Homeless Bird Page 6

  When Sass returned, the tickets were quickly put away. Sass appeared almost happy, pulling out the few remaining pots to make pooris, which we had not had since Chandra’s marriage. “I have an appetite,” she said. And then she added, with the same sly smile I had seen so much lately, “I have a treat for you. We will stop at Vrindavan on our way to Delhi. It is a holy city with a great many temples. It would be well for us to make a pilgrimage before beginning our new lives.”

  I was excited at the thought of seeing such a holy city, but puzzled. Never before had my sass spoken of temples. She seldom started her day with a puja to the household shrine. Perhaps, I thought, Sassur’s death has made her think more about such things. Still, I was uncertain.

  As unhappy as I had been in my sass’s house, a thorn of sadness pricked at me when it came time to leave. I had swept the courtyard so often that every inch was familiar to me. There was the mango tree with the rope Chandra and I had swung on. There was the little garden where I brought water to the neat rows of eggplant and okra. The river where I washed the clothes and studied my books was a friend. I could not guess how it would be to live in a large city like Delhi. I did not know how the family of Sass’s brother would treat me. Because I was leaving it, my sass’s house, where for so long I had felt unwelcome, now seemed like home. I even said goodbye to the bandicoot, which switched its tail and twitched its whiskers at me in a friendly way.

  Sass said good-bye to nothing and counted the hours until our departure. She hummed as she packed her things. I was pleased to see she took the quilt I had made in Hari’s memory.

  The morning we were to leave, she was up before dawn, a greedy smile on her face as if she were about to take a big bite of something tasty. I made a bedroll of the quilt I had made for my dowry. My few clothes and my book of Tagore’s poems went into a basket. We set out in a wagon for the railway station. I kept looking back over my shoulder at what had been our home, but Sass stared straight ahead.

  At the station we pushed our way through the crowds and past water wallahs, tea wallahs, and ice cream wallahs. Sass paused only to buy two palm leaf fans, giving me one. I took it gratefully. It was the only gift she had ever given to me.

  By the time we struggled into the ladies’ compartment of the train, all the seats were taken. We had to push our way onto a little space of floor. It was hot and smelly, and I couldn’t move without getting in the way of someone else. Still, my unhappiness and worry soon melted into wonder as miles of green fields rushed by, and small villages, and once a large city.

  More people crowded onto the train, so I was pushed into a corner where I could no longer look out or feel the slight breeze from the open window. Most of the passengers, like ourselves, had brought something to eat for the journey. The smells of the food, along with the swaying and jerks of the train, were beginning to make me sick.

  Sass studied me. “You’re pale, girl; you had better get out at the next stop and take some air.” At the next stop, with much complaining, Sass led me off the train. She opened her umbrella to shield us from the hot sun and walked me about. When we got back on the train, I finally fell asleep.

  When I awoke, we had reached the holy city of Vrindavan. As we got off the train and I saw the crowds of people, I asked, “Where will we stay, Sass?”

  “I’ll find a place,” she said. “For now we’ll leave our things at the parcel office so we won’t have to carry them about.”

  After we checked our baskets and bedrolls, Sass handed me my claim check and hurried me into the street, where she hailed a bicycle rickshaw. The rickshaw was decorated with small flags in bright colors. The seats were swept clean and the bicycle polished. “Take us to a temple,” Sass ordered the rickshaw boy.

  The boy laughed. “There are four thousand temples. Which one do you want?” The boy was only a few years older than I was. He was tall and lean, but in the leanness there was strength. His hair was badly cut and stood up in odd tufts. There was an insolent look on his face. I admired him for not being intimidated by my sass. “Make up your minds,” he told us. “I’m losing money by standing here.”

  Sass gave him a push. “Don’t be rude with me, boy. Just take us to a temple. Any temple.” She gave the boy a shrewd look. “One close by. I’m not going to pay a big fare.” She climbed into the rickshaw and pulled me in after her.

