3 White Witches

“Mai tried to kill herself again today,” the warden tells me.
            I try to unlock the gate leading to my room. The lock is large, and the key to it is relatively tiny. This strange marriage has marveled me every time I perform the ritual, and I have been performing it for nine years.
            “Are you upset that she tried to kill herself or that she failed?” I ask Didi with a slight smirk.
            The residents refer to the warden as Didi even though she is younger than most of us, older than me by only a couple of years. Didi twitches her mouth to convey her chagrin at my comment.
            “Ay Leila, why would I be happy if she died? Crazy old hag as she may be, Mai is still very much a part of our family.”
            Didi loves the word family. She loves words that assemble units into wholes. The lock unlocks. I keep it with key attached in my grocery bag. I have often taken a mental note that the key could use a chain or a keyring, but this reminder escapes me when I am at the market.
            “How did she try to kill herself this time?” I ask Didi.
            She takes the question to be an invitation and comes in to ensconce herself on the plastic stool facing my cot. I place the grocery bag and my fake leather purse on the wooden dresser, then take a seat on the cot.
            “This time she fastened one end of her sari to the fan. Then she stood with her lean frame on the plastic stool, fastened the other end around her neck. Her plan was to kick the stool and hang in the air until the knot strangled her.”
            “What went wrong?”
            “The plan was foolproof, Leila,” Didi says. “The woman would have died if she wanted to die. Except she didn’t. As soon as she sensed the tiniest bit of strangulation, she began howling like a dog. Save me! Save me! she cried. I didn’t know Mai could scream this loudly! I traced the voice to her room, ran to see what the ruckus was about, and there she was, hanging naked except for her petticoat and blouse, screaming to be saved.”
            Didi shakes her head in dismay, “What do I do with the budhiya? She does not want to live. She does not want to die. All she wants is attention. That woman—always striving to create a scene.”
            I smile and stand up to pat Didi’s shoulder. I ask her if she wants chai.
            “Only if you are making a cup for yourself. I don’t want to trouble you,” she says.
            Didi and I are used to her routine of passive reluctance. I fill a saucepan with two cups of water from the tap outside and bring it to boil on the stove in the opposite corner of the room. The patla I use to sit on does not accommodate my lanky frame easily. After the water has boiled, I add two teaspoons of ground tea leaves.
            “Will you talk some sense into Mai?” Didi asks, turning her stool to face me.
            “What use will that be?” I say, pouring a cup of milk into the pan.
           “Who knows? She considers you wise and might listen to you.”
            “Mai only considers herself wise.”
            She moves her head up and down, “Still. Still. Try. Try.”
            After Didi has had her cup of chai, she wipes her mouth and places the steel cup on the sink under the tap.
            “Leila, what did you get from the market? Last time I visited, the vegetables were all stale,” Didi waves her hand in the air, dismissing the grocers altogether.
            “Eggplant. I’ll make some extra khichdi with fried eggplants for you.”
           “Oh,” she says, shaking her head, “only if you are making a plate for yourself. I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
            After Didi has left, I sit on the cot and let out a huge sigh. These days I get tired after accomplishing very little. Didi’s assignment forces me to think about the old woman. Mai is the oldest resident of the ashram. She had arrived when merely seventeen years of age. It has been seven decades since. One could say that the woman is as old as the ashram. There is even a black-and-white photograph of her with the founder placed neatly on the dresser in the guest room. In the photograph, three women are seated on respective stools; the one on the right-hand side is Mai. With defined cheekbones and diaphanous eyelashes, she is the prettiest of the group. Towering behind them is the owner of the ashram, who passed away five years ago from cardiac arrest. The other two women had passed before I had arrived. Kaki claims to know one of them but has disclosed little further information upon being interrogated. Even in the picture Mai is not disciplined. While the other two women are looking straight at the lens, Mai’s attention is caught by something on her side. Her mouth is open as though she is scolding a mosquito. Looking at the picture, I have often wondered what Mai would look like with a bindion her forehead. There is no way of knowing this because widows are not allowed articles of decoration.
            Mai had been widowed after a year of marriage. She likes to boast about it in a way that makes her listeners both afraid and embarrassed. I burnt the house with my husband and his family in it, she tells us with feverish vigor. What she sometimes keeps from us is the fact that her mother-in-law would scald her hand with a hot spatula because her father had failed to pay them full dowry. Her husband would drag her around the house with her long hair entangled between the folds of his fingers. Chudhail. Dayan. Witch. He would call her this whenever she brought him an imperfect cup of tea. Her father-in-law felt for her, but the man had rarely stood up to his wife. Mai’s family put up in a different city, removed from where her in-laws lived. One time she had bought a train ticket and tried to escape, but her husband’s colleague had spotted her at the station and reported the incident to him. The night of her failed escape, her husband had locked her in a room for forty-eight hours without water or food. She had knocked wildly, desperately pleading for their forgiveness. After two days, the symphony of screams and crying had quieted. When her father-in-law unlocked the door out of concern, Mai was found sleeping on her own vomit. She had tried to swallow a disinfectant.
            The story from that point forward is grainy. We know that Mai was rescued in time, but the situation in their house did not improve following her near death. What ultimately incited her to burn the house and its residents is unclear, and the weapon she did it with confused. When Mai is questioned regarding these facts, the incident and the weapon alter with each narration. Kaki says it was after her mother-in-law had twisted her arm. I remember hearing a version in which her husband had thrown a vase aimed at her forehead. Until last week, both of us believed that Mai had spilled kerosene oil all over the house, then lit the dwelling with a prayer matchstick. Last Thursday, I caught Mai smoking a beedi near her stove.
