Uma stares at the World with Suspicion

Uma stares at the library room in the Officer’s Mess, in the new southern town that they have moved to.
It feels a bit familiar to her. So many windows and sunlight streaming in. The nakedness of its display! Space opening itself so joyously to its readers, touching is mandatory, it seems to say. She smoothens the gold rimmed bindings with her stubby fingers, takes a deep whiff smelling the insides of a dusty ancient tome, Oh! Poor thing! no one took you out to read? I shall be your saviour….

‘Read as much as Possible’ figures in her latest to-do list this year. Actually she likes both the numbers 1 and the zero. Unable to decide which she prefers, she usually settles for a 10. Everything has to be done 10 times. Or at 10 past or 10 after. Or in the years when you are 10 or 20 or…Uma is 10 and this is her list of 10 items.

1. Meet as many Famous saints as possible
2. Take part in Sports Day at school and Win
3. Practise speaking on any Topic everyday . Extempore
4. Never sit next to a Boy
5. Pay more attention at school Assembly
6. Take Autographs for the Future
7. Improve General Knowledge and Vocabulary
8. Make an effort to Like girls
9. Join an all Girls school
10. Read as much as Possible.

Uma never tires of making lists, in the event of nothing else to do, she will tear out a neat white sheet of paper, ruled or unruled, lick the back of her pencil, bite her lips, swing her feet with abandon and ponder on what the list should be about. Once she has made the list, she forgets all about it. She does not need to read it now, having given it her all she has every word etched in her memory, embedded for posterity, to cash in if the situation should so demand.

This new list is as the result of a fiasco in the last school she was in, as a Class Monitor in Holy Cross, she wants to be now better prepared, for Life.

No, she couldn’t have guessed it was coming. Else she is a conscientious one, our Uma. Since she seemed to be always so quiet and studious, the good samaritan Sisters in the previous school thought it imperative that she get a little boisterous. It was funnily enough a co-educational institution for a catholic school and though she did not mind boys, in fact it was girls she disliked and hence had insisted on studying with boys, she couldn’t bear the silliness surrounding her. Everyone was always passing ‘chits’ to everyone else. Every pretty girl had a boy stalking her, following her every move, rest breaks and intervals were filled with croonings of the latest film hits and whenever a teacher went out, a pandemonium always broke out in the classroom.

Boys would try throwing love notes at ‘their’ girls and the girls would giggle and someone would shout suddenly about what someone else was saying about some other person….it was the Circus itself with just clowns surrounding her. Hence she did what she thought befitted a scholarly ten year old. She refused to be party to such frivolity. It could also be that she was not really pretty and she had no interested parties to distract her. Boys though will respond to their own calling than the parameters of aesthetics. Some did find her quiet demeanour very alluring.

Khalong was from somewhere near Shillong and he made it very clear to everyone that he wanted to sit next to her. So after the new seating arrangements were put in place he bartered the latest trendy pencil sharpner that his uncle from Mizoram had gifted him for the prized seat. Next to her. He was now sandwiched between two girls, Uma and the-girl-who-always-whined. It was a policy decision made by the Head Sister to inculcate a healthy respect for the ‘other sex’, as she called it.

When the holy Sister first stated her liberal purpose using that three letter word in the classroom there was a big bang in the heads of each of the thirty, ten year olds, sitting demurely in front of her. What was she saying? This word unlike other words that were said before and most promptly ignored by the restless bunch was taken in, in concentrated silence. As though something sacred was being spouted. Not that anyone knew what it meant but even at ten they knew its potency. The word, then crept into their consciousness and stayed there till it would be called urgently at a latter date, trying to redeem itself and its duty of having a healthy respect for the other. How much respect would actually show when it manifested itself from a word to an act, that was doubtful but it certainly hinged upon decisions such as this.

Of Khalong sidling next to Uma. Trying to lend her his geometry box, his notes, his dirty handkerchief when she sneezes. Uma is starting to feel suffocated. She is used to being left alone and ignored. This sudden spurt of attention takes away the joys of staring silently into space observing the twisting tail of the class lizard hunkered overhead, threatening to drop at any moment on the language teacher. If only he were smarter she would not have minded but Khalong apart from being the rough and tumble sporty kind was also very loud and upfront about his ‘feelings’ for her, which made her dislike him even more. Plus this assumption of his that she needed his help. Okay she was not the most brilliant in class but she had come third and that was not too bad, was it? Third, in all the sections A, B, C put together.

