The Stranger in My Home

by The Stranger in My Home- Facets of a Life (retail) (epub)

  I persisted with the search for several months, talked to the police, placed notices and rewards in the newspaper. There were no results for a while. Finally, I located a local trader who had encountered Biju close to the railway station. But that was all. We had no clue as to what happened next to Biju.

  The police closed the case.

  Disheartened but dutiful, I undertook a trip to visit aunt Tara and explained in detail the effort that had been made and the scant result it had produced. There was now no alternative but to abandon the search and simply hope for a lucky break. Aunt Tara did not say a word till the end. She whispered, ‘Please get Biju back to me.’

  No lucky break ever came. I could not face aunt Tara and tried to avoid her at family gatherings. At a wedding, I could not help encountering her and politely asked how she was. She in turn asked about my family, and then, with a pause, quietly asked, ‘Any news?’ I shook my head ruefully and passed on.

  In the next twenty years, I came across her another four or five times, and each time, after we had talked about other things, she would pause and simply look at me. I knew she was gently inquiring without articulating the question, and I would shake my head in mute response.

  Aunt Tara died of cardiac problems at eighty-nine, in the house of her daughter, who had brought her to town to see a specialist. I drove over to see her and happened to be with her in the last hour. As I sat next to her bed, holding her hand and answering her questions about my children, there was a pause, and she looked earnestly at me and murmured, ‘Please get Biju back.’

  9

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF WAR

  AN ITALIAN CAPER

  IT WAS THREE WEEKS to Christmas. I was back in Washington for a fortnight’s work and settled in a rented penthouse apartment near Rosslyn. Returning from an evening jog, I noticed the colourful festive banners in the lobby.

  The older man who got in the elevator with me wore blue jeans and an elegant suede jacket. He carried three chilled champagne bottles. When we reached the top floor, I realized he occupied the apartment opposite mine. Before I could turn the key, he spoke up, ‘Could you help me?’

  ‘I am ninety,’ he added, ‘I am not sure I could open these easily.’ He indicated the bottles with a glance.

  I followed him to his apartment, asked for a small towel and opened the first bottle. ‘You have helped me open the bottle. You might as well help me drink it too.’ He smiled and got two glasses from the kitchen. Those weren’t champagne flutes, but we didn’t care.

  ‘It is my wife’s birthday. I had to celebrate,’ he explained as he poured the champagne.

  ‘She isn’t here, is she?’ I asked, for the place seemed bare of any sign of a female presence.

  ‘No, she is in Milan, visiting her sister who is ill. She will be back for Christmas.’

  We kept drinking and chatting, occasionally talking about ordering some food but doing nothing about it. The first flakes of a light snow drifted by the large French windows, as Stan, my host, kept pouring.

  It was December of 1942, he reminisced, when the US Army ordered Stan, who worked in the publicity department, to the war front in northern Italy near Milan.

  He was eager to please and determined to gather some telling photographs, but felt himself getting increasingly ill as he drove. Desperately, he drove through the Italian countryside, hoping to reach his camp before it got worse. But after another few miles he knew he could go no further. He stopped in front of what was clearly a farmer’s cottage, hoping to ask for an inn nearby, and knocked on the door.

  When a couple came to the door, Stan, lacking Italian, tried explaining by signs that he needed a place to rest. The man saw his livid face, held his arm and led him to a chair. Stan did not make it; he simply slid to the floor. His last recollection was of an anxious dialogue of the couple that he could not understand.

  When he came to three days later, he saw a pair of grey-green eyes in a gentle freckled face, framed in the dark cascade of long hair, urging him to sip from a bowl of soup. He thought he had never seen a more angelic face. When the farmer’s daughter realized that he could not drink the soup on his own, she started to feed him with a spoon. Stan soon realized that, since the cottage had only three small rooms – a living and dining room and a bedroom each for the couple and their daughter – he had in effect dislodged the daughter from her room. More, as the couple had to work the fields, the daughter was his sole caregiver. As she did not speak a word of English and Stan had the benefit only of an Italian phrasebook, their conversation consisted of many repetitions, some playacting and a lot of confusion and laughter. The more she laughed, the more angelic she seemed to Stan.

