It wasn’t at all like the movies. In movie graveyards, the prospect of the dead coming back loomed large. Moonlit headstones cracking open and so on. Shafiqa had expected to feel a sense of dread, perhaps even a sort of reckoning. What she hadn’t expected were homey bunches of marigold at the gates, a neat periphery of yellow and pink roses against the wall. This olfactory assault, this riotous distraction from grief. And what was this rose?
A rose with a bluish tint around its outermost whorl and a purple heart. It reminded her of the ruin of her garden. Worse, it made her want to commit theft. Snap off a twig, try grafting it at home. Out of the corner of her eye, she began to look around for the hand that had teased the rose into that novel shade of blue, something between violet and aquamarine.
Shafiqa’s daughters were talking to a young man with skin the color of wet earth. Telling him to look after their father’s grave, to plant a row of Sweet Williams on either side. They pressed a five-hundred-rupee note into his hand, and as his fingers curled around the money, he crossed his arms on his chest in a gesture of respect. In a place like this, Shafiqa thought, one must maintain a perpetual posture of deference. She crossed her arms too as she stood before the grave.
The headstone was very plain—a square concrete block with a name and the year, but it was fitting. Rehman Sahab liked things to be plain. He liked his wife to wear small patterned prints in pastel shades. He stuck to greys himself or faded mustard brown kurtas with white pyjamas. He never wore navy blue shirts or a red cap or one with golden thread woven through. Always the same greys, blacks and whites. A pair of black lace-up shoes for outside, black sandals for inside the home. Her younger son-in-law had appropriated those sandals as soon as he showed up for the funeral.
Why was there a perennial shortage of slippers and sandals at home? There were enough plates and towels to spare, and yet, each time her daughters visited, Shafiqa had to dip into her purse for a new pair of house slippers. The next visit, there’d be the same breathless rummaging in the shoe cabinet followed by an attempt to borrow more slippers from her. Rehman Sahab’s feet had been swollen up and had never gone back to normal after the last round of hospitalization. It wasn’t like he’d ever had pretty feet, but towards the end, Shafiqa noted the squareness of his toes, the yellow thickness of his nails with a sense of disgust. She had clipped his toenails every two weeks, and it took all her strength to separate the extended wedge of nail from his big toe. A loud click and inevitably the sharp, curved nail crescent flew off into the air.
His mind and his nails, those were the only bits of Rehman Sahab that were uncontainable to the end. Not that she sought to contain him. She didn’t even contain the girls. Who knew better than she the futility of grasping at things that weren’t yours to begin with? As if anybody could! But roses and white jasmine, a strip of green lawn, the hard work of coaxing okra and papaya out of a little backyard—surely these were her own?
*
The last gardener Shafiqa had hired asked for three months’ advance on his pay and disappeared. Just as well. He didn’t do much without supervision, and her every waking minute was consumed by a sick man who could barely chew or swallow without gagging. Mashing his rice and daal, putting fruit and spinach into the blender. A whole hour would pass between bringing a tray to his bed and coaxing a few spoonfuls of goop into his mouth. Scolding him for not sitting up, yanking at his wrist, prodding with increasing degrees of impatience until he uttered a soft oath and allowed her to shovel the spoon into his mouth.
She had scolded him with every spoonful. Eat! Eat! Eat a bit more, for God’s sake! Will you kill me with trying to keep you alive?
She hadn’t been able to keep him, of course. Five months of turning him this side and that side and, yet, bedsores all over his back. Between the feeding, there was the cleaning, the bandaging, the laundry. Wiping the corners of his mouth. Shaving his chin. She barely had time to bathe herself. At the end of the day, she would simply lie prostrate beside him and whisper her prayers, underlining each Arabic phrase with just one thought: Let him stay alive.
He slipped away, complaining about the lack of salt in his porridge. By the time she returned from the kitchen with the salt shaker, he was gone.
He could have asked for a bit of sugar instead, she thought later. He hadn’t tasted sugar in years. She often left out a bowl of temptation, disappearing into the garden for a bit so he could sneak a spoonful. If he asked, she was duty bound to refuse. No, the doctor said, no. Sugar is poison for you. Still, she would leave a bowl of kheer to cool on the dining table. One spoon wouldn’t kill him, but he never touched it. She always knew when her kids stole a few spoons of kheer or halwa. She’d know if the surface of the dessert bowl had been disturbed, no matter that they made clumsy attempts to level it flat again. But her husband?
He had wanted to live. But five months ago, he had begun to murmur in the dark. Enough. Enough. Enough what? she wondered. Pain? Being turned, his sores suppurating, smelling his own shit? He never said anything more than that word, enough.
Rehman Sahab, so loquacious, an opinion on everything. He went on and on about how loud her clothes were until Shafiqa stopped shopping for herself. Was it twenty years ago? Nargis was sixteen that year and learning to love the touch of money, the thrill of exchanging currency for desirables. Her daughter would carry home intricate tales of how hard she haggled and how tacky the picco work was on readymade dupattas in chowk, how one had to scold the tailors. Shafiqa, who had never haggled for anything, let the girls take over the shopping as soon as they could go out on their own. The girls picked out fabric in what they called English colors—muted shades of purple, cream and baby pink that Rehman Sahab approved of. Yet, he had bought her an unwearable green, the color of Indian parrots. Was it eight years ago?
It was right after his second stroke. The doctor had insisted that Rehman Sahab take some exercise. Take a walking stick. Straighten your back, Rehman Sahab! We need to see you walking if I am to continue your treatment.
