A Breath of Fresh Air (8 page)

ELEVEN

ANJALI

Sandeep continued to be evasive about Prakash and I finally gave up. I wanted to tell him why Prakash’s wife, Indu, affected me. I corrected myself instantly—she was Prakash’s Indu. To me she was Indira.

After Prakash and I divorced, I started clearly spelling out my “correct” name to people. Everyone started calling me Anjali; no one shortened it to Anju. Some had tried and I had fought against it. I’d argue that my parents had given me a perfectly reasonable name, that it didn’t need to be shortened. People backed away after that, wondering if I was some sort of a nut who was hung up on names.

I took Amar for his weekly check-up on Thursdays because my classes ended early that day. The school administration cut me slack because they knew about Amar. They didn’t mind if I left early on some days or had to take an extra sick day because Amar was not feeling well. I didn’t take advantage of it, just in case someone would object and the small perks I did have would be snatched away. Worse, I could lose my job, and my job helped pay Amar’s medical bills.

Amar squirmed in the auto rickshaw and I tried to make him more comfortable. “Why are the roads always so bumpy?” he complained. “Does no one ever fix them?”

I gave him a wry look. “What do you think?”

“Right.” He nodded, and we laughed together.

He could laugh, I thought, as my heart split apart. He could still laugh, while most grown-ups would have given up.

“Do I still have to take those shots?” he asked, as he did every week when we went to the doctor, and I nodded.

“Can I just take the pills in the morning and not take the shots?” he asked. “The shots make me sick.”

“I know,” I said, and patted his hand. “But we need to find out if they work.”

Amar was on a strict regimen of corticosteroid pills every day. A month ago his doctor suggested that we try some new corticosteroid shots and see if there would be a difference.

“Sometimes . . . ,” he looked out of the auto instead of at me, “I wish it would all end. I mean, you and Daddy spend so much money—”

“Money is not something you should think about,” I interrupted him sternly. “You are my precious baby and nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. So don’t worry about anything and concentrate on getting better. Okay?”

He smiled shakily. “Something bad has already happened to me, Mummy. I am getting more and more tired and . . .”

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want him to give up. Not now, when he had beaten the odds for twelve years.

“You just worry about getting better.” My voice was shaky. I never cried in front of him. It was our rule. Sandeep and I wanted to smile when we were with Amar. There would be no fighting, no yelling, and no screaming in front of our son. He would see the world around him as a happy place, not a devastating one.

Amar patted my hand to comfort me and I choked on tears. This was not living—this was the purest kind of hell. My sick baby had to comfort me.

Amar’s doctor repeated what Amar had said earlier. Amar was getting weaker and his lungs were not getting any better.

“The inflammation is not going down and the scar tissue is spreading in his lungs,” Doctor Anand Raman said. “I wish I could say something else. But considering how things were, Amar is very lucky.”

Lucky?

“You are lucky to be alive, Anjali,” he said, when he saw the anger in my eyes.

We’d had this discussion several times. I would always vent that no one had bothered to tell me that the Bhopal gas tragedy had left its mark on my womb. I wish someone had told me that having a child would be dangerous to the child, that any child I had would be affected by that fateful night in Bhopal when so many lost their lives and so many were left wounded forever.

Amar got his shots and I shelled out over six hundred
rupees
for his medication for the week and the doctor’s visit. All his pills went into a red wooden box that sat on his bedside table. On the box, Amar had himself painted the words
Amar’s
Medicine
. He had painted the box five years ago, when he was seven, right after his heart surgery, which we had hoped would cure him. He had told me, “When I stop using the box, I will still keep it.” Then, he had had hope that someday the box would be empty and he would be a normal child. Now, five years later as his condition deteriorated, he seemed to be changing his mind about life and death.

Komal was sitting in front of the television when Amar and I got home. She looked up at us but didn’t say anything, and I wondered once again why she hated me so much. Our relationship from the beginning had been tenuous, now it was worse. Familiarity was breeding contempt, just as the old cliché promised.

Amar sat down on the sofa next to Komal, tired after being out and tired from the shots that kept him breathing.

“We are having Gopi and Sarita for dinner,” I told Komal. She nodded without looking at me.

Gopi and Sarita were coming with their two children, Ajay and Shalini. Two healthy, adorable children. They were our closest friends, had been with us through the worst and the best of times, yet I was envious of their children. They went to school and didn’t get tired after walking for five minutes.

As I headed for the kitchen, Komal made a sound, something in between a curse and a prayer.

I sighed. “Can you come into the kitchen with me, Komal?”

