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Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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Mrs. Das now?”
“The guides have put her in a separate tent where they can keep an eye on her until they can send her back,” Aunt says, shaking her head sadly. “Poor thing—I really feel sorry for her. Still, I must confess I’m glad she’s leaving.” Then a suspicious frown takes over her face. “Why do you want to know? Did you talk to her last night? Leela, stop, where are you going?”
MRS. DAS, WHOM Leela finds in a small tent outside which a guide keeps watch, does not look like a woman who has recently battled several men tooth and nail. Cowled in a faded green shawl, she dozes peacefully against the tent pole, though this could be due to the Calmpose tablets the doctor has made her take. Or perhaps there’s not much outside her head that she’s interested in at this point. She has lost her glasses in her night’s adventuring, and when Leela touches her shoulder, she looks up, blinking with dignity.
Leela opens her mouth to say she is sorry about how Mrs. Das has been treated. But she hears herself saying, “I’m going back with you.” The dazed expression on Mrs. Das’s face mirrors her own inner state. When after a moment Mrs. Das warily asks her why, all she can do is shrug her shoulders. She is uncertain of her motives. Is it her desire to prove (but to whom?) that she is somehow superior to the others? Is it pity, an emotion she has always distrusted? Is it some inchoate affinity she feels toward this stranger? But if you believe in destiny, no one can be a stranger, can they? There’s always a connection, a reason because of which people enter your orbit, bristling with dark energy like a meteor intent on collision.
TRAVELING DOWN a mountain trail fringed by fat, seeded grasses the same gray as the sky, Leela wants to ask Mrs. Das about destiny. Whether she believes in it, what she understands it to encompass. But Mrs. Das grips the saddle of the mule she is sitting on, her body rigid with the single-minded terror of a person who has never ridden an animal. Ahead, the guide’s young, scraggly-bearded son whistles a movie tune Leela remembers having heard in another world, during an excursion with Aunt Seema to some Calcutta market.
Aunt Seema was terribly upset with Leela’s decision to accompany Mrs. Das—no, even with that intense adverb,
upset
is too simple a word to describe the change in her urbane aunt, who had taken such gay control of Leela’s life in the city. The new Aunt Seema wrung her hands and lamented, “But what would your mother say if she knew that I let you go off alone with some stranger?” (Did she really believe Leela’s mother would hold her responsible? The thought made Leela smile.) Aunt’s face was full of awful conviction as she begged Leela to reconsider. Breaking off a pilgrimage like this, for no good reason, would rouse the wrath of Shiva. When Leela said that the occurrences of her life were surely of no interest to a deity, Aunt gripped her shoulders with trembling hands.
“Stop!” she cried, her nostrils flaring. “You don’t know what you’re saying! That bad-luck woman, she’s bewitched you!”
How many unguessed layers there were to people, skins that came loose at an unexpected tug, revealing raw, fearful flesh. Amazing, that folks could love one another in the face of such unreliability! It made Leela at once sad and hopeful.
WALKING DOWNHILL, LEELA has drifted into a fantasy. In it, she lives in a small rooftop flat on the outskirts of Calcutta. Mrs. Das, whom she has rescued from the women’s hostel, lives with her. They have a maid who shops and runs their errands, so the women rarely need to leave the flat. Each evening they sit on the terrace beside the potted roses and chrysanthemums (Mrs. Das has turned out to be a skillful gardener) and listen to music—a tape of Bengali folk songs (Mrs. Das looks like a person who would enjoy that), or maybe one of Leela’s jazz CDs to which Mrs. Das listens with bemused attention. When
“The guides have put her in a separate tent where they can keep an eye on her until they can send her back,” Aunt says, shaking her head sadly. “Poor thing—I really feel sorry for her. Still, I must confess I’m glad she’s leaving.” Then a suspicious frown takes over her face. “Why do you want to know? Did you talk to her last night? Leela, stop, where are you going?”
MRS. DAS, WHOM Leela finds in a small tent outside which a guide keeps watch, does not look like a woman who has recently battled several men tooth and nail. Cowled in a faded green shawl, she dozes peacefully against the tent pole, though this could be due to the Calmpose tablets the doctor has made her take. Or perhaps there’s not much outside her head that she’s interested in at this point. She has lost her glasses in her night’s adventuring, and when Leela touches her shoulder, she looks up, blinking with dignity.
Leela opens her mouth to say she is sorry about how Mrs. Das has been treated. But she hears herself saying, “I’m going back with you.” The dazed expression on Mrs. Das’s face mirrors her own inner state. When after a moment Mrs. Das warily asks her why, all she can do is shrug her shoulders. She is uncertain of her motives. Is it her desire to prove (but to whom?) that she is somehow superior to the others? Is it pity, an emotion she has always distrusted? Is it some inchoate affinity she feels toward this stranger? But if you believe in destiny, no one can be a stranger, can they? There’s always a connection, a reason because of which people enter your orbit, bristling with dark energy like a meteor intent on collision.
TRAVELING DOWN a mountain trail fringed by fat, seeded grasses the same gray as the sky, Leela wants to ask Mrs. Das about destiny. Whether she believes in it, what she understands it to encompass. But Mrs. Das grips the saddle of the mule she is sitting on, her body rigid with the single-minded terror of a person who has never ridden an animal. Ahead, the guide’s young, scraggly-bearded son whistles a movie tune Leela remembers having heard in another world, during an excursion with Aunt Seema to some Calcutta market.
Aunt Seema was terribly upset with Leela’s decision to accompany Mrs. Das—no, even with that intense adverb,
upset
is too simple a word to describe the change in her urbane aunt, who had taken such gay control of Leela’s life in the city. The new Aunt Seema wrung her hands and lamented, “But what would your mother say if she knew that I let you go off alone with some stranger?” (Did she really believe Leela’s mother would hold her responsible? The thought made Leela smile.) Aunt’s face was full of awful conviction as she begged Leela to reconsider. Breaking off a pilgrimage like this, for no good reason, would rouse the wrath of Shiva. When Leela said that the occurrences of her life were surely of no interest to a deity, Aunt gripped her shoulders with trembling hands.
“Stop!” she cried, her nostrils flaring. “You don’t know what you’re saying! That bad-luck woman, she’s bewitched you!”
How many unguessed layers there were to people, skins that came loose at an unexpected tug, revealing raw, fearful flesh. Amazing, that folks could love one another in the face of such unreliability! It made Leela at once sad and hopeful.
WALKING DOWNHILL, LEELA has drifted into a fantasy. In it, she lives in a small rooftop flat on the outskirts of Calcutta. Mrs. Das, whom she has rescued from the women’s hostel, lives with her. They have a maid who shops and runs their errands, so the women rarely need to leave the flat. Each evening they sit on the terrace beside the potted roses and chrysanthemums (Mrs. Das has turned out to be a skillful gardener) and listen to music—a tape of Bengali folk songs (Mrs. Das looks like a person who would enjoy that), or maybe one of Leela’s jazz CDs to which Mrs. Das listens with bemused attention. When
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