Moistening her eyes, Miss Joshi said, ‘Why are you telling me all this? I can make all this public and put you through so much embarrassment. Aren’t you afraid of that?’
Apte laughed and said, ‘No, I have no such fears from you.’
‘What if I want to settle a score with you?’
‘When I am ashamed of what I did and am asking you for forgiveness then there is no score left to settle. In fact this makes me wonder if you have really forgiven me. But even if I hadn’t apologized, you wouldn’t have been looking for revenge. Because the eyes of vindictive people don’t get wet so easily. I think you are incapable of deception. If you wanted to deceive me you would have never come here.’
‘I have actually come here to worm things out of you.’
‘Go ahead. I’ve already told you that I have served a sentence for theft . . . in the Nasik jail. I was physically very weak then and couldn’t do hard labour. Taking me for a shirker the jail officials would beat me mercilessly. Fed up, I finally escaped one day.’
‘You’re a dark horse, aren’t you?’
‘It was a neat escape . . . no one came to know. Even today there is a reward of five hundred rupees on my head.’
‘Then I’m most certainly going to have the police take you away.’
‘In that case I may as well disclose my real name to you. My name is Damodar Modi. The name I use now is a cover-up from the police.’
The little boy had been quiet all this while. When he heard Miss Joshi mentioning the police he said, admonishing her, ‘Who can take my dada away?’
‘The police—who else?’
‘I’m going to beat up the police,’ the boy lisped.
Running to a corner he fished out a toy gun and stationed himself near Apte in a protective stance.
‘Your bodyguard seems to be really brave.’
‘There’s a story behind this too. About a year ago, this boy had got lost. I found him loitering in the streets and asking my way around I somehow managed to bring him home to his parents. This family and I bonded so well that I started living with them.’
‘I’m sure you know what opinion I have of you after listening to your story.’
‘Yes, exactly what I am . . . an impostor, a charlatan and a cheat.’
‘You are being unfair to me once again. I can forgive you for being unfair the first time, but not for this. Anyone who can remain so pure, simple and straightforward despite living through such adverse circumstances is not human . . . he is superhuman. All the comments you made about me that day are true. As a matter of fact I am far more immoral than you can imagine. I dare not even look into your eyes. By showing me how noble you are you have brought me face-to-face with my own real self. Take pity on me, please forgive me.’
With these words Miss Joshi fell at Apte’s feet. Helping her get up, Apte mumbled, ‘Miss Joshi, for God’s sake don’t embarrass me.’
In a voice thick with emotion Miss Joshi said, ‘Please save me from these rogues and make me worthy of you. God is witness to how I pity myself at times. Time and again I try to break free of this trap of decadence that has come to envelop me completely but my willpower is not strong enough. It appears to be the result of the way I have been brought up. Acquiring a good education at the best of institutions made me contemptuous of the life of a housewife. The thought of living a life where any man would be superior to me was revolting. The concerns and responsibility of being a housewife seemed to come in the way of my intellectual freedom.
‘By drawing attention to my intellect I wanted to overcome the disadvantages of being a woman, and be free like men. Why should my life be controlled by someone else? Why should my aspirations and desires have to be compatible with someone else’s? Why should I give someone else the right to question my actions? In my eyes matrimony was rather contemptible. It wouldn’t be right for me to criticize my parents . . . may their souls rest in peace . . . but they were never there to give me the correct advice. My father was an academic and my mother, an illiterate person. Between the two of them there was constant fighting and bickering. Pitaji looked at his marriage to an uneducated woman as the greatest misfortune of his life. He would never tire of telling Ma that she had ruined his life, that she was a liability . . . had it not been for her, the sky would have been the limit for him. He felt that all the unhappiness in their lives stemmed from Ma’s lack of education.
‘Pitaji wanted to keep his only daughter away from the influence of his wife. If Ma ever said anything to me he would come down on her like a ton of bricks, “Haven’t
