Leela's Book (27 page)

‘That’s ridiculous, how can he think that? I don’t believe you.’

‘You’ve spent too long out of India. This kind of thing happens nowadays. The ruling party funds this sort of project. They pay palaeontologists to prove that horses were indigenous to India – when actually everyone else thinks they were probably brought in with migrating tribes from Central Asia – and fake archaeologists to—’

‘Yes I know,’ she interrupted again. ‘But what’s this got to do with Ash? He isn’t doing that. His project is to do with blindness, and forensics; he’s looking at how disease runs in families.’

‘Ash told me that Sunita’s father was encouraging him to undertake a study to discover the genetic purity of Hindus. That he could secure the funding from Party coffers.’

‘And what did Ash say?’

‘That’s the point, I don’t know. The man is his father-in-law, he’s married his daughter, how blunt do you think Ash is capable of being?’

Bharati laughed. ‘Ash doesn’t need to be blunt,’ she said, ‘he can be
scientific
. Believe me, nobody has any idea what he’s on about when he describes his research. I have no idea and I’m his twin. He could say anything to the man to get him off his back.’ But she didn’t feel as confident as she sounded. She didn’t want to show how hurt she was by Pablo’s insinuation that Ash would get himself involved in his father-in-law’s politics. It was one thing to dispense criticism of one’s twin; another thing to hear him criticised. Pablo, however, wouldn’t stop talking.

‘That’s his university work,’ he said. ‘You ask him about this other idea, see what he says.’

‘Have you asked him about it?’

‘At first. Then we had a disagreement and stopped discussing it.’

Bharati made a sound of disgust. ‘It’s nonsense.’

She lay down and pulled the sheet over her head.

‘The worse thing is,’ he went on, ‘that his father-in-law boasts about this gene project to the Party—’

But she had pulled the sheet tight around her head so that only her face was showing and stuck her fingers in her ears. ‘I can’t listen any more,’ she sang out.

His face broke into a smile. ‘You look like an Afghan lady in a burqa,’ he said, and then he leant down and at last he kissed her, and she was just beginning to feel appeased when he said, ‘I’ve been wondering how he made his money so fast, this Hariprasad, Sunita’s uncle.’

She sighed. ‘And?’

‘There must be something he did to get where he is. His family background is very modest.’

‘Some people just work hard,’ Bharati observed, growing annoyed now with his sanctimonious observations. ‘Rich people aren’t by definition corrupt.’

‘But there’s his brother’s RSS links. I just have a feeling: that it may go beyond the usual shoddy employment practice, the fake account holdings, blah blah blah.’

Bharati shrugged and sat up, pulling the sheet off her head. ‘Give me some more coffee. I really don’t want to think about Sunita’s family.’

What she was thinking was how annoying everything was; how stubborn her father was about her work, how silly Ash was for marrying Sunita. The only good thing right now was that after breakfast, Pablo and she would go back to bed, and forget this nonsense about her brother’s new family and his scientific research.

But Pablo continued to talk, leaning up on one elbow and looking at her; and she understood finally that this was his big drawback as a boyfriend: he talked too much. She was used to being the loquacious one. She was used to stunning her boyfriends with her eloquence and erudition. It was annoying to be upstaged. It was irritating not to be bathed in constant adulation. ‘Remember I said I met his wife Leela in the basti last night?’ Pablo was saying. ‘Well, she was the one who fainted at the wedding. And it happened just after you climbed up onto the stage. I was watching. She took one look at you and fainted—’

‘Maybe she did. I didn’t notice. Probably her blouse was too tight.’

‘So last night I realised something that I’ve been wondering about for a while.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘After I was sent your mother’s poem I began to—’

‘
What
?’ Bharati had sensed that Pablo was holding something back and now she saw why.

‘I was sent your mother’s poem,’ he said in a voice of protest and innocence. ‘The envelope was addressed to me, at the newspaper. I did the research and wrote the story.’

‘Wait. So you slept with me as a subject of research?’

‘No!’ he said.

‘Isn’t there some ethical code preventing journalists from doing that? Shouldn’t I report you?’

Pablo got up from the bed, picking up the two coffee cups and placing them on the tray. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said eventually. ‘I didn’t sleep with you for that.’

