The Age of Shiva (40 page)

“Don't worry about your uncle tonight. What you did was right—we won't be seeing him for a while.”

I felt the soreness in my shoulder blade, where Arya's fingers had dug in. I tried to apply some Iodex to myself, but you took the jar from my hand and did it for me. Your fingers felt light on my skin—the astringency of the iodine began to clear the smell of Arya from my memory.

My hair was still damp from its shampooing, so you brought in a towel from the bathroom and spread it over my pillow. You pressed at the strands, then arranged them into different patterns—a stream of ripples, a sunburst of rays. I let you carry on, since you seemed so completely distracted by this play. “If you're going to make your mummy into such a princess, tell me, how is she going to be able to sleep?”

Your fingers curled a lock behind my ear and began to run down towards my chin. They came to a stop where Arya's hand had left its mark on my cheek. “It's swollen,” you said, dabbing at it lightly. “Does it still hurt?”

“Don't worry about Mummy. You saved her, remember? Like her very own Prince Charming. All you were missing was a horse, or it would have been a real fairy tale.” My words seemed to cheer you, so I continued. “Rajesh Khanna couldn't have done it better if he was rescuing one of his heroines. Whether it was Mumtaz or Zeenat Aman or Hema Malini. Which one do you think Mummy should be? Perhaps if she was a little fatter, she could even be Yogita Bali.”

We both remembered the film, with Yogita Bali making a thunderous splash when she had jumped into a pool to escape being molested by the villain. You began to laugh. Then, abruptly, you grew somber. “Yara uncle—was he trying to do the same thing to you as that bad man in the movie?”

I made room for your head beside me on the pillow. “This isn't the time to think of these things.” I kissed you several times on your head, as if contact with my lips would conduct away the thoughts inside. “The important thing is that we're both all right.”

You looked like you were getting sleepy. Just as I thought your eyelids would close, they opened up. “You can't be Yogita Bali,” you said. “You're not big enough, like her. Over here.” You ran your hand across your chest to indicate you meant my bosom.

“I saw you.” You blushed. “On the floor.”

I AWOKE LATER THAT NIGHT.
I must have slept for only an hour or so, because it still wasn't light. I had been dreaming—something with you in it—a dream that hovered tantalizingly at the edge of my consciousness, refusing to be enticed back in. I began to sit up, then stopped—you were asleep in the fold of my arm, your face snuggled against my bosom.

I thought about extricating myself, spreading you out more comfortably, climbing over to lie in your bed. But I stayed where I was, and let myself luxuriate in the feeling of your head at my breast. It hardly mattered that my shoulder blade felt stiff, that the Iodex didn't seem to be working. Fears of Arya prowling naked through the Emergency outside, waiting to strike again, faded to a faraway corner of my mind. I lay back and tried to synchronize my breath to yours by following the rhythmic motion of your chest.

The dream called to me again—I willed my mind to empty, my attention to float free, to lure it back. What flitted in, as I watched you sleep, were thoughts of Parvati. The son she created to ward off her loneliness, using bath oil and sandal paste and dabs from her own skin. What would happen if Shiva never returned from his ascetic wanderings? Would Parvati and her boy spend the rest of their years in each other's company? Playing hide-and-seek in the forest, eating when they wanted to, sleeping where and when and how they wished? Leading a life that had need for neither husband nor father, that was fulfilled and immutable and carefree?

Or would time change things? Would she notice his lip sprouting, his voice beginning to crack, his features being altered from the ones she had sculpted so lovingly? Would her own beauty fade, her step begin to waver, the wrinkles start to form over her skin? Would there come a time when she would grow too frail for the romping, too listless for the hide-and-seek, too old to sustain the breezy existence they shared? Or perhaps he would tire of it first, would want to strike out on his own, explore the world beyond, leave the forest and his aged, unattractive mother with it?

Surely, though, if she was lavish enough in her devotion, he would not leave. Her love would be a golden playroom, an enchanted palace, whose comforts he would be loath to surrender. A love so indispensable, like air itself, that a life without it he could not conceive. What choice would he have, in the face of such extravagance, except to love her back with a matching intensity?

