The Selector of Souls Read online

  Lord, give him a heart attack. Maim him before I sin.

  “What matters is who you know—not what you know,” Vikas often says to Anu. A member of the Old Boys Associations of Sanawar School and Hindu College, the Delhi Golf Club, the Habitat Centre and the India International Centre, he is proud to be even a Dependent Member of the venerable Delhi Gymkhana Club thanks to his father. He works hard to keep up with the party circuit. “We must attend,” is followed by, “I invited about eighty guests for cocktails and dinner, maybe fifty will turn up.” Which launches Anu into a frenzy of purchasing and cooking, and ordering shamiana-tents and caterers, flower arrangements and musicians, leaving no time to read or implement her own ideas, or even help Chetna with homework.

  Nightly, Vikas makes shows of plenty to people who undertake fasts and pilgrimages and spend lakhs of rupees—no, crores of rupees—on religious ceremonies, weddings and birthday parties. Nightly he exchanges gold-embossed invitations, floral arrangements and shiny wrapped gifts with people of high blood and low competence. They drink Dom Pérignon and eat canapés while the poor go unnoticed and unfed. He’s entangled her in a new version of colonialism.

  Arrow number two: pale gold—colour of caution, colour of all those could-haves.

  Could Anu have written to Vikas and confessed her feelings about children before the wedding, feelings everyone assured her would pass upon marriage? No. Vikas could have jilted her and left her reputation in tatters.

  Could she have realized that Vikas was comparing her to someone? Anu writes the numeral one in gurmukhi script, then a three as if beginning an “om.” She extends its tail up, and over to join the beginning. One more arc jumping from there, and it becomes “Ik Onkar,” symbol of the Sikhs. There must have been more to his first fiancée, besides her religion.

  And now Arrow number three: Green for Chetna—colour of movement, change, and growth. With the green pencil, Anu draws, then colours in a telephone receiver.

  Anu had been on the phone with Rano late at night. Vikas was travelling. Rano was on her lunch hour, as lonely in Toronto as Anu was in Delhi. After the usual discussion of family members, Rano said her period had come again, and she’d cried, and so had her husband, Jatin. Six thousand dollars worth of fertility treatments, all for nothing. Two little blocked fallopian tubes and she just cannot conceive.

  Then Rano had asked delicately about Vikas, and Anu began in a falsely bright tone. But she soon faltered, tears came, and she whispered to her cousin, “You know how it was, Rano. I never wanted this child.” And Rano said, “Hai, don’t say that, sis. Listen, Anu. Listen very carefully. If you really don’t want her, send her to me. Jatin will be delighted, I know.”

  And the next moment, a click on the line. Had Vikas come home early and heard her? She hung up quickly and walked into the kitchen. There was Chetna, receiver in hand, tears plopping into her Ovaltine-laced milk.

  “You never wanted me, Mummy, you don’t want me.”

  “Oh, no darling,” she’d said. “It’s just that I’d promised myself I’d never have a child—any child.” How could she explain that at twenty, she walked around looking like a woman, feeling feminine—attractive, caring, kind, able to feel for the aged or sick without reserve, feeling no distaste for children, overflowing with love for parents, relatives, fiancé, country—but failing to need a child of her own?

  Maybe one day Chetna will understand Anu’s promise to herself to remain childless. When Anu was growing up the US Agency for International Development, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, WHO, Swedish International Development Authority, Population Council, UNFPA, IMF and Indian Government all tutt-tutt-tutted that Indian women were having far too many children. Restrain yourselves! they said. It’s an explosion, said European experts, even as their armies pointed missiles at one another. You’re procreating too often, they said, even as the Pill bifurcated procreation from pleasure. Control your breeding, they said, and there’ll be more water, food, land and brotherly love for each man, woman and child in India. Back in the early seventies the slogan went, “India was Indira and Indira was India,” and Madam G. loomed on billboards at traffic intersections, berating Indians for having more than two children. The year India managed to sterilize six and a half million men, a younger Anu told Rano that having children was a selfish act of self-perpetuation, an imposition on India’s resources, and a sacrifice of a woman’s independence. She would have self-control.