Rahman Sahab agreed to go to their neighborhood zoo for half an hour, six days a week. Twice he shuffled along the brief circumference of the walking track inside the zoo, and Shafiqa shuffled along, chafing at the enforced slowness of gait. Her back was still straight and her legs still strong, Alhamdulillah, thanks to all the hoeing and cutting, stirring and sewing. Her hands were rough with work, her fingernails torn, and she was proud of them. But she couldn’t leave him behind, could she?
It was the only time Rehman Sahab had gone out with just her. Not their daughters, not the clan, just the two of them. Shafiqa hadn’t even wanted to go, but what was she to do? He’d asked her to come along, and although she hmphed and said, ask your daughters, she had pulled on the pale grey shalwar kameez she usually saved for Moharram and combed her hair, pulling it into a bright henna-red knot at the nape of her neck and buckling it down with a silver clip.
There was plenty to see in the zoo, but they never walked farther than the lion enclosure. Between seven and eight in the morning, a series of roars reverberated across the zoo. The lions were loud. They had learnt to expect the roars, and yet, they jumped each time. Rehman Sahab gripped her shoulder tight and stopped several feet from the enclosure where the great beasts sat. Sometimes they’d be lolling in the mud, sometimes lying atop an unvarnished wooden table, twice the size of her dining table at home. Her husband had quailed in the face of those beasts, gaping at their yawning maws before turning around and shuffling back towards a bench where he had to sit down for a moment. Sometimes he commented on the color or size of the winter flowers before he decided they had walked enough for the day.
*
Shafiqa had never brought flowers into the room after Rehman Sahab was confined to his bed. A vase on the table would have been nice, she thought. Juhi had done it when she was a schoolgirl. Risked Shafiqa’s displeasure and cut roses from the garden, bringing them to her father on a tea tray along with his morning tea. He liked that, even if he barely glanced at the flowers before losing himself in the newspaper.
That was when he still went to work. When he returned from the office, he demanded that the children tell him things they did in school, and later in the evening, he had visitors. Men whose names she never learnt, always dropping in unannounced. Men who would not leave politely before dinner. A few women too, wearing bright lipstick and striped dupattas. Their outfits were what Rehman Sahab would have described as loud, except he never did. These were women with loud voices, women who shook with laughter and who never came into the kitchen to offer help with filling glass bowls with nimki or making yet another round of tea. But when Rehman Sahab retired, the stream of visitors dried up. And then one day, he went out and bought her a parrot green outfit. Shafiqa had sniffed and said that it was too loud for her age.
Your age?
His eyes had roved over her face until a flush travelled down her front, from ears to navel, but he did not say a word about how she was so much younger than he. Not one word about what she should do once he was gone.
They whispered about it, the girls and their husbands. They went peeking into his desk drawers and read aloud the details of his bank passbook, to make sure that she knew. No bungling, no slyness about where the money went. They did it the week after they put him in the earth. Here, in this indelicate bower.
The flowers in this graveyard, Shafiqa noticed, were undoubtedly loud. The earth smelt heady, and the young trees sending out new shoots reminded her of that parrot green kameez. But of course, she was in black now. It was the first time she was visiting the grave since the burial. The first time the girls have agreed to bring her here.
Nargis was putting her arms around her while Juhi sprinkled the grave with a little watering can she’d brought from somewhere. Fool, Shafiqa thought, only weeds grow that way. She could tell them, but the girls had never taken an interest in gardening. Daddy’s girls, both, too keen on the outside world. They hated getting their hands dirty.
Shafiqa was torn between wanting to shake off her elder daughter’s arms from around her shoulders and wanting to clutch her closer. She found a lump choking her throat and murmured softly, “This is my place.”
Her daughter stiffened, leaned into her. “Don’t say such things, Mummy. Who do we have now, but you?”
Shafiqa didn’t bother to say, you have your husbands and children. She patted Nargis’ hand and said it again, “This is my place.”
Her daughters exchanged glances. Before they could remonstrate or scold her for being negative, she pointed to the empty spot next to Rehman Sahab’s grave.
“It is my last wish. I set aside money for it.”
Juhi rolled her eyes at the mention of money but squeezed her arm. The sun was high. Shafiqa blinked, wiped sweat off her brow and stood resolute at the foot of the grave, as if waiting for something. The girls gestured to each other and went off towards the room with the tin roof that served as the graveyard manager’s office.
The gardener looked at Shafiqa, then quickly looked away. His arms were polished, sinewy. A dirty black vest hung loose on his chest, and she noticed two tiny holes in the fabric. She heard him sigh, as if for her loss, or perhaps at the ephemerality of the mortal coil. She wondered if he was hungry. She herself was starting to think about lunch.
“They won’t take, not in this weather.”
The gardener’s head swayed in agreement. He knew at once that she was talking about the Sweet William plants.
“Plant bela on the sides. And try a musk rose at one end.”
His head swayed again, then his chin tilted, gesturing in the direction where her daughters had disappeared. Shafiqa clicked her tongue.
“Never mind them. Do as I say.”
“I can do zinnias,” he offered.
Shafiqa hmphed. Who puts zinnias in a graveyard?
“Musk rose,” she repeated. Then there was nothing more to say, so they stood in silence. ̃
When she visited the graveyard next, it was after the whirl of the fortieth day ceremony was done. Done with the feeding of people, the fits of weeping, clutching cousins and in-laws and nephews who came from all over the country to offer condolences. They waited their turn to clutch at her hands, put their foreheads on her shoulder before mimicking sobs that they couldn’t quite muster up. They crowded the driveway with their cars and motorbikes, and two dozen plastic chairs had been dragged out onto whatever was left of the lawn. Between dabbing at her eye, Shafiqa noticed a pair of grandnephews stamping on the periwinkles, knocking over a pot of asparagus fern.
