by Pratap Reddy
Of course, she has neglected to bring her shopping list. Jogging her memory, she coasts along each aisle picking up what she thinks she needs, like a street vacuum cleaner that sucks up roadside refuse. She selects Indian vegetables like karela and small round eggplants, and ready-made chapattis. She opts for apples and pears since it isn’t the season for mangoes, and picks up yoghurt in the dairy section, not forgetting the homo milk.
She would’ve preferred to buy fruits and milk products at a mainstream grocer like Food Basics or Freshco because they’re cheaper there, but today, she’s in no mood to visit yet another shop. To hell with cost-cutting! As it is she feels edgy and impatient as she shuffles about in the dark, smelly, aisles. She wants to get back home as soon as she can. Even this small outing makes her fell exhausted and — she doesn’t know why — a little depressed.
When will she learn to start buying cheaper substitutes and save money? Business magazines call it “downtrading,” and Wilma does it like a pro, without even knowing the word for it. She should follow in her good friend’s footsteps, if she wants to survive. She makes up her mind to buy unbranded bathroom tissue instead of Charmin the next time she visits the supermarket. That’ll be a good a start.
Even without her best friend by her side, Ramya graduated from junior college with flying colours. It was Amma’s unshakeable belief that Ramya’s success was entirely due to Maunika’s disappearance from her life. Ramya didn’t feel Maunika’s absence as much as she had feared; there were other friends, like the loyal and faithful Sujatha, who stood in, and even if none of them acquired the standing of a best friend, they weren’t so demanding either.
But on the very first day of college, Ramya ran into Maunika. Ramya didn’t recognize her at first. Maunika had cultivated a mod look — in her appearance and the way she carried herself. She had a pageboy haircut, and spoke in a fashionably slangy Hinglish, a hybrid of Hindi and English. Moreover, she’d rechristened herself Monica. It was her re-tailored clothes that gave her away.
When last heard of, her erstwhile best friend and her family were roughing it out in Kolkata, a metropolis nearly a thousand miles away. Ramya was more annoyed than surprised to discover that Maunika had returned to the city, and hadn’t bothered to let her know. Agreed, she was living in another part of the town — her father had rented a house close to his new place of work, but couldn’t she have given Ramya a call? If they didn’t have a phone installed in their home (in the days of quotas, God knew how hard it was to get a connection), couldn’t she have rung up from a public phone?
“Sorry, yaar! I wanted to give you a buzz, but I misplaced my address book when we moved back. Kya karen?”
Monica was in the science stream, and claimed airily that she was trying for a seat in a medical college. Ramya knew it was all bull; nonetheless she was amenable to having Monica back as her friend — though she wasn’t sure how Amma, peering down from her heavenly vantage point, would perceive it.
Nizam’s was a co-ed college, and Ramya felt both shy and diffident there; until then she’d attended girls-only institutions. And she’d heard such dreadful things about the college, mostly about its libertine reputation, from her relatives and friends. It would be nice to have an ally like Monica.
Monica didn’t seem displeased at reconnecting with Ramya, but behaved as if befriending a backward girl like Ramya was one of the realities of life. Since their electives were different, Monica and Ramya could meet only during the lunch hour.
Every day it was Monica who would come over to the Arts section of the college to meet up with Ramya for lunch. Monica rarely brought a packed lunch from home. And not having money to buy herself something in the college canteen, she would’ve had to go without food had not Ramya in her generosity offered to share hers. Ramya made a point to bring extra food every day, just in case. They ate their lunch together, sitting down on a grassy patch under a shady tree — the college was dotted with such agreeable spots. Monica usually sat cross-legged, even if she was wearing a skirt, whereas Ramya, dressed in a salwar-kameez, would sit down with her legs modestly fold back to one side.
