blow.

The truth was Dida's house, now Anil mama's, some fourteen hundred miles away from the place dada and I had always known as home.

"But… but… why can't we stay here?" I had stuttered when Amma broke the news. The next morning I ran off to tell Soma, my best friend from school and also my neighbour. Soma, squeezing my hand had said that her parents fought all the time but always made up in the end. Her concern baffled me as the previous day we had quarrelled like cat and dog over, what now seemed, something so trivial that we forgot about it the next day, the way only ten-year-olds can.

My world had changed in a single day. 

Rajiv chacha – that's what Soma called Daddy – would return soon, don't worry. Soma's mother, setting down steaming poha and tea on the dining table, ran her hands over my hair saying I need not worry. I returned from Soma's home smiling and optimistic that evening.

Dida's house – actually a villa - in the heart of the city was a creamy white quadrate hemmed in with gardens and guava orchards. My brother had christened the rather contemplative edifice Twelve Oaks. But the house didn't have a single oak tree, I had protested. It was from a book he had read which was later made into a movie, he said. Dada, the Hollywood buff in the family, had skipped his math tuition to watch Gone with the Wind at the Odeon with his cricket club friends two days before Daddy's departure.

When Daddy had waved his hand from the tonga in his sinuous saffron robes I felt trapped as though by unknown shadows inside a dark room. I had not waved back. 

The journey to my mother's natal home lasted two days.

It was Radha mami who greeted us at the door. Did I just say "greeted"? She had swung open the latch and stood at the door, as though guarding the house against fresh intruders. Then, spotting the disheveled trio at the doorway, she had pivoted in a movement reminiscent of a peacock's graceful strut. Years of training in Indian classical dance had left their imprint on my aunt's gait and figure.

Phoolmati had been ordered to lay out freshly-rolled puris to be eaten with hot potato curry and curd. Lime pickle – dada's favourite - was fetched from the pantry and placed at the centre of the table.

The dining room appeared different from our last visit. The table had been moved to the centre, right beneath the ceiling fan. Amateurish pen and ink sketches executed by Anil mama during his "artistic" phase had exited the walls to be replaced by family photographs. By "family" I mean Rajesh mama's family. My favourite was the one depicting Radha mami with her arm around Sandeep. I was about to ask when he was getting back from boarding school but didn’t.

"Please wash your plates after finishing up. Phoolmati is off for the day. Susheela only comes during the evenings."

Her brusqueness punched my ears.

The strain inside the dining room was stretching like a wire on an obstinate fret.

"Dida!"

My grandmother's reflection on the polished marble acted like a salve. I rushed towards where she was standing.

"Not now, not now please, I haven't had my bath yet." At least she sounded friendlier. Not friendly, just friendlier. "Was the journey satisfactory?" The last was directed towards my mother. 

Everybody maintained a studied silence. Daddy's disappearance would be discussed later in the evening, behind closed doors.

"Rajiv will return of his own accord you wait and see." Dida's voice was sounding strained, a rope gone threadbare. Anil mama, having just returned from the court, looked fresh in his off-white pyjamas and kurta. 

Feeling irrationally angry with the quartet assembled in the living room I opened the room door brushed by guilt.

"When a man leaves it is usually the wife's fault…" I could hear Anil mama slurping over his tea. "I mean, how could you not have seen it coming? Surely…"

The living room door closed on its own.

This was to become routine. Spurted conversations punctuated by silence. And arguments.

The following evening, pushing the door slightly ajar I scampered inside the kitchen, which was not a great distance away from the drawing room.

Of the quartet, Anil mama possessed the loudest voice.

"I have spoken to the Principal of The Pine School. He said he is willing to take Rani from the next term."

I found my snobbish little heart sinking. Phoolmati's brothers went to The Pine High School.

"Are you crying, didi?"

Phoolmati, the same age as I, addressed me as didi or "older sister". 

"The smoke is making me cry," I replied, not altogether untruthfully. Never having rolled out chapatis over a blazing hearth before, I hated every moment of the exercise. 

"But why The Pine High School, Anil?"

"I am sorry Nandini, but I can only afford to send one of your children to a good public school. You know that I had to fall at Mr. Dave's feet for your son's admission to the Boy's High School."

The privileges of being enrolled in a school with English as the medium of instruction far outweighed those of vernacular schools. The British, having departed from the country decades ago, had left behind their imprint of superiority.

Dida's voice was gathering force. "You must realize, Nandu, that Sandeep's boarding school fees have gone up. You should have thought of all this before leaving Rajiv. His college would have given you a decent job, of a library assistant or a clerk maybe, if you had only asked. But practicality was never one of your prime assets."

Her next words had me swallowing invisible tennis balls. "What you don't realize… what nobody of your generation realizes is that the husband is the boss, whether you agree or not. Tell me Nandu, when you were teaching drawing at that school, weren't you required to obey your boss even when you disagreed with him?"

The conversation was short-circuited by Phoolmati's mother Susheela. "Mataji, the flour canister is almost empty. Did you want me to fetch flour from the market?