Once in the kitchen, I decided to stop beating around the bush. “What have I done now?” I asked flatly.

Komal looked away, not saying anything.

“Oh come on, if you don’t tell me, how am I supposed to know?” I insisted.

She sniffled and I thought it was a mistake to have asked her at all. The woman was being melodramatic, while I had to cook for guests.

“Today is his . . . death anniversary,” she said, and sniffled some more. “No one has done anything. I wanted to go to the temple, but Sandeep is not here to take me and I can’t walk to the temple, my knee is bothering me again.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked. It was an important day for her. I had other problems to deal with and couldn’t keep track of the days someone died on.

“You should know. My own brother doesn’t remember. I have no family.” She started sobbing.

I patted her shoulder awkwardly, unsure of how to comfort her. I couldn’t imagine life without Sandeep—and suddenly I felt a pang of guilt for treating Komal the way I did. She was a widow, a pariah in society. She was going to live like this for the rest of her life. Nothing was going to change. She was forever going to be a burden to someone.

In some ways she was in the same position I was in when I divorced Prakash, though my situation had been worse. Society forgave widows for their husbands’ deaths, but they didn’t forgive women like me, who let their husbands go on purpose.

My parents had gone berserk and so had Prakash. No one could believe I was divorcing him. Prakash had even refused to give me a divorce and had relented only when I told him I would start naming names of women he had been with to make a case for divorce on the basis of adultery. After that, he hadn’t protested much and I had gotten what I wanted, freedom from my husband.

Komal, on the other hand, had not wanted to be free of her husband. She had not wanted him to be run over by a city bus. She was alone in the world. She didn’t have children, her husband was dead, and she was stuck with us.

“Would you like to go to the temple now?” I asked patiently. “Sandeep should be home soon and he can take you.”

Komal looked at me with something like surprise in her eyes. I didn’t like seeing that. Did I really come across as some bitch who wouldn’t let her widowed sister-in-law go to a temple on her husband’s death anniversary? I didn’t even tell her what to do or what not to do. Her life was hers, but I knew she couldn’t understand that she was free to do what she wanted. How could she? She had listened to her father, then her husband, and now she felt she needed to listen to Sandeep because he paid the bills. I felt sorry for her, but I knew she wouldn’t have it any other way. Komal was raised, just the way I was, to obey the men in her life.

“He is here? In Ooty?” Sarita squealed.

I made a hissing sound to silence her. “Yes, and he had the nerve to come to school to talk to me.”

We were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on our dinner. Sandeep and Gopi were on the veranda with Komal, and Amar was playing with Sarita’s children.

Sarita’s oldest, Ajay, was Amar’s age and Shalini was a couple of years younger. Ajay and Shalini understood that Amar was sick and came by whenever they could to keep the “sick boy” company. I was glad they did, but it felt like charity, nevertheless.

“I also met his wife,” I told Sarita. It was a pleasure to gossip with someone. I was, after all, a woman and I had to talk about what was going on in my life. Sandeep knew all of it, so there was no point in telling him.

“What was she like?”

“Pretty, pretty.”

“Not prettier than you,” Sarita claimed, and I laughed.

“I don’t want him, Sarita,” I told her, as I sprinkled chopped coriander on the
dum aloo
.

“I know, but you know what I am trying to say,” she said.

“I know,” I said, and sighed. “Can we talk about something else?”

“How was the doctor’s appointment? Any improvement?” Sarita asked.

I shook my head. “No, the lung inflammation is not getting any better and his heart is the same. To make it worse, the scar tissue has started to spread in his lungs.”

“If only the heart operation had worked. He is such a smart boy,” Sarita said.

Tears filled my eyes. “Yes, and today he said that sometimes he wanted it all to be over. The corticosteroids shot makes him sick and . . . there is nothing I can do to make it better.”

“Ice cream,” Sarita said firmly. “Children always feel better if you give them ice cream. I have some
pista kulfi
at home; Gopi will get it right away.”

I tried to stop her, but what was the point? Sarita never listened to anyone.

The
kulfi
did help. Amar was grinning from ear to ear as he ate the homemade pistachio ice cream, despite the cold weather.

After dinner, Gopi dropped off his kids and put them to bed and came right back. The four of us did that often. We sat and talked late into the night. Komal stayed with us for a while and then usually left.

And it was like the old times again. The four of us, together, alone.

“I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Gopi began, and I was on alert. “But you should join this class action lawsuit against Union Carbide.”

“And then what?” I questioned.

“You might get a good settlement.”

“And then?”

