One Hundred Shades of White

by Preethi Nair

  ‘What do you mean you won’t marry him, Amma, if Maya says no? Go on, Maya, tell her, tell her,’ Satchin shouted.

  ‘No, Monu, both of you have to be happy about it,’ I insisted.

  She replied by telling me that if marrying Ravi would make me happy, then it was okay. I waited until the children fell asleep and I began to cook.

  In cooking, there are always answers. As I squeezed the fresh tomatoes into a pulp, I thought of saying yes to Ravi and then as I chopped and fried the onions, I would agree to move the family to Mill Hill but on the condition that I kept my business and perhaps with the deposit I had saved, I could lease a shop or an outlet where we would work from. As the onions sizzled, I added garlic, ginger, some turmeric and it seemed better to wait until summer when the children’s school term would be over and Maya would be finishing junior school and moving to a new secondary school. The green chillies went into the paste with the boiled potatoes. As it fried together with the tomato puree, I decided that Maggie would still be chief taster and Tom could continue with the deliveries. Finally, fresh coriander and a few cinnamon sticks made it smell just right. Things would work out. I called up Ravi and said, yes, yes, I would be his wife.

  Maggie was thrilled but Tom said if we moved, Mill Hill would be too far to pick up consignments but he would find us another driver. I pleaded with Tom and when I got no response, I asked Maggie to speak to him. ‘He’ll get over it,’ she replied.

  As I was packing up our belongings for the removal men, Tom came to see me.

  ‘You can’t get married, Nalini, you know you can’t,’ he raised his voice.

  ‘He’s dead, Tom. It has been five years and he’s dead to me,’ I replied.

  ‘It’s not that … Oh forget it, what’s the point anyway?’ Tom shouted as he slammed the door and left.

  I wished I could put things right between us but I couldn’t. We had reached a point where we had drifted so far apart that it was impossible to communicate with him. I busied myself packing and finding a shop that I could lease. Ravi helped me look and we found one in Edgware that had a two-bedroomed flat above it. I put down a deposit and then asked Maggie to move in, rent-free. At first she refused, so I asked her to give it six months and if she didn’t like it, she could always move back. Maggie said she would think about it. Farida couldn’t come with us, so we found her a job with the wholesaler but it didn’t last very long and I never knew what happened to her.

  Ravi and I got married in July at the register office in Stanmore. His parents, brother and sister-in-law flew over from America, as did his friends who came from all over the world. His mother was a little eccentric and she kept kissing my face and thanking me for making him so happy. She thought she would never see the day he married. Now, she said, she could die peacefully. Ravi’s brother, Anil, was a little distant with him, considering that they had not seen each other in over two years, but Anil was very courteous and polite with me. Ravi’s friends that flew in were also good towards me but I detected a sense of uneasiness in the ones who lived near us. In particular, two married couples kept their distance and looked at Maggie with contempt but I let it go; after all, it was difficult to please everyone.

  The day before the wedding, Maya fell ill with a stomach ache and said there was no way that she could possibly come. Maggie coaxed her and sat with her most of the night, saying she had better get well so she could wear the creation that she had made for the wedding. In the morning, she felt much better and both Maya and Satchin stood beside me. Maggie was there too. Tom didn’t come. ‘Just do it for the children’s sake,’ I pleaded.

  ‘They’ve someone else now, they don’t need me.’

  ‘Of course they do.’

  ‘Let’s not kid ourselves, Nalini, you’ve all moved on.’

  Even Maggie couldn’t persuade him.

  After the wedding, we had a small party in an Indian restaurant and then we went to our new home. As I climbed into bed, there was an envelope with my name on it. I opened it and found a wedding card and the deeds to the shop and the flat, all in my name. I felt a deep sense of gratitude. ‘I love you, Nalini Thakker,’ Ravi said as I opened it.

  ‘I love you too, I don’t think you’ll ever know how much.’ As I held Ravi tightly, I let go of Raul completely. He had finally, finally gone.

