บท 5: The Exchange
Sipra hurried off carefully shutting the door behind her and silently putting on the padlock. Even a mother blind in the love for her daughter could not take chances with such a girl who had eloped once.
Sipra went directly to her room to gather the welcoming plate. It had on it a lamp lit with ghee, a coconut to break in front of the groom, a few strands of fresh grass and some unsheathed grain of rice, a little sandalwood paste and some vermilion. She hurried to the door to greet her sons in law. The figure that stood there was not what she expected. The elder son of the Mukherjee family stood there. Though he had his mother's features he lacked her complexion. He looked more like a bloated version of his younger brother Ravi, save with a moustache and perhaps a bit shorter in altitude. Perhaps he was even a shade darker than the brother. But that was not what surprised the to-be mother in law. The person dressed as the groom did not look anything like the Mukherjee brothers. He shared the Matriarchs complexion and her blue eyes but everything from the width of his jaw, the bent of his nose, the arch of his brow was different. His hair was a copper brown in colour with interwoven greys and he stood taller than most in the room. Sipra took wary steps towards the man in question. Dressed in a traditional Dhoti and uttariya he repeated the image his mother often portrayed, a European tourist swathed in souvenirs. It was Rahul who introduced. "This is our mother's eldest son from abroad; Rupert, but you can call him Rup." Sipra looked from one to the other, half brothers yet so completely different in appearance. Rup bowed his head in a courtesy, a gesture so crisp and polite compared to his younger brother's wide mouthed grin. Rup stood with perfect posture awaiting the ceremony while his younger brother, tired from the half an hour drive to the place, stretched his back, pushing his pot belly forward and trying to suck it all back in again.
The murmur that had been going on in the background turned to an uproar. Changing of grooms was not something that a modern middleclass family would tolerate in modern India. This was almost medieval injustice. Sipra bowed her head and went through the ceremony without word. She asked the groom, "Would you like to talk to the bride?" As in every culture it was forbidden for the groom to see the bride. Nevertheless cellular phones made such restrictions ineffective. Rup turned to his brother with a blank face. Rahul explained that his brother did not talk. From the lack of comprehension on his face Sipra gathered that he did not hear as much. She let the seating of the groom be left to the other members of the family while she herself stole her way to her daughter's room. She silently unlatched the door and tiptoed inside.
Inside Shimonthini sat silently, her eyes fixed with a determination devoid of joy. Her mother stood with bowed head in front of her. Then gathering the courage to face her daughter she raised her eyes and silently mouthed the words, "Run away", with tears streaming down her face. The sight of her mother in tears brought motion in even the stoic Moni who moved forward and held her by the shoulders. Shimonthini was a good few inches taller than her mother and she had to tilt her face upward to see her expression.
Sipra explained how they had been tricked, how the groom had been changed and the unfortunate state of the groom. Shimonthini took a deep breath, her stoicism returning. "This doesn't change anything."
"We know nothing about the groom, not even who his father is." Sipra demanded.
"I am to marry the son, not the father." Shimonthini said.
"How will you ever communicate?" Sipra asked.
"Necessity will show the way." Shimonthini answered.
"You are your own worst enemy." Sipra said exasperated, turning to leave the room, door unlatched this time. Was her daughter so desperate for a husband's name? If so why couldn't she say so before? They could have looked for a groom for her though a groom for a woman in her mid thirties was a difficult proposition.
Soon the ceremony was commenced in all the humdrum of the social uproar. The bride was called in their midst, beetle leaf held in her hands hiding her face. Rupert squared his jaws for the commitment of a lifetime. The beetle leaf gradually came down to reveal a round face with large brown eyes lined with kohl. The eyes met at a small nose that pointed towards a small mouth with thick lips. She was fair, almost as fair as his mother. The few locks of hair that peeked down from under the veil and cupped her artificially blushed cheek were wavy and brown in colour. She was a few inches short of his six foot stature which was quite impressive for a girl from the country where he now stood. As their eyes met they almost spoke of a despondency to get these rituals over with as soon as possible. The urgency was mutual. Rupert saw her gulp at his sight, her Adam's apple an imperceptible wavelet through her porcelain neck.
Shimonthini saw her husband and saw why he was named Rup. He did embody the concept of beauty as his name suggested. Those blue eyes held under the shade of the perfectly arched brow gave the impression of an angel come down. Those square jaws immortalized as the measure of masculinity held a day old stubble which made him look inviting. Shimonthini was alarmed by the beating of her heart, a part of her that had been absolutely silent since Rishi's death. Was she dishonouring the dead by appreciating her husband? She checked herself but the imperceptible heaving of her bosom did not escape Rupert's eyes. He smiled.
