My Sister, The Moon: A short story
MY SISTER, THE MOON
by Ashok Banker
She woke and found herself sprawled across a strange bed in a strange house beside a strange, naked man.
The man was asleep, snoring slightly, and she rose to her elbows and stared at him for a moment.
She had no recollection of ever having seen him before in her life.
As she was dressing, he stirred and turned over. His eyes opened as she was zipping up her churidhar. “Going so soon?” he asked sleepily. “At least stay till morning.”
She went over to the window and yanked open the curtains. “It is morning.”
He blinked at the blinding glare of the April sunshine, sitting up in bed. He swung his feet over the side and stood up, stark naked, gripping her forearm as she turned to leave. He smelt of sour alcohol, sweat and maleness.
“Let me go,” she said, scared now.
“Why? Do you have to rush home to your husband? Or maybe you have to go make breakfast for your children before they leave for school!”
His hoarse laughter followed her all the way down the stairs. She stopped running only when she was out of sight of the building. She never looked back even when she was in a taxi and speeding away.
* * *
Nitin came into the kitchen as she was making eggs for the children, an omlette for Neeta, half fries for Siddesh.
“Morning,” he said, kissing her on the back of the neck. She stiffened, keenly aware that she hadn’t had time to have a shower. She turned to him, her lips trembling with fear, words and tears combining in a terrible mixture that would spill out at any moment. “Nitin,” she began. “I don’t know how to explain–.”
“Explain what?” he asked, nosing around in the fruit basket for an apple. “By the way, how was the kitty party?”
She blinked, the omlette turning brown on the tava before her. “The kitty party?”
He rinsed the apple under the kitchen tap and bit into it. “Yeah. Your weekly night playing cards with your friends. How was it? Hope you didn’t bet our house and lose it!”
She stared at him blankly. “No,” she said shortly. “No, I didn’t.”
He chucked her under the chin. “Hey, I was only joking. What are you so serious about today?” He offered her the apple. She looked at it. She could smell the sweet fruity fragrance, it smelled so fresh and pure and natural.
Virginal, perfect. She turned her head away. “Haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”
He looked over her shoulder, sniffing. “Watch it.”
She looked down and saw that she had burnt Siddesh’s omlette.
* * *
She went out for lunch with Leela. They ate at the new Mexican place on Linking Road, the one with the waiters dressed in cowboy outfits. After all the small talk was over and Leela had tried her best to keep the conversation going, she struggled in silence to eat. But finally, the weight on her mind grew unbearable and she put the spoon down and looked at her friend.
“What is it?” Leela asked curiously. “What’s wrong, Shalini?”
She told her.
Leela put her spoon down too, the food forgotten. “Oh my God,” she said, repeating it half a dozen times. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Afterwards, they parked the car at Carter Road and looked out at the sea. It was hot and she had to keep pressing the accelerator from time to time for the A/C to work properly. But at least they had privacy.
“So you’re telling me that you woke up this morning in bed with a strange man? And you had slept the night with him? And this wasn’t the first time? My God, Shalu, how could you do such a thing? Who is this guy anyway?”
“No, you don’t understand,” she explained, staring straight out at the sunlight dancing off the surface of the glass-topped ocean. “It’s not the same man. Each time it’s a different one.”
She felt Leela staring at her in horror.
“How many were there altogether, Shalu?” Leela asked this in a low, almost reverential tone.
“I don’t know. I don’t really remember. Eight or nine, I think. Maybe more. I never remember anything between the time I leave the house and the time I wake up in bed with these men. Nothing in between.”
“It must be some kind of fugue,” Leela said.
“What?”
“Fugue. It’s a kind of memory loss where the person doesn’t even realize she or he’s lost a memory. Like a lapse. Or a jump in time. You should see a doctor, Shalu.”
“No,” she said vehemently, surprised at the loudness of her own voice. “No, Leela,” she continued in a quieter voice. “I can’t tell anyone else until I know what’s happening to me.”
“But that’s the whole point. You need help, professional help.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She looked at Leela and saw the strange mixture of concern and awe in her friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I’m sick, mentally or otherwise. I think I’m…”
“Yes?”
