Dogs of India by Polly McGee

Author:Polly McGee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Author People

Chapter Eighteen

Seeking Solidol

Malina lit a lamp in the kitchen and sat alone in the flickering light. Gaandhu. Choosing a life of perversion over family. Never coming home. Never graduating. Never marrying. Never taking her away from all this. Malina’s heart felt jagged, she could feel its shards cutting at her chest. Why were the gods punishing her? What wickedness had she committed? She stared at the shadows of the Ganesh statue above the stove and using the handle of a broom she reached up and knocked him to the floor, smashing the deity into colourful joyous pieces. Let him feel what it was like in my chest.

What else could she and Gajrup have given their son? He had everything she had missed out on, yet still chose to shame them. Her bonded labour had given him an education. Her hustling had devised the offer of a new life in a foreign country. It was her scrimping and sacrifice that had funded his arranged marriage to that gora so he could get work despite his lazy stupidity. Geet was supposed to be their pride, an engineer, to look after her and Gajrup with regular money wires and then eventually take them to his new country. And now, with just one text message, everything was gone.

Geet was Malina’s only child. Her body was not built to reproduce. She had crouched on the floor for hours, grunting like a heifer to push him out into the world. Her body had torn and she had screamed with the pain, the village women watching over her agony with concern born of experience. Barely surviving the birth, doctors had told her she was ruined inside and would have no more children. Now she had no children and was truly ruined inside. What life was this? Shamed in front of everyone. No child to support her. It would have been preferable for Geet to be dead. At least it would have been easier to explain.

How could she tell the Sheenas? They would be expecting him to be there when they returned. He was their co-investment, too, through the school fees they paid and the extras they slipped into her pay. Malina had boasted to the street sellers and the market vendors and the other staff of Hastinapuri Estate about the homecoming of her son, having graduated from university. Her son, a graduate. She had alluded smugly to his new life and future stellar career in Australia. Lauded it up among her peers, relishing her moment of superiority, of her family entering the newly evolved India of opportunity in a land of plenty Down Under. She thought of the looks she would get at the temple and from the door-to-door wallahs she’d acted so superior to. Malina imagined the veiled comments: the gossip, sympathy, silence or more likely outright joy at her comeuppance. She would pay for her pride. Malina fought for breath, moving from shame to anger. Gajrup was to blame. He should have been stronger and more disciplined with the boy.

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