The Age of Shiva (46 page)

“Yes, say what you like, Roopa—I know you too well to care. You're mean, and you're selfish since birth, and there's no deeper reason for it—what's more, you'll never be able to change. Paji must have seen this ugliness too—did you think you could keep it hidden from him? Perhaps that's what made him stop loving you as much as before—why else would he write the will the way he did?”

Roopa gave a cry and stood up. This time, the tears in her eyes were from fury, not sorrow. “My Paji is dead. You've got your freedom from him. Go now, and don't repeat his name. Don't pretend to speak for him ever again. Go and make some brilliant changes in your life. The money you've managed to squeeze out—spend it as you wish. And once you've transformed yourself, once you've emerged as carefree as a butterfly, be sure to write us about your wonderful happiness.”

A
LTHOUGH I HAD NEVER CONSCIOUSLY FANTASIZED ABOUT PAJI DYING, I
always harbored a feeling in the back of my mind that it would be a deliverance of sorts when it happened, an escape from his control, a liberation from the existence he had constrained me to live. Now that I was back in Bombay, it was not clear to me how my life was going to change. How would I enjoy my freedom? What brilliant steps would I take, as Roopa had challenged, to make myself happy again?

Could she have been correct about Paji just being an excuse? Someone convenient to fault for all the things that didn't go right in my life? Was I, as she had contended, the only one really to blame? I tried to comfort myself with a list of all the times Paji had subverted the course of my life, but Roopa's troubling accusation remained.

What disoriented me more was the wrenching loss I already felt from your absence. Paji's passing made me feel doubly unmoored, as if my last remaining anchor had been hoisted away. I had never thought of him in this way before, never imagined that his could have been a stabilizing presence over the years, a dependable force to react against. The realization that I now had to navigate life truly alone made me sink into a despondent state.

I began roaming the city streets aimlessly. Sometimes, as I wandered, I tried to imagine Paji following me. Glancing at his watch from time to time to add up the minutes and the hours I wasted. Perhaps he would shake his head, remind me of the books I could have read instead, the goals I could have accomplished, the degrees I could have earned.
Meera, Meera, Meera. Have you ever thought of how much of your life you've frittered away?

But nobody followed me—Paji was gone, I reminded myself. It had a strange effect on me, this double bereavement—I felt more widowed than when Dev had passed away. Sometimes I imagined myself to be an ant in a cosmic experiment, designed to test my ability to make sense of things.

It was on one of my rambling walks that I first started thinking of the idea of completion. I had just crossed over the bridge from Chowpatty to take a look at the small garden behind the tracks at Charni Road station. It was never crowded, since it lay hidden from the main path and people hurrying to and from the station barely noticed its existence. A grove of palm trees of a frizzy kind I had not seen elsewhere stood in the center, surrounded by several plantings of hibiscus and mogra which seemed to be in bloom year-round. I especially liked the corner with the ferns—the way the babies nestled amidst their parents, their heads curled in close to their stems like sleeping birds.

Today, though, my attention was drawn to the edge of the garden, where the ornamental banana tree stood. Instead of the healthy specimen so flamboyantly in bloom the last time, I was surprised to now see something barely alive—yellowing fronds blowing weakly around the shriveling trunk. It seemed impossible that such a change could have taken place over the course of a few weeks—had the tree just decided to die, once the show for which it had been planted was done?

By itself, perhaps I would not have made too much of it. But then I started noticing other things. The spent orange flowers from the gulmohar tree strewn all across the path. The outer layer of fern stalks, all droopy and brown, in contrast with the sprightly inner stalks, preparing to unfurl into the air. Drifting leaves and fallen fruits and seeds, all slowly turning into dust. Most poignant of all, a small white bird—not a dove or a sparrow, but a species I didn't remember having ever seen, resting in a bed of canna lilies. At first I thought it was asleep, but then I noticed an ant crawling over its tiny yellow beak. The feathers were plush and unsoiled, their sheen intact—the bird, I could see, was neither aged nor decrepit. I turned it over with the stem of a leaf—there was no indication to show what had felled it, no mark or injury. It was as if it had alighted from the sky one final time and decided there was no reason to fly again.

