Nimita's Place

  I take Kishmish so Divanka-Bhabhi can drink her tea and hear Dad’s story about how Dadi used to bring him and the other Urmila to this same lookout point when they were small.

  I walk towards Romy-Bhaiya, who is dangerously near the edge of the lookout point. I stop behind him because Kishmish is in my arms.

  He doesn’t turn, but he says: “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.”

  “Dadi’s dream home,” I say and rock my niece in my arms.

  Bhaiya steps back and takes Kishmish from me. “Look, baby. Look,” he tells her, kissing her eyes, brown and blinking from rainbow-coloured wool. “Look at your great-Dadi’s dream home.” He cuddles her close: “We’ll have to come back one day when she can properly appreciate it.”

  I nod.

  He puts one hand on my arm. “No matter what we decide, Nimmy, we’ll bring her back to properly appreciate it.”

  There is a lump in my throat. I need to drink another cup of chai.

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket. I look at the screen and walk away to take the call.

  “Haanji.”

  “Happy Diwali,” Irving says. The reception is surprisingly clear.

  “You too. I saw the feast you posted yesterday.” He went to Siddiqui’s neighbour Mrs Kapoor.

  “How authentic was it? Mrs Kapoor insisted it was the ultimate Diwali feast.”

  I snort but the wind takes the sound away. “You want authentic, you need to come to India.”

  He laughs. “Should I hop on a plane?”

  “Sure.” I am only half-joking. Somehow, hearing Irving’s voice, I wish he were here with us to see the Lonavla house. “Book a flight. Come today.”

  “Ah, but then will you come to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year?”

  “Sure,” I say. “When is that?”

  Irving says nothing.

  Then I realise what he has asked me. And I answered so easily.

  The silence between us deepens until I can hear only the wind and the occasional sound of Dad telling Dadi’s story to Kishmish.

  “When is Chinese New Year?” I repeat finally.

  He clears his throat. “I can be there in twenty-four hours to discuss details.”

  My heart beats so loudly I’m surprised he can’t hear it.

  “Nimita?”

  “Okay. I can meet you at the airport.”

  “I’ll book a flight now.” But he won’t sign off.

  Mummy is behind me, holding a cup of chai. “Nimmy?”

  I take the chai. Take a long sip. It slides down my throat like a line of comforting warmth, like the warmth that connects me to Irving, to Chia Ying, to all of us right here, right now, in Lonavla. A line that goes through India and Singapore and yes, through Hong Kong, and who knows where else?

  “Book a flight,” I tell Irving. “I’m waiting.”

  Epilogue

  1960

  While serving glasses of tea in the staff room of Alexandra Girls’ English Institution, the usually quiet Visu Peon gets up the courage to speak.

  “What?” Mrs Bhandarkar, the geography teacher, snaps in Marathi.

  Her question stiffens the Gujarati-speaking peon’s back. If he didn’t have a full-time job, he too would have joined his brother at today’s protest demanding that a separate state be carved out of Marathi-speaking Bombay for Gujaratis.

  “What is it?” asks the English teacher, Mrs Sachdev, smiling kindly at Visu.

  Visu sighs. “Trouble on the streets again, madam.”

  There are always protests in Bombay. Sometimes it seems that the hobby of the Indian is to take to the streets in protest. There is plenty to protest, of course: the waiting line for cars and telephones. The sinking economy, so low that in 1950 an act had to be passed to raise the real wage of the Indian worker to the level it was in 1939.

  But today’s protest is the worst in months. Police fired on the crowd, Visu’s brother said, and hundreds were killed. He barely escaped with his life. The streets may still be unsafe when school lets out, he says. “The army may be called,” he ends, with gloomy excitement.

  Alexandra Institution is a school for young ladies and there are procedures to be followed during times like this. First, someone has to inform the principal. But who can abandon hot tea?

  Mrs Bhandarkar looks at the maths teacher, Mrs Singh, who looks at the moral science teacher, Mrs Benjamin. She in turn looks at Mrs Sachdev, who is just taking her first sip of tea. Mrs Sachdev looks back at Mrs Bhandarkar, who has found something of great interest in her purse.

