Echoes in the Well

imagined

GOVIND

I

I see the girls as they lean toward the sunlight, their faces dissected by a grid of shadows formed by the bars on the window. Sometimes they speak softly to one another. But mostly they are silent, icy blue veins around their mouths. Sometimes they bend over my sleeping face – Daddy? – Then – it’s all right. He’s still breathing. And soft sighing sounds as they move back to the window. Sometimes they fade into the light and I am alone, shadow bars pushing my legs into the springs of the mattress.

Yesterday, they spoke late into the night. Whispered words that ballooned into moving images.

Remember? they said. Remember, remember, remember?

As they moved back and forth, a year, ten, a lifetime. The words filled out their two-dimensional frames. Now breathing, pulsing bodies, streaking the air with ribbons of misty memories.

They looked toward me – once, twice – and were gone again into the past.

The sun rose early this morning to expose the purple exhaustion under their eyes.

It’s morning.

Already.

Do you think we’ll be going home today?

They can measure time. Still. Minutes, hours, days… accumulating to build pasts, to define the present, to give shape to an unknown future. Days pass into nights and I have forgotten how to count.

II

Who can tell what dreams are real? If I begin to pick through memories searching for truth, will I have a story to tell? Last night I tried to imagine what death would be but the weight of its silence threw me back again and again into the labyrinths of my life. And always Amrita beside me saying – but there is no tomorrow if it’s the same as today.

She would not exist if I did not, yet she is nobody that I am or that I could be. I look at her now. I look at them – and I know that their small bodies add to the bulk of mine. I do not know if I chose the role that their lives gave to me, or if I walked blindly down the road charted by fate. But this I can say -their presence made me more than I was before.

Those many years before their birth I did not think about being a father. I was aware that fatherhood was seen as inevitable in a man’s passage through life, but I never thought that life might be mine. I cannot say that I liked children, or even that I noticed them. My experience of children lay only in memories of my own childhood, and that was left , now far behind. Perhaps when I married a fleeting thought of children passed through my mind, but I do not recall that moment. I never thought to imagine an experience or situation which had no possible meaning within my present. I never thought to imagine I might be responsible for the creation of another life. Yet when Lika told me that she was pregnant, I was not surprised.

I will not say that there was a special emotion in my heart, joy or regret, when I heard her words. I cannot say that I felt anything but a faint curiosity. But as time passed and I began to notice the changes affecting Lika, the reality of a new life expected in ours generated an excitement that intruded on my every waking moment. It may be that all expectant fathers feel the way that I did, or it may be that each has an inimitable experience, but even today it is difficult for me to express the thoughts and sentiments that I felt through those months of waiting. I can only be grateful for the changes that time brings, and thankful that remembrance of those times past renews my appreciation for the present.

That earliest dream in which my child appeared to me is as vivid today as it was the morning when I dreamed. He stood with his arms outstretched, unsteady in his first step toward me. His eyes, so deep, drew me into his being so that I was a child again being lift ed into the arms of my father. How can I describe the joy I felt in that first meeting with my son? I marvel, even now, at how that small pair of hands held all the pleasures of the world and gave them to me in a flash. I dreamed of him many times again.

There was never any doubt in my mind that my child would be a son. It could not be any other way. I was the father of a son. When I look back I know that my hope for a son was not an extraordinary desire nor an emotional prediction, but one more indication of how much I am my father’s son, how much a man of my times. Sometimes I let myself imagine that I arrive at my own thoughts without influence. But the more closely I examine the possibility, the more closely I look at myself, the more clearly I understand how impossible that is. Does an idea, a thought once expressed or heard disappear completely, or does it remain to flow into every other thought in its stream? How can we stand apart living together as we do?

I cannot say if I am dreaming asleep or awake. My body moves, changes as I lie still. Is that my voice telling the story of Amrita’s birth, or does she speak herself ? The voices emerge from within me to enter the mouths of others, and sound once again. She sits, so silent by the window. And we look out when a bird calls.

They speak to each other intently, Ambika and Amrita. Channeling their words through tight spaces as if they might escape and reach where they should not. I do not try to hear what they are saying. I know.

AMRITA

I

That is how he died. My father. Silent, on a hospital bed.

I think about his death not as a single moment, nor as the end of one life. I see it as the release of all the other lives that shared its memories. I return repeatedly to these memories, to these dreams, to reshape the stories of my life, to reuse my past, to give meaning to the present.