I thought about the bird all the way home—imagined how it could have orchestrated such a perfect death. Had it spent the summer tending to a nest full of speckled eggs, and once they were hatched, to the fledgling chicks that needed its help? Is this where it had come after seeing them fly away all grown—had it felt so fulfilled that it seemed like a natural time to end its earthly sojourn? Wasn't that what animals did in the forest—find a quiet corner to curl up and die in once they had come to the end of their usefulness? And the fish that I had once read to you about—salmon, were they?—that came back to spawn and expire where they were born?

For the next few days, I was enthralled by this idea of completion. Every time I saw a flower that had drooped in its vase or spotted a beetle lying curled up on the windowsill, I was reminded of it. Shouldn't I be as smart as these organisms? Know not to challenge the order of the universe? Wouldn't it be foolish to persist once my work on this planet was done?

And what could have been that work, Ashvin, but to bring you forth, to nurture you until grown? You were what had given sense to my life, what had made its pieces fit together. The reason I had met Dev and come to Bombay, the years I had lived to bring you up after he was gone. Perhaps everything that had transpired had a purpose behind it—even what happened to tear us apart. Weren't you settling in well enough now in your boarding school—away from me, away from Arya, out of the reach of harm? And now that Paji had left more than enough money to see you through, weren't you assured a smooth passage into life as an adult?

The more I thought about it, the more clear it became that your need for me was done. The evidence was apparent every time I looked at your photographs. Here you were as a toddler between Dev and myself, holding on to each of our hands as you tried to remain standing. There you sat in your navy blue long pants the year after Dev passed away, with a pale smile coaxed out only for Mummy. Even in the photo that Zaida took of the two of us the April before last, there was a vulnerability in your look, a tenderness in the way your head turned towards me. But then came the two pictures sent from Sanawar. In the first you posed with three other boys—what drew my attention most was that your smile was as carefree as theirs. The other, an identity card portrait, startled me even more—dressed in your new school blazer with the fiery pocket emblem, I could see, for the first time, the defiant confidence in your face.

Could there be something else awaiting me in this life beside you, another purpose I had not explored as yet? Paji, of course, would have exploded at such a question—he would have raged about a long list of goals I still had left. But he was gone now, his letters no longer arriving to exhort me on—what was the significance of the timing of his death? Wasn't this the final validation that I needed, the ultimate reminder that my task was complete? The image of his library ashes came to my mind—I pictured myself floating together with them down the Ganges.

The morning after the immersion trip to Hardwar, I had gone to stand in Paji's library one last time. It was disorienting to see the emptiness gaping from the bookshelves all around, the walls denuded of plaques, the desk swept clean. I rummaged around in the drawers, but they had been emptied as well. Then, against the back of the lowermost drawer, I found something missed by Biji—a small volume of the Urdu poetry Paji loved so much. I quickly hid it in my purse—it would be my last souvenir from my father, not to be shared with my siblings.

Now, I pulled out this volume, to see if in it I could find some guidance from Paji. The way I had discovered the book, the verses Paji had underlined, convinced me some communication lay hidden inside. Most of the poems were about ardor and longing, by poets like Ghalib and Dard and Mir. Roses bloomed, then turned to dust, nightingales wept tears of blood, rivers of wine were poured to wash away the violence of love. I paused over each of the marked couplets, studying some for a very long time, wondering if I had discovered what Paji had selected to speak to me. But I found them all inscrutable. I was about to give up on the book, when my gaze fell on a poem in the last section, by Sauda.

I felt instantly electrified. Wasn't this exactly the confirmation I was seeking? A reminder that my fate was irresistibly coupled with Paji's, a beckoning that harked back to our biological link? The fact that the lines were unmarked, that Paji had been unable to bring himself to underscore them, made them even more compelling. He had chosen this cryptic way to convey the message, one that he knew was the precise one for me, but didn't have it in his heart to endorse with his pen. I had his blessing, the lines were assuring me, I had correctly interpreted the meaning of his death.

