Maps for Lost Lovers

food probably wouldn’t taste half as good as yours.”
    Kaukab smiles. “I am just an ordinary woman. Your cooking is much better.”
    “But I learnt it from you.”
    “Would one of you stop licking the other’s pussy for a second and tell me where the dustpan is.”
    Mah-Jabin turns around, stunned. “Ujala!”
    He stands there with his jaw clenched, the eyes bright red.
    “How dare you talk to your mother and sister like that,” Kaukab says to him. “I wish I had never come to this country.”
    The tears spill over onto his cheeks but he is still breathing like a bull, the jaw pulsating. “What the fuck is all this for? What are we celebrating with this . . . this feast? May I remind you that yesterday it was confirmed that Uncle Jugnu and Chanda were murdered, chopped up and burnt.”
    Kaukab turns back to the pans set on the hobs. “We are not celebrating anything. My children were coming home after a long time, so I thought I’d cook something . . . Then I started thinking about the favourite dish of each one of you . . .”
    “Did you, even for a moment, stop to think that it might be a little inappropriate—your seven spiced-and-saffron’d dishes, and tandoori chicken, with a choice of chappatis and rice?”
    “Ujala, please stop it.” Mah-Jabin takes a step towards him. “Mother has been working on this for two whole days now.”
    Kaukab is frowning. “As I said it’s not a feast. Only a few dishes I cooked. It’s not a party. And yes, when someone mentions saffron you are bound to think the meal is luxurious and special, but I’ve always put a little saffron in my rice, a festive occasion or ordinary day.”
    “Let’s hope you stop at saffron and don’t start putting any other ingredients in the food,” Ujala says.
    “What does that mean?” Mah-Jabin looks over her shoulder. She turns to Kaukab: “What is he talking about?”
    Kaukab too is puzzled: “What other ingredients? It’s Charag who doesn’t like cumin seeds in his food, you eat everything . . .”
    “I was thinking of that powder a Muslim cleric gave you, after you had gone to him to tell him how unruly your son Ujala was, how he had done nothing but quarrel with you ever since he entered his teens. Remember?” He smiles contemptuously at Kaukab. “The holy man read special verses of the Koran over some powder and asked you to secretly mix it into your son’s food. ‘With Allah’s help the child will be obedient within thirty days,’ he said, or something along those lines.”
    Kaukab looks ashamed. “I didn’t know what else to do. I . . . I . . . How did you find out?”
    “You put things in my food!” he shouts. “If you lot had tails they would wag every time you approached a man with a beard.”
    “I asked Allah to help me through that holy man. And it worked, thanks to His blessing. After I started putting the sacred salt onto your plate, you did become very kind and affectionate, mindful of the respect you owed your elders. But then, for some reason, you disappeared and I haven’t seen you since then. And I have felt you moving and walking about in the world the whole time. They take the baby out of the mother but not all the way out: a bit of it is forever inside the mother, part of the mother, and she can hear and feel the child as he moves out there in the world.”
    “Do you want to know why I left? Do you?”
    “I do know now. You must’ve seen me putting that blessed and consecrated salt in your food.”
    Mah-Jabin approaches Ujala and places a hand on his shoulder. “What difference does it make, Ujala? It’s all harmless and it makes her happy.”
    Kaukab looks fiercely at the girl: “Don’t patronize me, Mah-Jabin.”
    Ujala removes Mah-Jabin’s hand from his shoulder. “Yes, I saw you putting that thing into my portion of the food but I didn’t leave because of that.” He turns to Mah-Jabin: “I did think it was all harmless at first, but then I found the place where she had been hiding that stuff and had it checked out. It was a bromide, the thing they put in prisoners’ meals to lower their libido, to make them compliant. That was when I left.”
    Mah-Jabin gasps and looks at Kaukab.
    “It was just some salt over which the cleric-ji had read sacred verses,” Kaukab says. “And it worked. His behaviour was exemplary then. Any decent mother would have been proud of his conduct during those days . . .” She talks but cannot ignore the horror in Mah-Jabin’s eyes, and