Part 12 (1/2)

*Andha kya jaane aurat ka swaad,' Dhoopwali Mai says in a sly, slithering voice.

Gyan stands up in surprise. How could he have not sensed Dhoopwali Mai watching him-motionless and soundless-as he mended the broken chair?

*The one who's always in or always out?' Parvati asks.

Gyan wills the Mai to silence, but-*Gyan na jaane aangan tedha'-it's too late.

He hears Parvati's footsteps cross the veranda, and moves to the back of his kholi, which he imagines is dark and an ideal hideout. The curtain at his doorway swishes. Parvati is standing inside his kholi, for the very first time. He has nothing to welcome her with.

She stops, as if taken aback. *Is this a house or a factory?'

He doesn't know. This room is filled with cane chairs and his precious tools: needles, chisel, pegs, glue and nails. The only thing he calls his own is the straw mat that he sits on, a thin mattress that he sleeps on, and some hand-me-down clothes from his roommate Sunder. And though Gyan likes the lingering smell of bachelorhood in his house-c.u.m-factory, now he wishes that he'd made this place more homely, hung up a poster or two, if only of those busty women liked by other men.

*There isn't even a statue of Ganeshji here. Don't you believe in G.o.d?' Parvati continues.

Gyan has never understood the intense faith of damaged people. But his first meeting with Parvati must go well, so he replies, *I find it difficult to believe in something that I can't see.'

*Then you don't believe in anything,' Parvati says, her voice strong and insistent.

Gyan's throat clamps down on his speech. He swallows and draws a deep breath to stop the shakes that are starting in his body.

*How did you know that my chair was broken?' she persists.

Can he tell her how he knows? How he hears everything? No, it would cheat her out of thinking that the walls keep her secrets safe. But the little bells lining her dupatta jingle as she waits for his answer; she's probably twisting them around her finger. She is nervous. Is he wrong in not owning up to the truth?

Closing his eyes to the cruelty of life is stupid and sinful; since there is so little he can do about it, he should at least acknowledge it.

He blurts out: *I heard Sheel break the chair after you told him that you needed money to buy rice.'

Parvati's breathing becomes rapid. In a voice that's walking a tightrope, she says, *So you sit in this filthy G.o.dless place all day and spy on my husband and me?'

Spy? Doesn't she realize that he is someone with whom she can share her sorrow?

*What else have you heard?'

*Nothing more,' he lies.

*Do not lie to me. I've had enough of that,' she continues, relentless.

She's asking this more for herself than him, so he replies softly, unsure, *I've heard the things that he says to you. What he does. That time he snuffed out his bidi on your thigh. And how you cried after that for six straight days.'

Gyan feels a sharp clap against his cheek. His face becomes hot.

Parvati has slapped him.

*What sort of monster are you? Spying shamelessly on your neighbour's wife?' His ears are ringing as she laughs harshly. *And how would you know that I was crying? Do you even know what tears are? Can blind men even cry?'

She turns around and her steps bang against the hard floor, not stopping as she tells Dhoopwali Mai, *Waah! Waah! What a chawl I live in-the only people who can hear me are the ones who can't see.'

Gyan runs his fingers over the wall separating Parvati's house from his; he counts the lumps on it. On the first go he counts eighty-nine lumps. On the second try ninetytwo.

Her parting words play like a loop in his head.

It's been a long time since someone has reminded Gyan that he's blind. He'd be happier-it went without saying-if he could see, but he'd also be less of the person that he is. For a lame man can smile with a friend. A deaf man can walk straight. A mute man can admire the curves of the woman he loves. But blindness is not like that. Gyan can neither walk without it, nor share nor love without it. It consumes his life completely, becoming the vantage point from which everything else follows.

He hasn't minded it very much-no really-but now, after many years, he wishes that he could see, just to be able to show Parvati his tears. Show her that when she bears Sheel's beatings, it is Gyan who carries the scars, digging his nails deep into his flesh, drawing blood. That he wakes up when he hears her stir in the morning, boils his tea as she rummages through the kitchen utensils, grimaces through her sobs, which are the worst just before Sheel comes home, that he smiles on those rare moments when her voice is not gloomy-when Sheel finds a new job or hands her a little money saved from his drinking binges.

She doesn't know-can't know-that in many ways Gyan is married to her more than Sheel is.

Parvati had moved next door, to Sheel's kholi, seventysix days and four hours ago. Gyan was not invited to their wedding, couldn't imagine there being one since Sheel's first wife had burnt herself to death just a few weeks earlier. So that afternoon, when Gyan heard the clink of a ghada, he pressed his ears hard against the wall. There was a swish of rice grains across the cement floor. Then he heard a sliver of her laughter-the first sound he came to a.s.sociate with Parvati. It skimmed the edge of the darkness into which he'd slipped over the years and then, without warning, yanked him out of it. He became immobile with surprise, and in waiting for Parvati to laugh again, realizing at once that this woman would never just be his neighbour's wife.

