Is Sundari Raisinghani Happy?

Sundari left her body at 9:29 pm on Saturday evening. She was asleep one minute, and out of her body the next. She thought there would be more fanfare to the process, but nothing happened. Suddenly she sensed she was out of her body and looking at it. Her grey-black hair was undone, there was no lipstick on her wrinkled lips, she had worn an old, tattered floral nightgown that day of all days, and her nail paint was chipped. She was sure her children would take pictures of her dead body, and she couldn’t believe she wasn’t dressed nicely. This would be their last memory of her. Her friends had made fun of her when she said she wanted to write a note for her daughter-in-law with detailed instructions in case of her sudden death. She had it all thought out.

Dear Beta,

Please change me into my favourite Silsila saree – the one in light pink. It is age appropriate. Please spray No.5 by Chanel. Apply the light pink lipstick that is on my dresser – Satin Pink by Mac. And lastly, if you can manage, please tie my hair in a nice bun, the way I like it. I love you, beta.

Mumma

That chudail Asawari said, ‘At least be modest in death Sundari, be natural’ and now look at what had happened. She would look like an old wobbling woman in her last photos. She wondered if her grandchildren would take selfies with her. It would be nice if they did, but maybe they wouldn’t; perhaps there were inappropriate moments for selfies.

She had thought there would be a rakshas who would come and take her, but thus far, no one had arrived. She just hovered like a helium balloon near the ceiling. She wasn’t able to descend and go closer to her body, nor was she able to ascend and raise the level of her body, nor was she able to ascend beyond altogether. The windows in the room were closed. She wished she had left the tv on, playing her favourite show Zindagi Gulzar Hai.

She liked going to sleep while looking at Fawad Khan’s face. Yes yes, she knew he was Pakistani, but technically so was she. On some nights, she wondered if they could have been together. She was probably forty years older than him but chhado, things can happen in dreams, right? She saw them dancing to ‘Pyaar Hua Ikraar Hua’ just like Raj and Nargis in mausam ki pehli barsaat under the black umbrella, quivering and shivering with love. Okay alright, wipe that look of haw! off your face; old women can lust too. Or maybe, Fawad’s granddad might come to take her. Maybe he would be just as good-looking or perhaps even more than Fawad, like Prithviraj Kapoor was more handsome than Raj Kapoor, and Raj Kapoor was definitely better looking than Rishi. Oh! she had completely forgotten Shashi Kapoor, who was the handsomest of all. Her recitation of the names of the Kapoor men sounded a bit like a prayer. Shouldn’t she be chanting some bhajans? The Kapoor chanting would definitely be her ticket to hell, she thought. Oh, who was she kidding, she wouldn’t mind going to hell if she got a harem of the Kapoor and Khan men picked just for her.

She’d heard that after or around death, at her age, people most often spoke about daughters-in-law, diabetes and death in that order. She normally zoned out when the topic was death. But she had gathered some information – for example, that the person experienced a flashback of their life. Okay perhaps the more accurate source of this information was the movies, but she didn’t mind going over the highlights of her life. She tried to think about all the landmark moments, but she could only see herself in the kitchen making rice. She did make other things like chhole, paranthe, roti but it seemed like she had cooked mounds and mounds of rice across millennia. She thought about the many kilos of rice she had cooked – if she collected all the grains and imagined them in a field – it would be a huge field. She imagined herself standing in this field spread across acres. She was so small against all the rice she had cooked. It was a green and abundant field. The stalks of rice were dancing in the breeze and she thought to take a bit of a nap. She lay down in its murky-muddy waters, sinking deeper in the mud. It felt cosy to be lying down in the cool-dark of the land, she felt as if she was in an in-between place, a border. She could go this way or that. Into the past or into the future. She ran straight to the time when she wasn’t even Sundari, wife of Relumal Raisinghani. To a time, when she was just Malu. And she ran across the street to the store. It was time to take lunch for Dada at Sabnani Kirana.

She loved going in and seeing all the boris of rice. She dropped off the tiffin, took her customary kiss from her grandfather, and made her way to the rice section. She then sank her hand into her favourite kind of rice, basmati tukda. She played with the grains first, made a little tunnel, sinking her hand in. She stood there, eyes closed, hand stuck in the chawal ki bori. She could feel the weight of all the rice around her hand and she could also feel the coolness of the tunnel she’d made, and stayed there a while till Dada said ‘uff Malu bachhe, now go home’. She dipped her head into the rice tunnel and reached their eighth floor apartment, where she was hovering by the ceiling.