  But Rano just laughed and said Anu would feel differently as soon as she was married, that love would come and hormones would kick in and that having a child would make a woman of her. And to believe anything else was abnormal.

  Chetna will never understand how naive her mother was. How could Anu have expected her parents to find her a man who would love her for being herself, not because she was equipped to produce babies? How utterly stupid, how clueless she was to believe she could remain childless in the face of her husband’s expectations, and her in-laws’ expectations. And Vikas’s prodding to produce the son he needed to carry on his family name, and the family businesses. Otherwise, he had demanded to know, what was he working for?

  “If you didn’t want me, why did you have me?” wept Chetna.

  “Because …” Anu couldn’t tell Chetna the whole truth. Never, ever.

  The act that conceived Chetna was rape—even if the policewoman with the black leather chestband said, “Such things don’t happen in India. Only abroad.” She cocked her cap over her sleek coconut-oiled hair and said, “If somehow it happened in India, it is not a crime,” and refused to register Anu’s complaint. It was rape, even if Pammy Kohli denied it happened, and then said Anu had brought it on herself by saying No, and now doesn’t remember any such incident.

  Chetna was born of Vikas’s disbelief that any woman would not want a child. She was born of violence, and Anu’s lack of contraception. She’d fully intended to use the rhythm method.

  Raping your wife is not a crime. Killing your husband is a crime.

  And premeditated murder is an even larger crime, which would lead to years in prison.

  Now a green cord grows from the receiver on the page. Anu curls it up into white space.

  A partial truth came out that night, as she attempted to reassure her crying daughter: “Because once you were coming, I couldn’t … I mean … I began to want you.” A child Anu once saw as theoretical moved into her body, its very real hunger causing her nausea, its will to survive competing with her body’s early desire to expel it. But once Anu felt Chetna’s first fiery movements in her belly, she could not bring herself to extinguish a life-spark, and allowed the baby to use her body as incubator. Rano had counselled that a woman is incomplete without the experience of children. That if she had one, she would see.

  “Then you were born,” Anu said, taking the phone from Chetna and choosing her words for an eight-year-old as she hung it up, “And I fell in love with you. That’s why I called you Chetna—it means self-knowing—do you know that?”

  Anu could not refuse that tiny hand groping for her breast, laying claim to her body. You will love me, said that gesture, and incredibly, mother-love came like a life-jolt from heaven. The moment she named Chetna, Anu connected with a force much stronger than herself. She was responsible for a life, this one life, and time could never again be linear. She wanted to strain the world through her fingers for Chetna. She found herself petitioning god and all the gods and Lord Jesus to hold her daughter safe.

  Vikas’s first words when he saw Chetna two days after she was born were, “I wanted a boy.” A boy, a boy, everyone wants a son. An heir and a spare, if your wife does her duty. Unless she’s as “unnatural” as Anu.

  And if the sight of Chetna sometimes brought memories of violence and pain, she tried for the child’s sake to pretend to like motherhood. She even went so far as not to hire a maid, though as her mother continually reminded her, all her school friends had. Soon she was charmed by Chetna’s tiny hands in hers, aski
ng to be lifted, carried, changed, bathed, and fed. She caught Chetna’s first steps, first words and small joys on camera and videotape. Along with the authority of motherhood, Anu discovered patience, a quality she never knew she had. It bloomed from guilt, she knew, guilt that she could not feel total and utter love. “You’ll see,” said Rano, “It will come.” As a mother, Anu has tried to be firm, consistent, awe-inspiring and funny. It helps that her little girl is easily delighted by songs, stories or coloured pencils like the ones rolling back, rolling forward in Anu’s palm.

  But the night of the phone call, Chetna was not persuaded. The overheard conversation loomed larger in her mind than all Anu’s protests. A week later, she came to Anu. “Mama, please send me to Rano Aunty,” she said in her high solemn voice. “She wants me.”

  Anu outlines an airplane, jet streams shooting from its engines. She draws a maple leaf on its tail, and colours it red.