            “Mai, no smoking near the stove,” I had rushed in to warn her.
            Mai had extinguished the beedi with her bare feet. “I should have known better. I once took a house with it,” she said, with a laugh.

“Leila, ay Leila,” Kaki is screaming outside my gate.
            Watching me lie down, she must have taken me to be asleep. I walk towards the gate and open it slightly.
            “Why are you sleeping in the middle of the day? It is not your age to be slumbering,” she reprimands me with a hint of softness.
            “What should a widow be doing at this hour, Kaki?”
            “Watch television in the guest room? The cable is back. Cook? I don’t know, find something to occupy yourself with.”
            In her hands is a parcel wrapped in betel leaf. Prashad, I think. She has gone to another satsang, where she must have chanted hymns with dozens of followers, for one or another god.
            “Leila, take some prashad,” she says with the enthusiasm of a toddler.
            “What gathering did you attend today, Kaki?”
            “A gathering of Lord Krishna’s devotees. Krishna ji’s satsang,” she replies, impervious to my mockery.
            Kaki, a woman in her fifties, is addicted to religion. She likes to say that her faith has kept her alive and well. I refrain from reminding her that she is in an ashram full of widows.
            “Come, sit.” I ask Kaki, “Do you want a glass of water? It is hot outside.”
            “Ah! It is hot,” she says. “I was so absorbed in Krishna’s thoughts, I didn’t take note of the heat.”
            I pick out a steel glass from the sink under the tap, rinse it with soap, then fill it with water up to the brim.
           “Mai tried to kill herself again,” I tell her, handing her the glass.
            She finishes the water in one big gulp, then dabs her mouth with the pallu of her sari.
            “Acha! With what this time?”
            I tell her what Didi has told me.
            “Tch, tch, tch,” Kaki says, shaking her head. “A woman her age should lean into devotion and prayer. That is the sole path to a peaceful death.”
            Kaki has a tendency to make every conversation about God. In the evenings, she will sit by the tulsi plant on the verandah and chant Ram. Ram. Ram. until dusk. I’ve had to shift my siesta to early afternoon because of her loud incantations.
            “I wonder why the urgency?” I confide in Kaki. “She will die of old age eventually.”
            Kaki stands up to leave, says she is tired. Collecting her chappals from outside, she lets out a loud yawn, and says, “Who knows when she will die? She is a tortured widow who set fire to her betrothed family. Even God needs some years deciding between heaven and hell.”
            I watch Kaki leave. The cotton cloth beneath her armpits bleeds sweat onto the back of her blouse, mimicking a river pattern on a geographical map. She takes short strides towards her room, which is located next to the warden, Didi’s residence. Kaki is my closest confidante, a pleasant woman to hold conversations with. When I was down with dengue last year, she sat next to my bed and made wet cloths by tearing up an old sari of hers that she placed on my forehead to bring down the temperature. The fever made it difficult for me to fall asleep. It was the only time her incantations reversed their role, acting like a lullaby instead. She kept singing Save her, Lord Ram! Ram. Ram. Ram.
            Kaki’s husband had died of diabetes. She was left in the ashram’s care by her only son, who had to move to a different country for work. In her initial years at the ashram, Kaki believed her son would come to get her. Every Saturday, early in the morning, Kaki would wear a perfectly ironed white drape, pour water on the tulsi plant on the verandah, apply sandalwood paste to the pot, and say, Guide my son to fetch me, Lord. As more and more time elapsed, any hope of her son returning crumbled. Now on Saturday mornings, Kaki wears an ordinary white drape, sometimes crumpled in places from lack of ironing, to perform these rituals. She does not make a specific prayer while applying the sandalwood paste to the pot. Kaki’s story of abandon, although despairing, is still the most hopeful among us.
            I place the back of my palm on my eyelids and try to fall asleep. Even though the fan is rotating at full speed, it is unable to mitigate the heat. A pungent odor emanates from the cloth beneath my right armpit. I switch hands. After thirty minutes of twisting and turning, I finally close my eyes. When I wake up, it is evening. Kaki’s incantations have begun to gallop towards my gate, breaking down only upon entering my ear. I drink a glass of water, adjust the pallu of my sari over my forehead, and decide to visit Mai.

On my way to Mai’s room, I exchange glances with Kaki, who nods at me while counting through her garland of beads. Mai’s room is one room away from mine. The room separating ours was vacant before it was allotted to Anam, who is a ten-year-old recent occupant and the only nonwidow among us, with the exception of warden Didi who is a spinster and our caretaker. I decide to check on the girl after paying a visit to Mai. Upon nearing Mai’s room, I find the gate ajar. Mai is squatting by her cot, swiftly leafing through the pages of a book. I am surprised at her expedition because the woman cannot read. Her thin hair is held together with a plastic rubber band. Small sprouts make an appearance on the top of her forehead from lack of being washed.
            I enter silently and seat myself next to Mai. She notices but does not react.
            Smoothing the sprouts on her head, I ask, “What are you reading, Mai?”
            She turns away from me like a child disturbed in her play.
           “Warden Didi said you tried to kill yourself earlier.”
            Mai returns a sideward glance, then resumes with her leafing.
            “Why, Mai?”
            Placing the book to one side, Mai turns to face me and says, “Because I might as well die.”
            “You will die if you just wait around patiently.”
            “Is that how you all do it? Wait around patiently to die?”
            The sudden weight of her question disables me to come up with an apt response.
            “All you widows lying on your string cots, killing mosquitoes, swinging hand fans, waiting to fall asleep. Getting up next morning, buying vegetables from the bazaar, cooking them, eating them, only to lie on your cot to fall asleep again. Is that living to you?”
