The first anonymous letter arrived by mail and was addressed to me. The
return address was fake. It said, From: LN, Room 718, Leela Nag Women’s Residential Hall. But there
was no Room 718 at Leela Nag.
Do you know what goes on under your very nose?
The letter asked.
Do you know how good name of Leela Nag Women’s Residential Hall is
being destroyed? While administration dillydallies over unimportant
issues like gate-closing time and Hindu diets, immorality of some girls
knows no bounds. The immoral activities happen late at night, with full
knowledge of administration. These are injurious to innocent, decent
girls. We request the administration to stop unsocial activities and
secure us from bad influence.
There was nothing notable about the paper or the typeface. The postmark
showed the local post office and the date was from two days ago. The
addresses were handwritten.
I had no idea what these alleged immoralities were. Alcohol? Drugs? Some
girls smoked cigarettes in secret, I knew. I’d come across them here and
there in the hall after dark. But they were always sensible enough to hide
as soon as they spotted me. I didn’t think that would count as such an
immoral activity to merit accusations like this, not these days.
But the writer had to be one of our hall residents. Everyone on campus knew
about the Evening Statute Protests—female students had rallied together to
push back gate-closing time for women’s halls from six pm to nine pm. But
the other issue, the problem with the Hindu women, that wasn’t big enough
to have traveled outside these walls. Maybe some of the girls had talked to
their non-resident friends about it?
I puzzled over the poison pen letter, and thought of throwing it into the
wastepaper basket. But then I changed my mind. Maybe I should hang onto it
for a while, just in case. I slid it into a desk drawer. The wire-mesh
basket beside my desk looked pristine and empty. On an impulse, I cleaned
out my bottom drawer of the accumulated trash masquerading as memories and
dumped it all. I’ve carted these things around for years: store receipts
from a study tour in India, newspaper cuttings, group photos of some picnic
I barely recalled, programs from cultural functions. All my memorabilia
dated from my university days; as if I hadn’t existed before.
I scanned one of the cultural function programs: an orientation evening
from back when I had been a student living in a women’s hall. The schedule
and the names of the performers were listed in glossy purple. I traced the
embossed gold pattern on the border with my finger, touching each name
listed. Some I remembered, some I didn’t. My name was there too, in a way:
invisible in the ‘…and chorus.’ I flipped the program into the trash. Many
of the names printed had changed; new surnames adopted with marriage. Mine
hadn’t. Mine wouldn’t.
It was useless to worry about something you cannot alter. I put the letter
out of my head. Maybe some of the girls were smoking more than cigarettes.
The letters weren’t where it all began, though. It was the two Hindu
students coming in to complain about their food. Or rather their roommates’
food habits. They weren’t both Hindu actually—one girl was Hindu, the other
Buddhist. But they’re the ones who started off this whole mess.
I was sitting in my office checking the entry-exit ledger from the evening
before. The guards had been lax in maintaining the log, and that morning
Provost Madam had called all of us in for a scolding. Even the typist had
to be there. Apparently the resident girls were going in and out after
hours as they pleased, and Provost Madam didn’t care what protests about
gate-closing time they had held four months ago, this was still her women’s hall, and it would run by her rules. In
accordance with whatever rules the University Syndicate handed down, of
course. But mainly her rules and her rules didn’t include the
young women of Leela Nag wandering in and out of the compound at will after
dark. Her finger jabbed the air. Nice, decent girls did not need
to be outside after dark.
Lima apa, who had worked as a House Tutor much longer than the
rest of us and exuded the confidence of one who had witnessed the coming
and going of many Provosts, said in a calm but firm voice, “Madam, the
protests made clear that many female students have part-time work outside
of campus, and they cannot get back by gate-closing time, especially with
city traffic the way it is. The evening buses rarely return to campus
according to schedule. It’s not like they’re demanding a later gate-closing
time because they want to hang out with their boyfriends.”
Lima apa had been a student activist. As House Tutor, she always looked out
for the students; I had seen this as an undergraduate. All this made her
popular among the lefty student girls, but didn’t win her any points with
the Provost.
Madam waved her hand in the air dismissively. “I don’t want to hear
excuses, Lima. You always take their side. We’re not here to take sides;
we’re here to make sure everything is handled appropriately.” She cut
through whatever it was that Lima apa was trying to say. “No, no, they’ve
had their say to the University Syndicate and pushed back gate-closing time
from six pm to nine pm, fine. But the Syndicate hasn’t officially
instituted any new regulations yet. I have a right to know who’s coming in
and going out. How else am I supposed to maintain discipline among three
hundred and nine young women? All these uppity girls behaving as if they’ve
spotted the fifth leg of a serpent; no sense of proportion.” We all sat
listening to her in awkward silence. What was the point in rehashing all of
this?