  I will not pretend that it did not take the children some time to settle in. It took that whole first year. There were simple things like sleeping in their own rooms. We had all been so used to sleeping in the same bed for so long that it was hard for them to be alone at night and they missed Maggie and Tom. Although Maggie promised to move into the flat as soon as the shop was up and running, it was not the same for them without her. Maya missed her terribly and called four or five times a day to report any new thing that she had done or seen. Then there were the practicalities of getting used to living with another person. Maya tested Ravi, goading him into scolding her, but he never did and Satchin, he adapted quickly, but I knew he missed his friends.

  We continued making pickles throughout that summer. Ravi wanted to take us on holiday but we were too busy moving the production line into the conservatory downstairs whilst the shop was being fitted. It wasn’t the ideal place because the sun came pouring through the windows and made it uncomfortably hot for the four of us to work in. Maggie came for two days a week, staying overnight, and Ravi’s cleaning lady, Ana, found two local Indian women to come in and help on the days Maggie wasn’t there.

  The upheaval of the move cost us a few clients because we couldn’t fulfil orders on time. Some of the consignments also came back with customers saying that the pickles didn’t taste the same. This could have been because they were exposed to too much heat in the preparation phase, so we all moved to the kitchen, which was chaotic. My mind was also chaotic; it was more impatience than apprehension or uneasiness. The building work seemed to be taking forever and I was distracted because I had to keep going in to check how the workmen were getting on.

  The builders were extending the back room of the shop, putting in a kitchen and fitting in the machinery to make pickling and bottling more effective. There was ample space for a team of ten to work easily. I also had a side room built to make it easier for the driver to collect the finished consignments.

  I had the decorators paint the whole kitchen area white which made all the new equipment shine even brighter, then large black and white tiles were laid down to finish off the back rooms. There were no fluorescent tube lights, they reminded me too much of the sewing factory, so I had spotlights, which everybody said were too costly and impractical, but it had to feel just right. The decorators were in the front of the shop painting the walls the deep red colours I had requested and the carpenter came to make the counter, shelves and the sign. Little Annapurna was positioned on a tiny shelf especially made for her in the kitchen so she could watch over us. It was all finished in time for Onam.

  The following week the children started their new schools, Maggie and her cats moved into the flat above the shop, and we were all preparing for the opening. The shop felt magical as we displayed all the pickles on the newly made shelves. Maggie made a window display and bought different coloured sari fabrics, some of which she sewed around the woven baskets filled with straw, and on top she strategically placed a few jars of pickle and fruit. An aroma of dried lavender floated in the air to give a feeling of peace and wind chimes hung above the door, so each time it opened the sound cleansed the air. I managed to find a priest through a friend of Ravi’s who would bless the shop and he was due early in the morning, the day before we opened.

  The chimes rang and a thin old Indian man with a white beard entered. He introduced himself as the priest and took off his shoes as he walked into the shop. He looked around first and then looked straight into my eyes. As I pulled out a stool for him, my eyes filled with tears and a lump grew in my throat. I felt my mother’s presence, an odour of sesame oil and ginger, with her saying, ‘Just look after
Nalini, I am okay.’ Was I doing all right, Ma? Are you proud of me? Was I taking care of the children as you had expected me to? I began to cry streams of tears and the priest held my hand and as he held it, the more I cried, inconsolably. He sat there in silence.

  Slowly, the waves that inundated me drifted back to wherever they had come from and my self-control returned. I was just very tired, I said to the priest. He said nothing. He then took out his shells and threw them over the counter. ‘Now that you have mastered forgiveness, let it flow through all those who come through these doors and then serve, serve gratitude, but only when you are ready.’ I looked at him and asked how I would know. ‘You will, when the time is right, you will feel it.’ The priest broke a coconut which he stained with saffron. The coconut milk ran over the step that led to the kitchen, he said a prayer, blessed the shop and reached in his pocket for a little pot of moist sandalwood. He placed a spot on my head and left.