Especially with having to learn a new language it had not been easy. Being a boy his own interest was in taking charge of a wayward elf like her who ate alone, walked in the garden alone, struggled with Assamese and couldn’t, wouldn’t laugh aloud in class when he or the other boys acted goofy. This much then was enough for a boy to like a girl. He could feel good about protecting a poor thing, giving her some much required company and confidence. Allowing her to share his bawdy space. Did he for a minute think of himself. Of how he came across to her ? Well, it did not matter apparently. He did not question his purpose towards her nor her response towards him.

She was being kind. Uma is kind as we have seen. She stares kindly at the bloated lizard (unlike other girls who might scream), she very kindly smiles at the-girl-who-whines, when she whines, which is all the time, she kindly offers to close the classroom door when it gets too hot and muggy or there are sudden showers, she in short tries hard to be kind. If she cannot be first in class in academics she will beat Sudip Sen by being the kindest. She was being kind now to Khalong by borrowing his tattered and incomplete notes, she would not use them of course but he had been offering them as though this was maha prashad itself and he being a tribal, a Christian, who did not speak Assamese or Hindi, she was conscious of the small slights he faced time to time in a very Bengali dominated school. She did not wish to add to it.

That was how our happy tribal concluded that he had scored her heart.

“I gave your name in for Extempore tomorrow” he announces triumphantly one day, after his unlabelled, uncovered notes have been returned without being perused or copied. He is not someone to sense that or that in Uma’s world, if you do not cover your notebooks with brown paper and label them in your own handwriting, running not bold, you are insulting Goddess Saraswati. She has not yet responded and he is not in a hurry to hear an answer. Is this how they grow up? To be men? Telling their side of the story and not waiting for a reaction, a conversation, an acceptance.

“Why?” Uma can be rude and reticent when kindness starts intruding into her space.

“What do you mean why? I know you can do it! You read all the time…you must have so much to say. It will be easy, I found out that other teams don’t have anyone strong signing up, they have already signed up for the Debate….and we need someone from Daffodils to win this time, we are lagging behind already…” Khalong is the vice-captian of Daffodils, one of the team with three others at school, all named after flowers that the students of Holy Cross, Silchar have never had a chance to see and may never ever see in the future either. That has not deterred the sweet nuns from transplanting the gardens of Devon and transposing them to a tropical belt where a Mahua, Juhi, Kachnar or even Raat-ki-Rani might have been more apt. Or NeelKamal, Palash, Parijaat, Shankhapushpi...
Daffodils or Pansies did not emit to Uma the fragrance of her land.

In which case the school wouldn’t be as popular of course. Without the Christian hymns that were taught, without the English sounding teams, without the English discipline, without the English uniforms and ties (in humid Assam) and buckles and belts and labels and covers and polished black shoes and pure white socks (in humid Assam) Who would dare send their ward to be educated here? After all a proper education meant all this and more. Pity that she wasn’t in a boarding school, her father could neither afford nor comply with it. Whoever got left out, too bad, they were sure to suffer in the future. In the future who would care about Assamese or Bengali or her own language Telugu? What chance did Khalong have with just his native Nagamese!
She could sense that if she had to be anybody at all, she had to master English.

Which meant Khalong had done her a favour. Poor boy that was his intention anyway, team Daffodils was just an excuse. Which meant she should be thanking him politely and make him feel special.
“Thank You Khalong” Uma is as reticent in her kindness but the rude edge has been couched.
“That’s the first time you said my name!” he races down the corridor with a swoop and flourish of a film hero, turning back to give her a smile and flick his lock of hair back in place. He fails to notice the disinterested look in Uma’s eyes, infact a look of pure disdain. Its just a name, she thinks! What is in that?

There are matters more pressing like when and what of this competition he has tethered her to. She is told to arrive at the Auditorium at 10 am tomorrow, sharp. The five topics will be given ‘then and there’ and she will have to choose one and speak on it for a five minutes. It doesn’t sound too complicated to elicit any preparation and Uma shows up at 10 am sharp as directed at the Auditorium.

Khalong is already there with a brood of equally happy looking boys, who are no doubt enlisted to support her, since she is his ‘girl’. And they are his friends. Uma hates this public display of affection. What has made this boy assume that he owns her? That she needs his backing, cheering and good will? She is in a very bad mood now. She would have liked to have come quietly and having done her bit for Daffodils, gone away without much notice…but this! She is sure that tomorrow were she to offend Mr K in any way all this would fizzle off into cold vibes and hateful stares. This is what she would have liked to prevent. How could she have allowed this to happen?

