Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  The only one I haven’t seen again is Irving. His PlayStation is still at home.

  Meher hiccups over her milkshake. Over Rehima’s shoulder I can see a large photo of her holding Meher at the Eid party.

  My stomach feels funny. I should go easy on the mangoes.

  “You don’t like it?” Siddiqui says. His eyebrows are knit together.

  “No, no, it’s very tasty. Very tasty. I’m just eating slowly.”

  Rehima nods. “That is best for digestion.” She takes the sippy cup away from Meher and rubs the baby’s back.

  “You know, I have always wanted to feed you these Chaunsa mangoes.”

  “Oh?” I didn’t know my mango-craving was so obvious.

  “Not you specifically.” Siddiqui coughs. “I mean, of course, you, specifically, since you love mangoes. But also because your grandmother was from Lahore. Do you know what her address was?”

  “Somewhere in Model Town, I think?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can check.” His face is so serious that I call Dad on Haanji instead of sending a WhatsApp message. It is 10am in India. He is wearing a kurta at the breakfast table. “Hi, beta, how is everything?”

  “Fine, Dad. I’m at my colleague’s place eating Pakistani mangoes.”

  “From Lahore,” Siddiqui says, and I turn the phone so everyone can say hello.

  Dad and Siddiqui talk for a while, but Dad also doesn’t know exactly where Dadi used to live. It was definitely Model Town, though, because Dadi sometimes spoke of how she had to leave her house in Model Town so suddenly with her mother. Dada came separately.

  Dad and Siddiqui make noises about how we must all meet in Singapore and I cut the call.

  “So.” Siddiqui wrinkles his nose. Rehima puts her hand on his arm.

  “That was very clear,” she says. “Even clearer than FaceTime. What app is that?”

  I tell her about Haanji. Her eyes become round. “It’s free? Like WhatsApp? I will use it and tell my sisters about it. It looks much clearer than Viber even.”

  “Than Skype, too.” I finish my mango.

  Siddiqui insists I have another one, with parathas, and then a glass of cold milk. “The pickles I’ll pack for you to take home,” Rehima says.

  We wash our hands and move to the sofa. Siddiqui looks a little downcast, so I ask if he is feeling well. Maybe it’s the April heat. Some days are also a little hazy.

  He clears his throat. “I had this funny idea in my mind. Just a silly idea.”

  Rehima clucks her tongue at Meher.

  “You know, my parents were not well-educated,” Siddiqui says. He nods at Rehima. “Hers were Matric (Fail), mine didn’t even go to school. But they educated all their children.

  “Before I was born, my father used to do many different small jobs. He drove a tonga, he helped in a varnish factory, he worked in a mill for some time. He couldn’t do a lot of physical activity because of some accident. In fact, he always walked with a limp and he suffered from rheumatism and arthritis throughout his life. His joints used to swell during the cold and during the rains and my mother would try and massage them with camphor oil, but it was no use.

  “After I was born, he got a job helping in a wet-goods store. You know those places where you get your flour and sugar and oil?”

  “A ration store. That’s the name we use in Mumbai.”

  “Yes, that kind of place. My father worked there. It was a steady job and my parents needed the income because they had five mouths to feed apart from themselves. My oldest brother and sister are more than twenty years older than me. I was only two years old when the first war happened between Pakistan and India.”

  “1971?” That can’t be right.

  “1965.” He shakes his head. “You are so young. How would you know? I also don’t remember much about it, but things were bad, a lot of foodstuff was not available. My father lost his job because there wasn’t money to pay him, the owner said. Luckily my oldest brother Kabir was in the army and his pay kept the family alive. Still, when I was about four years old, my mother asked him to leave the service and do something else.

  “My father had started his own little business by then, thanks to this one’s aunt.” He means Rehima. “My wife’s aunt was a real force in the community. Everyone called her khala even though she wasn’t our mothers’ real sister. She was a matchmaker, no wedding happened without her intervention. It was a family business. She made the matches, Rehima’s mother made the wedding clothes.”

  “Even mine,” Rehima says, nodding at a photo on the wall.