  My mother had always said that trust prepared the ground for forgiveness. It was essential to have faith and trust in something and forgiveness would then have a firm anchor. Essentially forgiveness was the first step and gratitude was never far behind. Gratitude could come in a hundred forms, like all the different-shaped savouries, offered unconditionally. Gratitude, she said, was the only form of showing appreciation, a way of paying the rent for being allowed to do what we loved. The savouries were offered to the Kathis who gave us an opportunity; the astrologer who came every Thursday with his guidance; the children living on the beach; neighbours who came to visit. Gratitude, she said, kept fear away. If we focused on what we had, it grew, but if we thought even momentarily of what we feared, the fear would multiply and take us backwards. So she even gave thanks for the bad things that had happened, thanks that my father had left. She put behind her the fact that he had ended up a drunk, leaving a series of women behind as he went from village to village. She also said that gratitude brings all the ugly things to the surface and an abundant life is one that faces all that is ugly and lets them go.

  After the priest left, I spent the day up to my elbows in the abundance of freshly ground cornflour and sesame oil, which made each grain of thanks come together, pasting into a dough with the comfort of lukewarm water. Adding just a little salt, pepper, paprika and crushed bay leaves, made bundles of gratitude for my life as it was: the children, Ravi, Maggie, our home, my staff and the shop.

  If we were back in India, the savouries would be flattened into different shapes and left out in the sun, soaking in the heat and the energy: here, I left them with the light in the kitchen so they expanded with the heat and when they were ready, I fried them in hot groundnut oil so they would set hard, solidifying in time.

  I called out to Maggie, who was out in the front polishing the counters. I asked her to try the golden brown crispy ringlets. She crunched into them and after she had finished, she licked the crumbs around her mouth and took another. She asked me what it was. ‘Gratitude,’ I said. Maggie rolled her eyes and gave me her Maggie laugh, a cackling sound where she tilted her head back so she could send the noise into the air. It didn’t seem right at that time to package the savouries and serve it as produce – we hadn’t established ‘forgiveness’ yet – so we placed them on plates to welcome our new customers. We were ready to open.

  It was a Saturday morning and our first customers were Ravi and the children. The children bought some pickles, asked for a receipt, and gave Maggie and I a good luck card that Maya had made. They left to go into London with Ravi. Maggie was in charge behind the counter as I moved between counter and kitchen.

  There weren’t very many customers at first and the ones who did come ate the savouries and left without buying anything. Maggie got really annoyed when they returned to eat some more. She said gratitude and patience were running out pretty fast. After lunch, a few more people began coming by. At first they said hello, looked at different varieties of pickles and randomly selected whatever they felt they needed. Maggie wanted to advise them but she held back and talked about the weather, to which they would nod, say nothing, purchase their goods and leave. ‘Not very friendly around here, are they?’ she whispered. ‘We’ll soon change that.’

  Back in the kitchen, my assistants were the same two Indian ladies who worked with me in the conservatory, Anita and Deepa. Anita was married and had a young son. Deepa was her young sister-in-law who lived with them. Govind also worked in the back. He was a kitchen hand at the local Indian restaurant but lost his job because he shouted back at the tyrant cook. We were there when it happened so I said he could come and work for us and we would see how it went.

  Deepa’s job was to wash, chop and prepare the fruit and other ingredients as requested. I came in and added the condiments in their required proportions; then she and Govind cooked and boiled the ingredients. Anita would make sure that the machines correctly bottled and labelled the pickles. She then packed them either for the shop or for distribution. Maggie, like myself, was in her phase of gratitude and served at the counter or helped customers choose the pickles that were right for them.

  Tom visited infrequently, always choosing the days that I wasn’t there. Maggie wanted him to sell the house and come and live with her above the shop but he refused. He didn’t even bother to see the children, just cut himself out of our lives. He sent a new driver called David who brought us fresh produce every two days and took away the consignments that needed to be delivered.

