All the Tomorrows

by Nillu Nasser

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maa wasn’t ill. She was full of life.”

  Muna’s gentle voice cut through his denial. “She was ill, Arjun. The autopsy showed how progressed the cancer was. I know that doesn’t make her death easier.” Her voice trailed.

  “It’s my father’s fault. If he had come to me, or Maa had, I could’ve helped.”

  Muna held her tongue. The air stilled between them. Nearby Leela rolled onto her stomach and cooed as cool stems of grass tickled her nose. Arjun watched his daughter absent-mindedly.

  “I keep expecting to see Maa’s silhouette appear on the veranda,” he said.

  Muna resumed kneading his fingers. “She’d be telling us to come inside right now. What was that she used to say about the Jinn?”

  “The evil spirits sit in the trees after sunset. She didn’t really believe in it herself. She was just repeating what my grandmother used to say, that Jinn visit trees, graveyards, forests. Highways, even. My nanima wasn’t one for long journeys. They frightened her.”

  “Maa didn’t seem the type to believe that.” Muna pushed herself off the lounger. She threaded her way barefoot along the ceramic tiles to where Leela lay.

  “She wasn’t convinced, just cautious, I think. There were parts of the culture that still had a hold on her.” He hesitated. “Our upbringing marks us, I guess, however much we try to escape it.”

  Muna caught his eye. “Don’t forget, you have us.” She glanced down at Leela, and squeezed her daughter’s bare leg.

  Arjun crossed over to where his family sat. Muna smiled up at him, and his heart ached for his mother, who he had never been without. The weight of his sadness hung in his core, and he had no idea how to banish it.

  “Shall we go in?”

  He picked up his discarded shoes, clothing and blanket, tossed the deckchair cushions in a storage box and followed his wife and daughter inside.

  The commotion of the wake that had filled the house after the funeral now seemed a lifetime ago, and the quiet irked him. I miss your strength, Maa.

  Instead of sitting downstairs, Muna tucked Leela into her cot in the nursery and they retreated to the cocoon of their bedroom, where Arjun drew the curtains, undressed where he stood and sank onto the silk of the bedsheets. Muna changed into a simple cotton nightdress, her heavy plait sitting on the creamy skin of her shoulder.

  Arjun beckoned her over to the bed, and that night, they made love for the first time since Leela’s birth. The fading light pierced the curtains, throwing shadows into the room that danced across the walls. Arjun’s exhaustion momentarily fled as he gave himself to his wife, gentle and rough by turns. Her nightdress slipped off her shoulders as his mouth closed over her nipple, and as he worked his tongue in circles around it, he thought of himself as a suckling baby and then forced the image out of his head. His movements were initially robotic, as if on auto-pilot, but as Muna responded, arching her back and burying her fingers in his hair, he lost himself in her. Her slender thighs contrasted with the bulk of his as their legs tangled, and he trailed butterfly kisses from her jaw to her stomach, still rounded from the birth.

  Urgency drove him up onto his knees, and he bent to press his lips against hers, sucking her lower lip, dipping his tongue into the caverns of her mouth. He pulled away to search her eyes, asking silently for agreement to enter her, unsure of whether she’d healed enough from the birth. She smiled, shyly and opened her legs to welcome him. She tensed as he entered her, and he eased in, fearful of hurting her. Arjun worked, his head close to his wife’s, whispering his love in her ear as the rhythm of their pairing rocked the bed against the wall. He reached his pinnacle, and as he came down from it, images from the funeral flooded him.

  His mother’s shrouded body underneath a bank of soil. His father in the Red Room, a womb-like coffin, holding his mother’s hand. He shook his head, intent on remaining in this moment, with his naked wife in his arms. This is life, he thought. Not pain. Joy, comfort. A man and his wife.

  He propped himself onto his elbows to look down at Muna. Her eyes brimmed with tears in the half-light. Arjun gathered her to him, and reached for the bed sheet, pulling it up and over them. They slept entwined, her face buried in his chest, haunted by ghosts of the past.

