Free The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee Page B

thrives on earth’, or ‘The kaajol that women wear around their eyes is always black, never white’, or rhyming kaalo , black, with aalo , light.
    Ever since Chhaya had learned to identify the face looking back at her from the mirror as her own, she had been intimate with the fact – hard, unchangeable as fate and as merciless – of her own ugliness and, harder still, with the awareness that the world outside shared the knowledge too. To know that you are ugly is one thing, but to grow up with the imprint that it leaves on others’ thoughts, facial expressions, murmurs, talk, gossip is quite another; the former is a reckoning with one’s self, the latter an instilling of that most adamantine knowledge of all: that the world is as it is, and knocking your head against its hard shell is only going to break you, not dent the world.
    So the storm-fronts of girlhood – tears, capricious cruelty, tantrums, envy, brittle self-consciousness – had seemed to pass eventually after an unseasonably prolonged stay, but more intractable, more sustained damage was left behind in their wake.
    After five years of the drama of diminishment that was her matchmaking were played out, the neighbours started talking. Like all such examples of this genre, there was a great deal of histrionics about protecting the subject of gossip from unkindness, but drama, that is, fiction, was what it was, for it was seen to that Chhaya came to hear of what was being said about her via some circuitous route or the other. The usual, predictable things: she would die a spinster; the Ghoshes would never be able to get her off their hands; she would bring bad luck; that kind of dark skin (‘black, really, coal-black, ink-black, soot-black’) surely pointed to a dark fate; if the first face you saw after waking up was hers, your day was certain to be ruined; maybe there was something else wrong with her, something other than her dark complexion . . . and so it went on. Several kind-hearted people made ameliorative gestures: there were regular remarks along the lines of ‘What if she is so dark, she is remarkably well educated’ and the gradual currency of euphemisms for her skin colour – warmly glowing , a radiant darkness – that they thought shielded Chhaya from the misfortune she was born with. But all this was as leftovers from a small dinner party offered to a region ruined by famine: the gesture was noted, but the effect was nil. In the eyes of her suitors and their families, Chhaya had seen the instant knowledge, shocked, flickering, imperfectly repressed, as soon as she had walked into the drawing room. Beside that knowledge, everything was like her name – just a shadow.

    Armed with comb, Ultorath and a small stainless-steel bowl of mango pickle, Baishakhi stealthily runs up the stairs to the roof terrace. Lunch is just over, so most of the household is getting ready to go to bed for a light snooze. She is fairly certain that no one has seen her coming up here. Still on tiptoe, she makes her way to the west side of the prayer room; here she is sheltered from the eyes of any casual visitor to the terrace – someone coming up to hang out the washing, or clean out the prayer room. They would have to know she is up here to find her. She positions herself so that her back catches the October afternoon sun, loosens her still-damp hair and settles down with Ultorath in front of her. It is nearly three o’clock and her mind is very far from reading. It is almost time for Shobhon Datta, who lives next door, to come out onto his roof for his sneaky post-lunch cigarette. This is what Baishakhi has been really waiting for: the book, the bowl of pickle, even her comb and damp hair are just props in a pre-emptive drama of deception. If anyone finds her sitting here, with Shobhon on his terrace, the suspicion that she is romantically entangled with him will alight instantly on her. The props will then give her performance of wide-eyed innocence some