  The shop was like a magnet that drew many broken hearts. These fragile hearts came in with layers of armour so they appeared very strong. We had an array of customers: matriarchal Indian women who seemed to know how to hold their families together; young Jewish and Polish women who knew what they wanted out of life; middle-aged affluent English women who looked like they had everything under control; single men, married men and old men. All entered with an air of certainty. Unbeknown to them, the sound of the chimes and the various smells disarmed them and made them feel safe, they felt secure in the store and they didn’t even know it.

  At first, they bought random jars without saying anything, trusting that their instincts were guiding them and then they came back, buying different flavours so they could make a decision on which ones they preferred. Some had regular orders which they would collect every week and these were predictable; raw green mango for decisiveness, apple and fried ginger to soothe disputes, sweet mango and lime mixed with a hint of red chillies to restore forgotten dreams. Others could not quite decipher which their particular favourites were and so changed their order every week. Some said they were buying them as gifts for other people and bought boxes. Maggie diagnosed this as symptoms of loneliness and talked as much as she could to make up for it.

  Maggie was often right. She had incredible perception and often knew what people needed. She didn’t thrust her advice upon them, but would recommend and then they would engage in conversation with her, confirming the diagnosis she had in mind. ‘You’ll do well trying this one,’ she would say, running around the counter to hand it to them.

  The shop ran smoothly apart from the occasional disputes between the staff. Maggie sorted those out and I rarely got involved. As the store became packed with regular customers, I hired Govind’s younger brother, Amit, thinking that this would even out the balance between them all in the kitchen. I also asked Ana, our cleaning lady, to come in three days a week to help Maggie serve behind the counter. Maya came in on Wednesday after school and on Saturdays, and Satchin and his best friend, Suri, helped the kitchen staff box up the consignments and get them ready for David who now delivered every day.

  Wednesdays I took off. In the morning, I continued going to college, enrolling at the one in Stanmore, and in the afternoon, I experimented with new recipes and combinations. At least twice a week, I made sure I was home by four o’clock so I could get back before the children did and make dinner, normally two different types, as Maya still didn’t like Indian food. Ravi came home around six-thirty, he would shower a
nd we would all eat around seven o’clock. I know the children hated this as they wanted to watch television. ‘Oh, Amma, none of the other kids at school have to do this dinner ritual thing,’ Satchin protested, but it was the only thing I held firm on. Dinner was the only time in the day when we could all sit, eat and talk together but on Fridays, I allowed them to get a takeaway and eat in front of the television.

  The evenings were time for Ravi and I, and sometimes to entertain friends. I could sense a reserve between his friends towards me and when Maggie joined us for dinner, they made polite excuses and left. This was despite the fact that Maggie’s outfits had become very respectable. Maggie said she thought that we scared the wives, who no doubt gossiped about what we got up to. She laughed and mimicked in an Indian accent, ‘How do you think they met each other?’ ‘I don’t know but I don’t like that Maggie woman, Nalini should know better. What is Ravi thinking about?’

  Whenever they came into the shop, Maggie prescribed the extra-hot chilli pickle, to add spice into their lives so they could have something of their own to gossip about.

  A year went by and the shop exuded prosperity. I sensed the time was right to introduce packaged savouries. I taught Deepa and Govind how to mix the proportions of sesame oil, water and cornflour and how to get the groundnut oil at just the right temperature so that the savouries did not break and float about. They all eventually came together and became such a good team that I didn’t have to be around all the time to supervise them. Gratitude did amazing things to the shop. People came and stocked up with boxes as they served pickles and savouries to friends and family who came to visit. There was something indefinable in the air and over the months, things began to change, as if multiplying the cause and effect of events. Deepa, who had lived with her brother and sister-in-law because she had been thrown out of the house by her mother, announced that she and Govind were marrying in the spring. Anita was moving to a bigger home with her husband. Amit was promoted, Ana won a sizeable amount when playing bingo, but she said she still wanted to clean for us and work in the shop and Maggie, Maggie had fallen in love.