            I stay silent.
            “Death is more attractive to me than this kind of living,” she declares before picking up her book again.
            Mai’s indignation is etched across her face, but I decide not to bow down to it.
            “So, it took you these many years to decide you were bored?” I speak with frail determination.
            She scoffs, then shakes her head and says, “No, it took me these many years to realize nothing is going to happen. . . . Nothing is ever going to happen to me, Leila. And I am tired of waiting around.”
            She looks beyond the gate as if staring at a ghost. I can tell that she is sitting on a bitter statement.
            “After claiming the lives of so many men, a womanwith your fate should have considered killing herself too,” she says. “Chudhail kahi ki,” she scolds the air on her side, instead of looking directly at me.
            A curtain of mist hangs over my eyes. Mai is infamous for her sharp tongue, but her bitterness has never before been directed at me. I stare at the ceiling to prevent tears from taking shape. After regaining composure, I stand to collect my chappals.
            Leaving Mai to simmer in her anger, I say, “Wash your hair before your next attempt.”

I am not upset at Mai’s words, rather at the distress they have caused me. Nothing Mai has said is not the truth. My fate had claimed my precious husband’s life. It had gone on to cause my father’s death, leading to my mother’s eventual demise. When I was thirteen years old, my mother had summoned an astrologer to our house.
            With both eyebrows raised, the sage in saffron robe had examined my palm lines and declared, “Maanglik. Ill-fated. Her presence is ominous for the men she will love.”
            My mother had been distressed for several days until she had forgotten about it. Until Ashwin was killed in a car accident. A year after Ashwin’s death, my father died of lung cancer. Ashwin had been driving drunk to a friend’s wedding. There were other friends in the car, none of whom survived. My father had a pernicious smoking habit which had ultimately taken his life. When they were being cremated in different ceremonies, the relatives had pointed out the coincidence of such closely timed deaths. My mother had confessed she was glad I was diagnosed with medical impotency. She did not have the will to mourn another death. Soon my mother died of grief because of her husband’s passing. When I found my way to the ashram full of widows, I knew I could live here without my wretched fate intervening.
            I pass Anam’s room on the way to mine and decide against checking in on her, lest she should be witness to my distraught state after hearing Mai’s bitterness. When I near my room, I find her sitting on the floor outside.
            “You should have waited inside, Anam,” I tell her. “The gate was open. Come on.”
            She follows me to my room.
            “What is it?” I ask her once she is seated next to me on the cot.
            She holds out the pallu of her sari and points at it.
            “Sari?” I say. She shakes her head.
            I notice a drawing notebook in her hands. An outline of a woman in a sari is drawn at the centre of the page. The rest of the page is empty.
            “Cloth?” I try, but she shakes her head again.
            Then she moves her hand in a wheel-like motion to suggest I am nearing the description of what she wants to hear.
            “Color?” I ask.
            She nods her head vehemently to suggest I am close.
            “White?”
            Her eyes grow large and her lips widen into a smile.
            “White,” I repeat, ceremoniously.
           She writes the word down on the same page.
            “What do you need it for?”
            She ignores my question, gets up, and leaps towards her room like the winner of a marathon, too exhausted to share her journey.
            Anam is situationally mute, or rather, she can situationally speak, a condition the local doctor has diagnosed as a post-trauma response. Didi had rescued the girl from a man who was trying to sell her. She had spotted them on a bus to Didi’s hometown. The man was too sketchy to be her relative. Anam, seated next to him, had been crying without making a sound. Didi had cornered the man with a series of questions. The man had made a run for the door and jumped out of the moving bus. This was a year ago.
            On Anam’s first night at the ashram, Didi asked me to cook something special for her. I prepared my mother’s shahi paneer recipe along with roti, rice, and a salad of green vegetables. When collecting Anam’s plate, I noticed that she had left everything untouched. Only the glass of water adjoining her plate was empty.
            It took Anam a long time to warm up to the residents. In the beginning, she treated everyone with cold suspicion. We viewed her as a little bride in a school of widows, a stroke of hope in a canvas colored largely with despair. But Anam did not feel similarly. The rare times she spoke to us was in monosyllables that conveyed affirmation or negation, Yes and No. All other communication was restricted to nodding and shaking of the head and sometimes complete withdrawal from a situation. Kaki had been the first to adopt her, even though the effort had been reluctant and eventual. Anam was a Muslim girl, and her religious identity had posed a conflict to Kaki’s 108 Hindu gods.
            “She is a Muslim, Leila. Her religion is violent to both humans and animals,” Kaki had spoken to me in confidence.
            “Muslim. Opposite of Hindu,” she had said, categorizing one evil and the other holy.
            Since losing my faith in God following my father’s death, I was able to neither console the woman nor correct her. On a Saturday morning last winter, after Kaki had watered the tulsi plant and applied sandalwood paste to the pot, she sat shivering in the cold, counting her religious beads with tears in her eyes. The combined weight of the cold and her emotions obstructed her from performing her incantations. Anam, wandering in the verandah, made the decision to sit next to her. The third word we heard Anam speak was when she was playing substitute for poor Kaki. Ram. Ram. Ram, she chanted. The religions were not antonyms in the little girl’s dictionary.
            I sit next to the stove to start preparing khichdi for dinner. I am too tired for this endeavor and don’t mind foregoing the meal, but my promise to Didi earlier binds me to cook.
            “Leila, Leila!” Mai’s voice approaches my gate.
            I turn to look in her direction and open the gate for her to enter.
            “I want to know what happens in the story,” she says, presenting me with the book she had been trying to read when I had visited her.