  Chetna badgered Anu and Vikas to send her to Aunty Rano for a visit. And Rano helped, gaily reminding Vikas that Anu could get a discount through her employer, a travel agency. She sent letters addressed to the Canadian High Commission certifying her sponsorship for Chetna’s visa. She did everything but mail Chetna a ticket—that might imply Vikas couldn’t afford to send his daughter abroad.

  And as soon as he realized Anu didn’t want Chetna to go, Vikas was all in favour. Of course his daughter must go after the school term ended. So with an “unaccompanied minor” sign around her neck, Chetna left three weeks ago in May to spend a summer in Canada.

  Anu’s pencil line connects the curly telephone cord to the airplane’s jet stream. She brushes away a drop that has somehow landed on the paper.

  What would Vikas look like bound hand and foot? How wonderful she’d feel standing over him, weapon in hand. A gun? A knife? Maybe poison.

  Clap-clap. Vikas’s Peshawari-style sandals on the marble staircase. Nerves pulse and skitter beneath her skin. Calm down, calm down.

  He must be climbing to the guest apartment and air-cooled yoga chamber on the third storey. There he’ll pay his respects to his mother’s guru Swami Rudransh.

  Arrow number four: Anu takes a saffron pencil from the tin and draws a circle, two beady eyes, a pleat between them, and a moustache. Here’s the swami’s round face and double chin. Two black dots for eyes, eating up the adulation of his devotees. And between them, a large red bindi. Her mother-in-law’s precious Swami Rudransh. Here’s his bare chest, the brahmin-cord draped across it. Darken the cord till it’s black.

  Like god, the swami has no fixed address. Like god, he can arrive anytime at his devotees’ homes, and stay as long as he likes. And does. A house guest who expects and receives special vegetarian meals, who must be entertained in air conditioning and given a sheepskin to sit on as if it were a throne. Who spent the whole of last evening preaching against ego for his followers, yet expected his hosts to bow low before him.

  “To meet him is a blessing,” Anu’s mother-in-law insists. She counts herself in the swami’s inner circle of disciples. “He only meets those I bring to his attention. So many yearn to be in his presence and are never as lucky as you. His blessings have brought all our good fortune.”

  In the swami’s presence, Vikas tempers his Punjabi swagger, turns charming, even obsequious. He who has a B.A. (Pass) Second Division degree in Applied Science from Delhi University, and who finds fault everywhere, can find no illogic in the swami’s claims that every important idea in the world was conceived by Aryans of Vedic times. Hindus, before Hinduism was named, from a pre-colonial, pre-Mughal India.

  Last night before dinner, Vikas led the swami into each room of the house and the swami raised his hand in blessing. When he entered this one, Chetna’s, his presence felt like a desecration.

  And Anu just followed along behind Vikas and her in-laws, stomach churning with self-loathing, smiling a don’t-notice-me smile.

  The sumptuous dinner Vikas and his mother ordered had kept Anu, the cook, two bearers, two maids and three messenger boys in the heat-hazed kitchen the whole day, chopping, frying and roasting enough to feed a hundred beggars. But all Vikas said was, “Where is the paneer? I told you Swami-ji likes paneer.” Hot-cheeked, Anu explained that the health ministry had banned the sale of cheese throughout Delhi until the June heat abated.

  And the plates—why had Anu laid the table with china? She should know that pure silver platters were to be used for grand guests, grand occasions. Anu dutifully cleared away the plates and asked the cook to bring in silver platters. Then before everyone, Vikas upbraided the cook and Anu for the tarnished silver.

  When everyone was seated again, the swami held forth in English from the head of the table. What is required, he said, as if speaking to multitudes from behind a podium, is an awakening of national self-respect. “Hinduism,” he said, “is thee only releejun in thee world to which you cannot convert. It has thee most toleration, never insisting on only one god.”

  He informed the family that Ayurveda can cure cancer, heart disease, diabetes and glaucoma. “And obeesity,” he said, tucking in.

  Anu values all aspects of the eternal. She has nothing against scientifically proven, harmless and curative Ayurvedic remedies. But last night, the swami’s perversion of Hinduism burrowed beneath her skin. “Read thee ancient vedas,” the swami said to Vikas. “Pranic healing, kundalini, reincarnation and karma have now been proved by pheesics and biology. Vedic pheesics is only now being discovered by thee West.”

