Custody Read online

  Every half-hour groups of ten were led by a teacher into the belly of the school.

  Some social souls began talking. Where all have you applied? Where all have you heard from?

  There were some who had received affirmative responses from other schools.

  Then what are you doing here, ran the collective thought, spoiling our chances?

  They wanted options, they felt it was their right.

  Selfish, greedy parents, with their stupid precocious brats. This is the mentality that gives our country a bad name. No sense of the collective good, every man for himself.

  But still all kept smiling, all kept asking, what questions were put to your child?, what answers expected?, hoping in the general accretion of information to glean a few nuggets that would help open the gates of a good school.

  By the time Roohi was called, Ishita was a mass of anxiety. Her earlier confidence seemed misplaced.

  ‘Do your best, darling,’ she whispered into the child’s ear. ‘Good luck.’

  The child barely acknowledged this as she left.

  ‘Oh don’t worry,’ said Raman for the millionth time.

  What was the use of going on saying don’t worry? Couldn’t he see the kind of children gathered here, smart, bright, confident? Not that Roohi wasn’t all these things, but she was also indubitably shy.

  Slowly they walked to the Nestlé kiosk. Ishita needed coffee to calm her nerves. Judging from the crowd, lots of people needed to calm their nerves and it took Raman a while to buy two cups. They sipped the hot frothy instant coffee, and while they were only halfway through they saw a teacher leading ten small children towards the auditorium, Roohi among them.

  Ishita threw her coffee cup into the trash and darted towards the child.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Fine.’ The child’s face revealed nothing.

  They smiled at her, grabbed her hands, started walking towards the car.

  On their way home, Ishita asked, ‘What did they ask?’

  ‘My name.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My mama’s name.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said Mama!’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Papa’s name.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I said Raman.’

  So. She had not taken her name. Understandably she was confused. But the teachers would never realise why.

  ‘Beti, did they ask you any nursery rhymes?’ put in Raman. He knew Ishita had focused on nursery rhymes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Any one I wanted.’

  ‘Which was that?’

  ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses,

  ‘Pocket full of posies . . .’

  ‘Good girl!’ exclaimed Ishita.

  Thank goodness the rest of the interview had gone well, thought Raman.

  ‘And – what else?’ continued Ishita.

  ‘They asked what “posies” was.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  *

  That night Raman spent a lot of time in close proximity to his wife’s angusih. ‘I am sure other children do not know the meaning of what they sing.’

  She sniffled.

  ‘There is always VV.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  There was a gloomy strain in Ishita that had burgeoned in these two months of applications and interviews. For his own sanity if nothing else, he hoped Roohi would find admission someplace.

  ‘Should I go and talk to Mother Superior at OSC? She was very fond of me.’

  ‘A convent is our last choice. Let’s wait and see first.’

  But Ishita couldn’t go on trusting to Raman’s optimism. Among the thousands of children lining up for admission, there were many who were going to be stuck in mediocre schools through no fault of their own. And whatever Raman’s opinion of convents, he would be grateful to have her in OSC if other options failed. So unbeknownst to him she did visit her old school.

  In OSC, Ishita’s talents had been rewarded steadily through the years. She had been class monitor, prefect, house captain, sports captain, vice-head girl. She knew Mother Superior would claim helplessness in the face of a mountain of applications, and to forestall that she related her own recent history. Deprived children at Jeevan, Raman the abandoned divorcee, Roohi the neglected child, her own love for the little girl.

  When she walked out the gates it was with the feeling that Mother had been moved by her story. And in OSC at least Roohi would not be asked irrelevant questions such as the meaning of ‘posies’.

  *

  The admission procedures in VV were spread over a weekend, from morning to night.

  An intelligent school, commented Raman. They know if they want both parents present they have to do their admissions on Saturday and Sunday.

  Ishita, staring at the forms they were meant to fill out, said nothing. Eight pages of questions. One would think the child was applying to do a Ph.D., or enter the secret service, the list was so exhaustive.

  She looked at the other parents in the brightly coloured kindergarten room. Every low chair was filled to overflowing with a bulky parental form. From the frowns she could tell they too were finding the questions difficult. Well, it was Raman’s second time round, he knew what kind of responses the school would approve of. It did say on top that the objective was to understand the child, there were no right or wrong answers. And she was born yesterday.

  Raman was muttering –

  Any siblings in the school?

  Parents’ educational history?

  Jobs?

  Salary?

  Child’s favourite food?

  Favourite game?

  Story?

  Toy?

  Bedtime?

  The activities you do with your child?

  What are your child’s likes and dislikes?

  In one sentence, how would you describe your child?

  What do you think is your child’s greatest weakness?

  Greatest strength?

  How much media entertainment do you allow your child?

  Her favourite programmes?

  What will you say if your child wants to buy a balloon?

  An ice cream?

  What will you say if your child wants a toy she has seen?