Suddenly, with this piece in place, the jigsaw of my life was complete, the map of my future set. My feeling of aimlessness began to lift, the disorientation I suffered from was relieved. I did not as yet dwell on where this line of thinking was taking me, articulate to myself the resolution to which it would lead. I was like an artist setting aside a half-finished painting or a writer waiting for a plot to jell—this would be a last grand work into which I would not rush impulsively.

Zaida noticed my change of mood. “What's the matter?” she asked. “You keep smiling to yourself these days as if you have some secret to hide.” I knew I couldn't let her have the slightest hint of what I was contemplating, so I pretended there was no explanation for my newfound buoyancy.

The only person with whom I knew I could be free was Sandhya. She arrived one night during my gestation period, as I lay thinking in bed.
“How long, how long, will you remain?”
she sang, “
And wander like a vagabond from lane to lane?”
She told me that Sauda had been quite well-known in Lahore. “It took me years to understand I had no purpose left, Didi. You're lucky, you won't linger around uselessly.”

She started coming regularly, holding my hand or caressing my cheek, curling up next to me and covering our bodies with the sheet. “It's as simple as getting off from a bus when you reach your stop—I'll be there to help you with your bags when you arrive.” I smelled the sweet herbal fragrance of her skin, looked into her clear, unblemished face, the empathy in her eyes. “The things you're worrying about don't really matter in the end—once it happens, all those feelings pass quite quickly.”

Sometimes her voice took on a beguiling tone. “You know who else is here, don't you, even if you haven't thought about him for a while, about your Dev? He hasn't forgotten you, Didi, he asks about you each morning—what you're feeling, how long will be his wait. He says he's changed, not to worry about what he was like—when people come here, they don't remain the same.”

She was especially soothing each time I thought of you, Ashvin. When I wondered what effect the news would have on you, how you would be able to continue without me. “He's like the son I didn't have, Didi, so I know how you must feel. But you have to remember he'll find his own happiness in the end. Don't confuse his need with your own—he's already stronger than you think.”

It was Sandhya who came to my rescue when I got bogged down in my planned goodbyes. I had been wondering whether to wait until after the Divali holidays to get a chance to see you again, perhaps even make a special trip to Delhi to visit everyone there. Sandhya assured me there was no reason to linger just to bid farewell in person. “They all know the love in your heart for them, Ashvin most of all. You'll be surprised how little it will matter, Didi—the important thing now is not to lose your momentum.”

One night, Sandhya kissed me just as I was falling asleep. “You're ready now, Didi,” she whispered. “I can see it in your face, feel it in my heart. I'll pray for you tonight while you sleep—we'll meet next on the other side.” I tried to protest, but she covered my lips with her fingers. “Just do it quickly, remember not to wait too long.”

In the morning, when I awoke, the sheet under which we had slept lay folded at my feet. Light streamed in from the balcony, and only the faintest trace of fragrance lingered in the air. I got up from the bed and tiptoed into the other room, as if I might discover Sandhya there, asleep. The sofa was empty, the cushions reclining neatly against the armrests in their pink pillowcases. On the floor near the entrance lay the newspaper, still folded in thirds after being pushed through the slot in the door.

I picked it up. The front page reported that floods had ravaged both Bihar and U.P. India had protested the latest American announcement to sell seven F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan. There had been a stabbing attack by unknown assailants on three more residents of the Muslim colony at Byculla. Indira Gandhi was scheduled to address a conference of women scientists on Saturday morning, followed by a political rally at Chowpatty that evening.

My brain barely registered these headlines—there was something else for which I was searching. Suddenly I knew what it was. I turned to page three, where the more lurid items of local news were located, where the ad for Gulani Clinic (“abortion—safe, affordable, legal”) appeared every day. I was not disappointed—there, in the second column, was the report of a young woman who had drowned herself in Mahim Creek. And right next to it, an account of a spurned suitor who had perished by flinging himself, with melodramatic aptness, into a garbage pit from the terrace of his building.