  Such rhetoric had fuelled the nationalism of freedom fighters against British rule in the 1930s and 40s—but the swami had updated Sri Aurobindo and Vivekananda’s ideas with pseudo-science. “Read Thee Bell Curve?” he told Anu. “Now West has proven in this book that thee highest intelligence goes with thee highest caste with thee lightest skin.” He didn’t seem to realize he was emulating British colonialists by dressing his prejudices in scientific conviction. “See, Western scientists too are finally learning thee value of classifeecation by varna. You understand varna?” he said, patronizingly positive she knew no Sanskrit. “It means complexion. Hinduism understood this long long ago, and this is why Hinduism is superior to every other releejun. Now you see why we must change our schools, libraries, newspapers—all influence of thee West must go from India. Including English.”

  Vikas nodded, and so did his parents. But if English goes, the Punjabi they speak, and about three hundred other languages, might be next.

  For the swami, being a Hindu and being Indian had somehow become the same. The Christian side of Anu was affronted. “English is an official language, ji,” she ventured, in a voice delicate and shivery as a spider strand. “Gandhi, Nehru, Rammohan Roy, Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati, Tagore … all of them were Hindus. But they spoke English as you do, and wrote very well in English.” Her voice strengthened into the coaxing tone she used with Chetna. “Besides, if you banish foreign languages we won’t be able to read Voltaire or Shakespeare’s plays. Or Darwin. Or the philosophy of Locke, Kant, Jefferson or Franklin.”

  “Foreign writers.” The swami waved them into non-existence. “All making a separation between matter and thee spirit.”

  “We’ll have to give up cricket and polo and all learn to play kho-kho!” Anu said with a laugh. No one else laughed with her, Vikas only laughs at his own jokes, anyway. She should have noticed the thunderous anger gathering behind her husband’s eyes. Should have noticed the pleat between the swami’s brows deepening, the expression of disapproval changing to affront. And she should have changed the subject. Instead she blurted sweetly, “If you want to remove all foreign influence, we should all leave the country to our tribals.”

  As if she’d pressed a button, the swami launched into a bizarre version of history: “Hinduism and the vedas were always here in the sacred motherland. Aryans were always here—don’t let anyone mislead you with migration and invasion stories. Foreign invaders—Muslims and the British—built thee cities of Moen-jo-daro and Harapp
a in the Thar Desert, covered them up and then ‘discovered’ them to make us believe there was a civilization before Vedic times. Tribals and low-castes are Hindus, too—at least for voting. Real Hindus are not willing to turn thee country over to Muslims. Real Hindus understand what thee vedas say, ‘Everyone has his dharma.’ You understand dharma?” he asked. “Thee duties of his caste. This is thee correct definition of the Sanskrit word. And thee vedas say ‘Everyone has his ashrams.’ You understand ashrams? His stages of life.”

  Mrs. Pammy Kohli closed her eyes and smiled blissfully, as if a woman’s duties and life stages were just the same as a man’s. Anu, now trying to steer the conversation back to the future, asked, “How will we learn medical science or genetics without English—so much research is happening in English.”

  “All matter, living and non-living, is essential energy. What we call brahman. Foreign scientists make a separation between science and releejun, spirituality and science. But science is just an instrument, thee weapon of spirituality. Do you know, aeroplanes are mentioned in thee Rig Veda from 23,720 BC? And in thee Ramayan. Divisible and indivisible atoms are in Shrimad Bhagwat, written in 4000 BC. Nuclear energy and black holes are described in thee Mundakopanishad, gravitational force is in thee teachings of Shankaracharya. Foreign scientists do many years of research and spend millions of dollars to conclude what we already know. They suffer from illusion.”

  Suffering from illusion seemed more attractive to Anu last night than the swami’s religiosity. Yet why did his faith ring false? She believes in the Christian god plus all the gods. She’s a baptized Hindu-Christian complete with all the contradictions of faith and reason. She too has stated belief in a divine human god-man, Lord Jesus Christ. At five or six, Mumma taught her the yoga poses she does each morning. Dadu read Krishnamurti, Tagore and many other Indian religious philosophers.