When Ramya wanted to eat in the college canteen or go to Mohini, a restaurant nearby, just for a change, she would always invite Monica to accompany her. Monica came along without any qualms, pretending she was doing it just to humour Ramya. Though it was Ramya who bankrolled their lunches, Monica always had the gumption, when the waiter appeared with the salver which had the invoice and a handful of mouth-freshening fennel seeds, to make jokes like: “Now, who’d like to play ‘footbill’?”
Over lunch, whether it was in the canteen or the restaurant or on the grassy patch, they would share gossip about college and common friends.
“What’s that chokri — whatshername — Sujatha doing now?” Monica asked.
“She’s doing Electrical Engineering in Osmania,” Ramya said.
“Quite a brainy girl, n’est-ce pas?” Monica sometimes abandoned Hinglish for French which she took as her second language in the college. She was forever casting bits of French about like confetti, for some kind of effect. Ramya had opted for German, partly because her uncle, whom she’d seen only once in her life, lived in Dusseldorf, but mostly because she’d hoped, in her youthful naïveté, that she would be able to read Goethe and Rilke in the original.
Or Monica would say: “Everyone says that you and Prahalad are an item, sacch hai kya?” She would add a snigger, like a filler word.
“Nothing of the sort!” Ramya said hotly. There was a senior named Prahalad who was stalking her, and Ramya had confided in Monica. But telling Monica was as good as announcing it over the mic in the Salarjung Hall, the college’s assembly room.
Six months into college, Ramya began to detect a change in Monica. At first, she couldn’t exactly place a finger on what had altered. It was partly to do with Monica’s clothes. Most of the girl-students wore saris, or its shorthand version, the half-sari, or shalwar kameez. A few fashionable girls wore tops with skirts or jeans. But it was always some full-length garment, at least something that fell well below their knees. But Monica’s clothes had something bold about them — sleeveless tops with or without plunging neck lines. And, surprise of surprises, her clothes ceased to look like renovated hand-me-downs.
Almost at the same time, there was a change in her behaviour towards Ramya: Sometimes she got unnecessarily impatient or showed irritation with no justifiable cause. It was as if Ramya’s very presence grated on her nerves. Then there were occasions when she tried to shake off Ramya’s company all together.
Ramya couldn’t comprehend Monica’s conduct. She felt puzzled at first, and then hurt — it wasn’t a nice feeling to realize that you’d been used as a doormat. One fine day Ramya decided enough was enough and stopped seeing Monica. It wasn’t such a difficult thing to do: they didn’t have any common subjects, and the imposing Arts Building and the modern shapeless Science Block stood far apart, aloof from each other. The students from either stream didn’t even have to use the same gates to enter and exit from the spacious grounds of the college.
A few months passed before everything began to fall into place. While Monica’s experiments with clothes turned bolder and bolder, it became common knowledge that she was going steady with a fellow-student named Amar.
Ramya remembered seeing him, in the early days of the first term. A light skinned, plumpish young man of medium height, he was doing BSc. He wore clothes that were shiny and seemingly expensive but not necessarily stylish. His hair was always groomed with loads of sweetscented hair oil and a fine-toothed comb. Dandruff, the size and colour of snowflakes, could be seen trapped in his hair.
Even in those days, it was a well-known fact that he was not only married but had a toddler son (chubby and fair, a carbon copy of his father, but too young to have dandruff). It was also equally well known that he had tons of money. He was one of the few students who came to the college in his own car. He would park his Premier Padmini — an authorized
Indian clone of the Italian Fiat — under a shady tree. The snow-white car was pimped up to be a rich man’s conveyance: tinted windows, large, shiny hubcaps, and a long radio antenna that arced back like a bow. Amar and his male friends would hang around the car in their free time, chatting and listening to Hindi film songs on the stereo.
The car became a standard fixture under that tree, with all its doors open and music flooding out. But at some point in the month of March, when the final exams were just around the corner, it was no longer seen at its habitual haunt. All the hangers-on too had melted away. On a couple of occasions, Ramya spotted the car sitting sedately in the designated parking area opposite the Salarjung Hall. It gave Ramya cause to wonder, but she put it out of her mind.
