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Rajshree Chauhan | The MonsoonThe day was gray, warm and dust dry in anticipation. The tropical monsoon rains were late this year. He looked up at the pregnant clouds in the sky from the flat stone rooftop - the lowering sun cast a red glow behind the grayness. The water would soon pour down, as if a bucket had been tipped over. Children would appear on rooftops – playing and dancing in it. The steamy rain would come down so fast there would be no time for run off. The dust would churn into mud; the drains and gutters would be flooded within moments. The streets would pool to waist level within five minutes. And, just as suddenly as it had started, it would be over. The water would eventually drain out… leaving a mess behind. He had loved the monsoon rains since he was a child himself, and wanted to live to see more.
Three weeks had passed since he was given the deadline. His mother was coming home to him from America – she had left the year before. When all else had failed, he was ready to bet she would be carrying all the money collected from his brothers and sisters in America on his behalf.
His mother had protected him his whole life. Her voice echoed in his mind. He had heard it many times. “Since you were a baby and I carried you in my arms the whole way from the old mansion in Karachi, on the steamer that brought us here. I had your father with one leg amputated, all our luggage, and ten other children – I carried YOU. Growing up, I let you play when all of your brothers had to work. I said ‘let him play, he’s young.’”
He would have this whole week to assuage her, snake the money from her, and wait until the very last moment to pay the bookie – to play. She was after all only a woman – an unlucky woman. Hardly deserving of the respect and admiration afforded to her by all others. He had always been able to fool her. Didn’t that make him the wiser one?
He climbed down the cool stone stairwell back into the courtyard, along the side of the building. An errant ball rolled up in front of him followed by a child. He bugged his eyes out at the little boy to instill fear. The pitiful thing stopped in his tracks and began to cry on the spot. A second and older child came and grabbed them both away from his path. It was instinct now – giving that glare. “See? Everyone respects me.”
He slipped into the first room of the house. He sat down in his mother’s old chair. “God. This is where she wanted me to live out my life? Sitting on the floor all day until my back and knees ached… rubber cementing leather soles to uppers… painting designs and stitching toe loops sandals…”
The room was almost empty now. There was only a chair, a cot and two picture frames above the opposite doorway – one of his dead father with a neglected and dried up garland hung across it, and one of a painting of the God Shiva, the destroyer. He pulled out a triangle of silver foil from his shirt pocket and unwrapped it. He loved the taste of paan; the pungent leaf wrapping equally pungent spices. He slipped it into his mouth to chew – a meditative ritual like taking tea. The red juice spread its stain in his mouth.
His mind wandered to the trunks in the loft storage in the bedroom. His mother had left the locked trunks in his keeping when she left. He wondered, as he often did, what exactly could be in those trunks. He had a vague idea that they contained his mother’s share of wealth after his father’s death. He tried to get them open many times… without success.
He looked around the room. The workstations were gone. The shoe materials were gone. The calendars were gone. Every inch of peeling sky blue paint and beneath that peeling old pasted flyers and movie posters were visible. No need to track distribution now. He had sold the business piece by piece, as he needed the money for gambling, for cigarettes and for treating his friends to paan at the nearby stand.
“Nitin?” His wife was calling from the kitchen.
There were no bars because of the prohibition. Instead, the men would spend hours and hours hanging out in front of the paan stall chewing; endlessly chewing until some magical moment came when they would spit the red juices and saliva onto the street. Their mouths were stained red looking like children who’d had suckers with the proof of having eaten them. The street and curbside were irreparably stained the same dirty red.
“Nitin? Are you coming? Food is ready.”
He lost money to the mafia this time. Next time he would make it. He would have more respect than his family ever had before – not from education and not from working at the same stupid job day in and day out. He would have MONEY…
“Nitin!” His wife called him for the third time.
A fire blazed in his eyes as he stood up. He walked across the stone floor, through the doorway, under the picture of his father and Lord Shiva – his left hand deftly taking the belt hanging from a nail just inside the next room. He looped the leather end around his fist as he strode through the middle room and into the last room of the house in a straight line. His wife was squatting on her haunches on the floor in front of the propane stove, her simple printed cotton sari gathered between her legs. He entered, still chewing, arm rising back, just as the last chapatti tortilla was finishing cooking. She had a stainless steel platter with food already set out for him. She had just switched off the gas and put the last tortilla, still warm, on his plate when the buckle end of the belt caught the back of her head.
“You… should never… take that tone… with me!”
He was whipping her with the buckle on her back, on her waist, on her legs. She stood up instinctually trying to avoid the blows. He toppled over his plate and his food to lash at her a few more times. He stopped for a moment, chewing as his rage ebbed.
“Mother is coming today! Mother is coming tonight! Please… You need to eat early… You’ll eat again with your mother when she comes… Please… Please… Mother is coming… Nitin… It’s okay. She will help.” She cried.
He bugged his eyes out to keep her in fear. He knew she was right. Still, she needed to learn it was never acceptable for her to use such a tone with him, her husband. He stood and waited adamantly, the belt still wrapped around his fist and hanging at his side, chewing, as she bent down to clean the splattered food. Eventually she wiped out his plate and pulled out the covered vessels of food from under the stone shelter to serve his food again. He sat down, finishing his paan and began to eat. He ignored her tear streaked red, puffy face, disheveled hair and clothes – she would fix herself up when he had finished his dinner.