Back in the House Tutor Office, Lima apa assigned me the duty of checking
over the ledger kept at the gate. I wasn’t exactly sure what to check.
Supposedly the guards weren’t recording entry and exit properly. But unless
I sat at the entrance with the guards, I had no way of knowing who was
crossing the gateway when, in which direction, and whether the guards were
logging it in. What could I tell from looking at the ledger entries?
“Just ensure entries are being made, I suppose.” She bent over with her
hand on the back of my chair to get a closer look at the ledger. I could
smell her light perfume. “Looks okay. As if the girls who do ‘bad’ things
can’t do them before six o’clock. As if everyone’s as pure as flowers while
it’s daylight.” Lima apa snorted. “Just another idea to let herself believe
this is her Queendom.”
I laughed at Lima apa’s comment but quickly focused on the papers in front
of me. Lima apa had no fear. One of the ayahs was in the room
cleaning our tables of teacups and saucers sprinkled with brown biscuit
crumbs. I could never trust these peons and ayahs, they were always
gossiping and whispering. What if she reported such comments to someone?
Trust and survival couldn’t possibly be placed on the table together.
The two girls came in as soon as Lima apa left for lunch. They were first
years, and had only been at the hall a couple of months. I’d never seen
them before. They lived in separate rooms but they looked the same in their
waist-length braids and neatly folded ornas covering their
breasts. Their complaints were the same too: they were vegetarians and
their roommates cooked meat or fish in the rooms. Which in itself they
wouldn’t object to, but the situation was getting complicated.
I sighed and closed the ledger. It took me a while to understand what they
were saying. The one with the deeper voice did most of the talking; the
other one was mostly the backup harmony. Apparently their roommates split
costs for groceries and cooking stuff but they couldn’t participate because
they were vegetarians and the others didn’t want to accommodate that. Also
the senior roommates kept using their utensils without asking and once
something had been used to cook or slice meat or fish, it became tainted
for them and had to be thrown away. Hall life was getting to be more
irksome and expensive than they had thought. When they raised the issue
with the room seniors they were told to shut up. Then someone, as a joke,
had slipped a piece of beef in deep voice’s vegetable curry. Fortunately,
another roommate warned her in time and she was saved from transgressing,
inadvertent as it might have been.
Why was I being involved in their dietary issues? Couldn’t she just have
picked out the meat and thrown it away? I usually have the dining hall send
meals. It wasn’t terrible, there was hilsa fish with parvals for dinner last night. And chicken and potato curry before
that. Maybe they could eat there. There’s usually a non-beef option. I put
the suggestion to them.
They seemed affronted. “We’re vegetarians,” said deep voice. “My caste eats
neither fish nor chicken.” The quieter one piped up, “The dining food isn’t
fit to put in your mouth. We’d die if we ate there.”
Well, really. “None of the other Hindus ever complained,” I said, just to
put things into perspective. If their roommates didn’t want vegetarians to
eat with them, what could I do? However, we are supposed to mediate
conflicts. “Why don’t you just wash your things with very hot water?” I
said encouragingly. They seemed even more offended by this suggestion. I
don’t know what they expected from me. I guess I could tell their roommates
not to use their stuff?
But they had a better solution. What if the two of them were allotted a
corner room?
Most of the rooms in the hall were equipped to house four girls. That meant
four wood and metal beds, four desks, four wall cabinets. The cooking space
was merely a corner where they hooked up a single electric burner to an
outlet. When I visited the rooms on inspections, I always marveled at how
the girls managed to dress it up. There were bright hued spice pots lined
on the floor beside the burner, perhaps a coverless red and white Dano milk
tin holding spatulas and ladles upright like soldiers in tight formation,
red earthen bowls with white clumps of garlic. The rest of the supplies
would be out of sight under someone’s bed.
The hall was, however, bursting at the seams. Every year there were many
more girls than we had space for. The promised construction of two more
halls, much larger than ours, was taking forever. In the meantime, we
stuffed six, sometimes eight girls to a room. The new girls were ‘attached’
to a room and were recorded as ‘doubling’ with a senior. If the doublings
were lucky and got a nice senior, they would get to share the tiny bed and
the desk. Sometimes doublings were made to sleep on the floor and do
chores. No one complained.
Then there were the corner rooms, oddly triangular and small, like mine.
