Visitors to the house, p.27
Visitors to the House, page 27
Chapter 5
April came upon us slyly. I realized only after three weeks and Aum and Dina and baby Nesh were already gone. The little vacation was over, with a deep sadness left behind for a few days more. All of us retired to our routine except Mini. She sat, balancing her chin on her palms, her elbows resting on the dining table, for an hour every day after breakfast. We noticed and said nothing, hoping she would get over her worry soon enough. But when she extended her brooding to an hour after lunch and an hour before sleeping, Theresa and I had a meeting in our small orchard behind the house.
‘What do you think is eating at her?’ I asked directly. ‘Is it what happened with Baby?’
‘I have no clue, Papa. And if you are saying I may be the cause, well I’m not up to much. She takes everyone’s pain and makes it her own. I wish she would relax. Maybe she’s missing something?’
‘Mira?’ I suggested, though not convinced. She and Mira liked a little distance between them, like apple trees. They met for a few days and that was enough. ‘Is she missing work?’
‘I can tell you something she said.’ Theresa lowered her voice. ‘It sounds silly, of course.’
I sat down on the low wall that separates the orchard from the yard and has a small gate embedded in it. Tiny wildflowers and brown moss grew out of crannies. The stones had turned black and green. There stood a stone bench at the foot which no one ever sat upon. We preferred the wall with the sun on our backs.
‘Silly we are.’ I smiled to disguise my worry. Theresa rarely mentioned stuff that could be unimportant. She observed more than us all.
‘You know Chandan, don’t you? The washerman?’
I said I did. He came pushing his little wooden cart precisely at twelve on Wednesday afternoon. He shook the ashes from his massive iron over the rose bed saying it was fertilizer. I shared a nod with him only when our eyes met. He would be in his late fifties. The only striking feature, other than his boots with curled toes, were the large golden earrings he wore. He knew the children as they grew up and all of them, including Theresa, had stood across the cart, listening to his stories while he worked. Sometimes when I read the paper on the porch, my ears strained to hear the train of his thoughts as he rambled on, inventing stuff. He brought presents for Baby, pebbles mostly.
‘He wasn’t rude to your mother, was he?’
‘No, no.’ She laughed. ‘You know him. It’s about Baby.’
Although Baby sat on the wall with us, he wouldn’t know he was the Baby we spoke of. He raised his head, made a happy sound in his throat and went back to the liverwort he was examining in his hand. I had an inkling Baby was the focal point of Theresa’s theory, but the ‘how’ came unexpectedly.
‘Have you noticed, Papa, he goes around smelling people?’
I’d seen him do that with a guest we didn’t know too well. The gentleman and his wife had pretended to be amused despite their annoyance. The dinner had become an embarrassment. I had wondered if they hadn’t called in months because of Baby.
‘Oh you didn’t hear? Mister Murthi had surgery. His wife called a couple of times. They found a lump in his colon. They went away to her mother’s house. He lost seventeen kilos,’ Mini informed me then. ‘You can never tell, can you? I feel bad when I think of the dinner.’
‘They didn’t mind I’m sure, he’s a kid.’
‘I know, I know. And to think Mister Murthi was so sick and taking it so well. I mean the disease.’
Theresa continued her story about the washerman. ‘So last Sunday he was singing and ironing as usual. I was watching from my window. You were reading the newspaper on the porch. And Baby went and stood near him. He gave Baby a piece of coal or something and started talking the way he did with all of us. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see Baby watching him with his mouth open and drool all over his pullover, the one with the three bears. I remember clearly.’
‘You are a writer,’ I observed.
She smiled grimly. ‘And then Baby just went over and began smelling him. Chandan humoured him for some time but then he tried pushing Baby away. And Baby kept going at him. He called out to you, but you’d dozed off.’
‘I know nothing of this,’ I said in disbelief.
Theresa went on. ‘I ran down to save the poor man. Baby wouldn’t come away. Mini-Mum saw the commotion and told him to come the next day.’
I glanced at Baby. He chewed an orange I had peeled for him. The juice ran down his chin. He made a chomping sound, but only god knows in which of his worlds Baby’s mind was.