  “My father started a dry goods store for thread, buttons, needles, lace, that sort of thing. Khala and Rehima’s mother would give him the orders for what they needed for their business and after that everyone in the chowk would come to him. That’s how we lived in Mozang. You’ve heard of Mozang?”

  I haven’t. He looks disappointed.

  “It’s very near the High Court and there’s a very famous mosque there as well. Oh and a biryani restaurant to die for. One day you have to come and see all these things.”

  “One day,” I say, but what I mean is “perhaps, but I doubt it.” “Wait, so you were childhood sweethearts? That is so cute.” It is adorable, especially the way they both look a little embarrassed now.

  “I was telling you about my mother,” Siddiqui says, taking Meher from Rehima. “Only my oldest brother could stand up to her. He didn’t want to leave the army, but my mother nagged every time he came home on leave. Finally, in 1968, he got a discharge on compassionate grounds and joined my father in the shop.

  “I was not that happy. You know how boys are. My brother used to come home wearing a uniform and he had a gun and his name in Urdu on a black name tag. In 1970, 1971, when I was eight years old and the fighting broke out in East Pakistan—Bangladesh—I got all my friends together. Even this one,” he points at Rehima. “We pretended to be troops subduing the rebels in East Pakistan. I was the commander, of course. I made them carry sticks like rifles and made them march through the gully shouting things like ‘India Murdabad! Get out of Pakistan! Bengal belongs to Pakistan!’

  “I took the parade outside my father’s shop and some of the ladies shopping there came out and laughed very kindly. ‘Little patriots,’ one said. But my brother ran out past them, hauled me up and gave me two tight slaps. ‘If Ammi heard you, what would she feel?’ he yelled at me. To this day I think I’m deaf in that ear.

  “I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I disbanded the troops. No, actually, they ran away when they saw my brother slap me.”

  “I didn’t run away,” Rehima says. “I took you to the pump and washed your face.”

  Siddiqui snorts. “My face was dirty so you had to wash it. I wasn’t crying.”

  “Of course not,” Rehima says, patting his hand.

  “Anyway. I was deadly afraid my brother would tell Ammi, but evening came and she said nothing. I went to sleep thinking it was over. But the next morning, she told me that I wasn’t going to school. I was coming with her to somewhere special.

  “I was very excited. Where could this somewhere special be? Maybe she was taking me to the cinema or to the zoo? Then I realised we were just going a little distance away to Temple Road and I thought, oh no, she’s going to take me somewhere where Abbu can’t see and kill me. This is my punishment for yesterday. But what did I do that was so bad?

  “‘Ammi,’ I said and I was shivering in my chappals. ‘Where are we going?’ ‘You wait,’ she told me.

  “We walked up the road closer to the place where all the big bungalows were, closer to the junction of Mall Road. There was a cinema theatre there, so maybe she was going to take me for a movie after all? But no. We began walking down the other side of the road, back home. ‘Siddiqui,’ Ammi said, ‘do you know that I was not born in Lahore? I’m from a place very, very far away. From Bengal. From East Pakistan. The place where the war is being fought.’

  “I was scared
of my mother but I also loved her very much. I told her: ‘Don’t worry, Ammi, Bengal will never leave Pakistan. I’ll go join the army and take you home one day.’ Then I remembered how much she hated my brother being in the army.

  “She looked very sad and she stopped outside a walled compound. ‘Siddiqui you see that house over there? That was my home,’ she said. ‘When I came to Lahore all those years ago, I had nothing. I was nothing. The owners of that house, they made me their own, they clothed me, fed me, gave me such respect, I can’t tell you. They married me off to your Abbu as well. From their own house. That big house. That house and those people were everything to me and your Abbu.’

  “I listened and I tried to understand. I said: ‘Then why didn’t you go in to see them? The owners?’

  “I’ll never forget the look on her face then. She put her hand on my head and said: ‘Siddiqui, those people are not there any more. They are in India. Do you understand?’

  “I didn’t understand then. It took me many, many years to fully understand. But then I did.” Siddiqui stops.