The corner rooms were carved out from the leftover spaces, and all three
residential wings had a few. They seemed more architectural mistakes than
planning, but I didn’t care. I liked my window with its single panel
looking out onto an expanse of deep red earth easing into a small pond.
Sometimes the veil of the floating water-lettuce would even let through a
glimpse of shining water.
Small as they were, the corner rooms were coveted. There were twelve
altogether, and I got one as the live-in House Tutor. The rooms barely had
space for two beds and the wall cabinets were smaller. Of course mine had
just one bed, so I had enough space to squeeze in a tiny bookshelf and
dresser.
The corner room occupants were never asked to take on doublings. The
official rule was only Masters students could be allotted to the corner
rooms, and if there were more applicants than slots—which was generally the
case—the Provost would consider their academics and behavior to decide. In
reality, the senior girls who were in the Provost’s good books got
allotments. Which meant leaders in the student wing of whichever political
party had exerted influence in the appointment of the Provost. There were
also rumors of these slots being bought and sold. Many of the politicals
were professional activists, students in name only. Some were even older
than me and enrolled in some department or diploma course so they could
live on campus. Some just refused to move out even after they had
graduated. There wasn’t much we could do about it, they usually had the
backing of influential faculty or administrators. Student politics had
become a career for them and the residential halls on campus were how they
marked out territory. Whoever had the halls, had the clout. Everyone knew
how it worked.
Except for these two, it seemed. If they were allotted a corner room, they
suggested, they could practice their vegetarian ways to their heart’s
content without bothering or being bothered by anyone.
I thought a more important issue was the dining hall food, and how bad it
was. The daal was just yellow salty water, flavorless. I wondered
if they put any lentils in it at all, or just boiled turmeric and garlic in
water. During load-shedding one evening, one of the girls mistook a bowlful
of daal for the bowl for rinsing your eating hand and washed up in it. In
the daal, I mean. I don’t know why more girls don’t complain about that
sort of thing. All this other nonsense.
I told them I’d talk to the Senior House Tutor about it and sent them away.
But, I thought to myself, before I spoke to Lima apa, I would call in
Aaroti. She was Hindu, I knew, her surname was Das. Although I’d seen her
eating kabab with other girls and it didn’t always seem to be
chicken either. She’d been very vocal during the gate-closing time
protests. We’d grown to know each other while the protests and negotiations
were going on. I knew she attended the study circles organized by the
Socialist Students Union and she seemed to know the ins and outs of student
politics. I could sound her out. She usually came by my room for a little
chat once a week. This time I’d invite her.
Personally, I thought it was a non-issue. The other Hindu girls weren’t
complaining, and these two seemed the quiet type, not troublemakers. But
these days, with students protesting issues right and left, who knows what
was important when and why. Best to be safe.
Lima apa’s entrance in the mornings was something to behold. She lived five
minutes away from Leela Nag Hall, in a gray building smeared with the
ever-growing vine of money-plant. It sat right beside the huge two-storied
house that was the Provost residence. I guess they gave Lima apa a separate
apartment although she didn’t have a family because she’d been here for so
long. Rumor had it that she had loved blindly and lost when she was a
student stealing hearts right and left. But that had been long ago. She had
never married after that. Sometimes I wished I had known her then. Or she
had known me.
She’d never invited me to her place although I’d heard there were students
who congregated there for a study circle and sometimes music rehearsals.
Lima apa was in charge of the hall’s cultural programs so it made sense, I
guess. Although they did take up a lot of her free time. It also seemed
that the girls who spent time with her were mostly the troublemakers.
Her trademark attire was a freshly laundered cotton handloom sari every
day, a woven jhola-bag and a big teep centered on her
forehead. The teep changed color daily, matching her sari. Her blouses were
always of the same make—high necked at the back, plunging to a v-shape at
the front, but modestly covered with the perfectly folded anchal
of her sari pinned on her left shoulder, sleeves tight down to the crook of
her elbow. In the three years I’ve lived and worked at Leela Nag, she has
always arrived thus.
At exactly eight thirty every morning, she would walk into the office, hang
her bag on the side of the chair, and place a handful of flowers on the
gleaming white saucer on her desk. Sometimes they were wildflowers from her
early morning walks, some days flowers plucked from the plants lining her
balcony. Her plants grew outwards and when I walked by the building I could
see the leaves and flowers pushing through the metal grill to reach the sun
and air.
The flowers she brought changed with the seasons: blood red hibiscus,
yellow marigolds, purple-hearted glorybower, and orange ixora. She would
drain the glass of water awaiting her before greeting me, “How is your day
looking, Tamanna?”
