The Painted Face

It was one of the painted ads that graced the grimy sides of BEST buses, low budget, low branding. But somehow the painter had accomplished the intended message, depicting a girl child's face wrought with suffering - anger and pain reflected in her eyes - as she pleaded for funds to save her from infanticide. Mrs. Kumud Arora sighed as she watched the red BEST bus race her own just as the traffic light turned green. She gathered up her lunch box in the pale pink Femina imitation tote bag, her black shiny leather bag and her flowery yellow synthetic dupatta, and made for the exit at the front of the bus, holding on to the overhead rail to keep herself from slipping. Placing her feet firmly against the once-shiny concrete floor, she lurched forward as the bus skidded to a temporary halt near her Worli Dairy stop, and with a little 'shiv shiv' she disembarked from the bus.

Crossing the road to her small one-room flat she shared with her husband Prabhat, she began planning dinner. Yes, lauki it would have to be, she thought, secretly pleased with herself that there was some chana daal to go with it too, and as an added bonus she wondered if there was any lemon juice to garnish it with. Panting a little as she climbed up the four flights of stairs, she studied the same sootiness and chipped cement that was a ritual eyesore every day - the drabness of her surroundings becoming more pronounced ever since Prabhat had been promoted to Chief Disbursing Officer at the Central Railway Headquarters in Fort. But she had soon realized that pestering Prabhat to move into a better flat would be of no avail, since this was the flat he had grown up in and Kumud, with her notions of Lucknavi space (for she belonged to the city of Nawabs) could please save her breath to dust behind the mattress-cushions on the floor.

Mrs. Kumud Arora latched the small door behind her as she entered her house and hung up her bags behind the door, depositing her lunch box on the low glass coffee table with curved lion paws - Prabhat's heirloom, which always made her feel scared - as if the table would get up and walk. Mechanically, she went to the blue Kelvinator refrigerator and rummaged about in its vegetable tray, pulling out a small bright green chilled lauki and discarding her sliding dupatta. Thus leaving the lauki out to thaw, she went into the bedroom and drew the curtains, feeling a little betrayed (like she did everyday) at the dusk that settled over the little colony at this time. She left the house when it was sunrise, and returned well after sunset. Ah yes, there, in the flat opposite theirs separated by a narrow lane that ran in front of the Monginis bakery, Mr. White Shirt had reached home, indicated by his tell tale shirt flung carelessly over the worn wicker chair in the children's room. Their little table fan was swinging ferociously in its stand as usual, adding to the din of the shrill voice of the paani-puri walla mixing with the cacophony of birds and the distant roar of the sea. There was only one solace in this flat, thought Mrs. Kumud Arora, as she gathered up the day's washing hanging on the clothesline outside the window - there were no traffic sounds to disturb them, no screeching and honking of cars that seemed to plague the city from Marine Drive to Peddar Road.

Mrs. Kumud Arora was a lithe, pretty woman in her early twenties. She wore her long black hair in a thick braid down her back, often scented with jasmine oil which she rubbed in her hair vigorously twice a week before shampooing it off with the black Sunsilk cream shampoo she purchased at the Sahakari Bhandar below her house, saving a total of 15p on each bottle. She had luminous black eyes, framed by thick eyelashes and now a pool of dark skin that stood out in contrast against the rest of her ivory face. She was beautiful - the only reason why Prabhat had chosen her over many other monied women as he had informed her once. That she was equipped with a degree in Library Science had somehow tilted the balance in her favour and she had soon put that to good use, applying for (and quickly obtaining) the job of a Junior Librarian at Ravindra Public Library in Fort. Though the pay was modest and the work hours decent, she often found herself gazing wistfully at the smart executives who frequented the public library, leather bound planners in hand; researching the next big news item. She longed to be like them - discarding her own drab salwar kameez for western attire and her glass bangles for a fancy silver Titan watch - but each evening as she collected library cards and locked up drawers, she knew the next day would be no different from the rest and important thoughts of cooking dinner would occupy her mind.