  Chapter 37

  However much she tried, Jaya could not erase Akash from her mind, much less her history. What would have happened had her parents settled on another match for her? Would she have lived in wedded bliss? Perhaps she and Akash still would have crossed paths. Would he have stood out for a moment, and then been forgotten as she continued her humdrum existence? It would have comforted her to see other roads mapped out, and to be able to measure her relative happiness.

  Her fingers trembled when she read his letters, even with her fourth and fifth reading. She couldn’t pretend that she wanted anything other than a happy ending with this man, even years later. It had been an involuntarily reaction to pick up his letter from the floor at Tara before she had fled. Losing the chance to read what Akash had composed would have haunted her. She didn’t need another albatross, another millstone around her neck. When she opened it, she scoured the page, turned it to see the flip-side, and tasted a bitter tang of disappointment that the second letter was all too brief. She took it from her purse as she walked the streets, gripping it tightly lest it float away, and began.

  Dear Jaya,

  I never knew I would be such a big keeper of secrets. When I was a boy, my mother scolded me for telling tales, but I could never keep anything hidden. I’d burn to tell her even the most insignificant facts, things she didn’t need or want to know. As a grown man, I have realised that secrets are comfortable with me. They find a home in me whether they’re welcome or not.

  It’s not in my nature to hurt anyone, yet that seems to be what happens. I had thought once I could protect myself and others by living without love, but without it, everything is bleaker. You see, whether we like it or not, our lives are about love. We dream about it. We are in love, or heartbroken from it. And afterwards, when all is finished and the embers have settled, the circle starts again.

  I hope you never have to live without love, because I want the stars for you.

  Your friend,

  A.

  The rhythm of her steps drilled his words into her psyche, each word perfectly pitched to fill the emptiness she hid from the rest of the world. I love you, she thought, then immediately silenced her treacherous thoughts. The final letter was written with a flourish. She understood he‘d risked her uncovering his identity although Ruhi had forbidden it. Jaya touched where Akash’s pen had scratched the paper and felt a link to the man who was still her husband. Could she trust him? Could she know that even now she wouldn’t play second fiddle to the dead woman? That could never be enough for her.

  She approached the bistro where she’d asked Firoz and Ruhi to meet her. Outside, a blind boy and his mother begged with their hands thrust towards her. She pressed coins into their palms, then paused on the threshold of the restaurant to carefully tuck Akash’s letter away in her bag. Inside, Firoz and Ruhi nestled at a corner table. She kissed each in turn, first her sister, then her friend, one man who had never asked anything of her, who sought only to give.

  “Been waiting long?” she asked, gesturing towards dirty napkins strewn on the table beside a plate of sizzling cassava chips and gooey brown chutney.

  “Indian time. We were late, too, though not as late as you,” said Firoz, mirth creasing the corner of his eyes.

  They rarely met as a trio. Sometimes it happened to celebrate Jaya’s birthday, but mostly, her relationships with Ruhi and Firoz were one-on-one affairs only. They came together only at her request. In another life, had each not been fiercely loyal to her, they would have perhaps been good friends, both unfettered creatives, prone to speaking their minds.

  “Why did you call us here?” said Ruhi.

  A fan hummed above their heads, its blades rusted with age, looping, chur
ning. Just like Jaya’s stomach. She pushed the food away from her. Even the smell of it made her retch.

  Firoz studied her face. “We can do this another time if you want,” he said, concern planting furrows on his brow.

  “No, I need to say this. It’s weighing on me.” Still, she hesitated. Akash’s name hung on her tongue. He had been a ghost for so long, it felt normal to avoid his name.

  “Ruhi and I, we’ve been talking,” said Firoz. “Don’t let a man mould you. You’re too wonderful to be driven by his agenda. Don’t get sucked into this again.”

  Jaya focused on the peeling paint on the walls. “And what if my agenda is the same as his? What then?” She turned to look at the two people who meant the most in the world to her, but who could not fill the emptiness.

  “I thought you might say that,” said Ruhi, her hands cupping a cool bottle of Coke.