            I scan her face for any expression of guilt but find no trace of it. It is as though she has forgotten the initial proceedings of the day entirely.
            “Now?” I say, examining the absence of light outside.
          “Yes, now.”
            Mai seats herself on my cot boldly.
            “I thought you were reading it on your own today.”
            “Oh! stop with the mockery. You know I cannot read,” Mai admits with lingering impatience.
            “I need to cook dinner.”
            “You can skip tonight. You seem to be gaining weight in your hips, anyway.”
            Ignoring her callous remark, I take the book from her and seat myself on the stool opposite. Anokhi, the title reads, by Sagar Sharma. The title and the author are both unfamiliar. I flip through the pages and spot some graphics interspersed with the text, which helps explain Mai’s interest. Then I read the blurb on the back. The book is about a rich young widow Sunita who falls in love with her English teacher. Sunita’s in-laws hire a teacher to keep her busy after her young husband’s death. The widow ends up drawn to both the foreign language and her educator. Will she run away with this man or forever be resigned to the fate of a woman in white robes? This seems to be the conflict of the novel. Back in college, when I was a student of literature, my friends and I would have discarded such a title, labelling it as trashy text.
            “Where did you get this from?”
            “I stole it from a bookstore located at the end of the market,” Mai says with a winner’s triumph.
            The fact that Mai, an illiterate woman, would pick up a piece of prose with a widow as its protagonist, bewilders me. I start reading to her.

By the time Mai leaves, dinnertime has passed. I dust my pillow and covering sheet before placing them down on the cot. I fan myself to sleep in the company of mosquitoes that come with the heat.
            The next morning, I take my towel and fresh petticoat to the ashram’s common bathrooms. There are two adjoining bathrooms at the opposite end of the ashram, closer to the warden’s room. They face two identical toilets. The stench emanating from the toilets usually makes bathing a difficult experience. Even though the widows and the warden try to keep the toilet clean, the pot clogs up unceremoniously from time to time.
            “Your hair, Leila, they are too long,” the warden has often told me, insinuating that my hair falling in the pot could be the cause of such a mishap.
            But I treat her accusations as innocuous. Especially since she eats what I cook for her with passionate enthusiasm and has never complained of finding a hair in her food.
            After bathing and draping a fresh white sari, I decide to peel peas in order to make mushroom pea curry for lunch and dinner. I remove pea pods from the bottom container of the secondhand Godrej fridge, which is kept in the guest room, and then I return to my room. I am in the middle of washing the pea pods when I hear footsteps approaching my gate.
            “Leila, time for story.” Mai is standing outside with the book in her hand.
            “Not now. I am cooking lunch.” I try to shoo her away.
            “No need. I have peanuts and jaggery. We can eat them in between the story.”
            Mai takes two newspaper packets containing condiments from behind her back. I slap my palm against my head to register defeat. Then I let her in.
            Mai wants to revisit whatever we covered yesterday.
            “Sunita has been married to her husband for two months now. Her father-in-law is a lawyer at the high court. Her mother-in-law is a housewife consumed by the affairs of their estate . . .”
            “Yes, yes,” she nods as I continue.
            “Her husband is practicing law as an advocate at the local court. Sunita is a beautiful woman with a round face, thin lips with a beauty mark over her upper lip, pitch-black eyes, and hair that hits just beneath her shoulders. She wears golden hoops, and her feet are covered in toe rings. The sole she likes to embellish with alta . . .”
            “Just like me,” Mai interjects.
            “What nonsense, Mai? Since when do you apply alta to your feet?” I snicker.
            “Silly girl. Not now. When I was married, I applied the pink liquid to my feet with the wooden spindle of a broom. Beautiful magenta alta on my dainty feet.”
            I continue laughing but Mai is washed over by nostalgia. She tells me that in the evening after she had served ginger tea to her mother-in-law, she liked to sit on the stairs that led to their vegetable garden. With the spindle of the broom, she would apply alta and listen to the noises on the street. The shouts of the grocer, the pedaling of the rickshaws, and in winters, the cries of the old man selling peanuts. She would always crave peanuts, but her mother-in-law gave her cash for the pantry only. When approached for some extra money, she would turn her face away.
            “Now I have my own money,” Mai says, relieving a skinny bundle of notes from the strap of her bra. I smile. The warden is generous with Mai.
            “Now continue the story,” Mai says.
            “Leila, aye Leila,” the warden’s voice is a sharp intrusion to our party of two.
            “I waited for the khichdi yesterday. You forgot or what?” she says, nearing my gate.
            I apologize with sincerity.
            “Oho! Look who the cat dragged in,” Didi says, taking notice of Mai. “What are you doing here, Mai? I thought you planned on trying poison today. Gave up on death so soon?”
            Mai makes a face at Didi, asks if she has no work, then comments, “I forget you get paid to look after women who can look after themselves.”
            The smile on Didi’s face vanishes. I try to console her.
            “Never mind the budhiya,” Didi says, “I need to borrow a sari from your trunk.”
            I ask Didi which sari she is referring to.
            “The violet one with yellow flowers. The one you have in that photograph with your husband,” she explains, pointing at the photo frame on the top of my limping nightstand.
            “Oh,” I say, before pulling out the trunk from under my bed with some help from Didi. There are four colored saris in the trunk, which the warden has worn more than me. She usually makes a request for festivals she cannot care to buy a garment for, so this unforeseen demand surprises me. I express my curiosity regarding the occasion.
            “Nothing,” she says, her cheeks starting to blush a little.
            “What nothing? The warden is dating the bus conductor. Must be going out for ice cream with him only,” Mai says, shaking her head derisively.
