(Bell in.)
Good Morning. Zina, serve the customer. Zina, dear, there’s a customer waiting. Zina! Sorry, excuse me, (coming behind the counter to serve the customer) sorry about that. My wife …. Cold isn’t it?
Is that all? Right, that’s 6.25, 2.40, 1.50 … that’s 10.15 all together thank you (sounds of the till). Thank you. Is 11 and 9 is 20 thank you, thank you, goodbye.
(Bell out.)
What is wrong with you? Never keep a customer waiting. If you’re going to be angry, be angry with me, just tell me what you’re angry about? Zina, now I am angry, if you don’t tell me …
(Bell in.)
GOBI looks up but there is no one there. He’s mystified till he looks down and sees a child waiting at the counter.
Oh, hello, dear. Just a moment. Zina, I am your husband, I command you to serve this child.
GOBI pushes ZINA to the counter.
ZINA (scowls fiercely at the child then roars) Aaaaagh!
(Bell out.)
GOBI is stunned.
(Bell in.)
GOBI Good morning. Pardon? Yes, yes we do actually, I just got them in. Come I’ll show you. (He comes through the counter.) They’re down there, just beside the Weetbix.
(Bell in.)
(He runs back to the counter.) Hello, John. How are you? Oh yah, freezing. Pop them up there, John. That’s $3.10, all right. Did you want a bag for that? OK, no problem (sounds of a bag being flicked open). Oh, don’t worry about the ten, John, that’s fine. (Opens till and drops in coins. Addresses first customer.) Ah, did you find them?
(Bell out.)
(To John) Bye, John. (To the other customer) Sorry. That’s 7.85, thank you. Thank you. Is 8 and 2 is 10, thank you. Goodbye.
(Bell out.)
I told you the vitamins would sell well. It’s winter you see ….
ZINA Gobi, I want to go back to India.
GOBI and in winter people get colds, and when people get colds ….
ZINA Gobi, I want to go home.
GOBI They always buy—what?
ZINA Vitamins.
GOBI No, what did you say?
ZINA I don’t like it here, I want to go home to Mepral.
GOBI You don’t like it here?
ZINA I don’t like it here.
GOBI You don’t like it here?
ZINA I don’t like it here.
GOBI You don’t like it here?
ZINA I don’t like it here.
GOBI We travel ten thousand miles, halfway round the world. Set up a business and twelve months later, you want to go back to Mepral.
ZINA What does it matter twelve months or twelve years? I know I will never like it here.
GOBI Oh, forgive me, I did not know I married Nostradamus. Entho thevame … itha kaietha? [My God, what’s your problem?] Tell me, what do you miss most about India? Is it the dirt? No, the smell? The rats? The flies? The cockroaches, the snakes, the … bad plumbing?
ZINA My family! Amma, Acha, Kaliani, Renuammaci … [Mum, Dad, Kaliani (Zina’s nanny), Aunty Renu…]
GOBI Muthi, Zina. Nyan piengra theshum verinoo! [That’s enough, Zina. I’m beginning to get very angry!]
ZINA Enoda thesha ped-arudhaa. [Don’t you get angry with me.] Don’t raise your voice at me!
GOBI This is my shop, I will raise my voice whenever I want to!
(Bell in.)
BABY APU cries from the stockroom.
Good morning.
ZINA Now you’ve gone and woken the baby.
GOBI Zina, dear, Apu must be hungry, why don’t you look after him and I will serve the customer.
ZINA Hmmf. (Exit ZINA. She enters holding BABY APU. ) Parvum kotcha, entho Apu? Perditure poio? Ayo da. Tha ra row kur muni aye. [Poor baby. What is it, Apu? Did you get a fright? There, there …. Gibberish lullaby.]
Nya oru story parium? Punda, punda, oro raja ondarunu [Shall I tell you a story? Long, long ago, there was a king] … There was once a man even more frightening than your father, the Emperor Shah Jahan, ruler of the world. But just like your father a woman ruled his heart ….
Enter SHAH JAHAN
JAHAN I am Shah Jahan, son of Jahangir, grandson of Akbar, Scion of the House of Timur, Second Lord of the Twin Conjunction, Protector of the Realm, the shadow of God on Earth. I had complete authority over life and death but when I first saw my wife, Mumtaz Mahal, I was powerless.