She wept with each mourner who came to hug her before subsiding into a sniffle. About three seconds passed before the cycle began afresh. Her head was pounding by the time lunch was served, but she refused to eat. When the crowd thinned, one of her cousins forced a cup of tea and a biscuit into her mouth, muttering in an undertone about the grieving showoffs, all the while loudly moaning about how she herself was orphaned now that Rehman Sahab was gone. How inconsiderate it was of him to leave poor Nanhi widowed.
It was the last of the cousins from her mother’s side, the last to call her Nanhi. To her cousins, Shafiqa had been the baby. The smallest, fairest baby who grew into a plump woman with a short fuse. They had tolerated her dashing pewter mugs to the floor, and had screamed while she chased after the monkeys that swooped into the verandah where breakfast was laid out in summer. The cousins were all in their own graves, most of them.
She had wished, although she could never bring herself to ask, that Rehman Sahab would call her Nanhi. In a quiet moment, when it was just the two of them, perhaps when he was coaxing her out of a stuffy mood, he could have said, Nanhi! Chucked her under the chin. But to him, she was always Shafiqa. A name appropriate to wives and mothers, not shrieking girls chasing after wild monkeys with a stick.
Still, Shafiqa wanted to save that childhood name, write it somewhere so they’d remember it. Could she ask for it to be put on her headstone? Shafiqa alias Nanhi. No, Nanhi alias Shafiqa.
The men went off to the graveyard first, then the younger boys with mothers who had travelled from other cities. It was past five in the evening by the time the last guest was gone, but Shafiqa insisted that she wanted to go today.
Her girls exchanged glances, said she needed to rest. She knew the younger one’s husband didn’t like women going to the graveyard. Well! He didn’t have to like it. He could stay home with the children instead. But she needed her girls to agree. She couldn’t drive herself, and she didn’t even know how to get to the graveyard.
Shafiqa had drawn her knees up to her chest and hidden her face. The girls put their arms around her, and they all wept. She said, “You don’t have to come with me. Just let me go.”
She said it over and over until there was a whispered conference in the kitchen and son-in-law number two’s jowls shifted from their self-assured perch over his collar and fell into a resigned droop. He offered to drive them.
The scent of damp earth filled her senses at the gate. A strong scent of rose mingled with wet earth. The gardener was watering the plants. She saw the flash of his vest in the distance where he was tying up an overgrown bunch of creepers at the boundary wall.
Shafiqa noted with satisfaction that he had planted bela at their grave. She was already thinking of it as theirs, not just his, and it took her several moments to notice that there was someone laid down adjacent to Rehman Sahab. She read the name, Bano, and stopped in the middle of saying the fatiha.
That Bano? Rehman Sahab never allowed that name to cross his lips, but Apiya had told her every little detail about that first beloved daughter-in-law. Bano’s love of bright colors. Bano’s silver anklets jangling across the courtyard morning and evening. Bano, who made everyone a co-conspirator in everyday felonies. Eating sugar and butter on warm chapatis right before lunch. Sneaking out of the house to go watch a movie, leaving you to tell lies on her behalf. Bano insisting on resuming her studies and winning a gold medal. Bano, more beloved by her in-laws than by her own parents. Bano, who had left and, yet, could never be banished.
Who else could it be but Bano, who had pre-empted Shafiqa at every turn, snatching the morsel of love right off her plate like an invisible monkey in the verandah. Once again, Bano had beaten her.
Nargis was kneeling at Rehman Sahab’s grave, whispering softly, as if her words could reach the father tucked under the weighty earth. She had brought red rose petals to scatter and now she held out a packet of agarbattis.
“Mummy?” Nargis whispered. “Mummy, don’t you want to say a fatiha?”
Juhi nudged Shafiqa’s elbow, conscious of her own husband’s disapproving gaze. Then she followed the line of her mother’s eyes.
“Oh!” she said. “But, but how? We told them! We reserved the spot!”
Her son-in-law crossed his arms on his belly and grunted.
“This is what happens when you women throw yourself into things you know nothing about. How much did you pay?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Who gets space for ten thousand these days? People are paying fifty, sixty, seventy. My uncle was laid near the extension behind the mosque, and he booked the spot at least six years ago.”
Juhi worked her tongue over her teeth. Her voice wobbled when she spoke to her husband.
“You should have come that day. Why didn’t you come along when I asked you?”
Son-in-law number two kicked at a pebble and turned away. Over his shoulder, he mumbled, “Come.”
The couple walked off towards the manager’s office. Nargis lit the incense and poked the sticks into the loose mud at the foot of the grave. She looked stricken.
“We did book the spot, Mummy. The manager promised us. We weren’t trying to skimp on money or anything.”
Shafiqa shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The smell of incense hit her nostrils and set off a series of sniffles. Nargis stood up, alarmed.
“Mummy, don’t cry. Look at me. We’ll find a way.”
What way? Shafiqa wanted to ask. To the left of Rehman Sahab lay his own mother, whom everyone had always called Apiya. His younger brother lay buried near his head. Little Chinna, a sister who died in her infancy, lay to his right. The only free spot had been the one near his feet, and now that was gone too.
Shafiqa didn’t even like this city. She had told Rehman Sahab to take her back to her maternal village for the burial, if she went first, but they had both known it was unlikely. She was twelve years younger and in better health. Her skin still stretched taut over a muscular frame, except for a little flab on her belly. Her husband had shrugged off talk about burials. Put me anywhere you like. The garden at home will do.
It had infuriated her for some reason, and when she was furious, she would speak in a quiet hiss. Stay out of my garden! See if I care where they bury you. When she was in a true rage, she would threaten to die before him. You’ll see me dead when you wake up in the morning! I’ll be glad to be rid of the lot of you. But let’s see if you can manage the household. But she had cared, and he did die first, and now she’d have to lie here without touching her husband’s earth.
