3

A few days later.

The little girl had lain down after dusk. Her Pishima was not at home; it had been over two months now since she had quarrelled with her mother over something or other and gone off in a huff to stay with relatives in a distant village. Her mother’s health had been poor for so long that there had been no one to look after her either. But ever since yesterday, when her mother had entered the birthing-hut, no one had really paid much attention to when she ate or when she slept.

Lying there, the little girl cried for her Pishima until sleep finally came. She cried every night. Then, sometime later in the night, she woke to the sound of voices and saw Kuruni’s mother, the midwife, standing on the kitchen verandah talking; the neighbourhood Nera’s grandmother and a few others were there too. Everyone seemed busy and anxious. The little girl stayed awake for a while, then lay down again.

The wind rustled through the bamboo grove, making a soft, sighing sound. A light was burning in the birthing-hut, and voices were talking inside. Moonlight fell on the verandah, and in the cool breeze she soon drifted off to sleep. Later in the night, a muffled sound, a commotion, disturbed her sleep and she woke again. Her father was coming out of the house and running towards the birthing-hut, calling out anxiously, ‘How is she, Khuri? What’s happened?’ From inside the hut, she heard a strange sound—the sound of her mother’s voice. In the darkness, still half-asleep, she couldn’t understand what was happening and sat there quietly for a while. A strange fear crept over her. Why was Ma making that sound? What had happened to her?

She sat for a little longer, but unable to make sense of it all, she lay back down and in a little while was fast asleep. She didn’t know how much time had passed when the cry of kittens seemed to wake her. She remembered at once: she had hidden the stray cat’s kittens in the broken oven on Pishima’s verandah that afternoon—tiny, fluffy little things, their eyes not yet open. Oh no, she thought, that tomcat has come and eaten all the babies… I knew it.

Still drowsy with sleep, she got up and quickly made her way in the dark to Pishima’s verandah. Reaching into the oven, she felt the kittens sleeping peacefully. There was no sign of the tomcat anywhere. Puzzled, she came back, lay down, and in a little while was asleep again.

But in her dreams, she could still hear the kittens crying somewhere.

The next day, as she was rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Kuruni’s mother, the midwife, said, ‘O Khuki, didn’t you know you got a baby brother last night? Won’t you go see him? Goodness, with all the shouting and commotion last night—where were you? It was such a close call; we’ll have to make an offering of sinni at the pir’s shrine in Kalpur. He truly saved her last night.’

Khuki ran in a flash to the door of the birthing-hut and peeped inside. Her mother was sleeping, lying close to the wall of woven date-palm leaves. A tiny, impossibly small, bright-pink creature, barely bigger than a large glass doll, was lying swaddled in a quilt—it was sleeping too. The gentle smoke from the cow-dung fire made it hard to see clearly. As she stood there watching, the creature opened its eyes and blinked, then waved its impossibly tiny hands and let out a weak, feeble cry. Only then did Khuki understand what she had thought was the mewing of kittens in the night. It was the very same sound—from a distance, you couldn’t tell the difference at all. Suddenly, her heart filled with sorrow, tenderness, and sympathy for this helpless, impossibly small, utterly tiny brother of hers. Because Nera’s grandmother and Kuruni’s mother the midwife forbade it, she couldn’t go into the birthing-hut, however much she wanted to.

Once her mother was out of confinement, Khuki would rock the baby’s little cradle and sing all sorts of rhymes and songs. And as she sang, memories of so many evenings, memories of her Pishima, would come to her, and her eyes would fill with tears. Pishima used to recite so many rhymes just like these! The whole neighbourhood flocked to see the baby. Everyone who saw him said, ‘What a child to light up the house! Look at that hair, that complexion!’ And as they left, they would chatter amongst themselves, ‘Did you see his smile, n’ Di?’

Khuki just wished her Pishima could come and see him once. Everyone else was seeing him, but where had their Pishima gone? Would she never come back? Even as a child, she understood this much: no one in this house, neither her father nor her mother, loved Pishima, and no one would bother to bring her back. During the day, it pained her to look at Pishi’s room; some days the door was left wide open. Bat droppings had accumulated on the verandah. The courtyard was no longer swept as it used to be; here a sheora sapling, there a kochu plant—would Pishima have allowed that? Khuki’s large eyes would fill with tears—how could she ever forget those rhymes, all those stories?

The other day, Hari Palit’s daughter came and told her mother, ‘We saw your old auntie on the path to the ghat, coming from the fields with a water pot and a bundle. She’s gone into the Chakkotti house and is sitting there. Go on, send Dugga. If she takes her by the hand and brings her here, her anger will surely subside now.’

