ISSUE 34

‘Where is the picture?’

‘What picture?’

‘That photograph of Mithi Masi that used to hang on this wall.’

Baby, Mamaji and Ma were standing in the Yellow Room. Or what was once the Yellow Room, and was now only a shell of grey concrete. Much smaller than the Yellow Room, with no double bed, no floral bedcover and cushions to match, no cupboard with stickers of cartoons on it, no wall with pen marks made by shaky hands reading Mithi and Mimi, and no picture of Mithi Masi above the headrest. Mamaji had brought Baby and Ma to see the ongoing renovations at Roshanara House. The house where Ma grew up, the house where her family had stayed until they were lured out by the sleeker things their money could buy or were driven out by the ghosts that lived there.

Ma’s family did not always have money. The money came much later, after many years of work and endless dreams. It was hard-earned stuff. The latest project was to renovate the old house, abandoned for nearly ten years now. Mamaji called it a ‘renovation’, but that was a lie. Even ‘reconstruction’ was a conservative description. Replacement was the most apt term; the old Roshanara had been razed to the ground and in its place was a larger space, with electrical fittings to take the load of the newest air conditioners and ceilings high enough to carry chandeliers. It would be prettier, much prettier. Mamaji knew how to get these things done. But still, the missing picture was pricking at Baby. And at the back of her mind she wondered whether it was pricking at Ma too.

‘In the store room, with the other stuff,’ replied Mamaji.

‘And will you put it up again?’

‘Well, this is a guest room Baby. And that is a family picture.’

‘I see.’ Baby turned to scan her mother’s face and was disappointed to find her forehead wrinkle-free. Like nothing was amiss. Like she didn’t care about the picture and the stickers and the signatures. But Baby was getting ahead of herself. Her mother would never protest. The Roshanara girls weren’t raised to make a fuss.

Baby had always known there was a sadness in Mithi Masi. Long before she knew her story, she knew Mithi Masi was sad. And she had no right to that knowledge, for Masi had died two years before Baby was born.

For a long time, Baby’s family had forgotten to mention this to her. She had been around for six full years, and while they told Baby many things about Masi, they forgot to tell her that her Masi was dead. Until then, Baby had thought that she lived someplace faraway and that visits home were difficult for her. So, when the cook told her, one day, about the funeral and how Ma had wept for three months straight, she didn’t believe her. That was when Ma told her, and then corrected her to say ‘passed away’ and not ‘dead’ because ‘dead’ was disrespectful and harsh on the ears.

Baby was certain it was the picture that had tipped her off that Mithi Masi was sad. The one in the Yellow Room, where her Ma and she stayed while Naniji battled a breast tumour across the hall. The Yellow Room was a lonely room. It was quite large, its walls bare save for the scribbled names and that one picture of Mithi Masi. A side profile, with her black hair clipped neatly behind her head and an olive green pallu wrapping her shoulders. She was smiling, in a weird, Mona-Lisa way. And perhaps it was because she never met Baby’s eyes, or the way her smile broke midway, or that her clothes were the colour of dust, but Baby always knew that she was sad.

The air in that room felt damp and heavy and old, and the curtains always drooped low, sweeping the floor every time the loo blew outside the mesh windows they covered. And Ma lay awake in that room every night, flipping her body from side to side. Baby wasn’t sure what kept her up – the tumour or her dead sister’s sad picture.

‘We have increased the size of the bathrooms. There is to be a bathtub as well as a shower area now,’ explained Mamaji as he led the way, hopping over puddles and cement bags and wires.

‘We have reached the stage of tiling as you can see.’

‘Oh, it looks good!’ said Ma, ‘Where are they from these tiles?’

‘Kishangarh.’

‘And what about the flooring in the room? You are going to keep the mosaic pattern, aren’t you?’

‘Oh no. We tried to save the old stones, we really wanted to. But it wasn’t possible. No, we will be using marble for the room.’

‘Oh, okay. Well, marble will make the room very posh, that’s for sure.’

Mamaji nodded in agreement, and then they returned to the hall and sat down beside the cooler. It was forty-five degrees under the sun, and about forty indoors. Baby watched her Mamaji as he leaned back into his chair, wiping his wet forehead with the towel he kept handy, and then gulping down water from an insulated flask before passing it to his sister. He hadn’t always looked this way, Baby thought. He had been much slimmer in the days he lived at Roshanara, his smile much wider, less apologetic, and his eyes had held a secret childishness. How much of himself was buried and lost under the weight he had accumulated over the years?

Ma’s face was still terribly straight. She had plenty of reasons to be upset but never appeared to be so. Baby couldn’t decide if that was bravery or cowardice. The idea of Ma being upset was so extraordinary that the day she came home and fell to her knees, strange sounds coming out of her shuddering form, almost like a dog yelping, Baby felt sure there was something tickling her, making her laugh uncontrollably and roll on the floor. Because Ma didn’t cry. How could she, when she told Baby all the time that crying was for toddlers not grown-ups? How could she cry? She couldn’t, she couldn’t, she couldn’t.