I remember the days of mourning and of the funeral. I remember the cool touch of the pine floorboards on my bare feet. All those years ago when the woman said, You are nothing now. You are nobody. You poor, peculiar thing.

I thought then that the ground should shift beneath my feet and throw me into a void. But it did not. I smiled into my mother’s anxious eyes.

Everybody has experienced loss, a sense of exclusion, a feeling of being denied. My life had been shaped by this feeling of being cut off . The woman at the funeral repeated the exclusion, her words pronouncing my life ended as my father’s life was ended. But I had stood on the boundaries of my own life before, and I knew then that I did not have to remain in exile. It was at that moment I reclaimed the right to define myself, to tell my own story, to no longer be that poor, peculiar thing.

It was then too that I realized how much my mother’s longings had delineated our lives – my sisters and mine. I understood how her refusal to reproduce herself and her circumstances had given us the freedom to identify our own desires, and given her, in turn, the opportunity to restructure her own life within ours. She wanted for us everything that she had been without. But nothing comes without a price. She wanted for us to stand apart, to be independent, thinking women, to be without fear of being different. But she wanted also for us to be praised and accepted by all. She wanted us never to be touched by the desperate poverty that had surrounded her own girlhood, and yet she wanted us to remain unaffected by the material comforts that enclosed ours.

She succeeded in some ways, and she failed in others. Her failure was cruelly marked that day of my father’s funeral, by the words of the woman who had played no significant role in our lives until then.

You poor, peculiar thing.

Yes, I. My mother’s daughter.

II

I know the scene perfectly.

A dark night – such a dark night. The stars pierced fiercely through the tightly stretched sky, stained in patches by the milkyway. And through the darkness every detail sharply visible – the house, the trees, the gravel on the path – damp shining.

Inside the house they shielded her eyes even from the dimmed electric light, but she leaned forward impatiently – why is it so dark in here. My baby will be born into the light. The room was brightened until all shadows disappeared. Then again -a deep quiet. She pushed against the pillows, shift ed her weight about until she was comfortable, and rested her hands on her swollen belly. There was defiance in her eyes, a stubborn set to her mouth, and a silence buried so deep in her heart that nobody would know her fear.

Such a dark night. Such a dark, dark night. Deep. Soft . As velvety black as the underside of a bat’s body. The doctor walked up the hill without once looking down at the path. She knew the cooperation of all things in the world, and was sure that she walked safe. She was so perfectly neat and clean. Her clothes starched and pressed into unmoving folds. Her dyed, black hair pulled back from her face, and her trimmed pink fingernails embedded firmly in her wrinkled, carefully washed fingers. Her eyes did not strain against the gloom. Her pace so steady that it seemed she was lighted from within.

The regular sound of her footsteps was broken by the anxiety of Mithun’s feet as he moved rapidly on the path. He ran ahead, and then returned to light the doctor’s way. His flashlight swung in his agitated hands so that its small yellow light shot wavy patterns into the night which disappeared even as they were created. Her eyes remained fixed on the tiny clouds of breath that emerged from between her lips and then quickly vanished into the cold night air.

Fifty-six years old, she thought. Fifty-six years old today, and every day a new baby born.

She delivered the baby with the same consistent efficiency she had delivered countless others, recited a mantra of post partum care as she washed her hands, and looked with some surprise at the weeping Madhulika.

Crying? She said curiously, still rubbing her hands together. I didn’t expect that from you.

No. Not crying. I don’t know. Another daughter, doctor. Two girls.

And? That’s reason to cry?

What do you think? You tell me.

I’m fifty-six today. She picked up a towel to dry her hands. Fifty-six years old. Can you tell?

No. Madhulika smiled. You certainly don’t look it. Is it really your birthday doctor? Perhaps my baby will be a doctor too. Fifty-six! I would never have guessed! She began to cry again. Then she turned her face into her pillow and fell asleep.

The doctor took another look at me. I was asleep too. My wrinkled little body swaddled tightly in white flannel. She stood there, without a sound, not quite sure what to do. The room began to fill with the morning light, and she stood there, still. She was not thinking anything in particular, but she was aware that the deep stillness of dawn would soon be broken.

You’ll be fine, she said. At last. And she left the room.

I was born in the silence of night and my father was not there. He did not see me that moment of my birth, nor the many months that followed. He was working hard to ensure our future. I knew that.

But I would be lying if I do not admit that there are times when I ask myself if he would have come home for the birth of a son.

III

I remember that night so clearly. But Ambika is impatient each time I tell her that.

