Quietness

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Quietness is the sound of crickets in the night-time by the solitary path on the slope of the valley leading to a gathering of houses. It is the chorus of frogs in the twin ponds just outside the gates. And the swoosh of the fan – at full speed – hanging from the beam of the ceiling-less tin roof as everyone tosses and turns in bed under the cube-shaped envelope of a mosquito net. Maa, Bapi, Bhaity and you, each in pursuit of a meagre space that does not involve skin contact. Your bodies settle, momentarily, in configurations defined by the heat of the night and Bhaity’s selfish attempt to spread like an octopus.

Quietness is the rhythmic breathing of four humans as they are lulled into sleep by the fan, the frogs and the crickets.

The scream of a woman pierces the air. Bapi groans, Maa sits up, and Bhaity semiconsciously encroaches into her space, while you stay still as violent wails follow.

“Poor Maamu,” Maa mutters.

She gets out of bed and turns the light on. You stare at the head of the ceiling fan and notice its wobbly movements as you hear Maa rummaging through the clothes rail. The lights go off, the fan disappears, and the door of the living room creaks as it opens and closes. Maamu’s wails fill up the darkness, and despite their repetition and continuity, they refuse to blend in with the cacophony of quiet. You lie awake long enough for the head of the fan to appear from the darkness.

In the morning, Maa fills a big flask with black tea, and you help her pack some pithas and larus in a tiffin box before heading to Maamu’s. Two banana trees garlanded with orange and yellow marigolds greet you at the gates. Their long leaves are tied at the top in an arch, while bamboo slats holding earthen lamps with mustard oil and unlit wicks jut out of their trunks. In the time it takes you to pick a marigold at the foot of one of the trunks and plant it – with the help of your clips – behind your ears, Maa crosses the courtyard, nodding at the elders sitting in red plastic chairs, and steps onto the verandah of the house before disappearing behind the curtain to the living room. Abandoned, you skirt your way around the courtyard, past the workers busy removing the wedding pandal and stacking up chairs. Once on the verandah, you hesitate to step into the living room and spend your time circling your big toe on its mud-lapped floor to avoid the eyes and the voices of the courtyard. Your toe finds a crack, the crack runs and connects into another crack to form a mosaic-like pattern, the patterns – delimited by the curtains – spread off the edges of the verandah to blossom in the courtyard where the voices you had filtered moments ago spring back to life. They evolve from exclamations to utterances in cold, sombre tones.

- It is fate.

- Ram, Ram! How could such a thing happen?

- Baghu, don’t lose hope.

- Tsk tsk tsk.

- The family is not alien. The groom’s father is known to Baghu’s father-in-law’s neighbour.

- Pass me the betel nut and paan tray.

- Why don’t we go? Get our boys. Dada, just tell me. We will drag him to this courtyard.

- Hari, Hari! We are cursed.

- It will not solve the problem. We are from the girl’s side. One word of criticism is enough to tarnish the image of Baghu’s family.

- And our village.

- Get some lime and tobacco from the kitchen.

- Tsk tsk tsk.

- And who is going to pay for this? Poor Baghu, he is already in debt.

- Ram, Ram! This is a bad omen. She is cursed

- Nobody’s going to marry her.

- Tsk tsk tsk.

- Hari, Hari!

…

As the repetitions collude into patterns and coalesce to get louder, more frequent, they drown the individual voices into a certain sameness, and yet, you are not comforted.

You feel the pallu of Maa’s sari brushing your arm as she passes you a pitha. The hullabaloo in the courtyard fades away and is replaced by a frenzy of slurps as tea is served. They surge and grow till an elder gets up from his chair. You recognise his kind face from the time he brought an amulet for Bhaity when he had measles. Bapi’s resulting anger at the sight of the square-ish object was quelled by Maa’s sobering words – there is no harm, he wishes well. So, Bapi let Bhaity wear it around his waist – as recommended – on condition that there will not be any discussion about it, especially with his medical colleagues.

So now you wonder if the elder will produce another amulet to rescue Maamu, but instead, he suggests that Baghu mama and a few of the elders visit Jibon Baba, the bez, for guidance. With Goddess Kali’s blessing, he says, everything will heal, and that Maamu should go too. Everyone nods. Amidst the desperately hopeful faces, you see the figure of Baghu mama – shrunk in a silk kurta – in one of the chairs, looking impassively at his feet. He scratches the ground with his big toe, and you wonder if he too will discover a crack, and a mosaic-like pattern, and if it could breach the curtains to reach Maamu.

Maa announces in a resolute voice that Maamu is dehydrated and has fainted a few times. From the elevated position of the verandah, she looks at the standing elder as she tells the congregation that Maamu should be taken to the hospital. She then goes back inside the house, and you almost instinctively follow her. But the inertia of the hesitation that forbade you from entering the house earlier reins you in.

