A Breath of Fresh Air Read online

  “Yes,” I managed to say.

  “Anju,” he repeated. “It’s me, Prakash.”

  I didn’t need him to tell me his name, I thought angrily. I wouldn’t forget him. I couldn’t forget him.

  “Prakash,” I said, and cleared my throat unnecessarily. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m posted in Wellington,” he said, his eyes still filled with disbelief.

  The Defense Services Staff College was in Wellington, Ooty, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was posted here. But I was surprised, maybe because in my imagination I had always thought I’d meet him when I was looking like a knockout and my hair was in place in a sophisticated knot. But my hair was not in place, my braid was limp, and strands of dry hair were stubbornly pushing out of the folds I had made in the morning. It had been months since I had dyed my hair, so the white streaks were everywhere. My sari was cotton and lime green and wrinkled, and my blood red shawl clashed with the green. No, I didn’t look like a knockout. I looked like a weary woman at the end of a very long day.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked politely.

  “A month,” he said. “And you?”

  “Oh, I moved to Ooty a few years after . . .” I let my words trail away; he knew what I was talking about.

  We stood in silence for about half a minute, when I said, “I should go, I have had a long day at work and . . .”

  “So . . . you . . . you work?” he asked. “Are you married?”

  “I am a teacher at the Ootacamund School and, yes . . . married,” I said.

  He nodded in response and then I nodded and then we nodded together, avoiding eye contact. We really didn’t have anything to say to each other. All the speeches I had planned and everything I had intended to say were somehow lost in the reality of the situation and the shock of seeing his face again.

  He was in mid-nod when a woman called out to him. He turned automatically and I took a step back.

  “I need your purse,” the woman said.

  She was wearing an impeccable brown silk sari with a long flesh-colored woolen coat. She looked at me and smiled.

  Prakash cleared his throat. “Ah, this is my wife Indira . . . Indu, and this is . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

  I folded my hands and smiled as my adrenaline surged because of the unexpected shock. He had a wife!

  “Namaste, I am Mrs. Sharma,” I said, putting him out of his predicament.

  “Namaste,” his wife said, trying to figure out how her husband would know me. She looked at Prakash quizzically and he blurted a few disjointed words, saying nothing, confusing everything.

  “I knew Prakash a long time ago,” I said easily, enjoying his discomfort.

  “Ah,” his wife said, and we all stood together in uncomfortable silence.

  Unable to stand it any longer, I made my excuses by saying, “I should be going,” before hurrying away.

  I smiled maliciously when I heard his wife’s sharp voice ask, “What does she mean by a long time ago?”

  I walked home briskly, oblivious to my surroundings, to everything except the shock that was still simmering through my blood. Usually Sandeep, my husband, bought vegetables on his scooter, but today he was giving some of his students private tutoring.

  I had always known that sometime, somewhere, I would meet Prakash again. I just hadn’t thought it would be such an anticlimax. I had thought he would be apologetic and guilty for his actions. I had hoped he would be contrite, would apologize right off the bat, and I would wave his apology away. I couldn’t forgive what he had done and it didn’t seem relevant anymore either. It didn’t matter whether he was sorry or not, it was over and done with and we had both moved on. I definitely had, because besides the shock of seeing him, I felt nothing. A mild confusion was traipsing through my brain but there was no bitterness left. Time made apologies and absolution unnecessary. Time didn’t really heal, it just made bad memories distant so that the brain couldn’t recapture the lost pain.

  When I got home, my sister-in-law was waiting for me by the door, with a scowl on her face.

  Komal had been living with us ever since her husband died five years ago. Sandeep had told me she had no place to go and didn’t ask for my permission before he invited her to stay with us. He had consulted with me, but what I had to say was immaterial. Komal really had no place to go.