In the weeks that followed, whenever she caught sight of the car, it always had Amar at the wheel and Monica in the passenger seat. Just a few days before exams, Monica and Amar stopped coming to the college altogether. Nobody seemed to know the reason. Surely it couldn’t be that they were cramming for the final exams?
Soon there was a rumour circulating in the college that Amar had eloped with Monica, deserting his family.
Years later, when Ramya was working as a junior executive in a pharmaceutical firm in Hyderabad, she ran into Monica again. She was seated in the office foyer with a binder on her lap. Clearly, she’d come for an interview. From the way she was dressed — no printed silk sari or a business suit, it was obvious that it was only for a junior position. She wasn’t sporting anything unorthodox or daring either, just a sober shalwar kameez that had seen better days. Her dusty feet were stuffed into a scuffed pair of Bata sandals. Instead of eye shadow, she had bags under her eyes. She looked tired and careworn.
Ramya greeted her and started a conversation. Monica’s response was polite but unenthusiastic. After Ramya returned to her desk, she decided to call the HR Manager and put in a word for Monica. But she came to know later that, the moment Ramya went back into the office, Monica got up and left the place without saying a word to the receptionist. She didn’t attend the interview.
9
The First Kiss
RAMYA BRINGS in the mail which had been sitting in her mailbox from God knows when. There are stacks of offers from pizzerias, real estate agents and dentists. And there’s an envelope from her ex-employer which fails to ignite any excitement. She has become incurious about the world around her, and she knows the envelope will bear no lifechanging news, though she’s heard rumours about rehiring. The letter, when opened, professes concern for her well-being, and outlines the ways laid-off employees can upgrade their skills to cope with a rapidly changing world.
Skills, and rapidly changing world? If she recollects correctly, it was not her lack of skills that brought the company to such a pass. It was obvious to any sane onlooker that it was her employer’s lack of skills in adapting to a rapidly changing business environment that brought misery upon its own and its employees’ heads.
The company wants the out-of-job employees to meet with consultants who will develop customized individual plans for their rehabilitation.
Back to school, says Ramya to herself. Come on, she’s forty-nine going on fifty! Too late to learn or unlearn. Unbidden that mawkish song about a girl who’s sixteen and going on seventeen from The Sound of Music floats into her head. Ramya was taken to the film by her school, and she’d watched, like the rest of her schoolmates, completely mesmerized.
But right now, Ramya cannot readily recollect any songs that celebrate her circumstance. Surely, there must be a song about a golden girl, even if only a gilded one?
At her age, Ramya doesn’t see any need to enrol in a college. If a fifty-year-old needs to learn anything, it must be about retirement and estate planning. But why would Ramya want to know about wills, testaments and death duties? Who does she have to bequeath her fortunes? Besides, what legacy would she be leaving behind?
A wasted life, she sighs.
Later in the evening, Ramya gravitates to her sandalwood chest. She espies a smuggled made-in-Japan Hero fountain pen. When she was growing up, all the attractive items were the ones which were smuggled into the country. There were places in Chennai like Burma Bazaar and Kasi Chetty Street where shop after shop would stock serried rows of breath-taking foreign stuff. You could buy openly if you had a gift for haggling and didn’t mind the extortionate prices. The contraband goods were all so exquisitely packaged while, in comparison, Indian merchandise seemed sloppily produced and came in lacklustre packaging. Generations grew up in India believing that the grass was always greener abroad.
The pen has a dark green softly contoured body with a gold cap that has the name ‘Hero’ etched on the clip. Her father had a similar pen, but in ebony and gold, with which he’d write out prescriptions, on a letter pad that boasted a large R.
When she was very little she’d thought the R on the prescription pad stood for Ramya — after all she was the apple of her Daddy’s eye. Later she discovered that the letter with a cross bar on its right leg stood for the Latin word recipe, and under which doctors wrote, in their illegible scrawl, directions on how to take the medication.