Shafiqa blew her nose into her kerchief, and when she looked up, she found the gardener standing on the other side of the grave. The holes in his vest had expanded to the size of a fist. Hands cradled, head tilted at a deferential angle. Had someone taught him to hold this posture each time he stood with mourners?
He caught her eye and clicked his tongue, as if commiserating a minor loss. A business deal gone sour, or having had your pocket picked. Pointing with his chin, he went on conversationally, “These people didn’t want flowers. They put the stone down straightaway.”
They, who? Who buried Bano? There was no loose mud on her grave. It was paved flat, with a slab of granite on top with her name and years of birth and death. They hadn’t written her father’s name on the grave, she noticed. That was in his will. Bano’s father had disowned her and willed that she not be buried in their family graveyard. Was that why they brought her here, to be buried next to the man she’d dumped?
Shafiqa said she was thirsty, and Nargis began looking about with wild eyes.
“Do you know where we can get some water? Drinking water?”
The gardener pointed to a hand pump near the wall. It was where they washed their hands and filled the watering can. Nargis frowned.
“Is it safe to drink?”
The gardener shrugged. “I drink it, bibi.”
Shading her eyes with her hand, Nargis stared into the distance. There were stalls selling incense and candles and flowers, a couple of sweet shops from where mourners could buy food to be distributed to the poor. There had to be a bottle of water somewhere.
“I’ll buy a bottle, Mummy. Stay here.”
Once her daughter set off towards the gates, Shafiqa looked at the gardener more frankly. Anywhere between twenty-five and forty. His bare feet were covered with a film of dust so that they looked a shade lighter than the rest of him. The very opposite of the gardener she had before. That one’s feet always looked darker because he kept splashing them with water. Perhaps it was to stay cool in summer, though likelier he was anxious not to let mud stick to his skin. That one showed up to work wearing a full-sleeved striped shirt and full trousers. Once he entered, he would undress, hanging up his clothes on the clothesline and stripping to a vest and loose underpants, before coming around to the kitchen door to ask for the digger.
Shafiqa had been careful not to look out of the window, but she judged the pace of his work from listening to the splash of water and the soft thup-thup of the digger in the flower beds. A taciturn man, that one, speaking only to ask for money, grunting when she asked about the possibility of growing okra. This one was different. Chatty, given half a chance. He also seemed not to wear a shirt at all. Did he not have one?
She found herself saying, “Some people think of mud as dirty.”
“And yet, we all turn to mud.”
His head was swaying sideways again, as if he found it hard to hold up straight. Was there something the matter with it? The rest of him seemed to work fine.
“Bela,” he pointed to the plant. “As you asked.”
“But you didn’t plant the musk rose.”
“A man comes by with a cart. He doesn’t bring any musk rose.”
“You could go out and get it.”
The man nodded ponderously. Will you go? Shafiqa wanted to ask, but then another idea struck her. She already had a musk rose at home. It had bloomed beautifully every year for the last forty years. She could bring a cutting and plant it herself. The gardener would help. She would like that, yes. But it meant returning to the graveyard next week, and who knew if the girls would bring her?
It had been so long since she went out on her own. Her daughters had done the grocery, the tailor visits, even her shoe shopping. They always bought her some variation of black sandals with one-inch heels. Shafiqa knitted her brows, trying to recall the last time she’d hailed a rickshaw to go somewhere on her own. Three years ago, on a winter evening she was headed out to her sister-in-law’s fortieth day ceremony, but son-in-law number two’s car broke down. Juhi was nursing a baby and couldn’t come. Rehman Sahab himself pleaded ill health and stayed home, but Shafiqa had been determined to go. She had walked out to the main road and hailed a passing rickshaw. The chill winds that slapped her face for a whole hour were memorable.
Shafiqa wondered now whether it was cooler or warmer under the earth. Cooler surely? The earth was always moist underneath, dark and cool. But the earth covered your body like a thick blanket. Layers and layers of silken mud. Who could say?
She squatted at the foot of her husband’s grave and heard her knees creak.
“Are you feeling sick?”
The gardener bent forward to peer into her face. She sneezed again.
“No. Just saying a fatiha.”
Placing a palm on the earth covering her husband, she shut her eyes and said the words, meaningfully at first, then faster, afraid she’d lose the sequence if she thought too hard about the afterlife. She stayed in that posture even after she was done. More words floated soundlessly up from the pit of her heart.
I’ll follow. But not too soon. The girls would be left orphaned. Then, more bitter words. You couldn’t let go of Bano, could you? Apiya couldn’t either. Well, she’ll be pleased now, won’t she?
“Mummy? Mummy, are you all right?”
Nargis was hurrying towards her with a bottle of chilled water. Shafiqa sneezed twice more and struggled to her feet. Her creaking knees seemed to echo in the still air as she took the bottle with shaky hands, then handed it back. All these years and her daughter still couldn’t remember that she never drank icy water. It provoked another series of sneezes. They heard an Alhamdulillah, and Nargis turned sharply.
“You . . . Did you want something?”
“No,” the gardener said simply. He stood on his toes, arms linked behind his back.
Her husband would have taken offense to the single word, no. No prefix, no suffix. A mark of loutishness, he would’ve said. When the girls were younger, they were told off for saying yes and no minus a properly respectful tail. Ji was tolerable. Ji, Abba. Ji, huzoor. Ji, Abba huzoor. Ji, rather than yes. Shafiqa herself was always on the verge of defiance. She had argued that home was just about the only place where daughters are able to say a flat no. It would be all “ji” and “right away” when it came to husbands and in-laws. Besides, she liked people who meant what they said. Simple, direct people.
Her glasses were fogged over, but as she removed them to wipe them, the mud from her hands streaked the glass.
“Oh, Mummy!” Nargis sighed.
