by Shobhaa De
“Mother,” I said, “we’ve been over this before. I don’t want children and neither does my husband.”
“Why don’t you have a proper checkup?” Mother asked, obviously not listening to me. “Do you get your periods regularly?”
“Yes, Mother, I do. I’ll show you proof if you’re that interested. But I don’t want children. I don’t like children.”
She stared at me thoughtfully. “You’ll get a beard by the time you reach forty. And then you will regret your decision.”
“I’ll risk sprouting whiskers. Mother,” I told her, “electrolysis is cheaper than children.”
I felt bad immediately, being facetious at a time when she was obviously upset, but Mother seemed not to mind. Or perhaps she was past caring. I thought about her who, to my eyes, had served out a life sentence as a domesticated wife, still able to be concerned about my sisters and me and I felt small and unheroic. But later, as I was driven home, I envied my sister. At least she’d had the guts to break free from an unhappy situation (her husband had taken an English mistress) while here I was still playing out a witless little charade. As usual I thought to myself that I should get out, that I should break free, but some spark had been extinguished in me.
My sole comfort was Ritu. She had been away for six months in Switzerland with a married sister and I was delighted she was back. At least she was someone to talk to and be with. With Anjali lost to the filmi set (though she’d never been any great help in pointing me in any direction given that I did most of the nannying in the relationship) Ritu began dominating my life and not because of our talks alone. I was fascinated by her way with men. Whatever it was she had, she attracted all sorts, from little servant boys she mothered to silver-haired industrialists, who drooled at her feet and begged for a smile. “All the men I’ve ever known have always fallen in love with me,” she’d say without a trace of boastfulness. At one of our early outings together, I found her in the hostess’ bedroom, sitting on the bed, with a slobbering man at her feet. He was weeping while she was murmuring soothing words.
He repeatedly clutched her feet and slobbered all over them. “Trample me, walk all over me—but let’s spend one night together. Just one. Is that too much to ask?” She signaled me to sit next to her.
“Have you met my friend?” she asked her tearful admirer.
“Look, I don’t care a turd about your friend or anyone else. I want you. Just you.” And he burst into a fresh round of tears.
She looked at me and winked. “He wants to drink champagne out of my slippers. He wants to lick wine off my toes. Isn’t he sweet?”
“Come home with me, Ritu. We’ll never get a chance like this. My wife’s in Vienna, your husband’s in Hyderabad. This is too good an opportunity to blow.” He turned to me desperately. “Friend . . . tell her.”
I looked at her and said, “Maybe you should go with him.”
Her eyes widened with alarm and she shook her head violently. Very gently, she removed her foot from his clutches and retrieved her sandals. “Shall we leave? Your husband must be waiting,” she said, and got up.
The poor man collapsed in a heap on the floor and started to flail his limbs about like a child throwing a tantrum. “You are a cruel woman,” he moaned.
Just then, our hostess walked in. “Well, well, well—what do we have here? Ritu, what have you done to this poor man? He looks destroyed!”
I thought it was pretty perceptive of her to address that remark to Ritu and not to me, though, on reflection, I guess I didn’t look the sort men would grovel on the floor for.
“He’s OK,” Ritu said. “It’s the wine, smoke and air-conditioning that’s got to him. I think he needs a doctor.” I was amazed by her cool handling of the situation.
“Why did you go into the bedroom with him in the first place?” I demanded as we rejoined the party.
“I didn’t. I’d gone to the loo and he followed me in.
“You were encouraging him.You led him on. Why did you flirt if you weren’t interested in him?”
“Don’t be silly. You call that flirting? Then you haven’t seen me in action.”
Ritu, I realized soon enough, had managed to cope extremely well with the circumstances that straitjacketed wives like me. Her only grouse against her husband was his lack of drive and general un- adventurousness. And so she maintained the other satellites in her orbit for temporary amusement. She sent out messages, maybe without even meaning to do so. But I’d watched her at parties, a few at my own home and I concluded that she was what the glossies always described as a “natural flirt.” She couldn’t help herself. “It’s all terribly harmless,” she’d insist. “Plus, I think you are far too uptight and old-fashioned.” Her husband, well-trained by her, to make the right responses, reveled in her glamour and sex appeal. I’d seen him sidle up to her at parties and whisper, “Did you see the way that guy has been staring at you all evening?” It was innocent enough on her part.The men always made fools of themselves. At one party in their home, a prominent businessman said to her, loudly, “I’m going to Singapore next week. What shall I bring back for my lovely one?”