  It was a week before Stan could get up, shower and dress himself. By the time he reached his intended camp, the tide of the war had changed and he was ordered to move to another camp in short order. On his way, he again went to the farmer’s cottage, thanked them with the help of his phrasebook and offered them the envelope of cash he had taken out at the camp. They refused to accept the money.

  Six months later, after he had received a further order to return to the US, he turned up again at the farmer’s cottage, this time without an envelope of cash but with a strange proposal. He wanted the hand of their daughter.

  He told the parents they had to trust him, for it would take some time before the authorities would allow his betrothed to join him in the US and it would take several months after that before the parents could come to see their daughter.

  It took eight months for the War Department to deliver the farmer’s daughter to an Air Force hangar near New York, where Stan waited eagerly with a box of chocolates and his phrasebook. He had taken lessons meanwhile, but the moment he saw her come down from the military plane, his legs got wobbly and his words got jumbled. Hearing what he said, she laughed, doubtless from confusion. But Stan thought she looked more angelic than ever.

  His story finished and the champagne finished too, I took leave of Stan and walked through the festively decorated lobby to the twilit street outside. The last few flurries of the snow were still floating down and my glasses frosted. But I wasn’t paying attention.

  I was thinking of a man waiting eagerly by some dingy hangar for a freckled long-haired Italian girl who spoke little English but laughed a lot and whose grey-green eyes spoke love.

  10

  AN INSPECTOR CALLED

  ENGLISHMAN VERSUS GRASSHOPPER

  I WAS BORN A subject of the British Empire, on which, reportedly, the sun never set. I was a citizen of India, a subcontinent that included then five countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. It was a vast land, an ancient culture, and a huge source of precious raw materials, but its people – all 350 million of them – were to be treated as no better than beasts-of-burden for the empire’s pillage, cannon fodder for its colonial wars and, at best, an ‘army of clerks’ for its administrative chores.

  As a student in a missionary elementary school, I heard the big news that an inspector of schools would pay us a visit the following week. Though only eight, I knew what made the news big was that the inspector was an Englishman and a royal emissary in effect. It shook everybody in the school, from our plump easy-going headmaster to the lowly, skinny groundskeeper. None had a doubt that the slightest lapse could mean a swift sack for any staff. For a student found wanting, in performance or in conduct, the fate could be worse.

  For me the situation felt worse, for I seemed to get little sympathy from my usually genial parents. My father had worked with Englishmen and thought my terror overblown. My mother, without saying as much, credited it to a fevered imagination.

  She said airily, ‘An inspector will inspect. No big deal.’

  I knew they were both wrong, very wrong, but I couldn’t find a way to persuade them. So the fateful day came and I went morosely to school, wearing the school uniform of white shirt and khaki trousers. The headmaster had pressed his torso into a laughably tight jacket and nervously paced in
front of his office.

  We went to the school hall and waited an hour before the inspector turned up. He was a tall, bony man with a red face, made redder by the fierce summer sun, carrying a large leather case and sporting a comical felt hat. He took off the hat, revealing a mop of sweat-dappled brown hair, and, with a sign from the headmaster, led us in a prayer. We weren’t so familiar with English and given his grammar school accent, we didn’t understand a word of what he said. He then left the hall, after the headmaster had told us that the inspector will later visit our classes. It sounded like a threat.

  In the third period, while our history teacher Grasshopper – we called him that because of his jerky style of moving – was talking of Emperor Ashoka, when in came the inspector with the headmaster. It was the height of miscalculation on the headmaster’s part, for Grasshopper did not speak a word of English.

  In an unusual act of bonhomie the inspector said, ‘Good afternoon,’ though with a funereal face, and Grasshopper responded, ‘Sir!’ That was an English word he spoke, because by that time the word had entered all Indian languages.

