Curse

The lousiest jobs were set aside for me, like making chai for Bebe. She needed chai at the oddest hours, whenever she got one of her headaches, sometimes at one in the afternoon, right in the middle of lunch, when no one else wanted any. I’d make a quick concoction, no fancy adrak-elaichi business, put two Parle-Gs on the side and tiptoe into her room hoping she would be asleep. She claimed the biscuits were not for her, she didn’t take any sugar. They were for ‘them’.

Bebe would never leave the house without a little something in her tote bag for the pigeons or the homeless woman outside the temple, which was a bit ridiculous considering she was something of a destitute herself. She lived in our storeroom, all her belongings stowed in half a shelf in the cupboard – three saris, three blouses, two shawls and a comb. And a little cloth bundle tucked away in a corner, that we were forbidden to touch.

She scraped rice off the bottom of the pan, mixed it with vegetable peels, made little balls of it and left it on the ledge for the birds. She cut pieces of cloth into squares and stitched them together into a sheet. In the summer, she soaked muskmelon seeds until they smelt putrid, like a rat had died in our house. She then sat on the terrace under the scorching sun, separating seeds from the web of slime and laid them to dry. She threw handfuls of them to the monkeys that sat in the shade, watching her. She loved being on the terrace. No matter how strong the heat, she was always cold.

I was scared of the terrace. Years ago, a new-born baby went missing from there. Some afternoons, we heard thumping noises from upstairs. Some said it was the baby, now a grown woman looking to take other children away; Bebe said that was nonsense, the girl just wanted someone to play with. I asked her how she was so sure. She said the girl told her so herself.

She heard things the rest of us didn’t: a lame dog yelping, hungry chicks, dead babies. They gave her headaches, these voices. She’d tell us to lower the volume of the radio long after we had given the radio away. Sonu would sit by her and ask, ‘How can we make them go away?’

‘On days that are too hot, it tries to come off,’ she said. ‘That’s your best chance to catch it and tie it up and hide it.’

I’d wink at Sonu, nod exaggeratedly, make blah-blah movements with my hands but she’d stare back at me, like I was the weird one. Sonu, the suck up, everyone’s pet.

We took Bebe to a different ENT because the first one refused to prescribe her a machine, said her hearing was perfect. Too good, actually. It was rare to see a geriatric with such acute hearing.

To the rest of the world, she was hard of hearing. She wouldn’t hear Ma asking from the next room, if she wanted food. But with me, she would hear my thoughts. My deepest, darkest thoughts. Thoughts I had not even dared to think yet.

On her sixth birthday, Sonu fell sick. Stopped eating or drinking for two days. I had told them not to let her eat that crushed ice lolly. But she’s everyone’s darling, so she’s allowed everything. What else do you expect. Fever so high, the doctor says if it doesn’t break by evening, we will have to hospitalise her. Hearing this, Bebe packs left over rotis and achar and goes to the witch’s mound behind the temple, in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun is spewing fire. When she comes back in the evening, Sonu’s body is covered in sweat and for the first time in thirty-six hours, she asks for something to eat. A rasgulla, specifically. First ice lolly, now rasgulla. Ma asks me to see if there is any left in the fridge. I don’t need to check – there is exactly one left in the fridge, the last piece from her birthday. I know because I’ve had my eye on it since yesterday. The only reason I haven’t had it is because it is the birthday girl’s favourite, and I don’t want Ma to know that I finished it. But I forget that Ma hasn’t slept for two days and is too harried to keep track of what’s in the fridge and what isn’t. I open the fridge, the rasgulla is too big for my mouth but I squeeze it in, sweet, sticky syrup oozes out of my lips, all over my chin and fingers, shout to Ma that there doesn’t seem to be any and offer to make chai with extra milk and sugar, the way Sonu likes it.

The top hinge of Bebe’s door is rusty, creaks when you open it. But if you lift the door from the handle just a little bit, it doesn’t make a peep. Bebe is lying down with her eyes closed. I tiptoe into the room, hoping to deposit the chai and biscuits without waking her. As I place the plate noiselessly and turn back, a cold hand grabs mine. Her grip is strong. And her fingers ice cold.

‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,’ she says with her eyes closed.

I wipe the corners of my mouth with sugary fingers, in case some syrup is still there.

‘You get a curse, you spend the rest of your life trying to stay warm.’

Fear rises up in me. I don’t even bother asking what the hell she’s talking about, I pull my hand free and run out of the room.

‘You can’t feel it now, that’s why I’m telling you. By the time you understand it, your fingers will be too cold to do anything,’ she calls out after me.

I start shivering, and vomit. Eight times. But everyone is so relieved that Sonu’s fever is abating they don’t hear my retching.

*

I see a leper at a red light and look immediately away. Our town is teeming with them. Bebe on the other hand, knows each one by name and shouts for them to come over.

‘What’s the point?’ I ask her. ‘They were here yesterday. They will be here tomorrow. Their need is endless. You think your half-rotis are going to fill their stomachs?’

‘Not giving to those who need it more than you gets you a curse,’ she says leaning over me to hand an over-cooked roti to a boy with a crutch. He is younger than me.

The witch’s mound is a little hillock tucked under trees, trees with red strings tied around the branches, pathetic wishes clinging on with desperate hope. Witches congregate there. Some say the woman whose baby was taken by monkeys lives here, some say it is the baby herself, a grown woman now. Mothers clutch their children’s hands tight and walk faster as they pass here. Bebe, on the other hand, makes the rickshawala stop. She saunters over, leaves a guava and walks back unhurriedly, while we chant the Hanuman Chalisa to ward off the spirits.

Her tote bag is something of a talisman that never runs out of things. Guavas, bananas, puffed rice, always puffed rice. I am convinced there’s some witchery going on here. But when I suggest this to Ma, she looks at me like I’m a piece of burnt roti, not even fit for the crow. She doesn’t believe in poltergeists. Not that they don’t exist, but that they are from another world that doesn’t touch ours. They are here, breathing, eating, bleeding amongst us. Evil doesn’t live on mounds, it lives with us, there’s really no way of telling who is a spirit and who isn’t, no one knows, not even they themselves.

*

Bebe was our grandaunt, Dadaji’s sister. But the way Ma looked after her, you’d think she was her own mother. Gave her a new sari every Diwali, knowing full well that it would end up with the first eunuch Bebe came across on the street. All her whims and fancies were fulfilled, like she was someone important.

‘This is her house,’ Sonu said.

‘Nonsense!’ I said.

Sonu was a year younger than me, but somehow managed to get on everyone’s good side. She could get away saying the damnedest of things while I had to fight for even that which was right. She worked with an accounting firm, had a good head for numbers, and already marriage offers were flowing in faster than the family could say no to, while I was doing a beautician’s course, which basically meant washing buckets of wax strips by hand, sweeping hair off the floor and practicing threading on my knees and thighs till they bled, all for a measly stipend of five hundred rupees which would not even buy a proper make-up kit. I asked Ma-Baba if I could start my own beauty parlour. All I needed was one room.

‘Where are we to get this room from?’ Baba asked.

I tilted my head to the storeroom, where Bebe lay all day, mumbling to her herself.

‘We owe everything to her, none of us would be here if not for her. Greed is a curse.’ Baba stormed off.

Turns out, the baby that disappeared was my aunt. Baba’s sister. Older. She was born with severe jaundice. The midwife shook her head the moment the baby came out. Yellower than turmeric, were her exact words. But Dadaji wouldn’t take no for an answer. He brought a doctor from town. The doctor wasn’t hopeful either. Dadi seemed to get it, but Dadaji dug his heels in and demanded cures. The doctor prescribed Dadi to eat more radish. She did. She did as much as anyone could without hope – she tried to feed the baby, gave her oil massages on the terrace in the sun. The monkeys kept them company. The baby got paler by the hour, lay motionless, barely able to open her eyes.

