My crime; Radha’s punishment.
Chapter Twelve
Mohan peppered Smita with questions as soon as they were back in the car, but she answered in monosyllables as she jotted down last-minute impressions in her notebook. She was beat, emotional, and in no mood for conversation. For the first time, she wished Nandini had accompanied her here instead of Mohan, because as a professional minder, she would have known to leave her alone. Mohan, however, seemed oblivious to her reluctance to chat. After a few more minutes of her noncommittal replies, he finally got the hint. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Did I offend you in some way?”
“No,” she said, looking out the car window at the scenery around them. I hate this land, she thought. Everything about it is cruel and violent.
“Smita,” Mohan said, “what’s wrong, yaar?”
The fact was, she couldn’t explain this dark, nasty feeling that had grabbed hold of her. The only sun in my sky. That’s how Meena had described what her husband had meant to her. How did one survive such a loss?
“Smita?”
“What?” she snapped. “Can’t you see that I want to be left alone?”
Mohan’s jaw went slack. “I was just—”
“You were just what?” she demanded, then added before he could respond, “What were you and that old lady laughing and giggling about anyway?”
“That’s what you’re angry about?” Mohan sounded incredulous. “That I was cheering up an old woman who . . .”
“Damn straight. I’m out there interviewing that poor girl about the brutal murder of her husband, and we come back in to find you two laughing and joking.”
“I was trying to distract her,” Mohan said loudly. “So that you could talk to Meena and get your story. I thought I was helping you, but instead you are . . . I don’t even know what you’re saying.”
Mohan’s anger was so unexpected that Smita felt chastised and immediately regretful of her behavior. “Mohan,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
“I honestly don’t know how to help you,” Mohan said. “It’s like I have to apologize to you for everything in this country. Everything I see is now filtered through your eyes. And it all looks ugly and backward and—”
“Mohan, no. Please. I . . . I’m just frustrated, you know? But it was wrong of me to take it out on you.”
He took his eyes off the road to look at her. “Why do you hate India so much?”
Smita sighed. “I don’t,” she said at last. “I . . . there are many things I love about the country. And I know that what happened to Meena happens all over the world. Even in America, of course. I know that. I mean, trust me—I cover stories like these all the time.”
He nodded, and as suddenly as his temper had flared, the anger left his body. The change was so dramatic that Smita imagined that she’d heard a silent whoosh. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s drop it.”
She looked out the car window as they cut through the main village, shocked by how shabby everything looked. Small houses with corrugated metal roofs squatted next to ones covered merely with blue tarp. Flies hovered above the open drain that ran past some of the houses. They drove past a giant pit filled with refuse. A couple of young boys played desultorily near the pit, even as a strange, moldy smell seeped into the car. Smita thought that these huts looked even more ragged than the slums she’d passed on her way from the airport a few nights before. Then, she remembered: This was a Muslim village, which meant that it was even poorer than a typical one. A few old men, their faces dark against the white of their beards and skullcaps, stared expressionlessly as they drove by. There were no women around.
“Do you want to stop?” Mohan asked. “Talk to anyone?”
Smita considered for a moment, then shook her head no.
“I wanted to ask you,” Smita said when they were back on the main road, “do you understand the dialect Ammi speaks?”
He shrugged. “More or less. Some of the people who worked for my family came from villages near Birwad. I think the old security guard at my school was from around here.”
“Oh yeah? What school was that?”
“The Anand School for Boys.”
“Where’s that?”
“What?” Mohan said, his voice heavy with irony. “You haven’t heard of the world-famous Anand School for Boys?”
“No. Sorry.” A beat. “But I’m sure it was great, seeing how it produced a prodigy like you.”