Chapter Eighteen
Vasudha Patil
Garware Ladies Hostel
Fergusson College, Pune
July 1983
Sureva Bhalekar
St. Mary’s Ladies Hostel
Charni Road, Bombay
Dear Suru,
I know things are bad when you send me a letter that doesn’t have numbered points and subheadings. I hope this new us doesn’t change the old us. I love that word you used: conflate. Is it a combination of contain and inflate? That’s how I feel. Like our love always contained us into one being, but what has happened between us—the hunger to feel each other’s physical being—inflates us into something higher, something even more beautiful.
Of course I was singing to you. Every song I’ve ever sung has been for you. I think I’ve always known, Suru. I’ve always loved you. In every way it is possible to love. Welcome, I have been waiting here for you.
I know you’ve blamed yourself for touching me that way first. The moment when you came to see me in the greenroom after the show, tears shining in your eyes from the sound of my singing, and pulled me to yourself. It will always be the most beautiful moment of my life (if life’s beauty can be turned into a scale and superlatives apply). If I could put into words the relief of that moment I would, but I suspect you do not need my words, you felt that relief too. It felt like being allowed an entire lake after burning in the desert without a drop for so long I’d forgotten the taste of water.
I can still feel the softness of your lips, see the fire in your eyes. It makes me unafraid now. I’ve thought about this a lot, I used to be afraid of losing you. But now when you are inside me and I have felt your touch, even tearing my body open cannot take it away.
You’ve studied the universe, from its tiniest elements to their place on this massive rock, and you know that there is always a reason why things—atoms and molecules?—are placed in each other’s vicinity, because forces outside their control bring them together and tear them apart. It cannot be a coincidence that your aie found her way to my parents’ home when she’d had you but a week and your home had been destroyed in the fire. Imagine the courage it took for her to leave her village so soon after your father died and knock on doors to find work with an infant strapped to her breast.
It cannot be a coincidence that my aie had just had me and was unable to make milk for me and I would vomit up any other milk they tried to feed me. I would have died if you hadn’t been born. That cannot be a coincidence. We are covalent atoms. Without your existence mine would not have been possible.
Why would any of that have happened for no reason? And if the highest power itself has willed us to be together, why should we be afraid? I have already told my aie on the phone that I left one of the rings in your bag when I gave it to you for safekeeping in the crowded college auditorium. They know that you were visiting Pune for the Youth Cultural Festival. (Naturally, I have not told them that I sang onstage. You know that I would be immediately shipped back to Yevla if Aie and Appa found that out.) (Oh, and Aie was very happy to learn that you are doing well in school and keeping good health. Actually, she was grateful that you had the rings for safekeeping because you are so much more responsible than I am.)
I also told her that in my hurry to take the rings back from your purse before you left, I forgot one of them in there. She was not surprised. Obviously, this is what she would expect me to do. She was surprised that you did not check that I had both rings. To which I told her that you did remind me and I still forgot. Also, a pattern she was not surprised by. So all is well, dear Suru. We are safe for now.
I am eager to hear your plan for the rest of our lives. I have one too, but I suspect it is more simple and less viable than yours. Which obviously means we will be following yours rather than mine. Which obviously makes me hopeful and happy (a pretty constant state for me these days).
I’m looking right now at that Darwin book you left me. It’s interesting enough. The man seems to understand the world in a way the world needs to be understood. There is also an added advantage to reading it: as soon as I read a few pages I get the best sleep. I almost want to give it to my aie. Instead of taking her pill to sleep she could use this. (Of course I know she cannot read English. Which is why I think she is so terrified that I can.) Actually there is another advantage, the photograph of yourself you left in it. Tell the truth, you left it in there as a test to see if I would read it, did you not? The photograph is beautiful.