  We didn’t get along. Our personalities were different and she never forgave me for marrying her brother. But she probably would have had the same problem regardless of which woman Sandeep married. Despite how our relationship was, I couldn’t turn her out of my home and onto the streets. But disliking a sister-in-law and living with her are two completely different things. Komal knew that she was living in my house on sufferance, but that didn’t stop her from trying to treat me like a daughter-in-law living in her husband’s family home.

  “You should have been home an hour earlier,” she bellowed, as soon as I took my Kohlapuri slippers off on the wide veranda. I silently walked into the house and she followed me to the kitchen. I started to pull out the vegetables from the cloth bag and line them up next to the sink.

  “Do you think I am the maid in this house?” she demanded.

  I didn’t respond. I had learned early on that Komal had a knack for asking rhetorical questions.

  “I had to clean up after your son today. He dropped a glass of milk on the floor,” she continued. Amar was not adept at holding heavy things; his fingers sometimes failed him, just like his legs did, and mishaps happened.

  I shucked my shawl off and threw it from the kitchen into the living room, not caring where it fell. I could hear her speak even as I peeked inside Amar’s room and found him sleeping contentedly. I would have to wake him up for dinner, I thought uneasily. I didn’t like to wake him up. While he was asleep, he couldn’t be sick. But he had to eat, even if it meant he had to face the world.

  Komal was still complaining when I got back to the kitchen.

  Didn’t she see that I was trying to ignore her?

  I started rinsing the vegetables and Komal raised her voice to be heard over the running water. It was bad enough that I had to cook dinner after a long day in school; it was worse that she clawed at me as soon as I got home.

  “And why don’t you come home early so that you can take care of Amar? Why do I have to do it all the time?”

  Actually, Komal didn’t have to take care of Amar. Sandeep and I had hired an ayah to take care of him after we moved to Ooty and I had started working. Once Komal moved in with us she said she wanted the job because she didn’t have anything to do all day. Even though I resented having to rely on Komal, I was the first to admit that not hiring an ayah did save us money, something we always needed to do.

  I maintained my silence and pulled out the wooden cutting board and knife.

  “What, you have taken a moun vrat or something?”

  I shook my head. No, I hadn’t taken a vow of silence; I was just too tired to argue with her over something that didn’t need to be argued over.

  “These karela look bad,” she commented on the bitter gourds I had just purchased. “Can’t you go to the market to buy vegetables? It is just a kilometer away. Do you have to go to that cheap supermarket?”

  I took a deep breath and, knife in hand, turned around to face her. “I did go to the market and there is nothing wrong with the supermarket, it is close by and it is cheap. Now if you don’t leave me alone there will be no dinner before Sandeep gets home.”

  Komal knew that tone of voice, but it didn’t mean she listened to it. She glared at me and then sniffed, bringing the edge of her sari to her face. She wiped her cheeks as if there were tears on them and sniffed some more.

  “You talk like this to me because I don’t have a husband.”

  I was in no mood for her emotional dramas. I just wanted to cook dinner and find a place in the house where I could put my feet up and calm down.

  I peeled the coarse green skin of th
e bitter gourds and rubbed turmeric and salt on the white soft skin that lay beneath.

  “You’re making stuffed karela?” Komal demanded.

  No, I was making potato curry! Heavens, couldn’t the woman shut up for just a little while? Did she have to talk all the time? I understood that she was home alone all day and needed to pounce on me as soon as I got home, but understanding only went so far. She was tired of being locked up with Amar all day and I knew she needed the adult contact, but I had been locked up with students and teachers all day, and I needed the silence.

  “I don’t like karela,” she complained. “Why do you make it when I don’t like it?”

  “Because they are in season,” I said, as I made incisions in all the other gourds to put the stuffing in. “And I feel like stuffed karela.”

  “Oh, we have to do everything the Queen feels like doing,” she carped, and I wanted to throw the sharp knife at her. Thankfully I heard the front door open. Sandeep was finally home and Komal would go nag him for a while.

