At times you don on the nose-pin and mandala from one of your father’s idols and pretend to be the Goddess Durga herself. With your head held high and your right hand raised, as if to bless the good in people. Or to curse the bad in them. Certain events of unbearable happiness or sadness trigger this fantasy in you. Like that one time from years ago when you had cuddled close to your mother’s bosom and she had mentioned how you were named after the Goddess; making you to run around the house afterwards, shouting out your name to each corner and every wall in pure childlike delight.
Or like today, when you have just seen your emaciated and unconscious mother mumbling to herself. Struggling but losing the battle for her life. Overwhelmed, you dashed outside, unable to control the tears brimming in your eyes, and sought refuge in the only fantasy that made sense in the uncertainty of your emotions. For a moment, as your raised hand blesses your own mother to live, hope carries you on its wings to a place filled with never-ending happiness. But then an agitated voice from somewhere nearby jars you from the play-acting and brings you crashing to ground.
“Durga…now where did that useless girl disappear? Always playing. Even when her mother lies dying.”
It is Poornima pehi. You remember about the pail of warm water which she had asked you to fetch some time back.
You hurry the nose-pin and mandala back onto its rightful place and scamper for the kettle of water brewing over the mud stove in the kitchen. Later, as you hesitate by the threshold to your parent’s room and hand the kettle filled with warm water over to Poornima pehi, she shakes her head at you disapprovingly. The others present in the room look at you. But you look at your mother who lies on the straw bed by the mud floor. You watch as didi (the local midwife) tears a piece of cloth kept nearby, dips it into the pail of warm water, takes it out, and wrings the water from it. The fat in her belly crumbles into rich lines as she struggles her weight up from the only stool in the room, to place the cloth on your mother’s forehead. She lifts your mother’s right hand and checks her pulse. Your father, who sits hunched on the floor beside didi, looks up expectantly at her. His hands are folded in prayer. And from the look of it, it feels like he is praying to her.
“She’s taken it bad this time.” Didi shakes her head, letting the hand fall noiselessly on the kaccha floor.
“W-What about my son?” your father hesitates, referring to the day-old bundle (of joy?) that now lies cradled in Poornima pehi’s arms.
“How will you feed it even if it survives?” Didi flares up.
Such statements – you realise from experience – make your father uncomfortable. And stubborn.
A tense silence follows, in which your father looks to Poornima pehi. She goes about explaining how Durga Pujo is approaching and he is hoping to sell a few idols at the October mela happening in the nearby town.
“God help the new-born till then.” Didi sighs. “Look at your daughter. She’s in rags. Look at your wife.”
You recognize this sigh. It is the sigh of a father, the pitied idol-maker, whose hands shake from too much alcohol in the veins and most of whose idols come out wrong and wither inside the compound for lack of buyers even as other idols of other idol-makers have the good fortune of getting submerged in the holy river year after year. It is the sigh of a harried mother too, who wouldn’t open her heart to anyone, not even you. Instead, she would open the strings of her petticoat and spread her legs whenever her husband returned home drunk at night and forced his way between her legs. In the half-light of your cramped one-room quarters, every act was visible for your uncomprehending eyes to see. Although now if you scratch your brains hard, you do recall a few moments of happiness in between, stolen from the little things in life. Like your mother and you eating half-rotten sesame seeds picked from around the nearby acadia tree by the road. It is not that your mother hadn’t suggested to your father, “Why couldn’t you do some other work instead?” But every time your father has shaken his sorry head declaring he is too old to learn a new trade. He retreated to his tools instead, like a stubborn child refusing to let go of his broken toys and play with something else, and spent his mornings and afternoons tinkering with the half-finished idols that had their noses at the wrong places and the jawlines not quite right. On those evenings, he sneaked out and managed to numb his sadness with a bottle of cheap liquor. Returning home, he bragged how he was building the most beautiful Durga idol that the Sunday market had ever seen and how, with the money earned from selling the idol, he would polish the uneven floor and buy you both new dresses to wear. His talks on such evenings were incredible enough for your mother to have believed in. But you never dared casting your own doubts for fear of bursting the happy bubble within which he stayed for the rest of the evening.