  “About twenty years later, all us brothers got together and bought the Temple Road house for Ammi and Abbu. The first thing after moving in, Ammi planted a mango tree. She said: ‘When I first came here, there was a mango tree. Bibiji told me I could eat as many mangoes from her tree as I wanted, without asking permission. It is my dream to one day feed her mangoes from my tree.’ Those mangoes.” He points at the table.

  “They are good mangoes,” I tell him and he smiles.

  “Who knows, maybe one day one of us will fulfil Ammi’s dream,” Siddiqui says.

  “Inshallah,” Rehima says and pats his sleeve. “Take some mangoes home for your friends,” she tells me. “We’ll get the family to send more.”

  3.

  A 3BHK house in Lonavla, three-bedroom-hall-kitchen, is going for Rs 2 crore. That is at least 400,000 Singapore dollars, and almost twice the price last year.

  Stupid Narendra Modi and his stupid positive economic policies. Prices of property have gone up in India and are almost as expensive as in Singapore. How can I afford to buy my half of the Lonavla house from Romy-Bhaiya?

  Money is sitting in my bank account, absolutely useless. Not enough for a flat in Singapore, not enough to buy out Romy-Bhaiya in India.

  I do the mental calculations. Oh yes. I am forty thousand to fifty thousand dollars short to do a deal in either country.

  “What are you doing?” Hafeezah comes out of her flat holding Altaf on her hip. I stop marching up and down the corridor.

  “Sorry. Too much up here.”

  She tilts her head. “Got pimples again. So much stress, yah?”

  I touch my upper lip. The pimples are from the mango pickle and Chaunsa mangoes Siddiqui made me take home. Very tasty, but not so good for the skin.

  Hafeezah shifts Altaf to her other hip. “You come with me.”

  “No, no, sorry, I’m disturbing you.” I should go back into the flat, but Chia Ying said I was driving her crazy, walking up and down. At least it isn’t hazy outdoors.

  Hafeezah clucks her tongue and takes my hand. “You come. I know what to do.”

  She takes me through her living room and into the half-finished parlour area. The washbasins are still on the floor, the beauty products still wrapped in plastic. She pushes me into a salon chair, leaves and brings back Altaf’s crib. “You sit there and watch Mummy, okay?”

  Altaf has big brown eyes. He burbles when I make funny faces at him.

  Within seconds, Hafeezah has made me put my feet in a tub of warm water, moved the salon chair into a reclining position and started combing her fingers through my hair.

  “This one I learnt from Indonesian woman come to Rupini’s,” she says. “Indonesian cream bath. Very good for brides, very nice for relaxing tension. Cooling also for head, will get rid of pimples.”

  “No, but—” I shut up when she submerges my hair in a body-temperature water bath. The sensation is so nice. Coolness shoots down my neck and shoulders.

  Hafeezah adds dried rosebuds to the foot bath. I can smell roses from my hair as well.

  “Just relax.” She massages my shoulders.

  “Hafeezah, I don’t think I withdrew money.”

  She clucks her tongue. “Who’s charging you? All these beauty products will spoil, I don’t use them.”

  She moves her hands down my right arm and onto the wrist. Her touch is like magic, strong yet gentle. No pain, only the joint untwisting.

  She does the little joints of my fingers as well and my vision becomes blurry.

  “Got pain?”

  I shake my head and the water splashes. “Feels very nice.”

  I start wondering how much money is in my purse. I will withdraw more. This feels so good.

  Altaf throws a rubber ball out of his crib. Hafeezah clucks and goes to retrieve it.

  He does this again, and again Hafeezah picks it up.

  The third time, she gives him an iPad. “You trouble Daddy,” she tells him.

  She tells me: “He so smart, he can use FaceTime to talk to his father.”

  “Wow.” I bet Kishmish will learn faster.

  The cream bath involves soaping and shampooing the hair, rinsing it and then massaging cream conditioner into the scalp for half an hour. There is no running water set up in the room, so Hafeezah keeps emptying and refilling the basins. She does it without spilling a single drop.

