The House of Hidden Mothers by Meera Syal

Author:Meera Syal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473525023
Publisher: Transworld

CHAPTER TEN

IN AN AGE full of surprises, perhaps the most unexpected discovery for Mala was how clouds were not what she had imagined they would be at all. From the swollen riverbank, in between the waving sugar-cane stalks in the fields, from her perch on her wobbly stool in her courtyard whilst she watched chapattis rise into floury discs, clouds were blowsy, corpulent pillows far above her head, soft yet firm enough to cradle her weight. Imagine jumping on to one of those, hena? Your body would sink into it, like the Pogles’ imported feather sofa, so springy you would be bounced back on to your feet. In the aeroplane she had braced herself for the impact as they ascended straight into a bank of dawn-tinted cumuli. Instead the world went grey, metallic vapour obscured her final view of Delhi, her old life exhaling its last foggy sigh until suddenly they were dazzled by bright sunlight again. Now the clouds were below them, but they looked like nothing that belonged to the sky, more like an expanse of curdled buttermilk or a heaving, slow-moving sea, or maybe a shifting desert, all dunes and hollows, forming and re-forming with indolent ease. Somewhere down there were her village, her husband, her pots and pans, her trunk. I could have said no, she thought, so many times; a simple shake of the head and everything would have stopped, and I would be back down there, thinking I could bounce on clouds. But instead she kept saying yes: to Shyama Madam’s idea of coming away with her; to fleeing the communal dormitory without a backward glance; to every form thrust in front of her, awaiting her careful signature, which she still felt did not belong to her. Yes, yes, yes, because I know, she told her belly, I know there is no home for either of us there any more.

It was the news about Seema that had confirmed everything. Just a lucky chance, listening in to the brood mares sitting on their charpoys hai hai-ing about their fat ankles and bulging veins, boredom making them indiscreet. Virtually every woman was there in secret, only their husbands knowing the truth about their confinement. They feared the reaction of their neighbours and friends, village elders and local gossips. Then Mala heard Seema’s name mentioned, and the name of her own village. Her ears pricked up whilst she carried on nonchalantly leafing through the pages of her Elle India.

‘So they had the house built, AC, widescreen TV and all. But someone must have told someone else, you know how it is. They go off shopping, they come back, bas. The whole koti is burned to the ground.’

Also all that Shyama Madam had done, how she had done it, Mala would never comprehend, but the two of them – she and Toby sahib – were always huddled together doing sus-sus whispers and then looking over at her with that fond faraway smile that made Mala feel both special and utterly transparent.

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