  “I’ll go tell the principal,” Nimita says, putting down her cup.

  Nimita feels slightly ashamed of her detour on her way to the principal’s office, but she needs to look in on Urmila’s class and check that her baby is safe and sound. Her 14-year-old daughter is bent over a copybook, so Nimita can now worry about her other baby, Deepu. Radheshyam is getting old and slow, but he can be trusted to bring the boy home, surely.

  Nimita knocks at the principal’s door and enters when she hears “Come in.” She half expects to see Mrs Dalhousie sitting there in her usual pristine, starched cotton sari, but it is Mrs Nowrosjee in the chair, as it has been for the last three years since Mrs Dalhousie passed away. Anyone who came in Mrs Dalhousie’s place would have displeased Nimita but her relationship with Mrs Nowrosjee is more cool than expected.

  “Do you have a minute, Mrs Nowrosjee?” Nimita asks, unaware that the less than warm aura emanating from the principal is in part because she does not greet Mrs Nowrosjee with the title “ma’am”, which the older woman was accustomed to in her last school. The rest of the staff room take their cue from Nimita Sachdev, so Mrs Nowrosjee has the English teacher pegged as a troublemaker.

  What Mrs Nowrosjee doesn’t know is that the term “ma’am” was scolded out of Nimita 13 years ago, when she first made the mistake of addressing Mrs Dalhousie by it. “Students call their teachers ma’am and that is proper. You are a teacher now and we are colleagues, Mrs Sachdev,” Mrs Dalhousie had said.

  “What is it, Mrs Sachdev?” Mrs Nowrosjee says without a smile.

  “There’s been a riot at Flora Fountain. Visu Peon says many were killed.”

  “Not again,” clucks Mrs Nowrosjee.

  Nimita shares her exasperation. While both women intellectually understand the dangers of a riot and will do their best to ensure their schoolgirls are protected in the aftermath, neither is shocked anymore by news of violence. One can get used to danger and be merely irritated by it, instead of immobilised.

  The school has its response to riots down pat. Lessons continue as usual. When the bell rings for the end of school, the teachers will assemble at the gates with their classes and hand over the girls to parents or guardians. Sometimes no one comes to fetch the girls and the teacher waits a full hour before allowing the child to go home as usual by tram or bus or cycle, cautioning her to be extra careful.

  This riot response initiated by Mrs Dalhousie is praised by the parents and big donors on the school board. The teachers appreciate its necessity but find it a big, fat headache.

  Cold tea awaits Nimita in the staff room but one of the teachers, probably Mrs Bhandarkar, has relinquished her Marie biscuit so Nimita can enjoy two.

  Powered by the extra treat, she takes three classes through “cannot/will not” and “may/might”, then supervises rehearsals for the parents night concert.

  After much discussion in the staff room, it was decided that regional languages would not be allowed in the concert this year. “We are an English-medium school and should speak English,” Mrs Nowrosjee said. She does not want to upset one or more major donors at this sensitive time by appearing to favour Marathi over Gujarati or Hindi. She even went through the original proposed programme and totted up the number of words allotted to each language.

  So now Indira Melwani and Indira Pendse are sulking because they both wanted to sing and dance to Hindi film songs from the Shammi Kapoor blockbuster Dil Deke Dekho. Pendse’s second
option was to perform the lavni in her mother’s nine-yard sari, but that has been vetoed as “too regional”.

  On the positive side, Indira Gupta and Priyadarshini Patel are ecstatic because they can recite Wordsworth’s poems and Mark Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar.

  Melwani and Pendse will just have to join Darshini Choudhary, Priya Banerjee and Indira Menon in their adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. “But there are only four sisters, ma’am, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy,” Banerjee says.

  “There were only three of you to start with. How were you going to play four sisters?”

  “Ma’am, double role,” says Choudhary.

  “So now no double role and you can also add the mother.” Nimita gives in to the urge to massage her head and checks on the next group.

  “Indira,” she calls to Indira Hegde and four heads snap up around the room. Nimita curses the dozens of unimaginative parents who have named their daughters after the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru: Indira Priyadarshini Nehru, now Gandhi because of marriage, and some say the first woman prime minister of India one day.