            I ask Didi if it is true. “Just an ice cream. Not a big deal. He is a very chivalrous man, Leila. Makes a lot from driving buses. Always ensures that I walk on the safer side of the road.”
            Didi’s cheeks are blushing like those of a newlywed bride. After I have given her the sari, she thanks me, then hurries off to get ready.
            When I turn to Mai, she shuffles one of the packets in her hand and says, “Peanuts?”
            I read the tale to Mai who listens intently, interrupting me from time to time with questions. Our sessions remind me of the tutoring classes I taught before I got married. During summer and winter break, I would teach math, science, and English to high-school students to help my mother with expenses. None of my students were as curious or as sincere as Mai is.
            “Her husband is not bad?” Mai seems disappointed.
            “No, no, Mai. Sunita’s husband is quite the gentleman. He treats her with respect and takes her to the cinema on the weekends.”
            “Well, what is he doing now?” Mai asks.
            “He is holding her hand as they take a walk in the garden. See,” I say, showing her an illustration of the two of them holding hands.
            “Hmmph!” Mai twitches her lips to express her disapproval, “Lucky woman this Sunita is.”
            I remind her how the story is that of a widow, which implies her husband’s anticipated death.
            “So what? At least he was nice to her before his death. At least she will remember him kindly.” Mai has been taken prisoner by her past again. “Mine was a brute. Never asked once before touching me.” Mai recounts to me how her husband would hit her if she had cooked something improperly.
           “Not a half teaspoon of sugar less or more,” she says. “Make a mistake, and you get a thrashing. Look,” she pulls up her sari to show me the impressions on her shins, “the marks of his belt . . . still present. Even after his death.”
            I am not a stranger to Mai’s stories, but the woman has never before divulged details with so much earnestness. If Mai splintered in front of me, I wouldn’t know how to hold her together.
            “The first night I was so frightened, Leila, but the man wouldn’t leave me alone. Raped me till he was full, made me bleed like I had been to war.” Mai pauses for a minute before resuming her reverie. “The smell of fresh blood mixed with his sweat ate up the whole room. I can still smell it,” she says, sniffing the air. “When he was finished, he lay down in his banyan and ordered me to take a bath because the odor was making him nauseous. Harami,” she hurls an abuse at her dead husband before settling down with the quiet of the evening. She stares outside the gate as if studying a ghost, a habit of hers I’m now familiar with. I smooth the sprouts on her head and offer her a piece of jaggery.

Mai makes it a habit to sit with me each day from early afternoon till evening. I read to her as if reciting a lesson, and she listens with the devotion of a student sitting on the first bench. In the evening, between performing her incantations by the tulsi plant, Kaki looks at me with accusing eyes, as though expressing her displeasure at our camaraderie being interrupted by a third party. I offer to accompany Kaki to her early morning satsangs a couple of times to make up for our loss of conversation. This seems to keep her at peace for the time being.
            One evening Mai and I have reached a part of the story that I worry will cause her grief. Instead, she squeals with joy, “Does the husband survive the bike accident? No? Very good.”
            I look at her incredulously.
            “Oho! So that the teacher can make an appearance quickly.”
            When I resume reading, she says, “I am sorry, Leila. You lost yours in an accident too. I am sorry. I am very sorry.”
            The thought hasn’t occurred to me until she mentions it. I try to brush away any recollections by ignoring her apology and reading at a brisker pace than before. When I conclude our reading, I ask Mai how someone’s death can cause her so much joy.
            “Not joy. Relief,” she says. “The man was too good to be true. God takes the good ones away. We’re all left to the devices of villains.”
            The next day Didi returns my sari with a laugh unknown to the ashram.
            “Aha, what a good day. What a good day, Leila. There is a restaurant next to Kwality called Andhra Bhavan. They make unbelievable dosas. Finger-licking dosas. We also have filter coffee there sometimes. It is the best. So sweet,” she says, referring to her dates with the bus conductor, whose name we learn is Kishore. She tells me that the reason she is returning the sari so late is because Kishore Ji has liked the sari so much on her that she has had to wear it twice with him. Twice, she says. I ask her if she would like to borrow another one from my trunk. She shakes her head at first, then thinks to herself and says, “Only if it’s not too much trouble.”
            Mai urges me to hurry as I retrieve another sari from the trunk. Mai wants the complete description of the Master Ji who has come to teach Sunita. After she has exchanged a few bitter words with the warden and I have offered her consolation with a different sari, I sit down to continue our practice.
            I tell Mai that the Master has received education in English literature from London and conducts himself like an Englishman.
            “He wears trousers that taper slightly on reaching the feet, a crisp white button-down shirt, a vest and a blazer that mimic the pattern on his trousers, and a tie that alternates with a pocket square on special occasions.”
            Mai listens and her eyes prod me to continue.
            “When the Master instructs, his baritone has a hint of softness that could belong only to a very sophisticated man. One time Sunita is drinking chai from a teacup with the spoon sitting in it. The Master interrupts her, takes the cup from her hand, removes the spoon from it and places it gently on the coaster, then returns the cup back to Sunita. Sunita feels both embarrassed and taken care of.”
            Mai begins clapping her hands like a toy monkey at a children’s store. “Then what? Then what?”
            “Sunita, who is accustomed to her muted white drape, now begins experimenting with different silhouettes. Sometime an ivory salwar kameez, other times a chikankari kurta embellished softly with sequins, and when she feels daring: a sari with a blouse featuring a keyhole neckline that looks like it was tailored to reveal the best parts of her without giving too much away. The two of them, conscious of the boundaries their relationship inflicts upon them, find a way to communicate through their attire.”