Gopi exhaled loudly. “And then . . . you will have money, which will help Amar . . .”

“You think lack of money has stopped us in any way?” I demanded, and Sandeep put a restraining hand over my shoulder.

“I can sue Union Carbide, but I can’t get my baby to walk and be normal,” I said, trying not to yell at Gopi. “No amount of money is going to change that.”

Sarita was on her husband’s side on this one. “But the money will help. You could stay at home with Amar.”

“I don’t want their money,” I said harshly. “What happened, happened. Things happen. I am not going to get into a court trial that could last for god knows how many years, while my son is struggling to live.”

Gopi looked thoughtful. “I just thought it might be worth your while. It will make the finances real smooth. A group of people are suing Union Carbide again, but this time it is in the United States . . . so chances are better.”

Sandeep shook his head. “It’s been over a decade and people are still trying to sue instead of getting on with their lives.”

“Oh, you know what I heard? Remember Bhaskar?” Sarita changed the topic as she always did when discussions went awry. “He was a professor in the English Lit department.” We all nodded as memory slithered in. “Well, he wrote a movie screenplay that Kamal Hassan bought for . . . lots of money.”

The evening drifted away, as we wandered from the topic of the Bhopal gas tragedy to movies to the current political climate to Pakistan.

As we talked about Pakistan, the border dispute, and the Indian army, Sarita took the opportunity to open up the discussion to include an army officer, Prakash.

“Have you met him?” Sarita asked Sandeep.

“Whom?” Gopi questioned.

“Prakash?” Sandeep asked.

“No. Why?”

I closed my eyes. Damn Sarita, couldn’t she for once keep her mouth shut?

“Her ex-husband showed up at her school,” Sarita told Gopi, and I winced. “To apologize! Sometimes I think you should’ve bludgeoned him to death. He is the reason for all this. That man . . .”

“Can we not talk about this?” I implored, and Sarita glared at me.

“Why not? Is it taboo?” she demanded.

“No,” Sandeep said gently. “It just makes Anjali uncomfortable.”

And it did. God, how it did!

I couldn’t sleep that night. Sarita and Gopi hated Prakash and they didn’t even know him. Sandeep maintained his indifference, and I didn’t know how to feel about the man I had once been married to. The man I had lived with for almost a year.

It was so many years ago, yet I seemed to be caught in some time warp where Prakash existed. It was like history repeating itself. Prakash was here again, and once again I wasn’t sure what I felt for him.

TWELVE

ANJALI

I discovered early on in my first marriage that being an army officer’s wife was not just fun and games. It was sometimes very boring and sometimes very stressful. It would have been worthwhile if Prakash behaved more like a normal man instead of a homicidal bull caught in a trap.

I knew how he felt about being married. I had found out on our dismal honeymoon. He had told me that he liked me, but he was not sure marrying me had been such a good idea. I was shocked. This was not what I was supposed to hear on my honeymoon. My army officer husband was not the loving, caring man I had thought he would be. So just like in the Hindi movies where the wife has to work at gaining her husband’s love, I started working at it.

It was the small things. The cardamom
chai
in the evening when he came back from work, the delicious breakfasts, and the perfect parties—I did everything I could. And finally I think he stopped disliking the idea of marriage. I was an asset and for a while I convinced myself that he even loved me. But in an arranged marriage where love is not important—it is actually a guarantee. The husband will love the wife in some shape or form and the wife will love her husband because he provides for her.

I loved Prakash because he was my husband and because he took care of me financially and because he was what I’d wanted so much. I loved him because not loving him would mean I had been foolish to believe he was the perfect man.

Life in the army was a series of parties, just as I had imagined it would be. The parties were boring—I had not counted on that. Prakash kept to himself, and our marriage was just like the many I had seen growing up. We were strangers living in the same house. We talked once in a while, but it was superficial conversations that gave us something to do besides chew our food at the dining table. We watched television the nights we didn’t go out and he always went to bed before I did.

It started to get to me. I was sitting at home all day long with nothing better to do. I cooked and I cleaned and I did the laundry—but I was always bored. I started going to the library and picking up romance novels to fill the time, and it was on one of my trips that I met Harjot Dhaliwal.

Harjot was eighteen, in medical college, and was back home for the summer vacation. She was studying to be a doctor and she was everything I used to not like in a woman. She was intelligent, well educated, and wanted to be independent. She didn’t want to get married anytime soon because she wanted to build a career.

We met at the EME Center library where she was going through magazines and I was piling up Mills & Boon romance novels in a plastic bag. She looked at the title of a book I was holding and whistled softly. “
Prisoner of Passion
?”

