by Mahesh Rao
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DIMPLE KNEW THAT Ania had strong opinions on food but was unlikely to have ever prepared anything that required more than the addition of a dressing. And she knew that food was cooked in the Khuranas’ house, vast quantities of it, but not even a whiff reached the parts where the family spent their time. It seemed remarkable. She mustered up the courage to have a quiet word with the Khuranas’ housekeeper, Dina. She wanted to cook a meal that was not too difficult but stylish, a couple of courses with class. Dina had overseen enough dinners; Dina would know.
Her office was a windowless room off the kitchen, from where she administered the Khurana household. Her sagging appearance belied her energy and efficiency. The bags under her eyes were pronounced and capacious. Her neck rested in folds. Her clothes sagged too; baggy trousers and a series of smocks with large pockets that hung loose. And her words sagged as they fell in a despondent trickle from her lips, which also tended to droop.
Dina, unsurprisingly, had a keen sense of social distinction and was able to rank individuals by the pitch and tone of Dileep’s voice when he mentioned them. She settled her own behavior accordingly. She spoke to Dimple as she sorted out the week’s receipts into neat piles; there was no need to get up.
“Who is the guest? Is it a man?” asked Dina.
Dimple mumbled that it was a man but not that kind of man. Dina looked at her over her reading glasses and turned back to her receipts.
Her instructions were sound and delivered like proverbs.
“Don’t make something for the first time. You’ll definitely get it wrong.
“Give him something filling and make sure it’s hot.
“And make sure there’s plenty of it.
“And there should be bread on the table. Men love bread.”
* * *
—
THE TIME HAD come for Dimple to show herself that she was modern. It was interesting, that word. At home it had been used with derision to describe any woman who wore lipstick in the daytime or had an acknowledged boyfriend. But she had also heard it used by young men to refer to their hopes for IT careers in large cities, and by family members to describe relatives who had moved abroad and now owned two fancy cars. In her case she decided that it meant a certain kind of courage, to be able to ask a man home to dinner, to buy and cook the food, to encourage him to make his feelings known. Her heart thudded at the prospect. When Ania spoke to her about Fahim, she was easily convinced of their mutual attraction. But during her absence, apprehensions returned. Now Dimple was going to be modern. With her roommate away for a while, she would have the apartment to herself. It was the right time to approach Fahim.
He accepted her invitation immediately and sounded thrilled to be asked. Dimple felt a twinge of guilt for having doubted Ania. She decided on chicken cacciatore with rice. She had not cooked it before, but she was confident about her abilities in the kitchen. It sounded hearty but sophisticated: she said it under her breath a few times in her cubicle at work. “Cacciatore” meant “hunter” in Italian, according to one of the recipes. It seemed like the kind of food that would appeal to a man, along with the two loaves of bread she intended to buy. Dina’s advice was to be at least partially heeded.
Dimple went shopping for the ingredients at Khan Market. The capers came in a jar with a little booklet tied to its rim, the balsamic vinegar had a castle stamped on the top of its cork. She looked at the labels with care. Didn’t all salt come from the sea? Wasn’t that why Gandhi had to march all the way to the seashore at Dandi?
She took the day off work: this day had to be kept separate from other days; it could not be corrupted by her normal routine. But then she was at a loss. The shopping was already done; the cooking didn’t have to be started till the early evening. She unfurled her yoga mat on the mosaic floor and then simply sat on it. The room was filled with an unfamiliar mid-morning light; on the mat lay a square of sunshine, patterned with the swirls of the grillwork. In a few minutes she had rolled onto her side and fallen asleep, her snores barely audible.
She opened her eyes to the yellow stains on the ceiling, the result of the vapors and sighs of dozens of previous tenants. For a few seconds she had no idea where she was—then she sprang up in horror, certain that she must have slept through the day. She grabbed her phone to see that she had been dozing for only a few minutes.
He could want to have sex. The thought struck her like a blow. She had been so preoccupied with the apartment and the food that she had not given it any thought. She was practical: there was a packet of condoms at the back of her underwear drawer. But she did not even know how he really felt about her, so wasn’t it presumptuous to assume anything along these lines? On the other hand, she had been led to believe that men always wanted sex. Would she have sex with him even if it became clear that he was just looking for a fling? The last time had been with Ankit, and there had been no tortuous rumination. They had drunk too much Old Monk and maniacally shed their clothes on her bedroom floor. Her mood dampened as she thought of Ankit, and she sprang up to busy herself in the kitchen.
She browned the chicken, enjoying the sizzle in the pan, still trying to force Ankit from her mind. Then a wave of anxiety washed over her again. Fahim was a television personality, someone who would be recognized by half the city. It felt as though his world had flipped itself inside out and somehow come to include her. These sorts of thrills occurred in the lives of wide-eyed girls in soaps on television. She wondered if her landlord would spot Fahim on his way in. He was the kind of man who would barrel upstairs a few minutes later, full of a stammering admiration, panting for a selfie with the celebrity. And then the next day he would try to grill her about the nature of their relationship, warning her about these TV types and Fahim, a Muslim.