She looked embarrassed for a minute but recovered fast enough to say, “I’d love a Big Mac—Can you manage that?”
“Why not?Your wish is my command, lady.”
Ritu was holidaying with the family in Mahabaleshwar the following weekend, when a chauffeur-driven Mercedes drove up. The driver leaped out and gave her a large package. “With compliments from Mr. Gupta.” Gift-wrapped elaborately and presented on a silver salver was the Big Mac she’d asked for. Soggy and stale—but there it was. Her husband was even more tickled than she was.
I suppose the reason I really hit it off with Ritu was because she was everything I wasn’t. She was spontaneous, I was inflexible. She was shallow, vibrant, buoyant and fun. I was anxiety-ridden and tense when I was not anxiety-ridden and bored. And the best part about Ritu was that while she enjoyed every nugget of the attention she got, she didn’t use the power she had over men the way some women did. For her it was all just fun.
“Isn’t it wonderful to be pampered?” she’d ask with a twinkle.
“I wouldn’t know, never having experienced it,” I’d say flatly.
“That’s because you’re too tense.You scare men.”
“Maybe they scare me,” I’d say defensively. Invariably, when she’d be spending an afternoon at my home, the phone would ring. “It’s for you,” I’d say. “Now, who’s the new one on the scene?”
She could seduce someone over the phone, she was that good at it. But like she always maintained, “I don’t really do anything. I don’t sleep with these men. They don’t threaten my marriage.”
“Then why?” I’d ask.
“It’s nice to have them around. It’s flattering. It keeps me going. There’s an incentive to dress up.” Oh boy! She could say that again. If there was one woman I knew who spent a major portion of her time planning her wardrobe and jewelry, it was Ritu. She loved dolling up. She loved to watch herself dressing. She would lavish at least an hour and a half before a party going through the whole routine—a leisurely perfumed bath, maybe a shampoo, a face scrub with some imported grains, feet and hands scrub with a pumice stone, a good rub with a fluffy towel (“Don’t you love the texture of a Turkish towel against freshly bathed skin?”), deodorant, perfume (always the latest one), and then the short but effective makeup routine. Her dressing room resembled the makeup rooms of Hollywood stars. Professional lights all around the long mirror, lights inside the wardrobe, a basketful of brushes and accessories hanging in a corner, the closet neatly divided up into sections and rows upon rows of sandals. Ritu had a shoe fetish. She had more than two hundred pairs of shoes, and was truly surprised when the world made a fuss over Imelda Marcos’ collection. “I thought all women bought sandals,” she commented. “Yes, of course, they do,” I told her, “but it’s not a disease with them.” “Really? How strange,” she said, looking genuinely
puzzled. The same afternoon she added five more pairs to her collection. And then Ritu, the only woman I’d known who’d taken up the destructive challenge of high society living and turned it right around to her own advantage, lost her touch—if briefly. And the one who put her life on the skids was, of all things, Karan.Yes, Anjali’s ex-huckster-gigolo and the last person I’d have expected to bewitch the enchantress herself.They met on the tennis court. She was wearing a sexy T-shirt with a sequined melon on it. He was sitting on the sidelines watching her powerful game. She saw him staring and, as was instinctive to her, pulled in her breath and pushed out her breasts. At the end of a set he came over and said, “Your melon looks tantalizing. I feel like biting into it.” Corny, but it worked. She giggled and asked him whether he was a player or just an ogler. “I’m equally good at both—playing and ogling,” said Karan in true gigolo-fashion and swept Ritu off into an affair she’d have preferred to forget.