  While the conditioner is settling into my hair, she starts giving me a pedicure. Her magic fingers find a spot in the sole of my right foot that makes me want to cry in happiness.

  “Nice?”

  “Very nice.” I look around the room. “Your hands are magic.”

  She laughs. “See, I told you, got skill. Now you tell bank, okay?”

  “No luck still?”

  She shakes her head. “I even ask my brother if he can loan me some money. But his business not so good nowadays. Property market quiet. No more big deals even though SG50.”

  Singapore’s fiftieth independence day celebrations were going to be a big thing, but since Lee Kuan Yew’s death, it would be like celebrating Diwali after your father died. Not the done thing.

  Hafeezah scrubs my left foot. My phone starts ringing.

  Romy-Bhaiya up so late?

  “I just thought if you were free, we could talk,” he says.

  I know what he wants to talk about. “I’m at the parlour.”

  “Okay. Call me back?”

  He ends the call.

  Hafeezah says: “You use what app?”

  “Oh. This is Haanji.” I show her.

  “You not use iPhone?”

  “No, this is the super-cheap Xiaomi. Android phone.”

  “What name? We want to get Android phones but then how to FaceTime Altaf?”

  “You could try this app.” I show Hafeezah how to use Haanji.

  She nods and starts massaging my left toes.

  Altaf has fallen asleep by the time my hair is clean of conditioner. My toenails are a pretty pink.

  Hafeezah puts the hairdryer on the softest setting and blows my hair dry before the giant make-up mirror with the lightbulbs around it. They are not yet plugged in.

  “You got nice hair. Never keep long?”

  “I used to but it fell out when I moved here.”

  She nods. “Got a lot of Indian ladies like that in Rupini’s. Something in Singapore water maybe. A lot of hairfall.”

  It might be the stress of the move. It might be chemicals in the super-clean water, which is safe to drink from any tap. Most of my hair fell out when I moved here.

  “You have lovely hair,” I tell Hafeezah. Somewhere between the conditioning and pedicure, she removed her tudung.

  From the side, she looks a little like Divanka-Bhabhi. A little like me.

  There is an odd feeling in my stomach. I do pranayama breathing and realise on the first exhale that there are actually no knots in my stomach when I look at her. Maybe it
’s the cream bath and pedicure.

  “There, see?” She holds a mirror behind my head.

  I look at my reflection and hers, two faces that could almost be related.

  “Lovely,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

  She presses my shoulders once. “I say: ‘Thank you.’ My hands becoming useless. I don’t practise enough. Give my mum-in-law, sisters-in-law once in a while. Not enough.”

  Haan, these North Indians. Such naatak-baazi.

  I go back to the flat and come back with my purse. She refuses to take any money.

  “No, no.”

  I try to put fifty dollars in her hand. “For Altaf. For your parlour.”

  She refuses to take it. “When I open parlour, then I take from you. First customer.” Her eyes are wet. “You will be my first customer when I open parlour, inshallah.”

  I stand holding my purse, a strange feeling in my throat.

  It makes me open my mouth and say: “Just how much loan do you need, Hafeezah?”

  Two drops fall on the first page of the printed-out IOU. “How to thank you?” Hafeezah says, wiping drool from Altaf’s mouth.

  “No thanks needed. I’m not doing charity. Proper interest I’m charging you.” I pass the two papers to Chia Ying after Hafeezah and I have signed.

  Chia Ying holds a ballpoint pen like she doesn’t know what to do with it.

  “Sign,” I tell her. “In this witness space.”

  I checked the Singapore laws online. They are almost like Indian laws, because both come from the British system. It is legal to make personal loans to family and friends. It is also legal to charge interest on those loans as long as this does not exceed the maximum amount allowed to actual moneylenders. Moneylenders can charge four per cent monthly interest in Singapore, which is ridiculous. In India, banks can charge 12 per cent interest on loans but they give you eight per cent annually on fixed deposits; in Singapore you are lucky if you get 0.5 per cent in a year. That is like the bank charging you to keep your money safe since cash depreciates over time.