But the war has sharpened her senses too much. Her vision can slice right through cloth and flesh—she knows the position of my pomegranate, she can probably tell me its size, its weight, the number of seeds it contains. “It’s always been his favorite fruit. If you could just share it with him.”
“Share what?”
“The pomegranate. The one you have in your lap.” She makes the assertion loudly enough for people around us to hear. Her voice is bold and righteous, even tinged with indignation.
What am I to tell her? That I need to offer Karun the entire fruit, not one with a segment rattling around in her boy’s stomach? That I have searched all of Crawford Market for it, given up my mangalsutra for this chance? That I would have liked to help her—it is not due to heartlessness or greed I will not? “It’s for my baby at home,” I finally lie.
“All I’m asking for is a small piece, memsahib, as one mother to another.” She appraises the bulge in my lap and I can see the primitive calculation in her eyes. “There’s more than enough there for two—why just save your own child, when you can also save another?”
Emboldened by his mother’s words, the boy advances his small brown fingers towards my lap. “Don’t touch it,” I hiss at him.
“How dare you,” the woman cries. “How dare you talk to my son like that.” She pulls his hand back, and he bursts into tears. “Do you think we’re beggars, untouchables, that you can treat him like that?” She spits next to my foot, creating a fiery orange betel juice streak on the ground. “A curse on you and a curse on your pomegranate.”
People turn to look at us. The woman lifts her hands into the air towards them and begins to wail. “Look how she has insulted me. Look what selfishness the war has raked in from the gutter.” A maid sitting nearby gives me a dirty look before edging away.
The woman’s son keeps crying. “Pomegranate,” he repeats, between sobs.
For a moment, I waver. I almost give it away. What does it matter in the grand scheme of things? We’re going to be annihilated by the end of the week anyway. But then I think of Karun, standing waist-deep in the sea. The water beading on his face and neck, foam sliding down his skin. The sun is so strong that I cannot make out the expression in his eyes. From the shore behind me come the sounds of crashing waves.
BY THE TIME I got to the water’s edge, Uma had already entered the waves and was cavorting with Anoop some distance away. Unlike her, I hadn’t brought a swimsuit, so I pulled my salwaar up my legs as high as the openings would allow, and wrapped my dupatta around my waist. Karun stood with his back to the sun, the red of his shorts flaring in the tide. “I can only come in up to my knees,” I called out to him, but the wind blew my words away.
I raised my hand against the sky to shade my eyes, but the glare from the water was too strong to make out his face. Waves broke against him, their foam encircled his waist. He stood where he was, his darkened form emerging like the statue of a deity from the sea. Didn’t they used to say a woman’s husband was her god, her swami, didn’t people still believe a spouse embodied divinity? Was I standing on the sands on the floor of Karun’s temple, were those blessings that rippled across the water from him to me?
I waded in deeper. Coconuts bobbed and rolled on the water surface, their husks black from days at sea. A wave brought in a garland of brown marigold and wrapped it around my legs. I bent down to untangle it and watched it float away towards shore. Who had offered it to the sea, and why? Had someone been born, had someone expired, was it part of a marriage ceremony? A fisherman and his bride maybe, come to solicit a blessing from Mumbadevi? The goddess after whom the city was named, who some believed made her abode in this very sea?
I waved to Karun, but he still did not acknowledge me. I could see now that he’d folded his arms across his chest, holding them close to his body as if guarding against a chill. A chill which couldn’t exist, the sea being as warm as bathwater. “Karun,” I called, waving again, and this time, he waved back.
But he did not come to me. I stood there, wondering whether to venture in deeper. The water had already crept up my salwaar to my waist—any further, and it might begin the climb to my chest. I imagined the ride back home on the train, my clothes sticking to my skin, the outrage on my mother’s face as men crowded around to leer. I turned, half expecting her to wade in after me, all thoughts of her own clothes getting wet lost in the attempt to rescue me from shame.
Nobody stopped me. A group of children paddled by on a raft, in pursuit of a boy holding a basketball high above his head. A fully dressed woman swam purposefully through the waves, the folds of her sari ballooning around her like the whorls of a jellyfish. On the shore, I could make out the red and white segments of the umbrella under which my mother slept. In the distance, the figure of a lone child emerged from the smiling mouth of Mickey Mouse and slid down his inflated tongue.
I took another step in. A large wave, its head irate and foamy, slammed into my groin. I staggered, and for an instant wondered if I should fall. Surely then Karun would have to run to me. I would be drenched, but the distance between us would be dissolved. Would he reach into the water and pull me up in his arms?
Before I could further evaluate this ploy, he came sloshing up to me. “Do you like to swim? It’s something I’ve loved ever since my teens.”
Could this be the criterion he’d set for a spouse—someone aquatically adept? I thought back to all those wasted swimming sessions at school, spent splashing around in the shallow end of the pool. “I never did learn.” The confession brought with it that sinking feeling of having skipped over a topic, only to find it on the test.
Karun contemplated me silently. “I could teach you,” he finally said, and I felt myself flush. Perhaps he didn’t mean more than his offer stated. But how could he not see what an intimate invitation this was to extend to an unmarried woman my age? Fortunately, a wave thundered down upon us to hide the redness of my face. I fell over backwards, felt the sea squeeze into my ears and nose, tasted salt at the back of my throat. For an instant I was completely submerged—sand swept into my sleeves and packed itself in my hair. How would I face my mother now? I wondered, imagining the men on the train ogling me in my waterlogged clothes.
The water cleared to reveal Karun’s face. The wave had knocked him over as well, his body covered mine. He tried to disentangle himself, but stumbled, and fell face forward into my chest. The tip of his nose plunged into my bosom, as if trying to sniff out some scent, dark and hidden, from deep between my breasts.
He sprang back up before I could react. “Sorry,” he stammered, staring pointedly away.
A volley of small waves whitened the water around our knees. He looked so perturbed, I wanted to soothe his hand in mine. “It was the tide. It’s too strong.” He nodded but did not turn. “Have you taught many people before how to swim?”
He raised his head and regarded me without speaking. Was he having second thoughts—could our physical contact have made him change his mind?
Perhaps Mumbadevi herself sent in the next wave to set things right. She didn’t topple me, not quite, just made me stagger and thrust my hand out blindly through the foam. She knew Karun would grab for it by instinct, hold on to it so I didn’t fall. Prudently, she withdrew this time, without forcing an embrace like in her clumsy previous attempt.
“The tide’s a lot less rough farther out,” he said, as I tried to wipe the salt water off my eyes. “They’re just ripples there—they only swell into waves as they near the shore.”