When I first started work at Leela Nag, I would enter the office at
eight-thirty as well. But soon I realized Lima apa expected me to have the
morning paperwork organized by the time she arrived. I began coming in
fifteen minutes early.
It wasn’t a problem as I lived in the hall. I had been allotted the corner
room on the ground floor. If you crossed the outer gate, negotiated the
twenty-four hour guard-station, walked through the main gate, and took the
two steps onto the narrow passage you’d be standing facing the open square
of green in the middle of the structure. The hall rose on three sides, like
matchboxes stood on end and glued together. Mine was the first door you
would have to cross to get to the rooms the girls lived in; I usually had a
good view of who was coming and going.
Lima apa had been at Leela Nag from the beginning. She had no reason to
remember me, I was one among many, but I was a doubling for a year at the
hall where she was the live-in House Tutor. Back then I would see her at
the hall all the time. Usually she had a group of students around her.
I was enrolled in History, had three subsidiary courses, and I was tutoring
two elementary students. The tutoring was how I paid my way through
university eventually. My parents were already threatening to cut me
off—the money they were paying for my education, the shelter they
provided—all of it made them believe they had more of a right over me than
any human being should have over another. Love, by then, was no longer in
the equation. What an oddity love is: not having it slays, but having it
can very well slay you too.
Around the same time things became tense with the senior whose doubling I
was; she was juggling several messy relationships that were spilling over
everywhere. She had a boyfriend in play, and another man writing letters
from abroad, and yet it was my shoulder she leaned on. She preferred, she
confessed, a woman’s softness to the men her traitorous heart inevitably
led her to. It felt as if she didn’t know what she wanted and she began
accusing me of various misdoings. I felt myself on the verge, teetering
over the sharp edge of an abyss. We had grown close, and yet it was as if
she, the older and more experienced one, needed more clarity. As if we were
both swimming but only one of us knew how to breathe underwater.
After a year I opted out. I left the hall and moved to my cousin’s house in
the city. For the rest of my years there, I would make the daily hour-long
commute by bus five days a week. It had seemed worth it back then.
I remember one afternoon when I was still a resident student. I was sitting
in the shadows at the back of the hall TV room while outside the rain beat
down, the lightning an occasional ambient flicker within the walls. Lima
apa joined the girls waiting for her up front. She was rain-soaked, and her
hair was plastered to her face and neck. I could hear them talk and laugh
as she dried herself with a towel one of them brought. They formed lines
soon and she stood facing them, ramrod straight, her hands clapping out the
harsh staccato of the choral poems they recited as she made them practice
again and again.
I knew every word of those poems and those songs. I knew the order they
went in, where the pauses were, where the breaks fell because I had watched
them rehearse for days. I don’t know how Lima apa spotted me mouthing along
at the back of that large room; she smiled and called me to join them. I
went at her beckoning, but still I hung back at the edges, as if despite
being called upon, I could stay as I was in that moment: neither in nor
out.
“Which girls? I guess I haven’t met them yet, so many first years this
year.” Aaroti sat on my bed crunching the biscuits I had placed in a saucer
in front of her. The cool evening air wafted through the window behind us,
the scent of water carrying through the iron bars.
I couldn’t remember their names. “It’s not like any of the corner rooms are
empty.”
The breeze ruffled the stack of pamphlets she had placed between us, the
grey bordered white papers a call to arms for all students to uphold equal
rights. I wondered what rights these were. Aaroti always had a hundred
things going on. She shrugged. “They’re fully paid students; the
administration needs to take their concerns seriously. All students have
full rights to every amenity on offer at their academic residential
institutions.”
“We’d have to empty out a room and you know who usually gets those rooms.”
“So the administration is more concerned with keeping the politicals happy
than the rights of the general students?” she asked sharply.
This is why I sometimes don’t like Aaroti. We’d be having a nice
conversation and then she’d sound like that. I said, “Well, we have to…”
“No, apa,” she cut in. “I’m sorry, I have to disagree. You are here for the
general students, for the students only.”
That is all very well in theory, but how does that work out in real life? I
didn’t want to argue. I had seen her prowess when she led the debate
against the Evening Statute, first with the Provost and then later the
Investigation Committee. At least the gong beating at 5.45 pm to signal
that the girls had fifteen minutes to get inside the hall gates or be
locked out was no longer heard. “Like my grandmother forcing her chickens
into the coop at dusk,” she had described it in her impassioned plea. The
last time the gong had been heard was when the protest rallies from the
different women’s halls converged here and one of the girls grabbed it from
the guardroom. They had stood outside beating it, a call to all to stand
together.