  Jaya watched beads of evaporation thread their way down the bottle. Every nerve in her body cried out for her to take control. To step out of her victimhood. She smiled, her lips curving, hiding the anxiety that was building to a crescendo within her. She needed only to close her eyes to see the flames, to see monstrous, grinning Akash there, delighting in her pain. She could no longer distinguish truth from reality. It would not do. She could not continue without finding out what kind of man he was.

  Jaya turned to her friends. “I have a plan. Will you help me?”

  Akash’s body ached with the pain of the day’s labour at Janghir Saheb’s store. The monotonous work—hauling planks of wood up and down stairs, hammering crude shelving together, shifting stock from vans into the new premises—helped to keep his mind off Jaya and her rejection. He and Tariq worked with a harmony borne of their friendship, his friend chattering all the while. Only in the pauses, when the exertions eased and the conversation stalled, did Akash allow his thoughts to drift to Jaya. In those moments, he found a glimmer of light. She had picked up his letter when she had fled. And more than this, she hadn’t asked for a divorce. Can it be that you still care about me despite everything? He banished the idea as soon as it found him. False hope would only hurt him later down the line.

  So he worked. When the day was over, Janghir Saheb kept his promise, pushing a bundle of rupees into their hands and telling them to stay in the store and guard it from looters or squatters. He also gave them some ready samosas from the newly installed fridges for their dinner.

  “I expect you not to steal,” said Janghir Saheb, handing over a small set of keys on a brass ring and pinning the men with a solemn stare, “but if you act honourably, so will I. I am generous to my friends.” He tapped his cane as he left, his chest swollen with pride as he surveyed the beginnings of his empire.

  After he had gone, leaving just one halogen light buzzing above their heads in the twilight, Akash and Tariq rolled out their blankets side by side on the concrete floor and listened to the hum of the refrigerators and the quiet of the store.

  “I’m tired but it’s been a long time since I felt such peace,” said Tariq, unwrapping his samosa. He gulped down the first one, then the second, smacking his lips together when he finished and revealing turmeric-stained teeth when he spoke again. “We’ve been indoors all day. Fancy a walk? I need to smell the sky. Maybe we can have a drink with our earnings, a little celebration?”

  Akash also missed the thick air of Bombay nights. The store felt strange. “Maybe a falooda to celebrate or some mango juice, but leave off the whiskey tonight,” he said. He wanted to make a good impression on Janghir Saheb in the morning. He didn’t want to risk the older man’s disapproval at the inevitable stench of alcohol reeking out of their pores. Tariq didn’t always know when to stop.

  They switched the lights off, locked the door and pulled down the shutters with a trill and a thud. Akash pocketed the keys they had been entrusted with. Outside, they breathed in the familiar smell of sweat and urine and spices under a cerulean sky dotted with emergent stars. Akash’s body found an ease outside that eluded him indoors.

  “How about a pilgrimage to Juhu?” said Tariq, nodding his head towards their old neck of the woods.

  “Sure. The beach?”

  “Yeah, we can get some paan. You know, that stall by Malhotra’s video shop.”

  The thought of paan appealed, betel leaf with areca nut and mukhwas seeds. Together Akash and Tariq strolled, past palm trees and tooting, spluttering traffic, stopping at a street vendor’s makeshift stall to buy mango juice thick with pulp. They sucked it up through straws ill-suited to the heavy clumps of fruit until their thirst had been quenched.

  “So, how are you going to win her back?” asked Tariq, his sandals heavy against the paving, loose coins clanking happily in his pocket.

  They drew up to the paan stall. It was shut.

  “Shit, yaar, we missed it.” He kicked the dust. “Go on, you were telling me how you are going to win back Jaya.”

  “I’m not,” said Akash. “I opened up to Jaya, but I can’t hold her back if I’m not what she wants. The best thing I can do is make this job work, build my life back into some semblance of normality. Who knows, maybe once Arjun’s first swell of grief has eased, I can try to build a relationship with him. I need to prove to myself and Jaya that I can be a better man.”

  “What if what Jaya wants is for you to really chase her, prove your worth? Are you really going to give up this easily? That might not be what she wants, yaar.”

