The Guru of Love Read Online Free Page B

very fine, don’t you see? I told her to get rid of that baby when it was still in her womb, but did she listen? And now this.” She motioned toward Malati and the baby.
    â€œMalekha Didi,” Malati said to the woman, “will you please be quiet? Your voice is disturbing Rachana.”
    Didi. So, the woman was Malati’s sister? She hadn’t mentioned one, but
didi
could apply to anyone, even a stranger.
    â€œYes, I am the bad one now,” the woman said. “I have done so much for you, and, slut that you are, you don’t see what I’ve done.”
    The word
slut
stung Ramchandra. Malati finally looked up at him with a faint smile, as if to say, see what you’ve gotten yourself into. Then she turned again to the baby, who had calmed down and whose eyelids were becoming heavier. “I’ll have to feed her Lactogen,” Malati said.
    â€œWhere is Lactogen? Who’s going to buy it?”
    â€œI bought some yesterday,” Malati said. “Sir, what brings you here?” Her breast was back inside her blouse, and she was rocking the baby in her lap.
    Ramchandra looked at Malekha Didi, and Malati said to her, “Leave us to talk alone for a while.”
    Malekha Didi left., but not before warning Malati that she was to cook the morning meal after feeding the baby.
    Ramchandra wanted to sit down, but the only place to sit was the cold kitchen floor, so he remained where he was and said, “I just came to see, about yesterday—”
    â€œI’ll have to make formula for the baby,” she said, and got up. “Why don’t we talk in the other room?”
    â€œIs this your bedroom?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDon’t bother about tea,” he said. “I came by to talk.”
    â€œLet’s go to the other room.”
    In the living room, he sat on the sofa, noticing that the carpet had large stains, and that some baby clothes were strewn about. A framed photo on a nearby table showed a younger Malati with a man about Ramchandra’s age. Another photo, this one on the wall, was of the same man with the albino woman. They were standing a little apart but with an air of intimacy, which made him think they were husband and wife. There was no heater in the room, and it was cold.
    Malati went into the kitchen, and when she came back, the baby was not in her arms. She held two glasses of tea, which she set on the side table before sitting beside him. To warm his hands, Ramchandra cupped a glass of tea.
    â€œHow old is your girl?” he asked.
    â€œEight months.”
    Her face, which so far he’d seen as that of a child, became transformed. He noticed lines of maturity, creases under her eyes. The room suddenly seemed different to Ramchandra, as if he wasn’t sitting there, as if he was on the ceiling, looking down at the Ramchandra below. Swallowing the saliva that had filled his mouth, he asked, “Is she your sister?”
    Malati smiled. “No, that’s my stepmother.”
    â€œBut you call her didi?”
    â€œYes, that seems the most appropriate.”
    â€œYou’d mentioned your mother.”
    â€œMy mother vanished from my life a long time ago. Malekha Didi is my mother now.”
    No good mother would call her daughter a slut, Ramchandra thought—that’s what stepmothers are for. Of course he knew that some stepmothers treated their stepchildren with affection, but a distant memory pressed on him. A restaurant near New Road where he used to go for tea and, when he had enough money, for samosas, after finishing college and before starting a teaching job. A small boy, in a frayed shirt and loose half-pants held up by a thin rope, was constantly scolded by the woman he worked for. She criticized him for being slow, for not boiling the tea properly, for leaving the glasses dirty. The boy looked to be barely twelve, but he had an old, sad face. One day, when the woman was about to lift her hand to