After the birth of her second still-born son, your mother fell sick and took to the bed for months. Your father’s unmarried sister, Poornima pehi, came to stay with you all, and never left afterwards.
Now, as Poornima pehi tends to the new-born, you slip your seven-year-old fingers around Didi’s arm and accompany her on the way out. The outside is a relief from the suffocating indoors. Immediately, your spirits lift. The village is a half day’s journey by bus from the nearest town of Bedeti. But you could still hear (or think you do) the sounds of revelry coming from the October mela happening there.
“How is my little goddess doing?”
Your cheeks redden at the reference. Didi had once seen you play-act the Goddess and since then, often teases you with the name, joking that your father had sculpted at least one Durga correctly in his life. She now fishes inside her bag and retrieves a bunch of toffees. “Here…” she offers. “I have saved these just for you.”
Suddenly you remember the knot in your stomach, from not eating since last night.
“Deta is taking me to the Sunday market tomorrow.” You mumble, even as you stuff one of the toffees into your mouth.
“To sell his idols?”
You nod. But then a doubt clouds your mind and you speak out. “But he hasn’t sold a single idol in the last three months.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll pray for your father this time. Tell me, have you been to the market before?”
“Of course.” You lie. For some reason you do not want to come across as ignorant. But then you recall your mother’s words from a lifetime ago “You should never lie. It is a sin,” and you silently pledge to ask the goddess for forgiveness later. Although you had never gone there yourself, your father’s stories have created a vivid picture of the place in your mind: of a place filled with Durga idols and pots and utensils of varying shapes and sizes kept on rickety trestles and of a blanket of dust trampled by the feet of eager buyers and sellers. A place where anything and everything can be bought or sold.
“Listen you need to take care of your mother. If this child doesn’t make it too, your father might try for another one next year. But your mother can’t take it anymore. She’s grown too weak.”
You nod in agreement. But your child’s mind is too young to grasp your father’s need for a son or why your mother’s stomach bloats every year even as the rest of her continues to shrivel.
As Didi walks away, you look around and notice the acadia tree by the neighbour’s yard. Two boys are gathered around it, struggling to reach the top branch which holds a prized mango. One of them, the one who often confronts you inside narrow alleys and puts his hand under your skirt and later declares his unending love for you as you begin to shout, signals at you to join them. Neither of them knows how to climb, you giggle to yourself. A little hesitation later, you find yourself hopping onto the tree branch, stick in hand. Most of the good mangoes from the lower branches have been plucked and eaten long ago. But the top one holds a mango as fresh as the hunger gnawing at your stomach. You hesitate, your right foot on the top branch. It swaddles. You hesitate the other foot too. The branch snaps. And down you crash into one of the waiting hands. “Got you!” smirks the boy who says he loves you endlessly. As you wriggle free from him, the lower part of your skirt gets entangled in the bangle he’s wearing, exposing a little skin over the knees. You notice the other boy ogling at it. It is then when you realise you have nothing underneath your skirt. Just then Poornima pehi walks out of the house and the boys scatter and disappear. Much later, you return home to find Poornima pehi talking to your father. She is narrating the earlier incident from the mango tree. Unfortunately, when it came to matters concerning you, she often feels the need to exaggerate.
“But why does she play with them.…” pehi is saying. “…you should see how those loafers sometimes ogle at her. She even runs around holding hands with one of them when you are not around.”
Just then you walk in and the elders go quiet.
The next morning you wake up before the others, bathe, and light a diya before the idol of Maa Durga. Your mother is still unconscious, still mumbling in her sleep. You don’t disturb her. Instead, you sweep the floor and afterwards, sit upon the compound wall facing the kaccha road. The pleasant butterflies inside your stomach make you greet every passer-by, known and unknown, with a lovely shout of, “We are going to the market today.” The passers-by halt for a moment on the footpath and smile back at you before moving on.