  “So, tell me, oh wise one, what might she want, since you’re such a Romeo?” Teasing Tariq lightened his mood. If he were not to succeed in his quest for filial and romantic love, he had this friendship that had passed casually into a brotherhood.

  They reached the beach, dark waters swirling with froth underneath the now blackened canopy of the sky.

  “They want this!” Tariq ripped open his shirt, baring a scrawny chest. His perennial cough surfaced, giving him the look of a decrepit wannabe Don Juan.

  “You idiot!” called Akash above his friend’s raucous laughter.

  He didn’t see the group of men approaching behind Tariq until it was too late. Zahid Khan’s podgy face loomed out of the darkness, flanked by his lapdogs. He was chewing tobacco, and spat into the sand at their feet. Grimy red spittle flew out.

  “You two lovers out for an evening walk, I see?” he said, smirking. His wingmen tittered behind him, two fools desperate to impress their master.

  “I guess you prefer threesomes,” Akash drolly countered.

  “Oooooooh,” sang Zahid’s bruisers in unison.

  “What, you don’t have permission to say anything meaningful?” said Akash.

  Tariq drew the flaps of his shirt together and came to his side, his face wan, eyes large. Akash sent a message to his friend telepathically, desperate for him to understand. Play it cool, yaar. He could sense his friend’s jittery movement beside him, like a bird stunned by a fall from a tree.

  “You still haven’t learnt from the last time we met.” Zahid shook his head in mock consternation.

  Tariq lay a pleading hand on Akash’s arm. “Please. Let’s just go.” To Zahid, “We don’t want any trouble, Zahid Saheb.”

  Akash shrugged him off. “No. It’s about time we put an end to this once and for all.”

  Zahid rolled up the sleeves of his tunic. He was dressed as if he’d been to masjid this evening, yet here he stood batting for the devil. “What’s that clanking I hear? A bulge in your pants?” He turned to his men. “For me, that would have an unmistakable meaning, but this dog is not so well-endowed.” He walked up to Akash, menacingly close, glancing around to ensure there would be no risk of interference by passers-by, then motioned to his men. “Have you been stealing again? Let’s do our civic duty, shall we? Empty their pockets.”

  The men approached Tariq first, turning him upside down, shaking him until his earnings fell to the sand. Akash reached out to help his friend and received a kick in his face. He nursed his jaw while Zahid’s men dropped Tariq, leaving him in a gro
aning heap.

  “Enough!” said Akash, bending down beside Tariq. “We are invisible to everyone, but you seek us out to cause trouble. Why won’t you just leave us alone?”

  “Because I don’t like you. People like you are a stain on Mother India,” said Zahid. He leaned forward, so the angry red veins in his nose were visible though the sun had long fled. “And because I heard about Janghir’s offer to you.”

  Akash’s head jerked up in surprise. There was an energy emanating from Zahid, at once alien and familiar, one that stemmed from envy and loathing, repurposed as resolve. He understood too late they should have run. One man, hooded eyes over a thin moustache, hands like a butcher’s, pulled him away from Tariq. He held Akash firmly, while Zahid first tore at Akash’s trousers, then his shirt, leaving him naked but for his underpants. A few crumpled rupees and Janghir Saheb’s keys fell from his pockets. Akash balled his fists, enraged, ashamed, trying not to let his humiliation show.

  “What’s a battle between men without degradation?” said Zahid, quiet, psychopathic. He picked up the keys, smirking, and lobbed them through the air. They arched and landed with a clank.

  Tariq whimpered, but Zahid blocked Akash’s view with his bulk.

  “What’s this?” said Zahid, spotting the locket that hung around Akash’s neck.

  A vein in Akash’s neck pulsed, insistent with wrath. “That’s mine,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I’ll take good care of it,” said Zahid, unfastening the clasp and shaking out the pictures of Arjun and Leela. “Let’s face it. You’re not really a family man, are you?”

  He motioned to his brute, who pressed Akash up against a palm tree. The man looped one leg around Akash’s so he was trapped, his arms pinned against the prickly trunk. Akash scanned the beach and recognised how alone they were. Even if the nearby sands weren’t deserted, why would anyone intervene in trouble that was not of their making?