Happy Birthday! And Other Stories Part 12

*Andha kya jaane aurat ka swaad,' Dhoopwali Mai says in a sly, slithering voice.

Gyan stands up in surprise. How could he have not sensed Dhoopwali Mai watching him-motionless and soundless-as he mended the broken chair?

*The one who's always in or always out?' Parvati asks.

Gyan wills the Mai to silence, but-*Gyan na jaane aangan tedha'-it's too late.

He hears Parvati's footsteps cross the veranda, and moves to the back of his kholi, which he imagines is dark and an ideal hideout. The curtain at his doorway swishes. Parvati is standing inside his kholi, for the very first time. He has nothing to welcome her with.

She stops, as if taken aback. *Is this a house or a factory?'

He doesn't know. This room is filled with cane chairs and his precious tools: needles, chisel, pegs, glue and nails. The only thing he calls his own is the straw mat that he sits on, a thin mattress that he sleeps on, and some hand-me-down clothes from his roommate Sunder. And though Gyan likes the lingering smell of bachelorhood in his house-c.u.m-factory, now he wishes that he'd made this place more homely, hung up a poster or two, if only of those busty women liked by other men.

*There isn't even a statue of Ganeshji here. Don't you believe in G.o.d?' Parvati continues.

Gyan has never understood the intense faith of damaged people. But his first meeting with Parvati must go well, so he replies, *I find it difficult to believe in something that I can't see.'

*Then you don't believe in anything,' Parvati says, her voice strong and insistent.

Gyan's throat clamps down on his speech. He swallows and draws a deep breath to stop the shakes that are starting in his body.

*How did you know that my chair was broken?' she persists.

Can he tell her how he knows? How he hears everything? No, it would cheat her out of thinking that the walls keep her secrets safe. But the little bells lining her dupatta jingle as she waits for his answer; she's probably twisting them around her finger. She is nervous. Is he wrong in not owning up to the truth?

Closing his eyes to the cruelty of life is stupid and sinful; since there is so little he can do about it, he should at least acknowledge it.

He blurts out: *I heard Sheel break the chair after you told him that you needed money to buy rice.'

Parvati's breathing becomes rapid. In a voice that's walking a tightrope, she says, *So you sit in this filthy G.o.dless place all day and spy on my husband and me?'

Spy? Doesn't she realize that he is someone with whom she can share her sorrow?

*What else have you heard?'

*Nothing more,' he lies.

*Do not lie to me. I've had enough of that,' she continues, relentless.

She's asking this more for herself than him, so he replies softly, unsure, *I've heard the things that he says to you. What he does. That time he snuffed out his bidi on your thigh. And how you cried after that for six straight days.'

Gyan feels a sharp clap against his cheek. His face becomes hot.

Parvati has slapped him.

*What sort of monster are you? Spying shamelessly on your neighbour's wife?' His ears are ringing as she laughs harshly. *And how would you know that I was crying? Do you even know what tears are? Can blind men even cry?'

She turns around and her steps bang against the hard floor, not stopping as she tells Dhoopwali Mai, *Waah! Waah! What a chawl I live in-the only people who can hear me are the ones who can't see.'

Gyan runs his fingers over the wall separating Parvati's house from his; he counts the lumps on it. On the first go he counts eighty-nine lumps. On the second try ninetytwo.

Her parting words play like a loop in his head.

It's been a long time since someone has reminded Gyan that he's blind. He'd be happier-it went without saying-if he could see, but he'd also be less of the person that he is. For a lame man can smile with a friend. A deaf man can walk straight. A mute man can admire the curves of the woman he loves. But blindness is not like that. Gyan can neither walk without it, nor share nor love without it. It consumes his life completely, becoming the vantage point from which everything else follows.

He hasn't minded it very much-no really-but now, after many years, he wishes that he could see, just to be able to show Parvati his tears. Show her that when she bears Sheel's beatings, it is Gyan who carries the scars, digging his nails deep into his flesh, drawing blood. That he wakes up when he hears her stir in the morning, boils his tea as she rummages through the kitchen utensils, grimaces through her sobs, which are the worst just before Sheel comes home, that he smiles on those rare moments when her voice is not gloomy-when Sheel finds a new job or hands her a little money saved from his drinking binges.

She doesn't know-can't know-that in many ways Gyan is married to her more than Sheel is.