Just a month ago, Maamu hoisted you up a jackfruit tree, and together you sat on a sturdy branch, sliced into a ripe fruit, and relished the sweet bulbs with your legs dangling carelessly, till the cows came mooing around. “They can sniff it from miiiiiiles away,” she said, and laughed loudly and unapologetically. You laughed too, but your attempts to snort like her made your laugh sound shriller. Both of you jumped off the tree, holding your stomachs, with tears in your eyes.

Later, you sat cross-legged behind Maamu on the steps of her verandah and worked your fingers through the ebony hair cascading down her back, concentrating on weaving three strands into a single, thick braid. You were sloppy and struggled to secure the end of the braid with a rubber band. On the contrary, Maamu’s movements – when you switched – were rhythmic and sure. Her fingers danced through your coarse hair with the tenderness of a lullaby, extending and weaving its assurance through its gentle tugs and the bonds that emerged and grew from it. When she was done, she put her hands on your shoulders and said, “Two braids for a girl, and one for a woman who is about to get married.” And that is how she told you about her engagement, unassumingly, when you were unguarded, like she was talking about going to the mela on the weekend, and you took it just like that, a mela. It made you think about the dresses and the sweets, and the DJ travelling from town to play music, and staying up late without bothering to wake up early in the morning for school. You were jubilant.

But as the days progressed, your time with Maamu got curtailed by a flurry of pre-wedding activities demanding her attention, and although you participated in some of these, she was always surrounded by people. So, when you told her about the mangoes ripening in your backyard, and when she asked if you would use a bamboo pole to get to the low hanging ones, you felt forsaken.

That afternoon, after you struggled to keep the pole upright, you ran to the bedroom looking for Maa’s sewing box and tied a long black Coats thread to the little finger on your left hand, circling it tighter till it hurt. Then you knotted it and cursed Maamu and the wedding. It was easier than saying that you missed her, easier than asking her to stay. You carried the pain for weeks, retying and knotting the thread as it came loose.

You only removed it when the groom did not show up.

But something had changed when you heard Maamu’s wails last night. You were no longer assured. And now, you see the remnants of the curse in a pale band of white skin around your finger. It refuses to disappear despite your vigorous rubs. You cannot go inside the house to check on Maamu with the band. Maa will find out. They will find out. The elders will then assemble in your courtyard. They will have betel nuts with paan and slurp their tea, and then one of them will stand up and suggest to Bapi to take you to Jibon Baba. Will Bapi nod or will he disagree like he did when the elder got the amulet for Bhaity? What if he freezes like Baghu mama? They will take you to Jibon Baba, and in the carnival atmosphere of magic, make you sit in front of Maamu. Baba will lift your lifeless wrist to reveal the band. What will Maamu say? You feel a crunch gnawing at your stomach. It transmutes into an ache as it rises to your chest. In its oppressive grip, you see a release and wish it to continue till you are cleansed and redeemed. The ache grows, and you hold your chest and collapse on the verandah. You hear approaching footsteps and cries for help. As you are lifted, you hear someone say, “Poor soul, she is so close to Maamu.”

You wake up, somewhat disoriented, to the familiar swoosh of the bedroom fan. As you squint your eyes open, you see Bhaity’s grinning face looming over you.

He runs and calls out, “She’s awake. She’s awake.”

Maa rushes to your side, with a benign smile on her face, and Bapi emerges from the adjoining living room with a stethoscope looping around his neck. He inspects you with a furrowed brow in a drill-like fashion, running the cold head of the stethoscope over your chest and checking your pupils and then your tongue with a torch.

“Nothing to worry about,” he says. “You are mildly anaemic.”

He runs his fingers through your hair and tells Maa not to send you to school for a week. When he is gone, Maa perches herself next to you on the bed with her head on the bed rest, and starts humming a lullaby, even though you are too old for that. She strokes your hair, and holds your hand, running her fingers over yours.

“How did you get this?” she asks abruptly.

Alarmed and lost for words, you pull your hand and mutter something incomprehensible. She looks at you, and says, “It’s alright, you can tell me later,” and goes on with her lullaby.

You curl up and bury your head in her armpit hoping for the ‘Maa’ smell not to retreat and disown you. Once when you and Bhaity were playing throw-the-ball, and Bhaity was hit by your hard throw, you saw her envelope of protection for you shrink to accommodate Bapi’s anger. A thin film of water shimmered in her eyes when he hit you, and you knew then, as you know now, it is her envelope of protection, too. Tears rolled down your cheeks, but knowing how she felt consoled you, and even made you happy. In the shared humiliation, you had a measure of her hurt, and in it, you knew you’d find a way to heal each other. But now you fear that the shame will be so great that in her attempt to protect you, she will isolate you in a solitary envelope. You will never know the depth of her anguish; and she will never reveal it in her eyes.

