Kalyana Page 24

  In the box I also found the romance books I had secretly stolen from Manjula. I remember how I would tuck them into Archie comic books and read them in bed. Sometimes my mother would sneak into my room and catch me. “Naughty!” she would cry in Hindi, snatching the book from my hands and scolding me sharply. “Reading adult books. Shameless!” I smiled at this memory.

  Raju’s wife, Yashna, was a large woman who wore long, colorful dresses: solid blue, red, purple, pink. She said little to me, mostly ordering Raju around the house in a high-pitched voice that hurt my ears. “Raju, get me that bowl from the top shelf…Raju? Did you pick up a box of salt from the supermarket?…Raju? Did you go to the bank and deposit the money I gave you this morning?…Raju? Did you do the evening prayers?” When he ignored her because he was watching Indian soap operas on TV or smoking a cigarette on the porch, she would stealthily make her way towards him and punch him hard on the arm. Raju always jumped, taken by surprise. He would squeal, “Aw! That hurts, Yash!” She would punch him again, harder the second time, and sometimes on his back.

  I had to chuckle under my breath. “Raju, I should have been punching your arm all along to prepare you for your fate!” I would say mockingly. Raju didn’t laugh or holler or even give a witty retort; he would just purse his lips and shoot me a glowering look. Poor Raju. The wild one had been tamed.

  His older two sons, Ramesh and Ritesh, were gone from the house most of the time, just as Raju himself had been in his youth. But Rakesh, the youngest one, hovered near me, staring at me with his piercing dark eyes and chatting incessantly: “Aji said that trains fly in the skies in Vancouver, where you’re from. Is that true?” He never waited for my answers. He would shake his head and brush the rumor off swiftly. “I don’t believe it. Trains can’t fly. I think Aji was making up stories again. Huh!”

  I indulged in memories of the past and visions of the present, but most of my time was spent by my mother’s bedside. Like Roni, I held her hand and massaged her feet with coconut oil. Some nights, overwhelmed with loneliness, I crawled beside her and slept on her bed, taking comfort in the steadiness of her breathing and the familiarity of her scent.

  Yet sleep would elude me. Often I lay awake at night, recalling the old stories that my mother had told me. How many tales she had recounted in this same room: stories of our heritage, of our past, and of our families. Yet one detail still puzzled me.

  One night my mother was also wakeful. I felt I must ask the question that was bothering me: “Is it true that the Surgeon-Superintendent smashed a snake on the very decks on which my grandmother was born?”

  “Yes,” she said weakly.

  “And the snake charmer followed his beloved snake into the depths of the sea?”

  Smiling and nodding her head, as though the images flashed across her eyes, she said, “That is why Fiji does not have any snake charmers or snakes. We left him and the snake behind in the sea.”

  She smiled faintly. “Remember how scared you were of snakes,” she murmured.

  Suddenly I no longer felt a desire to question her about the facts. I no longer wanted to hear about the snakes and snake charmers lost at sea. The story I suddenly most wanted to hear again was of Krishna’s birth—the story that soothed me after my nightmares as a child. But she had never finished the tale. “Tell me the ending of that story, Momma. Of Krishna’s birth. Please. I want to hear it.”

  “You remember that?” she asked, surprised.

  “I remember all the stories you told me, Momma.” I held tightly to her hand. It felt so tiny and frail in mine.

  “I can’t tell it the same way I did before. I am too old now. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. What did I have for breakfast today?”

  “The details don’t matter, Momma. I just want to hear that story again. Tell me what you remember. Tell me the ending. Remember? King Kansa, the evil ruler, sentenced his sister and her husband to prison because her eighth child was to bring him death, ending his unfair rule. Remember, Momma? He killed all of Devaki’s seven children in the cold, hard jail cell. And then her eighth child, Krishna, was born. The guards fell asleep. The cell doors miraculously opened, and Yasudev, Krishna’s father, bundled him up and carried him out of the cell and across the raging river. Then the storm brewed in the skies and rain beat down on both, the father and the child…”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. You do remember.” My mother smiled. “And then the five-headed snake emerged from underneath the Yamuna River. It shielded baby Krishna from the stormy weather. The river parted ways, making a pathway for Krishna’s father.”