“Give them to me.” The gardener stepped forward. “I’ll wash them at the tap.”
Shafiqa hesitated, glancing at her daughter for approval. Nargis was hesitating too, clutching a corner of her dupatta. It was pure georgette, snowy white.
“Where’s the tap?” Shafiqa asked. “I’ll wash my hands.”
The gardener led the way, and Shafiqa followed. Nargis seemed disinclined to come along and called out to her mother to be careful; the ground was uneven in places.
At the tap, Shafiqa rinsed her hands and her glasses, then wiped them on the hem of her kurta. To the right, she noticed a flower bed that had been worked over recently.
“Zinnia?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Who asked for zinnias?”
“As such, nobody.”
“You planted them on your own?”
The gardener tilted his head and allowed himself a slow smile. There was something intimate about the smile, a secret between himself and her. What an odd young man, with his holey vest and bad teeth and his utter disregard for the sobriety of a graveyard. Surely, he didn’t really want to work here? If he could get work elsewhere . . .
“Mummy!”
Juhi and son-in-law number two had emerged from the manager’s office and were waving her over.
Shafiqa inclined her head at the gardener. She wanted to say something, but what was appropriate to say?
“I have a musk rose at home,” she said at last.
“That’ll be best, Badi Bi,” he said, bringing his palm to his chest in a gesture that signalled both goodbye and welcome.
*
On the car ride back, Juhi fiddled constantly with the air conditioning. Sitting up front beside her husband, she turned her neck constantly to look at Shafiqa, and although her words were semi-apologetic, she sounded pleased. It hadn’t been her fault, after all. The manager confirmed that there had been a mistake. It wasn’t really his fault either. He had accepted their booking, but there was a delay of two days in entering it into their records. The woman who was buried there happened to die the very next day, and there was a different manager on the night shift. That woman’s people had been insistent that she be buried in that very spot, so they assumed she was family.
“Frankly, this place is so full, I’m surprised they’re still letting us book. By the time our turns come . . .” Nargis trailed off, dabbing the sweat off her neck.
“It’s all one earth in the eyes of Allah,” her son-in-law chipped in. “All this booking of spots is . . . Well, one can make a request, and a request may be accommodated, but we may not demand such things.”
“But,” Juhi hastened to add, “we’ve done the next best thing. The spot diagonally across from Abba’s grave is available, and the manager has booked it. It’s not right next to him but sort of in touching distance. And there are other close family members around.”
A small sound escaped Shafiqa’s throat. Close family? All prospects of closeness had dried up after Bano. Apiya had never really loved her second daughter-in-law. There was no friction, but there was none of the pealing laughter and the coddling that her first daughter-in-law had managed to extract. A teenage ingenue with dancing eyes and curly hair, and an unabashed hunger for love, Bano had thrown off the daughter-in-law mantle as soon as she entered the household. She had danced barefoot all over the house, and if she was scolded, she simply threw her arms around her mother-in-law, squeezing her hard, saying, My darling Apiya!
Everyone in Rehman Sahab’s family had a story about Bano. Everyone agreed that her leaving broke their hearts. Rehman Sahab resisted remarriage for a few years, but when he agreed at last, he stipulated that his second wife should be neither too young nor too attractive. A homely type would do. That’s how Shafiqa was chosen—nearly thirty, no great beauty, no great scholar.
When Apiya brought the proposal, Shafiqa was glad to accept, if only to escape the pitying glances at home. But it wasn’t just beauty she lacked, Shafiqa discovered once she came to live with Apiya and Rehman Sahab. Morning and evening, she was subjected to tales of how Bano had giggled her way into everyone’s heart.
Not that it lasted. Doomed, as all love is. Bano had the heart of a termite. In six short years, she had lapped up every squirt of love in the household, and still, she hungered. Rehman Sahab had loved Bano, but his love lacked the tang of autumn oranges. His was a dogged loyalty, a love like the ligaments clinging to one’s bones. As for Apiya, she simply couldn’t understand what made her darling ask for a divorce. It was him, that evil man put something into her food and captured her mind.
It was done easily enough, this love trick, thought Shafiqa. Laughter, arms, fingers in hair. And yet, she herself could never cross the gulf of formality. She could never throw herself into Apiya’s lap or nuzzle her neck, saying, I’m your daughter too, aren’t I?
Shafiqa had remained the workhorse in the kitchen, the minder of her own children as well as of any little nephews and nieces who happened to be visiting. And if she wasn’t out in the garden, trying to coax spinach or tomatoes out of the soil, she was helping her mother-in-law dress, massaging her back, oiling her hair. And all the while, Apiya would talk about Bano.
Even after Bano had confessed to seeing that wretch in her office, Apiya had begged her not to go, assured her of Rehman Sahab’s forgiveness. But there was no stopping Bano. It was as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning, and her nerves were burnt up. She wept ceaselessly. She wept in her mother-in-law’s lap and in her husband’s arms. She sat weeping on the kitchen floor, getting in the cook’s way. Love! A miserable disease, Apiya said. The poor thing was miserable, though of course, she took her wedding jewelry with her when she left.
Apiya raged at the wicked man who had stolen her away. Does he have five feet or seven eyes? He’s only a man, after all. He would install Bano in a poky flat, thrust her into the smoky fires of a black kitchen. Rumor had it that he already had a wife, whom he was casting aside for no good reason. The bathroom would need cleaning, and Bano would be made to do it. His skin would acquire liver spots. Would Bano not grow disgusted with him? And so on and on.