‘The stupid part is, Papa, Chandan hasn’t been coming to work.’
‘Who does the ironing?’
‘Bani.’
‘Is it because a boy behaved that way? Now that is silly, you’re right. He has known Baby for years. Did something else happen?’
‘I was coming to that,’ she said.
I could hear my pulse in my ears.
‘Chandan isn’t coming because he is seriously unwell. Cancer in his right lung, Papa. Don’t get alarmed.’ She took my hand, seeing the shock on my face. ‘Mini-Mum said not to tell you.’
‘Why?’ My voice was a whisper.
‘You would worry.’
‘I didn’t know him well enough.’ I skirted round the reason, knowing full well what was on Mini’s mind.
Theresa said it. ‘This has happened before, she told me. She checked on all the people Baby went after in that manner. Four out of six are seriously ill. The remaining two probably don’t know about their condition yet.
‘Is it possible, Papa, that Baby can smell disease? There are dogs that can, I’ve read. Is it possible, Papa?’
I swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’ And asked, ‘Is that your mother’s worry? That our grandson is a bigger freak than we thought. What is wrong with her? And you believe her?’
‘No, Papa, she’s worried for another reason. She told me not to tell you, but it’s too much.’ She was weeping now.
‘Tell me, Theresa.’ I feared the worst.
‘Baby has been behaving that way with Mini-Mum,’ she choked.
The sky spun.
‘He goes around smelling her!’ she cried.
Chapter 6
Love makes you believe in magic. Amidst her protestations we took Mini to the hospital in Delhi. I couldn’t leave Baby alone or rather he couldn’t leave me, so Aum took her with him for tests. It sounds incredible and I felt stupid being the centre of something so unscientific. All my life, the only god I believed in was maths. It was only much later that I looked around and saw poetry and music as a kind of dance of numbers. To me every emotion had a logic when I began, but as time went by, turning the crop on my head paler, I started seeing emotions in logic. If Mini cared for the world and loved even the tiniest of creatures, it was her logic.
We didn’t tell Aum the real reason for the check-up. He would have laughed and yet gone ahead. Those who love don’t mind being foolish. We decided not to simply because Baby could not become the cause for new anguish. We couldn’t take him to the city for the very same reason. He had to be where there were fewer people. We had no idea what pain the discovery of a patient caused him. We had not a clue whether his little heart wept or not.
‘What if,’ Theresa had raised a doubt in the beginning, ‘what if Baby merely likes the smell of people he likes, and most people in that age happen to be unwell in one way or another? Is it not possible, Papa, that our lifestyle ensures we fall sick? The probability is very high, isn’t it?’
‘You may be right,’ I said. I hadn’t, in my state, not paused for thought and rushed everyone. ‘But what’s the harm in a little check-up? See, it was already on her mind. This will help clear things for us, including your mother. Am I right?’
‘Will it also not affect her? This doubt, I mean. She shows no symptoms of any disease. Are we overreacting?’
‘Yes we are. Let’s see it as a routine trip to the doctor. Let us all have our check-ups when she’s back so she doesn’t feel singled out.’ I felt a pang of guilt. ‘And no word with the others, no matter what.’
‘Yes, Papa.’ She trusted me and I loved her for it.
When a worried Aum asked his mother why she wished to see a doctor, she had to invent symptoms. At the hospital she told them her check-up was due so she came. And when she wished to do it all on her own, Aum and Dina were sure we were hiding something from them. They pulled out the big gun. Mira called. ‘What’s going on, Papa?’
‘Your mother’s gone for a medical examination, you get one too.’
She had arguments all ready. ‘Why didn’t you get one too? You’re ten years older. If she has a problem, tell me.’
‘Okay.’
‘Tell me now. I have walked twelve miles to make this call. I can’t go back without a clear answer.’ She talked like my mother.
‘You sound like your Ammu, that old witch,’ I said, trying to lighten things up.
‘Don’t change the subject. Put Theresa on the phone, what’s the use of speaking with someone who likes suffering alone?’