Finally, it seemed like there was a welcome party. She perked up to see who might be there. But it was just her son crying near the bed, head down so no one would see him. She could hear him clearly; soft sniffles, the same for the last fifty years. Rajiv hated to cry, he always tried to hold in his tears and his breathing would become laboured. She could recognise that sound anywhere, there was something to the idea that mothers had instincts and all that. She wondered what he was thinking about, but before she could dwell on that she heard someone calling her Dadi and followed the call. It was easy to move towards things when you were essentially vapour. Sundari zooped in the dark to land in a dimly lit room. She could see a hunched figure sitting on a chair at the left, talking on the phone.

‘If you want me to come back, I’ll take the next flight out, Mom.’

‘Really, it’s no big deal, I’ll come. Dadi is gone, I can’t believe it.’

‘Are you sure? Well okay then. I’ll see you soon. Take care, Maa. Love you.’

*

‘My Dadi died.’

‘Umm okay. Shall we head out then?’

‘No, no, it’s okay. She was old. Just give me a minute.’

Sundari shifted her focus from her slightly sad grandson to the bed that took up most of the small room. A girl was sitting there, wearing what seemed like her grandson’s t-shirt and not much else. She wondered what would happen next. She wanted to get a closer look at the girl, but she couldn’t go any closer. Every time she tried, she bounced back. So, she resigned herself to hovering near the ceiling.

Two minutes later, her beloved grandson Bittu, was on the bed and his mouth was on the girl’s. She wondered if this was how kids dealt with grief, but it didn’t seem like that.

Things proceeded too quickly for her to keep up and soon the girl was sitting on him, his hands on her breasts, as she moved up and down, quite gracefully, she noted. She wondered what she would look like to onlookers riding a boy. She tried to focus on the scene in front of her.

The girl was riding hard, Bittu holding on. Together, they looked like the front of a bike. She imagined them growing wheels and riding off on a plain dark road; a motorcycle of hands and feet and breasts, swerving along curves, bouncing on speed breakers.

The bike in front of her seemed to have dismantled and now her grandson had his head between the girl’s legs – she lay with her mouth open, writhing in what Sundari hoped was pleasure. She saw this intimate scene unfold; he was licking her thoroughly, diligently, like a student preparing for an A+ on an examination. Full marks for steps from Miss Kapadia, his eighth-grade math teacher. She wondered where he learned to do that. It was clearly not genetic.

Relumal wasn’t a bad man, she had gotten pretty lucky. But he was also not a very adventurous man. He got excited, did the deed, heaved on her body and slept off. He had never been between her legs like that. His tongue had never reached her petals (that’s what her friends called their parts; it sounded like they were talking about gardening if they were ever caught talking). They could be heard saying ‘My petals have been seeing a drought yaar’ or ‘just get the petals ready for the annual rose sho’ as they sipped gin at their kitty parties and there would be peals of laughter. She wondered what it felt like. Did it tickle? Did it get all wet? It seemed like it felt good from the girl’s face. She felt jealous. She felt jealous of this girl who got to feel like that, who had been touched like that. She wanted to be the one, tits out, legs spread, back arched, eyes closed and feel what she was feeling right now.

She snapped out of that reverie quickly. One, she was dead. Two, he was her grandson. She rested her ghostly eyes and threw her head back.

It was late afternoon; soft light was streaming in through the mosquito net. ‘Aaja Sanam Madhur Chandni Main Hum’ played on the small radio on the bedside table. And right next to it on the bed, Sundari was lying on her side, with a cushion between her legs, moving slowly, like a wave in the sea, up and down, following the music, and then a bit faster. One look at her face made it clear, she loved this song and that she was transported to another world. Light as a feather floating across time over a rice field.

Relumal often said time is a straight line. He could get philosophical after a peg or two. He said that our whole lives are happening at the same time. Childhood to death, we only perceive it in a linear fashion. He rocked on the armchair in the living room into the dead of the night, philosophising to Sundari. She always accompanied him, with a peg of her own. Gin and tonic with a splash of lime. Relu didn’t mind it, in fact, he had introduced her to gin. She remembered it so clearly, that first time, he made her a drink, a few months after their shaadi.

‘aaj mere yaar ki shaadi hai, aaj mere yaar ki shaadi hai.’

‘And relu are you happy? You are going to be sacrificed today.’