Nobody, she says emphatically, absolutely nobody can remember the day they were born.

Well I do. I am stubborn in my insistence and sure on every detail.

Listen, I say. Listen. Ma was crying. Not noisy crying. You know her silent tears crying. I know, because the moon reflected a rainbow on her tears. She didn’t wipe her face. The tears just ran down her cheeks and down into the folds of her neck. I know, because I felt ticklish when I saw that. She kept smoothing her hair as though she were pushing it away from her face. I know. Because I looked to see what was on her face, and there was nothing.

The room was brightly lit. Every piece of furniture was sharply outlined against the white walls. The polished wood posts of the bed reflected the light in narrow columns that shift ed as I moved my head. People walked toward the bed to look down at me and then away again. The skin on their faces glistened, and I stared, fascinated.

It was really cold that night. Didn’t you feel it? The windows were wide open and every few minutes a sharp breeze would blow the curtains in. Someone or other would move to close the windows, but ma insisted that they remain open. "It’s cleansing, she kept saying. The cold makes me feel nice and clean."

It did feel nice. You know that feeling? When you’re all warm and cozy and the feeling is heightened because your face is so cold – a smooth, clean, cold. Maybe you didn’t feel it because you were fast asleep on her other side. You didn’t even know what had happened, and ma’s body protected you from the breeze. It took me ages to fall asleep. People kept peeping into the room and then going quietly away. I don’t know who they were. After the doctor left I heard voices outside the door for a short while, and soon afterward it was very still. I remember it was a good feeling lying there against ma. And then the sound of birds outside the window and I was asleep too.

There must be so much more that happened. I just don’t remember it all. So many things. Such little things. I was so small then. I spent much of the time either sleeping or feeding. Or that’s what everyone imagined. Sometimes I’d just be lying there – not really asleep.

I remember Mithun maama coming in to play with me, and ma saying, No, no, no. Don’t touch her. She’s sleeping. Maybe when she’s bigger. Don’t touch her.

He’d be confused because I was lying there staring at him with eyes wide open waiting to be picked up and carried out of the room. But he always listened to ma so he’d just bend over the crib and look at me with his gentle brown eyes, and his fingers would go into a tickling motion just inches above me.

Stop it Mithun, ma would say, don’t be such a fidget. But she said it so softly. It gave him the chance to pretend that he hadn’t heard.

Sometimes he told me stories – long, rambling stories that never had an end. And ma laughed and said, I remember that one. That’s so funny – I remember that one. And she would give him a quick hug.

But most of the time it was quiet. Just the sounds ma made as she moved about, putting things in place. The sunlight streamed in through the windows, lit up the room and made shimmering patterns on the ceiling. I remember being mesmerized by the dancing light, feeling its warmth on my face, and falling asleep with brightness surrounding me.

1V

Shillong was such a clean, small town those days. Ma was never afraid to let us go for walks alone, even to spend whole days during the winter holidays, lying on the hillside with a book and a bag full of oranges. When the sun shone against the cool breeze, and I lay on my back and looked at the blue sky through the needle pines, I calmed to the silence of the world.

Just be sure to be back before dark, ma would say as we left home with our knapsacks, and be sure to keep your sweaters on. And so oft en we were late and she threatened us with a beating.

We seldom met anybody on those walks. It sometimes seemed we were the only people in the world as we wandered through the hills. We would sit by the rushing stream – is it even there anymore? – always taking off our shoes and socks to dip our feet into the water that skimmed over the smooth stones. And the water always so cold that we screamed in pained delight and rubbed our toes between our palms to warm them up again. Sometimes we’d wander further than usual, and come across a Khasi farmer digging in his potato fields. And we’d giggle nervously.

Looks like he rose up from the soil, we’d whisper. Our heads so full of the English landscapes of the books we read that our own appeared strange to our eyes.

And we’d nod and smile a greeting, unable to do more as we did not speak Khasi, and he spoke nothing else.

We tried so hard once to convince ma that we should be allowed to camp overnight on the hillside. But she was adamant in her refusal.

All the children in England do it, we argued.

How do you know that? You’ve never been to England.

We read, don’t we? we said, fortunate that ma ignored the sarcasm. The Famous Five are even quite young, and their parents allow them to camp away from home. Have you read even one of these books?

They don’t have kidnappers in England, she said.

Yes, they do, we answered with all the vast knowledge we gained from reading Enid Blyton.

Not kidnappers who catch children and sacrifice them to Theleng.