‘What is this, your police station? Your interrogation room?’ I said quietly.
‘Give her the phone, Papa, I can hear her breathing into your ear. She is in this too, isn’t it?’
Theresa took the phone. ‘I’ll tell the truth, Mira. Ask me anything.’
That cooled Her Highness, appeased the goddess. She must be doing some charity somewhere back of beyond. If she said she had walked twelve miles to hear my lies, she definitely had. I could hear their chatter.
‘What’s wrong with Mini-Mum?’ demanded the elder sister.
‘Nothing I’m aware of.’
‘What’s she doing in a hospital in Delhi?’
‘Her check-up,’ said the brave girl, coolly.
‘Why?’
‘Baby wanted her to have one.’
There was silence at the other end and then a scream. ‘Who?’
‘Baby,’ Theresa said truthfully.
‘I’m coming over tomorrow, both of you. I’m dropping everything and coming.’ She cut the line.
We looked at each other, our eyes wide. Baby drooled all over my left leg. Suddenly I felt like the biggest fool, at seventy.
Mira went straight to Delhi instead. Mini called urgently, asking why the Statue of Liberty had been flown to her hospital bedside. Sometimes she called Mira that and sometimes The Great Wall of China when our daughter wouldn’t budge from her position. And once when she bent over backwards to bring the magistrate for a school function we called her The Leaning Tower of Pisa for a fortnight. Mira knew.
‘She is a wonder of the world, this sister of yours. What does she eat? In twelve hours she’s travelled around the globe just because we didn’t give a straight answer.’ I wrung my hand and stomped my foot.
‘Easy, Papa!’ Theresa laughed. ‘Baby is clinging to your leg. He looks shaken.’
‘He starts the commotion and sits and drools. Just look at him. As if he doesn’t know what he did. I have half a mind to give him away to your overzealous sister. Both problems solved in one masterstroke.’ Exhausted, I dropped into a chair. Baby put his cheek on my knee and looked up at me like a pup begging to play. ‘What to do with you? What will I do without you?’
Suddenly the house looked so empty. Bani had left dinner on the table. We had decided to reheat and eat after a short walk to the bus stop and back. We called it Rhododendron, I have no idea why. Quite often Mini and I took a thermos of cardamom tea and some very dry biscuits she loved and had them sitting on the bench and listening to the sounds of the night. The very thought of Mini, and suddenly the house looked so empty.
Theresa made the beds and locked the doors. Baby had fallen asleep, half sitting, half standing. She carried him to the room. She had grown up in a couple of days all because of Baby.
Chapter 7
The news came that evening. Mini had a growth in her left breast. The doctor was happy it was detected early. The houses in Delhi and Didoli wore gloom. The doctors wanted to operate at once. We were fine with this. Mini would stay in Delhi for the treatment. She told Mira to come to Didoli and take charge. Theresa said she could handle it and I agreed, but Mini would have none of it. Theresa had school. Aum and Dina were enough for her.
I was stunned. Baby may have saved Mini’s life and the lives of many more. To me the verdict had come a week ago. I wanted to believe that birds could be wrong, that a pure soul that talked to sparrows and the mountain crow could be not so accurate, yet in a secret chamber of my heart I was prepared for bad news. I will say this at a weak juncture in our lives lest I forget in happier times, which are a given if your family thinks of you so tenaciously: kids are the voice of god.
Babies have Baby’s innocence. We must learn to listen to the wisdom in their gurgles and squeals. We have to take them in our arms and clasp them to our hearts so that their cheeks rest on our shoulders and their lips are closest to our ears. We must hear their breathing and the nonsense they utter for it is in those sounds of silence that we discover the truths of wretched life and beauty alike. We’ve to do this before they grow up and the information written on their tongue fades away. We were lucky because Baby would always remain a baby. He was happy when he took his little brother in his arms and they chattered like birds and small beasts. These were the few years when the baby could understand Baby, soon he would outgrow him. The tragedy that happened in Theresa’s room was not Dina’s; it was more about two brothers who might never connect again.
