Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  Without Angela I felt naked and unprotected. I was prepared to do whatever she wanted, as long as she went with me. It made her furious. ‘I am not your mother, Koman,’ she said. ‘You can’t cling to me. You were never like this. I thought you were the most selfsufficient person I knew. What has happened to you?’

  I would look at her and say, ‘I hate it here. What am I doing here? I am just living off you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. Something will work out soon, you will see. I am trying to arrange an appointment with an agent. Though, with kathakali, I can’t decide if I should speak to an agent who works with dancers or actors. If an agent would take you on, you would at least have your foot in the door. You can’t give up in just a few weeks’ time,’ Angela would say and that evening we would go out together ‘to take you out of this gloom you have sunk into’ as she put it.

  Now I looked at Angela and the concern in her eyes. ‘I will leave in a little while,’ I told her. ‘I will go out. I promise.’

  I went to Trafalgar Square. The pigeons descended. I saw their redrimmed eyes and felt enraged at their ability to swoop and fly and do as they pleased. I looked around. There wasn’t anyone on the side where I was. I raised my leg and kicked at a pigeon. My shoe made fleeting contact but it was enough. I felt alive. Around me the pigeons rose, flailing their wings.

  I felt my desperation lessen. Slowly I felt a new sense of purpose gather in me.

  I went back to the bed-sit and searched for the address my father had given me. ‘He is not a dancer or even remotely connected with the arts. But his father tells me that he has a good job there. He works in a hotel and if you ever need anything, he will help. His father has already written to him about you.’

  I called the number. ‘Damu, this is Koman,’ I began. The next day I went to see him. Damu worked at Kandaswamy’s, the most famous Indian restaurant in London. ‘I can find you a job in the kitchen. It will be temporary, but maybe later we can see what can be done. Will you want to do something like that? It is a menial job …not what you are used to …’

  I smiled. How appropriate, I thought. Bahukan, after he left the forest, became a menial in King Rituparna’s service. He was his cook and charioteer. It was befitting that I become a menial.

  ‘Right now, I will take anything. All I ask is that you don’t tell your father. It would break my father’s heart to know I am working as a porter in a restaurant,’ I said quietly.

  Damu sighed. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I understand. This is the conspiracy that we have to keep alive so that in our homes back in India, they don’t bemoan what we have been reduced to doing. You don’t have to work as a menial washing dirty dishes and sweeping the floor, my father and yours would say. Come back home and I’ll ensure that your belly is full three times a day. It is hard to explain to our families. There is no dignity of labour there, that is the truth.’

  I worried what Angela would say. But she didn’t seem to mind. ‘It is not for long anyway,’ she said, closing the wardrobe door with a movement of her hip. It won’t be for long was a myth that Angela liked to perpetuate.

  Our lives began to unravel. My hours were different from hers and we seldom saw each other. I left money on the table, now that I had some, for her to pay some of the bills with and she left me notes to find. We were merely room-mates sharing a bed. Strangely enough, I found fulfilment at Kandaswamy’s. I was busy all day and had very little time to spare, but I knew the satisfaction of being seriously occupied.

  One evening, the chef joined me for a smoke in the backyard. We talked about food and dishes from Tamil Nadu. He was from Madurai. I told him about growing up in Nazareth. His eyes mellowed with nostalgia. ‘I need an assistant. Do you want to work for me?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You know nothing of me. Not even if I can cook.’

  ‘It is enough for me to know how a man views food. You see it as I do. The rest you will learn as you go along.’

  Bahukan wrought miracles in the kitchen. There was none to match his culinary skills. I learnt to cook and in time I was even able to contribute three new dishes to the Kandaswamy menu. They were called K’s Enna Kathrikai, K’s Ulli Theeyal and K’s Fish in Buttermilk Stew. The K stood for Koman but it was usually interpreted as Kandaswamy’s. I didn’t mind. I was happy enough to be doing something even if it wasn’t kathakali.