  What will you tell your child when she asks you why you are smoking? (Do not say you do not smoke.)

  At the smoking question Ishita rebelled. ‘Surely that is the reason many people don’t smoke, they don’t want to set a bad example. Do they want us to lie?’

  That was the trouble with Ishita. Literal-mindedness did not cut it there. She would never make it in a multinational where they were always having to project scenarios and consider possible reactions.

  Form filled, the three of them were called. One teacher engaged the parents’ attention, the other engaged Roohi at some distance.

  Ishita saw paper and drawing, saw a sweet being given, saw the wrapper left on the table, saw the teacher prompting, saw silence from her daughter. Saw all this through sidelong glances.

  Inevitably there were questions that concerned the son whom they all remembered; he was such a promising boy. Where was he now? How was he adjusting?

  Ishita could see the teacher observing her, and immediately this made her feel inadequate. Somewhat gruffly she said that the adjustment process had been successful for everybody. Arjun was happy in boarding school, he was developing in sports and academics, Roohi was happy in playschool. And as anybody could see she looked upon Ishita as her mother.

  *

  When the rejection letter came Raman went to meet the Principal. He was an alumnus, his son an ex-student, why had this happened, there must be a misunderstanding?

  No, no misunderstanding. The child had seemed disturbed during the interview. They wanted to take her, but she hardly answered any questions. She could only recite a nursery rhyme and that was a function of memory,
not comprehension.

  The circumstances are special, pleaded Raman. But the school had little patience with such presumption. There was no situation in which silence could be considered favourably, nor were they in a position to allow second chances. With only room for eighty, they had to evaluate hundreds of applicants impartially. Parents have to understand.

  As Raman drove home, impotent rage filled him.

  Now Ishita was the one to console. Whatever happened was to the good. Even their questions showed how judgemental they were. If the worst came to the worst, she was sure OSC would be more receptive to the daughters of alumni. The old-school network was strong there.

  Raman did not have the heart to argue. His alma mater was considered one of the best schools in Delhi. He hadn’t found the teachers judgemental, they only wanted a fair evaluation and in Arjun’s case he had approved the methods used to select the boy.

  The same methods that meant Roohi was out in the cold.

  Roohi did get admission in OSC. Raman and Ishita fitted the criteria the nuns were looking for. The child wrote her ABC, rattled off her nursery rhyme, recited her numbers, and drew intelligent connections between a bottle of milk and a cow, a lace and a shoe, a bird and a nest, the moon and stars, a cup and a saucer.

  Her daughter would do well in this environment, of that Ishita was determined. Maybe Raman was right, they emphasised rote learning more than some of the newer schools. But students performed well in exams, and it was a competitive world out there.

  In April, Roohi joined a class of fifty little girls. Every morning Ishita went to drop her, every noon to pick her up. KG children kept shorter hours than the rest of the school, and Ishita saw no reason why a five-year-old should be burdened by a bus, when they had the option of a car.

  ‘It’s a lot of time to spend on the road,’ commented the father. ‘I hardly get to see you in the morning.’

  ‘I know, but what to do? From next year we will send her by bus. By then she will know other children. Right now she is still so small, poor thing.’

  ‘Nothing poor, since she has you dancing around her finger.’

  ‘Who could do less for her?’

  From Ishita’s demeanour Raman knew she expected him to say her biological mother, but the words stuck in his throat.

  XXX

  Arjun was by now nearing the end of class VIII, his second year at the Academy. Once a month when parents were allowed to visit, his father would drive to Dehradun. Ishita refused to accompany him, claiming that the bonding between father and son would be more effective without her. This however meant that Roohi never came, and Raman worried that circumstances would contrive to pull brother and sister so apart that as grown-ups there would be nothing to connect them. He tried to compensate by talking of Roohi to an Arjun who had very little time for girls. A sister just didn’t register on his radar.

  Though it was not allowed, Raman always went armed with food, biscuits, chips, chocolate, hoping that his son would get to eat at least some of it. He knew the way things worked in boarding schools, you could claim nothing for your own, unless you were at the very top of the pecking order.

  For lunch they drove into town where they ate pizza or dosa. The talk involved a jargon that Raman was beginning to be familiar with. The drinking chocolate cake, the Maggi cooked in the sun, the chits he needed, the house colours, house marks, house activities, and worst of all the fagging that seemed to go on all hours of the day and night.

  ‘Doesn’t this kind of treatment bother you?’ he asked. ‘And that too dished out by other students?’

  Arjun shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s all right.’

  How it was all right, Raman could not imagine. The image of a young beautiful boy – and no one looking at Arjun could deny his beauty – at the mercy of whichever sadistic senior happened to cross his path assailed Raman painfully. Having to change his clothes at the slightest excuse, running endless chores for seniors, being punished for the most minor infringements, all this was related with casual aplomb. Whenever he tried to probe, his son stayed with ‘It’s all right’. Maybe in the end it would be all right, but how would he ever know?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ishita tried to reassure him when he came back from these trips. ‘Hundreds of boys go to schools like this. By the end of it they seem fine.’