She returned to her bedroom to have another look at the dress she had picked. The problem was what to do about her feet. She couldn’t open the door barefoot: it seemed too casual and might suggest that she was expecting nudity in due course. But it would be unseemly to shuffle around in front of him in her house flip-flops. High heels would make it look like she was trying too hard—and she might slip and drop a bottle. Should she pad around in socks?
She returned to the kitchen to make the sauce, growing more confident as it began to smell right. Her mother was an indifferent cook: nearly everything she made tasted of some watery vegetable and an excess of garlic. Her primary concern was with wastage. Nubs and chunks from the back of the fridge were grated and chopped, jars were swirled with water and then scraped dry. Dimple had once borrowed a rolling pin for a game and lost it. Her mother had made her roll out chapatis with a Thums Up bottle for days afterward.
She opened the windows to air the room. In the street below, one of her neighbors rushed out holding a pressure cooker, plonking it down on the repairman’s cart, and announcing that it still would not whistle, she was tired of waiting by it like a fool. Dimple decided it was time to shower. She wished that there were other friends who could send her a few spirited messages, Ania being out of bounds for the time being. But none of her other friends knew about Fahim, and their minds would simply boggle at the thought of her dating someone like him. As she lathered her hair, she remembered the coffee and almost cried out with annoyance. She had forgotten to buy a cafetière and now Fahim would have to do without. She finished up as quickly as she could and ran downstairs to the kirana store, her hair still wet, damp patches on the old kurta she had thrown on. She bought a small jar each of Bru and Nescafé. If she used half a spoon of each, it might not be so bad.
* * *
—
HE WAS TWELVE minutes late so far, which was nothing. She had spent the last hour or so wishing it was all over, whatever that meant. But now her heart was palpitating again. She checked all his social media to see if there were any clues as to his whereabouts, but he had posted nothing for a day. She tried to think about it like a cri
sis at work, contemplating the worst that could happen, and then making reassuring contingency plans. They would have little to say to each other, and he would look bored and distracted. He would wolf down the chicken and leave early. Or he would hate it and push it around on his plate, eating all the bread. She would laughingly ask if he wanted to order a takeaway instead and try to alight on some new and interesting topic of conversation. He would never call again. But then she remembered the moment in the cave, the certainty she had felt as the sound of the water echoed around them.
When the knock on the door came, she almost froze.
It sounded again, cross and insistent.
She leaped up, gave her palms a quick wipe against the skirt of her dress, and opened the door.
It was her landlord.
He said that he was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks but not to worry, his brother and sister-in-law would be staying to keep an eye on everything, presumably meaning her. The rent would be due while he was away, but she was under no circumstances authorized to hand the cash over to either of them, and, for obvious reasons, there was no question of a check. He would come and see her as soon as he returned to take the cash. Dimple nodded as he spoke, beginning to inch the door forward as much as she dared. He continued to talk, bringing up the boy who cleaned the common parts and the person he suspected of always leaving the front grille unlocked and the fate of her broken-down air-conditioning unit, which he could not afford to have repaired at the moment. She was assaulted by a surge of rage so violent and unexpected that she had to grip the door and stare at the floor to steady herself.
When she finally closed the door, she was exhausted. She headed toward the bedroom to take yet another look at her face and then felt she couldn’t go through with it. She went to gaze at the chicken instead, which appeared remarkably like the photo in the recipe, although its casserole looked far more eye-catching than her battered steel pan. She moved back to the divan, but she would have to plump up the cushions again so sat instead on one of the hard dining chairs.
She stared at her phone screen and in that moment, as though by an act of her will, it lit up. She read Fahim’s message, saying that he would not be able to make it—a major breaking story, really sorry, these things happen—as though she had been expecting it all along. He said nothing about trying to reschedule. She told herself that in a way it was a great relief: at least she wasn’t still waiting, checking her breath, looking to see whether the ice had firmed up in the trays.
Dimple took off her dress and hung it up in the wardrobe. It would still smell of her perfume the next time she wore it. She returned the wine to the kitchen cupboard and filled a few plastic containers with the food, wiping the rims. There was still a little chicken left over, too little to bother to refrigerate. She spooned it onto a plate that was not much bigger than a saucer and took it to the divan by the open window.
There was due to be a wedding in the house opposite, and strings of yellow lights cascaded down from their balcony. A cycle rickshaw came to a halt, bringing the old couple to the building across the road. They returned at the same time every evening in the same rickshaw. It took time, the man carefully stepping to the ground and then turning to help his wife down. They checked all their belongings and then looked back into the rickshaw to be sure. When they had made their way to the door, the rickshaw driver tinkled his bell twice as a way of saying goodbye. She listened for it. He did it every time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ALMOST A COUPLE of months had passed since Fahim had heard from Ania. His last message had gone unanswered, but he was not worried. He knew that she had been abroad, tending to one or other of her indulgences. She would be in touch soon.
It was one of those metallic Delhi days when the light seemed to have no source, just a mineral haze through which millions of people found their way home. On the street corner, there was a whirl of yellow and pink as a sudden breeze sent a hawker’s pinwheels into a spin. Fumes rose; men jostled. Every edge of the pavement was trampled on.