  She coughed and sighed heavily, then continued: “Yasudev followed the divine light to Yashoda’s village and placed his precious son beside her. He took her newborn baby—a girl—and placed her in the empty basket and headed back across the river to his wife, who was awaiting his return in the jail cell where the guards still slept.”

  My mother breathed heavily. I didn’t want her to stop, but I could not bear to see her suffer. “It’s okay, Momma. If it’s too hard to continue, you don’t have to.”

  “No, no, Kalyana. I have already started the story now. I can’t stop in the middle of it.”

  I let her continue. For I knew well that there was nothing she wanted more than to finish telling her story. And there was nothing that I wanted more than to listen.

  My mother spoke in a small, shaky voice: “He placed the baby girl by his wife’s side. And miraculously, in that moment, the jail cell locked again and the guards awoke. King Kansa got the word that the eighth child, the one that would bring him death, in fact a mere girl, was born. He hurried to the cell.” My mother’s voice sounded raspy. “Devaki pleaded with her brother. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘the baby is not a boy like the divine prophecy promised. It’s a girl, and what harm can a girl bring you?’ Her words did not move King Kansa or change his heart. He snatched the girl from Devaki’s arms and laughed mockingly. In a gruff voice, he said, ‘A girl? A girl is to bring me death?’ He threw the baby against the concrete wall, waiting to see her little body crumble to the floor.”

  Completely absorbed in her tale, I shuddered at the thought of the girl’s head crashing onto the concrete floor, a small body covered in a pool of blood. Chills swept up my spine and I thought of tiny Aditi so many years before.

  But a smirk formed at the corners of my mother’s lips. “She wasn’t any ordinary girl, Kalyana,” she said. “She was a divine being. Effortlessly she rose to the ceiling, engulfed in a stream of light.” My mother was coughing now. “She grew eight arms and carried a different weapon in each of them. She laughed in King Kansa’s face and, in a thunderous voice, she roared like a mighty lioness, ‘Oh Evil King, you are not mightier than the divine power. You will gain nothing by killing me. The one that will destroy you is elsewhere!’ Laughing loudly, she grew wings and, like a bird, she flew away into the skies.”

  I could envision a baby girl, small and mighty, flying away. She left behind her a trail of blinding light.

  My mother sighed again. “King Kansa let Devaki and Yasudev go. And far away, the village of Gokul celebrated Krishna’s birth. Yashoda, not knowing the truth, raised him as her very own son! She’s known to the world as his true mother. For it’s not who gave birth to you that matters, it is who cared for you. It is who loved you.” She looked towards my face and moved a stray hair from my forehead. “Nice story, huh, Kalyana?” she said quietly. “Nice story.” Then she fell asleep.

  Yes, I thought. It was indeed a nice story, and now that I had finally heard the ending, my heart was satisfied.

  When my mother awoke again, she was quiet for a while, and then spoke. “Sorry.”

  I looked at her, confused, still lost in Krishna’s tale.

  “Sorry,” she repeated. “Sorry for what happened to you when you were little. You were so alone. There was so much pain. What a tragedy!” She sighed again. “Kalyana
, I am sorry.”

  I didn’t tell her what exactly I had lost. The first old woman, who no longer blew into our living room from the East like a strong cool breeze; the second old woman, who no longer plunked on our sofa in the middle of the day, creating stories that flowed with the fluidity and clarity of water; the third old woman, who burned hotter than the flames of fire itself no longer roared out passionate songs; and the fourth old woman, the mightiest of all, the mother, the protector, and the guard, disappeared forever from the entrance of our home. It was true. I lost my imagination, my innocence, and my faith that hideous day. The old women had never returned.