I laughed when I heard the title read aloud. The books were silly, but they made the time pass. They gave me something to do when Prakash went to sleep and I couldn’t. They gave me a fantasy world to walk into. The hero was always cruel and insensitive to the heroine in the beginning, and in the end he was nice to her and in love with her. I had the cruel and insensitive hero; I was waiting for him to become nice and fall in love with me.

“You are Colonel Singh’s daughter,” I said, stuffing the book back into the shelf.

“You don’t have to put it back because of me,” Harjot said.

I straightened and smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’ve already read it.”

“You live down the road, right under Major Malhotra’s house,” she said. “Malhotra Auntie and Mummy are very good friends,” she added.

I nodded, not knowing what to say. She was only three years younger than me, but I felt much older. I was a married woman and, in the hierarchical system of society, that made me much older than the years warranted.

“How are you enjoying your summer holidays?” I asked.

“I am bored.”

That was exactly how I was feeling, so I invited her over for tea. And that became a ritual.

She came over at around ten every morning and spent the day with me. Prakash came home for lunch sometimes and Harjot stayed, and she noticed how things were between us.

The first time she broached the subject, I wanted to get defensive, but I had no other friends in Bhopal and I was dying to tell someone what I was going through.

“I think he didn’t want to marry me,” I said. “I don’t know why he did. No one forced him to.”

I later found out that Harjot had known all about Prakash’s problem with women. Apparently several people in the EME Center knew and they all hoped that a beautiful wife like me would keep the good-looking and promising captain from straying.

“Why don’t you do a postgraduate?” Harjot suggested.

“But what will I do with it?” I didn’t want to go back to college; I had just gotten out of there. “I mean, what job can I hold as an army officer’s wife with all that moving?”

“You could be a teacher,” Harjot said. “Come on, you could teach in the army schools and there will be one everywhere Prakash gets posted. It could be really nice for you.”

“But I don’t want to work. I want to be a wife and a mother,” I protested.

“You can be a wife and a mother and have a job.”

I couldn’t believe it then. My mother had always been home, and that had been nice for my younger brother and me. Even though Sanjay was in college and I was married, I liked the idea that my mother was at home. I could visit anytime I wanted to without worrying about her not being available.

“I think it is expecting too much from life to work and be a wife and a mother,” I said. “I mean, you will have to stop being a doctor when you have a baby.”

Harjot gave me a look reserved for the stupid. “And why would I do that?”

“How can you take care of your baby and work? Babies need their mothers,” I said simply.

Needless to say, Harjot was not like me. She wanted equal rights and said that women had to believe in themselves before society would change. I told her that I didn’t want society to change. I liked the way things were. I liked the idea of having a husband take care of me while I made a home for him and his children. I didn’t want to enter the crazy working world.

The summer ended and Harjot went back to college. By then I had made more friends through her. Mrs. Dhaliwal played rummy with some other wives and I was invited to the card games. It was a lot of fun. There was Mrs. Malhotra who always complained when she lost money, there was Mrs. Khatre who was never on time and made the worst
samosas
, which she insisted were perfect, and there were a few more wives who like me were trying to find a way to pass the time. We spent our afternoons playing cards, or just gossiping about this and that.

Life was not boring anymore. I started paying less attention to Prakash, though he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t complain about having toast and jam for breakfast instead of the stuffed
parathas
I used to make, and neither did he complain when I sometimes heated leftover
dal
and curry for dinner. Our life continued as it had before, with us barely talking to each other or spending time together. Earlier I had made the effort to cook what he liked in order to please him; now I had stopped doing that.

We were comfortably apart and, unlike before, I didn’t really care anymore.

That changed.

It was in August and a big party was thrown to welcome a visiting brigadier general of the EME Corps. That was where I met Major Vijay Reddy, who had come with the brigadier general. We instantly started talking because he was also from Hyderabad. His parents even lived in Begumpet, just a few blocks from where my parents lived, and his younger sister had gone to the same college as I had.

He was charming and I was charmed. After being neglected by my husband, this attentive man made me feel feminine and attractive. He noticed me, which was more than Prakash seemed to do. We had been married for over three months now and we had never really talked to each other. We were unlike the newly married couples I had known. We had had sex just a few times and we had never gone out together to the city for dinner or someplace else, just the two of us getting to know each other. In the darkness of my current life, Vijay was a perfect and irresistible diversion.

