is no good,” she had advised me in sage tones.
In the past few months, she had winnowed the list of possible grooms down to two. One was a clerk in a government office in Haldwani. She admitted he was dark-skinned, “But who looks at a prospective groom’s looks? It is his nature that matters, and this boy’s nature is good.” One symptom of his goodness was that he said he wanted no dowry. And her network said he had no bad habits: he did not smoke or drink, he did not chew tobacco, not even paan. An additional bonus was that his family was small, so Charu, as the daughter-in-law, would not be worked to the bone. There were only two sisters, parents, and one old granny who, she said, did not count because, “She’s halfway up there already, and seems in a hurry to reach.”
The boy Ama had in fact set her heart on was an assistant in a medicine factory in Bhimtal. People said he had excellent prospects; what was more he was younger than the government clerk who, Ama conceded, was perhaps a few years too old for Charu. Though the young man she favoured did have a considerable paunch, her view was that it showed he was from a family that could afford to eat two full meals every day. This second possibility was also fair-skinned, and from what I could see, a sharp dresser: he had sent a colour photograph of himself against the backdrop of a painted Taj Mahal, posing on a red Kawasaki motorbike that the studio used as a prop.
Charu had been unconcerned about this resolute quest for a groom; the talk of it had been going on so long that she had stopped paying attention. But when the families of these two prospects announced they would come to assess the future bride, and Ama agreed to the visits, Charu began to worry.
The families of the prospective grooms came on their inspection tours, a month apart from each other. Both times, Ama dug into her cash reserves and cooked up meals that by their standards were lavish. She had even thrust some money at me one day, saying, “When you come back from work, bring a cake with pink kireem from Bisht Bakery, the small size.” The Kawasaki groom’s family, being from Bhimtal, “was used to city things”, she said. Her homemade kheer would not sufficiently impress them.
The reason for calling the Ohjha was that all Ama’s efforts and expense had gone to waste. The Kawasaki sisters had gone away suspecting Charu was feeble-minded, and perhaps deaf. “That is how the wretch behaved with them!” Ama said. “They asked her simple questions and she kept staring at them as though she’s an idiot and she went on squawking, ‘What? What?’ like a parrot.” With the other groom’s family, Ama had spotted Charu working up a squint when she thought her grandmother was not looking. When asked to serve the Coca-Cola that had been bought for the guests, she had limped to and from the kitchen as though one of her legs were shorter than the other, and had spilled half a glass of the precious drink on the floor.
“These things take no time to spread, I won’t be able to find a single boy for her if she goes on this way,” Ama cried in anguish. “I know she wanted them to go away thinking she’s deaf and insane and a cripple. Tell me, what is wrong with her? Has she said anything to you? Doesn’t she care about her future? Doesn’t she care about my reputation?”
The Ohjha had said two or three sessions would be needed if the spirit was a vengeful and determined one, as he thought it was. He worked at night, when the evil spirits that possessed human beings were at their strongest, in a rickety shed made of corrugated iron sheets. The moment they saw a snake or a toad or a scorpion leave that shed they would know Charu was free of the possession, he had promised.
When I saw Charu the morning after the first exorcism, she looked red-eyed, as if she had not slept. Her hair was dishevelled and she dragged her feet as she herded the goats and cows to their grazing on the slopes below her home. But from far down the slope, as soon as she saw the postman appear and turn towards my cottage, she bounded up the hill. She was