  “I felt so much shame.” My mother spoke quietly and slowly.

  “It wasn’t your shame to bear, Momma. Neither was it mine. It was Uncle Baldev’s, it was he who should have—”

  “I couldn’t protect you. Every time I looked at you, it killed me on the inside. I should have been there to protect you. I, of all people…”

  “We can’t always be there to protect our daughters or our sons. We can’t always walk around knowing who cannot be trusted. We can’t know the future or the present. You said that yourself.” I sighed this time, mindful of my own struggle. I had learned that I could not protect Aditi from the falls and scratches of childhood, from the heartbreak and pain of a teen love lost, or from the hardships or trials of the world. I could not protect my mother from the long, slow agony of death. We came into this world to die and to live, to suffer and to rejoice, to smile and to cry. We could not have one without the other. The prince needed his princess and the princess needed her prince. “It wasn’t our fault, Momma. It wasn’t our fault. Don’t you understand?”

  “I am sorry.” Her voice was weak, defeated. “I am sorry.” She coughed loudly. “I should have done something. I should have screamed it from the mountaintops. I should have raged like a storm.” Her breathing became labored. She coughed again. “I wish now that I had had that sort of courage, back then. I wish now.” She sighed, in exhaustion. “World is changing. Thank God for that.” She said this and coughed again, still more harshly.

  “Momma, I love you. Get some rest. You need your strength. Should we call the doctor?”

  “No point in spending money on doctors now. I am at the end of my journey, Kalyana.”

  It hurt me deeply to hear my mother speak in such a way. I did not want this time with her to end. Deeply I regretted the letters I did not write and the years I stayed away. I regretted not sitting with her in the veranda in her old age, drinking chai and taking in the evening glow of the setting sun. I regretted missing my father’s funeral, not offering her my strength.

  My mother drifted in and out of sleep. I sat by her bedside and watched her, holding her small hands. It came to me then that she had never told me stories of her dreams, her hopes, and her desires, and most of all, stories of her own birth. Over the years, it had never occurred to me to ask her.

  Did the thunder howl and the winds screech when she was born? Or did the sun yawn and the rainbow smile? Did she enter the world toes first, head last? Or did she come the usual way, with arms clasped across her bare chest? How many buckets of blood marked this auspicious occasion? Did she come crying like a spoiled brat or cooing like a mighty bird? Did she arrive like a queen, head-first and wearing a crown? Did the four old women blow their trumpets and the angels stamp their feet in the heavens above? In the end, I didn’t know the answers to the questions that mattered. I didn’t know the beginning of the stories I needed the most.

  It was a sunny afternoon when she awoke again. She complained of shooting pains down her left arm and asked me to rub it with Vicks. Then she asked me for a cup of warm water with a lemon wedge in it.

  “Momma, what was the day like when you were born?”

  “Oh, Kalyana, those stories aren’t important.”

  “Yes, they are. I want to know.”

  “I am too old to remember. My memory is gone now.” She kept staring deep into her mug. We listened to the birds chirp outside and the sound of the bees buzzing around the marigold flowers.

  “If you hadn’t gotten married, Momma, and could be anything you wanted to be, what would you have liked to be?”

  “If I had got the chance to complete all my school?” she said weakly, raising her eyes to mine.

  “Yes.”

  She giggled under her breath, then erupted in a coughing fit, spilling the warm water onto the bedcovers. I took the cup from her hands and placed it on the wooden dresser by her bedside. Gently, I rubbed her back.

  “If I could have been anything I wanted to be, I would have liked to be…” She gazed up to the ceiling and smiled. “A news reporter.”

  “A news reporter?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said with absolute certainty. “Yes, I would have liked to be a news reporter, so that I could tell my stories to the world!” She coughed and then turned to me. “But I found joy in being a mother and in being a wife. I have no regrets about that.”