  The boy shrugged and, standing on the pedals to give himself a start, he took off. As we rode through the streets of the city, everywhere I looked I saw women in white widows’ saris like mine. “Why are there so many widows here, Sass?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “It is the city they come to. They are taken care of here.”

  Many of the widows were old, but many were young, some even younger than I was. Suddenly I was anxious to leave the city. “How long will we stay here, Sass?” I asked.

  “Only a day.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. However difficult my life would be in Delhi, I would not be surrounded by thousands of widows to remind me that my life, like theirs, was over.

  The boy stopped his rickshaw and held out his hand. “Four rupees,” he demanded.

  Sass glared at him. “You take us for country folk who know no better? Two rupees is enough.” The boy ran after us complaining so loudly that Sass grudgingly gave him the other two rupees. As he turned away, he gave me an impudent wink.

  The temple was filled with chanting widows in white saris. Some looked peaceful, almost joyful. Others looked thin, hungry, and miserable, as if they wished they were somewhere else. Their hunger reminded me of my own. Our food on the train had lasted only until breakfast. As if she could read my mind, Sass said, “Here is a fifty-rupee note. Go and find us some food, and don’t settle for the first vendor you see. I’ll wait in the temple where it’s cool. Mind you don’t lose the change.”

  I clasped the money tightly in my hand, afraid someone would take it from me. Sass had never before trusted me with so much money. Keeping my eye on the temple to be sure I would not be lost, I went by two vendors before I found one with samosas that looked both clean and tasty. I asked the price and counted my change twice. Holding two samosas in one hand and the rupees I had received in change in the other, I hurried back to the corner of the temple where I had left Sass. She wasn’t there. While I waited for her to return, I ate my samosa. I could not imagine where she had gone. Finally I decided she was looking for a place for us to stay. Still, I felt little shivers of fear.

  I tried not to worry. The temple was cool and the sound of the chanting peaceful. Now that my stomach was satisfied, I felt a little better. I waited for an hour and then another hour. The chanting never stopped. Somehow I believed that as long as the chanting went on, I had nothing to worry about. It would only be a matter of time before Sass would return for me and all would be well. It was nearly dusk when the chanting stopped. The second samosa had been eaten long ago. The widows in their white saris stole silently from the temple. A terrible panic came over me. I rushed from the temple.

  I didn’t know where to start looking for Sass. I was used to our small village. The streets of Vrindavan were like an overturned ants’ nest. I wondered if I had misheard Sass. Perhaps she had changed her mind about staying in Vrindavan. Maybe she had told me to meet her back at the railway station. I stopped one of the widows and asked for directions to the station. She looked at my white widow’s sari. I thought I saw in her look pity, and something more frightening—a look of kinship.

  Though the sun was setting, it was still hot, as if some invisible sun were beating down on me. Beads of perspiration formed on my forehead and my upper lip and ran down my face. My sari clung to me. Shops and businesses were closing, and the streets became moving rivers of people pushing against one another.

  Twice more I had to stop someone to ask directions. Each time there was a pitying look on the face of the widow I asked. It was nearly dark when I finally arrived at the station, where passengers waiting for the morning trains were cooking th
eir suppers on small stoves. Some were already stretched out on mats. I quickly made the rounds of the station, but Sass was not there.

  I went to the parcel counter where we had checked our things and got my basket and bedroll. “Did the woman who was with me come for her things?” I asked, but the attendant had just come on duty and knew nothing of Sass.

  At the entrance to the station stood a line of rickshaws. I had forty-seven rupees tied up in my sari, but I could not waste them on a rickshaw, and anyhow I would not know where to go. In the line I saw a rickshaw with small flags, and next to it stood the boy with the wayward hair. I felt a great relief in seeing someone in the city I had seen before, someone I almost knew. I hurried toward him. “Have you seen my sass?” I asked.