It was as if Apiya were lovesick for Bano, and her sickness blinded her to the daughter-in-law who served her. The one who wasn’t beautiful. The one who, once Apiya began to slip in the bathroom, bathed her and powdered the undersides of her arms and knees. Towards the end, her mother-in-law spent most of her days dozing, soaking up the winter sun, saying little but trying to offer pine nuts and raisins to anyone who walked past. Sometimes she asked Shafiqa to sew new cloth purses for the nuts and a felt-lined pouch for raisins. Then, she too was gone.
Rehman Sahab never spoke of love. In fact, he spoke very little to Shafiqa, although the birth of their two girls was a calming sheath of oil on the troubled waters of his heart. He recovered his laughter in their babbling, their fists tugging his hair. As the girls grew, Shafiqa began to disappear into the garden for longer hours. Potatoes in one bed, peonies in another. Papayas in one corner, bay leaves in another. Everything had its own way of putting down roots. Things were seeded and outgrown, or grown over. That’s how it was.
Only once in her life, Shafiqa lied to Rehman Sahab. Not lied as such. Just failed to tell him the truth, which was that Bano had returned. Shafiqa had been in the garden, planting snapdragons next to the roses when a pale face appeared at the gate. An exhausted woman with baggy eyes, hair caught up in an untidy bun, not the lissom sprite she knew from stories, and yet, Shafiqa had guessed at once who it was.
Her heart thudded as Bano began to introduce herself, saying “hullo” like they did in English movies. She asked for Apiya, then Rehman Sahab, but Shafiqa shook her head, saying, You’ve come to the wrong house, bibi.
Bano stood there, licking her chapped lips. There was something cracked in her eyes, something that reminded Shafiqa of homeless boys crouching under the awnings of shuttered shops in the market. Without knowing that she was about to do it, she had reached for the little purse she kept tucked inside her blouse. A few hundred rupees, some loose change. She offered it on an open palm across the latticework of the gate.
Shafiqa could never forget those brown eyes blinking in pain. Lips moving but not saying anything. At last, Bano took the money, face averted in shame, and disappeared. Was it twenty years ago? Shafiqa thought she was rid of her, but look! The girl came back to reclaim her place in the heart of the family she had deserted.
How did she die? She would have gone suddenly. A heart attack or a tumor discovered too late. Shafiqa could not imagine Bano suffering the infirmities of age. Not the way Rehman Sahab had aged. Shuffling, suppurating, moaning for release. Bano must have escaped creaky joints, hearing loss, bald patches. Had she ever borne children?
Shafiqa doesn’t know who to ask. She has never talked to her daughters about Bano. Barring the few phrases she exchanged, calling them to the table for meals, asking how much something cost, she has never really talked to them. There were occasional outbursts, of course. Like the time they played with the hose pipe, ruining the mattress she’d been sunning. The time they demanded she stop counting the number of chapattis she needed to cook for each meal. And the times Rehman Sahab refused to eat. Words poured out of her then in a bitter torrent, a litany of all she had done for him and his thankless family, and was she never allowed any peace for God’s sake?
The house was more silent than the grave now, though who could say anything about the silence of the grave? Who could tell whether thoughts and memories became audible once flesh separated from bone? Who knew if Bano was not speaking right now, addressing her boldly: So, I’ve come to the right place, bibi, or have I not?
*
A kulfi vendor cried out, paused at her gate until she appeared in the verandah. Shafiqa smiled and waved him on, feeling her daughters’ eyes pinned to her back. Did they imagine that she’d never eat kulfi again? That she’d need them to coax her to eat a few morsels, that she’d kill herself rather than live without her husband?
The girls whispered, no doubt, about what to do with Mummy. Nargis had flown down the morning Rehman Sahab died and had insisted on sharing her bed ever since. Insisted on using her father’s pillow. Juhi came to visit every day the first ten days and then every other day. But how much longer?
It was true, she was barely eating. It was as if a hot skewer were driven into Shafiqa’s gut, and for the last forty days, she had waited for it to be withdrawn. She walked stiffly, as if movement would cause pain. It was a sort of absent pain that willed her towards motionlessness. Still, she had to show some signs of life or they’d begin to harass her. Juhi was already building up her campaign.
“Mummy, the house feels so empty without him.”
“Mummy, how do you manage without help? This house needs so much work.”
“Mummy, what are all those boxes in the storeroom? Do you even know what you’re hoarding?”
Shafiqa began by opening the storeroom and laying out the nicer clothes Rehman Sahab had worn to soirees and weddings. A glossy goat-hair hat, two shervanis, two Western suits.
“Take what you’ll wear,” she told her sons-in-law.
Her sons-in-law were shorter men, and they demurred, but the girls wanted to take the clothes anyway. Nargis said the jackets could be altered to fit her son. Juhi insisted she’d persuade her husband to wear an altered shervani.
On the forty-third day, Shafiqa went out into the garden and began to snap off broken twigs and wilted leaves. Her grass died weeks ago, but the marigolds had survived. Ah, there it was, the musk rose. It must have grown from root rather than a graft to have lived this long. When she first arrived in this house as a bride, it was already here. Who could have planted it? Surely not Apiya, who never stirred more than ten feet from her room? Who, then?
Reaching for the musk rose, using a kitchen knife to hack slantwise into one of its youngest branches, Shafiqa found herself thinking that Bano chased after love because she never learnt to love herself. A pretty pet, transferred from one home to another at eighteen, she had known how to love a mother better than she did a husband. And she never did learn the quiet, mutinous, patient work of love. Oh, the work! To work until exhaustion took over so she could forget about love.
On the forty-fifth day, Nargis massaged the joints of Shafiqa’s fingers, muttering about how swollen the knuckles looked, how she had worked too much, too long. Shafiqa wanted to pull away her hands and to tell her to leave. Go, go to your husband and kids, leave me alone. But she sat still, allowing her daughter’s fingers to massage her knuckles, and then to file away the torn edges of her nails.