Shimonthini exchanged the beetle leaf for a garland and a similar one was thrust in Rupert's hand. As soon as she put the garland around his neck he followed suit. Once the ceremony started there was no stopping it. A few hours later Rupert and Shimonthini sat in an almost empty room with their chairs thrust in the middle. The room was to be filled with friends of the bride and groom, none of whom seemed to be present. The couple were married, socially. The legal certificates would take a month more to be sanctioned due to the Non resident status of both the bride and the groom. Still the awkwardness remained. The lack of a chaperon in their midst made it even more awkward.
The bride and groom turned to each other and turned away. Neither knew how to remove the cold undercurrents in the relationship that had now become fundamental to their lives. That was when there was a sound on the door. It was Reshmi. "Congratulations." She greeted her school friend. Then turning to the groom she said in pure English, "And you must be the great Rishi." A shriek from Shimonthini alerted her of her mistake. Shimonthini made further introductions. Their medium of conversation had been the same as it was in school. Then they were forced to speak in a foreign tongue by force and now it was by habit.
"This is Rup Mukherjee, eldest son of the Mukherjee family, the Real Estate Tycoons."
"Oh." Exclaimed Reshmi, flabbergasted with embarrassment. "Does he know about Rishi?"
"Don't worry," beseeched Shimonthini, "he is deaf and mute." The declaration made her look away. Reshmi felt so sorry for her friend that she bowed her head, keeping her eyes on the palm of her hand folded together. No one noticed the hint of a smile that graced the deaf groom's face.
"Why did you marry him? You were supposed to be married last Sunday, in a Church, with your business partner." Reshmi asked. Rupert looked at his bride whom he knew to be a widow or a divorcee, but not engaged to be someone else's wife.
"The day before the wedding Rishi died in a car accident. The funeral took place instead of the wedding. When I returned from the burial I called my mother but she was on the verge of calling me anyways. My mother said you had given her the number. I was so broken that I started sobbing into the phone. That is when mother urged me to be home for the wedding. Henry thought the distraction would be good for me. Yesterday Chini's mother-in-law placed the condition that I would have to marry her eldest son for the wedding to go on as planned. I am the d-o-wry." Shimonthini couldn't stop her tears now. Her stoic defiance had ended. Her sacrifice had been accomplished. A hand was wrapped around Shimonthini's shoulder and she involuntarily took support. She was too weak now; she was too weak to even talk.
After crying for awhile she regained her senses and found herself in her husband's arms. She pulled away, a little ashamed for her shamefulness. Rupert saw for the first time something of a real blush covering her. Reshmi stood an audience to the silent couple. While she remained sad at her friend's plight she wondered at their connection.
"Your mother said they needed to ask you for money for your sister's wedding. I told them that I will forward the message. That was when they asked for your number." Reshmi said, anger rising within her. "Don't you see that you have been made the scapegoat of your family? They used you every bit of the way. This marriage doesn't even hold. You are a Christian and he a Hindu Brahmin. How do you think you are to agree on anything, even if you have an understanding more than words? Will parting ways be really such a bad thing?"
Shimonthini did not have answers to her friend's questions. She gaped, wide mouthed, at the reality. She was not a part of her family, her society. The last one week had taught her of her alienation with India in the last ten years that she lived abroad. Fear was making her go rigid. Fear of a future unknown, uncertain. Shimonthini cowered from the menacing questions and pushed back towards her husband from whom she had pulled away minutes before. She looked at him for answers and found him smiling. It was not a smile of confusion or bafflement but of assurance. He turned towards Reshmi and spoke. "The name is Rupert, Rupert Thomas Mornington. I am Catholic, not an Indu Brahman and being a Catholic I do not quite believe in Divorces." Then he turned towards Shimonthini and asked "Do you?"
Shimonthini looked at her mute husband who just spoke. The expression on her face was beyond amazement. Rupert's expression was however curiosity. She shook her head in the negative. Rupert grinned at her. "I gathered as much from your body language. We all make sacrifices. Some are personal, some a little less so. But at the end of the day we are all selfish human beings. We all have an ulterior motive for every mistake we make; every distraction has its root in some kind of preoccupation. Why did you make yours?"
Shimonthini continued to look from her husband's face to her friends. Rupert finally understood. "Oh yes! I talk. I pretend I can't for a reason. I was adopted by a foreign couple at the age of two and have lived all my life out of India. I came back last month and I haven't had the time to understand the language. Instead of having someone translate every sentence of theirs and mine I prefer to be deaf and mute to avoid the awkwardness."
Shimonthini nodded and a shadow of a smile came upon her lips. Reshmi was glad to see her friend smiling after the ordeal she had gone through in the last one week. What she wasn't looking for were the tears hidden behind her eyelashes which Rupert turned to rub away. That initiated another bought of crying. Reshmi didn't know what to do so Rupert just signalled her to leave them alone.