  He stared at me for a long while as if he were trying to remember me. “Oh, yes,” he said with a bitter smile. “I was back here when she returned. She tried to cheat her new driver just as she cheated me.”

  “If she came back, where is she now?”

  “On the train. I saw her get on the train to Delhi. It wasn’t an hour after I had taken you to the temple.”

  eight

  I suppose part of me had known all along. The thought had been waiting like a scorpion at the edge of my mind. Now it stung me, and I nearly cried out with the pain. There had been the letters from her brother in Delhi that she had never let me see. There had been the secret buying of the railway tickets. There had been the mysterious smile. She had taken care that I did not know her address in Delhi. I knew I could never find her in that city of millions. All I had were the forty-seven rupees tied into my sari. I understood now why she had entrusted me with so much money. It was to ease her conscience. Much as I hated to let the boy see me weep, I could not keep tears from streaming down my cheeks.

  The boy looked at me. “It happens every day here,” he said. “You can go and chant in the temple like the other widows do. The monks will give you food.”

  He continued to look at me. The insolent look was gone, and there was kindness in his face. He was about to say something when a man with a briefcase jumped into his rickshaw and ordered, “Get along.” The boy gave me one more look and pedaled away.

  It was evening. The shadows climbed up the walls of the jumbled buildings and fell across the narrow alleys. I walked aimlessly. One street looked like another, and I could not tell if I had been down them before. I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that I hadn’t found it and didn’t think I ever would. My bedroll and basket were heavy. I was tired and hungry and only wanted to lie down. I knew others must have felt the same, for charpoys and mattresses began to appear on the sidewalks. Sometimes one person, sometimes a whole family settled down to sleep. I would have welcomed dropping down on a bit of sidewalk, but I didn’t know what was allowed or what bit of sidewalk was spoken for.

  An elderly woman was watching me from a doorstep where she huddled, her dirty white widow’s sari drawn about her. She beckoned to me with a long, bony finger. When I went over to her, she moved even further into the corner of the doorway. She pointed to the empty space she had made. “You can sleep here,” she said. “The people in the house will not chase you away. They even threw out a little food for me.” She handed me a small portion of rice. It was cold and sticky. Gratefully I swallowed it. “Have you just come?” she asked.

  “Yes, my sass left me this morning. I don’t know where she is. Maybe she will come back for me.”

  The old woman shook her head. “You won’t see her again. It was the same with me. I came two months ago. When my husband died, I was no longer needed. His property was divided between his brothers. The brothers brought me here.”

  “Why would they bring you here and leave you?” I asked. “Why didn’t they take care of you?”

  “Once they had my husband’s property, they had no more use for me. They said widows were unlucky to have about. The truth is that I am too old for hard work.”

  If there were such cruelness in the world, then it might indeed be true that Sass had taken me to this place of widows just to get rid of me. I was alone in a strange city with only a few rupees and no friends. “How do you get by?” I managed to ask.

  “I am a servant of the Lord Krishna. Like the other widows I go each day to a temple and chant for four hours. The monks in the temple feed us, and there is the pittance of my widow’s pension. I had a room I shared with other widows, but the landlord wanted it back for his family, so we were all turned out. Now I must find a new room.”

  All around us people were settling down on the sidewalks. Babies and small children snuggled against their mothers or sisters. Some of the people fell asleep immediately, as if their square of sidewalk were as much a shelter as a house would be. Others chatted with their neighbors or prepared a bit of food, feeding the cooking fires with leaves and twigs. Across from us small children were pushing dogs aside to hunt for bits of food in a pile of rubbish.

  Even with my bedroll to soften the stone of the doorway, I could not sleep. Often I reached down to assure myself that the rupees were still tied carefully in a corner of my sari and then tucked securely into my waist knot. I told myself I should see if the rupees would buy a railway or bus ticket back to my maa and baap. But how could I do that? What the woman had told me was true. Because they had lost their husbands, widows were considered unlucky. If my family learned what had happened to me, it would bring them unhappiness and even shame. By now my older brother might be married, and his wife would be living in the home of my parents. There would be no room for me. Somehow I would have to make my life here.