Now, as she folded up a white shirt of Prabhat's she reminisced about her own marriage to him at age 21, when she was a doe-eyed beauty with flawless skin that glowed with the faint amazement of the future, and a life in the city of dreams, Mumbai. Prabhat and his uncle (for his parents had passed away when he was younger) had made the flat he owned in Worli the clincher in their marriage discussions, and Kumud returned to reality as she glanced at the little alarm clock kept near the mattress-beds which pointed both hands at seven, and hurried to the kitchen to prepare dinner. In the midst of slicing the stiff lauki and an onion to sauté it in, she replayed the day's events like she used to, happy in that small space of an hour before Prabhat would return - like how Mr. Azim, her boss, acted a little too familiar over lunch or how that smart woman from the Times group had come in for reference work. She was surprised that the first thing she remembered today was the BEST girl child's painted face - and her eyes. Kumud and Prabhat had decided not to start a family till Prabhat was several notches up the hierarchy but Kumud had been saving bit by bit, each month - a couple of hundred rupees here and there so that the foundation for a family could be laid. As with all Indian girls, getting married and becoming a mother were two of life's greatest fulfillments, and furthermore, she knew that had Prabhat's parents been alive, they would have been the proud grandparents of a couple of rosy cheeked kids. She silently grieved over their absence when she prayed in front of the little makeshift puja and the photo of Shiv ji that had been with her since college, asking them for their blessings.

Now when she thought about the face of the little girl no more than two years old, with black hair askew and a little dribble of saliva emanating from the corner of her mouth, holding her frail hands in a gesture which seemed to say, 'What should I do now?' the fingers pointing towards the sky awkwardly, laced together in an unspoken bond of helplessness and pain, she felt a small tug at her heart and the same hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach she felt when she had first sat on Mickey Columbus, a giant rocking ship in the Lucknow Mahotsav when she was 12 years old. The giant ship had hurtled down from a height of more than 14 feet. “Let's sit in the backmost seats,” her cousin Vinny who was visiting them had advised. And though experienced Vinny had enjoyed every bit of the traumatic 7 minute long rocking session, screaming out in that high pitched voice of hers, Kumud had gotten the fright of her life as the giant ship went down, and the little voile skirt she was wearing flew up along with her heart which seemed to travel all the way up to her mouth and then back to her stomach, gripping the rails till her knuckles went white, fearing that she would fly out right now if the ship didn't stop. That sensation had stayed with her all through her life, replaying itself in crucial moments like these.

The sad realization that there were probably hundreds of little beggar girls littered about in the streets of busy Mumbai, abandoned or - worse still - forced to beg by their parents, made her feel a small frisson of unhappiness and she absently nicked herself on her little finger, watching a small fleck of blood appear on the translucent onion curls. Her own blood, she thought to herself, with a mixture of sadness and remonstrance aching all over with an unnamed desire and longing for a child of her own.

What would it mean, she thought to herself, for a little somebody with dimpled cheeks and curly hair? No more monthly dinners at Sealord or the weekend walks on Worli Seaface when Prabhat would buy her a cone of hot crunchy peanuts lathered with sticky lime chutney, or a steaming cup of coffee with dots of sweet cocoa powder on its frothy surface - the thin cup warming her hands as she tried to consume the milky liquid in great gulps - and they would both watch over the starry sky, Prabhat's eyes furtively searching for his favourite couple of stars, Amma and Bauji, in their home in the velvet sky. Then, they would return to their small flat with its lumpy mattress-bed and make forced love that seemed to be the finale of this weekend ritual.

Would that be all, thought Kumud, absently thinking of their neighbour Beena and the joyous unplanned birth of her son which had nearly made them bankrupt. Kumud had shuddered to read the Rs. 38.50 tag on a 100g pack of Johnson's baby powder, which she was sure would last only a week in Mumbai's sultry heat.

Gingerly removing her nicked finger from the rest of the unpolluted vegetables, Kumud placed it under the kitchen tap, feeling the short burst of cold air as the Municipal tap wheezed and vomited out a small trickle of water. Yes, thought Kumud, feeling the exhilaration of an idea that sprung inside her head, sparked off by the water that flowed on her cut finger, washing away the stream of blood, bringing the excitement of an idea that comes unwarranted at night, feeling brilliant in its unhewn shapelessness, before reason sheaths it in a cloak of practicality. Yes, her eyes lit up, as she thought of adopting a girl child - she saved a couple of hundreds each month - and, so what if Prabhat and she were not ready for a child of their own. She silently closed her eyes, letting the water flow over her cut finger and pictured the little girl's desolate face, wanting to hug her so much and make her smile.

The doorbell cut into her reverie and she turned off the tap, feeling guilty for wasting so much water, yet drowning in her newfound happiness, and hurried out to unlatch the door for Prabhat. And even when he complained about her leaving her lunch box on the low coffee table yet again, she didn't seem to mind.

Later that night, when they had finished dinner and Prabhat had complimented her on her tasteful cooking, she changed into her favourite nightie - a soft billowing cotton gown with worn lace trimming and squeezed herself into their small bathroom to brush her teeth. And, as she squeezed the last drop of the clovey-red toothpaste onto her prickly bristled toothbrush, she smiled to herself in the mirror, determined to make the toothpaste last as long as she could. (July 27, 2005)