“Mummy, we’ve been thinking. It’s not safe for you here. It’s not like the old days with a big joint family around.”
Shafiqa wished she could have one of her outbursts now. Protest swirled about inside her mouth, but instead of bursting forth, it settled thickly on her tongue. She had a sudden urge to go brush her teeth.
“We’ll get a bigger apartment,” Nargis went on. “You’d have your own room.”
If the invisible skewer had not been in her gut, Shafiqa might have crumbled. Instead, she straightened and slowly stretched herself out on the bed. Nargis lay down beside her, taking her silence for encouragement.
“Burglars are always looking for houses where old people live alone,” she said.
The way these girls talked, as if they’d been standing at the door like sentries the last eleven years. Rehman Sahab was sick eight of those eleven years. It was she who called the doctors, she who locked up the house at night, she who unlocked the gate each morning. It was she who put out the washing on the line, she who dealt with the woman who came to sweep and mop, and the vendors with carts when they came by. Everybody had known for years that Shafiqa was alone with a sick, old man, that she was cranky and ill-slept. They saw her watering the plants, hailing the carts selling gajak and kulfi. Sometimes they folded their hands in greeting. Sometimes the neighbors asked if the kulfi was any good, or did it have flour mixed in?
“Mummy, are you awake? I’d get a chance to live with you again. You’ll get to spend time with your grandchildren.”
*
On the morning of the forty-sixth day, Shafiqa hastened from her bed, rubbing warmth into her red knuckles. She liked to lie in bed, listening to the sounds of the day, delaying the moment when she would have to be up. If Rehman Sahab were alive, he’d be on his second cup of tea. Towards the end, she often bit down on a jibe. This one thing, this half hour of peace in the morning, could you not grant me even that?
She put a pan of water on the stove, threw in sugar and tea leaves. When she heard Nargis stirring, she reached for the milk and turned down the flame. Her daughter had paced the verandah the night before, speaking to her husband and children in hushed tones. Telling them, no doubt, that she hadn’t yet booked the flight, but she would be home soon.
“Mummy? You’re up? Let me do it.”
“No, you go. Go, lie down. I’ll bring it to you.”
But Nargis lingered in the kitchen, watching her every move. Shafiqa was suddenly shy in her movements. The kitchen felt unfamiliar. Where was the biscuit tin kept? The girls had been in charge of the kitchen for forty-five days. There was a maid they hired to help prepare for the fortieth day ceremony, what was her name? The day was a blur of people, but the maid’s face stood out clear as a photograph in her head. A sallow young girl, she had called Shafiqa, Amma, and pressed buttered rusks upon her.
“That girl,” Shafiqa said. “Is she from around here?”
“She works at Shammi Aunty’s. Why?”
Shafiqa strained the tea into two cups, set them on a tray.
“Where’s my biscuit tin?”
“It’s right here.”
“No. Those are your Papa’s biscuits. They stick to the roof of my mouth.”
“I’ve been bringing you these same biscuits all these days.”
“I keep my rusks in a round green tin. Your Papa never cared for rusks, but I like them. I ate my biscuits, and he ate his. You all never really notice me.”
Her daughter frowned in a way that sent a little tremor into Shafiqa’s hands. She crossed her arms on her chest to hide it. Next, they’d be making it out that she wasn’t equipped to boil water for tea.
“I let you girls do what you like. Now you’ve got used to doing things your way, not even asking what I want.”
What things emerge from one’s mouth if one isn’t careful! She lowered her chin in a gesture of contrition. Or perhaps she just didn’t want to look at Nargis’ alarmed face. A jowly face now, padded with years of caring for another man’s family, cracking with the strain. She could see it. Shafiqa waited for Nargis to protest, but there was only a stunned recalcitrance. Her daughter reached out for a cup of tea and a biscuit, then admitted that these biscuits did stick to the roof of one’s mouth. She took a few sips, then sighed. A sigh of tested patience.
“Mummy, drink your tea. It’s getting cold.”
A fresh stab of resentment. As if, were it not for her daughters, all cups of tea, past, present and future, would always be cold. Shafiqa clenched and unclenched her fingers a few times before reaching for a cup of tea. She had eaten these sticky biscuits for forty-five days without complaint. If she moved to one of her daughter’s homes, she would have to ask for things all the time. Things other people didn’t think she needed.
That was one thing Bano was good at, asking for things. Stealing, if necessary. Just look at the way she stole the spot adjacent to Rehman Sahab in the graveyard. Her cousin had called last night to cluck in outrage, and also to pass on some fresh gossip.
“Nanhi! Everything comes full circle in the end. That wicked man she ran away with? He had abandoned her after six years. Exactly as long as she took to leave Rehman Sahab. I’ve heard that fellow moved back in with his first wife, and Bano would have been out on the streets, not that she didn’t deserve it. Somehow she hung on to her job. But Nanhi, can you imagine? That wretched fellow worked at the same office! How any woman can live with such shame is beyond the likes of you and me. But listen, here’s the icing on the cake. She still had Rehman Sahab listed as her husband on all her paperwork. Would you believe it? Our old neighbor’s nephew works in the same office. He says it was her office colleagues who came to bury her. She had asked to be buried at Rehman Sahab’s feet. The height of shamelessness, if you ask me, but there it is! And Rehman Sahab, poor man, he never quite got over her, did he?”
After breakfast, Shafiqa unlocked the cupboard where she hid her valuables. Boxes of laddoos reserved for visitors, emergency cash, a gold watch, her silks and an enamel bangle box too. There it was, the parrot green suit with elaborate cut work near the neck, and a sheer net dupatta dyed half green, half red. Red and green were bridal colors, much too loud. She had refused to wear it outdoors, but she did wear it once, for Rehman Sahab, on their last May Day dinner.