These lefty activist types were very good at arguing although they never
seemed to make a good show at the student council elections. But then the
student wing of the ruling party always swept the polls, regardless of how
many students actually voted.
“Aaroti, you misunderstand my goodwill. I could just ignore the complaint,
no?”
She leaned forward and began tidying the stack of pamphlets. The breeze had
been strong enough to topple a few onto my bed. The white paint of the iron
headboard had rusted and looked rougher than it actually was. I tried a
different tack. “Why don’t they just eat at the dining hall? Plenty of
girls do. You eat there too sometimes. Or maybe they could have a separate
cooking corner in their rooms.” I didn’t actually think that was practical;
there was no space.
“But isn’t having a burner in the room against the rules?” She looked at me
with raised eyebrows. “You wouldn’t suggest something against hall
regulations, would you?”
I couldn’t believe she was pulling this on me. Almost every room in the
women’s hall had a burner. Her room had a burner. Regulation #29
does stipulate that burners aren’t allowed, but no one really likes the
dining hall food and anyway girls like being able to cook.
At any rate, no one followed all the rules. Although we made sure
the girls knew what they were by having them copy all sixty of them by hand
when they came to live here. I mean who in this day and age would take
seriously the rule to have a chaperone present if you had a male visitor?
Or the requirement of a signed permission slip from a parent and/or the
local guardian if a female student wanted to watch a movie? The rules had
been there for ages; we just applied common sense regarding what could be
followed and what couldn’t.
I decided to ignore Aaroti’s question and replenished the saucer of
biscuits. As soon as I returned, she grabbed another biscuit and said,
“Tell me, Tamanna apa, when they accepted our demand to modernize the hall
code, were they just stalling, or is anything actually going to change?”
“It takes time, Aaroti, you know that.”
She laughed and stood up. “Six decades wasn’t enough, I guess.” She dusted
the crumbs off her hands and grabbed her pamphlets. “I have to be at the
rehearsal at Lima apa’s.” Aaroti had a solo at the Orientation Week Welcome
Night. It was still a month away, but they were all very serious about it.
She stretched, bending from her waist, first right then left. “As a
representative of the Association for Minority Students, I’d suggest you
take their complaint seriously.” She looked at my face and relented. “Look,
Tamanna apa, you’re not looking the problem in the face. You can’t compare
what I do—or don’t do—with anyone else. I’m not much of a practicing Hindu.
With those girls it’s a religious issue. Sounds like they’re believers so
they’re going to be strict about observances. You don’t want them going to
the papers or something shouting communalism or discrimination.”
I don’t know why she and her friends keep saying six decades. Leela Nag was
only built about six years ago. Construction had just started when I was a
student. I remember walking past the site, shortcutting from the tea stalls
to the Arts building. We would save time by braving the ogling laborers and
their raucous renditions of Bollywood hits. At first the ground was cleaved
open, the maw ready to swallow all. Then it surged out: first the iron
skeleton, then the gray concrete pillars pointing upwards and spreading
out.
I know they say six decades because the hall regulations were adapted from
the Rokeya Hall regulations, but Rokeya Hall is such a hallowed
institution. I think it might have been the first women’s hall in our
country. Anyway, what was wrong with following tradition?
As I dusted the crumbs off my bed, I decided I would talk to Lima apa. As
Provost Madam kept reminding us, we were blessed with opportunity and
freedom and it was up to us to not abuse that.
It was a month after we officially allotted a corner room to Mithila and
Jayanti, the two first year doublings, that the first poison pen letter
came. The room changes had been pushed through by Lima apa, almost
singlehandedly. I had never seen Lima apa so outraged as when I related the
anecdote about the beef-in-vegetable prank. “How would you feel, Tamanna,
if someone tricked you into eating pork?”
I’d never thought of it that way before. I guess because I’d seen Hindus
like Aaroti eat meat, even beef—I didn’t realize. I was just used to the
idea.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves. All of you.” Every word she had said
to the eight young women standing in front of us was heavy and crisp. They
had shut up after a couple of attempts to mumble shamefaced explanations
for their actions. “How disrespectful do you have to be of another human
being to behave like that? You didn’t mean any harm doesn’t improve the
situation. What has all this education taught you? Nothing at all, nothing.
I am ashamed to have women like you here. You’ll go out in the world and
behave thus and represent this university, this hall. Chhi!” Lima
apa almost spat out the last word, the force of its exhalation making the
girls hang their heads even lower.
