January 2008

The most beautiful gesture

By Mahsuda Shah

Vidhi’s eyes are so blurred she can barely see the knife or the chopping board. She squeezes her lids shut, lets the tears tumble down her woollen top, carries on chopping.

Maya stands at the kitchen table still dressed in her school uniform, a wrinkle across her brow.

“Are you alright mum?”

“Of course darling,” Vidhi says, wiping the tears with her sleeve, “It’s these onions.”

Maya stands on her tip-toes.

“But they’re chillies.”

Vidhi holds her breath, pushes the red segments off the chopping board and wipes her hands.

“Go get changed darling. Dinner will be ready soon.”

***

Vidhi is a mystery, even to herself. Sometimes she finds herself laughing, crying, seething with anger for no reason she can comprehend. She cried on her wedding day too. Standing in front of a full length mirror, she’d watched herself as tears, mixed with streaks of kohl eyeliner, rolled down her cheeks.

“You’re ruining your make-up,” her mother cried, pacing up and down the room, palms pressed on temples, “Your massi spent nearly two hours on that.”

The weight of gold around her neck, the heaviness of the crystal encrusted sari, had pulled Vidhi’s sobbing body to the ground. With each gasp of breath she tried to calm herself, but it was too late. Once she’d entered the fits of sobbing, she couldn’t grapple free from them.

Her mother left the room, arms raised and pleading to the gods to dispel whatever daemon had possessed her otherwise rational daughter. Her mutters could be heard through the door, mixed with the voices of sisters and aunts. After a while, Vidhi’s mother returned displaying a strained smile.

“What is it child?” she asked in a calmer voice, sitting by Vidhi’s side and stroking her cheek, “Are you unwell?”

Vidhi shook her head, tears now splashing on her mendhi laced hands.

“If you are unwell you should eat chillies.”

Her mother produced a red chilli from her hand as if it were a rose and she a magician. Whenever she’d been ill as a child, Vidhi’s mother had fed her chillies. Once, to cure gastric flu, she’d fed her four. One by one she’d pushed the waxy bodies through Vidhi’s lips, stroking her sweat soaked hair, until she threw up. Her fever went down instantly and she was eating solids by that afternoon.

Vidhi’s mother nudged the chilli to her weeping daughter’s lips with the same eagerness she’d had back then, but Vidhi shook her head and pushed her mother’s hand away.

“Lord Krishna above!” her mother cried, pulling her sari to her knees and shuffling out of the room. There was more muttering and soon she could hear the sobs of her relatives resounding through the door. Before long it was hard to tell who had started the crying or when it would stop.

That was when the front door slammed. The voice of a man, thick and seeped in Gujarati dialect, came booming up the stairs.

“What is this? . . . I will speak to her. You’re all hysterical, what good are you? Let me through.”

Vidhi was glad to hear the voice of her cousin Harin, pleased to know he’d had a safe journey from India, but was still unable to stop the tears.

***

Maya watches her father muttering as he sits at the dinner table. He pours the dhal over his rice.

“And I had to move all the potatoes to the front of the store because he’d put them with the rice. Daydreaming and talking, that’s all he can do. I might as well be running the place by myself, the good that man does.”

“Who?” asks Maya, slurping the yellow liquid from her plate.

“Don’t eat your dhal like that darling,” Vidhi tells her.

Vidhi hasn’t touched her own food. She watches the red circles float in the lake of lentils and imagines herself among them, struggling to keep on the surface.

“Who though?” Maya says with another slurp.

Karun snorts.

“Your no good Uncle Harin, that’s who.”

Maya smiles with recognition.

“I like Uncle Harin.”

“Of course you do!” Karun says, slapping his hand on the table, “He buys you sweets. But does he do a decent days work like your father? Does he pay for your school things and your hair to be cut?”

Maya thinks, tugging on her black plaits.

“No,” she replies.

“No,” Karun confirms.

He shakes his head and starts muttering over his dinner again. There is silence as Vidhi begins to fish a sliced chilli out of her dhal. She gets hold of it and places it in her mouth. She chews it slowly, her tongue stings and her eyes water but the fever inside her is still high. She stands up, starts to collect the plates.

“If he carries on I’ll have to sack him,” Karun tells Vidhi, washing his hands in the bowl of water by his side. “Whether he’s your cousin-brother or not. There’s only so many favours I can do for your family.”

He wipes his hands on a tea towel then flings it on the tabletop.

“Fine,” she says.

He raises his palm, stained yellow from turmeric.

“Don’t bother defending him. I’ve had enough of your excuses--”

“Fine,” she says, louder this time, “Sack him.”

Karun frowns.

“I don’t care what you do,” she says stacking the plates.

Karun glances at Maya, then back at his wife.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Vidhi doesn’t answer.

“She was crying over the chillies earlier,” Maya tells him.

Vidhi sighs.

“They were onions.”

“No, they were . . .”

Vidhi sits down on her chair with a heavy thud, the plates clattering as she releases them. They both watch as her eyes begin to well, her chin wrinkling to form tiny hollows in her skin. Soon her shoulders are bobbing up and down as she gulps and sniffles, tears running in quick succession down her cheeks.