Parvati had moved next door, to Sheel's kholi, seventysix days and four hours ago. Gyan was not invited to their wedding, couldn't imagine there being one since Sheel's first wife had burnt herself to death just a few weeks earlier. So that afternoon, when Gyan heard the clink of a ghada, he pressed his ears hard against the wall. There was a swish of rice grains across the cement floor. Then he heard a sliver of her laughter-the first sound he came to a.s.sociate with Parvati. It skimmed the edge of the darkness into which he'd slipped over the years and then, without warning, yanked him out of it. He became immobile with surprise, and in waiting for Parvati to laugh again, realizing at once that this woman would never just be his neighbour's wife.

The floor of Gyan's kholi becomes cooler. It's evening. He hears the office people's lingering footsteps return home to their sadness. There's a rustle near the curtain and from the smell of metal and sweat-underneath the overpowering lavender talc.u.m-Gyan knows that Sunder is home. With a customary thump Sunder sets down the case of hairbands and clips that he sells on the Western Railway line between Bhayandar and Palghar.

*Abbe Devdas,' he hears Sunder say. *I met Dhoopwali Mai downstairs and she told me that she hasn't heard your chisel all afternoon. Have you not made any chairs today? Do you want to starve? And it doesn't smell like you've made dinner either. Now, we're really going to starve.'

Gyan doesn't reply.

Sunder adds, *Now, now ... don't be so serious, Gyan Da. I was joking. You think I'd let you starve?' Something lands near Gyan's feet as Sunder continues, *I got b.u.t.terpav for us; two for each.'

Gyan doesn't reach for the b.u.t.ter-pav, all hunger having vacated his empty stomach.

A pause. Sunder asks, *Have you become deaf as well? I got pav with b.u.t.ter. When was the last time you even had b.u.t.ter?'

Sunder opens the small wooden container in which he locks his belongings, and continues talking. *I'm feeling rich today. A wedding party full of women going to Mira Road bought most of my clips, even the expensive fifteenrupee ones. And, they forced me to eat so much mithai, as if I was the groom.'

Sunder often regales Gyan with happy stories of kindness, of ladies who treat him to food and other delights, of men who treat him as an equal. Gyan has no choice but to believe him, for even the chawl women whisper that Sunder has the fairest face among all the chawl men, the biggest chest, the politest manners. Nanu, who took them both in, used to say the same thing.

Sunder sits next to Gyan and says, *You're spying on Aacharvati again?' Sunder gave Parvati this nickname after she took on the part-time job of Sheel's dead wife, fixing little caps of gingham cloth and labels onto the local Mother Love pickle bottles. *If only you could see her. Small cunning eyes, big ugly nose, thin brown lips, and dark skin as if her husband cannot afford Fair & Lovely ...'

Gyan turns grimly towards Sunder. *And how would you know?'

There is a silence before Sunder replies gaily, *Unlike you, my brother-in-blindness, I don't lock myself in this kholi all day long. The chawl women talk about her and tell me that Sheel has found a perfect match. While you, on the other hand, are wasting your time. After all you are what my movie people would call a chikna, true film star material.'

Sunder is probably talking about himself again, still dreaming of going to acting school and dancing beside Kareena Kapoor, something that Nanu so often encouraged him to do. For even Gyan's mother, when he asked her if it was true that he was ugly-like the other children said-would hide his face in the rough weave of her green sari and say, *G.o.d made you different because he loves you.'

Sunder unwraps the pav and puts it in Gyan's hands, *Eat!'

Gyan turns back to the wall. Unlike him, Sunder was born with perfect vision, a cowherd's son who lived in Tej, a small village in Punjab's Nawanshahr District. One day, when he was around ten or eleven, he was grazing cows in a field near the landlord's mango groves. The landlord's son-older, powerful-ordered him to pluck a mango from a tree. Sunder refused. The landlord's son asked again. Sunder said no. The landlord's son called five of his friends and they told Sunder to get the mango or else. Sunder ignored them. Mad with rage, the six boys broke branches from the mango tree and beat Sunder with them. They spared no part of Sunder's body, including his face. An inch of bark got lodged inside Sunder's right eye, blinding it, and a few weeks later, he could no longer see from his left eye either.

Gyan's story is different. He was born blind, the first in his family. His mother said, *It's okay not to see too much. Even those with sight go through life seeing nothing at all.' Gyan wanted to believe her; after all, nothing is more acceptable than what you're born into.