‘But you are researching my mother’s poetry?’

‘Yes.’ He regarded her for a moment. Then he said: ‘You
did
read the new poem that was printed in the paper?’

‘No.’ She felt a tiny prick of anxiety in addition to her crossness. ‘My father mentioned it but I haven’t seen it yet.’

She tried to sound nonchalant, but as she watched him walk over to his desk, open a drawer and take out an envelope, she felt queasy. Supposing it
was
one of her mother’s precious poems? And when he handed her the envelope, she felt a sudden resentment against her all-knowing lover, and swivelled round in bed, so that her face was hidden from Pablo as she read. She pulled out the single sheet of creased and folded paper, inscribed in faded ink by a hand she didn’t know.

Book one, a hundred chapters in,

Vyasa tells how his bastard

Birth, his mother’s marriage with a

Brahmin king, and the princes’ death,

Leaves the line without an heir. But

His fish-born mother, resourceful,

Has a plan. She summons her dead

Son’s pretty young widows and says:

Vyasa is here: your husband’s

Hermit brother. Go. Lie with him
.

Do exactly as I say
. And

The two sisters, fearful, obey.

But seeing the seer, hairy and

Naked, in her bed, the first girl

Shuts her eyes in fright. Vyasa

Is displeased:
Due to your error
,

Lady, your baby will be blind
.

His mother sends the second girl.

She, too, turns pallid with disgust.

Again, the seer blames his lover

For the child’s flaws:
And your son

Will be ashen, pale, wan as death
.

The third time, then, the sisters take

Revenge. They dispatch a servant

In their place, dressed in royal robes,

Who caresses and kisses him

And charms him with her ardent moans.

Vyasa, soothed by her pleasure,

Bestows a boon:
Your son will be

The wisest of men
. And Meera

Smiled and said:
Look, my own sister
,

Learn from the fate of these women
.

As we write, defend our children
,

This last poem is our weapon
,

A sisterhood of blood and ink
:

Proof of our collaboration
.

Santiniketan, November 1979

It was strange – a little menacing – the exact culmination of the process she had noted in
The Lalita Series
, of a gradual ceding of the nonchalant aura of youth to something more sinister. Why hadn’t her father showed it to her yesterday? She read it again, and when at last she looked round, she could feel Pablo’s eyes on her. But her mind was too full of the images within it, and of the peculiarity of its discovery, and on top of that of the tenseness of his expectation, to formulate a ready opinion. Casually, she put the poem aside, and leaning forward, fished out a packet of cigarettes from her bag and lit one as she walked over to the door that led onto the terrace. She sat down on a stool by the open door, her bare legs cold after the warmth of the bed.

Pablo was impatient. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

She shrugged. ‘My mother could have been a great poet.’

‘But don’t you think it’s weird?’ he said. ‘The subject matter and the tone?’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Bharati said, ‘I’m the one researching the poetry. Leave it to me, OK? It might be a fake.’

‘I don’t think it is,’ he insisted. ‘Look at those lines about sisterhood and writing.’

‘What about them?’

‘It’s obvious to me that Meera was writing the poems with someone else. She had a collaborator –’

‘Oh,
fuck
off, Pablo,’ Bharati said.

‘– and that her poetic collaborator was her sister—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Bharati said, getting up and stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette in a plantpot on the terrace. She felt furious suddenly with Pablo for making her think about things that were upsetting, and for the evident ease with which he had discovered things she should have known.

He spoke in a rush. ‘One of the senior editors on the paper was at college with your mother in Calcutta. He told me she had an adopted sister—’

‘I know.’

‘You knew?’

‘Of course I did. You think there’s been some conspiracy of silence not to tell us? Don’t be stupid.’ She had known of the sister in her mother’s past ever since she could remember: an orphan brought to Calcutta from the village in a kind of charitable act by her maternal grandfather – that was how her father’s mother, their Dadi, had put it. An orphan given everything a child could want – and who nevertheless turned against the family when she grew up. She had married, moved away, and all contact with her had been lost. Nobody ever spoke of this unfortunate episode in the family’s history. The twins had always understood that silence and respected it. There was no way of tracing her, and no point. Their mother wouldn’t have wanted it.

