Her eyes warmed with tears as she and Aruna waited for Kishore to buy the tickets, wishing she were here with Savitha, as they’d once planned, but Poornima gasped and forgot all about her when she entered through the balcony doors. She’d never seen a room so big. It was like entering an enormous cave, but one that was chiseled and glamorously lit. She stood in awe—looking at the red plush seats, some of them ripped but still luxurious, and the droplets of golden light along the walls where the lamps were hung, and the crowds of people, rushing to find seats. Kishore and Aruna must’ve been to this theater before because they pushed past Poornima to a row of seats in the middle of the balcony.
Then the curtain parted, the screen filled with light, and Poornima was astonished again. The people were huge! They seemed to be bearing down on her, ready to lunge. Her eyes grew wide, a little afraid, but when she looked anxiously at Kishore and Aruna, they were already engrossed in the film—a sad tale of two lovers separated by the disapproval of their parents, especially the girl’s parents, because the boy was penniless, and he had no job (as far as Poornima could tell), but he was strikingly handsome, and he had a handsome motorcycle, even though he was poor. The girl’s parents, in an effort to keep them apart, went so far as to lock her up in a remote mountain home. It was sad, but there were song and dance sequences of the lovers in Kashmir, and Shimla, and Rishikesh, dancing and frolicking in the snow. The actress was wearing only a shimmering, diaphanous blue sari against the white of the snow, and Poornima leaned over and asked Kishore, “Isn’t she cold? Isn’t snow supposed to be cold?” He ignored her, or maybe he didn’t hear.
At the end of the movie, the hero won over the girl’s parents by rescuing their family business from a greedy relative who was plotting to overtake it and throw them out of their mansion. If the hero hadn’t exposed him, and if he hadn’t held the bad relative at gunpoint, the girl’s family would have lost everything—money, jewels, cars—and would’ve been left homeless. The girl’s parents, in that instant, recognized the boy’s cleverness and quick-wittedness, and the movie ended with the girl’s parents placing their daughter’s hand in his.
Poornima was so touched by the radiant faces of the hero and heroine, by all they’d had to overcome, that she began to cry. Kishore and Aruna looked over at her and laughed. “It wasn’t even that good,” Aruna said. Poornima didn’t agree; and on the way home, as the bus wound through the darkening paddies of rice and the fading fields of cotton and peanuts that lined the road from Vijayawada to Namburu, and as the outlines of the distant hills bled into the night sky, she realized she wasn’t crying because of the film, she was crying because she hadn’t forgotten. Not for an instant. Savitha had been there, seated next to her, in some way. In some way more essential than even Kishore and Aruna had been there. She could picture it: Savitha would’ve grasped her hand when the hero pulled out the gun, and she would’ve liked him, the hero, because he was poor like they were, and because he loved the heroine with such sweetness, such guileless longing. Imagine, Poori, she would’ve said, shaking her head, imagine how cold that poor girl must’ve been, in that thin sari. All that snow, she would’ve said, it looked just like yogurt rice, don’t you think?
In the days and weeks after going to the cinema, Poornima thought more and more about it. Not the film itself. Not exactly. What she thought about were the faces of the other people in the theater, especially Kishore’s and Aruna’s. She’d never seen such a thing: lights flashing, changing colors, illuminating the rapt faces of people in an audience. She’d not even seen the lights of a television shining and shifting, let alone the lights of a movie screen. It seemed to her, as the months wore on, that the quality of that light, distant yet penetrating, menacing yet harmless, was how the events of her own life felt.
For instance, one evening, while she was cooking dinner for the family, her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen (which was actually a separate room, much to Poornima’s astonishment) and demanded to know where her garnet earrings were, the ones in the shape of a flower; she wanted to wear them to the temple, she said. Poornima, who hadn’t even known her mother-in-law owned a pair of garnet earrings, said she didn’t know, and went back to making the eggplant-and-potato curry on the stove. Her mother-in-law, watching closely as Poornima added salt to the curry, sighed loudly and muttered, “The poor. You never know around them.” Poornima put down the spoon, watched her mother-in-law leave the kitchen, and wondered, You never know what?
But then the lights of the cinema moved closer, became more menacing.
This time, it was while the family was having tea and pakora on a Sunday afternoon. Poornima had just sat down to drink her tea when Aruna eyed her closely, turned to her mother, and said, “Somebody discolored my silk shalwar. Amma, do you know who it could’ve been?” It had been a delicate pink, but was now apparently splotched with blue and purple. They both turned to Poornima. Their gaze took on a kind of hatred, sudden and smoky. “You soaked it with something blue, didn’t you? Was it that blue towel? I bet you soaked it with that towel. Amma, can you believe it? You’re jealous, aren’t you? It’s impossible to have nice things around some people. I know you soaked it with that towel. How can you be so stupid?”
Poornima opened her mouth to protest, but she honestly couldn’t remember. She did the entire family’s laundry, so maybe she had soaked it with the blue towel. But not on purpose, and certainly not because she was jealous. She looked at Kishore, but he was busy chewing an onion pakora. She turned to her father-in-law, who rarely said anything in front of his wife, and had a habit of slinking off whenever a discussion became heated or turned to him. Today he simply sat with his hands folded, staring into them as if into a deep well. Only Divya was an ally—a serious girl who Poornima had grown to like, but who had no voice, being the youngest, and was often shouted down.
But before Poornima could even turn to Divya, her mother-in-law was at her side, yanking her head back by her braid. “Ask forgiveness,” she growled. “Ask.” Poornima was so surprised she couldn’t get any words out, not even a scream. Her mother-in-law finally let go, and Poornima did ask forgiveness, but then, that night, as she was falling asleep, she thought, It was absurd of me. It was cowardly of me. I should’ve never asked for forgiveness when I’m not even sure I had anything to do with it. I don’t remember ever even seeing that silk shalwar. What did it mean to ask forgiveness, she wondered, not knowing the crime, or who committed it. It meant nothing, she realized. Nothing at all. And so she decided in that moment—decided, yes, decided, astonished that she could even do such a thing as decide—that she would never again ask forgiveness for a thing she didn’t do, for crimes she could in no way recall committing. And so she fell asleep smiling, and drifted into a dream.