And then she’d tell us those frightening stories about the snake god who brought good fortune to those who off ered up a sacrifice of the blood of children. We shouted in disgust. Stop it! You’re just trying to scare us.

No, she said, calm against our horror. Ask Kong Bai. She’ll tell you even worse stories. They’re all true, you know.

We were lucky she allowed us to hike around on the hillsides at all. Our classmates parents all refused to let them. Even when we reached senior school.

And then the town became so crowded, and cars began to clog the roads, and people built houses in an untidy mess all over the hills. All those beautiful pines cut down! We didn’t even want to go camping anymore.

I remember the days before the town began to change. We’d stand on the bridge at Ward Lake and look at the water lilies just as it began to drizzle. And ma said, Run, run. You’re going to get soaking wet! We ran. And she walked slowly behind, lifting her face to the rain. I remember I twirled round and round until the blue hills circling the horizon were just a blur, and I shouted, We’re living in a blue bowl. And ma laughed. I remember reaching home, cold and wet, and I remember how good it felt to dry off in front of the fire.

There were always so many people coming and going from our house. In those early days when I was just a baby, before daddy came home, nobody seemed to realize that I could understand their words, so they said whatever they felt like. Or perhaps they did know that I understood, but they didn’t care. It was taken so much for granted that it was undesirable, disappointing to be born a girl, that they didn’t think they were being unkind. Perhaps that was not the only reason they thought I was unfortunate. Perhaps it was the twist of my right foot that always pointed toward my left ankle. Do you think they noticed that when I was just a baby? Before I began to walk? I suppose they must have.

Oh you poor, miserable girl, they warbled as they rocked me in their arms, their sweetly sympathetic voices in sharp contrast to the ugliness of their words. Your poor father! He doesn’t want to come home to see you, does he? Oh koochi, koochi, koo, aren’t you the unfortunate one!

Ma couldn’t bear to hear anybody talk like that, so she’d snatch me away and put me in my crib. Sometimes she was so annoyed that she’d almost throw me down, and I’d begin to cry.

See what you’ve done! she shouted, at whoever was within hearing. Who’s going to make her stop crying now?

Don’t you remember, Ambika? Don’t you remember how you stood by the door, terrified by ma’s loud voice? The tears ran so silently down your face, such quiet tears, because I made enough noise for the both of us. Then ma pushed everybody out of the room and you with them, and sat down on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. I’d have stopped crying by then, and the room would be very silent. I could see the tension bleed slowly out of her body. I could feel the force of her will as she calmed herself.

Sometimes she stood by the crib and looked down at me. We’d stare at one another for what seemed like hours.

You know what’s happening, don’t you? she’d say, while massaging my crooked little foot. "You hear everything, and you know as well as I that your father is here, in Ambika, and in you. You know that."

I never saw ma as a young woman. She was always ageless to me. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? That’s how old she must have been when I was born. A young woman, yes. But her age had so little to do with what she was, who she was. Even now, although I am no longer a small child, I continue to feel that she is taller than other women. Even now I think her back is straighter, and her skin smoother, cleaner than any I have seen. And at that time, I felt, rather than saw her. She was our mother, and she was in charge. I remember her movements, always so deliberate and carefully calculated. She never wasted a gesture.

I can’t wait forever, she would mutter. I can’t wait forever. And she’d pick me up and walk out of the room, calling for somebody or other to take me off her hands. When one of the servants had taken charge of me, she’d begin her work, doing what she knew best, weaving and gardening. It isn’t just a story you know. She did earn enough from that to buy the land on which the house was built.

Even then people looked at her with disapproval.

Look at her working like a labourer. As if her husband doesn’t earn enough! He is an engineer after all, and he has his own business.

It was usually the women who voiced their criticism. The men? They were silent. They didn’t have to say anything because the women spoke their words for them.

Those days are gone now, they said. "We are no longer fighting for our independence from the British. We women have won the freedom to stay at home and tend to the needs of our families. But look at her doing all this altu faltu business like a small merchant! If she wants to work, she should try to be a teacher, or something proper like that."

I know now that it was fear that I heard in their voices. A fear that hid itself in annoyance and contempt. They were afraid of this woman who did not care for their rules. They could not understand her shamelessly independent manner. It was inconceivable to them that any woman could define her own needs, and then actually find the means to fulfill them. But I think it was what she actually did that outraged them more than anything else. How could any decent woman grow vegetables to sell in the market, and weave silk for profit? She should have been busy stocking the marriage chests of her own daughters, instead of selling her labour to fill those of others.

