“The beatings started again. My pregnancy was no longer an acceptable excuse not to do the chores they wanted me to. Rupesh looked more and more woebegone by the day. And his mother started saying, ‘What use is this woman who does no work around the house and cannot even produce a son?’
“One day last week I was working in the kitchen rolling the dough for chapatis which my mother-in-law was making at the stove. I remember Rupesh coming in with a can of kerosene for the stove, and my mother-in-law picking up a box of matches. I turned back to my dough when I felt a splash on my sari. The next thing I knew my whole body was on fire. I screamed and ran out of the kitchen and out the front door. People came running. If I had run the other way, into the house, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Her dry lips parted in a sad and bitter grimace. “Perhaps that would have been better for me than — than this.” Her eyes, the only mobile part of her face, took in the room, the bed, the other patients, Kadambari, and me. “Why did my neighbors bother to save my life? What did they save me for?”
I turned to Kadambari. “And Rupesh and his mother? Have they been arrested? What are the police doing about this?”
“They say it was a kitchen accident,” Kadambari replied. “There are a few dozen ‘kitchen accidents’ like this every year in Zalilgarh. What can the police prove? It is her word against theirs.”
I looked sadly at the young girl, knowing she will be disfigured for life, and worse, that she will either have to go back to live a pariah’s existence in the very family that tried to kill her, or return to her own parents, who will feel the disgrace of her broken marriage and face a mountain of unpaid debts from the wedding and the hospitalization of their daughter.
“The baby?” I asked. Sundari closed her eyes; it was the only way she could avert her gaze.
“She miscarried, the day after the burning,” Kadambari said. Kadambari spoke into my silence. “She was a good student and wanted to go to college,” Kadambari said. “But my parents felt she had to marry before she became too old to find a good husband.”
“A good husband,” Sundari whispered from the bed.
When we left the ward Kadambari was strangely more communicative than she has been so far. “You see, Mrs. Hart,” she observed, “this is the real issue for women in India. Not population control, but violence against women. In our own homes. What good are all our efforts as long as men have the power to do this to us? Your daughter never understood that.”
I wheeled on her then. “You’re wrong, miss,” I said in my most schoolteacherly manner. “Priscilla did understand. Her whole approach was based on her belief that women need to resist their own subjugation. That when they are empowered, they will no longer have more babies than they can look after. She wrote that to me very clearly. I am surprised you could have worked so closely with her and not understood what my daughter believed in.”
Kadambari looked unabashed, even defiant. “A lot of people,” she said slowly and softly, “did not understand what your daughter believed in.”
She would not explain what she meant, and the rest of our journey back to the guest house passed in a strained silence. When we arrived I thanked her for having introduced me to her sister. Rudyard emerged at that point and insisted she stay for a cup of tea. He always had a tin ear for my signals. In the circumstances, I could scarcely excuse myself. So I sat down in one of the rattan chairs in the guest house’s verandah, and while the tea was being made, I told him what had happened.
“God, that’s terrible,” he said. Then he turned to Kadambari. “Tell me, this sister of yours. Will she get well?”
“The burns will take a long time to heal,” Kadambari replied, “but the doctors say she will live.”
“She won’t have much of a life, Rudyard,” I began. “Her—”
“I understand all that,” he interrupted me. “My question to you, Miss Kadambari, is: Would she be able to go to college?”
“My parents can’t afford to send her to college,” Kadambari said. “They live on what I earn at the HELP project.”
“That wasn’t my question,” Rudyard said with that note of impatience that executives so often mistake for efficiency “If she could go, would she want to? Would she get in? Would she be able to cope?”
“She was the top student in her high school class,” Kadambari said.
“Great,” Rudyard said. “Now here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to sign over a thousand dollars worth of traveler’s checks to you tomorrow. That should be more than enough to cover your family’s expenses while she’s in hospital. And for every year that she’s in college, I’ll set aside money for her tuition fees, books, and living expenses.”
Kadambari seemed stunned, but even she could not have been as stunned as I felt. This was not a gesture I would have thought Rudyard capable of.
“Your sister’s going to have a future, young lady,” Rudyard said. He left unspoken the thought, Unlike my daughter.
“Rudyard, that’s a wonderful thing to do,” I said, a new respect for him in my eyes.
“It’s what Priscilla would have wanted, Kathy,” he replied.
It was the first time in years that he’d called me Kathy.
note from Priscilla Hart to Lakshman
September 29, 1989
As you know, I’m leaving town on Tuesday morning. My flight back home from Delhi is on Thursday. I guess I’ll never see you again.
It’s been so hard, Lucky. There are a hundred things I’ve wanted to say to you, to ask you. But you’ve never given me the chance, and we may never have the chance again.
I’m going back to the Kotli for the very last time tomorrow. How many Saturday evenings I’ve spent there with you! Do you remember, last month, when you wrote to me and said you’d be there after I’d walked out on you — and I came to see you because I couldn’t bear not to? That all seems a hundred years ago now, Lucky. But it’s now my turn to ask the same thing. Will you come tomorrow, for old times’ sake? I just want to see the sunset one last time with you, and to say goodbye properly. I don’t want to leave Zalilgarh feeling that the last word I had from you was that awful letter.
I’m sure you can do it if you want to. I know your wife and daughter are usually at the temple Saturday evenings. It’s not much to ask, is it, Lucky?
Don’t let this note put too much pressure on you, Lucky. If you think it’s too painful for you, or disloyal to your family, or whatever, don’t come. Think about everything and decide for yourself. I’ll be waiting.
I know you’re a decent and honorable man. Whatever you do, I know you’ll do the right thing.
Yours as ever, P
251
from Lakshman’s journal
October 3, 1989
I haven’t slept for three nights. The riot is over now; tensions are calming, though God knows when they will erupt again. I have abandoned the camp cot in the police station and returned to what I know as my home. But the horrible finality of Priscilla’s death keeps me awake in my own bed.
I completely forgot. It is as simple as that. I read her letter; I mentally upbraided her for having been so oblivious to the real life of Zalilgarh that she forgot there was a major Hindu procession on Saturday; but I planned to go to her afterwards. There was never any question in my mind that I would go to her, for that one last embrace, the final goodbye. But of course I didn’t plan on a riot, and once it began I forgot everything else, even her, waiting for me at dusk at the Kotli.
When Guru came to give me the news I doubled over as from a blow to the stomach. If I had had any food in me I would have been sick, but I experienced a retching of my soul instead. He put a hand on my shoulder and thrust something at me with his other hand.