The Selector of Souls by Shauna Singh Baldwin Read Free Book Online Page B

Maim him before I sin
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    “What matters is who you know—not what you know,” Vikas often says to Anu. A member of the Old Boys Associations of Sanawar School and Hindu College, the Delhi Golf Club, the Habitat Centre and the India International Centre, he is proud to be even a Dependent Member of the venerable Delhi Gymkhana Club thanks to his father. He works hard to keep up with the party circuit. “We must attend,” is followed by, “I invited about eighty guests for cocktails and dinner, maybe fifty will turn up.” Which launches Anu into a frenzy of purchasing and cooking, and ordering shamiana-tents and caterers, flower arrangements and musicians, leaving no time to read or implement her own ideas, or even help Chetna with homework.
    Nightly, Vikas makes shows of plenty to people who undertake fasts and pilgrimages and spend lakhs of rupees—no, crores of rupees—on religious ceremonies, weddings and birthday parties.Nightly he exchanges gold-embossed invitations, floral arrangements and shiny wrapped gifts with people of high blood and low competence. They drink Dom Pérignon and eat canapés while the poor go unnoticed and unfed. He’s entangled her in a new version of colonialism.
    Arrow number two: pale gold—colour of caution, colour of all those could-haves.
    Could Anu have written to Vikas and confessed her feelings about children before the wedding, feelings everyone assured her would pass upon marriage? No. Vikas could have jilted her and left her reputation in tatters.
    Could she have realized that Vikas was comparing her to someone? Anu writes the numeral one in gurmukhi script, then a three as if beginning an “om.” She extends its tail up, and over to join the beginning. One more arc jumping from there, and it becomes “Ik Onkar,” symbol of the Sikhs. There must have been more to his first fiancée, besides her religion.
    And now Arrow number three: Green for Chetna—colour of movement, change, and growth. With the green pencil, Anu draws, then colours in a telephone receiver.
    Anu had been on the phone with Rano late at night. Vikas was travelling. Rano was on her lunch hour, as lonely in Toronto as Anu was in Delhi. After the usual discussion of family members, Rano said her period had come again, and she’d cried, and so had her husband, Jatin. Six thousand dollars worth of fertility treatments, all for nothing. Two little blocked fallopian tubes and she just cannot conceive.
    Then Rano had asked delicately about Vikas, and Anu began in a falsely bright tone. But she soon faltered, tears came, and she whispered to her cousin, “You know how it was, Rano. I never wanted this child.” And Rano said, “Hai, don’t say that, sis. Listen, Anu. Listen very carefully. If you really don’t want her, send her to me. Jatin will be delighted, I know.”
    And the next moment, a click on the line. Had Vikas come home early and heard her? She hung up quickly and walked into the kitchen. There was Chetna, receiver in hand, tears plopping into her Ovaltine-laced milk.
    “You never wanted me, Mummy, you don’t want me.”
    “Oh, no darling,” she’d said. “It’s just that I’d promised myself I’d never have a child—any child.” How could she explain that at twenty, she walked around looking like a woman, feeling feminine—attractive, caring, kind, able to feel for the aged or sick without reserve, feeling no distaste for children, overflowing with love for parents, relatives, fiancé, country—but failing to need a child of her own?
    Maybe one day Chetna will understand Anu’s promise to herself to remain childless. When Anu was growing up the US Agency for International Development, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, WHO, Swedish International Development Authority, Population Council, UNFPA, IMF and Indian Government all tutt-tutt-tutted that Indian women were having far too many children. Restrain yourselves! they said. It’s an explosion, said European experts, even as their