She looked down, embarrassed to say the word aloud in the bright gaudy light of day. “I think I’m possessed.”
* * *
The room was dark and damp. The aroma of incense was so strong, it insinuated itself into Shalini’s sinus, and made her feel she was about to sneeze. The smoke from the incense burner and agarbattis cast wraiths of shadow against the dim indirect lighting. Like ghosts mating in thin air.
“She wants you to sit,” Leela explained in a low voice. She had warned Shalini before coming to speak as softly as possible inside the house. Shalini sat on the low wooden stool and looked up into the shadowy face of Bhakti Maa. She could barely make out a wizened but once-beautiful visage half concealed by thick, lustrous white hair. A heavy bead necklace, large gleaming earrings.
Strange marks on her face, neck, and bared shoulders. And a sense of immense calm and strength. Bhakti Maa bent slightly and took Shalini’s hands in her own. Shalini felt the lined, leathery surface of the old woman’s hands rasping against her smooth palms and goosebumps broke out on her forearms and legs.
Bhakti Maa’s hands were ice cold and strong like a man’s.
“Should I tell her my problem?” she asked, after a long moment had passed and no word had been uttered by either of them. Leela whispered to her that Bhakti Maa didn’t need to be told. She was now absorbing all Shalini’s thoughts, emotions, memories through her hands. Shalini wanted to ask another question, but just then Bhakti Maa intoned an unintelligible chant in what sounded like Sanskrit. Leela said, “She says you have a sister. This sister walks beside you unseen through your life. She is always with you.”
“I’m an only child,” Shalini replied. “I have no sister.”
Bhakti Maa spoke again, Leela translated. “This is your spirit sister. Your shadow self. Just as the Mother Earth is always accompanied by her sister the Moon, so also you are always with your shadow.”
“Ask her about the fugues, the memory lapses. Why do they happen? How do I make them stop?”
Leela spoke again. With a little frisson of shock, Shalini realized that they were not speaking Sanskrit, just plain Hindi. It was Bhakti Maa’s accent that made it seem so alien and unintelligible.
“They happen when your sister self takes over your body. You are two women sharing one body. Sometimes, your sister wishes to do things you would not approve of, so she puts you to sleep, so to speak, and does as she desires.”
Shalini’s palms were screaming with sensation. It felt like she had plunged her hands in a bucket of ice water. Or blazing coals. She couldn’t tell which.
“How do I make it stop? Can she exorcize me?”
“She says you are not possessed. This is not some rogue demon who has taken your body by force. Your sister has always been with you, since birth. You are inseparable.”
“But it has to stop!” Shalini cried out, on the verge of tears now. “I have a husband, children. I can’t go on sleeping with strange men! How do I make it stop?”
Bhakti Maa was silent for a long time. Then she released Shalini’s hands and laid her palms on Shalini’s chest. The sensation was electrifying. It was like being struck by two electric pads, the kind used by Emergency Medical units to shock heart patients back to life.
When she awoke, she was walking down the stairs of the old building, guided by Leela.
“What happened?” she asked as they emerged from the ancient brownstone building into the slanting light of evening. Traffic flowed endlessly down Mohammedali Road, an endless chrome river.
“You went to sleep,” Leela said quietly as they got into the car. “Your sister took over.”
Shalini waited until Leela had manoeuvred the Maruti 800 out of the narrow, pedestrian-packed lane and onto the main road. “What did she say? This so-called sister of mine?”
Leela glanced at her sharply. “You must not mock it. These are great, powerful forces. Some women would consider you blessed for having such a spirit shadow always by your side. It is akin to having the Devi with you.”
“They can have it for all I care. It’s not a blessing to me, it’s a curse.”
Shalini heard the bitterness in her own voice, the frustration, the guilt and shame.
“Shalini, you must understand. This is you, as much a part of yourself as your mind, your heart, your soul. Nothing can change it. Or make it go away.”
“It’s bullshit, Leela!” Her voice was loud enough to carry above the sound of blaring horns at a traffic signal. “You were right earlier. I’m sick. I need to see a doctor, a psychiatrist.”