  As soon as Sandeep stepped through the doorway, Komal rushed out of the kitchen. I heard her tell him about the stuffed bitter gourd curry I was making and how she didn’t like it at all.

  Sandeep spoke to her in a low voice. Sandeep always spoke in a low voice, as if what he was saying was so important that one had to pay all the attention one could to hear everything. That was one of the reasons why I had wanted to marry him. He was the calmest person I knew and I hoped it would rub off on me from time to time.

  I abandoned the gourds on the counter and filled a steel bowl with water for Sandeep’s tea. I put the water on the stove and added a spoonful of tea leaves and of sugar along with some milk to it. By the time Sandeep checked on Amar and came to the kitchen, I was pouring hot tea through a sieve into a cup.

  “How was the tutoring class?” I asked, wanting the comfort of aimless conversation.

  “These rich people’s children can be very stupid,” he said wearily, and sat down on the wooden chair I kept in the kitchen for him.

  It was our daily ritual—Sandeep sat and talked to me while I cooked, and he helped with the dishes when I was done. Komal always objected to allowing the man of the house to soil his hands cleaning pots and pans, but Sandeep and I both ignored her. This was our home; we decided how we lived, and Sandeep was definitely not the average Indian male who thought helping his wife in the kitchen was below his dignity.

  “Has Amar been sleeping long?” Sandeep asked as he stretched on the chair, sipping his tea.

  “I don’t know, I just got back. But he seems peaceful,” I said, as I chopped a raw mango for the stuffing. I added a spoonful of turmeric, another spoonful of chili powder, a dash of fenugreek seeds, and some oil to the raw mangoes and mixed them together with my hand. I opened the gourds carefully to put the stuffing inside.

  “Is Komal still at home?” I asked, because I couldn’t hear the television in the drawing room. Komal always turned on the television, which she called her “only true companion.”

  “She left for Mala’s house,” Sandeep said.

  Mala was our neighbor. Her husband was a salesman and he often went out of town. Komal spent most of her evenings and Sundays with Mala when Mala’s husband was away. It was how it worked. Widows and housewives gossiped to pass the time: one to forget she didn’t have a husband and the other to remember she had one even though he was hardly around.

  “Komal’s giving you a hard time, isn’t she?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want him to feel guilty for being a good older brother.

  “It’s just a bad day.” I liberally poured peanut oil on a flat cooking pan, which used to be nonstick a long time ago.

  “Something happened at school?” Sandeep asked.

  I didn’t know what to say, or even if I should say anything. I didn’t like having secrets from Sandeep. He was my husband, but that was a secondary title. He was my friend first. When the oil sizzled, I carefully added three gourds, one after the other, to the frying pan, all the while knowing that Sandeep was waiting for a response. He was attuned to me; he knew something was wrong and I did owe him an explanation.

  “I met Prakash today.”

  The words clashed with the air around us with the same sizzle as the gourds when they were added to the hot oil. I had to jerk my hand away as the oil splattered a little.

  It was not enough of an explanation. One didn’t say something like that without something else bolstering it. It was like serving plain rice without curry for dinner.

  I still couldn’t face Sandeep; I didn’t want to see what he was thinking. Sandeep had never told me how he felt about Prakash, even though I asked him numerous times. I told him what had happened in Bhopal, in my previous marriage, and he had listened sympathetically, but he hadn’t passed judgment on Prakash. That was another thing I loved about Sandeep; he never came to a conclusion without knowing all the facts. He only knew my side of the story, he told me, and even though he was sorry about what happened, he couldn’t think of Prakash as the villain. I remember him telling me that after what I had been through, I had to have the desire to blame someone. He understood that and hoped I would not give in to it. Sometimes life just took painful, unexpected turns and mortals had to accept them.

  “He is posted to the Defense Staff College at Wellington,” I added, as I rolled the gourds in the frying pan with a metal spatula. “I met him at the market . . . with his wife.”

