Someone Else’s Garden. Dipika Rai

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СКАЧАТЬ towards Mamta, pulling the inalienable rules from under the banyan tree into the room. ‘You listen to your man, you hear.’ Next he attacks the mother: ‘What will her husband think? That we’ve sent him someone vain and lazy and old?’

      ‘Namaste. Namaste.’

      Seeta Ram rushes out when he hears his son’s voice greet the guests.

      Lata Bai pulls the pallav low over Mamta’s head, covering her whole face and neck. ‘Don’t worry, people have been getting married for thousands of years, it will be fine. Just don’t run away,’ she says half joking, bending beneath Mamta’s veil to smile into her daughter’s eyes.

      The women stay indoors. It’s men’s business outside. Mamta’s dowry is piled up on the family’s hay mattress in the centre of the newly flattened courtyard. The dishes reflect a lusty sunset.

      She hears her father say, ‘Come, come, my friends,’ hesitating at the word friends, and shouting loudly, ‘Lata, tea!’ with singular authority.

      ‘They’ve come,’ whispers her mother under her breath, as if it’s a huge surprise that anyone’s turned up at all to partake in her careful preparations. She carries the tea out in tin mugs that the widow Kamla kindly lent her. Her husband doesn’t introduce her and once the hands have grabbed the mugs, she retires inside to be with her daughters.

      ‘There are four of them. Your husband looks very handsome in his turban. Mamta, you are a lucky girl,’ she says, pulling her daughter towards her. In actual fact, she didn’t look up from serving the tea so she doesn’t know what the groom looks like. Not that she could have seen his face anyway beneath the curtain of slightly bruised jasmine garlands that hung down from his forehead to chin like so many plumb lines. She hopes her lie will ease the pain of separation. Mamta has started to sweat and quiver. Finally the almost-twenty-year-old realises that she might never see her mother and siblings again. Up till now, the wedding has been a game.

      ‘What’s keeping that damn priest? I gave him the advance he asked for.’ She would never have dared to say this about some other priest, but Pundit Jasraj-feeler-up-of-brides-to-be is undeserving of her reverence. Her mother’s fretting fuels Mamta’s agitation.

      Finally Prem brings the message Mamta dreads: ‘The priest is here.’ She hugs her favourite brother for a long time. His presence comforts her.

      ‘I . . . I . . .’

      ‘I’ll be there, don’t worry,’ he says. She pulls up her veil and looks into her brother’s eyes, still filled with childlike luminescence. Prem, the boy she looked after when she was only five years old. He would always stop crying for her, and she took him on her hip wherever she went. But today, it is he who is the stronger, easing her nervousness.

      Just three steps to a new life, through the door of her hut. Mamta puts one foot in front of the other. She stops in front of the door. Lata Bai kicks it open and pulls her daughter through by her arm. It’s as awkward as being born. The two women pull in different directions. The mother wins. Did the mother pull her daughter through on the day of her birth as well?

      Lata Bai pushes Sneha back. ‘Stay here, don’t you go outside, and look after Shanti. Give her some water if she cries.’ She wants no comparisons made between the two sisters, one young enough to make the other look even older than she is.

      Just out of the door, Mamta hears an engine running at full capacity. She feels the dusty breeze on her face and up her nose before the engine stops with an angry cat screech. She stands forgotten, all eyes except hers are on the jeep. Hers stay looking on the ground.

      ‘Not too late, I hope. Not too late.’

      ‘Sahib, you are our mother and father, how can you ever be too late. We would repeat the wedding for you. You grace our home with your presence. The gods have smiled on us today,’ there is a cringing awe in her father’s voice.

      For Ram Singh, coming or not was a matter of casual choice, but for Seeta Ram and his family, Ram Singh’s appearance is nothing short of a miracle. This is the classic social seesaw that isn’t going anywhere. Ram Singh is so far above Mamta’s family that he has no conscious notion of what impact his attendance at the wedding makes. The stage set is instantly different, the players are totally reshuffled, someone new now has top billing.

      Brown sandals alight from the jeep. They are adorned with large decorative shiny brass buckles. The sandals are followed by oversized sturdy black leather shoes, with an air hole for the big toe to breathe. Ram Singh doesn’t go anywhere without Babulal his bodyguard. Mamta can see her father’s blue rubber Hawaii slippers walk up to the brown sandals. The buckles flash decisively in the fading light. The buckled sandals make her nervous. She can see her father’s feet fidget. Just like a new bride, she thinks, and almost giggles.

      ‘You’ve done well. I can see that you haven’t wasted your loan.’ At the sound of the word loan, her father’s Hawaii slippers do a small dance. Her mother’s bare feet walk to the dancing slippers. The slippers are still.

      ‘Tea, please.’ Her father’s voice is pleading.

      There are four more sets of matching new shoes, the smart polished city kind, with laces. The kind her father loves and will for sure envy. Mamta doesn’t know it, but her dowry has paid for them all. The laced shoes fill her with pride. Her new in-laws have taken the time to dress well. Just like Guru Dutt in Pyaasa, she thinks. The four pairs are in a circle. A cloud of murmured conversation rises like smoke from the huddle.

      ‘Meet our new in-laws.’

      The shoes fan out to form a straight line so the buckled sandals can make the acquaintance of their owners face to face.

      ‘Namaste.’

      ‘Namaste.’

      ‘From where?’

      ‘Barigaon.’

      ‘Ah, Barigaon, do you know Rattan Das? He’s a family friend.’

      ‘Not our zamindar, Rattan Das?’

      ‘Yes, exactly.’

      The buckles have successfully set the stage for conquest. Suddenly the owners of the city shoes realise who Ram Singh is. It’s the turn of the city shoes to dance.

      ‘Please, sit. Come, come, why are we standing round?’ The shoes squash together on the rope charpoy, jostling to get a place next to the buckles. They sit, leaving a wide gap on either side of them. Mamta can see more of the men now. She can see the hems of the dhotis, hanging limp above the shoes.

      ‘My daughter, the bride,’ Seeta Ram introduces Mamta from a distance like he might the Red Ruins to a visitor. Mamta’s blouse is wet with sweat. First she was hot, now the wetness has left her cold, a little later, she will be shivering. Her mother stands next to her.

      Sneha is still in the house, all decked up with no one to look at her. Her sister almost married, she is dreaming her own dreams. She peeks outside, rocking Shanti violently. She hopes to see one suitable face she can place in her daydream, but all the men seem too old to her. Guru Dutt has raided her thoughts too, and one of Lala Ram’s boys. She let him feel her up behind the temple last week. She thinks Pundit Jasraj might have seen them. She wasn’t careful. The searing hot blood in her veins and liquid feeling between her thighs had made her crazy.

      Lata СКАЧАТЬ