In the days that follow, you stay at home, mostly in the bedroom, waiting for the inevitable discovery of your curse and the arrival of the elders. You slip under the sheets and let the quietness of the fan talk to you. When it does, you notice the squeaks that don’t follow a pattern, and the rustle of the overweight branches of the mango tree brushing the roof. Then the murmurs from the walls emerge, and you are drawn to press your ears to the one separating the living room. It becomes your conduit to the world, the radio that you tune into every so often to pick up fragments of conversation.

- Oooooo, the peacock-blue makes the mekhela sador stand out. Will you turn around for me, baideo?

- You should meet my friend. She has her own handloom and runs her business from her home. I can ask her to give you a discount, too.

…

- No, no, no, no. Not that way. You clean the corners too. See the dust? And don’t forget to empty the ashtray…

…

- We should have stopped it.

- Did anything go wrong?

- No, it’s not that. I just find this whole thing degrading and humiliating. The poor girl. Tsk, tsk.

- What happened? Don’t give me the nuggets.

- Soooo, I was on my way to Baghu’s to check on Maamu when I saw people trickle into their courtyard. Yeah? And guess who was there?

- Maamu’s groom?

- Noooo! Which world do you live in, baideo? I was the bez.

- Jibon Baba? What was he doing there?

- I had the same thoughts. Weren’t the elders supposed to visit him? But there he was, cross-legged on a mat, beside the stump of a garlanded banana tree. And I tell you, baideo, he looked like any ordinary man, not the ochre robe and rudraksha wearing tantric baba.

- And the people? No, I know. They just need a masala story.

- Yeah! They were just hanging around. Murmuring. Whispering. It wasn’t hostile, baideo, but maybe it was, like... like a cockfight. I wanted to go inside, but Maamu emerged in her red wedding mekhela sador, led by a few women.

-Wait, where was Baghu in all of this?

- He was there, right there! Beside the bez, eyes nailed to the ground. That spineless, mute bastard didn’t even lift his gaze to meet the drained and lifeless face of his daughter. He could have just stopped it with one word... and she, she didn’t look up, baideo. Didn’t say a word. The bez started his chants, sprinkled rice grains over her head, smeared vermillion across the tree’s trunk and her forehead. But not a word from Maamu. Nothing. No. Nothing. Not even when he made her circumambulate the tree.

- Wow!

- Yes. And then he pronounced her wed, claiming that the tree would drink her shame of being abandoned, and the earth would forgive and enable a new beginning. I don’t know how I feel about it, but I can smell, still smell that oppressive energy.

- Tsk tsk. So, what happens next?

- Well, apparently, everything will be restored. Everyone’s expecting the groom to come back any day now and take our Maamu with him.

…

Everything will be restored, you whisper – again, and again – like thumbing a bead along a string for a prayer to come true. You ignore the mocking tone, and the wall swallows the feeling of pity and insulates you from the helplessness in the living room. You hum a tune, and suddenly you feel like going out. You take a bucket bath, watch the water gurgle into the drain, and think of the frock you’d want to wear.

Years later, after things had changed, and Maamu had moved to the city, married off – discreetly, without any pomp – to an old widower who was looking for someone to take care of him in his late years, you would look back at that prayer and your curse. It didn’t surprise you that it came so naturally – seeped in from the village’s way of life, from its normalised chorus. It was, perhaps, the easier way for you. Like it was for everyone, the elders, Baghu mama, and even Maa and Bapi. “Damn, these people and their beliefs,” Bapi will say over dinner. “Man has landed on the Moon, and they still run to the bez.” He will say it often even though he never voiced it to the elders, or for that matter, anywhere other than at the dining table or with his colleagues. As for Maa, her care for Maamu was genuine; that was the least she could do, but maybe, it was also a penance paid for her husband’s inaction and her own inability to stand up for what she felt so strongly. It was the easier way, and it seeped into you and made you a part of it.

You learn to braid your own hair with a mirror wedged between your knees. Maa hires a man to shake mangoes loose and to sweep the tin roof clean of leaves. The man has a kind smile, but he seldom laughs. At dusk he counts his rupees with care and goes.

At night, you lie under the fan and listen to its blades scything the heat, to the frogs tuning the ponds, and the distant crickets stitching the dark. You think of the jackfruit tree, and Maamu’s snorts make you want to giggle. You wish to sit on a branch and wait for the cows to nudge closer to the sweetness of the bulb with their wet noses, but feel the quietness of tsk-tsks, Hari Haris, and slurps chase them away. Perhaps, an elder is lurking somewhere, waiting for you to fall. You call out for Maa, but the weight of the chorus drowns your voice. And then, just like that, the quiet breaks into a scream, the scream you have carried since tying the thread, since digging the toes into the earth, since curling into Maa’s lullaby, since the wall learned to swallow words. In the dark, you reach for your braid and hold on.

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