Sumi is the one who has the air of being lost, of having no place in her childhood home. She shows no outward sign of distress, but the girls notice a new habit in her, of touching them, holding their hands, smoothing their hair, as if this physical contact is a manifestation of some intense emotion within her. The first time Aru comes home and finds her mother in the kitchen, she feels as if a weight has been lifted off her. She’s all right, she thinks, she’ll be all right now. But there is a kind of purposeless extravagance about her movements, an exaggeration that is different from her normal vivacity and quickness. When evening comes, she paces up and down in the front yard, the way she had done the day Ramesh had found her there, from the porch to the gate and then back, pivoting on her heel to make each turn in a stylized manner.
And then one day, she decides to learn to ride the scooter. She begins all by herself, until Prasad, the outhouse tenant, comes to help her. Aru is there to aid her the next day, but it is not long before she dispenses with all help and rides it herself, going in circles round the pond, slowly, ready to put her foot down the moment she feels unsure of her balance. Shyam and Shweta, Prasad and Ratna’s children, watch her in fascination, Seema sits dreamily on the steps staring at her mother and Kalyani goes in and out with a nervousness she cannot conceal. The spasmodic sputter of the scooter becomes part of the normal tapestry of sounds and the watchers go back to their usual occupations, except Kalyani who cannot keep away. The next day, Sumi suddenly gathers speed and in a burst of confidence, goes out of the gate.
‘She shouldn’t have done that, she shouldn’t have gone out on the road.’
‘Amma, she isn’t learning to ride the scooter to whiz around in your front yard!’
Nevertheless, Aru is anxious too; she wanders to the gate and waits there until Sumi returns and runs back in after her. Sumi stops and holds both her arms above her head in a triumphant gesture. The scooter rocks, she clutches at the handlebars and Aru, rushing to her, holds her in a hug that steadies her. Kalyani comes out attracted by their voices, their laughter, unware that above, Shripati is watching the mother and daughter, too, the expression on his face almost identical to Kalyani’s.
Three sisters—the very stuff fairy tales are spun out of. Aru must have made the connection even as a child, for there is a story, not apocryphal as family stories often are, of her asking the question: why is the youngest sister always the good and beautiful one? Why can’t the eldest be that?
Aru doesn’t wholly believe the story herself, she is embarrassed by it (secretly pleased, too, as we all are by tales of our childhood exploits). The story has had a footnote added to it later, Charu’s comment: So Aru and I don’t get Prince Charming? And then, a typical Charu retort: Who wants him, anyway! Seema can have him.
But to imagine Seema as Cinderella is impossible. Her hair, her clothes, her very shoes have the gloss of much care and rule out the possibility of any association with rags and cinders. She’s always ‘tip top’, as Kalyani says approvingly. And as for Seema slaving away while her sisters go out dancing—this is an even more impossible thought; it is actually the other way round.
‘Why do you make Seema’s bed, why do you iron her clothes? You’re spoiling her,’ Charu charges her sister. Aru offers excuses that sound lame even to herself. The truth is that she cannot give up the habit of babying Seema which began when Sumi had been ill and unable to look after the new-born baby. The sense of responsibility that began then, when Aru was only six years old, and Gopal brought the baby back from Kalyani who had looked after her until then, seems never to have left her. She is still that girl, her small face anxious and puckered, trying to soothe the baby who never seemed to stop crying.
Even Charu’s protests aginst this coddling of Seema are rare; she, like the rest of the family, accepts the fact that Seema is special, isolated not only by the five-year gap between them but by something else that none of them can spell out. They don’t try to, either; the awareness of this is cloaked in silence.
In any case, the three sisters could never qualify for a Cinderella story, for there are no ugly sisters here. Actually, there is not much resemblance between the sisters; they are not even, as siblings often are, variations on a theme. And they emphasize this dissimilarity by the way they dress, by the length and styling of their hair. Yet they are alike in this, that all three of them just escape beauty. Aru, who has no vanity at all about her looks, thinks of herself as the ugly one in the family. My nose is too big, she thinks, my lips too thin, my forehead too bony. She does not realize that she is at her worst when she is looking into the mirror; her unsmiling face looks severe, her jaw more angular than it really is, her cheekbones prominent. It is when she is relaxed and smiling that her face softens, that it is touched by beauty. But this is the face she never sees. Her sternness, like Charu’s plumpness and Seema’s curious blankness, is the one flaw that mars the picture.
It was Sumi who, after seeing Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, chose the name for her second daughter; but sometimes, watching Aru in one of her rare skittish moods, she feels that Aru is the one who is more like Ray’s heroine, moving suddenly, unexpectedly, from a sombre gravity to a childlike playfulness. Now, these moods are a thing of the past and Aru is wholly steeped in earnestness. She has taken on a great many of the chores at home. It makes sense, in a way, that she leaves Charu free for her studies in this crucial second year of her college. But there is more to it. She wants to be the man of the family, Sumi thinks, when Aru insists on accompanying her mother to the dentist. She wants to take Gopal’s place, she wants to fill the blank Gopal has left in our lives. But Gopal never went to the dentist with me, he didn’t do so many of these things Aru is now doing. And yet his absence has left such a vast emptiness that I can’t find my bearings, there are no markers any more to show me which way I should go.
Perhaps what Aru is trying is to steer her mother and sisters through the stormy passage of change. In this, however, she comes up against Kalyani.
Kalyani’s pattern of housekeeping, a routine carefully built on a foundation of pain, has been disrupted. She finds herself incapable of absorbing four people into her order of things, yet is reluctant to accept help. The result is that the larger issues of treachery and desertion, of grief and anger recede, making way for the minor irritants of food, meal-times and the sharing of chores. Aru finds this heartburning over trivial issues undignified, a kind of comedown. And after Sumi’s housekeeping that allowed them to pitch into anything they wanted to do, she finds Kalyani’s restrictions hard to bear.
Sumi, caught in the practicalities of moving house, has so far stayed aloof from the problem. But listening to Aru’s increasingly irritable responses to Kalyani’s questions one morning, she decides to interfere.
‘Aru should be studying, Sumi, she should be having fun, she shouldn’t be involved with this—this mustard seed of domestic life.’
‘And at your age, you shouldn’t be burdened with us, either. God knows none of us wants it, but there it is, we’re stuck in this situation. So let’s make the best of it.’
‘But, Sumi, I don’t like the idea of a child like Aru slogging.’
‘Aru’s not a child. And listen, Amma, if we’re going to stay here, and who knows how long it’s going to be, you’ll have to learn to take everyone’s help. If you can’t, it’s going to be hard on all of us.’
It’s not a threat, but it seems to frighten Kalyani. Her capitulation is absolute and she endures the occasional forays of the girls into her kitchen in stoic silence. But when Aru comes down with a heavy cold, she can’t help sounding triumphant.
‘I knew it, I knew you were doing too much, look at you now.’
‘It’s only a cold, Amma.’
By evening, Aru has fever, mounting so rapidly that she is lying in a kind of stupor, breathing heavily through her open mouth, her lips cracked and dry. Sumi, sitting by her, can feel the heat emanating from her body.
‘You should have removed her tonsils, I always said it. My father had it done for both Goda and me and ....’