  I didn’t hear Sandeep move, so I was surprised when I felt his hand on my shoulder. He turned me around to look into my eyes. I escaped his gaze, staring at the rim of his brown plastic glasses.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked calmly, as if I owed my turbulent emotions to more than seeing Prakash.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  He smiled and kissed me on the forehead. I think he was about to say something more but there was a noise from our son’s room. Sandeep touched my cheek and left to check on Amar.

  I washed some rice and put it along with some water into the small pressure cooker. I put the cooker on the gas stove and brought out yesterday’s dal from the fridge. I heated it on midflame on the stove and tried to make sense of what I was feeling.

  Sandeep had asked if something was wrong, and something was. I just didn’t know what. It could be several things, I decided. I could be disturbed because Prakash was married, or that he didn’t want to introduce me to his wife, or that Sandeep didn’t seem to be shaken at all by my news.

  There were times when I wished I could say or do something that would rock Sandeep out of his calm stupor. Our lives were not exactly going smoothly—there was our son’s illness, Komal’s constant bickering, and my having to work for money even though I would rather spend time with Amar— yet Sandeep seemed unfazed. As if he were above mortal trauma, as if it didn’t matter that I had seen Prakash again, after fifteen long years.

  Fifteen years! I couldn’t believe that so much time had passed. Prakash seemed unreal, like someone I had met in a dream long gone. But I had seen him again and it didn’t seem like a faraway dream anymore. It was closer to a nightmare, and it was suddenly fresh in my mind.

  All of it. Every torturous detail.

  It was amazing how the past that had become foggy with the passage of time had come into clear focus again because of a small trigger, because I had seen Prakash.

  TWO

  ANJALI

  I stood behind the door of the kitchen and eavesdropped on their conversation. Since I had turned nineteen two years ago, whenever Divya Auntie came home she brought a “maybe” marriage proposal along. She was more interested than my own mother in getting me married. But each time Divya Auntie came with one of her proposals, Mummy listened with eager ears about the boy who would be just perfect for her Anjali.

  I moved away from the door when the boiling tea threatened to spill over onto the stove. I switched off the gas and used metal tongs to pour the tea through a plastic sieve into teacup
s and tried to overhear the conversation in the drawing room.

  “The boy is very good-looking, just like Dev Anand in his black-and-white days.” Divya Auntie sounded excited and I thought Dev Anand in his black-and-white films looked very handsome. Divya Auntie often drew comparisons between prospective husbands and film stars. She was usually way off the mark.

  “He is a captain in the army and you should see him in uniform,” Divya Auntie continued, and my interest was piqued. An army officer! Now that was an interesting match. They looked so good in their olive green uniforms, real men, always saying “madam” and “sir.”

  My mother of course had to find the blemish on the perfect face. “But there is so much travel in the army. One year here and then you have to pack up your life and move. That is so bad for a family . . . though you did a great job with yours.”

  Divya Auntie, an ex–army officer’s wife, snorted as I added sugar to the tea. Three spoons of sugar for Divya Auntie and one for my mother. I stirred slowly so that I wouldn’t miss anything being said in the drawing room about the army officer.

  “When the match is this good you don’t complain about the small things, and there is nothing wrong with moving once in a while,” Divya Auntie said. “Our Anjali is very beautiful, and she should marry a nice boy and the Mehra family has a very good reputation. They are very good people. Their friends told us that the boy doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t have any bad habits. Imagine being in the army and not drinking? A very nice boy.”

  I put the teacups on a steel tray along with a small plate of fresh badam burfi that I had made just that morning.

  “Well, he sounds good, but—”

  “But nothing,” Divya Auntie snapped. “The boy is here on chutti. They don’t get a lot of holidays in the army and he is here now to get married. And I think we should start talking, let them both meet, and he . . . he will just fall for her. She is so beautiful.”

  Since Divya Auntie had for once brought a good proposal for me and said I was beautiful, I refrained from spitting into her tea.