She had rounded on me with no less fury. I had no explanation to give her
other than I hadn’t thought it was that important. She wouldn’t
even acknowledge that my exploration of the situation with Aaroti meant
anything. It was only when I raised the question of whether the chewing out
of the seniors wouldn’t make them go back and take it out on Jayanti and
Mithila that the Lima apa I was more used to returned. She pondered it for
a while and then shook her head. “I don’t know, there are moments when you
just need to take a strong stand. Sometimes people need it to be pointed
out what they are and what they think.”
Within the week the paperwork was complete and the two girls moved into the
corner room directly above mine. Lima apa went through the academic records
of all the corner room occupants and ranked them. But I did notice that
none of the rooms where the Provost made direct allotments were touched.
Lima apa just moved one person, a quiet, conscientious, Pharmacy major who
was unlikely to protest. Instead of being attached to a senior, the two
girls were assigned the slot jointly, each the other’s doubling.
I brought the discontent over first years getting a corner room to Lima
apa’s attention, but she said not to worry about it. There would always be
people unhappy over something.
***
The second poisoned missive followed two weeks on the tail of the first, on
a Thursday afternoon.
We have informed you of immorality that takes place in Room 326 at
night. There has been no action. We shall see what steps administration
takes and then we will take law in our own hands. We will not let good
name of our hall fall into dirt through machinations of those without
values. This lesbianism is against social morality of our beautiful
nation. This must be stopped.
I knew immediately they meant Aaroti. The other girls in Room 326 were of
the kind who went to class, came back, cooked, ate, made mud masks, bathed,
and repeated. Aaroti’s doubling had been assigned by me at her own request,
as they were from the same rural town. A quiet, petite girl with a delicate
laugh.
What was I supposed to do? Why were they sending these missives to me? I
couldn’t crumple this one up: what if it was true? I was assigned to live
in the hall to chaperone these girls, and now this. The shame of it made me
shiver. I had known such nastiness before in the women’s halls; there was
that time when we heard about the cleaners revolting because they kept
finding ‘used’ thin eggplants in the shower stalls. But that had been
hushed up. If it had ever happened. I’d always thought that sort of thing
was no more than a rumor. But there was no telling what the girls could get
up to. There were so many ways a young woman could go wrong without proper
guidance. That is why I had left my hall all those years ago.
Lima apa didn’t come in on weekends so I would have to wait. But the very
next day the third letter arrived; this one was slipped underneath the
door. I stepped on the yellow envelope as I walked in, postmarking it with
the dirt-smudged wavy lines of my shoe sole.
If this lesbianism situation is not resolved in next one week, we shall
have postering campaign across campus, and we shall inform all national
media of this crisis and how administration’s inaction is endangering
welfare of general female students. We have the goodwill of all general
students with us against this illegal activity and we shall prevail.
Lima apa’s face was expressionless as she read. I couldn’t tell if she was
annoyed at being summoned peremptorily on a weekend. Someone senior needed
to deal with this, and I couldn’t possibly talk to Provost Madam directly
about such a shameful accusation.
I willed myself to breathe slowly as she put the letters on the table. What
if I was held responsible? I thought of Aaroti as a friend and didn’t want
her to be shamed in such a manner, but this required investigation.
“Any idea who they are?”
“Well, it’s Aaroti’s room…”
“No, the letter writers.” She looked at me for a few seconds and said,
“You’re new still. This happens every couple of years, you know. And
generally they’re false allegations. That sort of thing just isn’t part of
our culture.”
I felt a bit slow. “When you say it isn’t part of our culture… you mean the
letter writing?”
“Oh, no, of course not! I mean—that other thing.” She picked up the letters
again. “Usually it’s some girls who work themselves up and then lodge a
complaint.” She looked at my uncomprehending face and explained, “It’s
partly a mob-mentality thing, but almost always, there’s some other
conflict. Like those fatwas the mullahs give out on women in the villages;
look under the surface and there’s some property dispute involved, or some
powerful man wants something and the woman or her family is in the way.”
I still didn’t understand. Also I didn’t think she was taking this
seriously. “Shouldn’t we inform the Provost?”
“File the letters somewhere,” she said. “It’s not a good idea to give
importance to anonymous messages; attention is what they want in the first
place.” She paused. “I’d bet this has to do with that room I assigned. Some
of these girls—I can never believe how low they can stoop.”
I disagreed. But I held my tongue.
Aaroti was crying. She was trembling in humiliation and indignation. I had
never seen her cry before. The Provost Madam watched her unmoved, the rigor
of her face proclaiming her dislike of the young woman in front of her.
Lima apa’s disapproval of the whole scene was clear in how her brows drew
together, in the taut line of her neck.