  The next morning I was awakened by the chanting of morning hymns coming over loudspeakers. The widow I had shared the doorstep with was gone. The mattresses and charpoys were disappearing from the sidewalks. At a street corner I joined a line at a faucet for a little water to wash in and to drink. I bought the cheapest bowl of dal I could find.

  I could not keep myself from returning to the railway station. I did not really believe I would ever see Sass again; still, I could not help hoping that she would come back. I waited all day. Once I saw a woman in the distance who I thought was Sass. I called out and ran toward her, only to find a stranger, annoyed by my cries. Even the rickshaw boy did not appear.

  That night I had the doorstep to myself, for the widow did not return. Just as she said, the door to the house opened and a bit of food was handed out, this time a chapati, which I quickly ate though a small child stood nearby watching hungrily. Afterward I was ashamed, for I still had some rupees, and the child had nothing.

  I knew that I could not afford a room, but wandering through the city I saw signs tacked to some houses, advertising beds. When I inquired, I learned that if I were to pay for both food and a bed, my rupees would soon be gone. After asking several widows, I found the government building where pensions were given out. There was a form to be filled out. Because of Sassur’s teaching I was able quickly to complete the form, all but an address. I could not say I lived on a doorstep off the Purana Bazaar.

  “You have not put your address down,” the official said.

  “Until I get my pension,” I explained, “I can’t afford a place to live. Can’t I pick up my pension here?”

  He shook his head as if the thought were beyond considering. “No, no. Pensions are mailed. Return when you have an address.”

  I tried everywhere to find work, but for every job there were a hundred seekers. For a week the doorstep was my home. When others tried to sleep there, I was not as generous as the elderly widow had been but selfishly chased them away. My rupees were nearly gone, and all I had was the doorstep and the bit of food tossed out to me by the hand of someone I had never seen. I would fight for the doorstep rather than give it up, but I knew that my hunger and my fear were making me into another person altogether, a greedy and coldhearted person I despised. I thought it would be Sass’s final cruelty to me, to make me be like her.

  I visited the temples: the Govindji, with i
ts great hall and its row of columns like tree trunks and its high ceilings where neat rows of bats hung like small furry pennants. I went to the Banke Bihari, where there was a darshan each day—the curtains were opened for a moment to give a glimpse of the deity, which is a great blessing. In all the temples, I saw the widows chanting hour after hour. I admired their piety and envied the food the monks gave them in return for their devotions, but try as I might, after only a half hour of chanting, my mind wandered. I could hardly breathe for the smell of incense and the mustard oil burning in the hundreds of little lamps. I found myself stealing away from the temple, relieved to be out in the open air.

  I made my way through the bazaars and along the ghats of the Yamuna River, lost among all the pilgrims to the city. Each afternoon I returned to the railway station, not from any hope but out of habit and because it had become familiar. On the day I had spent my last rupee and thought that I must sell Tagore’s book, I saw the boy with the rickshaw again. I tried to get his attention. Thousands of people had hurried by me without so much as a glance. I longed to exchange a word with someone who recognized me.

  At first he had eyes only for the passengers who had just gotten off a train. When no one climbed into his rickshaw, he squatted down, waiting for his next chance. Hesitantly I went over to him. He gave me a quizzical look. I guessed how untidy and dirty I must appear after a week of sleeping on the doorstop. “You still here?” he asked, but not unkindly. “I’ve seen you before. When are you going to give up coming to the station?”

  “I have no other place to go.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t stay here. There are bad people about this station who look for young girls from the country.”

  I could not keep from telling him my worries. “I am tired of sleeping in the street, and my rupees are all gone.” I bit my lip to keep from crying.