And Papa never came home early from work. But he did on that day. And he said to Baby, Naniji has passed. And Baby asked if passed meant passed away meant dead.

It was Ma who first noticed how silent the hall had grown, and it was she who first broke it. Silences had never agreed with her.

‘Bhai, now that Baby is twenty-three, I am really concerned about her marriage.’

Baby rolled her eyes. ‘Ma, please don’t bring that up again. I am not ready for marriage yet.’

Mamaji laughed, ‘Mimi was already a mother by the time she was your age.’

‘But I haven’t even finished studying yet Mamaji. And I don’t intend to settle down until I am financially independent.’ Baby sucked in a deep, sharp breath and jumped to her feet. She knew if she sat around to the end of this discussion she would say something regrettable.

‘Where are you going?’ called out Mamaji.

‘To the terrace,’ announced Baby.

‘You are too harsh on her,’ Baby heard Mamaji say as she climbed in a sullen march. She didn’t wait to hear Ma’s reply. Her head was hot enough as it was.

*

With her arms folded across her chest, and a deep furrow between her brows, Baby stood in the dusty wind staring at the sun as it sank behind the square edges of the buildings in front of her. This town had grown much in the last ten years. There hadn’t been any buildings around before – the horizon had been in clean view in the distance. A sight to see, really, especially for a child’s eyes. How large the sun looked. How pink the sky.

‘Baby? Is that you?’

Baby turned around and was surprised to see a man standing at the end of the staircase. About her own age and wearing formal clothes, even in the heat.

Baby smiled politely, ‘I am sorry. I don’t recognise you.’

The man smiled back, almost laughed more like. ‘No, you would not. I look very different from when we knew one another. I am Diggy. Gopi Ba the gardener’s son, remember now?’

Baby raised her eyebrows. She remembered Diggy of course. Diggy with his cycle, racing on the road outside. Diggy who imitated Salman Khan and made her laugh. Diggy who climbed trees to pluck the prettiest flowers, much to his father’s irritation. Diggy, her friend. But this was not Diggy. This was a full-grown man in a blazer on a hot summer day, standing with his hands in his pockets, his back upright and proud, and a smile flashing on his face.

Baby fidgeted with her hair nervously. ‘Oh, yes. I think I do remember you,’ she nodded vaguely, ‘We used to play together sometimes.’

He looked disappointed, ‘We played together a lot, actually.’

‘Yes, well, that was a long time ago.’

‘It was. Thirteen years almost? More?’

‘More.’

‘Right. Anyway, I remember you quite clearly.’

‘You have sharp memory then … So, what brings you here today?’

‘Your Mamaji has hired me for an odd job or two.’

‘You work in the construction line?’

‘Yes, you could say that.’

‘Gardening was not for you, huh?’

‘No, no,’ he laughed, ‘not at all.’

For a while neither spoke, and Baby’s attention turned once again towards the view. The road outside the gate, where Diggy and she often raced, had been tarred and named a National Highway and was choked with trucks and buses and cars that roared and grunted and sighed and bellowed. Impatient to reach their next stop, and impatient to leave it and start for the next.

‘Everything has changed, hasn’t it?’

Baby looked at Diggy’s face and sighed, ‘Yes, yes it has.’

For a moment, briefly, their eyes rested on each other’s. A halfway-familiar place. At the age of eight, friendship was a simple thing. But now it mattered that she keep a distance of three feet between them, it mattered he was Gopi Ba’s son – no suit could make her forget it. In fact, it mattered so much that she was frightened.

‘Well, I had better head downstairs,’ she said.

‘I will come with you.’

*

‘Ah! There he is,’ said Mamaji, when Baby and Diggy emerged into the hall where Ma and he were still sitting. ‘Gopi Ba’s boy. You know, little Diggy. A big man now.’

‘Oh! Diggy, yes. You have smartened up, haven’t you? How is your father, boy?’ asked Ma.

‘He died a few years ago. He had cancer.’

‘I am so sorry to hear that. It is a beastly disease!’

‘Diggy here has done us all proud, he has,’ Mamaji stood up and patted Diggy on the back, ‘He is a civil engineer now. Works for the state government these days. And does me a favour once in a while, if he can spare the time.’

‘It’s the least I could do after all your help.’

A second phase of silence swelled the distance between the people in the hall. An older one this time, more powerful. And since nobody knew how to fill it with words, Ma let out a noisy yawn instead and mumbled, ‘Oh this heat is making me so drowsy. Do you know the time, Baby?’

‘It is six o’clock.’

‘And still so hot!’ she clucked her tongue in disbelief, ‘I think I need my cup of tea now. When are we heading back, Bhai?’