It was the Provost who had insisted Aaroti be faced with the accusation,
that she be allowed one chance to defend her reputation. Lima apa’s
objections that Aaroti was surely a good girl, that she wouldn’t be
involved in such activities, died off when she realized the more she
objected, the firmer Provost Madam’s resolve to have Aaroti interrogated.
My thin dissent of not accusing her without knowing who the accusers were
was shut down by Provost Madam’s question, “If this gets out, you think
you’ll get off lightly? Why are you here? What were you doing all this
time, sleeping with mustard oil up your nose?”
The room was stultifying; the Provost Madam had delicate skin, and she
disliked the outside air so the windows were rarely if ever opened, the
air-conditioners constantly humming in the recycled air.
“Of course, I’m not like that! I can prove it,” Aaroti sobbed as
we watched. “I have a boyfriend.” She held a white handkerchief clenched in
her fist, yet she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m halfway
through my time here,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’ve done so much
for others, and this is how I’m repaid?” She broke down again, weeping with
the orna held up against her face. She was still talking but all her words
were going into the orna and none into our ears.
The Provost Madam’s arched her right eyebrow, never a precursor of anything
good. But before she could begin, Lima apa raised her hand. “Madam, I think
we’ve heard enough. It’s ridiculous that a student needs to bare herself
this way. And on such flimsy evidence.” Aaroti’s sobbing had quieted down
to sniffles.
The Provost smiled. “Well, Lima, it’s all very well for you to make easy
judgments. I, however, have to be more careful and balanced. You do realize
that I answer to a higher power.” For a moment I thought she was invoking
Allah, but then realized it was merely the University Syndicate. She looked
at some point above Aaroti’s head as she spoke. “Aaroti Das, I have taken
all facts into consideration. You may go now. But from now on, please try
to behave better. It is reckless behavior that lands people in such
situations.”
As I made to follow Aaroti out, the Provost motioned for me to sit.
She pulled open her top drawer, and placed another yellow envelope
beside the two that lay on her desk, crumpled by Aaroti’s sweaty hands.
The third envelope sat there with the same ungainly scrawl as if a
long-limbed spider steeped in ink had run amok, the same everything,
except this one was addressed to the Provost Madam.
She poked it toward Lima apa. “Go on, read it. I don’t know what I’m going
to do with this situation. I’ve told you for ages now, to not let these
students introduce all this foreign nonsense here. Do you have an
explanation for this?”
I was sitting near enough that I could read the letter as Lima apa held it.
We have very clear idea why administration is silent. What will
administration say when there is evil spirit right in pot of mustard
seed? Why is Begum Lima Apa still not married at this age? Why young
girls at her house late at night? Why is she living alone with no
family? What goes on there in her abode, we are aware. It is same as
Room 326.
I couldn’t bear to look at Lima apa’s face. None of this was my fault. I
was just making sure the hall’s reputation was not besmirched when I
brought all this to the attention of the Provost, ignoring Lima apa’s
instructions. But these girls, whoever they were, had gone too far now,
this was too much.
The Provost turned to me. “Tamanna, you haven’t said much. Come, you’re the
one who actually lives here. In all my years of university life, I’ve never
seen a House Tutor accused like this.”
I couldn’t speak. When I finally looked at Lima apa, it hurt to see the
usual glow of her skin overcast by an ashen pallor.
A nerve near her right temple twitched so fast and so hard, I could see
it. She reached up and pressed down on it and it was as if with that
movement some spell of silence was finally lifted.
We both began talking at the same time and then stopped.
She began again. “I can’t believe, Madam, that you would even consider
questioning me on this.” She paused to gather breath. “In any other
situation, after an insult like this, I would tender my resignation.”
The Provost was listening to Lima apa with her head cocked to one side.
There was a satisfaction in her smile that frightened me. “I wouldn’t
consider it, Lima,” she said. “You forget I’m a trained Sociologist. I’ve
studied many things and the homosexuality doesn’t incapacitate
administrative skills. Why would you need to resign?”
“Are you insinuating I’m one of those people? I shall get to the bottom of
this, I…”
I could feel the rage in Lima apa shake her. I felt it as if channeled to
me through an invisible conduit—her disdain, her anger, her helplessness,
her surrender.
“I would prefer if this stayed within these walls. I don’t want to take all
this and have to speak in front of some committee. I see no reason to wash
our dirty clothes by the roadside pond.” Provost Madam picked up all three
letters and folded them together. The letters nestled against each other, a
forced intimacy, and then slid inside a single envelope. The envelope
disappeared inside her voluminous bag. “Lima, the Investigation Committee
will be convening soon. They have a broad mandate since they will be
drafting a new code for the hall. Just remember the hall’s good name rests
in our hands.” Provost Madam smiled at us. “There are times when being
conservative and traditional isn’t all that bad. Let’s forget all this.