“Uma Uma Uma” the chants go on incessantly. As though this were a football match.

She is distracted and dismayed, she cannot find her being, her bearing, her centre, her space. She cannot think anything and her head is all fuzzy wuzzy. Her name is called out and she is walking robotically to the stage, standing in front of the microphone, picking up the lots, announcing it as “ SCHOOL ASSEMBLY” and then, and then all is Dark.

“You could have said we sing the National Anthem” Khalong’s disappointed voice drags.
“ ….and we say the Pledge….oh! and we read the Headlines” another chips in
“Thought for the Day” from a boy Uma has never noticed in school
“that we have Inspections…our hair, nails, badges are checked…”
“But you read so much…how come you were tongue-tied?” Khalong is perplexed.

and it goes on and on till she starts to run and run and run, their voices trailing, away from them all, to the grounds behind the school, where on one end all the didis and bhaiyyas are busy holding hands and shoo her away, so she runs and runs to the other end and settles down under the big water tank to absorb her loss in silence.

Her embarrassing failure in front of the whole school has not deterred Khalong from his pursuit, in fact now he is all the more determined to help her win at something. A week later he approaches her at tiffin time
“I put your name in for the running race. This is really simple. You don’t have to speak at all, I know you are shy, don’t worry. Just run, like you did the other day, okay? Daffodils believes in you” he is excited to have found an area where his girl can shine. Wait, where did he get the idea that she is shy? Uma is instantly irritated at this thought. She is neither shy nor tongue-tied. She is just not very fond of him and prefers to speak a lot with herself.

Once again his troops stand in attention at the will of their commander and prod her to please their Master. This is something she will not succumb to. This coaxing, cajoling, being told to behave in a certain way such that the ‘other sex’ can feel satiated. She begins to sense that the ‘other sex’ might never be satiated, they might demand more from her if she gives in once…with these thoughts and a false start she is the last one to complete the race. She is also not very good with her legs and anything to do with huffing and puffing drains her. She is a reader. Not a talker or runner.

Good! Good riddance. Khalong has been mum for a few months now. Though solicitous of her needs, he has not planted her name in any untoward games or competitions. Meanwhile Sudip Sen, whom she secretly likes but only because he comes first (In all sections A, B, C put together), is flaunting his GK scores and flirting with Bidita AND Bidisha. He has won a gold medal for the school in an inter-school Quiz competition that she too took part in, voluntarily, but lost out in the last round since she could not place Dardanelles on the map. All the girls are crazy about him of course and she has no chance. She does not know about Dardanelles and he does. Neither can she run a race or talk extempore for five minutes and there is this urgent matter of Khalong who sits next to her and professes undying devotion even in his mutedness.

“It’s a chorus, the school choir, you can stand at the back if you like, no one will see you…” this time he has less faith in her abilities but more affection in his tone. This is not the bravado of yore but a newfound sensitivity to failure.
“Thank you, I get scared when I see you and your friends in the audience” Uma manages to finally blurt out her real problem.

And so it came to pass that when Mother Teresa pays a visit to their school, she lustily sings “Love Him, Love Him, Love Him in the morning, Love Him in the noontime, Love Him, Love Him, Love Him till the sun goes down…” to a delirious audience who join in causing the living saint to remark that this is the best school she has ever visited and this is the best choir she has ever heard but among these students you will not spot Khalong nor his friends. In keeping with his promise to her he has forfeited this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by taking refuge in the chapel and praying hard for her, for her to be a success.

After that day of course her value in school shot up manifold. Everyone said Hello to her. She was surprised when they called out her name and was duly pleased that they knew her name, just as Khalong was not so long ago. She was soon called to sing at various events and was shifted from the back to the front position, right next to the microphone. She was in school magazines and feted by the Seniors with a ‘well done’ and a thumbs up sign wherever she went. So much so that Sudip Sen who had not even known that she existed in his class sitting all the while in front of his bench, assigned her a nickname and took to calling her OM-a or O-Ma depending on his mood and started teasing her the way he had teased the beauties B and B. It was all too delicious. To be wanted so.

Meanwhile the teachers not to be outdone have made her the Class Monitor for the rest of the year in keeping with her budding popularity and the fact that she still spoke so little.

