Shining Hero

Meena Gupta, silently blaming her husband for his outsize sister, nibbled her samosa through a veil of tears and vowed, though there was nothing to be done about the height, she would try to lighten Shivarani’s complexion the moment she got home.

After the third rejection Shivarani, her face red with her humiliation, her eyes red with tears, said she would not allow herself to be paraded any more. Her parents, frantic with worry, because what sort of life was there for a woman without marriage, begged Shivarani to give the process just one more chance. Reluctantly the girl agreed. ‘But on condition, no jewels and no pretty sari. They must see me as I am.’ Shivarani’s parents shuddered. What hope was there for the girl, unless she was disguised in opulence and glamour? But those were Shivarani’s terms and she appeared before the aunts and mother of the prospective bridegroom wearing a plain handloom sari in beige and, ‘Oh no, my God,’ whimpered Meena, a pair of high-heeled shoes. ‘You said they must see you as you are, but you are not as high as that,’ mourned Meena Gupta but Shivarani insisted. Either she would appear thus dressed or not at all.

There came a little gasp from the assembled family of the prospective bridegroom that Meena knew was not of admiration. But all the same they continued with their questioning as though, in spite of everything, they were still interested.

A photo of the boy was produced. Meena accepted it with caution and for a moment hardly dared focus her eyes on it. There was sure to be something dreadfully wrong with the fellow or why was his family, even after seeing Shivarani in her khadi sari and high heels, still considering her? When Meena at last dared to look, she thought he was quite handsome.

When Shivarani saw the photo, for the first time in the husband-choosing process, she actually smiled. ‘He looks nice,’ she said.

At last Meena Gupta felt it was safe to tell her club friends. She was unable to keep the triumph out of her voice as she said, ‘He is good-looking, of high intelligence, from excellent family, and what more can any mother want for their daughter?’ Meena thought she saw a quick glance flash between two of her friends. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘I there something I don’t know?’

‘Of course not,’ said Leela hastily. ‘I have never seen the fellow and I am sure he is a very good match.’ She had been on the rough end of Meena’s temper once already and did not want to risk it again.

Meena went to have tea with the boy’s parents and to meet the boy himself while Shivarani waited anxiously at home. But when Meena, usually the most garrulous of women, returned, she hung her shawl on the hook and removed her outdoor slippers in silence.

Shivarani clenched her hands till her knuckles went white, and waited. After a long silent moment she asked, ‘What was he like?’

‘Very nice,’ said Meena. ‘Just as good-looking as in the photo. And he is clever too.’

‘Yes, but,’ pressed Shivarani.

Meena turned her back to her eldest daughter and looking into the hall mirror, began patting down her hair.

‘There is something wrong with him?’

Meena, her gaze on her reflection, shook her head.

‘But I know there is something,’ Shivarani pursued.

‘Well …’ said Meena.

‘What, yes? What?’ Shivarani could hardly bear it.

Meena shrugged gently and said, ‘He is young. Perhaps he will grow a little more.’

Shivarani, frowning, said, ‘Young? How young? I thought you said he was nearly thirty.’

‘That is young,’ said Meena stiffly.

‘What are you telling me?’ cried Shivarani. ‘That you are hoping a man of nearly thirty will keep on growing?’

‘But you never know. That’s what I am thinking,’ murmured Meena Gupta and winked a tear away.

Shivarani stared at her mother’s back and the colour drained from her face. ‘He’s a midget, you mean?’

‘Hush hush,’ soothed her mother. ‘Size is not all. He comes from a prosperous family. He looks like a very nice person. He has doctorates in three subjects. And most important of all, you are so tall and so if you have a short husband your children will come out the right size.’

Shivarani burst out in fury. ‘You want me to marry a dwarf so that your grandchildren come out the right size? That’s really amazing,’ she roared. ‘That is the end,’ she said. ‘No more bridegrooms. I will make my own way in the world.’

Meena Gupta knew then that the battle was lost and that Shivarani might never marry.

Her consolation became her youngest child, Koonty. Meena drew a pencil line on the frame of the door, measured the child weekly and each time felt reassured that Koonty was growing at a normal speed. Meena was not sure what she would do if her youngest child started sprouting too. Perhaps there were things she could do if the fault was discovered early enough. Maybe Sahib Singh’s, the Park Street chemist, had a medicine for slowing human growth. Meena was watchful of Koonty’s complexion too. She kept a photo of Shivarani at the same age, and at regular intervals held it up against Koonty’s cheeks, comparing for darkness although it is difficult to see skin colour properly in a black and white photo.

