‘Is he all right with you?’ Sudha had asked anxiously when they had gone to visit her and P.K. after their marriage.
‘All right? Do you mean, does he scold me and beat me? No, he doesn’t.’
I was only eighteen then, I could joke about it. But Gopal’s sister did not laugh. She knew him, yes, she did, much better than I did. Or still do.
‘Destiny is just us.’
Gopal’s words come back to Sumi when, clearing up the large cupboard to make room for her things, she comes across the photographs. Deep inside, as if someone has thrust them as far back as possible. Two photographs in an envelope brittle with age. The photographs too, brown with the years, the edges frayed, the corners splitting, the backs slightly gummy to her fingers as if they had been stuck into an album some time earlier.
There are two girls in one picture: Kalyani and Goda, of course, she recognizes them, Kalyani’s arm protectively around Goda’s shoulder. Kalyani, about fourteen or fifteen perhaps, is already wearing a sari, the sari on her child’s body having the effect of a masquerade. A child wearing her mother’s sari for fun. But Kalyani’s face is anxious, the slight suggestion of a squint accentuated, as it always is, by her distress or anxiety.
Goda provides a contrast both in looks and expression. (It’s so hard to remember that Kalyani and Goda are not sisters but the children of a brother and sister, that the lack of resemblance between them invariably comes as a surprise.) Goda, pleasingly plump, is smiling at the camera, obedient perhaps, to the photographer’s command. She is wearing a ‘half-sari’, as the diaphanous veil on her shoulders shows. This, along with her large eyes, her chubby face and the flowers in her hair, gives her the look of a heroine of a South Indian movie of the fifties. She seems docile and agreeable, and though only a child, already good wife-material. It is clear from the picture that she will make some man a good wife, whereas Kalyani ....
It is the other picture that startles Sumi. A classic post-wedding picture, bride and groom formally posed against a dark background, the bride sitting in a chair, the groom by her, a tall table with paper flowers in a vase placed on the other side for symmetry. The bride is wearing a heavy silk, the sari much too heavy for her scrawny girlishness. Her left arm, exposed by the sari’s being held up by a brooch, is childishly thin and the weight of the heavy chain and necklaces she is wearing seems to make her neck droop. She is looking not at the camera, but at someone standing by the photographer, the uncertain look of a child seeking approval—am I doing it right? The man on the other hand is stern, his eyes hooded, arms folded across his chest in the usual ‘manly pose’ demanded by the photographers for such pictures. But the sternness here is not a pose, it is real. And the way he is standing, he gives the impression of being by himself, wholly unaware of the girl sitting by him. His wife.
Husband and wife. Bride and groom. Kalyani and Shripati, my parents. To see them together, even in a picture, gives me an odd, uneasy feeling. It seems wrong somehow, unnatural, even slightly obscene.
‘Destiny is just us.’
Yes, their future is here, it can be seen in this picture, clearly, what is to happen to them, to their marriage. We don’t always need astrologers, palmists or horoscopes to give us a glimpse of our future lives. They lie within us.
Sumi, who has heard Kalyani say ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ for everything, from the milk boiling over to a sudden death, has never been able to take the word seriously. It was something innocuous, a domestic pet, a cat that lay snoozing in your home. Harmless, though there was always the chance that you could trip over it, fall and hurt yourself. But Gopal’s use of the word ‘destiny’ gives it a different colour. A deeper tinge.
‘Destiny is just us, and therefore inescapable, because we can never escape ourselves. Certain actions are inevitable because we are what we are. In a sense, we walk on chalked lines drawn by our own selves.’
Chalked lines? What a strange way of talking about what the living of life is all about, she had thought then. For her, it was a magician’s bag, full of odds and ends. Put your hand in and you never know what you might get hold of: a rabbit, a bird, a string of silk scarves, a chain of ten-rupee notes. Chance, yes, haphazard, yes, that too, but nothing predetermined.
But, she thinks now, I forgot one thing. A magician is an entertainer, and therefore he can’t take the chance of ugly, frightening things coming out of his bag. He has to guard against that hazard. So perhaps Gopal’s theory fits better after all. Destiny is just us.
And yet, if Gopal’s life is shaped by his being what he is, what about us, the girls and me? We are here because of his actions: how does this fit in?
But I have no desire really to pursue these thoughts. Unlike Aru, I know that getting answers to questions will not provide me with any solution. The ‘why’ that all of them are pursuing leaves me cold. I know that they find it impossible to believe that I have not asked him anything. The truth is, I could not have spoken to him that night—no, it was impossible. But even if it had been possible, if I had asked him ‘why’, would I have got an answer I could have made sense of?
‘I could no longer stand in a position of authority before my students.’
This was his explanation for resigning his job! Just like Gopal, I had thought, both irritated and annoyed, to give such an impossibly metaphysical reason for resigning a job. If I’d asked him, ‘why are you leaving me?’, I’d have got just such an answer and what would I do with that?
And yet, she thinks, if I meet Gopal I will ask him one question, just one, the question no one has thought of. What is it, Gopal, I will ask him, that makes a man in this age of acquisition and possession walk out on his family and all that he owns? Because, and I remember this so clearly, it was you who said that we are shaped by the age we live in, by the society we are part of. How then can you, in this age, a part of this society, turn your back on everything in your life? Will you be able to give me an answer to this?
It is now over a month since Gopal left home and Sumi knows one decision has to be taken, and immediately.
‘Vacate the house? You must be joking!’
Aru is incredulous. As long as the house is theirs, they still have a home and the hope that Gopal will return, that they will be able to resume their lives. To give up the house, as Sumi is saying they have to do, is to pronounce the death sentence of that hope. Aru wants to say something that will stop her mother from taking the step, but she has no arguments that can contend against the reality of money; she knows herself that they cannot afford to pay the rent for that house any longer.
But Sumi’s hurry to have done with this has more to it than these financial considerations. With Gopal’s going, it was as if the swift-flowing stream of her being had grown thick and viscous—her movements, her thoughts, her very pulse and heartbeats seemed to have slowed down. It had worried her family, but it has been a necessary physical reaction to her emotional state, as if this slowing down was essential for her survival. Now, like a stunned bird coming back to life, there is a frenzy of movement, a tremendous flurry of activity, a frenetic shaking of feathers. Sumi cannot be still.
On the day they are to move, she is impatient to be gone, to set to work. She frets while Kalyani delays them for breakfast, she paces up and down waiting for Seema to make up her mind about accompanying them, so restless that Kalyani says, ‘you go on, if Seema wants to go, I’ll ask Hrishi or Devi to take her.’
The house, even in this short time of being unoccupied, smells musty. There is a thick film of dust on the floor, on which their footprints show clear and distinct at first. For a moment, as they stand and take it in, what they have to do seems impossible, their silence becomes a cry of despair: we can’t do it. But Sumi allows them no time for melancholy or nostalgia, she sets to work almost immediately and the girls follow. With remarkable swiftness they begin to sort out things, so that when Devaki and Hrishi come to offer their help, old newspapers, bottles and tins have already been set out in the yard.
Watching Sumi and her daughters united in the camaraderie of wordless, rhythmic work, they realize their help