At the edge of the flurry, Fahim was deep in thought. He had always known how to make himself useful. He was able to change a tire in under ten minutes; he could affect a sympathetic ear; he was familiar with obscure corners of the city and could provide information in no time; he would give his arm to someone’s grandmother for a whole evening, aware of who would be remarking on his attentiveness. Now, he felt he was on the way to making himself indispensable.
Ania’s pursuit had been relentless. When he thought about the public praise, the constant communication, and the welcome into her home, it seemed almost starry-eyed. He was surprised by the awkward use of Dimple as some sort of fig leaf. He had never imagined that a girl like Ania would need the presence of an inconsequential friend to maintain a sense of propriety. But he had humored them. He knew that every incident was pored over and that men were judged by how they treated a woman’s close friends. There had to be warmth and interest but no sexual curiosity. So he had directed his charm at Dimple too, in spite of her earnestness and insignificance. In a moment of weakness a few weeks ago, he had even accepted an invitation to dinner from her—but later come to his senses and canceled. Delhi was full of these girls: lost, eager to please, pointless.
He and Ania had danced around each other enough; it was time to be frank. With her by his side, he would finally be secure. Would it make him happy? It was so easy to let himself believe that love was imminent. For the first time in years he thought about what it meant to be loved, to have an unqualified attachment to a woman, to be assured of true affection, to be free of anxiety and alienation. It seemed an extraordinary and stupefying prospect.
He had to stop walking as he was assailed by a feeling that was physical, a tremble in his joints, a burst of vertigo. He held on to a lamppost while he waited for normal sensation to return to his body. Commuters hurried toward rickshaws in the rush; a woman pulling a suitcase tutted that he was in her way. Young men, touting for fares, hung out of bus doorways and yelled their destinations. He felt worn out and stupid, continuing to lean against the lamppost, still waiting for some kind of relief.
* * *
—
DIMPLE SAT AT her desk, unable to concentrate. She had spent much of the morning thinking of the grand hotel in her hometown. As a child she had been inside the hotel only once, the spring she had snuck in to try to catch a glimpse of an actress. It had tormented her, the fact that a film crew was at the hotel and that for hours every day the actress would be visible, sitting on a bench in the garden or perhaps walking along one of the shaded paths, a lackey holding an umbrella over her head—and in a few days she would vanish like a popped bubble. There was no point in even trying, her friends had told her. Security guards swarmed around the hotel, angry blasts sounding from their whistles whenever they saw stragglers trying to approach the film crew. Even those hardy souls who had camped out by the gates only glimpsed the darkened windows of her car as she swept in and out.
At the age of twelve, for the first time in her life, Dimple had schemed. She was convinced that the actress’s arrival was fated and somehow yoked to her eventual ability to escape the town. She had heard that they were filming in the hotel ballroom at all hours. Her mother stayed up late reading and marking papers, and so the best time to slip out of the house would be in the early hours. It was certain to be Dimple’s only chance.
She left the house before dawn, wheeling her bicycle beyond the light cast by the streetlight. It had seemed wise to wear her blue velveteen dress in case the actress invited her to her room, but now, as she pedaled up the hill, she knew it would be tragically creased. She left the bicycle at the bottom of a slope behind the hotel. Everyone in school knew about the breach in the bamboo fence through which waiters smuggled girls into their rooms. She made her way up through the pines and deodars, twigs cracking under her feet, the faint warble of thrushes already audible above her head
.
It was easier than Dimple could have ever imagined. Even as her heart hammered, she skipped up the front steps, buoyed by the recollection that she was in her blue velveteen dress, and said confidently to the guard on duty, “My mother is waiting for me.”
He smiled and nodded, perhaps accustomed to the strange habits of the rich on holiday, whether late-night frolics or early-morning rambles.
There was no one at reception, and she hurried across the parquet and stopped near the foot of the stairs. She had to make her mind up in the next few seconds. She decided to go down the dimmer of the three corridors. Halfway down she paused and then slipped under the cordon, from which hung a sign that read “No Entry.”
At the end of the passage, crates and boxes were stacked next to a pair of double doors. She tried the handle, and the door remained shut. She tried again, pushing against it with her shoulder, and it swung open. The room seemed to extend into a distant darkness. Light was beginning to seep around the edges of the heavy curtains, and she could make out the shape of a grand piano in one corner. There were rugs in different shades of maroon and an ornate sofa against the wall. To her, everything looked opulent and irreplaceable.
On a table in the middle of the room, a pale plastic sheet shrouded a dark object. She skirted around the room, past lighting equipment, taking careful, tiny steps over the cables. On the other side of the table, the plastic covering gaped, and as she approached, she could see what it was meant to hide—a cake, a three-tiered chocolate cake, with delicate swirls of pink and silver icing. Dimple stopped. She knew just how it would taste, the way each bite would disintegrate to fill every crevice in her mouth. She wanted to sink her arms into the cake elbow-deep, the blue velveteen dress now forgotten. The temptation was too great. Even if she were to jeopardize her future, it was a risk worth taking. She stretched out her arm and swept the side of the cake with her finger. It was cold and hard. The cake was carved out of wood.