Chapter 1: Sitapur Gali (Locust Lane)

Lata Jadhav, August 1978

The thing about Sitapur Gali that nobody told you was that the gali knew everything. The gali knew who was fighting, who was pregnant, who had bought a new sari, who had failed their board exams, who was drinking, and who was pretending not to be drinking. The gali knew because the gali was narrow and the houses were close and the walls were thin and the women talked and the women talking was the gali's nervous system — the information travelling from house to house at the speed of chai, which was, in Nagpur in 1978, faster than the telephone network and more reliable.

The gali knew about Tushar Jadhav's drinking. The gali had known for years — since Lata was seven, since the first time the sound had carried through the wall and Mrs. Kulkarni at number 14 had paused mid-sentence and looked at her husband and the looking had said everything that the words could not say because the words would make the knowing official and the official knowing would require action and the action was not something that Sitapur Gali did in 1978 because what happened inside a house was inside and the inside was the family's business and the family's business was not the gali's business even when the gali's walls were thin enough to make it the gali's business.

Lata knew this. Lata knew the gali knew. Lata knew because she was twelve and twelve-year-olds in Nagpur were not stupid — twelve-year-olds in Nagpur were, in fact, the most perceptive humans in the city because twelve-year-olds had the particular combination of intelligence and powerlessness that produced hyper-observation, the observation that said: I cannot change what is happening but I can understand what is happening and the understanding is the thing I have.

What Lata understood was this: her father drank Old Monk rum from a bottle that he kept in the bottom drawer of the bedroom almirah, the almirah that was supposed to hold winter blankets but that held, instead, three bottles of Old Monk and the particular smell that Old Monk produced when it was spilled on wood, the smell that was sweet and sharp and that Lata associated not with rum but with the hours after nine PM, the hours when the house changed.

Before nine PM, the house was — a house. The house on Sitapur Gali was a two-storey brick building with a green front door (the green fading, the paint peeling at the bottom where the monsoon rains splashed) and a front room that served as both living room and dining room and a kitchen that was Vandana's and a staircase that led to two bedrooms upstairs (the parents' bedroom and Lata's bedroom) and the bathroom that both bedrooms shared. The house was, before nine PM, a house where a family lived and where the living was — ordinary. The ordinary of dal-bhat and homework and Chitrahaar and the neighbour's television and the gali's dogs barking and the autorickshaw at the corner idling and the particular Nagpur ordinariness that was not exciting but was safe.

After nine PM — on the nights when Tushar drank — the house was different. The difference was not visible. The walls did not move. The furniture did not rearrange. The difference was atmospheric — the air changed. The air became the air of a house where a man was drinking and where the drinking was producing the particular transformation that alcohol produced in Tushar Jadhav: the transformation from a man who was competent and quiet and professionally successful (Tushar was assistant manager at Nagpur Municipal Corporation's engineering department, the department that approved building plans and that was, in 1978, approving the building plans that were turning Nagpur from a medium city into a large city) into a man who was loud and unpredictable and whose unpredictability was the fear.

Not the violence — the unpredictability. The violence was the consequence. The unpredictability was the cause. Because Tushar did not always become violent when he drank. Sometimes Tushar drank and fell asleep on the sofa and the falling-asleep was the best outcome, the outcome that Lata and Vandana prayed for silently (the prayer being: let him sleep, let him sleep, let the Old Monk be the sedative and not the accelerant). Sometimes Tushar drank and became sentimental — the weeping drunk, the man who cried about his own childhood (his own father had been — the cycle, the particular cycle that abuse followed, the cycle that was not an excuse but was an explanation) and who held Lata on his lap and whose holding was suffocating because the holding was the guilt and the guilt was heavy.

And sometimes — not always, not most times, but sometimes — Tushar drank and became the other thing. The thing that the gali heard through the walls. The thing that produced the sound. The sound that was not always Vandana's sound (the gasp, the muffled protest, the particular sound of a woman trying not to make sound because the making of sound would make it worse) but was sometimes Lata's sound (the crying, the closed-door crying, the crying that happened after Tushar took Lata to her room and the taking-to-the-room was the punishment and the punishment was for things that did not require punishment: the homework not done fast enough, the plate not cleared quickly enough, the existing-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time that was the particular crime of being a child in a house where the adult was drunk and the drunk adult needed a target).

Lata's arms. The bruises that she showed her mother and that her mother saw and that her mother's seeing produced the expression that Lata would remember more than the bruises: the expression that was horror and guilt and rage and helplessness, the four emotions simultaneous, the face of a woman who was being shown proof of the thing she already knew and who was now confronting the knowing with evidence and the evidence was her daughter's arms.

"Baba tula maarto ka?" Vandana had asked. Does Papa hit you?

"Ho." Yes.

The single syllable. The syllable that changed everything. Not immediately — the change was not immediate. The change was the slow accumulation of a mother's decision, the decision that took three more months and two more incidents and the night that produced the sling and the "I fell in the kitchen" and the suitcase by the door.