  It was almost three months since I had arrived in London. I was yet to make any contact with the world of dance or performing arts. Angela still continued to cling to the hope that I would resume dancing some day. I didn’t. I had stopped thinking about it. I thought about going back, but the humiliation of admitting that I hadn’t been able to achieve what I had set out to do stopped me. More than ever I feared the mockery waiting for me at the institute.

  It was the first week of December and my day off. Angela arrived early saying, ‘We are going to a party tonight. Helen is back in town and someone she and I know is having a little party for her. And guess what, Helen knows someone who knows Ram Gopal. So maybe now you will finally get to meet him.’

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have much hope left. But it would be nice to go out with Angela.

  It was the first house I was going to, in London. An old red-brick house with a little walled garden. Angela’s friend, a writer, picked us up in his car. Angela sat in the front passenger seat and talked to him. I sat at the back, trying to keep track of where we were going. Her voice was the kind she used when talking to people like her. The regime of the garbled sounds, I thought.

  ‘He is a dancer,’ she told everyone.

  I whispered in her ear, ‘I haven’t danced in the last three months.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ she snapped.

  ‘Why don’t you say I work in a restaurant? Are you ashamed of what I do?’

  She glared at me and switched on a smile for someone she recognized.

  I turned away, with the beginnings of a headache. The room was warm and filled with too many people and scents. There was incense burning and Ravi Shankar’s sitar in the background.

  I walked away and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. There was a woman sitting at a table. ‘Hello,’ she murmured.

  I poured myself a glass of water. ‘Don’t you want to join the party?’ I asked. Then I realized that she was the hostess. ‘You have a nice house,’ I said, trying to dispel the awkwardness. ‘Nice party, too.’

  She smiled. ‘You don’t have to be polite. My husband is the artist. They are all his friends. I really don’t know any of them. I am a nurse, you see. And my feet are killing me; I stand all day at work and I didn’t want to stand again all evening. I am giving my feet some rest. The party will go on without me.’

  I took a sip of the water and sat opposite her. ‘I work in a restaurant and stand all day, too. I think I will give my feet some rest as well.’

  ‘I heard someone say that you are a dancer. Do you have ballet in your country?’ she said.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. It felt coarse and dry. A few days after I arrived, Angela had asked that I stop using hair oil. ‘The smell is rather strong and you know it puts people off,’ she had said.

  ‘But you didn’t mind it there?’ I said. What else didn’t she like about me, I thought and threw my hair oil away. All I wanted to do was please her.

  ‘No, I don’t dance the ballet,’ I said. ‘It is something else. It is called kathakali.’ I looked away and said, ‘I used to be a dancer. I haven’t danced in three months.’ Her eyes were sympathetic and I found myself telling her everything.

  ‘It is a pity that you are wasting your talent,’ she said. ‘It is rather sad, too. You should go back. People make mistakes. There is nothing wrong in admitting you made one. But to continue making a mistake when you know it is one, now that is wrong.’

  I saw Angela through the doorway. She was laughing with her head thrown back. I couldn’t remember when I had last seen her laugh. And I realized that our li
fe as a couple had destroyed all that had once drawn us together.

  She was looking into the man’s eyes. It was the writer who had brought us here. Her face was rosy and flushed. He touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. Her eyes gathered his gaze. I thought, if they aren’t lovers yet, they will be soon. I went back into the room and walked towards Angela. Helen stopped me and pushed a glass into my hand. ‘Hang in there, everything will be all right,’ she said. She was already drunk. ‘Didn’t Angela tell you? My friend is going to speak to Ram Gopal.’

  I glared at her. I realized I was tired of all the pretence. Angela pretending that I would dance. I pretending that all was well between us.

  ‘Helen, don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I will ever dance here in London. All we are doing is play-acting that nothing is wrong. Angela knows it and so do I. Do you know that I work in a restaurant these days? I don’t mind. I even enjoy it. But I am a dancer and there is no place in this life I lead here for dance. My kind of dance,’ I snarled. ‘No matter how hard Angela and I may pretend to each other, I made a mistake coming here and I just wish she would accept that.’

