Page 62 of The Henna Artist

Kanta was still railing. “All that talk of love and romance. Fine for English girls, but not for Indian ones.” She sounded like hersaas. “I should have realized how young she is, how impressionable. She takes everything to heart, absorbs it like a sponge! And she learns so quickly—it flattered me that I was her teacher. We were having fun...”

I turned away from Kanta; I couldn’t let her see me fall apart. I looked down at the map of my life on the terrazzo as my tears blurred my vision. The pattern mutated. The shapes shifted into something I no longer recognized.

Kanta choked back another sob. “Oh, Lakshmi! I can’t believe our Radha is carrying a child! She hasn’t told me who the father is. She wants you to be there when she does.”

Radha wanted to confess in public.Like the monsoon rains, so fierce they eroded our temple friezes, my sister was about to destroy the fortress I had built. No question about it: my life, as I’d designed it, was about to change. Plans, meticulously plotted, were about to unravel. The room spun. I lost my balance, gripped the window ledge to prevent myself from falling.

Malik ran to catch me, but Kanta got there first. She eased me to the floor.

“I filled her head withbukwas! Me and my books and my films and my magazines and my ideas. My pregnancy has made me starkers! That’s the only way I can explain it. I thought it was all a good thing. And it’s Radha who will pay the price. And you, Lakshmi.”

She cried harder, and distractedly, I wondered if my neighbors would assume there had been a death in the family.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

She wound her arms around my neck, wetting my chest with her hot tears, but my body felt limp, wrung out. I couldn’t comfort her.

TWELVE

April 21, 1956

Kanta and I sat side by side on her drawing room sofa. Radha stood in front of us as if she were facing a British inquisition. She wore a frock borrowed from Kanta; the Madhubala dress was ruined.

My sister glanced nervously at the carpet, then at us, then at the photos of Gandhi-jiand Kanta’s newfound goddess, Swaraswati, on the wall.

“Go on,bheti,” Kanta said encouragingly.

Radha licked the cut on her lip, the wound I’d given her last night. “I used to pass by the Jaipur Club every day on my way to Auntie’s house from school. You know, the polo grounds, at the edge of the road?”

I started to speak, but Kanta put a hand on my arm to stop me.

Radha bit her cheek. “I would see him playing polo during the holidays, and one day, he saw me. He was walking his horse to the stables. He stopped and we started talking. He told me that he was working on a Shakespeare play at his school. And asked could I rehearse it with him? So that’s what we would do. Sometimes for a half hour, sometimes an hour.”

I clawed the piping on the sofa, trying to rein in my impatience.

“And one day he told me that I looked just like Madhubala.” She blushed and looked away. “He said he had never met a prettier girl and he wished he could spend all his time with me. He thought about nothing but me all day.” My sister flicked a glance at me, then back at the floor. “It was just like the movies.”

Kanta groaned. My heart pounded.

Radha folded her hands in front of her. “I liked him. He apologized for the holiday party. The way his mother had talked to me. I told him I had gotten into so much trouble with you about it, Jiji.”

The room was closing in. My vision narrowed.

“He said you were jealous of me.” She eyed me from lowered lids. “Because you had no one in your life, and I did.”

A cold sensation spread throughout my body. Radha’s voice sounded faint, faraway.

She was talking about Ravi Singh.

When I come to, my head was in Kanta’s lap and she was pressing the end of my sari to my forehead. It felt cold. I realized why: she had wrapped ice in it. Radha sat in the armchair opposite, rubbing her hands nervously on the upholstery.

I tried to sit up, but my head spun. Kanta guided my shoulder back down. I watched the slowtak-tak-takof the ceiling fan. My brain was still reeling from the news that Ravi Singh was the father of my sister’s baby.

“Of all the people in the world...Parvati’s son?”

Radha looked frightened yet defiant. She looked to Kanta for support. “This is why I needed you here, Auntie. I knew she wouldn’t understand, but you do, don’t you?”

Kanta’s forehead creased with worry. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She looked away.

---