Much later in the day, after alighting from the only bus that connects your home to the town of Bedeti, you navigate the narrow and uncertain footpaths of the October mela and are careful not to step onto the path of any passers-by. You follow as your father marches ahead, carrying one of his idols in the crook of his arm. You take in the different sights. Everywhere you look, the place looks bigger than your own neighbourhood. Bigger footpaths, roads, traffic, the blaring horns of endless buses, and you are surprised out of your thoughts. Bigger is the mess of garbage, held untidily inside large open bins, which appears at every corner where differing directions of roads fork into each other before going their separate ways. More stray dogs (something you are mortally scared of) roam the streets. Whenever a stray dog comes walking from the other side, you step down from the footpath or hide behind a tree stump or an electric pole, much to your father’s consternation. But this, in turn, makes the dogs – who are used to being ignored – more curious. They step down from the footpath when you do and look enquiringly at you, their tongues lolling out, scaring you even more. The playful ones stand in front of the stump or the pole, wondering what’s going on, and waiting for you to come out of hiding, as if to say, “I see you.”
You follow your father around the entire day, as he goes from one pandal to another, in search of that one buyer who doesn’t mind buying an idol with its nose at the wrong place and the jawline not quite right. Your legs hurt. But you do not complain. Instead, your childlike mind wonders why, although everyone believes in the presence of the goddess in all things good or broken, people only pray before unblemished idols. Around early evening, your father finally disappears inside a hotel that has bright lights on its facade, even as the disappointing yellow of dusk envelops the rest of it. You wait outside. A group of people are gathered by the reception, and a man with important-looking sunglasses from the group follows your father out.
“He has agreed to buy our idol. Be nice to him,” your father whispers to you when he’s back.
An awkward silence ensues as the man who stands beside looks to you and you look to your father.
“Haven’t you told her already?” the man wonders.
“Yes yes…” your father hurries. “She knows all about it.”
You get up and push the idol towards the man. But for some reason, he is more interested in you.
“You like sweets? Here, I have some.” He says, extending a palm filled with toffees.
You hesitate, your hand out for the sweets, but he holds you by the hand and turns you around, like he is a doctor searching for scratches or blemishes in his patients. Or like someone worse.
“Good, good.”
It is then that your father turns to you and whispers in a voice that you hadn’t heard in years. “Maajoni, I am thirsty. Can you fetch me a glass of water?” He points to a canteen beside the hotel where rows of glasses are kept on a trestle. As you walk reluctantly towards the canteen, you hear your father bargaining with the man over the price he was offering.
Later, as you return with the glass of water, your eyes search for your father. Your ears strain to hear his tender voice again.
“Where is deta?” You ask the man. But the man with the important-looking sunglasses looks down at you, amused. “Don’t you know? Your father sold you for a hundred rupees. Come now, give me that glass of water.” He reaches out for you. But you drop the glass and run. In search of the only bus from Bedeti that will take you home. You wonder if deta had seen you too, like didi, play-acting the Goddess? And did deta misunderstand? It is the longest minute of your life, running through the confusion of people, and expecting to bump into a father who would say it had all been a misunderstanding and take you home. But everywhere you run, the sad eyes of the goddess kept in the indifferent pandals greet you. For some reason, they had always appeared sad to you. But now they appear to be on the verge of tears. It is quite late and dark. The frequency of buses plying about have trickled down to almost nothing. At a distance you notice a lone bus with its conductor standing on the foot-board and thumping the sideboard with his coarse hands, calling out to all the remaining market-goers to board the last bus home.
You cry out to the conductor to stop. But the bus has already started for home. Without you.
A little down the road the bus stops. You begin running again. But it halts only for the tiniest of whiles, perhaps the impatient bus driver had misplaced his right foot on the brakes instead of the accelerator. For it roars up again. And soon disappears beyond the reach of your tiny feet.
Photo by Aditya Romansa on Unsplash