But she had to be careful how much she allowed him to love her. Wasn't there another son to give her pause, the one named Andhaka, the blind offspring of Shiva and Parvati? What lust erupted in his heart, how ravaged he was by passion, when his sight was restored and he was confronted by his mother's beauty. It was only after Shiva burnt off his flesh and drained the blood from his body that he eventually became worthy to be a son again.

You press yourself closer against my body in your sleep, as if you are whispering into my breast. Could Andhaka's desire be smoldering in your subconscious as well, waiting for the future to manifest itself? What if I fall into the trap of loving you too much—who will sustain me if you ever left?

I try to rein in the darkness of my thoughts, to concentrate once more on recalling my dream. You murmur in your sleep, and I pull you tighter to myself. I gaze at the hollow of your throat as it rises and falls, and ponder the traversing of each breath. If I had a wish, I think it would be that we stayed like this for decades. Time passing us by, letting you remain by my side, inscribing nothing on your chest.

A
RYA WAS CAPTURED FIVE DAYS LATER, IN BOMBAY ITSELF. TO THE
twenty-odd boons of the Emergency, so widely advertised around the city on billboards, I mentally added another—it kept me safe from my brother-in-law. Perhaps Hema found out he had visited me on Divali, because she sent a long, vituperative missive, in which she reviled me for leading her brother on and then turning him in. Among other rambling insults, she accused me of being selfish and perverted—charging that I had gotten rid of Arya just like I had deposed Dev, since I couldn't bear the thought of sharing your affections with any rivals. (“Even Kali would be less bloodthirsty,” she wrote.) Oddly, she also suggested that I had engineered Arya's nose to be broken on purpose, so that I didn't have to worry about anyone else marrying him. The next summer when we were in Delhi, however, with Arya still incarcerated, she was warm and cordial, with no mention made of her charges.

After Arya's visit, I had rejoined the beds. Cuddling up to me soon became a habit with you—there was a sense of safety in being together, of coziness, of protection. I would awaken to find your face pressed against some part of my body—the crook of my arm, the cushion of my abdomen, the curve of my neck. Sometimes I just went back to sleep—at other times, I arranged my pillow under your head and climbed over to occupy your bed instead.

I'm not sure why I became troubled by the frequency of these entanglements. There were no prying neighbors to cluck their disapproval, no Roopa around to make her nasty insinuations. From where did the unease spring that finally prompted me to push the beds against opposite walls of the room one afternoon?

The last time I had done this, after Roopa's visit, you had barely seemed to notice. This time, you were confused by the new arrangement that greeted you upon your return from school. “Which bed will we use? Aren't they too small for us to fit on just one?”

“We'll each use our own. If they're joined, we always end up on the same side—that's why Mummy has separated them.”

“But I like sleeping on your side.”

“You're ten already, Ashvin—you're getting too big. You want Mummy to have a good night's rest, don't you, and not be cramped?”

“But they're so far apart. How will I save you if some bad man comes at night?”

“Nobody's going to come. And even if someone did, I'm right there, in the same room.”

“Daddy never minded when I slept next to him.”

You didn't kiss me that night, retiring instead after brushing your teeth to your newly appointed side of the room. When I went over to tuck you in, you pretended to be asleep. The next day, you were more pensive than usual, as if brooding over some weighty problem. Even my announcement that I had made almond kheer for dessert didn't elicit a nod or smile. As I spooned it out, tears began trickling down your cheeks. “Mummy doesn't love me anymore,” you burst out crying, and I felt guilty, mortified.

We made a game of joining up the beds again—I pushed while you sat, pretending to be the captain of a ship, commandeering it across the ocean of the bedroom floor. Twinges of doubt arose in me as I held you asleep in my arms afterwards. Had I yielded too easily? Had I not given it enough time? But I felt my apprehensions dissolve when I gazed at your face, peaceful and guileless in the moonlight.

The beds remained joined. The hardest times to reconcile were when you transgressed too conspicuously on my side. When your face found its way deep into my bosom, or a palm settled flagrantly between my thighs. I would lie in the dark wondering whether to wake you up, or try to pry off your sleeping form. It was not as if you were conscious, as if you were making some crude advance. Where was the shame in any contact that was innocent, no matter how it might appear in anyone's eyes?

