Short Story #001

BILKHU

1

“You should get married again”, his mother whined, “the girls are growing up, they will need a mother soon and it will be very difficult for you to bring them up alone, besides Bilkhu is very little, he does not even remember his mother.”

Ajay lifted the plastic cover off the switchboard and peered at the mess of aluminium coils inside. He had dropped by to run errands for his mother. Ever since his wife’s death he had taken to visiting her. The visits were more frequent now that the girls were growing up and becoming difficult to handle.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, “What if the girls don’t like her? Nina is very hard to please and the younger one simply follows her lead. (He momentarily forgot his younger daughter’s name).It’s blown a fuse. Pass me the new one.”

His mother who was close by passed him a new fuse. The frown on her face deepened. “It’s been the second one in a week!”

“They don’t make these things very well here,” said Ajay.

“What if Nina was to choose her?” queried his mother, “Then it can be arranged. I know some people who meet the case.”

“I don’t want a woman with children of her own”, warned Ajay, “and she must adjust to our life. I won’t have the children dancing to her tune.”

His mother was annoyed. Although this was the furthest they had come on the subject, Ajay was behaving pig-headed. Which child danced to its mother’s tune? From her experience, it was she who did all the dancing!

“All right!” she said, “You tell the children. I have just the girl in mind. She is a divorcee, her husband was very abusive or something. The marriage lasted only four years.”

Mother and son had previously agreed that if he ever wanted to get married again, it would be to someone like him, a widower or a divorcee. He didn’t think he could fall in love again and any previously unmarried girl would naturally crave a lot of affection which he felt unable to give.

He wanted to be married to someone like him, someone who was done with living and simply wanted to kill time until life’s last breath.

“Is she patient?” he asked nonchalantly, mentally ticking off points in the list of requirements he had made, functioning more as a guideline to reject every prospective wife his mother selected.

He screwed the plastic safety guard back onto the switchboard.

“Any woman who has endured four years of an abusive marriage must be very patient! She is still quite young. They want to marry her off before it’s too late. ”

Ajay had been previously married for eight years. His wife had been a very beautiful woman with large mischievous eyes and a witty personality. They had fallen in love in college and married as soon as he got a job.  She passed away giving birth to their third child. After her untimely death he shut himself from the world and devoted his time to raising their children.

“What if Nina takes a sudden liking to her and then begins to despise her?” he asked as he unfolded his shirt sleeves.

“You have to explain all this to her.”, his mother said, setting a cup of tea before him.

As he drank the tea he couldn’t bring himself to ask her, what if Nina liked her and he didn’t?

2

“We are getting a new mother.” Nina announced to her younger sister and Bilkhu in the playroom.

Bilkhu laughed and said, “But you are our mother!”

Nina looked superiorly at him, “Only when we play house! This is a real mother. I am going to see her tomorrow and if I like her she can come home.”

Her younger sister stared back gimlet eyed, “What if I don’t like her?”

Her sister looked at her sharply, “of course you will! If I like her so will you!”

The matter seemed settled but Gina would not stand for it. What if she didn’t like the new mother? What if the new mother didn’t like her? Large tears gathered in her eyes and she went to find her father.

“Papa! Why must we have a new mother? Why can’t we have mummy back?” she wailed.

Ajay was unsure of what to say next. Since Nina had taken it so well he assumed that Gina would too.

“She is behaving stupidly, papa. Leave her alone,” Nina said, her young matronly voice carrying far.

At this rebuke her younger sister began to cry louder and clung onto her father’s neck. He tried to shush her and explained that since they were all still young they needed a mother.

“But why can’t I come to choose her?”

“You can come,” he relented.

Why shouldn’t she also attend the choosing of a new mother? It would be better for them all to get acquainted at once.

Nina entered the room at that moment and disagreed, “Don’t be silly, papa! She will only ruin the meeting with her stupid questions or else she will say something stupid and make the new mother think that we are all stupid.”

Ajay had not realized that Gina only aped her sister out of coercion and not hero worship. By giving his eldest daughter a lot of freedom in managing the lives of the other two he had created a despot.

“Of course she must come, Bilkhu too.”

Since her father’s word was final, Nina did not argue but she showed her disapproval openly. Those two were only children, she thought, and this was a serious business, they had to choose a new mother, not some Barbie doll.

“What sort of mother do you want?” she asked Bilkhu, later on in the playroom, loud in enough for Gina to hear.

“But you are our mother!” he replied. It was all a joke to him.

His mother had died giving birth to him, which made him a suspicious character in his sister Gina’s eyes. She often wondered if he was not some sort of gnome baby who had killed their beloved mother so he could be born.

When their grandmother used to talk affectionate baby talk to him, while he was still in the cradle, she had once called him Bilkhu. It was a silly name but it had stuck.

 Nina turned her face to her sister’s and said, “The new mother will not like you because you don’t listen to me.”

Gina turned cold eyes back and replied, “Then she will have to go.”