On those definitive days of our lives where we look back and wish we could erase everything so that we could start again afresh, make a different decision, be a little more frank, a little more honest, learn to appreciate the kindness in other people, learn to sift the good from the bad, recognize real love when it stares right at us, recognize it sitting next to us, annoying us, pushing and forcing us to acknowledge it back, we behave badly. We give in to the devil.

On such a day Uma is told that she has to stand-in for a teacher called on urgent duty by the Principal.

On any other day in any other time, a time before she was popular and called out by name, she would have passed those few minutes till the teacher returned by looking up at the class lizard, engaging him in her thoughts, minutes dragging to a grinding halt with the school bell but today is special. When she stands up and walks to the blackboard, the class hushes itself, they look at her with new awe and respect, didn’t Mother Teresa herself say that Uma sang ‘from her heart’, that we needed more of such joyous people in the world? They see her with different eyes, Mother’s eyes. She has been touched by fame and holiness and she is their classmate.

Very soon there is a battle for her attentions.

Khalong and Sudip outdo one another in telling jokes, making the class laugh, mimicking teachers and throwing dusters and chalk at random to display their manly prowess. Soon their coterie joins in and there are two groups. One pitted against the other.

All this for her.

There is singing too and everyone pitches in going Rambha HO HO HO, Samba HO HO HO!! They talk of the film, the actress dancing it, the singer and musician, when Sudip, trying to gain lost ground, shows off his superior IQ by announcing to the class that this is a copy of an English song and that “you are all English slaves to sing it” Khalong who has started the song and is the most vocal is stuck in mid-sentence in shame when the teacher walks in.
Demanding to know – “Uma, who has been making this racket?”
She should have kept quiet, like always. She should have said ‘we all’ or ‘they both’ She could have taken history on a different course.

“Khalong sir” saying that she sits down finishing off him and her for good.

Uma went to school for a few more days after that incident, till her report card came out and for those twenty odd days Khalong mysteriously disappeared from her life. He was said to have gone back to his village, some said he was sick, others said that he was seen at the chapel. She spotted him though on two rare occasions once under the water tank and on the last day of school at the gate. She passed him by but he did not say a word. She could have asked for his address or told him that she would be moving away to a new town in the South, that they may never again meet but neither Uma nor Khalong gave the future or their inevitable sadness in their latter years any serious thought. When you are ten, all that matters is your self esteem.

Later, in the absence of an Autograph which he refused her with a quick shake of his head, Uma would think of this boy who gave her so much so readily, who had changed her life for the better. Who had brought out a new Uma, an Uma who was not afraid to talk or run and who knew where every country was on the map. He had said that day under that water tank, while she sat and absorbed her ‘running race’ loss in silence that she was not like the other girls who laughed at his tribal looks, his accented English, that she did not poke fun at his old fashioned clothes or his lack of knowledge about the world, He had asked,

“Can you come to my village? We can play in the hills all day and catch butterflies”

Uma had not even bothered to reply. She was annoyed at being found.
Now, she did not know his full name even though she had sat next to him for a whole year nor the name of his parents, she had not asked where his village was nor what it was called. She would have to make do by visiting him in her head. Apologizing to him in absentia.
The 'sorry' that was stuck in her throat was grating her conscience each time she swallowed something, truth was unpalatable,
bitterly accusing her of crushing a delicate divine connection.
Maybe she could write to the school……..

It was Khalong she was thinking of when she saw this library room. This room is like him, Welcoming, Enabling, Embracing.
“I shall spend a lot of time here”…she says to herself looking at the uncovered unlabelled copy of Great Expectations.