‘So you’ll also know,’ Pablo said, ‘that there was some falling-out after your mother was married. The sister married and emigrated to America.’

‘And?’

‘And guess what her husband was called?’

He stared at her defiantly but she had no answer.

‘Hari Sharma.’

‘Hari Sharma?’ She couldn’t help the look of surprise and horror on her face.

‘Leela Sharma is your aunt,’ he went on, a look of triumph on his.

‘Right, well, I’ve had enough of this crap,’ Bharati said, shaking her sari out from the heap where she had left it at the bottom of the bed. ‘I haven’t got time to listen to your paranoid rantings.’ She pulled on the blouse and did up the hooks. ‘It’s Ash’s wedding lunch today—’

He interrupted: ‘I’m going to Calcutta, I can’t come to the lunch, there’s a story they want me to—’ but she spoke over him.

‘And I have to go there and be a good sister.’ She stepped into the petticoat, pulled it tight around her waist, and began winding herself into the sari. ‘You know nothing about my family, or my mother, or her poems.’

‘This woman Leela Sharma is your mother’s sister. I asked her about it last night when we met and she didn’t deny it. Think about it, Bharati.’

‘Leave me alone,’ she shouted, and grabbing her bag from the table, marched out of the flat, slamming the door behind her as hard as she could, hoping with this action to instil fear and repentance into the flippant heart of this over-talkative young man who presumed to dictate to her about her mother’s poetic creation and her brother’s scientific activity.

In her house at the other end of Nizamuddin West, Urvashi Ahmed stood in the kitchen feeling giddy with resolutions. She would be a good person, she thought as she took the packet of tea out of the cupboard. She would use this opportunity offered by the dreadful fate of young Aisha, she told herself as she turned on the gas, to do something meaningful with her life – to do something for someone else. She would get to know her husband’s family, she murmured as she took the tea and parathas through to the dining room, where Feroze was sitting and reading his morning paper as usual. She couldn’t say any of this to him, of course. She watched him as he sipped his tea and silently turned the pages. After he left, she prepared a new pan of tea, and fried some more parathas, and took them through to Aisha in the guest room.

When Urvashi pushed open the door, she saw that Aisha was awake, but lying absolutely still in bed. Only the young maid’s eyes moved, following Urvashi as she put the tray down on the table by the window and drew the curtains.
Poor little thing
, Urvashi thought; and then she remembered how she, like Aisha, was alone in this world – abandoned by her parents, her sister, her schoolfriends, with only this frail little maid servant for company.

‘Where is Humayun?’ Aisha asked suddenly, interrupting the dramatic reverie.

‘Humayun?’ Urvashi answered in surprise. ‘But it’s Diwali soon, he must be on leave?’ She looked at her maid’s distraught face. Her responsibility now was to take Aisha’s mind off what had happened to her last night. And so, after Aisha had eaten a little breakfast, Urvashi led her straight upstairs to her bedroom where she threw open the walk-in wardrobe and began pulling out clothes. ‘Take this!’ she exclaimed girlishly, draping Aisha in a pale blue georgette salwar kameez. ‘
Mashallah
,’ she said, enjoying the taste of the Islamic word on her tongue, ‘you look so fancy!’ The suit had been stitched by the Muslim tailor in the market, who, in the weeks just after they moved into the colony, when Feroze was working especially hard, and before the servants were hired, was Urvashi’s only real contact with the outside world. It made her feel lonely just to look at it. ‘Or what about this?’ she said, holding up a burnt-orange raw silk suit with blood-red velvet appliqué work at the cuffs. ‘It comes from that boutique called Nirvana, the one in Greater Kailash N-Block market …’ She looked round. The girl was standing with the blue suit draped lifelessly over one shoulder, her eyes filled with tears.

Urvashi responded with bustling practicality. She led Aisha downstairs again to the guest room, demonstrated how the shower worked, ran a bucket of hot water for her just in case, and then she waited impatiently in the hall, where she checked that the doctor’s prescription was in her handbag, and wondered which chemist to go to, and also how to get there. Apart from the two of them, the house was empty – Feroze, as usual, was at the printing press. Urvashi could have called a taxi. But instead, when Aisha appeared, wearing the new sky-blue clothes, her hair all wet, Urvashi took the car keys out of the bowl on the hall table.