Difficult Daughters Read Free

wretched enough?
    The chills and trembling began soon after she reached her bed. Her moaning attracted the attention of the servant who hurriedly asked Chhote Baoji to send for the hakim, Pabiji looked very bad. The hakim declared he could not answer for Kasturi’s life if she had any more children. The vaid also said the same thing. A Western-educated allopath declared that repeated births deplete the body, and no medicine could help Kasturi through another pregnancy. She needed to build up her strength, she needed the fresh air of the mountains immediately, as much as she needed to be removed from the crowded and unhealthy bazaar permanently.
    It was decided to send Kasturi to Dalhousie. Virmati was seventeen and studying for her FA exams, but since the tail end of her education was in sight, it was felt that missing a little of it to help her mother was quite in order. After all, in a year or so the girl would be married. The family hired a house near the central chowk, and Kasturi shifted with her eldest and youngest daughters to a hill station clean and bracing enough to work wonders with her health.

III
     
     
    The cottage Suraj Prakash had rented for his wife in the mountains was a pleasant one, with a pointed roof, and a glassed-in front veranda. It was high on the hillside, with a grand view of the valley in front, and washed with cool, bright sun during the day. There were deodar trees, thick and fragrant in the back garden, and blue and pink hydrangea bushes down the path leading to the front door.
    Virmati quickly settled into housekeeping for her mother. Compared to her duties at home, her work here with one baby and one mother was comparatively light. She had never had Kasturi so much to herself, and was jealous of each moment with her. The best time was the morning havan. In the clear, chilly greyness of five o’clock, before Paro woke, they sat in front of the tiny prayer fire, their chanting the only noise in the house, the yellow-orange flames the only colour. Unlike Amritsar, there was no reason to be distracted from the peace that both mother and daughter felt as they finished praying and sat watching the small, moving glow of the twigs in the havan kund.
    *
     
    At other times, Virmati’s attempts to spin webs of love through her devotion were met by exasperation. Kasturi was not used to so much solicitude.
    Towards the evening it often rained. Trapped in the house, Virmati mooned about restlessly, hanging about her mother, playing with the baby, fidgeting with some knitting as she looked out of the window.
    ‘Viru, at least don’t ruin whatever knitting I am trying to do,’ said Kasturi tartly one evening, ‘Why can’t you make yourself useful? There is so much sewing to be done for the baby. There are sweaters to be made for the other children. It’s a shame that your hands are idle.’
    ‘I’m tired of knitting and sewing,’ flared Virmati. ‘Besides, I’m here to look after you.’
    ‘I can look after myself.’
    ‘Why did you bring me if you don’t need me, Mati?’ said Virmati, with a thick lump in her throat.
    ‘What is all this nonsense? In Amritsar you were bad-tempered because you were busy and tired, here you are bad-tempered because you are idle,’ retorted Kasturi.
    ‘Maybe I should go back to Amritsar. Pitaji can take me the next time he comes.’
    The language of feeling had never flowed between them, and this threat was meant to express all her thwarted yearnings.
    ‘Maybe you should,’ said Kasturi crossly. Why was her daughter so restless all the time? In a girl, that spelt disaster.
    Virmati left raging. Why was saying anything to her mother so difficult? Maybe it was best to keep silent.
    *
     
    Back in Amritsar, Kasturi’s residence in Dalhousie occupied much of Lajwanti’s thoughts. She had never seen anybody fussed over as much as that woman. She, too, had been sick after her miscarriages. Had the family offered to send her to the mountains? To her