Pink Flowers

The fat one has come back and my Didi’s face grows pale as ash. Why does she come again and again when she must know that she is not welcome, when all she can do is destroy the peace of our household. Till late into the night I hear her voice go on and on, sharp, angry tones or wet and muffled. I wish I could understand. But do I really want to? I asked my mistress once, and she looked at me with her big serious eyes, and said, “She has had a most unhappy life, Anandi, we must be very kind to her.”

Unhappy! Who wouldn’t be unhappy with a face like that? She’s very rich, I have heard. A big house and many jewels and big, big cars, but when she comes here I never see her open her purse or even offer to pay for anything. Instead Didi has to buy all that expensive fruit and it has to be chicken every day, and how can I forget the whiskey? She helps herself to everything as if this were her own home, as if she has a right to do whatever she pleases.

I cannot behave like that even in my own mother’s house. But my poor mother cannot afford to feed all of us even one good meal a day, which is why Didi offered to keep me and send me to school and look after me. She believes it is very important to go to school. She says that if I am not educated, I will fall into the same trap as my mother. Married at fourteen, a child every year whether it lives or dies, sickness and misery for all.
Didi explains everything to me very carefully. Look at the world around you, she says. Everything depends on how much power you have. How much power does your mother have or your father? She uses the word ‘shakti’ and in my mind I can see the goddess on the Durga Puja day, riding on the tiger, smiling, smiling and holding a sword in her hand…

I look at the world I know, the jhopdis near the airport, where the noise of planes makes it impossible to speak or sleep or think; at my father whose body is so gaunt, his back so curved that he must lie only on his side, yet he will not stop his cursed drinking; at my mother whose face must have been round and pretty once, but whose eyes stare out from deep within her sockets, whose hip bones are so sharp, they hurt me if I try to embrace her…

I see the brother born last year so weak he could not even open his eyes, and died in a few hours. I thought my mother would also go, that time. But Didi rushed her to the hospital and when she was a little stronger, saw to it that she would have no more children. And after that I came to stay with Didi. I don’t want to leave her now.

“Don’t think I am doing you a favour, don’t think of it like that, Anandi. See how much you do for me. And I am not lonely any more. This is a chance for both of us. To do something different with our lives. By studying, by educating yourself, you are giving yourself power.”

She looks at me out of the corner of her eyes, the fat one. With her face like curdled milk. She would like to throw me out, to see that I go back where I belong. But she has no control over me. Didi won’t let her order me about. “Ask her if she will bring you a cup of tea, or if she will dry your clothes in the balcony. Don’t assume she has to do it. She is not obliged to obey you.”

So the fat one makes her requests as if it kills her to ask. One of these days I will just turn round and say no, I’m busy. Very sweetly. And then she will fall down and expire. And smoke will come out of her ears.

I wish it could be the way it is when Didi and I are by ourselves. Didi sometimes takes out her harmonium and sings for me, and sometimes I can follow the raag, and then she is very pleased and says that she will engage a teacher for me. That is something that I would truly love. When I sing, even if it is a filmi tune, I feel as if I am flying. The words are like wings and the tune is the open sky, as it is in the evening or in the night, and all you have to do is float with your eyes closed.

Then there are special nights when Didi has her friends for dinner, and we are a little tired because we have been cooking all day and yet excited because her friends are nice and they tease me and tell me I am looking pretty. And everyone talks at once, and even though I cannot understand everything they say, I am happy though the room is full of smoke and once Maria madam couldn’t get up because she had too much to drink, and we let her sleep on the divaan till morning.

But when the fat one is here, nobody laughs. She sighs and weeps but she won’t stop eating. I catch her standing before the open frig, popping gulab jamun or rossogulla into her mouth and then wiping her sticky fingers on her nightgown. Before Didi leaves for college, she cooks her lunch, and she has to get up really early for that. I try and help her but she tells me not to be late for school. When I come home in the afternoon, the vessels are empty, and I have to make myself a couple of chapattis which I eat with pickle.
I cannot believe they are sisters!

