A Breath of Fresh Air (2 page)

ONE

ANJALI

SEPTEMBER 2000 OOTY, INDIA

The fog was rolling softly into the vegetable bazaar and people were flocking around the vendors in woolen shawls and sweaters. The smell of burning coal and corn permeated the market from the stall where fresh corn was being roasted on hot coals. A few people were gathered around the corn stall, warming their hands by the coal, waiting for their corn to be ready.

It was like any other evening. The day was coming to an end and people were getting ready for dinner, bargaining with the shopkeepers, choosing the right vegetables for their meal.

The bitter gourd was just ripe enough and I brought it close to my nose. My weathered Pashmina shawl was slipping from my shoulders so I pulled it up. That was when I saw him, from the corner of my eye, my nose still taking in the scent of the gourd. It took a moment to register who he was—for an instant he was just a familiar face. His eyes lifted and he saw me. I let the shawl fall.

I wanted to pretend I didn’t see him. It would be easier to do that, but cowardly, and I hadn’t lived through thirty-seven cycles of this earth for nothing. I straightened my back as if I could feel him stare at me and I was tempted to turn around hastily to see if he was. But I didn’t want to do that. What if he wasn’t looking at me? What if he didn’t recognize me at all?

“Two kilos,” I murmured, half-dazed, to the vegetable vendor. He instantly lifted his metal scale and let it hang from his hand. Usually I paid attention so I didn’t end up paying more for less goods, but this time my heart was beating a little too fast for the small details to matter. The vendor put a two-kilo weight on one of the weighing plates and started piling the gourds on the other. I held up my cloth bag and he poured the gourds inside.

After paying for them, I turned around, boldly lifting my eyes, surveying the evening vegetable market as if I were looking for the next thing I needed for dinner.

He was gone and I was disappointed.

I bought some tomatoes and onions. My mind was blank and suddenly I doubted what I had seen. Had he really been there? Or did I mistake someone else for him?

It had to be him, I thought defensively, as I paid another vendor twenty
rupees
for half a kilo of tomatoes. It was September and tomatoes were not in season. If it was July, I would have paid less than half.

“Anju . . . Anjali?” a vaguely familiar, slightly unsure voice called from behind and I felt relief swarm through me. He recognized me; he wasn’t ignoring me.

I turned around as if unaware of who it was. I had practiced this in my head numerous times in past years. He would say hello and my eyes would glaze over. I would nod my head and ask him if I was supposed to know him. He would say his name and I would let my eyes brighten with recognition. Somehow, I had always hoped I would not recognize him.

But fantasies are easy to conjure, while reality is unchangeable. I smiled at him. I couldn’t ask him if I was supposed to know him—that would be juvenile.

“Yes,” I managed to say.

“Anju,” he repeated. “It’s me, Prakash.”

I didn’t need him to tell me his name, I thought angrily. I wouldn’t forget him. I couldn’t forget him.

“Prakash,” I said, and cleared my throat unnecessarily. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m posted in Wellington,” he said, his eyes still filled with disbelief.

The Defense Services Staff College was in Wellington, Ooty, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was posted here. But I was surprised, maybe because in my imagination I had always thought I’d meet him when I was looking like a knockout and my hair was in place in a sophisticated knot. But my hair was not in place, my braid was limp, and strands of dry hair were stubbornly pushing out of the folds I had made in the morning. It had been months since I had dyed my hair, so the white streaks were everywhere. My sari was cotton and lime green and wrinkled, and my blood red shawl clashed with the green. No, I didn’t look like a knockout. I looked like a weary woman at the end of a very long day.

“How long have you been here?” I asked politely.

“A month,” he said. “And you?”

“Oh, I moved to Ooty a few years after . . .” I let my words trail away; he knew what I was talking about.

We stood in silence for about half a minute, when I said, “I should go, I have had a long day at work and . . .”

“So . . . you . . . you work?” he asked. “Are you married?”

“I am a teacher at the Ootacamund School and, yes . . . married,” I said.

