“Have you ever been in love, Geeta?” she asked me.
I said that I love my parents and my brothers, and a childhood friend called Ashok - and the memory of another one called Narendra, who was no more. But KP nudged me and said, “You know what I mean. I mean have you loved someone to give yourself up to him?”
I blushed madly and said never - nor ever will I. She laughed. When we sat down to lunch, she said, “I fell in love two years ago, Geeta. He was my brother’s friend.” She went on to tell me that he used to come to their house occasionally, but as she never moved out of her rooms much, she had never seen him. Then she heard a guitar being played in the house at 1:00am one night. She got up and went, and found her brother’s door unlocked. When she looked inside, she found a person standing with a foot on the chair and the guitar in hand. She heard it all, and then went in and demanded an introduction. She also asked him to teach her to play the guitar.
After that, even when her brother was not at home, he used to come secretly to teach her and talk to her. KP’s rooms were on the third storey, and there was a staircase leading straight up to them from the road. She used to go down and unlock the door and let him in. Often they were together for the whole night. They fell in love, and - she told me - for the first time in her life, she felt wanted. This continued for one and a half years. KP said she had lost herself in him, but that she would not tell me more, because I was so young.
I couldn’t eat any lunch that day. Next day I asked her, “What happened after that?” She smiled and said, “Same as always.”
I went on being puzzled. I felt compassionate for her because she said she had suffered very badly. KP told me that day that she had been married to some awful chap perforce by her father - “...almost at pistol point,” she said. Her father, it seems, had suddenly noticed that his daughter had grown up, and had selected one zamindar’s son for her - complete with all biswaas and everything. What he didn’t consider was that the boy - he was 32, and hardly a boy - was not educated like his daughter was. KP was threatened with all kinds of tortures, was even hit by her father, and was bullied into accepting the match. She was given a very heavy dowry and packed off. Her mother never even came to see her off. “She must have been drunk at that time, seeing that it was 8:00pm,” KP said. She herself was thoroughly miserable. Her boyfriend came till the train with her brother and gave her a letter.
At her in-laws’, she found her father-in-law to be a thoroughly amorous character who would make physical advances towards her.
I felt nauseated. I began to cry at this point. KP tried to console me by patting my head. I don’t know why I sobbed for half an hour - probably this had confirmed all my fears about marriage. When I became calm, KP said, “No one ever cried for me like that. You are the uniquest person I’ve ever met, Geeta.”
She then told me that she was scared of her father-in-law because he was a true copy of her father. She thought that if her husband was good, there wouldn’t be any more troubles. She wanted to meet him, but was disgusted when she saw him. He was huge and like a typical zamindar, just like his father. He outright told her that he had slept with better girls than her.
KP soon found out that he was also impotent (though I thought that she had said “important”, and couldn’t follow any of her remarks till she repeated the word - and then I had to go and look it up in the dictionary). She told him that if he couldn’t give her anything why should he expect anything from her. There was a big quarrel between them that ended by KP slapping his face, and then shutting herself in the bathroom. He called one his seasonal mistresses into the room.
KP stayed there for five days and tried to avoid her father-in-law’s passes at her. On the fifth day she found an opportunity to slip off unseen and came back with her Ayah to Lucknow. Some days later, her husband also came and stayed in their house. One day he came to her room, but she fled to her father and wept it out. After that she never saw him again, though he often came to her place. He threatened to have her kidnapped, but her brother warned him back. Since both were equally terrifying personalities, the cold war continued. Her brother would always come to the college to leave and pick her up. Meanwhile, KP started drinking like a fish, and would often stay out in bars, etc.
I was trembling like a leaf when she finished. I wept again because I couldn’t understand much of what she told me, except that it was horrible. I am better able to understand it now, because I am older.
I stuck to the library and classroom for two or three weeks after this, and tried to persuade her to do the same. She wouldn’t. In fact, all my appeals went waste - she still smoked heavily, drank regularly, and bunked classes. We still had lunch together, mostly on the terrace of the Students’ Center in the winter sun.
Slowly KP got over herself. She began to whistle and sing in November - one moth after she told me about herself. I dared not leave her side, because she seemed to be badly in need of me. KP had a beautiful piercing whistle. I also learnt how to whistle with four fingers in my mouth from her. She inspired me to love dogs. She told me I was too timid, that I would go up very high in my life if I left my fears behind me. “Just use these fears as stepping stones to your success. Getting highest marks for every paper is not absolutely everything,” she told me over and over again.
I never let her spend any of her money on me - I used to stand her whatever we ordered. In the beginning she tried to argue about this, but then thought better of it out of her own logic. She was the only person I’ve met who never took any pride in my intellectual accomplishments. She never discussed class grades with me, nor criticized anyone. From her I learned to have an independent will of my own, and to assert myself in proper places. One day when I was feeling very down in the dumps because of Miss M, I spoke to KP very bitterly about her. KP spoke to me very patiently that all these small obstacles were really only very insignificant things, that there were better and greater things to dream for, that I would be no more worse off if a hundred Miss Ms came to pester me. I learnt confidence and laughter in the face of problems from her.
The amazing thing was that at that time I never really believed what she told me about herself - not because I had a suspicious mind, but because I had a childish mind that still believed in the coming of good fairies to put everything right. Such utter misery had no reality for me - it was something which happened to other people in far away places - not to the KP I knew, the girl sitting in front of me in the afternoon sun. If KP were here now, I would understand her better than those days, and be a better friend.
KP had a penpal in Germany. She loved him very much. She said that after graduation she wanted to join the training for airhostess, and serve there. I as usual was timid. I asked her whether she wouldn’t be terribly lonely and afraid, and wouldn’t all those people there try to... to do anything. KP was scornful and said she didn’t have anything to lose, which I can understand now. At that time I thought she spoke of her jewels, etc, which had gone in her dowry.
But KP had a lot of gold, silver and diamond ornaments. She showed them to me one by one, bringing them in her purse to college. I saw about ten beautify things - bracelets, necklaces and rings, etc; the rest she said were in some bank locker. She had argued her father to give her a monthly allowance of seven hundred - which was fortune - thus getting more than eight thousand every year. She was entitled to fifteen thousand - the balance was put in the bank for her. She was quite ready to sue her father if he didn’t agree. KP never wore the ornaments, but stuck to them because she knew that they were her insurance.
KP shocked me again one day by reading my hands meticulously for four hours on end. She was an expert palmist because she wanted to know her future so as to prevent the occurrence of any other misfortune. She told me that I would marry out of my own will, and this shocked me most. Just imagine! I told her, but she only laughed. She asked for my horoscope once, and I asked Amma to give it. But Amma said it could land me in great trouble and that was that.
KP said that Miss M was her father’s friend’s daughter, and under his escort, Miss M used to often visit them. But KP would shut herself up in her room. “You may be a teacher in the college, but I don’t want you to hound my life 24 hours.” She was bitter against Miss M because she had spread the news of her marriage among the hostellers, even though KP had told her not to.
One day KP read my hand. She was fascinated by the fusion of the head and heart line in my right hand. She explained to me for a while, and then grew serious. I felt alarmed.
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