  ‘How do you know what goes on in their emotional lives? Look at Ashok, wouldn’t you call him damaged?’

  In their house Ashok was the fucked-up one and Shagun the one who would bear the consequences.

  ‘Still, times have changed. Schools are not what they used to be.’

  Raman said no more, distrusting the calm reassurances of his wife.

  Arjun’s final report card came. The boy had scored in the 80s and 90s in every subject, surpassing his performance of the previous year. At least some of the fears concerning a traumatised child in a hostile environment could be laid to rest. Whatever treatment was meted out to him, it wasn’t bad enough to hamper his academic achievements.

  Raman stared at the card lovingly, the figures speaking to him, caressing him with their consolatory powers.

  ‘Look, look at how well he has done,’ he boasted to Ishita.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ she exclaimed, but she didn’t take the report card in her hands, gaze at each high mark, examine the teachers’ comments or phone the relatives immediately. This was the time he felt the loneliness of a single parent.

  Later that night he sat down at his computer and e-mailed Shagun the news. Here was the other person in the world who could equally share in this joy.

  When she replied he discovered she took all the credit.

  Arjun had performed as she had expected. At DPA excellence was inculcated right down the line. Children had to be taught to live in the real world, where competition was endemic to everything.

  Where on earth had she got such ideas from? Not from him – must be from the man she lived with – the man with cut-throat competition bred into his blood and bones – who saw the world as a marketplace with all its wares for sale.

  Ishita meanwhile was focused on Roohi’s life in OSC. Convents too had changed. Roohi’s class was large, it was true, but she seemed none the worse for it. School presented no terrors for her, nor were holidays a time of escape. Far from being taught to learn by rote, all she did was draw, paint, and make things out of plasticine. Letters and numbers were approached through large coloured books.

  Her friends too were many. Ishita had talked to the teachers, read the list of student addresses, and made a note of the neighbouring children. She had taken Roohi to their houses, and they had come to hers. To the Justin McCarthy classes were added swimming lessons, and story-reading sessions at the children’s library at the Gymkhana Club. A whole shelf in the dining room was devoted to her creations; there was even a framed collage, splashes of gory colour and awkward strokes. Raman saw no need to puff the daughter’s head up so much, it was not as though she were a genius.

  But could Raman see how she was growing in confidence?

  Yes, Raman could.

  ‘Now let’s see how she doesn’t talk in an interview. You have to understand a child’s psychology.’

  Roohi was a lucky little girl, said the father, to have someone who cared so much about her. He didn’t recall going to such lengths for Arjun, he added carefully, aware by now that Ishita resented statements of this nature. Would a real mother, doing all she could for her child, be subject to such compliments?

  Raman was analysing some spreadsheets in his office when Shagun phoned. For a moment he was startled. Did she have trouble sleeping, that she had rung at 2 a.m. American time? He tried to judge the nuances of her voice. Irritation with him as usual, but loneliness perhaps, regret and misery?

  ‘I want to discuss Roo.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Raman. You didn’t send her last time. Now I want to be sure that you don’t repeat this.’

  ‘Don’
t repeat this? You think her admissions could have waited?’

  ‘You know what I mean. I can make the arrangements, in fact I am coming there, but will you co-operate?’

  ‘These trips are unsettling for her. You have no idea how she suffers going back and forth. Last time she had nightmares. Kept crying about a wolf. It took me weeks to settle her down.’

  Silence on the other end.

  ‘God only knows what rubbish you filled her head with. Arjun continued this game in the plane, scaring her out of her wits.’

  ‘It was very traumatic sending her back. She wanted to stay with me.’

  ‘This is what you have subjected our children to.’

  ‘Don’t moralise, Raman. You are so fucking righteous I can’t stand it. I sent her back only because of our agreement.’

  ‘The point is she finds this kind of dislocation extremely unsettling. She is not even five – what does she understand of anything?’

  ‘Are you refusing to send her? I will be in Delhi, I keep telling you.’

  ‘She is refusing to go.’

  ‘Impossible. Put her on the phone. Let me talk to her.’

  ‘That will be difficult.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am the one who has to deal with her after you have finished your talking and your visiting.’

  ‘It will be in everybody’s best interests if we co-operate about the children,’ said Shagun coldly before ending the conversation.

  ‘Shagun phoned today.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Roo in the holidays. She is coming to India to make sure.’

  ‘I’m not sending her anywhere.’

  ‘It’s part of the agreement.’

  ‘If the agreement says push your children in the well, will you do that?’

  ‘Explain your objections to a judge when she charges me with contempt of court, OK?’

  His tone brought forth tears. ‘Aren’t we on the same side?’