A congregation of drunk people – uncles, friends, nephews – all danced around a groom seated on the horse, with a kid in front of him. He had a pagdi, a veil and also a sword. Why a groom needed a sword on his wedding day was a mystery. But there he was on a horse with a sword, riding to get his wife. The whole place had been decorated. The bandwallahs played with abandon and the canopy of glittery strings moved as if dancing. Relu looked a bit tense. She wanted to go close and look at him. But alas. This ghost business was tedious. She couldn’t see anyone’s expressions up close. She just hovered trying to see what was going on and that’s when it hit her. She had zero interest in watching the baraat and she floated to the room in the house from where the maximum noise was emanating.

‘Hai Gudiya. You’re looking so beautiful, Relu is going to become telu when he sees you!’

‘Listen, you know what happens on the first night naa? Don’t forget the almond milk. And let him lift the ghunghat. They all love it – lifting the ghunghat slowly means slowly and then looking into the girl’s eyes. You know I started laughing and then he didn’t want to do anything after that. So, I am warning you. Don’t do start laughing, haan, Mala.’

‘What will your name change to, you think? I hope they pick a nice one. It would be so nice if we could pick our own names. But it also has to do with the pandit and the letter matching with the boy’s name. I’ll send a little prayer for you Mala.’

‘I hope it isn’t a really sad name like Savitri, or worse, Ganga or something. You will always be Malu to me.’

And then she looked at herself, for the last time – Malu, her mother’s favourite child, grandad’s pet, who went and stuck her hand in the rice bori every afternoon like a ritual. Just Malu. She was wearing a bright red saree, a red dupatta with a gold border covering her face. Kajal in her eyes, pink blush fear staining her cheeks, bright red lips quivering. She didn’t know who she would become in a few hours. What would her name be? What would people call her? She didn’t want to leave Malu behind. But she would have to leave her here, in her mother’s home, on this chair where she had spent so many hours, a ghost of her childhood and go off to live in a new home with new people and not even the comfort of responding to her own name.

Sundari didn’t know ghosts could cry, but there she was stuck on the ceiling in a loud pre-wedding room, crying as she watched the commotion, people dressing her up, a gaggle of girls, mother rushing in and out. She couldn’t take it any longer.

She rushed back to her own room. But that wasn’t comforting either, so she went off to the rice field again. There, she lay down in the in-between, trying to make sense of everything. She hadn’t realised how much she missed her old name. For everyone now, she was Sundari Raisinghani, and she had been so for 55 years. But she missed being Malu so much. She missed being Mala. One could say what is in a name? But really what isn’t? Isn’t water given shape by its container and by that logic a person contained in a name?

She remembered the first few days after their shaadi, she had forgotten that she was now called Sundari, and walked on when people called out to her. Her mother-in-law had issued a strict advisory that everyone was to now call her Sundari so that she could get used to it. But she ached to be called Malu. To hear the love in someone’s voice as they took her name. She never thought of herself as sentimental. But how does one not be attached to one’s own self? One’s identity, the name that is a thread to one’s childhood.

It felt like Malu was her true self and she had created Sundari as she went along. Sundari, Relumal’s wife and daughter-in-law of the Raisinghani house, was soft-spoken. She got dressed early every day, wore bright, beautiful colours, she loved saris. She was an elegant lady with a keen sense of fashion, had an interest in cooking, and to some extent, in bridge. It felt like she was play-acting, she could add any hobbies to this picture and make them her own. Perhaps if one thought about it a little, it could even be considered liberating, but it wasn’t. She struggled to make sense of her life in her sasural, and just kept adding little bits and bobs to her personality to fit in. That’s what Sundari felt like, a person who had been cobbled together to suit the needs of others.

She wondered what it might have been like had she been called Malu in her sasural. Would her experience have been different? She’d never know. She sat there in the middle of the rice field, counting the grains, one malu, two malu, three malu, four… she rushed to pick up one Malu from the kirana store, told her to buckle up, they were going on a journey. She picked up another from the wedding night, much to the poor thing’s confusion. The third one was at a theatre watching a movie, staring at Prithviraj Kapoor, wishing her future husband would look like that. Gathering all the Malus, she went off to get some Sundaris.

One was at her evening bridge game and she travelled with a glass of wine in her hand, refusing to leave it behind. The other was at a singing class and the third was taken from the parlour, mid-pedicure.

She gathered them all up and brought them to her room. They were all like apparitions, hovering next to the ceiling, while her dead body was on the bed below. She looked at them, an audience of past selves and asked them an important question, ‘Were you happy living the life you were living?’

