They didn’t speak until the house was a speck from the rearview mirror. Then, a livid Smita turned on Mohan. “What the hell was that about? You actually got in the way of my doing my job. What gave you the right to bulldoze your way into my interview?”
Mohan raised one hand, as if to fend off a blow. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper. Forgive me.”
She glared at him and turned away. She looked out of the window even as Mohan spoke. “I don’t know how you do this job, yaar. I . . . I just wanted to choke him. After seeing how they’d ruined that poor girl.”
Nandini wouldn’t have interfered like this, Smita thought. She would’ve known the importance of dispassion, of allowing sources to reveal themselves in their own time, in their own words. But Mohan was not a professional. He was merely an acquaintance who had given up his own vacation to help her. He had reacted in the way any sentient human being would. And she needed him for his male presence. It grated on Smita to admit it, but if Govind had not believed that Mohan was her husband, he wouldn’t have allowed her to enter his home.
“I want to make one more stop,” Smita said. “Let’s head back to the main village. I need to talk to that fucking village chief.”
Chapter Seventeen
When Radha and I were children, we used to play a game. She would ask, “What is the true color of the world, Didi?”
And I would say, “Green.”
“Why green?”
“Because the trees are green. Grass is green. The new buds on the plants are green. Even the parrots are green. Green is the color of the world.”
“But, Didi,” Radha would argue, “the wheat stalks are brown. My body is brown. The field mice are brown. No, the world is brown.”
“What about blue?” I would say. “The sky is blue. And it covers the whole world, like a mother who loves and embraces all her children.”
Radha would fall silent, and I would remember that she had known our mother’s love for even fewer years than I did. So I would take her in my arms and hold her, to make her know what it feels like to be loved.
Today I know the truth: The true color of the world is black.
Anger is black.
Shame and scandal are black.
Betrayal is black.
Hatred is black.
And a roasted, smoking body is Black, Black, Black.
The world, after witnessing such cruelty, goes black.
The waking up to a changed world is black.
He comes to me at night, when it is only me and Abru, sleeping in our hut. Sometimes, he smells like the last time, smoky, like burnt hair. Like the taste that is forever in my mouth. But most of the time, he smells like he used to—like the river, like the grass, like the smell of our land after the first rain.
Ammi complained loudly when I first began to visit our old hut, but I think she is now happy to have her own house at night. Every time she sees my face, she is reminded of the night when two of the goondas held her back as she screamed and screamed, watching her oldest son ablaze. Of how she cried as she watched me trying to beat the flames off Abdul’s body until the heat melted my hands and I passed out from the pain.
It is only when I visit my old hut at night that I feel at peace. Always, I pretend to be asleep when Abdul visits so that he can feel like he is surprising me. I shut my eye and roll over onto my side as I lie on the mud floor. He puts his arms around me from behind, his hips moving against my hips, his knees fitting inside the bend of my knees. We stay like this until he drains all the fear and hatred out of my heart.
Once, a long time ago, when Nishta, my old neighbor in Vithalgaon, had jaundice, Rupal came to her house with a small stone. He rubbed the smooth stone over her body and then asked Nishta’s mother to wash her with a wet towel. When the woman wrung the towel outside, yellow water poured out of it. We all saw it. Rupal said it was the jaundice coming out of Nishta’s body.
Fear and hatred have turned my heart black. But with his love, Abdul wrings my heart clean every night.
His love.
Abdul’s love for me.
At the factory, the boss would give us a fifteen-minute lunch break. There was a large jamun tree in the compound, and Radha and I would sit under its motherly branches and eat our meal. We had never had enough to eat, but now, with both of us working, we stuffed our tiffin box with rice and dal and ate like men. Still, habit made me save a little of my food for Radha each day. Occasionally, two other women, both married, ate with us. But they were from a distant village and mostly kept to themselves. Once, I asked them if the menfolk in their village were also angry at them for working, but they shook their heads no. “See, Didi?” Radha said. “Only Vithalgaon has such backward customs.”