Even in death, he was quiet.
The proceedings were mechanical. Tiresome. Sujata, however, seemed powered by nuclear fission. Jet-lagged as she was, she single-handedly corralled the grieving relatives, performed all the rites, and even quieted the priest’s indignant muttering about the son not being the one performing them. Everyone but the two of us slowly dissipated back to their homes or to the master bedroom to fall asleep on the mattresses Sujata had arranged.
She made us some tea, remembering to use the induction coil stove. No flames during the wake. She separated mine – sans sugar – before heaping two teaspoons into her cup. I found a comfortable cool spot on the vitrified tiles of the balcony while Sujata curled up on her favourite sofa. Her father and my husband lay between us, sheathed in white. Not a radical fashion change; white had become his theme of late. Banians and cotton slacks.
In four hours, the wake would be over and he would be carried to the crematorium, but my eyes were still dry. I wasn’t even trying to hold back; it just felt unnecessary, somehow. Time passed erratically, distanced from what I usually experienced, disconnected from the reality I inhabited. My fingers riffed through the crunchy, yellowed pages of a journal lying next to me. Not once had he let me read what he wrote. The moon’s light fought its way through the clouds and haze and smog, diffusing into the unnatural darkness. A fourteen-hour power cut. Longest in any Mumbaikar’s living memory.
Even the ever-present throbbing of the urban sprawl had ground to a halt, as if in mourning.
He’d have definitely groused about missing his late-night movie – the eleven o’clock Hindi dub of some South Indian film we kind of half-watched to stay awake until Sujata called. She’d use her lunch break to entertain us, the poor thing. If only we’d packed up and moved to Canada after she’d settled there and bought a large enough house, she’d say every time she called. If only we’d sold out to better healthcare and less cramped living conditions. The same refrain, nigh on a decade now. I’d always wondered where Sujata found that kind of patience. It was clearly not a consequence of him raising her – he’d been as relieved as I was when Sujata’s visa had been approved, even planning a bon voyage party – as if anyone even bothered nowadays.
The theme of the event was presentability, he’d insisted.
No cosy couch cushions thrown on the settee, no middle-aged uncles and aunts groaning each time they had to raise themselves off it for another glass of aam panna. No. This was a rite of passage. Sujata had had her issues with it, but he was adamant. Sarees and sherwanis, chairs arranged in a formal circle around the center table with a platter of finger foods, full veg thalis (with aamrakhand, of course), and a formal sendoff with Haldi-kumkum and multiple semi-Surya Namaskaars as Sujata bent to touch her just-as-awkward elders’ feet.
Neither I nor Sujata had seen any utility in arguing. His house, his daughter, his rules.
And so, with the ringing of bells, the lighting of a Champa agarbatti and a silent prayer to Sujata’s deceased mother, the sendoff had begun, ending three and a half hours later with us applying Iodex to each other’s stiff backs before sprawling on the bed. Sujata’s knock on the bedroom door had stopped us from succumbing to the balm’s heady odour and our own exhaustion.
“Yes, Sujata?” I had always wondered why he had no nickname for her. No Suju, Mini, or Chinki – nothing. It wasn’t like his voice was devoid of affection, though, far from it. Which was what made the oddness stand out even more.
Sujata entered, demurely as always, gaze fixed on her feet, her usual hurricane-like intensity in public fully quietened.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You do know I’m not going forever, right?”
He thumbed his balm-coated back and sat up straight, fixing her with one of his bemused stares. Just the right mix of ‘oh, what you’re saying is heart-achingly interesting’ and ‘meh, I’m doing you a favour by listening’. Not that Sujata had noticed – she was too busy shining her right thumb toenail with her left foot.
“I do, why?”
“Just… you were quieter than usual at the party today, so I was wondering…”
I stifled a harrumph so hard the backpressure popped my eardrums. It was impossible, barring a coma, for him to be any quieter than he already was. But, hell did I know, maybe with Sulochana he’d been just as extroverted as his daughter. After all, Vikram, my ex-husband, had always resented me for stifling him. But this was not the time to wallow in my second-wife inferiority complexes, or my divorcee ones, for that matter.
“The poor girl’s nervous, Dobby.”
He flinched, and I let my grin loose. One of the many privileges of being his college junior, apart from the meals he’d grudgingly paid for, was the knowledge of every weird nickname he’d been given during his time there. His lengthening eyebrow hair had only made them droop even more in the last thirty-five years, and his ears had always been freakishly pointy. “And given that other thing…”
A quick shuffle from one foot to another. The girl was too polite to tell me to not go there, even though that was exactly what she wanted to discuss. He wasn’t, his pained glance was enough for me to tell.
“You’re not Abhi. I’m not worried.”
Sujata froze. I knew how much courage she’d needed to gather to be able to breach the subject. It was one of the few things I had in common with her. Abhimanyu, the older brother. The firstborn. Her yardstick. As Sulochana was mine. Both faulty, one because she was dead and the other as good as. This was the first time he’d said Abhi’s name in years.
“Baba, you need to forget about him.”
“I have, dear.” No, you haven’t.
“No, you haven’t,” Sujata echoed the voice in my head. “You had planned the same sendoff for him. But Abhi dada went to watch The Dark Knight Rises with his friends.”
“That was his reward. 95% ke liye.” And Sujata’s 90%?
“He could have watched it the next day.”
“His friends were going that day.”
“You had called everyone and arranged it.”
“It was his choice.”
“Today wasn’t mine.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. When they opened again, they were fixed straight on his daughter. Straight through her, rather, to some faraway horizon.