The floor of Gyan's kholi becomes cooler. It's evening. He hears the office people's lingering footsteps return home to their sadness. There's a rustle near the curtain and from the smell of metal and sweat-underneath the overpowering lavender talc.u.m-Gyan knows that Sunder is home. With a customary thump Sunder sets down the case of hairbands and clips that he sells on the Western Railway line between Bhayandar and Palghar.

*Abbe Devdas,' he hears Sunder say. *I met Dhoopwali Mai downstairs and she told me that she hasn't heard your chisel all afternoon. Have you not made any chairs today? Do you want to starve? And it doesn't smell like you've made dinner either. Now, we're really going to starve.'

Gyan doesn't reply.

Sunder adds, *Now, now ... don't be so serious, Gyan Da. I was joking. You think I'd let you starve?' Something lands near Gyan's feet as Sunder continues, *I got b.u.t.terpav for us; two for each.'

Gyan doesn't reach for the b.u.t.ter-pav, all hunger having vacated his empty stomach.

A pause. Sunder asks, *Have you become deaf as well? I got pav with b.u.t.ter. When was the last time you even had b.u.t.ter?'

Sunder opens the small wooden container in which he locks his belongings, and continues talking. *I'm feeling rich today. A wedding party full of women going to Mira Road bought most of my clips, even the expensive fifteenrupee ones. And, they forced me to eat so much mithai, as if I was the groom.'

Sunder often regales Gyan with happy stories of kindness, of ladies who treat him to food and other delights, of men who treat him as an equal. Gyan has no choice but to believe him, for even the chawl women whisper that Sunder has the fairest face among all the chawl men, the biggest chest, the politest manners. Nanu, who took them both in, used to say the same thing.

Sunder sits next to Gyan and says, *You're spying on Aacharvati again?' Sunder gave Parvati this nickname after she took on the part-time job of Sheel's dead wife, fixing little caps of gingham cloth and labels onto the local Mother Love pickle bottles. *If only you could see her. Small cunning eyes, big ugly nose, thin brown lips, and dark skin as if her husband cannot afford Fair & Lovely ...'

Gyan turns grimly towards Sunder. *And how would you know?'

There is a silence before Sunder replies gaily, *Unlike you, my brother-in-blindness, I don't lock myself in this kholi all day long. The chawl women talk about her and tell me that Sheel has found a perfect match. While you, on the other hand, are wasting your time. After all you are what my movie people would call a chikna, true film star material.'

Sunder is probably talking about himself again, still dreaming of going to acting school and dancing beside Kareena Kapoor, something that Nanu so often encouraged him to do. For even Gyan's mother, when he asked her if it was true that he was ugly-like the other children said-would hide his face in the rough weave of her green sari and say, *G.o.d made you different because he loves you.'

Sunder unwraps the pav and puts it in Gyan's hands, *Eat!'

Gyan turns back to the wall. Unlike him, Sunder was born with perfect vision, a cowherd's son who lived in Tej, a small village in Punjab's Nawanshahr District. One day, when he was around ten or eleven, he was grazing cows in a field near the landlord's mango groves. The landlord's son-older, powerful-ordered him to pluck a mango from a tree. Sunder refused. The landlord's son asked again. Sunder said no. The landlord's son called five of his friends and they told Sunder to get the mango or else. Sunder ignored them. Mad with rage, the six boys broke branches from the mango tree and beat Sunder with them. They spared no part of Sunder's body, including his face. An inch of bark got lodged inside Sunder's right eye, blinding it, and a few weeks later, he could no longer see from his left eye either.

Gyan's story is different. He was born blind, the first in his family. His mother said, *It's okay not to see too much. Even those with sight go through life seeing nothing at all.' Gyan wanted to believe her; after all, nothing is more acceptable than what you're born into.

But his father, who grew bananas on their one-acre family farm in Naugachia, Bihar, was unhappy with his son's disability. Still, when Bhoomi-a government employee, from the nearby town of Jabli-came to him one day and said, *The government is giving free treatment to blind children. I will take your son to Mumbai and return him in a week, fully cured, everything paid for,' his father said no. The next week a mysterious fire started in a corner of their farm. *Save the farm,' his father shouted to him. *Get some water.' Gyan could not find the water pail. The next morning, squatting on his burnt farmland, his father put his thumb impression on Bhoomi's paper and handed Gyan over to the man. True to his word, Bhoomi brought Gyan to Mumbai where, untrue to his word, he put him to work in this kholi with twenty other blind boys, including Sunder-all victims of the same racket-and Nanu, their kind but capricious caretaker. Due to his introverted nature, Gyan was a.s.signed the task of caning chairs. It was Sunder who found out that Gyan's mother had hanged herself from a tamarind tree (under which Gyan and she so often played hide-and-seek), and his father had left the village, never to be seen again. Within a week of hearing this, Gyan asked Nanu to buy him dark gla.s.ses, which he put on and never took off again.

Parvati's life continues as if Gyan and she have never met, but he carries on listening, more than before.