***

Harin had come in with arms wide open but Vidhi hadn’t been able to greet him for she was still heaped on the floor. He sat down and smiled, his teeth red from phann leaf. Her tears still came. He twiddled his moustache until the corners were pointing up like the tips of raven’s wings and she managed to reduce the sobbing down to chuckles and whimpers by the time he’d finished. He smiled triumphant.

Vidhi rubbed her finger along the bumpy gold of her bracelet.

“They say love marriages don’t work,” she said sniffling.

Her cousin sighed.

“My dear Vidhi, saying is not the same as living.”

“But it’s not just that,” she said, her mouth trembling with each word, “I’ve been thinking-“

“Ah, but thinking is not the same either. Too much saying, such an Indian characteristic. Too much thinking, such an English one. ”

Vidhi sighed, the crumples of her sari lowering with her body as though sighing with her.

“How can I know I’ve made the right choice?”

Harin looked to the ceiling, twiddling his moustache as he pondered this question. At last, he looked at Vidhi.

“Today,” he said, twisting his hand in the air as though plucking words from a bountiful tree, “when young Karun holds your hand and you take the seven steps around the holy fire, then you will be sure.”

Vidhi opened her mouth to speak but Harin raised his finger.

“This is not a silly Hindu ritual Vidhi, each step is a gesture of the most beautiful kind. A gesture for health, for wealth, for mutual love. The steps are symbolic of the journey you will take in life, the paths you will walk together. As you take the seven steps, you will have no doubt whether you have made the right choice.”

Harin rested his hand on his knee and smiled.

“And if it’s the wrong choice, tell me and I’ll sort it. Yes?”

Vidhi smiled and as she nodded, realised she was no longer crying. She sighed, wiping the streaks of eyeliner from her cheek, the noise of drums from the marriage procession clambering up the street.

***

“Uncle Harin!” Maya cries, running over to the front door. He is standing there with a steaming paper bag in his hand and a broad smile on his face. Maya jumps into his arms.

“I have brought you the most marvellous samosas,” he declares. Karun closes the door quickly, pulling at his already thinning hair and skipping from one foot to the other as Harin places Maya on the floor.

“She won’t tell me what’s wrong,” he says, gesturing to Vidhi as she sobs on the sofa. The sweat gleams on his forehead. “I don’t know what to do Harin. I just don’t know.”

Harin’s eyes widen. He looks at Karun, then back at Vidhi before carefully placing the samosas in Maya’s hands. He takes a deep breath, twiddles his moustache so high that the points poke into his dimples, then crouches down to Vidhi with a smile. She still cries. Karun is muttering in the corner as Harin stands up, stroking his chin.

“And she won’t speak?”

Karun shakes his head.

“That makes it difficult.”

“I already know that.”

Harin looks at Karun. He ushers him to the corner of the living room, the lamp shining behind them as they crouch over in a huddle. They whisper, Karun’s face turning to Vidhi every few seconds and Harin patting him on the back as he talks. They begin to nod and Karun takes a deep breath before turning around to face Vidhi. He walks over to her, then pauses glancing back at Harin who nods encouragingly. He kneels down.

“I know sometimes I am unappreciative of you,” he says, his voice shaky and weak as he takes her hand, “but I want you to know I’ll try harder from now on and be more . . .”

He stops and looks to Harin who mouths out a word. Karun nods.

“. . .considerate,” he says, looking up at Vidhi’s face, his dark round eyes wide and expectant. Vidhi feels his hand encircling hers and glances at Harin but can not speak because the tears are still coming.

Karun stands up.

“I knew that wouldn’t work.”

Harin ushers him back to the corner but Karun is embarrassed when he gets there and shakes Harin’s hand off when he places it on his shoulder. They begin to whisper again.

Vidhi looks over to Maya. She is holding on tight to the samosas and trying to smile. Vidhi wants to explain to her, but she knows that even without a dry throat and the blubbering sobs, she wouldn’t be able to because there is no explanation; just tears.

“Why do you assume it’s my fault?” Karun cries, flinging his arms in the air, “At the shop, in my house, you always assume it’s my fault.”

Harin shakes his head apologetically.

Maya unfolds the paper bag and pulls out a golden brown triangle. She glances up at Vidhi, her eyes dark and round like her fathers. Carefully she rips the corner of the samosa off, potato chunks and peas spilling out of the pastry. She blows on it gently. The smell of cumin and garam masala fill the air and the voices of the two men quieten. Everyone is watching as she Maya moves one, two . . . seven steps closer and stretches out the samosa to her mother’s lips. There is a silence, a few seconds of tightly held breath, and then Vidhi sighs. It’s a long deep sigh, not like her other ones of late, full of woe and sorrow, but full of relief. She wipes the tears from her cheek and looks into her daughter’s eyes, leaning forward to take a bite from the samosa. Her body is no longer heaving up and down, her eyes no longer filled with tears. She is composed, the fever finally calmed. In her mouth she can feel the tingle of chillies.

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