He nodded in response and then I nodded and then we nodded together, avoiding eye contact. We really didn’t have anything to say to each other. All the speeches I had planned and everything I had intended to say were somehow lost in the reality of the situation and the shock of seeing his face again.

He was in mid-nod when a woman called out to him. He turned automatically and I took a step back.

“I need your purse,” the woman said.

She was wearing an impeccable brown silk sari with a long flesh-colored woolen coat. She looked at me and smiled.

Prakash cleared his throat. “Ah, this is my wife Indira . . . Indu, and this is . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

I folded my hands and smiled as my adrenaline surged because of the unexpected shock. He had a wife!

“
Namaste,
I am Mrs. Sharma,” I said, putting him out of his predicament.

“Namaste,”
his wife said, trying to figure out how her husband would know me. She looked at Prakash quizzically and he blurted a few disjointed words, saying nothing, confusing everything.

“I knew Prakash a long time ago,” I said easily, enjoying his discomfort.

“Ah,” his wife said, and we all stood together in uncomfortable silence.

Unable to stand it any longer, I made my excuses by saying, “I should be going,” before hurrying away.

I smiled maliciously when I heard his wife’s sharp voice ask, “What does she mean by a long time ago?”

I walked home briskly, oblivious to my surroundings, to everything except the shock that was still simmering through my blood. Usually Sandeep, my husband, bought vegetables on his scooter, but today he was giving some of his students private tutoring.

I had always known that sometime, somewhere, I would meet Prakash again. I just hadn’t thought it would be such an anticlimax. I had thought he would be apologetic and guilty for his actions. I had hoped he would be contrite, would apologize right off the bat, and I would wave his apology away. I couldn’t forgive what he had done and it didn’t seem relevant anymore either. It didn’t matter whether he was sorry or not, it was over and done with and we had both moved on. I definitely had, because besides the shock of seeing him, I felt nothing. A mild confusion was traipsing through my brain but there was no bitterness left. Time made apologies and absolution unnecessary. Time didn’t really heal, it just made bad memories distant so that the brain couldn’t recapture the lost pain.

When I got home, my sister-in-law was waiting for me by the door, with a scowl on her face.

Komal had been living with us ever since her husband died five years ago. Sandeep had told me she had no place to go and didn’t ask for my permission before he invited her to stay with us. He had consulted with me, but what I had to say was immaterial. Komal
really
had no place to go.

We didn’t get along. Our personalities were different and she never forgave me for marrying her brother. But she probably would have had the same problem regardless of which woman Sandeep married. Despite how our relationship was, I couldn’t turn her out of my home and onto the streets. But disliking a sister-in-law and living with her are two completely different things. Komal knew that she was living in my house on sufferance, but that didn’t stop her from trying to treat me like a daughter-in-law living in her husband’s family home.

“You should have been home an hour earlier,” she bellowed, as soon as I took my Kohlapuri slippers off on the wide veranda. I silently walked into the house and she followed me to the kitchen. I started to pull out the vegetables from the cloth bag and line them up next to the sink.

“Do you think I am the maid in this house?” she demanded.

I didn’t respond. I had learned early on that Komal had a knack for asking rhetorical questions.

“I had to clean up after your son today. He dropped a glass of milk on the floor,” she continued. Amar was not adept at holding heavy things; his fingers sometimes failed him, just like his legs did, and mishaps happened.

I shucked my shawl off and threw it from the kitchen into the living room, not caring where it fell. I could hear her speak even as I peeked inside Amar’s room and found him sleeping contentedly. I would have to wake him up for dinner, I thought uneasily. I didn’t like to wake him up. While he was asleep, he couldn’t be sick. But he had to eat, even if it meant he had to face the world.

Komal was still complaining when I got back to the kitchen.

Didn’t she see that I was trying to ignore her?

I started rinsing the vegetables and Komal raised her voice to be heard over the running water. It was bad enough that I had to cook dinner after a long day in school; it was worse that she clawed at me as soon as I got home.

“And why don’t you come home early so that you can take care of Amar? Why do I have to do it all the time?”