            As I am reciting the story, I notice Anam observing us from the outside. She alternates between staring at us and sketching in her drawing book. I wonder if it has something to do with the sketch of the woman she was drawing the other day. My student notices the shift in my attention and turns to look in the direction of distraction.
            “Ay little witch, we are in the middle of something important. Don’t distract us by standing there,” Mai shouts at poor Anam, who runs away immediately.
            Kaki gives Mai a rude stare before returning to her garland of beads again. “May Lord endow the old woman with good sense,” she says, “Ram. Ram. Ram.”
            “During one instruction, Sunita tries to tie her hair with the rubber band on her wrist. The Master says, Please let them be, Sunita ji. Beauty must not be restrained.”
            Mai giggles like a toddler.
            “From then on, Sunita washes her hair with an assortment of fragrant soaps: henna, reetha, coconut, and even jasmine. In the afternoon, when it is time for Master Ji to teach her, she preens at her reflection in the mirror and smooths her hair with a comb before sashaying to class wearing anklets that tinkle like little bells with every footstep.”
            I send Mai off as the sun sets because I haven’t been cooking since our lessons began. I consider making a khichdi that will last me at least two days.
            “Leila, what is it that you’re reading to Mai?” Kaki’s voice breaks in on my contemplation.
            “Oh, it’s nothing. Just an ordinary story,” I tell her.
            I am afraid that Kaki, a devout person, will find the notion of a widow falling in love with her teacher obscene.
            “Acha,” Kaki retorts, “The old woman seems oddly interested, for an ordinary story.”
            “That’s because she cannot read, Kaki. Stories are bound to pique her interest at this age,” I reply.
            “Hmm,” Kaki stares at me for a moment, “I am making khichdi for Anam and myself. I will make some for you too. The woman is killing your appetite.”
            I thank her earnestly before retiring to bed with relief.

The next day I procure two packets of Parle-G biscuits from the warden as a treat for Mai and myself. I prepare tea so that the two of us can relish it with biscuits during our reading. Lately, I’ve begun to look forward to our lessons, the appointments proposing a sharp detour from afternoons consumed previously by siestas. Mai is usually here by 12:00 PM, but today she is late. I wonder what is keeping her. I watch out for her, haunching by my cot, then I cover the saucepan containing tea with a plate. Surely, I tell myself, I will not extend the class beyond 6:00 PM in order to accommodate her tardiness. My own annoyance causes me to smile.
            “Leila, Leila, let’s start.” Mai is at my gate.
            “Where were you, Mai? I was beginning to get worried.”
            “Just chores keeping me busy,” she pacifies me as she places herself on the cot.
            I offer Mai a packet of Parle-G biscuits with chai. Then I pick the book up from where it is kept adjacent to my pillow. I seat myself on the stool opposite with the book opened in my right hand. With the left hand I fish for biscuits from the packet on my lap. Mai’s eyes are awaiting the next incident in the story. As I resume from where we left off, I notice that the sprouts on Mai’s forehead have vanished. Clad in a fresh ivory drape, with golden bangles clinking on her arms and a single anklet circling her right foot, there is no doubt that Mai has, at last, washed her hair.
            The next day Mai has an unusual request.
            “I want you to dye my hair,” she says, with a firm expression on her face.
            I stare at her, trying hard to mask my disbelief at what she has just said.
            “Are you sure, Mai?”
            “What is there to be sure about? I want help with dying my hair.”
            “Won’t it interrupt our class?”
            “Yes, yes. Once you’ve applied the henna to my hair, you can read the story to me while I wait for it to dry.”
            There is no use in showing her the futility of a widow in her eighties dying her hair. I tell her that the henna must be borrowed from Didi because I don’t have the powder myself. I’ve seen the warden apply it to her hair on the verandah on winter afternoons. Mai nods and rushes to the warden’s room. The swiftness of her movement is rare for a woman her age. When she comes back, the warden is following her, laughing.
            “Is the budhiya serious?” Didi says, oblivious to Mai’s presence. “Will she dye her hair?”
            I nod, knowing no better way to respond.
            Then she hands me a packet secured with a rubber band, “You’ve both gone insane.”
            After the warden has left, I transfer one cup of henna powder into a bowl and add half a cup of water to make a paste.
            “You know I could have done it myself, but it’s hard to reach the back,” Mai says, pointing at her mane.
            Mai unties her hair when I bring the bowl towards her. As I am applying the paste to sections of her hair, Anam drops by our gate to giggle.
            “Chudhail, shusssshhh,” Mai admonishes her.
            I warn Mai against calling the child a witch, lest she should learn the word. This makes Anam laugh louder, this time with words Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha. I cannot help but smile.
           Kaki comes by looking for Anam and drops a stainless-steel tiffin outside my gate.
            “I cooked bhindi and dal today. Made some extra for you, Leila. Come on, Anam. Come to eat now,” she says, dragging the girl lightly.
            As she is departing, she looks in my direction as I collect sections of Mai’s hair. She says, “Tch. Tch. Tch.”
            “The Master asks Sunita what she remembers of the previous lessons and she repeats sentences from memory by gazing down at the open pages of her book. The girl was pain, she says. No, no, the Master corrects her, The girl was in pain. Pain could not be used to describe someone. It was not an adjective. It was a noun. Sunita is certain that pain could be used to describe someone. She has read it somewhere and searches frantically for the page. Where? The Master searches with her, brushing his hands against hers in this collaborative exploration. Sunita blushes and gives up. She stares down into her book. You must look at the teacher while making an argument, Sunita Ji. Sunita digs her eyes further deep into the page. The master gently lifts her chin with his fingers and says, At the Teacher. At this exact moment, Sunita’s mother-in-law makes an inopportune visit to the verandah. She has come to pluck curry leaves for preparing sambhar and catches them in the act. Sunita notices her mother-in-law’s figure and jerks her chin away from the Master.”
