Home? What home?
She puts her scooter away, has a wash and changes without anyone noticing her, for which she is grateful. She does not want to talk to anyone about what has happened. She is glad she has not spoken to any of them about her visit, not even to Charu.
Charu senses something, nevertheless. Covertly she watches her sister getting ready for bed, the pillow set straight, the blanket unfolded, spread carefully in a wrinkle-free smoothness with a fold at the top, her slippers placed on the floor, side by side ....
‘What are you staring at me for?’
Charu flushes guiltily, begins to say something, changes her mind and asks, ‘Going to bed so early?’
‘Yes.’
Charu does not react to the challenge in that single-word reply.
As Aru lies down, settling her head on the pillow, and pulls her blanket over herself, they hear Sumi call out, ‘Aru.’
Aru closes her eyes as if shutting out the sound.
‘A R U?’
‘Damn!’ She sits up with an angry jerk.
‘I’ll go,’ Charu offers.
She returns to find her sister in the same position, the ‘damn’ expression intact on her face.
‘What was it?’
‘Nothing, really. Just some vague thing—you know how she is.’ Charu yawns loudly, showing her tongue quivering in the cavern of her open mouth. ‘God, I wish I could go to sleep and wake up late tomorrow morning. Oh well ....’
She has picked up her book and, with a weary sigh, is going back to her page when she is startled by Aru’s voice.
‘Why do you call her “she”?’
‘What?’
‘Why do you call Sumi “she”?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t you say Sumi, or Ma, or anything else ... why do you say “she”?’
‘Hey, cool it, Aru, what’s with you?’
‘Just because Papa has left her, it doesn’t give you the right to be rude to her, it doesn’t mean she’s worthless ....’
‘Have you gone crazy?’
‘You ... think you can insult her ....’
‘Shut up, Aru, just shut up, will you!’
Charu, too astonished even to be angry, sees that her sister is in a cold fury, she doesn’t seem to be able to stop.
‘You’re showing your contempt for her when you say “she”. Why,’ and the question is propelled out of her with the force of a bullet, ‘why do you call her “she”, tell me that.’
‘Oh, shut up, I don’t want to talk to you when you’re in this—this—this state.’
There is silence after that. Charu, tapping her teeth with her pencil, picks up her book and turns her back resolutely on her sister. But the page is a blur, she can’t read a word. It is a relief when Aru speaks in a more normal tone.
‘Well, say it, go on, say it.’
Charu looks at her. Aru’s body no longer has the tense look of a tightly wound spring.
‘You saw Papa today, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s no use, it’s no use talking to him, I could have told you that. Listen to me, Aru, let’s not get involved in their hassles, let’s get on with our lives. All these things are not important.’
‘Not important? Charu, you—you frighten me. They are our parents, it’s our home and you say these things are not important!’
‘They’re important if you let them be. I won’t. They can’t mess up my life. I’m going on with what I want to do.’
‘Five and a half years of medical college before you can start earning—where’s the money to come from?’
‘I’ve asked Premi-mavshi. Or rather, she asked me if she could help and of course I said yes. I’m not proud. As long as I can complete my studies, I don’t care where the money comes from. I’m not like you and Ma. Make a note of that, I said Ma—not “she”.’
Charu is grinning, her usual impish grin, but Aru does not respond. She is silent.
‘You all right, Aru?’ Charu asks hesitantly when the silence stretches between them.
‘Fine. You go back to work. You’re right, you just go on with your life, don’t bother with all these things.’
Charu does not notice the emphasis on the ‘you’. She is too relieved to have her sister back to her usual self. It seems as if they have returned to the normal level of their intimacy, but the sisters are conscious nevertheless, of a wedge-shaped shadow that has come between them.
Sumi has become aware of this, too. She sees that despite the girls having resumed, on the surface at least, the normal course of their lives, something has changed. They have withdrawn into themselves, each pursuing her own activity, interacting minimally with each other. Even the occasional bickering—over Charu’s untidiness, Aru’s obsessive orderliness, Seema’s dependence—has ceased.
The three girls have changed in themselves, too. Aru’s reserve has turned into a secretiveness. She goes out a great deal, more than she did before, and it is obvious that this has nothing to do with college or her studies. In fact, she has resigned from the Student’s Council, something she had taken very seriously until now. Charu has become wholly single-minded and dogged, the intensity of her pursuit of a seat in a medical college frightening. Nothing else seems to exist for her, apart from her college, her evening classes and her books when she is at home. And though Seema, belying Sumi’s fears, looks the most untouched, she keeps aloof from her mother and sisters, following Kalyani about, even holding her sari-end, as if she is reverting to that early infancy she can’t possibly remember. It makes Sumi uneasy.
There’s something else, too. Sumi has an odd feeling that the house is accepting them, like it did Kalyani and her daughters all those years back, making them part of itself. Sumi sees her daughters unconsciously, unknowingly, lowering their voices to the exact decibel required to keep them from being heard by their grandfather upstairs. And she thinks: I don’t want my daughters to live with a hand clasped over their mouths, like Premi and I had to. And I don’t want my daughters to live in a house where—where—but she can’t pinpoint this until Hrishi spells it out for her.
Hrishi, who is in the same class as Charu, is now a daily visitor, picking her up for their special evening class and dropping her home after it. It is when Charu makes one of her usual jokes against him that Hrishi retorts, ‘You know what you are? You’re a clown. A female clown,’ he adds.
‘Why female clown?’
‘Clowns are always males, silly.’
The girls begin to laugh at that, laughter that becomes uncontrollable at the dawning look of realization on Hrishi’s face. Unnerved finally by their laughter—even Seema has joined in—he says, ‘Tchah!’ flapping his hands as if driving away a smell. ‘Too many females here. It’s like a zenana.’
And to Sumi, Hrishi’s words echo something Gopal had said once—reluctantly, and only in response to her urging, her goading, rather—in explanation of his increasing silences, his withdrawal from them.
‘It’s