But his father, who grew bananas on their one-acre family farm in Naugachia, Bihar, was unhappy with his son's disability. Still, when Bhoomi-a government employee, from the nearby town of Jabli-came to him one day and said, *The government is giving free treatment to blind children. I will take your son to Mumbai and return him in a week, fully cured, everything paid for,' his father said no. The next week a mysterious fire started in a corner of their farm. *Save the farm,' his father shouted to him. *Get some water.' Gyan could not find the water pail. The next morning, squatting on his burnt farmland, his father put his thumb impression on Bhoomi's paper and handed Gyan over to the man. True to his word, Bhoomi brought Gyan to Mumbai where, untrue to his word, he put him to work in this kholi with twenty other blind boys, including Sunder-all victims of the same racket-and Nanu, their kind but capricious caretaker. Due to his introverted nature, Gyan was a.s.signed the task of caning chairs. It was Sunder who found out that Gyan's mother had hanged herself from a tamarind tree (under which Gyan and she so often played hide-and-seek), and his father had left the village, never to be seen again. Within a week of hearing this, Gyan asked Nanu to buy him dark gla.s.ses, which he put on and never took off again.

Parvati's life continues as if Gyan and she have never met, but he carries on listening, more than before.

His morning begins when her voice rises among the women, fighting for water from the chawl's only pump. It's his afternoon when her voice becomes softer; she is alone with her pickle bottles, as Sheel sleeps or, on good days, goes out in search of odd jobs. And night is when Gyan seeks Parvati's voice, as Sheel comes home, drunk or angry, faulting her for everything.

After every beating, Gyan listens to Parvati clean her house with renewed enthusiasm, as if trying to wipe away the memory of her latest defeat. It smells of lime juice and curd, as though she's removing the stain of something deep red, like blood. At those times his kholi has the air of a place that has witnessed a terrible confrontation.

Then, all of a sudden, things change. Parvati changes. Whenever Sheel is out, she leaves the house and is gone for hours, returning in a hurry, minutes before her husband is due to come back. Her strides become long, different from the slow gossip-bound pace of the other chawl women.

Sheel suspects nothing, but uncertainty squirms in Gyan's imagination, taking on foul forms and becoming worse when he hears surprising sounds from her-laughter. It lasts only a few seconds each time, but echoes in Gyan's head for a full minute after. What does Parvati have to laugh about?

Then he overhears her on the phone with her mother, having a proper conversation unlike the broken bits of words that she usually exchanges with everyone else. She's joined an organization that helps women in her situation-though she doesn't elaborate what *her situation' is-and she's being counselled by a volunteer, a gora who tells her that she's the most beautiful Indian woman he's seen.

So this is the cause of her newfound cheer, Gyan realizes. It's an unexpected burden on him, this happiness that she's found by herself, without his help.

The next afternoon there is a knock on his open door and he hears someone enter his kholi. He smells a peculiar odour, somewhat nutty or spicy. Though not displeasing, it's not the odour of a body that is bathed. There's been a water-cut in the chawl for the last three days, so the person in his kholi must be one of his neighbours. Who can it be?

He hears Parvati's voice, *Gyan, it's me. Your neighbour Parvati.' And there she is, in his kholi again. It's because the chemical smell of her alcoholic husband is gone that Gyan hadn't recognized her. She continues, *I brought you some food ... lunch, I mean. I made it myself. I thought a bachelor like you would enjoy ... you know ... a home-cooked meal.' Her words tumble over each other like his thoughts.

He is too overwhelmed by her presence, her smell, her words, to speak a word, or to ask false curious questions that will slide them uncontrollably into the whole story of their intertwined lives.

*I haven't been very friendly and ... uhm ... I came to say sorry for being rude earlier. I don't know what happened to me.'

There is hope in her voice, a desperate hope carried by those who know better but still keep faith.

He senses her shifting before she adds: *You're still as a stone.' She sits down beside him. *Sometimes I think you're not just blind, but deaf and mute as well.'

*Sometimes I am,' he whispers hoa.r.s.ely.

She sets down a plate in front of him and he catches the whiff of slightly burnt roti, dal without hing, and aloo fry that he knows will have less salt. He doesn't reach for the food, already savouring the taste he knows he'll enjoy.

Because there's no special need for Parvati to talk to him, she begins to talk. She tells him to eat. He breaks off a piece of the hard roti, and, after taking a bite, finds that the flour still has tiny stones in it. He chews resiliently.

*You have something on your face,' Parvati says and reaches for his left cheek. A white flash runs through him. He expects her hand to be dry and scaly, but it's clammy and soft, like his mother's. She doesn't remove her hand and he turns hot, wishing he'd washed his canecovered face.