They did not hide their disapproval, but ma ignored them and carried on doing what she wanted. I’m not sure whether her conviction in the value of what she was doing gave her the courage to continue, or whether she was just plain arrogant and didn’t care for any opinion but her own.

I can’t say that all those women hated her, or anything like that. Although I suppose they must have come close to it. They were continually puzzled and outraged by her behavior. At first they thought she was an ignorant person who didn’t know any better, and they attempted to make her familiar with their ways of thinking. But ma refused to learn, and they became more and more infuriated.

Women from good families should behave with some dignity, they said.

That’s right, ma agreed. You’re absolutely right. And she continued in her own way.

When they saw that she would not conform, they began to treat her as they might an aberrant child, with patient tolerance, punctuated by outbursts of aggravated shrillness.

At least be realistic about your position, they said, unable to deal with her refusal to be contrite about producing two daughters, nor miserable about the absence of her husband. If they didn’t criticize her, I suppose they thought they would be supporting her actions. And then they would be faced with questions for which they had no answers.

Daddy did send her money every month. She paid the rent and the servant’s wages. She bought the food. I remember it all. There were always so many people to feed. Who were they all? So many faces, and I don’t remember a single name. So many pairs of arms lifting me up, rocking me, I don’t know how I ever set my feet on the ground and learned to walk. And always, the sizzle and hiss of something cooking on the stove, and always the dizzying smell of spices filling the air.

Every person who came to sell something at the door stopped at the kitchen for a cup of tea, and every old woman who offered a massage for a few paisa became a dinner guest day after day.

Don’t you enter my kitchen without washing your feet first, old woman, ma would say firmly. And sit there, yes, in that corner.

She spoke to them with so much authority, in such a commanding voice. But she always served them food herself, ignoring the mutterings of the cook that there would not be enough for everybody else that day. There was always someone sitting cross-legged on the floor in that corner of the kitchen, and always ma placing a plate of rice and daal in front of them.

Eat, she would say, and watch attentively as they did.

Sometimes she sat down on a low wicker stool and talked to them as they ate. What did she talk about? World geography and travel mostly. I wondered where she got her information, and whether it was accurate. She was like a retired school-teacher who missed her classroom, and had now found a captive audience. She talked about the climate in Japan as being the reason why they grew certain crops and ate certain foods, or described the pampas of South America, and the snows of Siberia.

Can you imagine there are such places on earth? she asked, rhetorically. My goodness you’re already finished. How quickly you eat! Go now. Quickly, quickly! I have so much work to do.

These were the people who filled our house. But at that time between three and five in the afternoon, ma always freshened up for the other kind of visitor who knocked on the front door. It was those for whom she had the tea served in the drawing room, or in the verandah that looked over the garden. Three to five were the hours for visiting, do you remember? It was the time just after the children came home from school, and before the wives had to rush home to supervise the cooking of dinner for husbands returning from work. I hated the times we came home from school and ma rushed us to wash up and change so that we could accompany her to somebody’s house for tea.

Hurry, hurry, she’d say. No, not that dress, the blue one. Hurry. Mrs. Barua said three-thirty, and it’s almost that already! She was always hurrying us although I never saw her do anything in a hurry herself.

There were not always invitations for these teas. More oft en they were spontaneous, and a housewife would be judged by her ability to produce a well laid tea tray without notice.

I was taking the children for a stroll, the ladies would say at the doorstep in explanation. As I passed this way I thought I must drop in to see how Madhu is doing. You look very well. No, no. I won’t stay. Well alright just a cup of tea if you absolutely insist.

Ma ordered the tea and sat with her guests. Their children sat stiffly beside them. The women dressed in pastel silk or georgette saris. Their faces and arms were lightly powdered, and they wore pale pink lipstick. They dabbed gently with lace-edged handkerchiefs at invisible perspiration on their lips and cheeks, and as they seated themselves the room filled with the scent of rose water and sandal wood. Sometimes the children leaned against their mothers, refusing to sit down, making it evident with their sulky expressions that they had not wanted to stop by.

Where are the girls? They are so big already, aren’t they?

We would be brought into the room and the exclamations would start. "Oh just look at her! Just like her father! Such a pretty child! Not at all like you. Not that I mean to say … but what a pretty child! So fair! And when is he coming home? Their father I mean. How long has it been? Did you say? What a shame that he hasn’t even