She is very sly, that one. She knows that I will not complain to Didi about her so she makes work for me in the afternoon. Sometimes it is nothing more than washing her underclothes, which she says has to be done very carefully as they are so expensive and so delicate; sometimes there are a pile of saris for which she needs the fall sewn or the borders trimmed. But at other times, she asks me to massage her body which she says aches in every bone. She has a big bottle in her room with a picture of open fields and pretty pink flowers on the label. I am supposed to apply the fragrant oil from this bottle to her stupid head, which she insists is hammering with the heat and the noise of the traffic outside. “I didn’t sleep all night,” she says in her stupid little-girl voice, and looks at me sideways. I keep my face expressionless but I can feel my body stiffen and I want to vomit at the thought of touching her. She knows, and I catch a small smile on her button-mouth.

Those afternoons are very long, and my arms ache as I pinch and pummel her flesh, or press the lumps on her head with the tips of my fingers and she groans and moans with relief and falls asleep. Then I go and wash my hands again and again, till I get the smell of the oil and her flesh off my hands.

Yesterday, aai was waiting for me on the stairs. She was sitting all hunched up in a dark corner and I didn’t see her till she touched the hem of my uniform, and I got such a fright. I hadn’t seen her for some weeks and I was horrified by what I saw. The skin is stretched tight over her face and her hands tremble and she hardly has the energy to speak. She needed some money and I gave her whatever I had, not much, just some twenty rupees which I had saved from whatever Didi gave me for the week. Looking at her all the bad memories come back, and I am filled with anger. I asked her why she hadn’t waited inside, but she shook her head. The fat one glowered as I let Ma in and kept coming into the kitchen to see what we were doing. I could imagine what she was thinking. Her suspicion that I was helping Ma to steal was written so plainly on her face, she actually looked disappointed when Ma left.….

I cooked some rice and dal for both of us, I knew she would not have eaten. She tells me that Baba is sick and cannot work; she doesn’t need to say any more. Her son, my older brother mostly skulks between school and the playground with a quick dash home to change his clothes and stuff his face with whatever mother may have made for him. She will not utter a word against him. The only time I’d see her face soften and a smile in her eyes was when she was feeding him; “kha, kha …” she’d mutter, looking round fearfully to see if my father was watching.

He doesn’t talk to me anymore, that one, just stares sullenly if we pass each other in the school corridors or in the playground. I can’t believe he is the sweet little brother I held and fed and sang to sleep. The girls I used to be friendly with ignore me as well, just nudge each other if I am in the vicinity or giggle and whisper. I don’t care, I don’t need them. My teachers are pleased with me, praise my work and I can be sure of getting class prize at the end of the year. That will be sweet. Didi will be so proud. She gives me books to read in simple English, corrects me gently when I mispronounce any word, teaches me poems I learn by heart. I like a poem called “The Palanquin Bearers” and Didi told me that word comes from ‘palki’ in Hindi, and about the woman who wrote it almost like a song. I would say it very fast so that the words could not be separated, so she taught me to say it very slowly, so that each word shone before my eyes. I could not understand many words till Didi showed me pictures from a big, fat book she brought home from the library, and even acted out many sentences. She showed me a picture of the poet, too, so dark, so fat, but with that beautiful smile on her face.

Didi knows so much, but you can’t tell by looking at her. Her face is very plain, her bones stick out and her eyes always look tired behind her specatacles. But when she smiles at me, I see so much beauty that sometimes I forget to breathe.

My exams begin next month. Soon I will finish school and it will be time to go to college. My heart beats very fast when I see myself grown up and going every day into the big buildings like some of the other girls and boys who live in this building do. They have cars and friends and they dress in smart-smart clothes and their hair is cut short and shines in the sunlight. I would like to look like that. Didi bought me a pair of jeans and a bright T-shirt from the bazaar, but when I wore it to school one day, everyone laughed at me and I could not help crying. I have not worn it again.

Today, aai has came again. This time I have no money to give her. I told her I would ask Didi for an advance and bring it to her tomorrow morning, but she said she needed it right then as Baba had vomited blood and had to be taken to the hospital at once.

“Ask her…” and she jerks her head in the direction of the fat one’s room. I feel I would rather die than do what she asks of me.

“I have to have the money now….” She does not look at me but suddenly I feel very, very tired. I realize that for her the necessity of keeping herself alive so that she can take care of her husband and her son is the most important thing in the world. And I am here, in this comfortable house, fed and clothed and looked after, I have been given this fortunate position, so I can help her do those things. Nothing else matters.

I get up slowly and my stomach turns to water, and my legs to jelly as I take that first step towards the fat one.