            “Oh no! Oh no!” Mai has a wounded expression on her face. “Why did she have to come now?”
            I show Mai an illustration of the scene in the book.
            Mai shakes her head, “What next? What next?”
            “That night Sunita’s mother-in-law informs her that tomorrow is to be her last day of classes with the Master. That she has learnt enough. She hands an envelope filled with cash to Sunita and tells her to give the Master his monthly remuneration in advance and ask him to discontinue immediately. Sunita is distressed. Her love for her husband, for the brief period of time that they were married, had been out of duty. But the adoration she has for the Master comes to her naturally and consumes her completely.”
           Mai says she wants to wash the henna off her hair. She needs time, she says, to process this development.
            After Mai has rinsed her hair with water under the tap outside, she prods me to resume the story. Mai’s auburn hair sits strangely on her forehead, un-belonging, like the skin of a doll after a child has colored it with sketch pens. Small white streaks appear at places where the color has not set in. The rest of her hair reaching the length of her waist is a mélange of orange and red, giving the impression of a strange sunset.
            “The next day Sunita does as she is instructed by her mother-in-law. She hands over the envelope and thanks her teacher for his services. The Master is filled with both embarrassment and grief. Sunita ji, the Master says, holding her hand containing the envelope filled with cash, I have a counter offer. Run away with me . . .”
            “. . . Before Sunita can express her discombobulation, the Master begins explaining the process of their elopement, like he would the stanzas in a poem. Tomorrow, he says, at their usual study hour, he would stand outside the gate of her house. Sunita must come wearing a colored sari with a pallu covering her face, in order to avoid recognition. She can sit behind him on the scooter and from there they would ride to the train station. The aim was to catch the next train to Delhi. The Master has friends in Delhi who would serve as witness to their marriage at the court. Your in-laws won’t be able to lift a finger once the marriage is legal, the Master says, letting out a final exhale. After the Master has accepted the envelope and left, Sunita sits at the same spot in contemplation. The elopement is an escape that excites her. The Master has her heart, she cannot refute that fact. It is not as if her in-laws really need her. What harm could result? . . .”
            “. . . Going over these thoughts, she walks to her room and retrieves a red-colored sari from a trunk containing her wedding trousseau. She collects some jewelry items—a pair of golden chaandbalis, silver and golden anklets, a pearl necklace, a nose ring—from the drawer of the almirah and starts packing them in her husband’s leather suitcase. She adds a couple more saris from her trunk to the suitcase. The Mangal sutra, her wedding locket, she cannot take with her for it would serve as a painful reminder of her husband. She leaves the locket in its place in the drawer. That night, she twists and turns in her bed, feeling both anticipation and guilt. Must she choose between her in-laws and her lover? Would the soul of her husband forgive her? Night segues into morning, but Sunita does not bat an eyelid. She stares at the garlanded frame of her husband on the wall facing her bed. Is he watching her? Worse, is he ashamed of her? Perhaps, she muses, he could even be happy for her.”
            “That’s it for today,” I tell Mai, before closing the book, “you must wait another day if you want to know the ending.”
            Mai, who is sitting transfixed, lets out a cry in protest.
            “Patience,” I tell Mai, mocking her curiosity. After protesting a while longer with a mixture of cries and tricks known only to children, Mai throws her hands in the air.
           “You have a sari like Sunita?” Mai asks, finally. I stare at her for further explanation.
            “A red sari like Sunita?” she offers.
            I tell her that the only red drape I own is the one I wore to my wedding.
            “It is a red georgette with floral sequins.” I try remembering the sari.
            She asks if she can have it.
           “For what?” I ask.
            “Just like that. For tonight.”
            I am too exhausted from reading to question her idiosyncrasies further. Rummaging through my trunk, I retrieve my wedding sari and give it to her.
            “I’ll be careful,” she says, before disappearing like a ghost.

That night, after eating the food Kaki has left for me, I find it difficult to fall asleep. I wave the hand fan over my face for a few minutes, but it is not the heat that is keeping me awake. I switch sides before deciding to use the facilities. The darkness in the ashram is suggestive of its already sleeping residents and I regret not carrying a lantern. Upon reaching Mai’s room, I notice something unusual. I near the gate to take a closer look. A woman in a red sari is squatting by the side of the cot, her pallu draped over her head all the way to her nose. Smoke is emanating from where the pallu is left loose. If this is not a hallucination, I suspect that Mai is smoking a beedi again, this time wearing my wedding sari.
            When I finally catch sleep, I see a terrible dream. In the dream, I see Ashwin driving a car, with me in the passenger seat. Both of us are smiling and singing, “Ye kahaan aagaye hum yuhi saath saath chalte,” before our vehicle crashes into a truck.
            My forehead gets sweaty from the nightmare. I pour myself a glass of water, then sit upright on the cot. I pick up the book from the side of my pillow and consider finishing it. In my heart, I entertain the idea of the protagonist running away with the teacher. Clearly that is what Mai wants as well, or else she wouldn’t sit like the protagonist’s apparition, smoking a beedi at this hour. But if the outcome is not as we hope, I am certain it will break Mai’s heart, and I wouldn’t know what to tell her.
            Gathering some courage, I open the novel to its last page and read, “In the end, she could not bring herself to do it. As ardently as she loved her teacher, Sunita found herself unable to abandon the duties of her marriage. The passion with which she adored the Master paled in comparison to the obligations she had towards her dead husband’s family. Alas! She weeps on the roof as she watches her lover ride away on his scooter without her. Her white pallu is dirty from where it has been trailing on the parapet.”