They all just looked at each other quite confused. They had seemed to be happy when she had unceremoniously picked them up.

Baby Malu whined, she wanted to go back to her rice bori, and Sundari from her bridge game, stood transfixed, glass of wine in hand and a few cards in the other, confused if these were her new bridge mates. The eldest Sundari of them all asked her question again, ‘Were you happy?’ They all looked at each other, somewhat in recognition. They seemed to know who the others were, had seen versions of them in the mirror and even then, the question seemed confusing. Then one of them spoke up. ‘You picked me up from the screening of a film, I was quite happy. Prithviraj was on screen and I was in the middle of a daydream. Waise, it looks like you were married. Did our husband look like Prithviraj Kapoor?’ Sundari, in her half-done bouffant, stared at the older version of herself thinking about how her hair was not done, and her lipstick could definitely have been a darker shade and then she said, ‘You know Sundari, happiness is momentary. No one can be happy for a whole life, all the time. So the question really is, were you happy?’

Everyone seemed to be at rapt attention after that, wanting to know what the oldest of them all had to say. Sundari stood confused, weighed down by the question. She had thought collecting her earlier selves for a conference may have given her an answer. But what really was the right question?

Why was she still here? Why had Yamdood and his cronies not shown up yet? She had heard younger people talking about how hard falling in love and dating was in their world and this seemed like some warped version of that. She was ready, dead, waiting and no one was showing up to take her to the other side. Maybe there were other dead wanderers she could chat with, ask them what the hitch was?

The Malus and Sundaris seemed to be getting a bit restless, wanting to go back. Mid-pedicure Sundari was the first to drift away and all the others followed. Sundari was alone again, left with her thoughts and her dead body lying on the bed. So, maybe she had been mostly happy. All the versions of her seemed fine from where she had picked them up. She didn’t really have too many grudges, except against Asawari, who had ruined her last day, and Shilpa, who had stolen her favourite masseuse. It wasn’t like she didn’t have fights with Relu, or her mother-in-law hadn’t displayed her fair share of saas type behaviour. It’s just that she had moved on from all that. So, what was the problem?

She decided to stay in her room a little while. She hovered a little bit more, restlessly flitting about the room. She wanted answers. She needed to know what would happen next. She floated around her body, her beloved dressing table and the door. There was some glitch in the system and she couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. How was it that no one had spoken about this in-between phase? She was worried she’d get stuck here as this vapour. She wouldn’t even be able to get dressed. She sat at the window and thought about what she would do, if she got stuck forever.

Maybe she would watch all the neighbours have sex and give them ratings like it was a book review. Vishnu and Radhika, good partnership, both worked hard, 4 stars! Nalini and Vinod, tch tch tch, Vinod really needed to work a little more, 2 stars! That might be fun. Or she might go and help hapless women trying to cook dinner after a long day of work, like ratatouille, but a bhootni version, or she’d just play bhootni bridge with her friends. It didn’t seem all that bad. She was beginning to accept her new situation. It would be somewhat like getting married to Relu, changing her name and getting used to a new world. Maybe she could pick a new bhootni name as well. One name for each of the phases of her life.

Just as she was starting to think about names like Nargis or Kyra, she heard someone call out. Malu, Malu. And it was like her entire being lit up. She felt herself smile. ‘Malu bachhe stop running! Malu, come back here! Maaalluu, Mumma is tired! Maalu, Mumma loves you!’

It was her daughter Monisha, who was calling out to her granddaughter, Malvika, who had just turned three-years-old. Something unknotted when she heard someone call out Malu. After her mother-in-law’s strict directive, no one called out Mala or Malu, and she had slowly got unused to her name. She was transported back to the time at the kirana store when her Dadaji called her Malu bachhe.

Something in Sundari shifted. She felt her non-existent shoulders relax. She hovered near the window and watched Malu run around the room. Holding her dead hand, she said, ‘Oh Mumma, her hands are so soft.’ Monisha picked her up and kissed her on her head, ‘Yes Malu, Mumma had the softest hands, I’ll miss her touching my cheek.’ Sundari closed her eyes and soaked in the sound of the word Malu. Such a small word, but it filled her with all the air she needed. She felt as if she was going back to where she started. She felt herself drifting away, out the window and into the sky. Her body on the bed slowly became a speck. She was drifting in the night sky, the stars looked like specks of rice. All the rice that she had cooked in her life. All the relationships she had held. All the people she had been.