‘Umm…’ Mamaji looked at his phone, ‘I was hoping to meet my contractor before leaving. He should be here in about ten minutes. But if you really want tea so much, there is a kiosk nearby. Diggy you wouldn’t mind getting us a few cups, would you?’

‘Not at all, sir,’ replied Diggy.

After pocketing the money Mamaji pulled out of his wallet, Diggy turned towards Baby, ‘Would you like me to bring you a cup too?’

He was looking straight at her, throwing up a challenge. What have you become? How many inches have you grown? And there were many things she thought of saying. Let me go instead. Let me come with you. Don’t, it’s not your place.

The words were there, gathering up at the edges of her lips, when Ma burst out into her first bout of coughs that evening, and Baby’s courage broke. She said in the end, ‘Yes, please. Thank you.’ Because she did want the tea.

Diggy gave her a curt nod. She saw it, and so did he – a wall had sprung out of the earth between them. And then Diggy, the gardener’s son, turned to leave, not looking behind his shoulder even once, his back straight as ever.

*

Baby sat herself by Ma, who was leaning back into her chair with her eyes closed. Mamaji had gone too, saying he needed to supervise the workers in the kitchen, leaving Baby and Ma alone in the hall.

Finally the weather was cooling down, and the hall was growing darker by the minute. Another day gone, thought Baby. And what of it would be remembered? What forgotten? Memory is a devious thing. Too close and a scratch could be a canyon. But in the distance, your eyes catch only what is bright, only that which shines. The little things, the ugly maggots, the specks of dust, are unseen unless gathered up. Memory is a devious thing. Bent, bent again, refurbished, packaged, sold with wrapping paper of tiny pink flowers, smiled at, cried at, lied at. Hidden. Rewritten. Lost.

From her place beside her mother, through the door-less frame, she could see inside the Yellow Room again. With the sun moving downwards at the other end of the house, the room was filled with shadows. And something lonely still wandered inside it.

Baby knew that if Masi would ever come back, she would come back now while they brought her home down upon her head. Crying and screaming to leave her be in her sadness.

That was when Ma started coughing again, lightly at first, and then she couldn’t stop. Louder and louder until Baby feared her lungs would slip out of her chest. She scrambled onto her feet and rushed forward.

‘Ma. Ma! Where is your inhaler? Ma!’

‘In – ’ her breath sounded like whistles, ‘Inside my bag, dear.’

Baby rummaged through her Ma’s large handbag – full of soggy papers and crumpled bills, and empty pouches and pens, until she caught a glimpse of the dull blue bottle and stuffed it into her mother’s mouth.

‘Oh, what a relief,’ said Ma, but her breath was still shaky and her eyes were leaking.

‘You should keep it on you Ma! Not in this old thing. What if I wasn’t here? What would you do then?’

‘Sorry, my dear. It is not so bad usually. The smell of new paint must have triggered it.’

‘Let’s go to the verandah in that case. Get you some fresh air.’

With one hand on Ma’s back, and the other holding her phone as a flashlight to guide them, Baby found the way that led out through the front entrance.

They stood in the porch waiting for Mamaji to finish with his work. The dusk-sky had grown into a decided darkness. Clouds were gathering up, and the stars were not visible this night. Looks like the monsoon will come early, thought Baby. Ma and she had their eyes fixed on the passing traffic. Smoke from the cars, perceptible under the faint glow of streetlamps, swirled around the iron gates of the compound, as though the house were a castle on a cloud.

‘A profound and irreparable loss,’ one of Baby’s great uncles had once said when remembering Mithi Masi. He had been sitting at the dining table of his house, his elbows placed on the table, his aged hands trembling. ‘A stupid and meaningless way to go.’

‘All death is stupid and meaningless,’ his son had replied.

One of the workers came to them with the tea. And Baby wondered where Diggy had gone off to, whether she would ever see him again. Diggy, Gopi Ba’s son.

Soon after Gopi Ba was incapacitated, the front garden had been overridden by weeds. It had never been anything spectacular, the desert soil was much too dry to sustain orchids or jackfruits, but it had been neat. A small lawn and a few Neem trees.

The oldest Neem in the garden, the one Naniji used to call the-hundred-year-old-tree, had been cut down after a rotten branch fell on the neighbour’s cat. Perhaps it was the sensible thing to do, to replace the house too. Perhaps Mamaji had made the right call. Roshanara’s bed-soil needed ploughing, and the dead and broken needed to be buried.

When Baby looked towards her mother again, she saw that her eyes were still watery.

‘Is something wrong, Ma?’

‘What?’ She smiled and shook her head, ‘Nothing at all.’

And then, after half a minute had gone by, she said, quite out of the blue, ‘I wish Bhai had saved the flooring, though. Mosaic work is so difficult to come by these days.’

Baby squeezed her mother’s hand, ‘I know, Ma. I know.’