  “Indira Hegde, yes, you, come here. What have you decided?”

  “Ma’am, can I sing the national anthem?”

  Oh yes, the national anthem, which is usually sung at some point in the performance. Or is that outlawed as well for being written in a regional language?

  At 4pm, Nimita stands with her daughter at the school gate, watching carefully to ensure that her charges are handed over to the right people. She waves off the last of her group and feels a small victory when she sees Mrs Bhandarkar and Mrs Singh left to watch over students until 5pm.

  Two excited voices hail her. “Mami! Mami!” Her nieces Itty (Indira) and Pritty (Priyadarshini) Bhargava come skipping up to her from Mrs Singh’s group. “Mami, Chotu has come, he says Mummy says you and Didi must also come home with us,” Itty says in one long breath.

  Pritty hangs on Urmila’s arm, winning a smile from the older girl. “Yes, Mami, you have to come and we’ll pick up Deepu as well.”

  “Yes, madam,” says Chotu, the uniformed chauffeur who ferries the Bhargava girls to school and back every day from their elite bungalow in Malabar Hills. Every time Nimita visits, she thinks of the Sachdev bungalow in Lahore. Roshna has done her best to recreate her childhood home, down to the mango trees in the garden and bullying Anand into creating a flat roof that makes no sense at all in the monsoon-wracked weather of Bombay.

  “I can’t come today, beta, tell Mummy you all must come for dinner on Saturday,” Nimita says. Her nieces are not supposed to call her anything but “ma’am” in school, but look how cute they are, the ten-year-old twins in always-matching clothes, who obey and love Urmila as if she were their own older sister and treat Deepu like he is their most cherished doll.

  “Ohh,” says Pritty, swinging Urmila’s arm. “Come, na, Didi. We’ll pick up Deepu.”

  Deepu is petted and cosseted as any boy would be in an extended Punjabi family, but he is adorable enough to merit it. Urmila has loved him since he was born seven years ago. The highlight of Deepu’s life is playing Meccano with his Didi. She uses the kit to make spinning, tumbling machines far more complex than anyone would have thought possible.

  Urmila hugs her cousin. Itty skips up for a kiss too.

  “Another time, beta, not today,” Nimita says, handing the children over to Chotu. “Drive carefully,” she tells him, as he shuts the passenger doors of the big, black Buick.

  There was a time when Nimita envied Roshna’s fortune, married to the doctor of all the film stars. These big patients are responsible for the Bhargava bungalow in Malabar Hills, the two flats in the new high-rises along Marine Drive—ten storeys with a generator for the lifts, imagine!—and once-a-year holidays abroad, often in the train of shooting crews making next year’s Diwali blockbuster film.

  In spite of their high living, both Bhargavas have treated Karan and Nimita with the highest respect. They cried at Charan-Mamaji’s funeral as though he were their own father. “Without him, we wouldn’t be here today,” Anand said, truthfully enough.

  When Roshna sends the car to pick up her niece and sister-in-law for lunch in the Taj—just like that!—or comes rushing over to Nimita’s home with a bag bought especially for her from Harrod’s of London—see, mine is the same, only different colour!—it is out of love and desire to be with family, not from any desire to show off her wealth. Nimita knows this and is now at peace with Roshna’s fortune and the fact that she and Urmila must take two trams home while Roshna and her daughters are chauffeured in a Buick from America.

  But, oh, the disparity used to pinch, once upon a time, back when she remembered how humble the Bhargava family had been, relatively, so humble that Nimita was more than generous when sharing Urmila-Mummyji’s jewels with her newly orphaned sister-in-law.

  Roshna has kept all her belongings and expanded her home from an army-allotted bungalow to one bought outright by her husband. Nimita has lost everything and lives in a space she would have once thought too small for her servants.

  They used to pinch, these thoughts, pinch for many years like the chappals she wore while walking to market, like the straps of the jute bag that dug into her shoulder, heavy with vegetables and fruit and freshly ground flour. But one can get used to a lot in 13 years.

  While Nimita still dreams of the garden she played in as a child in Model Town, green and bigger than the grand house she grew up in, she accepts now that these are dreams. Reality is the tram trundling to their stop; real wealth is a 14-year-old daughter who takes Nimita’s shoulder bag and says: “Mummy, I’ve been sitting all day, you sit down and let me stand.”