Quarantine of the Senses

He sat by the sea, his eyes shut. To him, the company of the sea doesn’t mean turquoise waves, sunrise ochers bleeding across a restless water body. He sought the music of the waves, countless breathless sighs, crashing on the shore, surrendering their sadness to sand and shells, before retreating with a soughing sound, humbled, subdued.
He was aware: his consciousness clung only to the sense of hearing. In the city where he now lived, morning light–seeping in through the half-drawn blinds–would dapple his face with bands of gray and chrome-white, and he would stir under the blanket, knowing it was too early to wake-up, yearning for sleep.
And then, he would hear a pigeon’s wings flap and fall silent as the bird settled on the window sill. It’s deep throaty murmur would reinstall a sweet drowsiness in his eyelids, turning them heavy, driving him back into the cocoon of slumber, safe, content with his hibernation.
The vegetable-peddler would wake him up about an hour later, first the wheels of his pushcart, crushing the gravel on the street, then his voice, calling out the prices of okra and eggplant. Closing his mouth on the toothbrush, his eyes lowered, uneasy about his reflection in the cabinet mirror, he sometimes thinks his mother’s presence is divided between the voices of the pigeon and the hawker, one cajoling him back to sleep: rest, my child, let sleep heal your body, the other stirring him to the world he must walk into, the responsibilities he must own up to: get up, child, there is much to learn, you have to be an important man some day. He works hard, at such times, to bring back the face of his mother. He’s aware that his mother has a heart-shaped face, her skin color like the base of caramel custard, her eyes brown as those of does. But this awareness doesn’t translate to a visual stimulus, his mind doesn’t offer him an image of her. There is only the voice, washing over him, at time like the music of windchimes, at times, like cobwebs in those ruins that childhood curiosities lead us into.
Now, he walks back from the seaside of his hometown to his ancestral bungalow, and in the growing darkness, recalls the evening walks he used to take as a child, in tow with his sister. In the park, they would sit on swings and soar so high, the wind singing in their ears, their mouths still on fire from the puffed rice they ate, coated with chilly-powder and coriander. He thinks of how being a family added a subtle energy to his daily life, an undercurrent that eased the drudgery of homework and those daily chores his mother assigned to him–filling water, taking casseroles and plates from the kitchen and setting them on the dining table.
He tries, sometimes, to access that energy, stretching his hand across all the years that have eclipsed, across the warmth of the many summers, the mild cold of the winters. He has forgotten what it is like to live in a family, yet, he manages to access that energy: in the form of his sister’s laughter, in the stories they made-up together to fill the afternoon.
He gets into his bungalow now, and finds it alive with the pitter-patter of feet, feet running up and down the stairs, through passageways, into rooms, shuffling before the fall silent under a bed, behind a door. No, there are no children at home. No ghosts either. Only memories: of his sister and him, playing hide-and-seek with children from the neighborhood. He smile, holds onto its taste, the way one holds onto the taste of a rare, seasonal fruit. The house is sinking into the darkness of dusk, but he doesn’t turn the lights on, instead, takes the stairs, walks onto the terrace. They are still there: the clotheslines, where his father diligently hung their wash each evening. He remembers now the sense of pleasure his father’s face flickered with, when after putting up the wash for drying, he stepped back, clutching the empty bucket, eyes set on the saris and trousers and school uniforms shivering gently in the evening breeze.
He takes the iron ladder that lead to the water tank. At one time, from here, he could have a clear vision of the sea. But now, the buildings that rise in between, the flats and the offices with tight tiny cubicles, block the sea out. Those new buildings have been built on lands where the houses of his friends once stood, houses that he went knocking to on most evenings, cricket ball clutched in one hand; houses where he played video games with his friends when their parents were away, where he arranged the He Man toys in a battle line, where he plucked lilac dahlias for his sister. Strangely, he doesn’t think of his friends, who would be grown up now, chasing children and monthly pay checks. He thinks, instead, of the furniture belonging to all those razed down houses: what happens to the furniture family’s leave behind, where they once sat sipping on cardamom tea, arguing over an actor’s performance, betting over a cricketer’s score record? What happens to the beds where their children slept, growing bigger each year, until one day the bed, the room, the house became too small to contain their dreams? What happens to the saucers with blue petals, powder boxes with cream puffs, and oh those yellow plastic ducks that floated in the bath water?
The thought of these articles, once so intimately in touch with a family, and now lying forgotten, broken, or recycled to a different form, saddens him. He feels as though an icicle that lay frozen inside him for years has now begun to melt, making his throat soggy, heavy. He gulps fresh, cold air again and again, till the icicle is restored to its frozen state. Satisfied, he steps down the ladder, the stairs.
Down in the hall, he collects a cushion, wraps his arm around it, and reviews once again the contract: yes, he too will be selling this bungalow, this home, so a wealthy constructor can raise an apartment complex, bringing down the spaces where his childhood was cast, delicate as the strokes of a painting done on ancient parchment. He shuffles through the pages of the contract, looking, but not reading. He knows tomorrow morning when the constructor arrives in his usual white safari suit with a betel-stained smile, he will sign and handover these papers, take the money, put it in the bank account, return to his flat in the city, and plan a trip to someplace foreign: Rome, or Egypt.
He lies in his bed that night, knowing this is the last night he will spend in this room, this bed, this house. He tries recollecting the sad moments of his life, feeling it were an obligation, his responsibility to feel heartbroken about the impending trade, old house for contemporary dream. But there is no tumult within him; he abruptly realizes that his home is no longer his “home.” We sometimes feel homesick for a home that doesn’t even exist, he muses; we miss a place that doesn’t occupy a place in the physical world, that exists but in our imagination.
He gets up, nonetheless, and walks about his old house, through the rooms, the bathrooms with their now-dulled fittings and bathtubs. He thinks of how he discarded the senses one after the other, even with no apparent tragedy striking him. Yes, he was a victim of abuse as a child, but that happened long back into the tunnels of time, when he was seven; even after that, he had tasted happiness, the senses in all their richness, day after day.
What happened later in his life was what happened to most people: his sisters got married and settled into the rhythm of their married lives, his childhood playmates grew up and left to pursue education in different cities, he grew bored of his old board games and playthings, his parents found a calling in the spiritual preaching of a guru (he remembers how they would come back from their weekly prayer meets, full of chants and conversations about God; this was before they shifted to the ashram, where they now live). But where other people seemed equipped to accept this change as a necessity to live their dreams, the transience of it all exhausted him: if what is important now is forgotten five years hence, why must he struggle to achieve something five years from now, when a decade from now it will bear little consequence? Only milestones and no destination to wrap his imagination around. And so he let the senses go, feeling the futility of using them to acquire something ephemeral. But the sense of hearing, he held onto, for he needed at least one channel open, so that life may flow through it and fill him, give him energy, just enough to go from one day to the next, just enough to restrain him from giving up on life.
He now sits in the balcony as another day begins with the same splash of earl-gray light. He looks up at the iron grills, beyond which lay the garden area. He remembers how his mother had placed windchimes here. When watching the cats–the eight stray cats that made his home their home–lap at a plate of milk, he’d listen to the windchimes fill the air with soft tinkles, and wonder how six strands of cut-glass can contain so much music.
The cats are now dead and gone, leading different lifetimes, the chimes packed away in some wooden box, no longer singing, no longer dancing in the wind. But the sounds are there: the pink tongue of the cats lapping at milk, the chimes with their sweet tinkles. His eyes shut, he thinks: for now this much is enough.
Yes, for now, to live through this world quarantined from the senses, this music is more than enough.