Left to them, Rupert whispered into Shimonthini's ears, "Tell me about Rishi and I will tell you about me."
Shimonthini looked at Rupert, her eyes wary of what he was suggesting. "I don't think I should." She suggested.
"Still it would be better to know what kind of a person you are interested in or whether I ever have a chance of interesting you." Rupert countered.
"How can you be so casual with all of this? Didn't you have hopes and aspirations about marriage and family and love?" she asked incredulously at his nonchalance.
"It died decades ago. She died decades ago. I have grown used to the absence. You don't have to worry about her though. She is history. My personal history. But apparently Rishi isn't your history. I I am to ever have a chance at a future with you I need to know the person whose shoes I have to fill. Obviously I can't ever replace him just like you can never be the girl I fell in love with in my adolescence. But I do want you to be the woman I lie in my grave beside. I hope I can be that to you as well." he concluded.
Shimonthini blushed again, angry at her own heart for giving in to desire. Yes she did want a man to share the rest of her life with, rest of eternity with and here was her chance but h was right. Rishi was too recent and the loss was too profound. She had been set in a mindset for too long. It wasn't easy to overcome it. "Rishi and I had been together for years. He started out as my boss. Then he encouraged my career and we became partners. He was very supportive, a bit patronizing. He was a chauvinist. He opened doors, pulled out chairs and the shenanigans."
"Let me guess, he always paid the bill." Rupert suggested.
"Not really. When I started a business of my own he became my agent and partner. I paid the bills and his salary. And he had no qualms about that." Shimonthini said pointedly.
"No male ego; got that," Rupert said in mock humour.
"He molested me, in office, one late night. I was a new recruit. I threatened to get him fired. Had I filed a sexual harassment case he would have been ruined. He begged for forgiveness and never crossed the line, till the party...I let my parents down, I put my family to shame and God has punished me for that. I am a ......" Shimonthini looked away. She was telling her husband about her lover and it felt so wrong? She couldn't carry on anymore. She felt so cheap. Perhaps she was cheap. The show of a marriage was just a facade to hide that. The Lord does not like pretentions. "I am not a wife material. He was going to make an honest woman out of me after ten years and he had to go and die. You can never fill his shoes. You can never be him and I can't be someone who makes you happy. I am too polluted for that. All this Christian stuff is just a show. I am just supressing my filth to feel good about myself when I don't have anything to do that."
Rupert took a deep breath. "How many children do you have?" he asked. Shimonthini looked at him alarmed.
"I don't have any children. I wouldn't bring a life into this world only to be damned." She looked insulted at his words.
Rupert half smiled. "I have a daughter. She is nineteen and recently married. Her mother was married to another man when she was conceived and so she bears his name and not mine." Rupert said.
Shimonthini looked at him not knowing what to think of him. Rupert filled in the words. "Yes I am an adulterer, a seducer, a man of an awful conduct and perhaps even worse than what I tell you yet I call myself a Christian. Do you not understand that the message of Christ is about second chances? We are human and so we sin. The miracle of Christ is that the payment for those sins has been paid by him in advance. All we have to do is recognize what the payment was for and accept his gift of forgiveness. It is because of my daughter that I am here and hopefully one day you will meet her." So saying he pressed a tight smile on his lips and lookes outside the window looking out to a murky sky.
Shimonthini heaved an involuntary sigh of relief. All of a sudden the burden of guilt seemed to not matter. She could for a moment shut out her inner voice calling herself a coward, a pacifier. She was not proud of who she was or what she had achieved. The mistake she committed fifteen years ago had kept haunting her. She ran away. Shimonthini had not just run away from her roots, her heritage, and the expectations of her family. In a strange sense of divine justice Shimonthini had run away from herself. For a brief period of time she had believed to have buried Monique in the cemetery along with Rishi's corpse. Truth was that all these days Monique had been masquerading as Shimonthini in her very home, an alien among family, a stranger among acquaintances. Rupert's words suddenly freed the real Shimonthini inside her heart. No tears came to her eyes, no hand tried to strangle her heart. She was suddenly free of the excruciating pain reminding herself of her own flaws.
Do we react to death because we lose a person or do we react to our own loss in the face of a vacuum created in our lives at a person's absence? What difference then does the loss of a life hold from the loss of a relation? Shimonthini was forced out of her hiding place inside her heart because Rishi was gone. Similarly, Monique was jolted out of her consciousness when she had succeeded in alienating herself from her entire family. What loss was greater, a promise of a tomorrow that Rishi presented or the roots to her being that her family provided? But if the Shimonthini of the yore was to be brought to life where would the Monique of today return to? Was it possible to completely obliterate a part of your identity because it had grown redundant all of a sudden?
