had been in his shed, staggered out drunk with sleep and added his shouts to ours, calling for Charu as he would for a lost cow. The clerk heard us and came out of his cottage. He looked up towards us and shouted, “What is it, Ama, why are you waking the birds again?”
Ama’s eyes fell on the wooden box that she stored valuables in. Nobody else was supposed to know where Ama hid the box or what was in it. But there it was, in plain view, its lid loose and the lock on it broken. Money was missing, as well as one piece of jewellery. This was Charu’s dead mother’s wedding nose ring: a bangle-sized gold hoop strung with pearls and gold beads, almost too heavy for a girl’s nostril to bear even on her wedding day, but nevertheless, a ring without which a hill girl’s wedding could not take place.
When Ama saw that the nose ring was gone, her finger went unconsciously to her own nostril, which a similar hoop had once pierced and left a sagging hole that was now empty of metal or stone. She rubbed it, as if in memory of all the rings and studs that had once pierced it. Slowly she put the box aside, shutting its lid so that the clerk and his wife, who had appeared by then as well, would be denied a look at the contents.
The clerk said, “I’ll get Lachhman, and we’ll go in his taxi to look around. She must be somewhere, maybe one of her animals has wandered and she’s searching for it. Arre O Puran, go and see: are all your cows and goats there in the sheds?”
Ama was looking straight at me, with a gaze so penetrating I could hardly meet her eyes. She said, “What do you say, Teacher-ni? Should we get a car?”
“She told me she might not do her lessons today because she had to go and see a friend who is getting married soon to a boy in Delhi.” I was stammering over the words. “I thought you knew.” Fear was making me feel weak. I needed to sit down. I held the door for support. Charu had no notion of big cities. What had made her do this without a word to me? If she got into trouble I would never forgive myself. Neither would Ama.
“And this boy is a good boy?” Ama said after a thought-filled pause. “After all, her friend’s mother would not marry her off to a rogue. In a far-off city. Eh, Teacher-ni?”
“He’s a good boy, Charu told me.” I tried to keep the tremble from my voice. I thought of setting off in pursuit of her. I had at least had the sense to write down Kundan’s address somewhere. She must have gone to him, where else would she have run to?
“From a good family?” Ama was saying. “This friend’s groom?”
“From a family which wanted nothing but the girl. No dowry, that is what Charu said. And he earns well, has a good, respectable job. His prospects are very good, he is going to travel even in foreign countries and earn five times what anyone here does.”
“Arre Ama,” the clerk said, “stop going on and on about Charu’s friend. She’ll marry who she’ll marry, what do we care? Should I get the taxi or not? I think we should go and look for Charu. It’ll get too late if we wait any longer.”
Ama said, “Let it be today. I think she’ll be back. I think she had told me too about going to this friend’s house, but I had forgotten. Our Teacher-ni, she always knows where Charu is.”
16
The next morning, Charu woke in one of the corridors of a Nainital hospital. She had spent the night there, finding nowhere else to wait for the morning bus to Delhi. The stench of urine and disinfectant had done away with her hunger pangs and throughout the night she had stayed awake listening to ill people groaning and mumbling in the open-windowed general ward. At night her worries turned into spectres. What if she never found Kundan? Had she enough money if it took time to locate him? What if he said he no longer wanted her? Why had he written so uncaringly in his last letter? What would happen to her if she had to return to Ranikhet after a failed journey? Ama would throw her out of the house with the same ruthlessness she