“Shalini, don’t you see? That’s why you yourself said you were possessed, not sick. You sensed it. When you were unconscious, your sister spoke to us. She told us about how she had often put you to sleep during your childhood. Like the time when you found yourself on the top of the tamarind tree in your grandmother’s garden with no recollection of how you got up there? Or the time when you found yourself naked in the forest and there were signs that a wolf had been nearby without harming you? Or the time–.”
“Shut up!” she screamed. A scooter rider beside the car looked at them, astonished. She noticed, inanely, that the man wasn’t wearing his helmet. “Shut up! That’s all lies. Nothing like that ever happened. She just made that all up, the old witch!”
“No, Shalini,” Leela said gently. “You can ask your grandmother to confirm it. I’m sure she’ll corroborate the stories.”
Shalini put her hands over her ears and refused to listen further.
When she got home, she called up her family doctor and asked him for a reference to a good psychiatrist.
* * *
The psychiatrist smiled at her across his polished wooden desk. “Well, Mrs Sharma. The good news is that you’re a normal, healthy woman. This is a natural phase of maturation that takes place in every woman’s life. With the proper adjustments, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy the same quality of life that you have been experiencing thus far.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, puzzled.
He nodded sagely, as if speaking to a small child who had asked where babies came from. “Menopause is not an end. It is the beginning of a glorious new phase of womanhood.”
“Menopause?” Shalini repeated. “But I’m only–.”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “It is unusual. But there’s no mistaking the signs. Of course, you already have two beautiful children, so you should not feel any lack.”
“How do you know they’re beautiful?” she asked, reaching in her handbag for her wallet. “You’ve never even met my children.”
He smiled broadly. “From looking at you, Mrs Sharma. Like breeds like.”
His smile seemed like a leer. She all but threw his fee at him and walked out quickly through the reception of the clinic, her heels clacking embarassingly loudly.
* * *
Nitin was so understanding. He put his arms around her and grinned widely.
“Okay. It’s about time you caught up. And I thought I was the only one growing old.”
“I’m not old, Nitin,” she said irritably. “I’m just past child-bearing age, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Well, so am I!” He lowered his face to the nape of her neck and began nuzzling her seductively. “But not too old to feel the urge to procreate!”
“That’s not procreating,” she said, enjoying his attention. “That’s just plain masthi!”
Later, as they lay entwined in bed, the house silent and still in the deep arms of the night, she experienced a great urge to wake him and tell him about the other expert opinion she had sought.
The non-medical, non-scientific one: Bhakti Maa’s explanation.
But that would mean telling him about the fugues, and what happened during them. And she was still not ready to confess that much. Perhaps she would never be.
She woke again later that night and thought she had heard someone call her name. She rose from the bed and went to the balcony. The curtains were billowing inwards, pushed by a gentle sea breeze. She could smell jasmine and night queen on the soft air. Her nightgown felt smooth and sensuous against her bare thighs. She went out onto the balcony and looked down. In the garden just below their first floor flat, she thought she saw a shadow move in the darkness. Then a cloud passed and she saw it was just the shadow of the moon.
She looked up and was awed. The vastness, the silvery brightness, the dazzling glow. Its full, pregnant form hovered above her, washing her in a waterfall of light. Celestial glory glowed on her skin, awakening every pore.
She turned and looked at the bed. And saw herself, lying asleep beside Nitin.
In her husband’s bed, in his arms.
It was her, lying there asleep. And yet she was here too. In the moonlight.
She went out of the house and down the stairs silently. She ran down the deserted street, her nightgown flapping behind her. She went in search of her naked desires. In search of her forbidden fruit. She went with no care of what lay behind her or ahead. Of her children asleep in their beds. Or her husband.
She went where the moonlight led her, down strange paths and even stranger turns.
Back in her house, in her bed, the woman who was also Shalini slept on.
Blissful, unaware, at peace. As the night grew older, the lines on her face faded and her features settled into a gentle, placid restfulness. The moonlight crept across the room until it bathed her in its wash. She stirred as it caressed her, sighing softly, then turned over and slept without waking until morning.
(c) Ashok Banker 2005. All rights reserved.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 11:48 pm. It is filed under Ashok.
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