  I heard the silence in the room. Helen tried to fill it up with a laugh and banalities. ‘Don’t we all make mistakes? Life is a mistake.’

  I put down my glass in disgust and touched Angela’s elbow. ‘I am leaving. Do you want to go with me?’

  Angela

  We did not talk in the tube. When we reached the bed-sit, I flung open the door and turned on him furiously. ‘You humiliated me in front of my friends.’

  ‘Friends! You call that pretentious lot your friends? They are disgusting. I am sick and tired of people like them. Pseudo artists and no more. How can you even bear to be with them?’ he said.

  ‘You think you are such a great artist, don’t you? What you are is a bloody liability and an embarrassment,’ I said. I stopped abruptly, covering my mouth. What had I done?

  Koman

  I steeled my face to show no emotion. There was no room for me to walk away into. There was no place for me to retreat to. All I had was my face to hide behind.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I thought of Nala in the forest.

  Nala who lies awake while Damayanti sleeps. Nala who eases her head off his feet and slips away into the night. She doesn’t deserve to suffer for my sins, he tells himself as he creeps away. In her father’s kingdom, she will be cherished again. She will have food to eat and clothes to wear, gardens to walk in and the softest of beds to sleep in. She will know happiness again.

  Nala wasn’t thinking straight. He was crazed with unhappiness and guilt. All he wanted was to be left alone. Even Damayanti, the love of his life, was a burden, a reminder of his worthlessness. So Nala wandered through the forest, railing against the gods, ‘Who will ever worship you again if this is what you do to people like me who have invoked your name diligently, observed fasts and penances, made offerings and performed sacrifices?’

  As time passed, it occurred to Nala that perhaps even gods are not above the machinations of destiny. And he felt a calm descend upon him. All that was left for him to do was seek their help again: Please help my wife find her way home. Please do not let me go insane with grief. Please do not let anyone know of my acts of cowardice. Please, oh gods, please.

  I thought, there in that cramped room, I will never escape the roles I am condemned to play. I will be both the ineffectual Nala and the twisted Bahukan. I am a liability and an embarrasment. If I go back to my little house by the river, however, I will break free of this curse. I will be who I was, once again.

  Shaantam

  So we arrive at the ultimate expression in the navarasas. Shaantam. How do we depict peace? What do we school our features into? Shaantam is not a face devoid of expression. Shaantam is not the absence of muscle movement. Shaantam is not turning yourself into a catatonic being.

  To understand what we need to do, we must first decipher what Shaantam is.

  Is it the stillness of the hour before dawn in a summer month, when a thin line of light appears on the horizon? The sky is devoid of all movement and so is the earth. The birds are still asleep and even the breeze is reined in by the heat that waits. There is a stillness to that hour that you can learn from. Rein in all thoughts. Calm your mind. Feel the stillness within your being.

  It is not the stillness of sleep. Which is why I suggest you watch the charamundi. Do you know it? The grey heron that lives by the river, with its thin, scrawny legs, grey back, slender snake-like neck and dagger-sharp, straight beak. It is the king of water birds because, unlike other water birds, it does not stalk its prey. Instead, it waits knee-deep in water without a flicker of movement or emotion. The grey heron is stillness personified while it waits.

  So you see, there can be stillness that is alive. The mind works but the thoughts must be like the palmyra fruit.

  Why the palmyra fruit, you ask?

  Shaantam is a discipline. Think of the purplish black cannonballlike shell of the palmyra. It does not let anything permeate it. And even if something does manage to, it has to be filtered through the fibre. That is how your mind must be. As for your thoughts, look at those little sheathed sacs nestling in the fibre. You peel them with your fingernails and then you see it: soft and tender, the fruit glistens, devoid of almost all odour or taste. Translucent as ice, the fruit is the epitome of shaantam. Alive, there and yet not there.

