Honor

by Thrity Umrigar

Mohan gave a slight nod. “Well, I just wanted to give you the news,” he said. “Carry on with your work. I’ll see you later.” He turned to leave but stopped, his attention snagged by the picture of Meena on Smita’s open laptop. “Is that her? Meena?”

He emitted a low whistle. “This poor woman,” he said. “Her . . . those scars. Her face looks like a map or something.”

That’s it exactly, Smita thought. Meena’s face was a map created by a brutal, misogynistic cartographer.

Mohan sat down across from her. “Do you ever get used to seeing such misery? I mean, in your line of work you must s...

She shook her head, unable to answer. Everywhere she went, it seemed, it was open season on women. Rape, female genital mutilation, bride burnings, domestic abuse—everywhere, in every country, women were abused, isolated, silenced, imprisoned, controlled, punished, and killed. Sometimes, it seemed to Smita that the history of the world was written in female blood. And of course, to go into the far-flung parts of the world to tell these stories required a certain amount of dispassion. But getting used to it? That was another thing altogether. No, she wouldn’t be worth her salt as a reporter if she ever got used ...

He frowned. “That...

“It’s not a matter of good or bad. It’s just the natu...

“You’ve never thought of settling overseas?” she asked.

“Me? He considered for a moment. “Yah, maybe when I was younger. But life is too hard abroad. Here we have every convenience.”

Smita took in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the blare of the horns, the plumes of smog from the truck in front of them. “Life is too hard abro...

“Of course. Here, I have the dhobi come to the house on Sunday to pick up my laundry. The cleaner washes my car each morning. For lunch, Zarine Auntie sends a hot tiffin to my workplace. The peons at my office go to the post office or the bank or run any errand I ask them to. When I get home in the evening, the servant has swept and cleaned my room. Tell me, who does all this for you in America?”

What a cultural contrast!

“I do. But I like doing it. It makes me feel independent. Competent. See what I mean?”

Mohan nodded. He lowered the window for a moment, letting in a blast of midmorning heat, then rolled it back up. “You must be mad, yaar,” he said. “What’s ...

“I . . . I don’t even know how to answer that. I mean, being self-sufficient is its own reward. I think it’s just one of the most valuable traits a person can . . .”

“Valuable to whom, yaar?” he drawled. “Does it help my dhobi if I wash my own clothes? How will he feed his children? And what about Shilpi, who cleans my room every day? How does she survive? Besides, you’re dependent, too. You’re just dependent on machines. Whereas I’m dependent on people who depend on me to pay them. It’s better this way, no? Can you imagine what the unemployment rate would be like if Indians became . . . independent?”

“Your argument would make more sense if these people were paid a fair wage,” Smita said, remembering how upset her former neighbors used to get every time Mummy gave their servants a raise, a...

“I do my best to pay well,” Mohan said. “I have had the same people work for me for...

Mohan fell silent and Smita glanced at him, afraid that she had hurt his feelings. We all have our cultural blind spots, she reminded herself. “I guess independence is in the eye of the beholder, right?” she said. “For instance, the free...

“Agreed,” Mohan said at once. “We Indians are in the Dark Ages when it comes to ...

The modest motel was so off the beaten path that they had to stop twice and ask for directions.

“Yes?” he said. “May I help?”

“We’d like to rent two rooms, please?” Smita said.

The man looked from one to the other. “Two rooms?” he repeated. “How...

“Just the both of us,” Smi...

“Then why you are needing two? I can offer one maybe. Someone called earlier today and said a big wedding...

“Well,” Smita said, “we’re here today. And we ...

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You are man and wife, co...

Smita felt her cheeks flush with anger. “I don’t se...

“Because this is a respectable family establishment,” the man continued. “We don’t need any problems here. If you are married, you can have one room. If you...

Smita was about to snap back, but Mohan squeezed her arm and stepped in front of her. “Arre, bhai sahib,” he said, smoothly. “This is my fiancée. I told her that we could stay in one room and save some money. But what to do? She is a girl from a go...

“I see,” the clerk said. He pulled out a pen and pushed a sheet of yellowing paper toward their end of the table. “You please fill out these forms.”

Smita reached for the offered pen.

The clerk froze. He stared intently at Mohan. “Sir,” he said, “only you...