Shivarani’s parents began to feel despondent about the future of their big dark daughter. Meena, who could not think of anything more dreadful for a woman than to remain unmarried, said hopeful things like, ‘Perhaps your Papa could find the cash to send you to UK. I have heard that the men there are not all that fussy about what kind of woman they are married to,’ and could not understand why Shivarani suddenly burst out weeping.

‘What are you saying, Meena?’ cried Shivarani’s father, outraged. ‘That our darling should be shipped off to marry some undiscriminating gora?’ And to Shivarani, ‘Marriage is not all, my darling, no matter what your mother says. Perhaps you could join some religious community and devote your life to love of God. Mahadevi did so and she experienced constant holy bliss in spite of being without husband.’ Mahadevi was a Tamil saint of the middle ages who, abandoning all aspects of society, including clothes, wandered South India clad only in her long hair, devoting her life to Shiva and singing hymns to him. Shivarani’s father adored his eldest child, but felt he could not properly understand her because of the way her weeping intensified at his suggestion.

Shivarani went to college, put all her attention on her work and tried not to notice the way the young male students responded gently to other girls but not to her. She had friends, even among the men, but they treated her as though she was a friend, and like one of them. How else could have they been to a woman who was an inch or so higher than the tallest guy?

One of the young men was a joker. No matter how serious the conversation he would always spoil everything by some silliness or other. In the evenings when the young men and women gathered in the dark and grimy coffee house and were in the midst of a serious discussion about the fear of war with Pakistan, Bhima would ruin it all by making a funny face then chanting, ‘When I kiss a little Hindu I’m careful not to smudge her bindu. When I kiss a Pakistani I hold her tight and call her “jani”.’ The others, unable to stop laughing at such nonsense, would all the same get cross. ‘That rubbish has spoiled the important tone of our conversation.’

The students would talk for hours over a single bitter brew of dirt-cheap coffee-flavoured chicory, discussing the problems of India. There were those who said things would only be solved by a revolution after which corruption would be rooted out, education made available for all and equality created for Indians of every caste and either sex. To destroy the present society and rebuild it better was considered by some the only solution to the present problems of corruption and inequality. Others though disagreed, and felt that change could only come by building on what was already there and that killing people and destroying property would never solve anything. The arguments would grow increasingly heated as the night wore on and in the end they always seemed to turn to Shivarani for arbitration as if, though the same age as the rest, she was perceived as older and wiser. One evening it was only she and Bhima still left, still arguing. Darkness had fallen, fireflies started to sparkle in the trees and the mosquitoes started to bite. Bhima, instead of listening to her ideas on education for all, began trying to balance a glass of water on his head, an experiment ending with water gushing over his nose. ‘You look like Shiva catching the Ganges on his head,’ said Shivarani strictly. ‘And you have not been listening.’ She did not approve of such frivolity.

‘Your beautiful hair is on fire,’ said Bhima, wiping his face. He gently took a firefly from her head, and held out the little flashing light to her in his palm. Shivarani suddenly could not remember what she had been about to say.

When she came home for her vacation Shivarani was shocked at the frivolity of her younger sister, Koonty, who rampaged round the Hatibari estate playing with the local children as though she was one of them and whose bedroom walls were covered in posters of film stars. ‘Even here, in the village of Hatipur, there are children who don’t have enough to eat,’ said Shivarani. ‘You should be thinking about things like that instead of getting swoony over some film star. Tomorrow I am going to the village to see what help I can give the people there. You should come with me.’

‘Don’t get cross with me so soon,’ begged Koonty. ‘Tell me about the people in college? Did you fall in love?’

Shivarani hesitated for the smallest moment before saying, ‘No.’

Koonty could not come with Shivarani to the village. She had been invited to the Hatibari by the young zamindar. ‘I will come with you next time, I swear, Didi,’ she said.

