The Selector of Souls Read Free Page B

dived into a ditchful of slime to escape the swerve of his car. And Timcu in the front seat with him, estimating the amount they’d need for a police bribe to forget the poor man’s life, should it come to that. A good amma needs to forget much more than she remembers.
    “How true, how true,” she replies, hanging up Mem-saab’s dressing gown.
    If Amanjit and Timcu still had a sister, maybe they would be kinder. And if Aman and Timcu had been younger when Damini came, maybe she could have taught them more gentleness. But like Mem-saab, she gave these little maharajas too much love, too much forgiveness.She passed down their clothes to Suresh and gave them all the blessings and hopes she should have given to her own children.
    Leela understands. She knows that but for their fear of Sardar-saab, Piara Singh’s brothers would have thrown Damini out. But here, an amma gets chai in the morning and two meals a day.
    Damini chooses three salwar-kameezes from the cupboard and shows them to Mem-saab, along with chiffon dupattas. If the salwar, kameez or dupatta is a slightly different shade, Mem-saab will look bad.
    Piara Singh’s brothers were a shade different from him—just enough to make the whole family look bad. But their karma caught up. They had many misfortunes, while Damini has survived when so many said she would end up selling her body for money. She has her ears, she has strong hands and bhagya.
    Mem-saab points to a rose and grey silk. Damini lays it on the bed.
    Aman has a business that exports fine silks like these. And women’s clothing that would barely cover a child. Another business sells plywood, furniture, crates, cricket bats, hockey sticks, cedar oil and varnish. And Timcu—instead of becoming a doctor so he could cure the pains that strike his mother every time she climbs the stairs—Timcu is an astrologer in Canada, divining if prices will go up or down and will there be too much of one thing and not of another. Even his Damini-amma knows prices go up and there is never too much of anything in this eon of greed called Kalyug. So much money spent on Timcu’s education, and the man cannot even tell Damini if Suresh will love her when she can no longer give him money.
    Foolish mothers like me make astrologers rich
.
    A knock at the door—Khansama’s standing outside, steam rising from the tray in his hands. He has changed his kurta.
    Damini takes the tray and elbows the door shut. She places it on a small table in the sitting area and helps Mem-saab to her sofa-chair. Damini adjusts the table before her, pours milk into the bowl of oatmeal, adds raisins and honey.
    Mem-saab’s spoon stops halfway to her lips. “Where’s he now?”
    Damini can hear Aman opening and closing drawers, then a creak as Sardar-saab’s mirror tilts for the first time in seven years. He’s trying on a dead man’s silk ties and turbans. “Unpacking,” she says.
    “Stand here while I eat.” The order is a plea. There are things Aman cannot say to his mother in the presence of a servant.
    When she has finished, Damini helps her to dress and then calls, “Khansama, tell Zahir Sheikh to bring Mem-saab’s car.” Her driver will take Mem-saab shopping before the May sun beats down at full strength.

    Damini takes her towel upstairs to the terrace. She uses the squat-toilet in her wash area behind the half-wall, and then sits before the tap. She pulls a basin of soiled clothing across the floor, and waits for a thin stream of water.
    Aromas of scrambled egg-bhurji, toast and butter rise up the stairwell as she kneads Mem-saab’s heavy silk salwar-kameezes, then Mem-saab’s transparent dupattas. Rising, she moves past the half-wall to hang the clothes on the line.
    Returning to the wash area, Damini half-fills a plastic bucket, pulls her kameez over her head and steps from the legs of her salwar. The water, sun-warmed from the tank at the other end of the terrace, wakes the skin of her forehead and shoulders.
    Piara