There was a short, painful silence. Then, Mohan mustered a strangled laugh. “Oh yes, of course,” he said. “Forgive my fia...

The clerk appraised Smita gravely. “Madam is a foreigner,” he said softly. “Not familiar with our customs.”

Indeed.

A heavy feeling gripped Smita. This was the real India, revealing itself to her in small slights and grave tragedies.

What would little Abru’s inheritance be? The gravesite of a father she would never know, but whose specter would haunt her entire life. The ashes of her mother’s dreams, which she would taste in her own mouth. Her grandmother’s grief, which could manifest itself only as anger, in a harsh word or a quick slap whenever the little girl did something that reminded Ammi of her dead son. Abru’s life would be marked by hunger—an emotional hunger never sated, its roots in a time before her birth. And the physical hunger, the emptiness in her stomach that would feel as real to her as a shoe or a stone. Poor Abdul had thought that his daughter would be the heir to a new, modern India. Instead, she had become a symbol of the old, timeless India, a country scarred by ignorance, illiteracy, and superstition, governed by men who dropped the poison pellets of communal hatred onto a people who mistook revenge for honor, and blood lust for tradition.

“I have two brothers. Who will give me a thrashing if they find out I am talking to a Muslim man.”

“What difference does that make?” he demanded. “We are both Hindustani, no? The same Mother India has given birth to all of us, isn’t it?”

His voice was not angry. Rather, it was sad, like the music from a flute playing alone at night. But in that one minute, my whole life changed. His words cut open a belief I had held my whole life, but when I looked inside, there was nothing there. “This is not what I think,” I said. “It is what my brothers believe.”

Most of all, he had thrilled to the notion of academic freedom, that a professor could be in charge of his or her classroom, with no interference from the university administration, much less from ignorant government bureaucrats.

Not any more!

In a few years, a new millennium would dawn; despite his own personal misery, Asif was hopeful that the new century would usher in an age in which the world would finally transcend the tired tropes of caste and creed and national boundaries.

Hasn't happened yet. If anything, things are getting worse and worse.

What good did Anjali’s involvement do Meena? Smita wondered. In fact, had the court trial hastened Meena’s death? Anjali’s justification for taking on the legal case was similar to what Smita had herself often said—that she had become a journalist to be a voice for voiceless women like Meena. But as Cliff had reminded her, it was a fine line they walked between journalism and voyeurism. Poverty porn. Is that what she did, ultimately, in her travels to the far-flung places of the world—sell poverty porn to her white middle-class readers back home? So that they could feel better about their own “civilized” lives and country, even as they tsk-tsked while reading about oppressed women like Meena? Smita herself had repeated the platitudes about the humanizing effects of literature and narrative journalism, how each medium cultivated empathy in readers. But toward what end? The world remained as sad and brutal a place as ever. Was it simply vanity that made her believe that her work made a difference?

Mohan looked up, and from the light cast by the outdoor patio lights, Smita could see his face, dirty, teary, worn-out. There was no trace of the irreverent, playful man who had breezily offered to give up his vacation to drive her into hell. We will never be the same, Smita thought.

And we have lagan nu custard for dessert.”

Translation: "Wedding Custard"! Its like flan.

All you have to do is sit still until you’re on that plane. Because—and you know this because you’ve done it a hundred times before—the cool, disinfected atmosphere of a plane is designed to make you forget whatever hot, humid, smelly city you are escaping from. It is designed to anesthetize you against remembering home.

Home? Had she just thought of Mumbai as home? The city that she had resented and feared for most of her life? A city filled with evil men like Sushil. But then, she argued with herself, hadn’t the same city also coughed up a Mohan? Hell, hadn’t it birthed and shaped the bones of a good and honorable man like Papa? How could she have let a man like Sushil blind her to this essential truth?

a traditional “privileged savior” novel, the modern, worldly Smita would lead the impoverished, illiterate Meena to enlightenment and safety. But what if Meena were the teacher in Honor?

In this novel, I wanted to reclaim the word and give it back to the people to whom it belongs—people like Meena, a Hindu woman, and her Muslim husband, Abdul, who allow their love to blind them to the bigotries and religious fervor that surround them, who transcend their own upbringing to imagine a new and better world. It

There is something incredibly tender and beautiful about people who have never known a day’s freedom deciding to love whomever their heart chooses.