I was still fluffing chapatis over the mud-baked hearth under Phoolmati's expert guidance when Amma summoned me to the dinner table.

"Have you washed your hands?" Dida bellowed from the dining hall. "And don't forget to serve everyone water before you sit down to eat." I hated her once again.

Dada and Anil mama had finished their dinner by the time Amma served me mine. There was little left of the delicious-smelling mashed pumpkin cooked with fennel and mango powder that I had helped Phoolmati prepare.

"When are we going home, Amma?" My mother looked away as if she hadn't heard. 

Dida woke me at six the next morning by tapping me on my shoulder and announcing in that loud voice I had come to detest. "Get up! I have been up long before you."

Rubbing sleep from my eyes I visualized striking her apple smooth face hard enough to leave an impression of my miniature palm. Daddy always said my hands resembled a monkey's paws.

Damn Daddy!

Flicking the irreverent fantasy like a speck of dust I rushed to the dining table to see Dida cascading piping tea from a clay teapot onto large clay mugs. Her face was set in a mould of censure.

"Knock thrice and no more." She jerked her peppered head towards my aunt's and uncle's bedroom without looking at me. "Also," her booming vocals stunned my ears, "tell your brother to go for a bath if he wants to get to the mela nice and early."

The mela was the fair held during Diwali, the festival of lights.

It was midday by the time the Twelve Oaks' denizens – minus Dida and Anil mama – climbed into the grey Chevrolet with Ramdeen at the wheel before setting off towards the mela on the river bank.

The plush sand felt like silk under my feet. Although the Yamuna was calm and unrippled, a fierce breeze kept tickling my back with its icy nails. Amma flung her huge red stole around me as I climbed into the boat that dada had hailed.

The boatman, a sturdy young man with a large moustache, steered the vessel away from the river bank. Sweating as he pushed the oars against the wind he stopped and let his boat anchor mid-river.

"Look!" He was jabbing a stubby index finger towards the waters licking his humble boat he had named 'Jaan'. We looked. A line appeared to be drawn inside the waters. The dark side was the Yamuna while the light side was, he explained in a voice thick with betel and tobacco, the Ganges. Viewing the holy confluence at such close quarters the little party fell silent.

"This is where," said Radha mami whose long tresses were blowing out with the breeze making her look like the goddess Durga I had seen during the Durga Puja festival, "the three rivers – Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati – meet."

But where was the third river, I asked. "Saraswati has been inundated by the other two, so you can't see her."

I couldn't help admiring her fingers tapering like okra from Dida’s garden as they reached for a pair of sunglasses from the expensive-looking handbag on her lap. She had a rather exquisite name for them- Ray Bans or something. Looking like a film star she appeared unmindful of the heads turning in her direction. She allowed me to look through her exotic sunglasses. The banks and rivers appeared pink and purple. The descending sun made the sand and the trees blush. Suddenly the world appeared beautiful.

The banks were swarming with scantily clothed mendicants, mostly in saffron. Would Daddy be amongst them? I stared at dada inquiringly who refused to meet my gaze. Instead, he steered me towards a stall where a reed-like man in a dirty white dhoti was busy dipping hollowed-out crisp balls in a container filled with sallow water before handing them out to waiting customers. "Here, try these gol-gappas." Dada thrust a crisp perforated ball into my hands. I swallowed the savoury in a delicious sweet-sour crunch but did not dare ask for more.

At the next stall a small and dark woman from a nearby village was selling plastic dolls in pink and blue satin frocks. They were nothing like the ones Daddy would buy for me during Diwali yet the little things in bright dresses held my attention.

"Careful!" exclaimed the stall-owner. "These are delicate pieces. One squash and poof!" she blew into the air ounding her rather ample mouth

I bought a cheap little doll with the two rupees Dida had given me. Hugging my latest buy to myself I refused to let go even after Ramdeen herded us inside the Chevrolet. The rivers and sands turned into little specks as we approached the city.

"What have you decided to call her?" Radha mami laughed as she delicately pushed back a lock behind her right ear. "Your doll, I mean. Have you seen the way she's been clinging to it, Nandini? A little mum already!" I decided to call it Soma, after my best friend from the hometown that seemed to have disappeared from life.

"I have instructed Phoolmati to heat some water for your bath. Don't take forever because she cannot do all the chapatis by herself." Dida barked her summons near the entrance door.

Damn Dida. Damn Daddy!

"Crick!" The sound made me sit up in bed. Exhausted from the day's excursions and evening duties I had spilled onto my bed late that night.

Soma! I held her up against the meagre light sneaking from Dida's bedroom. The mosquitoes chorused about my ears unconcernedly as I sobbed myself to sleep.

When Dida came to wake me in the morning she placed Soma in my hands. "I heard you crying at night and fixed her by blowing into this, see!" She unscrewed a cap underneath the Soma's cheap little headgear.

"Now come and get the tray. Be quick!"

I no longer hated my grandmother.