“All you had to do was tell me you didn’t want it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she blurted, only just noticing that he wasn’t even looking at her. “Baba, you know that’s not what I meant.”
He rested his forehead on his palm.
“What do you mean, then, dear?”
“I mean…” a catch in her voice. The beginnings of a sob in her glistening eyes. “It… I will be different. I will be enough.”
My heart lurched. Deja vu.
He sat up, transfixed, actually seeing his crying daughter for who she was for the first time that night. Pulling himself off the bed, he shuffled over to Sujata and wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders.
“Forget about Abhi dada. He didn’t deserve you. Or aai.”
“Forget about Sulochana. You’ve grieved plenty.” My fingers grabbed the comforter with a manic grip. He said nothing.
“I’ll call every day. I’ll visit at least once a year. I’ll ask for couriers of Diwali faraal and get annoyed if you don’t send them. Abhi dada doesn’t matter, baba. You have me and Madhura maushi.”
Two years later, I was still maushi. Pathetic. Maybe remaining childless had been a blessing in disguise.
“I love you, Dobby. Always have, since college.”
“Thank you, Madhu.”
“Thank you,” he half-whispered, half-choked the words out like every sound cost him a crore. “Sujata, I’m fine.”
She unentangled herself from his embrace, wiping away snot and tears with her sleeve. “I’ll miss you both.”
“Us too, Sujata, us too,” I said, smiling. A polite girl, through and through.
The night wore on. Fatigue gave way to listlessness.
Four AM. A knock on the front door. A face at the grille. Doubt in my mind, utter shock on Sujata’s face.
“Arre, at least check who it is,” Raksha tai, Dobby’s elder sister groaned, appearing from the bedroom. She hobbled to the door, took one glance, and made the same face as Sujata.
“Abhi?”
The sleeping relatives were woken up one by one, each going through their rounds of condolences. He apologized a hundred times for not being able to make it for the rites, not sounding sincere even once. Sujata aroused herself from her trance, filling him a tumbler full of water and putting the vessel she’d washed back on the stove for some more tea. I could see her hands tremble as she handed the glass to him. No eye contact.
Abhi walked over to where Dobby lay, his expression laconic. “I’m sorry, baba,” he whispered into deaf ears.
Yet another apology. I watched on, completely unable to summon any hatred. Or any other emotion, for that matter. Sujata busied herself with some errand or the other, appearing from the kitchen five minutes later with a cup of tea in her hands. Disturbingly polite, even now.
“Thanks, Sujata,” he shifted to a cross-legged sitting pose next to Dobby, accepting the cup and saucer. Sujata withdrew her hands as quickly as she could while still maintaining her polite facade. Ignoring her sofa, she sat down next to me, our shoulders touching. Her hand closed around mine. It was clammy.
Abhi stayed in that position for what felt like an eternity. He had so much of his father in him. The same curly hair, the same half-baked moustache that would never grow past his upper lip, and the same set jawline that came as a result of clamming up for the majority of his existence. Sujata’s tea lay ignored on his left knee. His right hand fingered a small silver pendant.
“See this?” Dobby held it up. “I had a Cartouche engraved with his name when we went to Egypt.” his smile could have lit up the room.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A symbol used to represent an ornamental scroll or tablet. Used to show the name is of royal descent. Pharaoh’s firstborns and the like.”
“Dobby, man, you’re a sap.” Vikram hated gestures like that.
“Shut up, Vik.”
“The only time you talk this much or talk at all, rather, is when it’s about Abhi.”
“Yeah, so?”
“When Madhu and I have kids, there’s no way we’re making as big a deal out of it as you. Right?”
“I think it’s cute.” I said.
“Of course.”
“Say what?”
“College was ten years ago. You’re not his junior anymore. It’s okay to not suck up to him.”
“Shut up, Vikram.”
“Thanks, Sulochana. Yeah, shut up, Vik.”
“Fine.”
Dobby held the silver aloft for a few seconds, and then carefully tucked it into the layers of swaddling next to his infant son’s ear.
“Abhimanyu,” he whispered, earning an eye-roll from Vikram. “I hope you know how to get out.”
I smiled.
Abhi held the cartouche in his fingers for a second, then took it off, tucking it into the shroud next to Dobby’s cheek, taking care not to touch the body. Mouthing a final I’m sorry, Abhi raised his eyes to meet mine. A glimmer of recognition in his eyes, a wave of bitter nostalgia in mine.
“Madhura…maushi?”
I crumbled. Sujata hung on to me for dear life as I cried – loud, heaving, uncontrollable sobs of agony.
I had thought what I’d done in the last twenty-two years mattered. Finally admitting the truth to myself and divorcing Vikram, suffering through an agonizing gauntlet of lawyers and family abuse to come through, single, just shy of fifty, but prepared to start afresh. I would be Sulochana’s replacement, and perhaps, just perhaps, over time, graduate from being a mere facsimile.
Somewhere, all through her life, Sujata had hoped to do the same. Straight As. No indignant whining about skirt lengths or seven o’clock curfews. The spitting image of obedience. All to no avail, no matter what Dobby had stoically claimed till his last breath.
Abhi had been estranged for nigh on two decades. In and out of prison, twice, for assault charges he still publicly denied. At least partially responsible for Sulochana’s ‘accidental’ sleeping pill overdose. Never once forgiven by his father. Never even mentioned, in fact, but for that one time.
And yet, he was the real thing.
Illustration : Sayantani Dasgupta