3

Riya smiled to herself as she undressed for the night. How adorable the children were! She had blushed when Bilkhu had clung to her sari and called her the “new mother”.

It almost felt as though he was her son and she was a new mother!

And the girls! They were so different from each other. Nina was the bossy, stand-in mum it seemed, whose approval she had to meet.

She was amused when Nina asked her if she could cook well. Riya understood at once the dynamics of the question.

Yes, she had replied, she could cook very well in fact, the dinner was made by her, and Nina could taste it and judge for herself. Then it went on. Can you dress dolls? Can you plait hair? It seemed like an interview for a housekeeper more than anything. Neither father nor grandmother cautioned the child, so Riya assumed that she was the boss at home.

The younger girl would say nothing at all. She would only stare at Riya’s parents and at Riya, smiling stiffly when anyone cracked a joke. She would nod or shake her head, and smile shyly when questioned as though overawed by the presence of the three new faces. Sometimes she would scowl at her sister’s questions but say nothing in response.

Riya was amazed that the kids weren’t pushed to do anything. When she was a child if she hadn’t wished guests a ‘good evening’ she was reprimanded then and there, if she said something that clashed with the beliefs of her parents she was told off publicly, and if she didn’t want a second helping of food, her mother invariably pushed it on her, just to look polite. She liked Ajay’s training of the children. She didn’t want her kids being excessively smothered.

Best of all she liked Bilkhu. She had mistaken him for a girl when they had arrived for dinner. He was dressed in pastel colors and his hair was unnaturally long for a boy’s. He had beautiful eyes, curtained by long curling lashes, smooth delicate skin and a fragile frame. It was when he was introduced as “my grandson”, by the eager Mrs. Kumar that she realized that this little fairy child was a boy.

She pulled off her earrings and proceeded with a bottle of baby oil to remove the light make-up she had worn for the occasion.

Her mother had insisted that she apply make-up. Riya who held heavily made up women in distaste toned it down a little. She used to be petrified of the red lips and kohl lined eyes as a child. She felt sure that the children might feel the same way.

Secretly she knew that she was a big hit with the kids. They took some time to open up to her, and soon they got on like a house on fire. She was told the names of Gina’s school friends, Nina’s favourite teachers and subjects, the colour of all their Barbie dolls’ hair, information which was of paramount importance to the girls.

She felt young again, almost as though she was reunited with her long lost children. Children, she reflected, she could never have. Bilkhu’s tiny fingers had been wrapped in hers throughout the evening and it was she and not Nina (it was Nina’s job, she was later told) who helped him eat his dinner.

She combed her hair and tied it. “Can you plait hair?” she mimicked to herself with a giggle. Her mother came in just then and smiled.

Riya expected her to her come and talk things over, just like they usually did after any family event. She was so excited that she spoke first, “I love the children! They are so lovely. Don’t you?”

“Yes, specially the little boy.”

“Yes. Bilkhu. What a marvelous child! And did you see Nina cross questioning me? I suspect she has had much to do. I can’t wait to go and put it all back where it should be.”

Her mother stiffened and turned grave eyes to her, “What about their father?”

Until then Riya had not thought much about Ajay. He was quiet and silent, or shy perhaps, he spoke mainly to her parents, enquiring of things she was not interested in, things of the past, she had been too wrapped up with the children to notice. “He’s all right”, she said at last, “to have such lovely children, he must be a good man. Besides, the children were very free with him.”

Her mother was silent for a while, at last she said, “But you are going to marry him, not the children.”

Riya tossed her head defiantly, “His mother didn’t seem to think so! They were more interested in my being a satisfactory mother than a wife! Besides I don’t want to get close to anyone. If a man can be a widower and raise such lovely children, he must be all right.”

“What if, assume you’ve been married for a long time, and the children have left home, then? Then you wake up one day and have nothing to talk about. What will you do?”

“There will always be the children to talk about.”

“Riya! A family begins first with a husband and wife then come the children.”

Her mother looked serious. All she wanted was Riya to be able to move on. She knew her daughter’s gentle spirit had a need to love rather than to be loved.

“I tried being a wife. I didn’t match up to expectations. Now I’d much rather be a mother. I don’t care! Besides I keep telling you, it seemed as though they mainly wanted a mother!”

“I don’t think you’ll come to much harm. It may be boring, but it will be all right I suppose.”

“I don’t mind that. If you like I could perhaps talk to Ajay and see if I get along with him.”

Her mother had no objection to the scheme.

So it was all settled. Mrs. Kumar pursued the matter diligently, easing out little tensions that could break out in these sensitive situations. The marriage was held six months after the first meeting.

4

It was four days after the wedding that Ajay returning home from work late at night found his girls bickering viciously. It was another bout of Gina’s questioning her sister’s authority which had sent the now powerless Nina into a furious rage.

Annoyed and tired he raised his voice, adding a touch of ruthlessness deliberately. The girls would not break it up. That night Ajay was not interested in playing the judge and hearing the case out, he was about to swoop down on them when he caught the new mother’s terrified eyes. It was a little too late.