What troubled me more was the issue of my own reaction. I lived in a vacuum, untouched by anyone except you. Which meant there was only you to keep my need for physical connection satisfied. What if I enjoyed these accidental caresses more than I should? Could there be some part of me getting aroused, some unspeakable desire deep within being gratified? I could almost feel Roopa sear these questions into my mind.

I kept a vigil for the slightest sign of stimulation in my body. I resolved to disengage myself from any contact the least bit titillating. The pleasure I derived from cuddling with you would remain innocent, beyond reproach. It would strictly be my maternal needs being fulfilled.

To my relief, nothing improper turned up in my scrupulous monitoring. There were no embarrassing flushes, no heat spreading dissolutely up my body. The sexual part of me that I had locked away so long ago remained caged, safely hibernating. I began to relax about our sleeping arrangements. The specter of my sister's disapproval faded from my mind.

THE CHANGES, WHEN THEY OCCURRED
, crept up on me. Your face never ended up against my neck or my shoulder anymore—it zeroed in on the cleft of my bosom with unerring regularity. Each time I eased away, you tossed and turned and returned to the same position, often with a hand falling across my breast as a further provocation. Once, I awoke to find you splayed out on my chest, like a conqueror resting atop an edifice he had climbed.

And yet I couldn't muster the will to sunder the beds once again. Even if you were aware of what you were doing, what, really, was the harm in it? Why should there be any impropriety in physical closeness? It wasn't as if Andhaka could have taken over already, as if lust could possess a heart so young.

Perhaps I let myself get too used to the feel of your body against mine, to the reassurance of its weight, like that of a snuggling pet. Each night transported us to our own private island, cocooned us in the sheets, separated us from everyone else. You turned eleven, then twelve and thirteen, and we continued enjoying our closeness in bed.

I was slow in recognizing the signs of puberty. You had always been private while disrobing or preparing for your bath—now you became painfully shy even while taking off your shirt. Still, I caught a glimpse of you once while handing you a towel through the bathroom door—the nascent wisps of pubic hair shocked me. In bed, you clung on to me sometimes, and were aloof at others—demanding a separate sheet one night, and the next, wanting to nuzzle beneath the covers.

Perhaps it would have been easier had Dev been still around, had I grown up with brothers as siblings. There was nobody to educate me about the changes you were going through—it was not something I could brush up on through an article in
Eve's Weekly.
One night, while you were asleep, I felt your puberty asserting itself against my thigh. I reacted so strongly that you awoke at my recoiling.

In that one moment, my ignorance was dispelled. I would pull the beds apart come morning. Then I saw the confusion on your face, its sleepy innocence. I remembered how distraught you had been the last time I separated the beds. I decided to keep things as they were, not call attention to what had happened.

There came mornings when you tried to cover the evidence of dreams that had played out wetly, and I tried my best to feign unawareness. Sometimes I would find a pillow awkwardly arranged in the center of your bed to hide the stain underneath. On other days, the first thing you would insist on upon waking was to go to the bathroom and wash your pajamas yourself. At times you were responsive, nuzzling at my neck as before, melting into my embrace. But there were also nights when you seemed to resent my very presence, when my endearments only made things worse.

On these occasions, you shut your eyes tightly, and reclined on the edge of your mattress farthest from my bed. Nothing stirred you—not the stickiness of the air, not my exhalations or sighs. I lay awake and tried to distract myself from the rejection I felt. Drops of perspiration dampened my back and I wondered if you were sweating as well. What always surprised me was how physical was my longing, as if someone had taken away a favorite pillow I was addicted to hugging to myself.

But eventually, even if it was after a few days, you always returned to my side. I let you cover my face with kisses on these nights. Did it ever occur to me that these tokens could have been for my benefit, not yours? That you might have been guiltily trying to compensate for my deprivation? The monsoons came and went, the weather grew cool, then warm, then once again wet. For months you maintained your back-and-forth, and I was too wrapped up in my own presumptions to realize what you were going through.