I was more shocked by Baby’s diagnosis than the doctor’s. I was prepared even though I laughed at the decision to get a check-up. When Mini was told the truth very solemnly, she laughed. She had been so worried all along and I think the pronouncement released her, relieved her suffering. Aum called to say she was behaving like the milk had boiled over on the stove and a mop would set everything right.
‘She hasn’t understood the gravity,’ he whispered on the phone.
I assured him. ‘She’s perhaps happy they found the tumour in time. Your mother sees the brighter side, you know her.’
‘Even you don’t sound worried,’ he complained.
He was right. All I said was, ‘Oh, when’s the surgery?’
‘What’s going on here, Papa? I should know, shouldn’t I? Mira is another one. Did you tell her that Baby advised a check-up?’
‘No.’ I wasn’t lying, it was Theresa who had told her.
That satisfied him a bit. ‘Are you folks okay? We are sending The Flying Rocket in your direction. Keeping up with her is like chasing a cyclone, my god.’
Mira was given so many different names of the superlative kind. Aum had forgotten his mother’s condition and was warning me of the opposite of peaceful existence. Mira was the tiger who must growl and chase and kill to feed her lot. The only person she cared little for was herself. She was a version of her mother to the power of ten. A car not meant for anything under a hundred miles per second. A Flying Rocket, Aum had called her.
I wouldn’t say the doctor’s words did not unnerve her. It took a day for the truth to sink in. The house and the garden were greyer all of a sudden. The rooms seemed emptier and the kitchen more silent despite Bani breaking stuff every now and then. It was natural that Theresa and I went walking up the road to Rhododendron more often, with Baby in a pram he didn’t mind.
When sadness afflicts a family, life changes, people change and expectations cease. Sadness is what helps us grow, not happiness. Sadness should be prescribed in schools like music and art. Theresa had become a lady overnight.
She awoke before the sun and tinkered about in the kitchen. Mini had told her where to keep Baby’s jar of chips and she did. She did not impose her will, but gently merged with the ecosystem. She went around touching this and that as a painter would, just enough. And once Baby and I were seated, satiated, on the porch, she took herself to school.
This is the thing about daughters: whatever be their method, they don’t perform their duties, they perform magic. I am surrounded by magicians. Mini is their patron saint. She took all of us into her shelter, her glass box, and turned us into her. She is kindness and generosity, things you would miss if she went off. But she would never go away, because her daughters carried her wand.
‘He sits there by himself,’ Theresa said, as we pushed Baby’s pram along, ‘I wonder what he thinks.’
‘He thinks the chips are delicious,’ I said, smiling.
‘That’s so deep.’
Like I said, Theresa took the conversation forward and added her own decorations. She merged with the mood and into the greenery. She was harmony. Could it have come from where she came from? Her birth parents were Austrian. When they were visiting Delhi in 1994, her gypsy parents had stolen her from them when she was but a few months old and raised her in hunger and poverty in a tumbledown hut, until Mini rescued her, aged six, and adopted her. Her golden hair and green eyes are in harmony with Mini’s simplicity. Her beauty is in her words.
‘You are missing her, aren’t you?’ she spoke again.
‘Not at all.’
‘You should not lie, Papa.’
‘Why would I miss someone who is walking beside me, pushing a pram on a beautiful April afternoon?’
My daughter blushed. We walked on in silence. Round the bend Rhododendron, a shed with a few benches, appeared. We hastened. The flask of tea and dry biscuits awaited us.
‘Do you know what I want to become, Papa?’ Theresa said. ‘I want to be Mini-Mum.’
Baby looked at her and smiled. At least I thought he did.
Chapter 8
We had calculated wrong. Baby was chirpy and kept running to the pram and back to us like a pup wanting to go out. We’d finished supper a bit later than always. Theresa had no school the next day, so we strolled over to Rhododendron with our thermos. The air was still and the stars were bright enough to hurt. A couple of electric bulbs bathed the shed of the bus stop with warmth. The faraway lights, in clusters, were villages. It is from them that Didoli received its daily milk and vegetables, delivered by ponies.