ZINA Of course, he wasn’t Shah Jahan when he met her. He was still a prince, fifteen-year-old Prince Khurram. And she wasn’t Mumtaz Mahal. She was a thirteen-year-old girl named Arjumand Banu Begam, the prime minister’s daughter … and a real stunner. Now, this was the time of the Moguls. They were Muslim, so the women were always in purdah. But although they could not be seen, they saw everything. Arjumand had often watched the handsome Prince Khurram through the lattice grill windows of the palace. She knew every detail of his face before she ever touched it and all he knew of her was through veil and shadow. They met at the Royal Meena Bazaar. On the one day of the year when the women could show their faces, unveiled. And where a special game was played. All the women of the court pretended to be shopkeepers for the evening. They would sell trinkets and flirt and bargain with the young men. Prince Khurram was strolling from stall to stall when he caught a glimpse of Arjumand in a corner of the marketplace. All the other women were selling gold and silver and silks, she was selling glass beads. And he fell in love with her at once.
JAHAN She was so beautiful that the moon hid its face in shame. Within a moment I was standing at her stall. ‘How much for the large piece of glass? The one that is cut to look like a diamond.’ She insisted it was a diamond and its price was high. Very high—ten thousand rupees. It was more, she suggested, than even a prince could pay.
ZINA Without a word, he drew ten thousand rupees from his sleeve, took the piece of glass, turned, and vanished into the crowd. Carrying the stone and Arjumand’s heart with him.
Sound of a toilet flushing.
Enter GOBI.
GOBI Why do you tell him such rubbish? Shah Jahan this, Shah Jahan that. The man was a monster. I tell you that for free.
ZINA It’s a beautiful story. Rachi aunty used to tell us when we stayed at her house in Travandrum. (To BABY APU) Rachi ammachi orkinor, Apu? [Do you remember Aunty Rachi, Apu?]
GOBI … and he came from a long line of monsters. Guess who his great great great great great grandfather was? Come on, guess. Ghenghis Khan! And when he was a boy do you know what his favourite hobby was? Watching the executions. Not only that, do you know what he was especially fond of? Death by strangulation. I bet your Rachi ammachi never told you that!
ZINA Well, he was a Mogul prince, they were raised to be ferocious. But he was also a brilliant architect, (to BABY APU) just like Regu Uncle, and a poet and they say he had a very good singing voice.
GOBI Zina, my warrior princess, who said he had a very good singing voice? Could it be one of the subjects that did not want to be strangled to death? I think everybody would say I had a bloody good singing voice if—
ZINA Don’t swear in front of the baby.
GOBI Swear? I didn’t swear—oh ‘bloody’? Well that’s rich. I say bloody and you get upset and there you are telling him about that bloodthirsty, bloody mogul, bloody monster—I didn’t know Regu was an architect. Here, give my son to me. (Takes BABY APU.) Chuckaro, chuckaro, chukaro ee. [Goochi goochi goo.] Come, you can help Daddy water his garden. You need some fresh air. (Exits the shop carrying BABY APU.)
(Bell out.)
Outside the shop
GOBI: Not too cold, not too cold? You sit here and Daddy will teach you some English. (Seats BABY APU on flower stand and picks up watering can. Sings as he waters the flowers.)
Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are?
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the ….
Hey, Apu, this is our diamond mine, (picks up BABY APU) cut flowers. Not many now, still very expens
ive, even with Avinash’s discount. But once the new funeral parlour is built on Davies Street … it will look like Brindavan Gardens out here. Brindavan Gardens, that’s where your mother and I went for our honeymoon. She cried the whole time, worse than you. She’s a very stubborn woman. You know, in our village, we have a special custom at the wedding reception. I take a ball of rice from my plate and I throw it into her empty cup, symbolising the love I offer her. Then she is supposed to take a ball of rice from her plate and throw it into my cup. I threw five balls of rice at her before her mother finally made her throw one back. She’s a very stubborn woman. Very pretty, but very stubborn. Nobody will be able to go past Krishnan’s Dairy without buying some lovely cut flowers for their dearly departed. Ayo da. [Aww cutie.] (Chuckles BABY APU before noticing customers approaching shop.) Yes, we’re open. Yes, of course. Please come. Come on in. You too. (Opens door for them.)
(Bell in.)
Welcome, welcome. Zina? Zina?! ( GOBI goes in to serve the customers himself.)