Shivarani jumped, startled at the creaking stirring of a bush, thinking that a snake was about to emerge, and had told herself that if the brain-fever bird did not shut up, she would be driven mad. When she was halfway to Hatipur the bird did fall silent for a while, and then all she could hear were the squawks of mynahs, the high screams of the rose-ringed parakeets robbing the guava trees and the river slapping its banks like an arrogant hero beating his thighs. The air was peppery and stung a little, as though the leathery trees and the bushes with their dangerous-looking speckled leaves were gasping spice. She wished her parents had not chosen to live in such an out-of-the-way place.

As Shivarani arrived a cry went round for someone to bring a chair for the Hatibari manager’s daughter. Ignoring their protests and refusing the battered plastic seat she told the gathering crowd, ‘I have been studying for the past three years, learning about the problems faced by the villagers of India. Now that I am back, please tell me what has been going on here.’

At once a great babble of excitement rose. People, packing tightly round her, began to talk all at once. They waved their arms, beat their breasts and dramatically pulled at their hair as they told of the things they needed – a well so they would not have to go so far for water, a bus service, a health clinic and most of all electricity. ‘Also we would like our own cinema,’ they told her. ‘At present we must travel to Dattapukur three miles away to see the films and because we are from outside, we have to sit at the back while those from Dattapukur get all the good places. And also when it is raining there is only a small tarpaulin for shelter and we of Hatipur are forced to sit outside of it till we become completely wetted. Even those with umbrellas become wetted underneath because of the water running over the earth.’

Shivarani quickly turned the conversation to drains, school books, clean water and medical care but every now and again one or another of the young men would let out an ear-splitting yell of ‘yahoo.’ ‘They have been to see the film of Jungly,’ a woman explained. ‘Have you seen this wonderful film, Memsahib Shivarani? In this Shamee Kapoor is this wild man, who is constantly shouting in such a way.’

‘But although hanging from trees and such like he is of a very handsome type,’ said another. ‘Like the gopis and their passion for the blue god, Krishna, all the women of Hatipur are in love with this fellow though the married ones do not mention it to their husbands.’ The surrounding girls giggled protests and hid their faces in their hands while the men of their families looked at them accusingly.

Shivarani brought the conversation back to tangible problems that she might have a chance of solving.

A woman spoke up, ‘My name is Laxshmi. If you wish to be helpful then you should do something for me. I have three daughters already …’ she gestured to three little girls wearing starched frocks, with bows in their hair. ‘I am pregnant again. If this child is a girl as well, my husband has said he will leave me. So can you make this child into a male?’

Shivarani sighed.

Others began to pour out their problems. They began to tell Shivarani of the paralysed grandmother who had to be carried everywhere, the threatening mother-in-law, the child that did not thrive, the cow that had dried up too soon, the virus in the tomatoes. One man described his happiness because his cow had given birth to a female calf. Another expressed his dismay because his wife had given birth to a female child. And then there were the widows. There were fourteen of them. ‘Perhaps you can find some work for us, Shivarani Memsahib,’ they said. ‘For these days we hardly get enough to eat for even if the families of our husbands wanted to, they would be unable to spare enough for us after the children have eaten.’

‘The wife of the misti wallah has a trouble and needs your help,’ someone told her. Shivarani followed him.

The misti wallah’s wife was sitting on bolsters in the room at the back of the shop, pressing shandesh into little wooden moulds in the shape of fishes. The room smelled of sugar and buzzed heavily with bees and flies and the misti wallah’s back was visible through the bamboo curtain, as he sat cross-legged behind his piles of sweets.

‘I want my eldest sons, Rahul and Ravi, to go to school, but instead they are thieving around the village and their father does nothing to stop them,’ said the woman. ‘Ravi is the leader, and Rahul, though the eldest, follows him. I want the best for our children and my husband says he does too, but it costs money and the attention of the father to bring up children properly.’

The misti wallah’s back flinched as though he heard or guessed what his wife was saying about him. He worked very hard, getting up before sunrise to separate the curds and set the dahis. For hours, even on the hottest days he would be toiling over a vat of hot oil, dribbling in the batter to make jellabies, then dropping the hot crisp squirls into simmering sugar syrup. After his stall opened he would be sitting there all day long, serving customers with rosogullas, Lady Kennies, gulab jamans, shandesh. Spooning almond-spiked paishes and rose-flavoured kheers into terracotta pots. Packing jellabies into banana leaf and tying the bundle with thread. Even after the stall was closed his work would still not be finished. He would still have to seal the jars of warm curd with muslin and waxed paper before carrying them to the river to cool all night in the shallows there. The evenings in the drink shop were his relaxation. He looked forward all day to the hour when he would be able to sit in silence in the little concrete room of the arrak shop and down a few tumblers of arrak. Then, fully drunk, his worries about his out-of-control sons and his wife’s complaints forgotten, he would stagger home and sleep.