  Nimita smiles and lets her daughter’s chatter fill her ears, about her schoolfriends and their fights and their making up and what she wants to do this weekend.

  A group of men in white clothes, white shirts and white tricorn caps board the tram. They are arguing loudly about something even as they pay the fare. From what Nimita can hear, they are not the Sanyukta Maharashtra movement who wants the separation of Bombay province. They are members of the RSS and along with Prime Minister Nehru do not want the province to become separate states.

  “What was the point of independence and our freedom struggle if we break ourselves into pieces like this?” says one in Marathi. Nimita wants to clap.

  What’s the point, indeed? What is the point of demanding a separate state of Marathi speakers and another for those of Gujarati culture? In Punjab we spoke the same languages, ate from the same soil and were divided because of religion. Here the religions are the same and it is language that people are fighting about. When religion and language are the same, what will people fight about then? Man versus woman, maybe, or older versus younger. People are always looking for a reason to fight.

  Language is a stupid thing to fight about, Nimita thinks, especially Marathi with its “guh” and “oh” sounds that make it seem even more uncouth than Hindi. Gujarati is even odder in the mouth with its “chuh” and “cho”. What she wouldn’t give to hear people on the streets speak the pure lilt of Urdu or the hearty explosion of Punjabi. Even the English people speak in Bombay is different, with a sing-song Welsh rhythm so unlike the rough burr of the Scottish teachers back in Lahore.

  Marathi is a language Nimita understands and speaks out of necessity, but even today she speaks it hesitantly, like a foreigner. The market women hide their faces and laugh when she speaks. Urmila and Deepu speak Marathi perfectly, without any accent, so Nimita takes her daughter to market under the pretext of teaching her to bargain. Urmila used to be very shy at first, but now she opens her mouth and the market vendors give her half price. Possibly because she is so pretty and fair that it is a shock to hear her rattling off like a fisherwoman.

  In 13 years Nimita has become used to making her daughter her voice, to people laughing when she speaks, instead of bowing respectfully. She has become used to women wearing long saris like dhotis, tied around their
legs scandalously high, showing their calves, instead of walking around in the more sensible salwar kameez. She has become used to humid air, instead of dry, rains so heavy that the drains overflow and the streets flood and she too has to pick her sari up scandalously high to cross the road home.

  She has never become used to not having a car. She prays that the rumours—that Italian Vespas will be available in India very soon—are true.

  Not all changes are bad, though. Instead of the chulha, they now cook on a high-technology Primus wick stove. Though Mummy complains the rotis taste of kerosene, food cooks so much faster on that high flame that Nimita only rarely mourns the loss of that Presto pressure saucepan. Anyway, an Indian company has begun manufacturing these cookers just last year and maybe if the household budget can stand it, Nimita will buy one for Diwali.

  The first Diwali in their own house. The thought makes her smile and smile even as the tram trundles through roads that become increasingly smaller and more crowded than the wide spaces of Fort and South Bombay. The tram passes through Parel, home of mill workers and labourers, and stops within a kilometre of Mohinder Bakshi’s big investment: an up-market colony of flats and small houses with tiny strips of gardens. Domestic help comes in the form of the mill workers’ wives, and the colony’s proximity to the dhobi ghat means Karan’s shirts and Nimita’s saris are always clean and crisply ironed.

  The Modern Colony house cost more than expected, even though Karan got a good price as an old friend. Still, in the six months since the Sachdevs moved in, Nimita has woken every day with a happy smile and the ability to stretch her arms in the bedroom without hitting a wall. Their house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen is nowhere near the size of the houses she grew up in, or was married into, but there is space for mogra bushes, marigolds and a profusion of flowers.

  The scent of mogra draws Nimita home, the real or imagined fragrance of her little garden overpowering the wet stench of garbage on the roads, the dung heaps left by the buffaloes on their way home to the sheds. Avoiding cyclists, dogs and pedestrians, she and Urmila walk hand in hand. Nimita wants to put her feet up and gives only half her attention to Urmila, who wants to go to the movies this weekend.