On the third morning, the oil finished in the middle of the massage and Dadi went down to get some more. When she returned, the baby was gone. They looked all over the terrace, over the ledge, inside the water tank. Dadaji was livid. He brought out his rifle, said he would first shoot all the monkeys and then Dadi. Dadi implored him to leave the monkeys alone, but he wouldn’t listen. He was storming up the stairs when Bebe ran past him and stood between him and his wife.

‘I was the one massaging her,’ she said.

Dadaji choked on his anger, speechless. All he could do was point to Bebe and then point to the door with his rifle.

‘What happened to the baby?’ I ask.

‘The monkeys took her. They spared Dadi and everyone else from having to watch the baby die.’

‘What did they do with her?’

‘Who knows,’ Ma shrugged. ‘When Bebe left, they left too. Dadi was devastated. She had lost her baby and her dearest friend in one day. The day Dadaji passed, she called a rickshaw and told him to take her around town. They rode through all the markets, all the parks. It was evening by the time they found her outside the dargah, shrouded in a blanket, sitting amongst the beggars, sharing her dinner with a waif. She didn’t want to come home, said she had mouths to feed. Dadi implored her, promised her that she could go back to the dargah every day and feed them as much as she liked; only then did she get in the rickshaw, with her tote bag that contained the sum total of all she owned.’

The monkeys returned to the terrace the same day.

Before Dadi died, she made Baba and Ma swear over the peace of her departing soul that they would look after Bebe like a mother. Not content with their word, she got the property transferred to Bebe’s name, to go to Baba only after she passed.

As I saw it, she ingratiated herself and got the house transferred to her name, but my family was too simple to see through the manipulation.

‘She took the blame which wasn’t hers to take. Doesn’t that get her a curse?’ I asked.

Ma looked at me, horrified.

‘Aren’t you all cursed?’

*

Bebe bathed with hot water, even in summer. Heating pots of water on the gas and carrying them to the bathroom first thing in the morning was of course my job, along with wiping the bathroom floor dry. I did, most days. On some days, the sun was nothing short of a geyser and I didn’t bother fetching the water.

It was an old marble floor. We had all slipped on it, many times.

After Bebe slipped and fell in the bathroom, she couldn’t walk up the stairs anymore. She would spend all afternoon outside the kitchen, making mango pickle. She looked feeble but she could split those tight little raw mangoes right through their stones. The monkeys banged the door, wanting to come inside. Sonu would take her thick accounting books and sit on the terrace on evenings when there was a breeze, feeding the monkeys, studying for her tests. She brought back things for Bebe, a perfectly ripe ber, a rusted ring, gifts from upstairs. Why no one else could see through Sonu’s tricks, I never understood.

But then she got an internship and was gone for the whole day, so these tasks fell to me. I was without a job. Temporarily. One of our customers claimed that I burnt her skin while waxing. She was lying, of course, she didn’t even get a proper blister, just some redness and swelling. I was only trying to get through as many clients as quickly as I could, but my boss took the client’s side and asked me to go back to cleaning work. So I left.

It was a particularly hot day. The monkeys were unusually raucous. We heard scraping of something heavy, then a thud. They were trying to uncover the lid of the water tank. It was made of solid cement. Three women like me would not be able to move it.

Bebe sends me up to the terrace with a clay pot of cool water and a handful of peanuts. I open the door a crack, just enough to slide the pot through and throw out the peanuts. I try to get yesterday’s pot back, but it is out of reach, and I will need to open the door wider. This split second of indecision is all it takes for one of the monkeys to see me. She comes over and sits near the door. Her baby follows. The baby tilts the empty pot to see what’s inside and lets it go. The pot rocks on its round bottom. The little monkey pulls it to itself again and lets it go, like it’s a toy. The pot rocks precariously, it is going to break before I can retrieve it. The older monkey puts her hand through the crack, her fist closed. She might hit me. I am scared but now I cannot close the door. Not with her hand inside. Nor can I leave it unbolted and go back downstairs; the whole entourage will come bounding inside. I am stuck here, waiting for the monkey to pull back her hand so that I can bolt the door. She tries to touch me. Something metallic shines through her thin fingers. She looks at me. She sees me, through my eyes, into my soul. That’s when I take off my chappal and slap it hard against the door, startling her, and close the door. If the monkey’s hand gets crushed in the door, it doesn’t make a sound. Not one that I hear anyway.