*

But before the suitcase: the days. The ordinary days that Lata lived between the nights. The days that were — good. The days were good because the days belonged to Vandana and the days were the hours when Tushar was at the Municipal Corporation and the house was the house-before-nine-PM and the house-before-nine-PM was safe.

The mornings: Vandana made pohe. The pohe that was Sitapur Gali's benchmark, the pohe that Mrs. Kulkarni contested and that everyone else conceded. The pohe began at 6:30 AM — the flattened rice soaked for exactly four minutes (not three, not five — Vandana's pohe timing was religious), drained, set aside. The tempering: oil in the kadhai, mustard seeds (the popping, the particular percussion that was Vandana's morning alarm, the sound that said: the kitchen is active, the day is beginning), curry leaves (the sizzling, the fragrance that filled the kitchen and the house and the gali), turmeric (a pinch, the yellow that made everything golden), green chillies (two, slit, the Nagpuri mirchi that was unnecessarily aggressive but that was, Vandana argued, necessarily Nagpuri), peanuts (roasted in the tempering oil until they were brown and crunchy), and then the soaked pohe, tossed gently, the sugar (a pinch, the sweetness that balanced the chilli), the salt, and the garnish: fresh coriander, a squeeze of lemon, and a sprinkle of fresh coconut.

The pohe was served on steel plates. The steel plates that were Vandana's — the plates that she had brought as part of her trousseau, the trousseau that every Maharashtrian bride assembled and that included, among other things, steel vessels sufficient to establish a kitchen. The plates were old now — fourteen years old, the age of the marriage — and the steel had developed the particular patina that old steel developed, the patina that was not tarnish but character, the plates telling the story of fourteen years of meals served and meals eaten and the particular history of a family's feeding.

Lata ate the pohe. Every morning. The eating was the ritual, the ritual was the safety, the safety was the morning. The morning that was Vandana's.

The school: Lata went to St. Joseph's Convent, Dharampeth. The school that was run by nuns (the nuns who were strict and kind in the particular combination that Catholic education in India had perfected: strict about uniforms, kind about everything else) and that produced girls who could recite poetry and solve equations and argue about history and who were, by the standards of 1978 Nagpur, overeducated for a marriage market that valued cooking and compliance over poetry and arguments.

Lata liked school. Lata liked school the way a prisoner likes the yard — the liking that was not about the school itself but about the not-being-home, the hours that were guaranteed safe, the hours that belonged to mathematics and English literature and the particular pleasure of Sister Margaret's history class (Sister Margaret who was seventy and who had been teaching history at St. Joseph's since independence and who treated every history lesson as a personal affront, the history being things that had happened to the world and the world having no right to have had these things happen).

After school: the backyard. The hours between 4 PM and 7 PM that were Lata's — the hours when the homework was done (at the desk, the pencil box, the photograph of six-year-old Lata in the frock) and when the backyard was available and when the backyard was the particular freedom that a twelve-year-old required: the freedom to lie on the ground and look at the sky and think about nothing and think about everything and the thinking being the processing, the processing of a life that required processing because the life contained things that a twelve-year-old should not have to process.

The coriander grew. The mint grew. The Nagpuri mirchi grew. The tulsi was maintained — Vandana watered the tulsi every morning, the watering that was religious (tulsi being Lakshmi's plant, the watering being devotion, the devotion being the particular Maharashtrian Hinduism that was not ostentatious but daily, the faith that lived in the watering-can and the morning prayer and the kumkum on the forehead).

And the evenings: the return. Tushar's return. The sound of the motorcycle (the Bajaj Chetak scooter, not a motorcycle, but the sound was motorcycle-loud because Nagpur's roads were motorcycle-loud and the Chetak's exhaust was failing and the failing exhaust was the announcement: he's home). The announcement that changed the house. The announcement that shifted the air from safe to uncertain, from Vandana's to Tushar's, from the before-nine to the approaching-nine.

Lata learned to read the signs. The particular literacy that children of alcoholics developed — the literacy that was not taught in schools and that was more useful than any school-literacy because the literacy determined the night. The signs: the way Tushar parked the Chetak (straight: sober, the night would be fine; angled: drinking had started at work, the night was uncertain; not parked at all, the Chetak left running in the gali: the night was going to be bad). The way Tushar entered the house (shoes removed at the door: sober; shoes not removed: uncertain; shoes thrown: bad). The way Tushar greeted Vandana (by name: fine; by silence: uncertain; by complaint: bad).

Tonight — the night before the knock, the last ordinary night — Tushar was not home. Tushar had been gone for three weeks. The Chetak was not parked in the gali. The shoes were not at the door. The house was Vandana's. The house was safe.

The last ordinary night.

Lata ate dal-bhat. Listened to Chitrahaar through the wall. Said goodnight to her mother. Went to her room. Lay in bed. Listened to the gali.

The gali was settling. The dog at 10:30. The autorickshaw at the corner. The television at number 14 going quiet. The particular acoustic signature of Sitapur Gali going to sleep, the signature that Lata had memorised the way she had memorised the signs of her father's drinking: completely, automatically, the memorising being survival.

At 11:47 PM, the knock.

And the ordinary ended.