            Trash literature, I think, before closing the book and falling into a deep slumber.
            The next day I wake up with a disabling pain in my back. I press my arm against it to get up from the cot.
            “Look Leila, look what this child has been up to.” Kaki’s hollering forces me to open my eyes.
            “Look,” she says, handing me a sheet of drawing paper.
            On the paper, is a sketch of three women seated on adjacent stools. In the middle is a woman with a book in her hand. To her left is a stouter woman with a potted plant by her side. In her fingers, is a thin garland of beads. On the right is a woman, skinny with beautiful long eyelashes, gazing somewhat outside the page, holding a thin pipe from which animated vapours seem to emerge. I laugh upon interpreting Anam’s drawing.
            “Laugh? You laugh? Take a look at the title.” Kaki nudges me sharply with her elbows.
            Anam looks down at her feet. On the top of the page in all capitals is written 3 WICTHES (Anam has misspelled witches). Between 3 and WICTHES is scribbled WHITE.
            “3 WHITE WICTHES,” I read aloud.
            “Mai must have taught her the Witch.” Kaki holds out an accusatory finger.
            I try to pacify Kaki but to no avail. After winding up her anger, she takes Anam lightly by the ear and drags her to her room, “Say Sorry. Say Sorry,” is followed by Anam apologizing. I place the drawing under my pillow.
            After only a couple of hours, I hear Didi’s loud footsteps approaching.
            “Take your sari. I don’t want it anymore,” the warden says, handing over the drape she has borrowed from me.
            When I question her angst, she stays mute for a while before breaking into a cry. Turns out, Kishore Ji has been seeing another woman on the side. While Didi has entrusted the man with her undivided affection, Kishore Ji has been sharing cups of Kwality mango ice cream with the washerwoman.
            “The washerwoman, do you believe?” Didi says, disapprovingly, “Over me?”
            She bursts into a polemical speech about how she should never have stooped beneath her status to develop a liking for a bus conductor. She had heard rumors of him peeking into women’s blouses when they sat on the bus and the vehicle jolted to and fro. But because she was a modern woman who trusted her eyes more than her ears, she had chosen to ignore them.
            “That rogue!” she exclaims. I suggest making her a cup of tea to assuage her mood. But this time she refuses openly.
            “Not today. Not today,” she says before storming off to her room.
            Following the warden’s departure, the pain in my back reemerges. I lie face down in agony and try to press my fingers on my back. The movement causes little relief. Kaki’s complaints and Didi’s acrimony seem to have colored most of the morning. I feel dizzy from the day’s weight.
            When I wake up, the evening has already set in. Kaki has begun arranging her seating cloth around the tulsi plant. I am relieved for a moment only before registering the absence of my student. I wonder why Mai has not bothered to call out for me. Perhaps she has but I was lost in a deep siesta. I withdraw from the cot and pour myself a glass of water before deciding to visit her. I can take the book to her today, although I am doubtful our last lecture will render her happy. I prepare myself to console her for a bit afterward, maybe even buy her a packet of peanuts and jaggery.
            When I near Mai’s gate, I find her sleeping on her cot. I enter and survey her sleeping figure. She has draped my wedding saree on top of her ivory one. Silly woman, I think to myself. With her auburn hair and crimson drape, she resembles an older bride. I smile thinking about her being sent off at this age.
            “Mai,” I say, “wake up. Come let us finish reading the book.”
            But Mai does not move. The woman has disturbed my sleep many times, so I entertain the idea of a little revenge.
            “Mai,” I say, shaking her vehemently by her left shoulder, “come on. Time for story.”
            But she does not rise. I begin to grow afraid.
            “Mai! Mai!” I shout for her to wake up.
           I tap her shoulders again and again, “No. No. Get up. Get up.”
            Mai’s feet are as stiff as her mouth. Tears start clouding my eyes. Mai’s body bleeds into an amorphous red blur in front of me.
            “Kaki. Didi. Anam. Kaki. Didi. Anam,” I scream in the midst of my crying.
            Didi is the first to arrive at the scene, followed by Kaki’s labored breaths.
            “Something is wrong. Mai isn’t waking up,” I say, still hoping it is one of Mai’s pranks. After confirming an absence of breath, the warden declares Mai dead.
            “Ram. Ram. Ram,” Kaki whispers close to Mai. “May God send her to heaven.”
            The pain of Mai’s death, combined with the one emerging from my back, causes me to collapse, and I faint at their feet.
            When Didi has helped me regain my consciousness, she admits that after all her efforts to kill herself, it is her dreams that have swept Mai away. “It is a good thing, Leila,” she consoles me.

            *

Later that night I stare at Anam’s drawing. Kaki has offered to make tea.
            “Why was she wearing a red sari, I wonder?” Kaki confesses, pouring tea from the saucepan into two cups. Mai’s figure in the drawing has a beedi in her hand, her gaze cast somewhere outside the frame, as if staring at a ghost or scolding a mosquito.
            “She was looking forward to an elopement,” I tell Kaki before breaking into a smile.

Author’s Note:

With “3 White Witches,” I wanted to preserve the magic of languor, the stretches of time that resist neat compression. Brevity demands tightness, a concision, and might I say some formality, but this story needed room to be loose, even be a little unruly (like its protagonists). Set in an ashram for widows, the story carries the sighs of waiting. But within that waiting, sudden voltages crackle: romance and heartbreak, a story folds inside a story, waves of desire and pain that I could not clip in ten pages. It is often said that the story begins when the story ends, and it was my intention that the reader remember the story long after.