  My mother was a woman. And regardless of the place of her birth, the color of her skin, and her social circumstances, my mother was like the millions of women who had come before her: she buried her dreams, lived for others, and sacrificed for her children. She tried and failed and succeeded and yet suffered the blame and carried the shame for the misdeeds of others. Like the fourth old woman, whom we all called the mother, she hoisted life’s burdens upon her shoulders and stood strong, guarding the entrance. My mother was so much like me.

  She woke up twice after that. Once she mistook me for Manjula, who had telephoned to say that her own ill health prevented her from taking the trip. Mother called me Manjula and told me that we would meet on the other side, where she, a Hindu, would frolic in the heavens, with her head held high and shoulders proud. I asked her if she wanted me to call Manjula. Get her on the phone. My mother didn’t respond, falling back into a daze.

  The second time she awoke, she mumbled that it was Uncle Chatur. That it happened in her mother’s room. It happened every noon hour when her mother went outside to hang the damp clothes. “No, Momma,” I said. “It was Uncle Baldev. Remember, Momma. It happened in the coop, outside. It happened only once, on Manjula’s wedding day. Remember Momma. You didn’t allow it to happen again.”

  My mother insisted, “No, it was Uncle Chatur. And it happened again and again. And then to you, Kalyana.”

  She began shivering and complaining that the air felt cold. For me, too, the world seemed suddenly frozen. Mother and me? Uncle Chatur and Uncle Baldev? Was it just the confused ranting of a dying old woman? Or was it something deeper, long-buried memories surfacing like rubbish floating back onto the shore? I could feel the pulsing of my heart, slow and distant within me. Veins and vessels seemed to knot. My lungs felt tight and my body breathless. Was it true that my mother and I had shared one fate and one story? That both of our roads had journeyed through the same past? Had my mother’s revenge on Uncle Baldev been on behalf of two hurt little girls?

  Mother interrupted my wildly cascading thoughts. “Put more blankets on me, Kalyana. Put more blankets on me. It feels like I am lying in the freezer.” She claimed she saw my father, smiling and swirling in a burst of white light. He looked as dashing as the first time she had seen him: so young, so robust. She reached out her hand into the air and clutched his, smiling. It was late in the afternoon.

  The sun had started to sink in the far sky when my mother gasped her last breath, her hand outstretched as she smiled. And then she lay back for the final time, and in my arms she silently and peacefully fell asleep forever. My calm shattered, and as I closed her eyelids, I burst into a loud scream.

  The members of the funeral procession, led by Raju and me, walked towards the ocean with grave faces and mumbled prayers. The pundit stood in knee-deep water, his white cotton pants soaked, a lota full of floating rose petals in blessed water in his left hand and sand
alwood incense in his right. He chanted the usual Sanskrit verses, awakening the spirit guides and asking in prayer that they might gently lead my mother’s humble soul to the other side. My brother, his head newly shaved bald, stood holding my mother’s remains. Ashes and bones, but somewhere the spirit of my mother must still live, hovering above ships, floating over valleys, swinging upon trees.

  As the pundit’s chants and the relatives’ weeping buzzed through the air, I receded to a warm, quiet place in my mind. Kalyana: it was my mother who had given me my name, the meaning of which, she had said, carried the weight of the universe. Blissful. Beautiful. Blessed. The auspicious one. Yet in the end, it was not without suffering. It was not spared pain. Sumitri. What did my mother’s name mean? I had never remembered to ask her. Did her own mother gift her that, too? There were so many unanswered questions. And so many questions gone unasked.

  My heart paused for a moment when I saw Raju’s head dunk under the waves and my mother’s ashes spill into the water. Sumitri Mani Seth had become one with the mighty Pacific. Raju dipped his head under the water three times, as the pundit chanted prayers. I stood tearless as I watched her remains be carried away with each rise and fall of the ocean waves. My mother, my protector, my guide; her ashes changed shape and took the form of a five-headed snake.