Two women

"Isn't that Dimple?" Amma braked in time, swerving away from the heaving Ram Lila convoy swarming the town's main road. The swirl of undulating saffron-clad humanity had spawned a mini dust storm on the town's main thoroughfare, resulting in a minor traffic bottleneck. 

"Now, where did you spot Dimple in this medley, Amma?" I craned my neck and eyes far into the crowd till they both ached. 

I longed to see Dimple again, with her saucer eyes and ceramic complexion. But most of all, I wanted to hear her wind-chime laugh. 

Dimple and Santosh, the ideal pair. So everyone said when the couple had surfaced in the ponderously cliquish suburb. 

Not much later, the murmurs pressed their way into the suburb's hallowed precincts like smog. Murmurs about the beatings and voices, crass and carnal, gnashing like scissors late into the night. 

Then Dimple disappeared one night, never to return. 

"Can't you see her?" 

I turned my gaze to where my mother was pointing. 

And then I saw her, by the chaat seller's stall, around which school children had swarmed like flies. 

"She looks heavier than before." I observed her shading her eyes with her hands. I do not believe that she had spotted us amid the ruddy multitude heaving ecstatically. 

Amma's brows were knitting in a sign of irritation as she sighed resignedly, "I wish the mob would move." So did I. The sight of ash-covered ascetics rolling in the throes of such wanton euphoria was hardly my idea of spending a lazy Sunday afternoon with the family. Besides, I was longing for the mint tea that was Usha's specialty. 

"How is Usha?" I promptly regretted my question. Amma's lips straightened into a thin line registering disapproval. 

"But if she is not happy…"

"Look at that!" my mother interrupted, as a thickset man, dressed as Hanuman in gaudy pinks and mauves, swung into our visual zone, blocking our view.

A police constable with an outsized mole on his chin and a beetle-like moustache, shooed away the Hanuman. 

"Sorry ladies," he grinned, displaying a polished set of teeth, "it does look like you might have to wait a bit long."

Amma switched off the ignition letting the key fall to her lap. We rolled up the windows as the Hanuman strode back. The constable had disappeared into the crowd chanting Jai Sri Ram!

Two long beeps followed by a crisp staccato. Amma's cell phone had a strange ringtone. "You should change it," I had told her more than once. "You can hardly hear it in a crowd." It was just as well that I had spotted the beep.

With the devotional chorale at full howl, Amma was forced to strain against the phone. "Tell her to act sensibly this time. She has to give the marriage a chance." With that lone phrase she switched off the instrument. 

"Was that about Usha?" I roared above the crowd. Amma nodded as she honked irritably. 

I could feel my face sallowing thinking of Usha who, at seventeen, had been married off by her widowed mother to a widower thirteen years her senior. 

"Not her fault that she could not provide a handsome dowry to buy a handsome match for her daughter." My mother had been openly sympathetic. "Why, my grandmother was fifteen and some eighteen years younger than Dadaji when she got married. He kept her happy right till the end."

I had met Usha for the first time when she arrived from her village to join her mother. "Why Susheela!" my eldest maternal aunt had observed, "the girl is your replica." Which she indeed was. Usha was the stenciled image of her mother with her oval eyes and tapering jaw set off by high cheekbones. 

Enrolled at the local municipal school, she had been forced to quit after being set upon by four boys from an adjacent school. A match was hastily located from a neighbouring village and a wedding date set. School became an instant casualty. 

What happened to the four boys, asked Amma. No one seemed to know. 

The wedding was solemnized inside a temple with some twenty guests in attendance, mostly from the groom's side. The groom, whose face resembled a bottle gourd, concluded the ceremonial rites with his betel-stained teeth flashing in consonance with the sing-song breeze ruffling the catchpenny wedding bunting. 

"He is lucky to have landed someone so pretty," hissed my eldest maternal aunt. "See! He can barely hide his glee. Shameless fellow!"

No one got to see Usha's face hidden behind a veil, swaddled inside a zari-embroidered sari with a border running all the way up to her knees. 

"I hope she will be happy." Dimple's sigh had been a non sequitur. 

"She had better be," Amma had snapped. "She's lucky that someone wants to marry her, especially after what happened." 

"Yes, I suppose," said Dimple, her face hardening. "There is something good in everything."

The petite breeze, picking up momentum with sudden ferocity, sheared the discussion. By the end of the festivities the breeze, blowing lustily into the sky's conch, began sprouting rain. 

"The weather doesn't augur too well…" Dimple's words were juggled by the drizzly wind that had blown off the wedding canopy drenching the guests with a sudden downpour.

That was the last we had seen of Dimple, in her red and gold tussar silk sari clinging to her slight frame in the flogging rain. 

That is, until this moment. 

"Who is that with her?" Amma almost whistled under her breath. I craned my neck once again. I couldn't see anyone save for a jalebi vendor who had taken her place next to the chaat vendor's stall.

"Let's get away from here!" Amma pursed her lips. I knew that look. Something had upset my mother.

The convoy had split, carving a route for the stranded traffic.

Reaching home well past lunchtime, we were discernibly grateful for the huge spread prepared by Susheela.

"The paneer koftas are delicious, Susheela!" called out my mother.

"It wasn't I who prepared them, Amma ji," shouted Susheela from the kitchen. "Usha did." 

A half smile touched Usha's lips. It was the first in two weeks. Two weeks since she had fled her groom's home.

"Does he beat you?" Amma's grilling had blazed through the kitchen, past the living room, all the way up to the front lawn. The sky, bleeding ink, was turning a livid blue with the trees at standstill, hinting at a brewing storm. Hastily running indoors, I found myself at the grilling site.

"Does he not feed you?" my maternal aunt had taken over the questioning.

Susheela, thumping a ragged heel on the floor had howled, "He has never shown any unkindness, yet this wretch…"

Amma, holding up a hand, said, "Do you know how lucky you are, especially after what happened?"

Usha looked away stone-faced.

"Repulsion! That's a new word she has learned," Susheela flung the kitchen broom on the floor. 

"I am surprised she hasn't spoken about incompatibility," observed my aunt drily. "Everyone is turning modern, including the servants."

A sickle moon peeping through the kitchen window beat a hasty retreat as the storm gathered force. 

"Didi!" Susheela, turning to face me, threw up her hands in beseechment. "Speak to her, won't you?"

And so I did. 

"You look like you could do with some water," my aunt said an hour later.

"So? What did she have to say?" my mother quirked an eyebrow, striking a Rodin-reminiscent posture with her arms crossed.

Usha had said plenty. About a twisted mind revelling in perversion.

"I doubt if either of you will understand." I could see that my verdict did not go down well with the two women facing me.

So I left it at that.

It was the next morning's front page headline on News Hub that changed everything.

"Brothel Madam Killed in Raid." The photographer, I felt, had not done justice to Dimple's smile.

"If Usha doesn't wish to go back to her husband, she can stay here with us. The family will pay for her education… only, don't force her to return," I heard Amma tell Susheela a week subsequent to the news report.

As Dimple had said, there is something good in everything.