(1997; 2005)
Jenny Bornholdt, ‘Wedding Song’
Now you are married
try to love the world
as much as you love
each other. Greet it as your husband,
wife. Love it with all your
might as you sleep
breathing against its back.
Love the world, when, late at night,
you come home to find snails
stuck to the side of the house
like decoration.
Love your neighbours.
The red berries on their trampoline
their green wheelbarrow.
Love the man walking on
water, the man up a
mast. Love the light moving
across the Island Princess.
Love your grandmother when she tells you
her hair is three-quarters ‘cafe au lait’.
Try to love the world, even when you discover
there is no such thing as The Author
any more.
Love the world, praise
god, even, when your aerobics instructor
is silent.
Try very hard to love
your mailman, even though he regularly
delivers you Benedicto Clemente’s mail.
Love the weta you find on the path,
injured by alteration.
Love the tired men, the burnt
house, the handlebars of light
on the ceiling.
Love the man on the bus who says
it all amounts to a fishing rod
or a lightbulb.
Love the world of the garden.
The keyhole of bright green grass
where the stubborn palm
used to be,
bees so drunk on ginger flowers
that they think the hose water
is rain
your hair tangled in
heartsease.
Love the way,
when you come inside,
insects find their way out
from the temporary rooms of
your clothes.
(1995)
Kate Camp, ‘Unfinished Love Theorem’
Like light
it can travel in waves
or lines
depending on the circumstances.
When I first noticed it, it was travelling in waves
and I could just see its sail pop hopefully up
on the horizon now and then
as it was keeling, or gibing,
or doing whatever brave ocean craft do
when the water is a little lumpy.
I admired its buoyancy, its neat fittings,
the way everything a person could need
was stowed in its purpose-built compartments.
I liked the way it was rigged, and aligned
with particular stars and magnetisms.
Now I’m in amongst it, I find it is travelling in lines,
the underground veins of a railway, hidden,
signposted, never drawn to scale on maps.
It is moving all sorts of things about,
taking good folk to their work, taking them out
and home to their rumpled bedrooms.
I admire its secret progress, how it can speed
or lull you on its beating window,
how it spills you out up silver
stairs and it’s unexpected sun, or night lights
shining, seeming so bright, so very surprising.
(2001)
Young Knowledge
Emily Perkins, ‘A Place Where No One Knows Your Face’
Your fingers are crossed because you’ve seen a white horse and until you see a black dog you have to keep them crossed.
White horse white horse give me good luck
onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten.
Sometimes you cross the fingers on both hands because this means double luck. Also it means one hand can keep crossed if the other one gets tired, or has to reach out and pinch your sister, who is sitting squashed against the car door as far away from you as she can because (she says) you stink.
This is not fair because last week at school you punched a boy who was mean to her. He wasn’t mean on purpose but he threw a basketball across the quad and she was standing in the way and it hit her in the face. You saw her small and crying and you went up to him and you punched him. You also did it because he’s Jeremy Lovegrove’s younger brother and you like Jeremy Lovegrove but he doesn’t like you. ‘He doesn’t even know I’m alive’ is what you sometimes say to your reflection in the mirror. It is a phrase you read in a book. ‘He doesn’t even know I exist.’ But the truth is he does know, he just doesn’t care that much, and he has brown hair and sandy limbs and you are a bit weird. Punching his brother who is younger than you is not a good way to make Jeremy Lovegrove like you. But you don’t understand this collision of aggression and love, and besides it makes you feel better. You hit Jeremy Lovegrove’s younger brother because you are afraid of the power Jeremy Lovegrove has over you by not liking you when you like him, and this makes you angry. You are angry with yourself and with Jeremy Lovegrove and also with his younger brother, partly because he looks like him and partly because he threw a basketball at your sister’s head.
Your sister who is sitting with hair curled around her thumb and her thumb shoved in her mouth, sucking it even though she’s not a baby any more. She looks at you and pushes her nose up with her finger and then looks away. You hate her. You will torture her later. She’s a scaredy-cat and when you get to the camping ground it will be no sweat to catch her off her guard and give her a fright. Be a nasty monster, Dracula or Werewolf-Man. Stalk her slowly, put a pillow up the back of your jersey like a hunchback, reach your hands out for her neck with their fingers all stretched and pointy. Wolfie’s here. She will scream and scream. She is frightened of you. She doesn’t know how to fight against these sorts of games. She doesn’t even know that she could.