He spent the entire evening with me. The first spark of attraction was ignited that night, though I wouldn’t admit it— I was a married woman and married women did not find other men attractive. It was a cardinal rule, which I was fully prepared to follow. But Vijay was tempting and, after all, I was just speaking with him, I rationalized. Just talking to a man didn’t mean anything.

I didn’t think anyone noticed me with Major Reddy. After all, wives talked to other officers all the time. And indeed, no one noticed, no one except Prakash.

When we got home, I was floating. Vijay had told me I was beautiful and how lucky Prakash was. It was innocuous flirting and I had smiled and laughed with him. What else could I do, when my own husband wore a permanent frown on his face?

“What were you and that Reddy fellow talking about?” Prakash asked, as I unraveled my sari in our bedroom.

I shrugged and didn’t answer.

“Well?”

I started to fold the sari and wondered what I could tell him. Vijay and I hadn’t really talked about anything tangible, it was just chatting.

“Hyderabad,” I finally answered.

“Why such a long time to answer me?”

“What?”

“What?” Prakash yelled. “You were sitting close to him and laughing. It was disgusting. You are my wife, not some ten-
rupee
whore.”

For a moment I couldn’t believe he had said that. “How dare you call me a whore?” I turned to face him. My eyes glistened with angry tears. This was not happening to me—decent middle-class women were not accused by their husbands of being whores because they had spoken to another man. I was attracted to Vijay, but Prakash had no way of knowing that.

“I dare to call you a whore because you behaved like one,” he accused. “Other women might do this kind of thing and get away with it, but my wife will not.”

“And other men might doubt their wives, but my husband will not,” I retorted forcefully. “I have done nothing, nothing at all to make you say these things. Why would you even think it? I can’t talk to anyone else? Is that it?”

“You were
talking
to him?” he said sarcastically. “Is that what they are calling it these days?”

“I don’t know what it is that you are talking about. How about when you sit and
talk
with those girls? Priyanka Mallik and you seemed to be extra friendly with each other last Saturday at the
Tambola
party.” I didn’t really think he was doing anything but talking with Priyanka Mallik, but I wanted to hit back at him.

His face turned red. His hands, which had been unbuckling his belt, stopped, and I took three steps back. I had seen this in the movies and I would be damned if my husband would hit me. That wasn’t going to happen, I vowed.

His hands fell from the belt and he sat down on the bed wearily. “What are we doing to ourselves, Anju?” he said, his voice hoarse, traumatized.

My relief was obvious. “I don’t know,” I confessed, and sat down next to him. This was my husband and I loved him. I put my hand on his shoulder to soothe him.

Prakash sighed and took my hand in his. “I am sorry. I don’t know . . . I was jealous seeing you with Reddy.”

“I am your wife,” I said, even though I was flattered that he was jealous.

“And I am a terrible husband. Right?”

“No,” I lied.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He kissed me then, warmly, gently. It was like a kiss from a romance novel. With that kiss our marriage finally entered a tentative honeymoon stage.

He spent the evenings with me and we went to the movies they showed in the EME Center Open Air Theatre on Wednesdays and Fridays. We spent more time together and he even took me to the city to shop for clothes and jewelry.

Bhopal was about ten kilometers from Bairagarh, where the EME Center was, and we would go away on a Sunday morning and come back late in the night. Prakash even found a restaurant where they served good South Indian food. Ethnically I was North Indian, but I was raised in South India and loved South Indian cuisine. Prakash thought it was too bland, but he came with me and I convinced myself that he did so because he loved me.

I thought that because he was being so warm and gentle, our sex would also take a 180-degree turn. That didn’t happen. We were both still uncomfortable. To me it was new. I was shy and scared. I didn’t know what his problem was. And I didn’t care. I was glad he was having sex with me, because that meant he probably wouldn’t go looking for it elsewhere. My mother had warned me about that: “If you don’t have sex with your own husband, he might go somewhere else to get it. Men need sex.”

Our lives became normal. We talked, we played, and we were the picture-perfect young couple. Behind the picture, I was always perturbed at how scared I was to disappoint Prakash in any way after the night of the party. Our life was going well and I didn’t want to do or say anything to tip it off balance.

The honeymoon, as I had anticipated, lasted only a month. Things changed all of a sudden. They changed the day Colonel Chaudhary was posted to Bhopal and came to our house for dinner.

Colonel Chaudhary had been Prakash’s commanding officer in Udhampur and Mrs. Bela Chaudhary was a perky, attractive woman who I liked at first sight.

After Colonel Chaudhary’s arrival, everything changed. Not just at home, but also amongst the wives. They were gossiping as usual, only I kept getting the feeling that they were gossiping about me.