Short Story: The Footprints of Tomorrow

(by Puneet Gupta)

The sonogram was perfect. "Everything was going to be just fine," everyone told him. He wasn’t sure if all this was for real. For the first time since she first found out was he actually nervous, unsure. The long nights of pacifying Kaamna and the endless anticipation of the moment, coupled with the perennial sermons from his mom on 'how to take care of a pregnant wife” was driving him to the edge. Now with the baby due any day, it would all be over, soon.
"I don’t want this baby!” he had told Kaamna with a wary uneasiness. "I think it’s too early for us to become parents". He had not had to deal with the stream of tears or the melancholic sobs of an expectant mother who now wasn’t too sure of her motherhood, for he had stormed out of the room when she tried to argue otherwise. This was eight months back.
It was 2:48am, on a Tuesday morning that marked the arrival of those tiny feet and the hairless head, weighing a healthy 8 pounds. The ward nurse had brought the news. "Mubarak ho, many congratulations Sir. It is a lovely baby girl". He felt a surge of something inside, an emotion he had never know. Emotions fogged his eyes and he rushed to share the moment with Kaamna.

The coming and going of relatives, telephone calls, medication, congratulatory bouquets, paperwork, sweets, and the hospital discharge procedure kept him off work for the rest of the week. They had named her Ujjwala. Kaamna had wanted to call her Sukriti, but at the end, he had his way.
They were due to get a health check up of the baby done the next week. Little did they know that this would be the last trip together as a family? Ujjwala passed away three days later. A case of pneumonia gone astray! He remembered with remorse his own words - "I don’t want this baby!"

A normal couple would have cried, held hands and shared some sleepless nights. But Kaamna and Rajeev chose to "deal with the situation" in their own smart ways. While Rajeev busied himself with work, often working longer shifts on the pretext of the upcoming audit, Kaamna filled her days by visiting the nearby slums to teach children and adults. At supper, their conversation revolved around the day's work, bills that needed to be paid, repairs that needed to be made to the house and calls that needed to be returned. Awkward silences and long uneasy pauses became rampant in all their night walks. Deep within, each of them understood the need of the other for that solitude and quietness. Ujjwala was never mentioned, yet never forgotten...