  That is Shaantam. Detachment. Freedom. An absence of desire. A coming to terms with life. When all is done, that is what we all aspire to. Shaantam.

  Radha

  I feel a core of calm reside within me. All the passion I burnt with, the contempt I felt for my life, all the sorrow I knew for chances wasted, the anger I felt at being trapped in an existence so stifling, the fear of what lay ahead, the disgust I felt for myself, the yearning, the deceiving, the worrying, the aching …the whirling, twisting chaos has settled into this quietness that floods me.

  I think of Shyam. I see him sitting on the toilet seat, his head in his arms and tears in his eyes. I knew then that he knew about Chris and me. All along, when I lied and deceived and lay in Chris’s arms and he in mine, I hadn’t ever felt that I was committing a crime. When we made love, wanton abandoned love, there was no shadow of betrayal. But I cannot erase from my mind the sight of Shyam as I saw him that night. Everything that I think he has put me through is outweighed by what I have turned him into. A broken man, hurt and humiliated, and I know that it is I who have caused him such anguish. The extent of my callousness frightens me.

  I have no love left for Shyam. That I cannot love him, I can live with. But I have robbed him of his pride. How could I have done that to him? It was cruel. Far worse than the fact that I had never loved him.

  I must spare him his pride, I think. I must leave him at least his dignity.

  I am racked by guilt but I am also racked by the thought that this love affair of mine is no more than an act of defiance.

  Do I really think I can make a life with Chris? What do I know of him except that our bodies respond to each other and that at first, when we were together, the rest of the world ceased to exist? Once this was enough. Not any more.

  Now when I am with Chris, I look at him and wonder if I know him at all. And I ask myself, what am I doing here with him? The passion is spent and there is little else.

  Adultery, I assumed, dragged itself into murky places. Hotel rooms and box beds, bathrooms with dripping faucets and bed linen that wore bleached spots of previous assignations. Stolen kisses and clandestine couplings. Cars with tinted, rolled-up windows and dingy movie theatres.

  In my mind adultery’s beast was lust. A creature that stretched its claws, ran a pointed rosy tongue over its lips and draped itself on a vantage spot. When lust pounced on you, it tore away every inhibition, every ligament of restraint away. The fuck was filled with the unholy C of cocks and cunts; defying, daring, draining all that was decent and illuminated, allowed and unsullied. All
of it stank of stealth and the forbidden. All of it was accompanied by a beating heart and countless whisks of a lying tongue.

  My love was none of this, I had thought. My love was neither murky nor rank. My love rose above the sludge of conventional adultery. My love was born in a perfumed garden where fireflies and stars stood vigil. My love lived in a room where curtains billowed and the breeze blew. My love grew amidst music and words, and a thousand buds. How could such a love be dismissed as squalid or vile, I told myself.

  Yet, when I think of Chris, what I see is the shadow of Shyam. And when I think of Shyam, what I see is the possibility of escape with Chris.

  I know for certain that I cannot live with one or the other.

  I go to see Chris one last time, to reassure myself that I know what I am doing. Is it possible that someone who impelled me to take such wild risks and shed my fears and inhibitions, can leave me cold now? How can it be that all the passion, the dreams, suddenly mean nothing?

  He is talking, but I hear nothing of what he is saying. I see his lips move and the expression change in his eyes. I see the smile that once caught at my throat. When I look at him, my heart stays in its place. There is no answering chord. There is no leap, no flash in the dark.

  He is trying to tell me what I already know. ‘I know. Uncle told me,’ I tell him. ‘Why weren’t you honest with me?’ I ask.

  He flushes. ‘How could I ask him if he was my father?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. My mother and he were lovers. That much I know.’

  I rise to leave. I realize that there’s nothing left to say.

  ‘How does it make a difference to our relationship?’ he asks. I think it would be kinder to let him think that his revelation has changed things between us.