It was a made-up celebration, triggered by Bano and her madness for love. She had once demanded a Valentine’s Day gift. Rehman Sahab asked what occasioned the gift, and Bano said, the occasion of love. He had laughed. You mean, you want me to buy you gifts every day?
Bano had stamped her feet, called him incorrigible. The very next year, she left. Without goodbyes, in the middle of the night, so he had no opportunity to reason with her, to plead or remind her of her responsibilities. She did leave a note for Apiya, asking her to deliver the news to Rehman Sahab with any words of recrimination she chose or with compassion if she could muster that.
Shafiqa had heard the story from Rehman Sahab’s brothers. The boys were sent running to see if they could catch Bano, stop her at the bus stop or railway station. When they returned, silent and with downcast eyes, Apiya was left with no choice but to summon her oldest son. For a long time, the old woman sat, hands folded in her lap, not knowing what to say. In the end, she had levelled a sullen charge: Why didn’t you stop her?
It wasn’t a question that required an answer. Shafiqa knew from countless retellings that the question had really been a plea. In later years, the old woman often sat with her palms upturned in her lap, a gesture of resigned pity. Pity for herself. Pity for her son who would never recover from the shock. Pity for a love that didn’t go around the house in ever-widening circles.
But it wasn’t true that Rehman Sahab never recovered. He even learnt something about love, for he gave to his second wife what he had denied to the first—an annual token of love. He didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, but May Day became their own day. A quiet, sensible day for celebration, for he always had the day off. On May Day, he insisted Shafiqa take a holiday from kitchen duties. They ordered aloo-poori for breakfast, kebab-paratha for lunch, and noodles for dinner. It was one day in the year he didn’t take his eyes off her. All afternoon, he’d quietly laze in bed with Shafiqa, citing the unbearable heat as an excuse not to go out. In the evening, he lounged in the verandah, watching as she pottered about the garden. And he bought her gifts. The enamel box, its white top inlaid with silver. Turquoise earrings. A locket with a flower pressed within glass. Something small and frivolous, easily lost in the clutter of a large family home. Things that were her own, possessed by no other woman before, and not valuable enough to be handed down to another woman after her.
The last year, when he could no longer go out shopping, Rehman Sahab had to ask Shafiqa to make their May Day special. Cook a light dinner, light a candle. He insisted she wear the parrot green suit, drawing the net dupatta over her head like a bridal veil. He hadn’t been able to eat more than a spoonful, but as she was clearing away the dishes, he had caught her arm and looked into her eyes for a long moment. In his eyes, she saw the sum of their years, and it did not spell loss.
Shafiqa now bent to retrieve a tin filled with pindi from her secret stash. She made them months ago, when she was still pretending that Rehman Sahab would recover. Or perhaps she had known that he wouldn’t recover. Perhaps she had intended to eat the pindis either way. She opened the tin and helped herself to one.
Nargis came wandering back into the bedroom, and her eyes widened. Shafiqa gestured to her to sit.
“I make these with makhana and ginger. Try one.”
Nargis sat on the very edge of the bed, her palms upturned. Funny, the way her daughter mirrored old Apiya’s gesture of pity and bewilderment. How little her girls knew about loss, Shafiqa thought. Grieving together, shopping together, mourning together. Returning home to receive their father’s love, their mother’s routine of care. They assumed they knew more about life than she did, but they wouldn’t last a month if they were left to themselves. It was her own fault, of course. She had taught them to keep house, but she hadn’t shown them how to wrest small joys from life without waiting to seek permission. Nibbling on a pindi, she slowly gathered her words.
“I’m going to hire a new gardener. I want sweet peas near the gate and snapdragons in the next bed. Near the wall, I’ll put in tomatoes. Okra grew well last year, but the soil needs refreshing.”
Nargis followed her gaze out of the window. The garden was a ruin of trampled grass and empty flower beds. A lone papaya tree survived. The girls have taken home dozens of raw papayas, using them to soften kebabs and grating them into salads.
“See that baby papaya? There’s one high up in the tree. If I had a gardener, he’d knock it down for you. And that girl, Shammi Aunty’s maid? Send for her this evening, and we’ll discuss the hours and pay.”
“Mummy . . .” Nargis began, then bowed her head and bit her lips.
Shafiqa knew what her daughter was thinking. Too soon to remind her mother of her age, her dependence. She didn’t drive. She didn’t know how to pay electricity bills and property taxes online. It was only a matter of time. The tremor returned to Shafiqa’s hands, but she smiled evenly.
“I will return to my earth when it is my time. Why do you worry? I know you’ll be there when I need you.”
She didn’t say: if neither of you girls can be bothered to pay a few bills online for your mother, what sort of life can you offer her in your own homes? Let them whisper their guilt and their inconvenience between themselves.
Today, Shafiqa would resume full control of her kitchen. There was half a cabbage in the fridge and some leftover rice. She’d fry them up together. Once she had her own tomatoes and okra and bay leaves and pumpkins, they’d see. There were four seasons of flowers and vegetables to plan for, and that gardener from the graveyard seemed to know what’s what. A bit wild, putting zinnias in a graveyard, but she’d talk to him. He could come in twice a week. She’d get him working on beds of marigold and roses. That rose with the blue tint, she must ask him for a graft.
Tomorrow, Shafiqa determined, she would go back to the graveyard with a cutting from her own garden. Musk roses would bloom over Rehman Sahab’s grave, and Bano may as well enjoy them too, the sad wretch. Let it all come full circle. She herself preferred tulips anyway. Bright orange and pink ones. Next year, she would plant some bulbs in the spot they’ve booked for her. If she does it herself, she can rest assured they’ll come up with very little fuss. And if Rehman Sahab finds her tastes too loud, see if she cares.