Riya’s scarred soul recoiled in fear. Memories she had suppressed were swiftly brought back. The delicate ties that they had tried to establish in a moment of fear she snapped.

Ajay had been warned that she was still quite sensitive after the divorce, but he had not anticipated her fear of harshness to be so great that she should shudder at disciplinary action.

It was Bilkhu who came to her rescue. So besotted was he with the new mother’s beauty and gentleness that he had taken to following her around the house while she worked. So he came, armed with his pillow and blanket, his round eyes eager and hopeful, could he possibly sleep beside the new mother?

The new mother was overjoyed and this welcome barricade between her husband and herself was duly planted in between them.

Then it became a routine affair. Every night the boy would come, and she would tell him nonsense stories and they would laugh softly until Bilkhu fell asleep.

On the rare occasion that he was told to go back to his own bed by his father, both mother and son protested vehemently, until Ajay backed down. He wanted to win his new wife’s trust again.

Riya then took to sleeping in Bilkhu’s room. He found her there many nights, laughing with his son, and soon the girls would join them and they’d make a sleepover party out of it.

He was glad she got along with the children, but he seldom saw her nowadays. From dawn to dusk it was the children who came first, the girls had school, Bilkhu the playschool, sometimes visits to his in laws and his mother, and life went along smoothly enough. Riya had not made a single change to their routine and even if she had done so he had not noticed it. It was as though he was the new father!

He rarely saw the children after that, except at mealtimes and on weekends. His mother had been right, the girls preferred going out with their new mother than with him.

Bilkhu was in love, he had noticed, and he had nothing to complain of. He had wanted someone like this he told himself, someone who wouldn’t disturb his peace of mind.

One day while they were getting ready to sleep, and Ajay unconsciously waited for the familiar little figure to creep up before turning the lights off, stole a glance at his wife. She was pretty, but not like the children’s mother.

Then the grief struck him with force. He realised that he did miss his first wife terribly after all, he had simply bottled all that grief up, forcing himself to live for the children alone. The children had managed to put the past in its place it seemed.

He recalled the moment when they had given him the news at the hospital, he felt as though one half of him had been cut off. He had never bandaged the wound properly, thinking it would heal itself.

He could never bring himself to look at Bilkhu after that. He simply encouraged Nina to treat him as one of her plastic dolls.

Bilkhu came in just then, and his step mother lovingly picked him up to kiss him saying, “Bilkhu must always sleep in between us, no?”

                              

5

The next night he eagerly anticipated his wife’s new beau to come in. When both had gone to sleep, he turned the bedside lamp on, and looked at his son’s face as if for the first time.

He shrunk back in shock. There was the face of the woman whom he loved sleeping blissfully beside him wrapped in the dreams they both had cherished. It was her same heart shaped face, her same lashes, the same tiny nose, and the same fragile frame.

When he looked at the girls he always saw himself, but now he saw the image of someone precious to him reflected in the face of his son.

From then on, Bilkhu was encouraged to sleep in between his parents.

Night after night Ajay would lay awake, drinking in the features of his son, breathing in rhythm with him, gently stroking his face, and wrapping his single finger in Bilkhu’s whole fist, at peace with the phantom image of his loss.

When sleep overcame him, he succumbed with grateful abandon, seeking release from the grief that now invariably plagued him.

6

It was Riya who accidentally discovered the reason for Ajay’s new fascination for Bilkhu. The incident that tormented her was soon forgotten and she too longed to make amends.

One day while cleaning out a drawer in his bookshelf, she came across an old picture of his taken during his college days.

There he was, years younger, and beside him was the spitting image of Bilkhu. Her hands shook and she was excited, so this was the old mother! She looked just like Bilkhu! Her attraction for that little fairy child began to fade a little.

So this was why she sometimes found Ajay staring into his son’s eyes in a dreamy trance... This was why he had stopped objecting to Bilkhu sleeping in their room…

She had pushed him away. And he had found a replacement in his son.

She looked at the woman whom she had replaced as a mother. The children loved her, she was sure of that. Yet again she had failed to match up as a wife. Riya scolded herself, that night he was only annoyed a little with the kids, which was no excuse to brand him a wife-beater. Her own father had done that sometimes.

When Ajay came back in the evening, he found a changed Riya. She chattered away to him about all the little things that had happened that day. He couldn’t pay attention. His eyes were fixed on her little shadow, Bilkhu who looked adoringly up at his mother.

When it was time to go to sleep, they both waited for the boy to come. When she had finished telling him stories that she had heard as a child, Bilkhu fell asleep in her arms.

Ajay watched with bated breath. Soon she would turn the lights out, and fall asleep, and he would be left alone with the past in the quiet darkness.

But today she lifted his sleeping son up and answered his enquiring look softly, “He should learn to sleep in his room by himself now.”

A sudden force of paranoia gripped him. He snatched the boy away from her, and cradled him in his arms.

“Bilkhu must always sleep in between us. Always.” he said.