That afternoon, Bebe asks to be moved out of the store because it smells of radishes. Why? Because the baby, her baby niece, my dead baby aunt, has heartburn, she has been burping all night. Ma and I make a bed for her in the hall and help her lie down. Her arms are cold. Ma turns off the fan and puts a blanket over her.

I place her chai next to her on the floor. She lies absolutely still. Even her chest doesn’t move. For a fleeting moment I wonder if she’s dead, but that thought goes away before I can fully think it. I peep into the store, at the bundle on her shelf. The cloth is cut out from one of her shawls. It looks too small to be property papers. But that has to be it, what else does she have? And she has no business having those. For all that talk about not taking what’s not yours, here she is, squatting in a house that doesn’t belong to her, not letting me have the room that can change my life. Does this not get a curse?

‘It’s not what you think,’ she says, without opening her eyes. I am startled, I tumble out of there, stub my foot against the wall, break my toenail and bleed.

‘Once it gets mixed with air or water, it spreads, no one can stop it.’ Her words catch up with me.

*

She is found floating face down in the water tank.

Sonu comes to wake me. I limp after her to the terrace. Ma-Baba are laying her down on the floor. Water drips from her sari and hair. My first thought is, how did she climb all those stairs. My second thought is, finally the house is Baba’s and now I can get the room. Ma looks at me with disgust, like she’s read my thoughts.

‘Did you say anything to Bebe yesterday?’ she asks me.

I shake my head.

The only way this is possible is if someone carried her upstairs. There are scratches on the banister, on Bebe’s bed, on the door of the storeroom. There’s no other sign, nothing broken, even the bananas on the table are untouched. Did I forget to bolt the door yesterday in my haste?

‘Did the monkeys do this?’ I ask Sonu in a whisper.

‘They wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want them to,’ she says.

I don’t understand. Had Bebe taken her own life?

The lid of the water tank, a slab of solid concrete, is on the floor. I peep inside. There’s something at the bottom, something wrapped in a plastic bag. I fish it out with a stick. Before I can open it, the monkey grabs it and takes it to the edge of the terrace. She unties the plastic bag with a practiced hand. It is the bundle from Bebe’s room. Dry.

They take the body downstairs. Ma lays her down on the floor, bathes her, drapes a fresh sari on her. She asks if I can do Bebe’s hair. I try. But her skin feels warm. I put my finger under her nostrils to check if she’s breathing. Ma shakes her head, tells me to go away, change her bedsheet. Under her pillow, I find a stash of roasted chickpeas. Sonu offers to take it upstairs. Ma makes a bag with her clean saris, blouses, shawls and comb. After they are washed, she will give the bag away. I look around the storeroom. Once we take out the bed and sundry boxes, it will need some work. Mirrors on the wall, one adjustable-reclining chair, a steamer. Ten thousand rupees, give or take.

Half the town turns up at our doorstep to mourn, along with all the beggars and homeless. As we prepare to leave the house, the monkey climbs down and comes straight to me. I freeze in fear. Is she going to pounce at me? Revenge for the other day? Scratch me? She is still holding the knotted cloth. I snatch it from her.

The old woman’s fingers had the strength of a witch. The knots are tight, I almost break a fingernail trying to open one. The tip of my nail turns upwards. Under that one knot, more knots. A chill passes through me. I shudder.

The monkey sits by the body, next to Ma, Baba and Sonu, back curved, mourning like family. They are planning Bebe’s peace prayer, followed by a community lunch, open to all. A separate basket of bananas and guavas for the animals.

I use my other hand and teeth and manage to unravel another knot. I am cold, although the sun is still beating down and the room is filled with people. The monkey taps my shin and opens its palm. On it is a small bracelet, silver with black and white beads, the size of a monkey’s wrist. Or a new-born baby’s. It’s not worth very much.

I switch off the fan. Everyone stares at me, like I’m some kind of witch.