The misti wallah, on his way to the arrak shop, would sometimes pass the bullock cart on which his wife and children were squashed among the other villagers, on their way to see the film at Dattapukur. His wife, like the other women, wearing her brightest sari and with jasmine in her hair, his sons wearing oversized shorts, with their hair greased down and behaving properly for once, crammed among little girls in frocks embroidered with glittering thread and men in starched pyjamas. ‘Why don’t you come with us instead of getting drunk,’ his wife would cry as he squeezed onto the verge to let the cart rumble by. ‘The cinema will not give a headache and tonight is one very good film.’

Later, at the arrak shop, the misti wallah would settle onto the cool cement seat, glass in hand, and hear the shrill excited laughter and the creaking of the axle receding, as the cart made its way out of the village, and feel grateful for the silence that followed the departure of his family.

‘My children are getting a bad example,’ said the wife as she began to shake the shandesh fishes from their moulds and decorate them with silver leaf. ‘That must be the reason for their bad behaviour but I am hoping that, since you are college returned and therefore of a great cleverness, you will speak with my husband and ask him to desist from the drinking of arrak, and come instead to the cinema with us.’

The zamindar’s son, Pandu, had taken Koonty all down the long gallery, telling her about the family portraits. And now they sat on the verandah drinking nimbu pani with ice. Although he was so much older he talked to Koonty as though she was as grown-up as him, telling her of his plans to bring the Hatibari back to its former glory. ‘In the days of my grandfather there were fifty servants, and all the land you see in every direction belonged to our family.’ He was planning to buy a herd of Jersey cows, he told Koonty. ‘There are all these stables that my grandfather used for his pig-sticking horses and they will make good byres.’ He brought out photo albums. ‘Look how pretty my great-grandmother was. And this aunt, see her. Isn’t she beautiful? Though not as beautiful as you.’

Koonty felt a heat in her cheeks and, unable to work out how a modest woman was supposed to respond to such a compliment, said nothing. Kuru Dadoo, who was Pandu’s father, joined them and, pointing to a faded sepia photo, said, ‘That is me on the day I saved the life of a Calcutta box wallah. I was a hero in my time though you wouldn’t believe it now.’ Then he laughed till his big stomach shook, pinched Koonty’s cheek till it was sore and popped a sweetie in her mouth as though she was a little girl and not a woman of thirteen and said, ‘I hope you will be visiting us often because I need a pretty little girl around.’

Meena Gupta became very excited and hopeful when she heard of the visit. And a few days later when Koonty was invited round again Meena went nearly hysterical with hope. Kuru Dadoo had talked of Koonty’s marriage with Pandu.

‘Tell me word for word what he said.’

‘I’ve told you twenty times and I’m not going to say it any more,’ cried an exasperated Koonty.

‘Once more,’ pleaded the mother. These words were music to her after the dreadful business of Shivarani.

‘He said, “If she was a little less jungly and a bit more modest Koonty would make a suitable bride for you, Pandu,” but he might have been only joking. I don’t think he really meant it. And anyway I don’t want to be married. I want to go on being as I am.’ Being as she was consisted of swimming in the river with Pandu and his boy cousins or even going with them into the village and playing games of cricket with the village boys in the main street.

‘All this must stop instantly,’ said Meena, who felt as though Koonty had grown up into a young woman in a moment, and without anyone noticing. Whatever could she have been thinking of to let things come to such a pass? She forbade all further visits to the village, and put a stop to meetings with the Pandava and Kaurava boys unless there was a chaperone present. Koonty cried and begged, but Meena was filled with terror mixed with a marvellous hope.

Shivarani had managed to solve a few of the village’s problems. She had got money from Oxfam to dig a tube well, and had started a little industry for the fourteen widows. They now made blue-eyed, yellow-haired dolls which Shivarani sold to a Calcutta toyshop. But Meena was not impressed. ‘What is this, going around all day among those dirty people? I think that you are stirring up trouble where no trouble was before, and sooner or later it will come to the ears of the zamindar. Do you want your father to lose his work here? Then you will be in the state of these poor people of Hatipur that you are so sorry about.’