It was during one of her field trips to Danubari, one of the jhopad patti area around the cities oldest railway tracks. The day's agenda was to train the basti people about the importance of sanitation. Stench, flies, rags and dung piles greeted her on the way in. While she was still orienting herself to gather the crowd and start her presentation, she felt someone tug at her sari. She turned around with a sharp reflex, for she had feared it to be a dog. Instead, she stood there looking into the most beautiful hazel eyes of a little girl, whose tattered, greasy clothes somehow seemed too unfair. "Yes, unfair was the word," she thought to herself. Presently, she was drawn out of her reverie by a thud. The easel mounting the poster boards had just given way. As she hurried to straighten it up, she looked back at the girl, only to find her running into one of narrow gullies, finally disappearing out of sight.

She visited the basti again next week, with brooms, disinfectant, garbage bags and her posters. Her eyes darted all around her while supervising the cleaning of the well, logging of drains and installation of wire gauze over the sewer. Just about when she was about to leave, she heard her name called out. She turned back to see Meeta beckoning her, urgently, to come into the dwelling. Meeta Rao was a friend and coworker at Roshni, the mobile school for the underprivileged. Sensing an emergency, Kaamna ran as fast as she could, to find Meeta bent over the little girl, shaking her up, sprinkling her face with water and shouting for someone to call a doctor. Later during the evening, at the hospital, Birju Lal - the panwallah - told Meeta and her about the little girl, Chutki. Chutki's dad was a carpenter and mothers a construction laborer. When the child was about a year old, her mother died in an attack of diarrhoea. Her father left the basti a few weeks later, leaving behind the child, sleeping alone in the cot. Chutki was now 18 months old.
That night, Kaamna did not sleep well. She kept on tossing an turning in her bed. The grief of Ujjwala's absence on her bedside choked her, threatening to belie all the self control that she had so gracefully mustered thus far. She got up quietly and went to the terrace, looking into the moonless sky, darkness so profound that it seemed surreal. A train whistled through the night, and she fell asleep on the lone rocking chair by the parapet.

...

As the days passed, Kaamna had the strange feeling that the whole world was conspiring against her, making her feel the void of her womb with such atrocity that was cannibalistic. The other day, Mrs. Parekh from the third floor invited them over for a birthday party of their 2 year old. Her aunt had just called about her daughter's wedding the next Sunday and Rajeev just finished reading out to her an email from his sister in Mumbai declaring that she was pregnant. She would see school kids dressed up as jokers and potatoes for school fancy dress competitions on her way back from the morning jog in the park. Women from neighborhood were busy discussing the dance program at Mrs. Lalwani's, the apartment supervisor's, baby shower.

Wary of her own feelings, Kaamna shut herself up. No more morning walks, no more social work and no more grocery shopping. She feigned illness and stayed in her room, busying herself with the mindlessness of daily soaps on TV. But even there she would find hideously made up and grotesquely overacting females fighting for their children. Yet the hazel eyes of Chutki continued to raid her dreams, tearing her self control to shreds.

As the summer sun soared in the sky, her uneasiness welled. She would snap at Rajeev for the most inconsequential things like leaving the tap dripping after he had used the wash basin, his jokes at the dinner table or the cartoons he watched on TV. She felt that Rajeev was losing his mind - he looked more and more pale by the day and too distant for her to approach. They had not been intimate for months, either in their conversation or in bed, and Kaamna felt deprived of her only chance to bringing back Ujjwala. After a while, she stopped caring.

While Kaamna was occupied with finding herself, Rajeev was trying to get lost. He had seen Kaamna's restlessness since the visit to Danubari. He had noticed how she slipped out of bed at night. He had heard her silent sobs from outside the bathroom door. He knew her grief, but failed to conjure a trick that he could set things right with. Like the magician at the circus who

could make things vanish. Only if he could make their loss disappear into oblivion too! But no matter what he did, it didn’t work. If he put on Tom & Jerry on TV, Kaamna would call him silly and get upset. If he tried to help her clean up the bathroom, she would scold him for leaving the tap flowing. After a while, he stopped trying. Ujjwala's loss, the failed attempts towards normalcy at home and the saccharine sympathy from colleagues soon drove him to seek peace from other means - a few visits to the local pub, a light conversation with someone at the bar, a gentle shove into trying the needle and the insuppressible urge to go back and feel the sting in his veins when the sweet venom was injected.