Did I tell you that you look like Marilyn Monroe with your new haircut? Thank you so much for forcing me to go to the screening of The Seven Year Itch at the National Film Institute. I was afraid I would not understand the spoken English (although thanks to you forcing me to write these letters in English, my written English is greatly improved), but with your translation (how is your spoken English so much better than mine?) I could understand most of it. Not that infidelity is terribly complex. The film itself was like any other film, but I have not been able to get Marilyn out of my mind. I know what you are thinking. It isn’t that (there is only place for one bombshell in my heart, even though mine isn’t blond).
As I sat there watching Ms. Monroe filling up the screen, I kept thinking how, of all the people in the world, she was the one who seemed to look straight at us and understand us.
I could not put my finger on it until now. I think I know now why a woman who looks and acts nothing like anyone we know, let alone us ourselves, would feel so familiar. It’s because what she is on the outside keeps everyone from paying any attention to who she is on the inside. To everyone who looks upon her, especially men, she is a shell inside which they can place whatever they want to believe. I think it’s an experience all women relate to. Because of the way we’re made on the outside, we’ve already been told who we are on the inside: what we can think, what we can do. Our shells, our bodies, they are vessels they have stuffed with their own beliefs. They’ve decided for us who we are. Who we actually are seems of
September 1983
Sorry I had to leave the letter in the middle of writing it because the girl in the next room rushed over to say that Appa had just arrived at the hostel. Usually men are not allowed here in the girls’ hostel, but rules do not apply to men like my appa. In my panic I tucked the letter in my bra. Which was a fortunate thing because he was in a rage and searched my room. I know it’s been months, but they’ve brought me back to Yevla and locked me in my room and taken away all my pens. I was able to steal one from the guard and now I can finally finish it, albeit not in the manner in which I wanted to and not at leisure either.
Everything is over, Suru.
Appa came looking for your letters and found them. He hit me so hard, across my face, I wasn’t able to see out of my right eye for weeks. Even now I can only see clearly with my left one. Which is enough to be able to write to you. I hope this letter reaches you. I gave Ranjana the gardener’s wife my silver anklets in return for her secretly taking this letter to the post office. I can only hope that she will do as she promised. I am sorry the handwriting is so terrible. Aie broke the fingers of my right hand by slamming a book into my hand.
We’ve always said that you are the smarter one and I the braver one. I never understood what you were afraid of. You always said only a girl who had never lost anything or wanted for anything could be as brave as me. Now I could lose you—and I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to be with you. If I lost you I wouldn’t know what to live for. For the first time I am terrified.
Your name means the rain and mine the earth, how can anyone want to keep us apart?
Appa said we were filthy. He said he should have listened to Aie and never let me out of the house because when you let girls study and live alone and don’t marry them off young they do dirty things for sex. Aie spat on my face when Appa brought me home. She refuses to look at me. Who would have thought the breaking of a heart makes the breaking of bones feel insignificant?
In the movies we watched, when men love women they fight for them. They get beaten up to prove their love. Then they hit back. What happens to us? Who do we smash so we can have each other? How is it fair that they get to beat us both down, crush us both. Our love is as strong as theirs, isn’t it, Suru? They just never let us strengthen our bodies enough to fight them.
When I gave you the ring and you hung it by your neck to hide it, I remember wishing you didn’t have to. I wanted everyone to know that we wore two halves of the same ring. That we are part of a whole, one and the same. Now I want to hide. I’ll hide forever. I’ll do anything so they leave us alone.
I wish I could go on writing but I do not have time to say anything more than this: Do not come home. Do not try to reach me. Not yet. I will find a way to escape and be with you. I will never let anyone else touch me. I cannot.
If Appa sends anyone to find you, hide. Don’t even go anywhere with your aie. I thought she at least would understand me but she hasn’t come to see me or help me while I’ve been locked up in my room. I suspect she was the one who told Appa about the ring and caused him to come looking for your letters.
I know you have friends, but if you can think of nowhere else to hide when he comes for you, go to Ashatai Athavale. She is the bravest person I know. She has friends who hide women hunted by their families. I will make my way there ultimately. Wait for me.
Please do not forget how much I love you.
Forever only yours,
Vasu