A Version of She Can Sing
Indu
Parvathi
Mrs Sen’s
palms felt soft and smooth and a little pudgy to the child as they cupped her
face. It made her think of Pink Doll. She missed Pink Doll.
It had
been busy at the intersection under the overpass, lots of big cars on the
afternoon that she’d found the doll. The traffic light had started to flash
before changing when a cotton-candy rainbow came arcing across the grey and
landed on the road. She’d darted out from Poorvi’s hold, picked it up and run
back clutching the woolly head accompanied by the other kids’ shrieks of ‘hurry,
hurry’, only to have Raji snatch at the doll’s brilliant pink hair. ‘Let her
have it, you cow,’Poorvi shouted and yanked Raji away. ‘Kid doesn’t have
anything, not even a name. Let her keep the damn doll.’Raji let go but bared
her teeth and jeered, ‘Anaamika’. The child didn’t care.
When
she closed her eyes now, she could remember what it had
felt like to stand in the shadow of the massive concrete arches, hugging the
doll to her chest. The sensation evaporated as Mrs Sen removed her hands,
leaving a shallow vacuum.
‘Sangeetha,
that’s what I’ll call you,’ Mrs Sen said. ‘Yes, Sangeetha, music, that will be
your name. And I will teach you to use that voice of yours.’
The
little girl’s hair, styled into a fashionable swirl at her nape was still
intact, not a hair out of place.She sat stiffly in a corner of the room
watching the others play. They were dishevelled and flushed with the excitement
of unhindered playtime while their mothers drank wine and gossiped in the next
room. Toffee wrappers, ice cream cups and crumbs of cake littered the soft,
carpeted floor. Her stomach grumbled. Mrs Sen had forgotten to ask her to have
her food, though she did not forget to introduce her to her socialite friends
who had complimented her on her magnanimity.
‘Oh Mrs Sen you are an
angel. Imagine having a street urchin at home, that too with your own
daughters...’
The child’s ears burnt
when she heard the soft tones of the conversation. She had stood there in her
frilly green frock for a long time, then drifted to the next room where
the other children were playing. Poorvi called her to join them, but she
preferred to watch from a sofa. When Poorvi wasn’t fighting with Raji or taking
a breather from the comics to which she was glued, she was kind to the child. Maybe
because she felt a bond. She too was ignored by her mother, except when she was
decked up for appearances like this, where they would be paraded as Mrs Sen’s
daughters, ‘so well behaved and beautiful’.
Away from her mother’s
surveillance Poorvi and even Raji spoke and acted like the maids who had been
rearing them since their birth.
The child scrutinised the
dolls on the high shelves lining the nursery from her sofa, deciding that none
of them were as beautiful as pink doll who had been her friend ever since she
had come to Mrs Sen’s house as an adopted daughter. She remembered the day when
Grump the big Alsatian had entered her room and torn pink doll into pieces. She
had sobbed the entire night holding onto the tatters but Susheela the maid
had swept the pink and white fluff away the next morning. She had other dolls,
the fairy doll with its white crystal studded gown, the prince with his small
white horse ... but she missed pink doll.
Mrs Sen never
cuddled her after the first day when she was bringing her home from the big
yellow building where all the other children like her had been. They were
all her friends, who begged with her on the streets. On a blazing hot day
Shambu Dada, who set targets for them every day, (‘fifty Rupees for you, don't
dare to come back without that...’), was arrested and all of them were escorted
to the shelter by the policemen.
‘Come on, get up, mama is
calling us,’ Poorvi shrieked in her ears jolting her out of her restless sleep.
The party was over.
In Mrs Sen's sprawling
bungalow surrounded by manicured lawns she felt lost. She longed to be back on
the streets again with the other kids where she could be herself.She could sing
then. She mostly sat mute when the music teacher came to train her at Mrs Sen’s
behest. Whenever she attempted to sing the teacher’s ragas she did so badly
that she shut up immediately.
‘This
child can’t sing Mrs Sen, she is so besuri...’
the teacher had said before she left for good.
‘But I heard her singing
the other day when we had gone to receive her from the rescue shelter...’
a confused Mrs Sen had mumbled.
During the school
vacation Mrs Sen took the children to the hill station where her husband
managed his tea estates. The child shrivelled up under the steady gaze of Mr Sen
who obviously disapproved of her.
‘You and your quirks,
Manaswini,’ he had told Mrs Sen in his deep gruff voice. Don’t hurt the child,
that’s all I have to say.’
The child hated meal
times when she had to sit at the high table with the entire family, silently
listening to the prattle of Poorvi and Raji. An invisible silver thread of
conversation and laughter bound all except her at the table into a family.
‘Where is this child,
what will we do now?’ Mrs Sen’s frustrated voice reached her ears. The child
was hiding behind a concrete bench outside the temple of Kali where they had
all come to pray. It was the last day of the visit. She knew that the flight
was at eleven and they wouldn't wait much longer.
‘Leave her alone, she
will survive, just don’t talk about her. If somebody asks about her, tell
them that her mother came to take her back. Come on get in, I can’t cancel the
plane tickets, come on come on come on,’ he shouted.
From her hiding place the
child’s large fearful eyes peeped out through the gap between the concrete
slabs of the bench, while the jeep snaked down the mountain roads.
She stood up, took a deep
breath and ran lightly towards the beggars who lined the path leading up to the
temple.
She was humming a tune.
*
Indu Parvathi is a writer based in Mumbai. She is
currently working on a novel.
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