There's silence, and Gyan is glad that he can't see Parvati's expression.

Her hands run along the dark gla.s.ses he's wearing.

*I don't like these,' she says breezily, as if telling him that she doesn't like the colour of his T-shirt. *They make you look like a professor.'

A professor I can still become, he thinks with sardonic humour.

She adds in a flat tone: *I want to see your eyes.'

He doesn't know how to react. This request is unexpected, almost insolent. Yet, coming from her, it doesn't seem hurtful. Should he say yes? It will mean that she'll see something about him that he hasn't seen for himself. What if they're horrific, these eyes that his gla.s.ses shield?

Her hot breath is on his neck. She's waiting nervously.

He says, *You can see them, but only if you describe them to me.'

Parvati gently removes his gla.s.ses. A heavy weight lifts off his face.

She doesn't move a single part of her body, so he knows that she is examining his eyes seriously. She seems to be searching for words as she says, *Your eyes are grey, the colour of the sky before it rains; murky with the opaqueness you see in the eyes of elderly people. They are still, like stones in water.' She pauses, takes a deep breath, as if this exercise is exhausting her. *On your right eye is a splotch, as if black ink has spilled across it. Your stare is somewhere else, looking London, talking Tokyo.'

He laughs, relieved to know what he looks like to her. There is nothing to hide any more.

With a sudden boldness Sunder would be proud of, he asks, *Can I touch your face?'

She doesn't reply but lifts his hands to the humid warmth of her face. Her skin is not smooth but greasy to the touch and full of pimples that he imagines she soothes with haldi at the end of every day. Her eyelashes are thin and she blinks often, probably tense. She has a large mole on her nose, a nose that is wider than her mouth and on which she wears a flat ring. Her lips are dry to touch, with tiny soft hair above them. Sunder was right. She is ugly.

He loves her more than ever.

He leans back, panting, as if they've just made love, though he never has, and he knows she doesn't pant afterwards.

With a queer inflection in her voice she says, *I want to tell you something. Promise me that you won't tell anyone. Not even Sunder.'

*I promise.'

*I've met a gora, Amreekan. He likes to help people, so when I told him about the famous blind friends of the Dagar chawl-the clip man and the cane man-he said he'd like to meet you.' She giggles. *He's nicknamed you both the "clip and cane brothers".'

A clever man, Gyan thinks, and says *No,' rather ferociously, surprising even himself. Parvati stops giggling. *I don't want to meet him. And you shouldn't either. He's helping you because he wants something from you in return. Can't you see that he's making excuses to come to our chawl, so that he can enter your kholi and demand things from you?'

Parvati doesn't take offence, but calmly says, *Gyan, you talk like a child and think like a prost.i.tute. Now finish eating. I have to take back the plate.'

Gyan chews slowly, allowing his emotions to settle.

Sometimes, when the blackness of his world gets to him, Gyan lights a matchstick next to one eye. He brings the matchstick so close that sometimes an eyelash burns. In those moments of sheer terror, with his face under the threat of fire, he senses a white light around him-the only time he sees a colour other than black.

Right now, all around him, Gyan is seeing white.

A few weeks pa.s.s like this; Parvati brings food for Gyan every other afternoon, whatever leftovers she can put together, and he eats her broken food while she talks about this and that, nothing that is new to him, but it doesn't even matter. She never stays for more than half an hour, running between her organization work and housework, making sure that Sheel doesn't notice her absences.

He asks her why she's doing this-bringing him food-and she replies, *I'm being a good neighbour.'

*Then take some food for Dhoopwali Mai also,' he says in jest.

*She doesn't have your eyes,' she laughs. Then she adds seriously, *And neither your kindness.'

He knows then that Parvati can hear him listening through the walls, that she has finally come to realize that she has a friend, not a spy, with whom she can share her sorrow. Maybe soon she will also learn to love him.

One day she walks into his kholi with slow, soft steps and sits down heavily next to him. He puts down his chisel and turns to where her taut breath meets his.

*I have to tell you something,' she says, in a tone that tries to sound frightened but is in fact a.s.sured. *We will leave all this tomorrow.'

His hopes fly. She wants to come away with him. They'll find another chawl, away from Sheel, where he will continue caning chairs and she will, only if she wants to, sow sal leaves into plates, a job he's heard pays as much as caning. They will be the couple with only one good pair of eyes, and a better team no one will ever see.