‘Don’t listen to Ma,’ Koonty tried to console. ‘I think it’s wonderful, all the things you are doing. I wish I was a good person like you but I just couldn’t do it. I know I couldn’t.’

When Koonty was nearly fifteen Pandu’s mother formally requested the union in marriage of Koonty with her son Pandu. Meena, nearly fainting with joy, reflected that the last year of Koonty’s sulks and rows had been a small price to pay for this wonderful reward.

Koonty now spent her days moping alone in the garden while the boys rushed around on their bicycles or went swimming in the river. ‘Of course you may not swim. Have you forgotten you are to be the wife of the young zamindar?’ ‘Certainly you may not go on a bicycle. That is not at all a suitable behaviour for a bride-to-be.’

Sometimes Shivarani, feeling sorry for her lonely sister, would sit with her and brush Koonty’s hair or rub mustard oil into her fingers, while Koonty told her sister the story of the latest film she had seen. ‘The Mahabharata. And the Sun God is absolutely gorgeous, though the one I like best of all is Arjuna. I’ve got a poster of him on my wall.’ Shivarani would tell Koonty about the things that were happening in the village, how Ravi, the misti wallah’s son, had broken the darjee’s sewing machine, how Laxshmi had given birth to a daughter and her husband had left her and how she was having difficulties in getting the doll shop to pay up. ‘The widows need the money so badly. You have no idea how poor they are. It’s not just a matter of having to wear white and being forbidden jewels. Their husbands’ families treat them as though surviving their husbands is a punishable offence.’

‘I would hate to be a widow,’ said Koonty. ‘I would kill myself if my husband died.’ And she touched the gold medallion that Pandu had given her the day before.

‘What a way to talk,’ cried Shivarani. ‘Here are you not even married and you are talking of your husband dying and you killing yourself. And you should not be accepting gifts from your husband-to-be at this time. Especially you should not accept something valuable like that so near to the wedding.’

Koonty crinkled her nose and hastily tucked the symbol of Pandu’s love back into her blouse.

‘Don’t screw up your pretty face like that,’ said Shivarani. ‘I know you are going to look beautiful on your wedding day but all the same you must be careful not to get a wrinkle.’

Koonty laughed. ‘And so will you look beautiful, Didi, because you’ll have to wear nice clothes and jewels for my wedding instead of those ghastly drab old saris.’

Shivarani shook her head and smiled. ‘It wouldn’t matter how I was dressed. Nothing will make me pretty. I will always be ugly.’

Koonty was appalled. ‘But Didi, how can you say such a thing? It’s because you don’t even try. Here. I’ll show you how to do flirting things with your sari. You never know. Some gorgeous man might come to my wedding and fall in love with you.’ Leaping up she demonstrated. ‘Just flip the palu like this, as though by mistake.’

Shivarani did a reluctant tweak.

‘Not like that,’ protested Koonty. ‘You’ve got to do it daintily and at the same time your eyes have to give a quick glance in his direction and then you have to look away.’

Shivarani was away during the months leading up to the wedding, travelling round the villages with her college friend Malti, seeing what could be done to help the villagers.

Villagers would instantly drop what they were doing when the two girls arrived, and stare, fascinated. Strangers were always exciting but the big one with the black face amazed them. Sometimes a whisper would go round among the children. ‘Where are her other arms?’ They thought that Shivarani was the goddess Kali. Malti was a type these villagers had encountered doing charity work at the health clinic or coming to instruct them on birth control. She was normal height, fair-skinned, wore gold earrings and her sari, though simple, was clearly expensive. They had never seen anyone like Shivarani before. It was not only her height and dark complexion. She wore no jewels and her wrists were bare, though even the poorest village woman wore at least a glass bangle. Her hair was short like a man’s and, in fact, although she wore a cheap handloom sari, they could hardly tell if this was man or woman. Perhaps it is a hirja, they whispered to one another. Hirjas were people of indeterminate gender, who wore women’s clothes and had the voices of men. They were frightening people, who appeared at the birth of a baby threatening to curse the child unless they were given payment. Shivarani’s voice was nearly as gruff as a man’s as she boomed out her party’s promises of education, clean water, and food, housing and transport for all.