“What a bizarre practice, to sleep together like that.” Zaida was not talking about the two of us, but Gandhiji—there had been an article in
Blitz
about his virgin experiments. For years, it seemed, the Mahatma had slept next to women, some of them teenagers—the motive being to hone his abstinence, to put his celibacy to the test. “Who knows what must have gone on under the covers? What he, or the women, must have really felt?”

I felt tempted to counter Zaida, to offer the example of our own nightly practice, in Gandhiji's defense. But something stopped me from making this revelation. Was it because my views on motherhood were too hard to explain, too unconventional? How would I articulate my central idea—that pure intentions always guaranteed the purity of the experiment?

That October, when you were fourteen, your Sharmila auntie came to visit. After Roopa's fall from favor, she had become the most popular aunt, the one with whom you spent the most time on Delhi vacations. You developed your love for science from her—she talked to you about chemistry and physics for hours. On her last Bombay trip, you had campaigned unsuccessfully to sleep between us—this time, to my surprise, you volunteered to take the living room couch without being asked.

For the next few days, you were more animated than I had seen in a while. Sharmila brought you a large box filled with old equipment from her college—diode valves and an ammeter, vials filled with chemical salts, and even a Bunsen burner, which she managed to hook up to the cooking gas. Every evening, after you came back from school, she produced blue and yellow precipitates magically out of colorless solutions in the kitchen. One day, she showed you how to read the current in a circuit, the next, she helped you construct an erupting volcano to take to school. She bought you an expensive illustrated book on space exploration as a parting gift—“He's the closest I'll ever get to having a child of my own.”

The evening Sharmila left, I was changing her sheets on your bed, when you casually mentioned you'd like to continue sleeping in the living room. When I asked why, you hung your head and said, “No reason.”

“You know the sofa's too soft. It's not good for your back.”

“But Daddy used to sleep on it all the time.”

“Only because you were the one occupying his bed.” I fluffed up your pillow. “Don't you want to sleep next to Mummy anymore?”

You didn't say anything, so I continued. “That's called the living room, you know—because you're supposed to
live
there, not use it to sleep every night. Besides, what would we do with the empty mattress by Mummy's side?”

Your face crumpled, revealing a flash of despair that made me stop. Suddenly all your ambivalence of the past several months was eloquently explained. You could no longer bear the thought of sleeping by my side—how could I not have seen it before? Was that pity I had glimpsed in your look? “Of course you don't have to worry about Mummy,” I assured you. “You can sleep wherever you like.”

The sofa
did
turn out to be unsuitable—there was no fan to keep you cool, and the springs were so worn that you almost rolled off some nights. I continued my game of movable beds, pushing them up against the walls again and bidding you to return. “It's much better this way,” I said, pointing to the reinstated arrangement with a bright and shiny smile. “You here and Mummy there—everything will be fine.”

It was obvious even to me that you weren't quite taken in by my cheeriness. You slunk into the bedroom each night, kissing me apologetically, examining me with concern, as if for signs of breakage, as if I was fragile. Every few days, you pressed your head into my bosom as before, or threw yourself atop me with apparent playfulness while I was in bed. Once you even presented your cheeks, adorned with pearl-perfect tears to kiss away, after you had cried. But it was not the same—I could no longer enjoy these bursts of affection at face value. There was always the nagging notion that this was a show for my benefit. That you were going along guiltily with a role you thought I wanted you to play.

YOU SPOTTED THE ELECTRONICS
kit in the window of a shop in Colaba, lying next to the board games of Property and Spell-O-Fun. We had gone there to buy you a new shirt for your fifteenth birthday. The set was obviously imported—on the cover were two boys with freckled cheeks and splendidly blond heads, pointing their screwdrivers in excitement at an incandescent set of electric tubes. “It might be rather expensive,” I cautioned, but you said you only wanted to have a look at it, and led me up the steps.

Ever since Sharmila's visit the previous year, your interest in science had increased steadily. The ammeter had been a favorite—once you even tried rigging it up with wires to my arm to measure electric currents through my skin. By now, you had acquired other odds and ends as well—mostly salvaged from Zaida's old radio that no longer worked. You were already well beyond your just-completed ninth standard syllabus—even assembling a microphone, which when you spoke into it, chirped.