Your mother passes peaches back from the front seat. You uncross the fingers of your left hand so you can hold the peach. She tells you not to get juice everywhere. You don’t see how you’re going to be able not to. The peach is over-ripe and squashy and as soon as you bite into it juice dribbles down your chin. It will be sticky later. The squeaking of the furry peach skin gives you the shivers. You bite around a bruise. You unwind the window and throw the bruised bit out. It doesn’t go out properly and slides down the door of the car. You hope your father didn’t see. You stick your face out the window to feel the air rushing over it. You stick your tongue out to be dried by the air and then put it to the peach flesh and feel the spit rushing back into your mouth. Saliva. You hate that word.
You are driving past pine trees. It is a forest. Wolves probably live there. The sun is bright on the road and the shadows of the pine trees sit blackly on top of the shiny tar. For a while you count the telegraph poles. Then you
breathe in and out by them. In as you pass one, hold it, out as you pass the next one, then in again. It makes you breathe slower than normal and you don’t like it so you stop. Your fingers are tacky and sore from being crossed. You swap the peach stone over to your right hand and cross the fingers of your left. You bring the stone up to your mouth to suck the last bit of fruit from it and it splits in your fingers and as it drops in your lap you see two earwigs crawl out. You scream. Your father slams on the brakes. You jerk forward. You squirm around in your seat, trying to see where the earwigs have landed. Your father pulls the car over. He shouts at you. It isn’t fair because you can’t help it if there were insects inside your peach and now they’re on the car floor somewhere and going to crawl up your leg. When he’s finished telling you off he pulls back out onto the road. Your face is hot. You stick it out the window again. You’re not going to look at your mother and you’re specially not going to look at your sister. You don’t have to anyway.
You’re looking at the pine trees and your castle is in behind there somewhere and it’s big and made of stone and you live there and do magic. You can talk without moving your lips. It’s called telepathy. You and the knights at your castle can hear each other’s thoughts. Only the ones you want them to. And you’ve got ESP and you can move objects just by looking at them. That’s called telekinesis. You’ve got that, like right now you could make a telegraph pole fall over or make your sister’s own hand fly up and slap her on the cheek. All you have to do is concentrate hard enough. The telegraph poles are no good at the moment because the car’s moving past them too fast. Later when you get to the camping ground you’ll do it. Make the tent fall over or something. Make the billy boil all by itself.
The pine forest ends and you’re driving through a small town. You don’t like this. You don’t like the small town houses with their curtains pulled closed. They look like they’re blind. You imagine people living behind those curtains as only being shadows moving. The flat footpaths scare you. The flat skies scare you. It’s all so big and so small at the same time. You drive up to some shops. Your sister’s saying Icecream, icecream, icecream. Your dad stops the car and gets out. Stopped in this small town. He gets out and walks up to the dairy. He pauses in the doorway to pull up his socks and then he disappears into the blackness of the shop. Two boys are leaning, squinting, against the wall outside. One of them has a bike. He holds onto it lightly with just one hand resting on the handle. It’s a chopper with a flag on the back. Him and his friend have got jeans on. You’re not allowed to wear jeans. The boys see you looking at them and they try to stare you down. You win the staring competition. You always do, even it if makes your eyes water. The boy without the bike has got freckles. They’re big and blotchy on his face, like tea leaves. You can almost count them. Your dad comes out of the dairy holding Tip-tops. He gets in the car and hands them out. Your mum says Eat it before it melts. You peel off the wrapper with your teeth and suck the cold hard chocolate coating. The boys are watching. You’ve got an icecream and they haven’t. You bite into it, closing your eyes and going mmm like in the ads as the chocolate cracks in your mouth and you taste the creamy middle bit. You curl your lips up and smile your mean smile at them, waving the icecream back and forth and moving your head from side to side. Your dad starts the car. The boys give you the fingers. You can’t do them back because you’ve got one hand full of icecream and stick and one hand with the fingers glued crossed together with peach juice. All you can do is poke out your tongue in the back windscreen while they wave their arms up and down, straight out in front of them, fingers held up in Vs. Fuck, shit, bugger, damn you say in your head. Then you say Sorry God, please God I’ll never say it or think it again God never as long as I live sorry God sorry.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 125