Naturally, when I heard about Karan’s entry into her life I was aghast. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know how that man operates. You don’t need a toyboy at this stage. Just drop him.” “I can’t. I’ve never felt like this before.” This was lunatic. First Anjali and now her. “Why don’t you tell him that you know all about his past. Tell him you’re a friend of mine and that I’m a friend of Anjali’s. See his reaction.” Ritu promptly went and repeated what I’d asked her to. “Oh, you mean that old hag and her chamchi? Forget it, sexy, let’s not waste our time over those two.” Ritu preferred his version to mine and that was that.
After this I decided to keep well out of her personal life. If she wanted to get taken, it was not my concern. But I’d underestimated Ritu. Where Anjali would have twisted herself into knots every which way to keep her man hooked, Ritu, for all her claim that Karan was an event in her life, still kept her cool and her distance. She’d come over to see me and Karan would never be mentioned. Not out of any desire to spare me embarrassment but simply because he didn’t rule her iife. Gradually I began to look upon her as a sister, the sort of sister my sisters had never been. This showed in all sorts of ways. For instance, on one occasion Ritu was around when I was cleaning out a cupboard. She joined in spontaneously and started to sort out my clothes and then exclaimed, “God! You live like a refugee. What are all these tied-up bundles?” Suddenly, I noticed, for the first time, that my cupboard really was a hopeless mess with several little heaps all tied up in old saris, a hangover I realized from the time I had to share an ugly Godrej cupboard with my sisters. The only way of separating our belongings then was to tie them up in individual lots. It hadn’t occurred to me that now that I had these wonderful rosewood cupboards from Chor Bazaar all to myself there was really no need to squeeze my clothes into ugly heaps. Then she looked at my jewelry. “Good heavens! Look at the way you’ve kept your jewelry! You’ll spoil it like this.You’ve just thrown stuff together—the pearl strings will break and the stones will get damaged.” A couple of days later, she arrived with a determined gleam in her eyes. “Look, why don’t you empty out the drawer and let me line it for you. I’ve brought the felt, fevicol, scissors—everything.” For over two hours I watched her bending over the drawer and painstakingly pasting the felt pieces into place. It was a treat looking at her hands moving so efficiently, her entire self concentrating on doing a neat job. An elder sister, I thought, or perhaps an adoring younger sister. For a flash I liked myself as an object of adoration and then the self-deprecation set in and I began anxiously and ineffectually to help her until she shooed me away.
As the months passed it became obvious her Karan affair wasn’t really going anywhere. She’d mention it casually every now and again and usually, to my amazement, it would be with an amused air. God, I’d think to myself, the woman has a soul of ice.
Then Karan started becoming jealous and possessive. If she did her usual forty laps at the pool after a game he’d snap, “You are showing off.” If she stopped to chat with someone else, he’d ask, “Who was that guy you were making eyes at?” Ritu lapped it up in the beginning and said it was like being back in school. The puppy love syndrome. Then Karan began to get on her nerves with his suspicions. “The bloody fellow is not even a real boyfriend,” she commented exasper atedly one day. “Why do I need this? Even my husband doesn’t ask so many questions.” Karan’s demands on her time started to increase. Apparently, he didn’t want to remain a “swimming-pool friend.” He’d said, “I want to date you. I want to take you out to dinner. Go dancing.”
“That’s impossible, idiot,” she’d told him. “What do I tell my husband? ‘Look, sweetheart, I hope it’s OK with you, but I’m hitting the nightspots with this stud friend of mine?’ You’re crazy, Karan. It’s not possible.” And then for the only time in those early years of our friendship she asked me what to do. “Drop him,” I said. “I’ve told you what a jerk he is.” “I am scared to. What if he slugs me like he did Anjali?” she asked half seriously. “He won’t dare,” I assured her. “You aren’t Anjali.”
The matter ended there but a fortnight later, as I was rushing through the shopping arcade at the Oberoi hotel, I ran into both of them. I would have thought Karan would feel embarrassed at the sight of me.
No way. He greeted me coolly and had the nerve to ask jauntily, “Oh, by the way, how’s that friend of yours, Anjali’s the name, isn’t it?”