Everyone whose name could have been sullied is in the clear. I
will make sure of that.”
She leaned over and placed a white file bound with red string in front of
Lima apa. I stared at the university logo printed on top and my handwriting
beneath that: Room Allotment Assessment. “You’re still holding on
to that list I sent you, Lima. I need to get these allotments out of the
way before I can focus on other things.”
The Provost had the final say on who got which room, but the Senior House
Tutor needed to sign off by ascertaining there were no mismatches or
errors. Lima apa picked up the file and held it quietly for a few moments.
I could barely hear her when she said, “It’ll be on your desk by tomorrow.”
I steeled myself to look back at her. “You already did, apa.” I didn’t
expect her eyes to brim over at my words.
She looked away. “Women like me, who choose to be alone, who choose to not
be wives or mothers…the ground we stand on is as only as solid as the
respect we are granted.” I felt my own eyes burn. From witnessing, again,
how the simple act of being exacted such a desperate price.
I gathered my things from my desk and went to my room. When I opened my
door, I stepped on a folded piece of paper. I stepped back quickly as if I
had been about to step on a turd, but it was only a leaflet advertising a
new laundry service. Complete cleanness!! In complete one day!!
Perhaps I would try that out one of these days
I stand in front of the gate now and remember arriving for the first time
three years ago to begin working here. Usually the girls arrived with one
or both parents, or perhaps a father and uncle. They would have several
bags’ worth of clothes and utensils, and following them would be a coolie
carrying a mattress rolled tight around a couple of pillows. The girl would
follow her family; the coolie brought up the rear. They would have the
coolie wait while they came to the office under the misguided idea that we
would let them all enter the girl’s allotted room to set her up. Why the
fathers always think they can go inside a women’s hall, I don’t know.
Some grumbled when we explained, others seemed happier the hall was more
secure than they had thought. The mothers, of course, could enter. And we
had ayahs at hand to help with the setting up and settling in.
I didn’t have much luggage. I carried one bag and pulled a bigger one on
wheels. Also: I was alone. There was no one who would have followed me
through that night speared by the twin headlights of the long-distance bus.
I had left home to come here, I had finally cut myself adrift on the vast
moving water of self.
The tiny pathway connecting the hall grounds to the road was still under
construction and the rickshaw puller had to deposit me half a mile away
from the gate. I was trying to persuade him to follow me up to the hall
office with my bags and my bedding.
The dawn fog of late autumn was melding into dew and light, as if
accumulating and dissolving at the same time. Lima apa emerged from the
mist. She was on her way home from her morning walk.
Beads of moisture had accrued on her forehead sparking the sun now and
then.
She didn’t remember me, at all, but she knew who I was. She made the
rickshaw puller balance my things against each other on the sidewalk, for,
as I would soon learn, we had peons at hand to help with that sort of
thing. Her right hand was held slightly away from her body, cupping a
fistful of Sad Tree blossoms. As if she was undecided whether the orange
centered star-shaped white flowers were too delicate or too heavy.
We walked toward the hall together and in between talking she sang a folk
song I’d never heard before. Her voice was low, the words sometimes melting
into a hum, but returning to words again.
Wood and iron play at love/the boat topples /the two conspire /Let us
live on dry land no more.
The gate loomed in the distance but the buildings themselves were still
shrouded. With every step we took the morning light sharpened, the clear
gold promising warmth. In between her singing we talked about the newest
wing of the hall, the room she had allotted me, a recent suicide on campus,
my student years. Every so often Lima apa would hold her cupped palm up to
her nose and breathe in the delicate fragrance. The cold that morning had
been heavier than usual for that time of year and I shivered under my thin
cotton shawl as I walked beside her.
I look down the same path now and it is already showing signs of wear with
bricks broken here and there leaving gaps in the neat pattern of
fire-bricks laid out with such care, or bricks poking upwards. There was
some dispute over where the repair funds should come from and neither the
Leela Nag administration nor the Campus Estate Office wanted to bear the
cost.
I stand to the side and wait.
It might take a few minutes but a rickshaw will surely pull through here
soon to carry me to the bus stop. I can only see a few of the ruptures on
the road in this dark, most of them remain beyond my vision despite the
light reflecting from the nearby streetlights. But I know whether I can see
them or not, as soon as the rickshaw starts moving, I’ll be able to tell
every gap and every bump. After all, seeing isn’t the only way to know the
world.