At that very moment, sitting in Hari Palit’s house, the old woman was listening to the neighbourhood women tell the story of Harihar’s new son.

‘O Piti!’

The old woman started and looked up to see Durga, panting as if she had run all the way. The old woman eagerly reached out to grab Durga’s hand, and in the same instant Durga threw herself into the old woman’s lap, a smile on her face but tears in her eyes. Many of the wives and maids gathered in the courtyard also found their eyes wet with tears. Hari Palit’s wife, a woman of years, said, ‘There now, Thakurjhi, she was your daughter in a past life; that same daughter has come back to you.’

When she came home, the old woman laughed and cried her heart out upon seeing the baby. After so long, the moon had risen over their homestead once again.

The old woman would wake in the morning and, filled with great joy, sweep the inner courtyard, clearing away the overgrown weeds. It seemed to Durga that only now was the household running as it should; for so long, it had just felt wrong.

After the midday meal, the old woman would sit behind the back door, in the bamboo grove, and cut switches from the bamboo stalks. There were no other houses on that side, all the way to the river—not that the river was very close, it was about a quarter of a mile away. This whole stretch was just vast mango orchards, dense bamboo groves, and other thickets. While she cut the switches, Durga would come and sit with her, chattering away about this and that. When a small bundle of cut switches had been gathered, Durga would carry it back to the house. As she cut the switches, in the lazy afternoon haze, in the cool shade of the bamboo grove, all sorts of memories would come to the old woman.

Things from such a long, long time ago.

He had come—three times. She remembered it like a dream. Once, he had brought some sweets in a little bundle. Bisweswari was only two years old then. Everyone said, ‘Ola—like a lump of sugar.’ They had dissolved it in a little water from the pot, and she had had a taste too. Then that man arrived—he came and stood near the old guava tree, just as evening fell. He was from her husband’s village, with a letter. There was no one to read the letter, Golok had also died the previous year—she herself took the letter to the dice game at Braja-kaka’s Chandi Mandap. She remembered that day as clearly as if it were today—Na-jethha, Mej-jethha, Braja-kaka, Patit Ray’s brother from the other side of the village, Jadu Ray, and Golok’s brother-in-law, Bhojohari. It was Sej-jethha who read the letter. He had asked in surprise, ‘Who brought this letter, Indir?’ After that, Indir Thakrun had to come home, take off the iron bangle on her wrist and the pair of silver pounche bracelets her parents had given her, the cherished treasures of her youth, wipe the sindur from her brow, and go bathe in the river. It was ages ago—it had all become a dream, and yet it felt like only yesterday!…

She remembered Nibaran—Nibaran, Nibaran! Braja-kaka’s son, Nibaran! A boy of sixteen, what a radiant complexion, what hair! Over there, in the Chandi Mandap, now covered in wild lota vines, in the midst of the bamboo grove—in that room, he had lain on his deathbed with a terrible fever for two or three days. Ah, the boy was constantly begging for water, but Ishan Kabiraj had forbidden it—he was only allowed to suck on a small pouch of fennel seeds. Nibaran died on the fourth night, his lips still murmuring ‘water, water’ moments before his death—yet not a single drop had touched his lips. For five days after her son’s death, no one could make his mother take a drop of water. On the fifth day, her brother-in-law, Ramchand Chakkotti, went to his sister-in-law’s room himself and, with folded hands, said, ‘What will become of me if you leave too? Where will I go in my old age, Ma?’ His elder sister-in-law was from a wealthy, noble family—beautiful as the goddess Jagaddhatri; there was no bride in the region as lovely as she. She would never take even water without first drinking the water that had washed her husband’s feet. She was a grihini of the old school, cooking and feeding her relatives and family before taking a small meal herself in the third quarter of the day. In her charity and in the giving of food, she was Annapurna herself. She loved to cook and feed people. And so her brother-in-law’s words must have touched a tender spot in her heart. She did get up after that and take water, but she did not live long; within a year of her son’s death, she followed him.

‘Give me a little water, Ma—just a little—’

‘You can’t have water, no, baba—the kabiraj-moshay has forbidden it. You mustn’t drink water.’

‘Just a little—one sip, Ma—I beg you…’ From fifty years away, the call of the midday birds drifts on the sighing of the bamboo grove.

The little girl says, ‘Piti, are you falling asleep? Come, let’s go lie down.’

Putting down the da in her hand, the old woman says, ‘Look at that, this blasted sleepiness has got me again. I won’t sleep at this odd hour, Ma.’

‘Let me just finish these. Bring me that big stalk, will you?’