Something snapped inside me right then. “Listen, asshole,” I heard myself saying, “don’t give me your fancy lines.You’re nothing but a cheap male whore. Why don’t you leave Ritu alone?”
I was stunned by my own venom, but the sight of him standing there in his Calvin Kleins, fingering the gold chain around his hairy chest and playing with his Carrera sunglasses was too much.
And then Ritu redeemed herself completely in my eyes. “Bravo!” she said. “You stole the words right out of my mouth. Why hadn’t I thought of saying them earlier?”With that, she linked her arm affectionately through mine. “Let’s go!” she said and threw a few shopping bags full of shoes at Karan. “I’m booting you out, baby. In style.”
When we reached the escalator I couldn’t resist looking back. Karan was on all fours on the floor, gathering up the scattered shoes. He saw me looking—and then he shrugged, grinned broadly and blew me a kiss!
CHAPTER 10
JUST AS WE WERE GETTING INTO THE CAR, WE SPOTTED ANJALI. SHE was obviously coming out from the beauty salon as she had her nail varnishes and hair-conditioners in her hand. She saw us and waved urgently. “This is straight out of a C-grade film,” I said to Ritu, as we walked over. “Imagine running into her of all people.”
Before I could tell her about the Karan scene, she announced in a thin, high-pitched, semi-hysterical voice, “Guess what, girls? I’m getting married!” Her nails gleamed in the afternoon sun. Frosted peach with eye shadow to match.
“Great!” I said unenthusiastically. “Let’s celebrate!”
“My treat!” Anjali squealed. “Let’s celebrate!”
“I have to call my husband first,” I said.
“Oh! Don’t be such a bore. Honestly, you and your ‘duties.’”
“It’s not that. He might wait lunch for me,” I said defensively.
“Call from the bar,” Anjali commanded and herded us into her car.
“Listen, let’s skip the bar bit,” I suggested. “I’m hungry. So is Ritu. Why don’t we just get ourselves a quick lunch?”
“You girls are such drips. It’s such an occasion for me, and you don’t want to be a part of it,” Anjali pouted.
Ritu piped up, “Of course we do. But we have to be getting back—at least I do.”
Anjali didn’t say anything. She pulled out her Charles Jourdan sunglasses and stared at her nails.
“Lovely glasses,” Ritu said.
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Look at that ring! Anjali—no—you mean, this time it’s for real?”
“What did you think, you horror? Of course, it’s for real—and it’s pretty soon. No p
oint in waiting. The wedding is a few months from now. Now, stop gaping at the ring and have the decency to ask me the name of the man I’m marrying.”
Ritu giggled, “What does it matter? Any man who can give you a rock that size must be fine. Even if he’s the hunchback of Notre Dame, to hell with it!”
We decided to “grab a crab,” as Anjali put it, at Nanking.
“It’s crawling all over with cockroaches,” I protested.
“So what, darling?You don’t have to eat them!” Anjali insisted.
“I’m not so sure—but what the hell, now that we’re here.” I first made my “duty call.” The husband didn’t sound pleased. “So you just ran into those two women—did you? Anyway, have fun, what else can I say. And, by the way, there were no hand towels in our bathroom this morning. And don’t forget to pick up my shaving cream on the way home.” Those remarks were meant to kill me. I’d taught myself to shrug them off. I rejoined my friends at the table. “There’s fresh broccoli today,” Ritu announced. We ordered the broccoli and crab to follow. The crab arrived. It wasn’t stuffed with cockroaches. I checked.
“So, let’s hear it,” I urged Anjali. “Who’s the guy? What does he do? Where did you meet him?”
“Let me get myself a drink first,” Anjali said.
“Tough luck, honey. All you’ll get here is ginger ale. And cockroaches. But carry on . . .”
“Oh, his name is Kumar, Kumar Bhandari.”
“Punjabi??” Ritu and I chorused.
“Well—half and half. His mother’s from Coorg.”
“That’s OK. He’s all right then. Next.”
“He’s a businessman—some sort of an engineering company. Now, don’t ask me what and where. He has a factory outside Bombay and they export machine tools or something like that. And I met him at a party—where else?You know—the party at the Mehras I’d told you guys about?”