Actually, Komal didn’t have to take care of Amar. Sandeep and I had hired an ayah to take care of him after we moved to Ooty and I had started working. Once Komal moved in with us she said she wanted the job because she didn’t have anything to do all day. Even though I resented having to rely on Komal, I was the first to admit that not hiring an ayah did save us money, something we always needed to do.

I maintained my silence and pulled out the wooden cutting board and knife.

“What, you have taken a
moun vrat
or something?”

I shook my head. No, I hadn’t taken a vow of silence; I was just too tired to argue with her over something that didn’t need to be argued over.

“These
karela
look bad,” she commented on the bitter gourds I had just purchased. “Can’t you go to the market to buy vegetables? It is just a kilometer away. Do you have to go to that cheap supermarket?”

I took a deep breath and, knife in hand, turned around to face her. “I did go to the market and there is nothing wrong with the supermarket, it is close by and it is cheap. Now if you don’t leave me alone there will be no dinner before Sandeep gets home.”

Komal knew that tone of voice, but it didn’t mean she listened to it. She glared at me and then sniffed, bringing the edge of her sari to her face. She wiped her cheeks as if there were tears on them and sniffed some more.

“You talk like this to me because I don’t have a husband.”

I was in no mood for her emotional dramas. I just wanted to cook dinner and find a place in the house where I could put my feet up and calm down.

I peeled the coarse green skin of the bitter gourds and rubbed turmeric and salt on the white soft skin that lay beneath.

“You’re making stuffed
karela
?” Komal demanded.

No, I was making potato curry! Heavens, couldn’t the woman shut up for just a little while? Did she have to talk all the time? I understood that she was home alone all day and needed to pounce on me as soon as I got home, but understanding only went so far. She was tired of being locked up with Amar all day and I knew she needed the adult contact, but I had been locked up with students and teachers all day, and I needed the silence.

“I don’t like
karela
,” she complained. “Why do you make it when I don’t like it?”

“Because they are in season,” I said, as I made incisions in all the other gourds to put the stuffing in. “And I feel like stuffed
karela
.”

“Oh, we have to do everything the Queen feels like doing,” she carped, and I wanted to throw the sharp knife at her. Thankfully I heard the front door open. Sandeep was finally home and Komal would go nag him for a while.

As soon as Sandeep stepped through the doorway, Komal rushed out of the kitchen. I heard her tell him about the stuffed bitter gourd curry I was making and how she didn’t like it at all.

Sandeep spoke to her in a low voice. Sandeep always spoke in a low voice, as if what he was saying was so important that one had to pay all the attention one could to hear everything. That was one of the reasons why I had wanted to marry him. He was the calmest person I knew and I hoped it would rub off on me from time to time.

I abandoned the gourds on the counter and filled a steel bowl with water for Sandeep’s tea. I put the water on the stove and added a spoonful of tea leaves and of sugar along with some milk to it. By the time Sandeep checked on Amar and came to the kitchen, I was pouring hot tea through a sieve into a cup.

“How was the tutoring class?” I asked, wanting the comfort of aimless conversation.

“These rich people’s children can be very stupid,” he said wearily, and sat down on the wooden chair I kept in the kitchen for him.

It was our daily ritual—Sandeep sat and talked to me while I cooked, and he helped with the dishes when I was done. Komal always objected to allowing the man of the house to soil his hands cleaning pots and pans, but Sandeep and I both ignored her. This was our home; we decided how we lived, and Sandeep was definitely not the average Indian male who thought helping his wife in the kitchen was below his dignity.

“Has Amar been sleeping long?” Sandeep asked as he stretched on the chair, sipping his tea.

“I don’t know, I just got back. But he seems peaceful,” I said, as I chopped a raw mango for the stuffing. I added a spoonful of turmeric, another spoonful of chili powder, a dash of fenugreek seeds, and some oil to the raw mangoes and mixed them together with my hand. I opened the gourds carefully to put the stuffing inside.

“Is Komal still at home?” I asked, because I couldn’t hear the television in the drawing room. Komal always turned on the television, which she called her “only true companion.”