  ‘What do you teach?’ was the inspector’s first question.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Grasshopper. He probably thought the inspector was asking if he was teaching, though the answer sounded as silly as the question. To save the situation, the headmaster quickly said, ‘History.’

  ‘And what are you teaching just now?’ We waited with bated breath for Grasshopper’s response, but he continued with the only word he could handle, ‘Yes,’ adding a ‘Sir’ at the end to be polite.

  A true bureaucrat, undeterred by the Grasshopper’s brevity, the Englishman popped his third question, ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what you are doing with these students?’

  This was far too complicated for Grasshopper, and he stuck to the only response he could think of, ‘Yes, sir.’

  By now the august inspector was visibly flustered and annoyed.

  He narrowed his eyes and said with the utmost contempt, ‘I don’t know how you can possibly teach these students history or any other subject, when you can’t even say what you are doing in this class?’ He almost spat the words.

  A front-row spectator of the entire drama, I shivered with anger and embarrassment. The headmaster, who could have explained or intervened, did not dare do so. Whatever the quality of his teaching, Grasshopper did not merit such humiliation simply because he did not speak English. As an inspector of schools, the arrogant Englishman should have known that most schools in India taught in local languages and not English.

  As loudly as I could, I yelled, ‘Sir!’ The inspector turned to me with great surprise, while the headmaster looked stricken with a cardiac problem.

  ‘Sir,’ I affirmed, in a voice tremulous with fury, ‘He is… a very good teacher.’

  One good outcome was that, when the highly agitated headmaster reported the incident to my parents the next day, they told me they were sorry they hadn’t listened to me well when I had expressed my concern about the inspector’s visit.

  11

  AN IDEAL COUPLE

  THE OTHER SIDE OF PERFECTION

  RACHEL AND HER HUSBAND Dylan always seemed an ideal couple to me and our friends. They clearly enjoyed each other’s company and enthusiastically shared the responsibility of their household and care of their only child, Peter. When Dylan suddenly died of cardiac failure at forty-seven, we all considered it a great tragedy.

  So it was a surprise to me when, six months later, Rachel approached me with a request to secure the services of my lawyer friend, saying she needed his help to arrange an adoption. She wanted to adopt an orphan girl who had grown up with an out-of-state family, and she wanted it done quickly. When I sought to understand the circumstances, especially the need for urgency, Rachel told me an unexpected story.

  Apparently, she had had a last-minute bedside conversation with Dylan before he died. He confessed to Rachel that he had had an affair with her best friend, who had quietly gone out of town and given birth to a girl. The girl had been growing up with the friend’s sister’s children in rural Pennsylvania. Dylan had a strong sense of guilt for not having looked after the daughter well, let alone acknowledge her. He had confessed his lapse to Rachel and begged her to do something about the girl.

  I told Rachel that it was good of her to want to give the girl a loving home and asked if she was quite clear in her mind about adopting Dylan’s love child with her best friend. She paused and impressed me with her firm response. Yes, she was certain that she wanted to adopt Dylan’s child and she felt she could lovingly bring her up and give her every opportunity.

  ‘You see,’ she added, ‘I listened to Dylan and promised him that I would take care of the child. But there wasn’t time enough to tell him what I wanted to tell him at that point. Well, Peter wasn’t Dylan’s son. He was the unexpected result of a fleeting relationship I had with his brother when Dylan was out of the country. I could not bring myself to divulge it to him earlier, and then there just wasn’t the time.’

  12

  WINNING AN ORDER

  NOT THE GAME, ONLY THE RESULT

  AFTER GRADUATING FROM MY university, I joined a European company as an intern and then started work as an assistant to the purchase officer. I sent out tenders, compared bids and prepared the papers for my boss to sign the orders. I would meet with the suppliers’ representatives to clarify a specification, emphasize a technical requirement or negotiate the order quantity.

