The Selector of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

village.
    When they leave, Damini brings Mem-saab’s prayer book. Mem-saab removes it from its silk pouch and Damini joins her in chanting the
Rehraas
. After the evening prayer, Mem-saab tells Vaheguru she was ashamed to tell her relatives about the lock on her husband’s room and the suitcase that says Aman is staying for as long as it takes.

    It’s 10 p.m., long past Mem-saab’s usual dinnertime. Khansama’s sweet white rasgullahs still wait in the kitchen. Not for Mem-saab, who ordered the dessert, but for Amanjit. Listening to him now, Damini thinks she should have made him eat them before the meal to sweeten his words.
    “You are getting so old, you cannot make up your mind about anything.” Aman has switched to Punjabi and remembers to speakslowly, but it is still difficult for Mem-saab to read his lips through his beard.
    Damini leaves out the part about being old when she repeats his words for Mem-saab.
    Mem-saab gestures for Damini to offer Aman more curry.
    “Your father told me never to sell or move from this house,” she says in Punjabi. “You know, we built it together, selling the jewellery we escaped with during Partition. I still see him walking with me through these rooms—there were only wood beams then, to mark where the walls would rise. This house and the estate in Gurkot, he said, would replace all he’d lost.”
    “Certainly not all,” says Aman. “The government didn’t give Sardar-ji any compensation for so many of his villages. They were lost to Pakistan.”
    “We escaped with our lives—so many didn’t.”
    “Yes, I know. Haven’t I heard it, and heard it, and heard it from Sardar-ji and you? He looked backward to Rawalpindi the rest of his life. But Mama, we must look forward. It’s a new world now—why don’t you decide to live in it?”
    Even with the air conditioner going and Khansama’s curry steaming, Damini can smell Aman’s exotic cologne.
    “I do live in it, Aman—maybe you haven’t noticed. Perhaps you are right that I cannot decide anything, but …” she smiles apologetically, “your father always decided everything for me.”
    Aman scrapes the serving spoon around the bowl, retrieving the last morsels. He is too old for Damini to tell him not to be greedy.
    “If your businesses are not doing well, Aman, I can help. How much more do you need?” As always, she is too mild with her youngest.
    Amanjit rocks back in his father’s chair, taking her measure through half-closed eyes. “My businesses are doing well, Mama—not that you and my father ever had confidence in any of my projects when I really needed the investment. But one must grow—no limits.”
    Mem-saab holds up her hand to stop Damini from repeating—he has enunciated clearly enough.
    “You’re competing with something, someone?”
    “There’s no one I want to compete with in India. No, it’s time to scale up, think bigger, aim higher. All I want is more.”
    He lets the chair legs thump to the carpet, and shifts.
    A mongrel, kicked away once, will attack afresh. And from behind
.
    He mouths without sound, so that Damini too must lip-read his words. “Today I made arrangements with a construction company. Tomorrow they will begin building bedrooms on the terrace. Kiran and Loveleen and I will move from Bombay and live here with you.”
    Mem-saab looks at Damini; Damini shakes her head as if she has not understood, so Aman has a chance to change his words. Building on the terrace would make his share far more than a quarter of the house. But Aman mouths it clearly again, just as before, so Mem-saab cannot mistake him.
    She gestures for Damini to offer him a chapati.
    “Why do you need to move?” she asks, a little too loud.
    Aman’s strong dark hands close around the softness of the chapati. He tears a small piece from its slack circle. Then another and another. Intent as a counterfeit yogi, he tears every piece smaller and smaller.
    “I will look after you in your old age,