The Selector of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page A

should hear it again
.
    She passes him the beedi. “But birthing! It made me feel alive—rohm-rohm.” Through every pore and crevice of her body, as never before. Back then, she thought if she could survive childbirth and birth a son, everything else would be easy. Ha!
    Suresh blows a smoke ring, and waits respectfully enough, but she knows he doesn’t want to hear how painful it was, or how she nearly died to give his atman flesh.
    “I don’t have to do much,” he says, passing her his beedi. “Every videotape comes out the same.”
    “How do you know?” says Damini. “Maybe each video copy tells a slightly different story—it depends who is telling, who is watching, who is listening, when the tale is told, and where.” She holds smoke deep in her lungs, feels it hit, and exhales. “I thought Leela would be my copy and that you would be just like your father. But you aren’t even like each other.”
    “I should be like a woman?”
    “I mean she’s so trusting and hardworking,”
    “I’m not hardworking?”
    “
Arey!
One word and you get angry. I only wish I knew how you and Leela grew inside me. If I had gone to college like Aman and Timcu and Kiran, I might know.”
    “They know? Ha!”
    “I saw a doctor on TV pointing to pink and white pictures.
Bapre-bap!
How much that man said happens inside a woman—but how does a man know? Only a woman can feel and tell what happens inside her.”
    “Ask Mem-saab to read you her magazines.”
    “I can read them myself, slowly, but lady-doctors don’t tell about giving birth, even in the new glossy-glossy ones. TV is better—because when I hear something, I don’t forget.”
    “TV is bad for women.”
    “Bad for us but not bad for you? Why were you saving to buy one, then?”
    “To watch Swami Rudransh,” he says.
    “Ha! You want to watch movies.”
    “So? You should listen to the radio.”
    His protectiveness is a comforting omen for her old age, but she says, “I can’t, now. Amanjit-saab is visiting.” She can’t tell him how afraid Mem-saab looks, or that she has a feeling trouble is coming. He’ll just say Sikhs are known to be troublemakers. He thinks Sikhs should be given a chance to revert to Hinduism or be told to leave India.
    He’ll never know Mem-saab has made Damini a Sikh—boys and men seldom learn anything unspoken.
    All too soon, Suresh folds his hands in namaste and rises. Damini aims her last puff at the gladioli and stubs the beedi out in their bed. Mem-saab will smell tobacco though Damini only smoked half, and say she must give it up to be a better Sikh.
    In blessing and farewell, she rests her right hand on Suresh’s dark curly hair for a moment. Then she returns to Mem-saab’s room.

    Mem-saab has woken from her nap. Aman is still gone.
    “I will give you a massage; you will feel better,” Damini offers.
    She draws the curtains and brings a steel bowl of warmed mustard-seed oil. Sweeping the line of Mem-saab’s back, Damini’s fingers seekand press marma points where seen and unseen energies unite. Then with Mem-saab facing her and watching her lips, Damini talks about old times, golden times—eleven thousand magical years of Ram Rajya—when Lord Ram ruled, and children lived with their parents, and parents with loving, caring children and grandchildren. Her massages take a long time; anything important should be done slowly.
    Damini helps Mem-saab to be beautiful, though she is a widow and her ears hear no sound. Mem-saab applies her foundation and powder on a face the colour of milky chai, not deodar wood-brown like Damini’s. Despite daily applications of Orange Skin Cream, Mem-saab’s wrinkles trail across her forehead and bunch at the corners of her eyes. Though twenty years her junior, Damini’s look almost as deep. Damini stands behind Mem-saab, and Mem-saab takes black kajal pencils from Damini’s hands to make eyebrows. Damini regards Mem-saab in the mirror and mouths how beautiful she