  These representatives came not just with their company literature, but with small gifts, tickets to sporting events and invitations to dinners. I refused them all, for my boss Earl had told me that that was the company policy. Earl was a pleasant person, always courteous and genial, but he had emphasized that I had to be like Caesar’s wife, above all suspicion of partiality or wrongdoing. Of course, there were rumours of shenanigans by some, and other assistants would often smirk at my refusal to socialize with vendors, but I felt good.

  Joe, the sales chief of a big chemical company, came to see me one morning to discuss a large contract for the next six months. He said he knew the situation was competitive and so he had come to find out where his company stood. I told him that the deadline was still two days off, and I couldn’t discuss the bids, especially as one last bid from a competitor hadn’t yet come in. Joe then explained that he was in a very vulnerable situation, for he had to close immediately on a large deal for an expensive ingredient that went into the production of the chemical he sold us. He would incur a terrible loss if he made the commitment and then found he did not get the order.

  Reluctantly, I told him then that his company simply didn’t have a chance to win the order because its bid was distinctly higher than the other two bids we had received. Joe then left. I could not, however, help noticing that he didn’t seem particularly crestfallen.

  Two days later, after I had received the last bid, I made a comparative report to Earl, recommending another supplier, and considered the matter closed.

  Three weeks later, I sat with friends in a hotel bar when a waiter opened the door of a private room behind the bar and went in with a food tray. I had a moment’s glimpse of Earl and Joe toasting each other with raised wine glasses. I thought there was something wrong with that picture.

  The next day I requested our secretary for the files. My comparative report was missing; instead I saw a new and lower bid by Joe, and a large order in favour of his company.

  13

  LOVING A MURDER

  A CASE THAT SHOOK INDIA

  A MAN FINDS THAT his wife loves another man. She has been sleeping with the other man. The man gets a gun. He barges into the other man’s home. Bang, Bang, Bang. He shoots the fellow dead.

  This scenario plays in many heads. We all hate someone and want him or her dead. To be cheated on is unpleasant. You love someone and think you have the one to yourself, only to find the person cares for someone else and is sleeping with him or her. For a man, there is the
added element of pride and pretension. To be cuckolded is humiliating. You feel you want to kill the guy.

  But you don’t. That is whole point of being civilized. You divorce the person and go your way. Or you swallow pride and live on with the person. Embrace her in lukewarm acceptance or even love her with her perfidious imperfection. ‘Honour killing’ is vulgar and dishonourable.

  I was a young student in 1959 when Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati, a high official of the Indian Navy, took advantage of his position and obtained an official gun by lying to another official, then marched into the bedroom of Prem Bhagwandas Ahuja and pumped three fatal bullets into him at close range. Nanavati’s attractive wife, Sylvia, mother of their three children, had just told him that she was in love with Ahuja and had also been intimate with him.

  What followed was a maelstrom of histrionics and hypocrisy, hate and hero worship, machismo and mendacity, insinuation and innuendo, sensationalism and sanctimoniousness. India went wild. The focal point was a trial: the prosecution was highly uneven, the defence overly dramatic. But the evidence was overwhelming.

  The killing was never in doubt. The killer had been too furious to avoid identification. The motive was not in doubt either. Nanavati was angry that Sylvia loved Ahuja and had gone to bed with him. He had killed his wife’s paramour in jealous rage, with ‘malice aforethought’.

  His lawyers tried to make it seem a crime passionnel, but Nanavati had planned and obtained arms on a subterfuge. They suggested a provocation, claiming Ahuja told Nanavati he did not have to marry every woman he slept with, but this flew in the face on Sylvia’s earnest letters broaching marriage. Desperately, they imagined the scenario of a scuffle in which the gun went off accidentally, but the quickness of attack and close succession of the three bullets gave the lie to that. The autopsy and ballistic studies showed clearly there was no scuffle but a clear-eyed murder. Nanavati himself told a guard and a colleague that he had shot a man who had ‘connected’ with his wife.