He finished eating and left for a quick ride on his scooter. He needed some cool air and a quick ride around the canal-lake would help. The rain clouds made the night darker than usual. The air was heavy with moisture now. The rain would definitely come soon. People were staring. Men who knew him, boys who knew of him… “Do they know?” From the corner of his eye, he saw a face draw back into shadow. It was gone before he could look at it squarely. He saw another, and another – always disappearing before he looked straight on it. “They’re watching me. Waiting. They’ll get their money soon, and leave me alone.” There will be no need to beat him slowly, to torture him and finally kill him. They would have their money and disappear like they always did.
By the time he reached home again, she was asleep. The futon mattress was pulled out from under the bed in the middle room, and spread with the chador coverlet. He switched on the fluorescent light as he changed his clothes and lay down to sleep. When she heard his first snores, she stealthily got up to lock the door and turn out the light.
It was 2:15am when the rickshaw motor sputtered in the courtyard. His wife was up first. She went to unlock the door and help bring her mother-in-law’s suitcases into the house. He came in as she dragged the last one into the empty room next to the cot and chair. His eyes were still burning with hot, dry sleep. He sat on the cot and waited for his mother to pay the rickshaw. He watched her in the light as she approached the door wondering what changes America had made on her in the past year.
At 83, she still wore the white cotton sari of a widow. Her white hair was pulled severely into a bun at the back of her head – not tight enough to pull the folds of sagging and wrinkled skin smooth. She looked as she always had, as if she was melting back into the earth. The skin and fat on the underside of her arm, her face, the fold of stomach showing from the drape of the sari – all dripping toward the ground. Her eyes that used to be brown were now grey blue with the weariness and heaviness of the trials of her life, magnified many times by her glasses. Looking in to them her deep wisdom was unmistakable, unquestionable.
He doubted very much that she ever stopped chewing her toothless gums, her mouth constantly working at nothing in it. As she stepped over the threshold, his wife rushed to touch her feet for a blessing and to show respect. Since no one else was around, he didn’t bother. He watched her greedily. He imagined his mother to be carrying with her what he coveted. His wife mimicked a decent woman and went into the kitchen to heat up some food and to make some chai tea for her mother in law and husband.
In uncomfortable silence they sat together on the floor and ate together, mother and son. The sage, wise woman and the wicked, twisted man sat down together. He was losing patience already.
They came into the sitting room again. She sat on the cot directly, his angel of mercy, pulling one knee up to her chest, her foot on the cushion, her arm holding her ankle… her mouth still working. He sat down directly across from her in her low easy chair. He couldn’t wait anymore.
“Did you bring the money?”
She chewed a couple of times, paused and lisped,
“No. I told them, no. Your brothers and sisters work very hard and have their own families. They work hard for their money and they need it. I told them not to give it to you.”
He felt the burning fear rising in his body. His heart was beating in his ears. “Did she not understand that THEY were going to KILL HIM? How could she deny him help this time?”
“Ma, you don’t underst-”
“I do understand. Finally I see. You are not young anymore. You are not even a man…”
She glanced over at her daughter in law who was cradling the back of her head and trying to wipe away traces of blood.
“It’s enough.” She continued. “I must have done something terrible in my past life to have had such a son as you.”
He was numb at these words from this woman, his mother; he wanted to erase the words. He needed money! They were going to come in six days. She wanted him to die… He saw her keys tucked into her blouse. She no longer lived here yet she still owned all the keys as a matron would. Keys to the house… and to the trunks up on the storage shelves in the bedroom. He sensed she had some business with them. “Would she be taking what was inside with her, back to America.” Whatever it was, he decided right then, that he would have it.
He let the burning fear, shame and guilt guide him across the room. She looked up into his face as he came closer. She thought she had nothing to fear – he was her son. He grabbed at her blouse and ripped the keys out. She followed him, pleading into the bedroom. He vaguely heard her through the rush in his ears. He climbed up onto the loft. He unlocked the trunks.
What he found on top was more valuable than the heirloom gold wedding jewelry... more valuable than the ancient, heavy brocade silks embroidered with 22k gold. He found the papers of ownership for the mansion and land abandoned in the 1947 Partition in Pakistan. Until this very moment, he had only heard stories of the respect and wealth his family had had before they left it behind. They had been respected; they had been WEALTHY. He had found proof that his family really had had what he grew up coveting. And, it was his bad luck that his birth heralded the end of that time. She still owned the land… All these years, keeping it from her sons.
When he climbed back down, his mother was collapsed on the floor trying to breath. His wife stood by. He cradled his mother’s fragile head in his lap, the papers on the floor beside him. He tenderly removed her glasses. He motioned to his wife to bring him his pen as he stroked his mother’s forehead. Methodically, he broke the pen. He rubbed and smeared the blue ink on his mother’s thumb before he pressed it to the paper – her signature.
“You have taken what I came to give you.” she whispered. “Take it all my son. I forgive you.”
Thunder and lightening cracked the dark sky as she exhaled her last breath – her son’s hand covering her mouth and nose to be sure it was done.
The clouds spilled the monsoon rain. There was no joy this time. The dust would churn into mud outside; the drains and gutters would be flooded within moments. The streets would pool to waist level within five minutes. And, just as suddenly as it had started, it would be over. The water would eventually drain out… leaving a mess behind. He had loved the monsoon rains since he was a child. He would live to see more.
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