While playing doctor-doctor with an unwilling Barghest as the patient, and using all of Daddy’s professional paraphernalia, she’d discovered that the plastic portion of the pen had a magical quality: if you rubbed it vigorously it would turn into a magnet that could pick up small bits of paper. Yes, at times, a pen is mightier than the magician’s wand, a realization which didn’t fail to sink into Ramya’s impressionable mind.
The dark green and gold pen was given to her by a good-looking young man, following the tradition of gallant males giving gifts to their lady-loves. Though it wasn’t deliberately intended, it was more of a phallic symbol than just a writing utensil. Prahalad, her senior in Nizam College, was a jock, aware of his good looks, and not averse to using them to further his designs. A prick if ever there was one.
When she’d opted to join Nizam’s, it was indeed a bold step for a girl student who’d attended only gendersegregated institutions until then. She’d lain awake many a night wondering if it was a wise move. Since Amma had passed on, she had to do all the worrying for herself. Though Daddy always presumed that Ramya knew what was best for her, and usually had little or no objection to anything she chose to do, he had some reservations about the college she’d chosen.
“Are you sure about it, dear? People tell me that Women’s College too is a very good.”
“It’s easier to get to Nizam’s by bus than to Women’s College. I can’t expect you to drop me off and pick me up every day. According to Arati, Nizam’s is a wonderful place.”
“What would Arati know about colleges?”
Arati was a distant relation who’d discontinued her studies to get married to her maternal uncle. That was the local custom — a girl was expected to marry her maternal uncle, and only if a suitable one wasn’t readily available, did the parents range out to look for other candidates. Anyways, Arati’s marriage was a success in some respects at least: She and her husband/maternal uncle produced three children in as many years.
Many of Daddy’s friends and relatives — busybodies masquerading as well wishers — expressed either puzzlement or concern, or downright outrage at Ramya’s choice of college.
It scandalized Mr. Parmesan, Daddy’s very close friend and a very learned man. (He spent at least ten hours a day reading the Great Books of the World by all sorts of authors, starting with Augustine and ending with Zola. He could afford to do so because his wife was a successful gynaecologist — nothing to sniff at in a country where millions are born every year.)
“Nizam College!” he’d spluttered. “It’s... it’s like a fleshpot of Egypt!” Noting Daddy hadn’t understood a word of what he was saying, Mr. Parmesan elucidated: “The students there are very permissive. I wouldn’t send my daughter there.”
Since Mr. Parmesan didn’t have any children, let alone a daughter, it was a moot point. Mr. Parmes
an was too busy perusing classics to take time to procreate. It was widely believed that, had his wife worn a dust jacket instead of a white coat over her sari, he’d have taken more interest in his conjugal obligations.
Another friend, Mr. Radhakrishna, a bank manager, said: “A new college for women has come up in Nehrunagar. It’s called Kasturba. Maybe Ramya would like it better there?”
Sharada-auntie, Daddy’s colleague and a gastroenterologist, said: “Isn’t Ramya interested in medicine? If she wants to do ‘arts’, why does she have to go to Nizam College? It’s so far away. Why doesn’t she join Arts & Science College in Secunderabad? It’s so much nearer and perhaps just as good?” In her opinion, only a medical college merited a long trek.
There were suggestions aplenty. Though her father was very suggestible and could easily be swayed, he wasn’t the sort to force his ideas on Ramya.
“I have a patient who teaches in the university, shall we see what he has to say?”
They drove to the Osmania University campus. How vast it was! God knows how many tens of square miles! It had no compound wall, she noticed — it would cost a fortune just to build one. When she wondered aloud about the picturesquely situated building on top a hill, Daddy said: “That’s the library.”
“What a lovely location for a library!”
Holy places were usually located on summits of hills. In a way a library was a very sacred place, the abode of Saraswati, the goddess of learning.