Shimonthini realized that she had regained her roots there and then and those roots tied her to the man sitting beside her. She did not care who she was anymore. The only thing that mattered was who she belonged to. Without looking towards him she leaned onto his shoulders and his warm hand pulled her in an embrace. Shimonthini felt safer than Monique ever was since the time she had left home.
While the unforeseen couple found comfort in each other a different fiasco unfolded in the adjoining room. It was Rahul, the eldest son of the Mukherjee family who had a proposition for Shinjini's ears alone. Ravi was still absent from the venue and a lot of conjectures were made to that outcome. Rahul and Shinjini conversed behind closed doors. About half an hour later it was the bride who stepped out and made an announcement. She was marrying Rahul instead of Ravi.
There were wild gasps among the elders who had not seen such preposterous things since when they were married and that signified three-quarters of a century. Some swore on Lord Krishna that this marriage was cursed. Aunt Rupa whispered into her husband's ears "Our daughter has brains. She is pocketing the eldest son of the family." Sipra fainted. When Sipra came to the deed had been done. The documents signed. Unlike her elder daughter her younger one was legally married to a man who looked more like a father to her.
Shinjini was a late child, conceived when Sipra was almost menopausal. Her birth was a celebration of turning tides in their financial situation. While Shimonthini had seen the just employed father struggling to make ends meet Shinjini had only seen affluence in the family. She was eight years old when Shimonthini had started to send the money. She never had a want of anything. So to her material affluence was important.
Shimonthini had by that time dozed off in her husband's arms. Rupert who was several years older than Shimonthini looked at his wife in wonder. She had loved the man who had molested her. She had married a man she knew nothing good about and she was ready to sacrifice for a family that sought her in times of financial need alone. Rupert did not know what it was that Shimonthini did to make her family depend on her for money.
When his mother had asked him for a favour he expected something similar. What she asked instead was to settle down with the woman of her choice. He refused upfront. In return her mother had simply concluded that he lacked the constitution to be a part of her world and to prove it called forward her younger son and asked him to call off his wedding. He complied. That was when he conceded to her wish. All that he was told was that the woman was uneducated and damaged goods who had returned to her family after leading an ignoble life for fifteen years. Somehow Rupert failed to question his wife's virtue though he had ample reasons to. Even her own testimony failed to stir in him any loathing for her. All that he felt in every bone of his body was desire for his sleeping wife.
It was late night or early morning when Sipra's wail was heard. Shimonthini stirred from her sleep to the same empty room that had given her the peaceful dreams. What stirred her awake was her husband's firm hold that shook her. "We better go and see what is happening." He said with a serious expression. The wail was now a whimper coming from the room below. In the room adjoining theirs sound of music came floating from an mp3 player. The closed-door served to attenuate the sound. Whether revelries went on was not perceptible outside. The closed-door not only provided a sanctuary for their merriments but also isolated them from the pathos of the near and dear ones.
The unmatched couple stole down the stairs tied at the knot that united them for seven lifetimes. The first room that they entered was the source of the sound in question. Aunt Rupa was there holding a hand over the mouth of the grieving mother, or the grieving wife. Rupert handed Shimonthini the piece of cloth that tied her to him to enable her to approach her mother without his intrusion. When she took a closer look it was not her mother who scared her with her hysterics. Her father lay senseless on the floor. He had suffered a cardiac arrest.
The sound of her jewelry alerted the worried women. Sipra's eyes lit up with hope.
"Have you called an ambulance?" it was not the daughter who spoke but the mute son-in-law.
Both women gasped at the miracle but Shimonthini was more focused to translate her husband's words to a language that her mother and aunt were better placed to understand.
Aunt Rupa figured that what was more important than the answer was the question, "Your husband doesn't speak Bengali?"
"No, he doesn't" Shimonthini said curtly before involuntarily dialing nine-one-one on her phone. Then she asked aunt Rupa for the emergency services number. Here again, it was her husband who did the job of calling the ambulance before her family even got their priorities right.
By dawn, her father was stable and admitted to the ICU of a reputable hospital. How Rupert had managed to procure a bed in the hospital seemed a miracle. Sipra watched her elder son-in-law taking critical decisions through the wee hours of the morning. That dawn was really a dawn for her daughter. Rahul was right, however. Rupert did not talk, not unless a word out of him was critical. In that husband and wife were more than alike and though strangers the evening before Sipra saw her daughter seeking comfort in her husband's steady gaze and set of his jawline.
When Sipra had regained her senses her husband hadn't been feeling well. There was nothing to comfort her fears for her daughters except now. Sipra smiled content and thanked the Goddess who was a fortress to her devotees for being there for her daughter.
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