His appetite ebbed and he felt weaker in body and in mind. His work suffered, strewn with many a errors, and his supervisor advised him to take off for a few weeks to recuperate. It was the first time since Ujjwala's loss that he had spent that much time at home. He went and saw a doctor, who prescribed some patches and meditation to help him get control over his addiction, which fortunately had not been long enough for any severe withdrawal symptoms. Weighed by his guilt about violating his family’s faith, he confessed it all to Kaamna later that evening. She didn’t cry, nor shout but just sat there next to him on the sofa. When he finished telling her, she just put her hand on his. For the first time in months, they talked about Ujjwala, about her going away, about the pain, about their hurts. Rajeev cried as they talked - like a five year old who had hurt himself while playing on a swing. Soon, her tears joined his and they sat in silence late into the night. Outside, it began to rain, announcing the arrival of monsoons.


Outside the city, there was a small ashram called Ananda Kuteer. Bhaskar, the young chap in administration department at work had mentioned this place to Rajeev over lunch, launching himself into a long yet animated description about the healing powers of the place, particularly for relieving stress. Rajeev had seen Bhaskar rave about the place with such a sincerity, like a follower who known no greater truth than his God. So much so that even the driving directions were still etched in Rajeev's memory! Over the next few days, the couple spent time meditating by tall banyan trees, taking long walks along the rivulet, making their meals on a small chulha in their cottage and reminising about their days together before marriage - the time when the future seemed to be so full of promise.

Cleansed, calm and reconnected within, they returned to the humdrum of the city, with a new resolve. They knew that this was their only shot at parenthood, and both Rajeev and Kaamna were nervously excited by the prospects. But no one else seemed to understand. Kaamna's other had shrieked into the phone and wailed in the name of all fifty six gods that she worshipped. Her dear papa maintained a stoic silence for some time then finally heaved a sigh and told her "What can I do if you have already decided?" Rajeev's sister (now three months pregnant) was more diplomatic, and told "If that’s what you want, I wouldnt discourage you. But do think again". This was the last phone call they made to any of their “well wishers”.


They brought Chukti home the next month. It was not as difficult as they thought. Since Chutki's father was nowhere to be found, and the basti-wallahs in Danubari had no legal guardianship, they both just needed to contact the Shameem Nagar police station for adoption formalities. The inspector, a friend of Mrs. Lalwani from fifth floor, was very resourceful. And with everyone from Birju Lal to Meeta endorsing Kaamna, the paper work was all drawn out within a couple of weeks. Chutki came into their lives like the drops of dew bathed in the light of the morning sun. She sparkled their hearts every time she set her eyes on them, or held their hand. She adapted fast, not once sulking to go back. Though somewhat unsure of what to do with herself for the first few days, she picked up the little tricks of being cared for within a week. Well bathed, scrubbed and free of grime, she looked like an angel in the new pink frock that Rajeev had bought for her.
She was almost two years old now, and was making her way towards language - learning to talk.

She learnt to say "shooo" and "bhapp" before the words "amma" and "kaka"came to her... words that sounded like a divine music riding on the drops of mist rising from the base of a virgin waterfall to her parents’ ears. Kaamna had set the spare room by the balcony into Chutki's playroom, and they spent most of their afternoons playing while Rajeev was at work. They would go to the park in the evening. This Sunday, Chutki was busy playing with her water colors. She had painted her palms with green and pink colors and was patting them on the white marble floor, admiring her art work with great fascination after every few strokes. Rajeev meanwhile, was busy painting the base of Chutki's feet with vermillion red color, for Chutki would topple over if she tried doing it herself.

Such was the emotion that Kaamna felt in that moment, that she gathered the child into her arms, drew her closer to her bosom and kissed her head. Eyes clouded with tears, she looked at Rajeev, while she cradled Chutki in her arms. She knew it was time...and she knew Rajeev understood too. It was time for them to let go... She looked down into those hazel eyes and said "Chutki, your new name is Ujjwala... Ujj..walaa. My baby, my Ujjwala.?" Unaware of what her mother was telling her, Chutki freed herself from Kaamna’s grip and hopped away into the living room, leaving behind her a trail of red footprints...


Rajeev moved closer to the base of the sofa, still sitting on the marble floor, lowered his head into Kaamna's lap. She instinctively ran her fingers through his hair and he fondled the little finger of her left foot, where she wore a leaf shaped toe-ring. Rising, he kissed her hand and said "Kaamna, those… those are the footprints of our tomorrow..."


(The End)