The Private Life of Mrs Sharma

by Ratika Kapur

  For my parents: Kuko and Vipen Kapur

  The Private Life of

  Mrs Sharma

  RATIKA KAPUR

  Contents

  1 Saturday, 7 May 2011

  2 Sunday, 8 May 2011

  3 Thursday, 19 May 2011

  4 Sunday, 22 May 2011

  5 Thursday, 2 June 2011

  6 Sunday, 5 June 2011

  7 Monday, 6 June 2011

  8 Sunday, 12 June 2011

  9 Monday, 13 June 2011

  10 Saturday, 18 June 2011

  11 Monday, 27 June 2011

  12 Saturday, 2 July 2011

  13 Sunday, 3 July 2011

  14 Saturday, 16 July 2011

  15 Friday, 22 July 2011

  16 Sunday, 24 July 2011

  17 Wednesday, 27 July 2011

  18 Friday, 29 July 2011

  19 Saturday, 30 July 2011

  20 Sunday, 31 July 2011

  21 Wednesday, 3 August 2011

  22 Saturday, 6 August 2011

  23 Sunday, 7 August 2011

  24 Thursday, 11 August 2011

  25 Sunday, 14 August 2011

  26 Sunday, 21 August 2011

  27 Wednesday, 24 August 2011

  28 Wednesday, 31 August 2011

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  1

  Saturday, 7 May 2011

  I was walking up to the ticket counter to recharge my Metro card when some man stopped me.

  Where are you going? he said.

  Can’t you see where I am going? I said.

  There is a line here, he said.

  I am in the ladies’ line, I said.

  I can’t see any ladies’ line here, he said.

  I was just going to tell him to mind where he pokes his nose when another man, a younger man, who was wearing a tie with thin blue and grey stripes, interrupted us. Forgive me, bhaisahib, this younger man said in a very calm, cool voice, but let madam go in front.

  This was how I first met Vineet. This was almost two months ago.

  Three days after that both of us were standing on the platform at Hauz Khas waiting for the train to come. He did not see me, but I could see him just ten or twelve steps from where I was standing, and I knew that if I fixed my eyes on him he would, after some time, look back at me. And he did.

  Thank you for that day, I said.

  He walked up to me slowly, as if he was a little bit scared. I am sorry, I did not hear you, he said.

  Thank you for that day in the line, I said.

  Then the train came. He smiled at me, and turned and walked to the end of the train. I got into the ladies’ compartment.

  Seven or eight times after that I saw him at the station on my way to the clinic. It was not every day, but at least two or three mornings a week I would see him on the platform at the Hauz Khas Metro station, standing straight and steady and smart, jacket, shirt, pants, tie, waiting for the HUDA City Centre train to come. Other men played with their phones or looked down the train tunnel or walked up and down the platform or stared at women, but Vineet always stood calmly in one place, like a statue of some great man, waiting for the train. I liked that. I also liked the way he dressed, and from the types of clothes that he would wear I thought that he worked in an office, some fancy air-conditioned office with cubicles and carpets in one of those new steel and glass buildings in Gurgaon. His pants always had one very nice pressed line in the exact middle of each leg and his shirts never had even one line, and at that time, before I knew anything at all about him, I thought that his shirts must have been taken to a presswallah in the locality, and not only that, but also that the presswallah must have brought them back on hangers, not folded.

  One morning I was standing behind him at the x-ray machine waiting for my purse when something happened to me and I tapped his shoulder with one finger and said, Are you going to work?

  He turned around very suddenly and looked at me, first at my face and then at my feet, and then he nodded his head and smiled. He was wearing the same tie that he wore the first time I met him, the one with thin blue and grey stripes. He told me afterwards that the brand was Zodiac and he had bought it from Shoppers Stop. It cost him almost one thousand rupees.

  But I should say here that I am not a cheap woman. I hail from a good family, a well-educated family, my father actually had a BSc in Botany, and I don’t talk to men without reason. From time to time men come up to me. Some will offer me a smile, some will try their level best to talk to me and some, I have seen, will allow their eyes to roam all over my body. But I just walk away each and every time. I should also say that Vineet is also not that type of man, the type of man who makes passes at women. I am quite sure about this. Like me, he also hails from a good family, and I knew this from the first moment that I saw him, and that is why when we met each other again at the station four days after that and he asked me if I would like to meet him at Barista in SDA the next Sunday, I said yes. Obviously I waited for one or two seconds, but then I accepted his invitation.

  We met each other at Barista at eleven o’clock in the morning, I remember, and there was a lot of noise all around. Still, it was a nice type of noise, it was happy noise. There were some girls playing a board game, there were three old women wearing blouses and pants who were drinking coffee and talking as loudly as the girls sitting next to them, and in one corner, all by himself, there was a boy playing a guitar. It was the first time I had been to Barista.

  We did not ask each other many questions, we did not talk too much. We watched young people and old people sitting around us, we looked up at the TV, which, I remember, was on one English news channel, and one or two times we looked at each other. We talked a little bit about the weather and a little bit about the news, and that was all, and as it is supposed to be.

  After that day, after that outing to Barista, we have met each other five or six times, and always for very short times, for samosas at Shefali Sweets, for example, or for momos outside the station. And then, obviously, we meet each other on the Metro when we go to work, which happens, without any type of planning, two or three times a week. We hardly talk on the train, but I like it like this. Actually, there is nothing that I want to tell him, nothing that I want to hear from him, and maybe this is odd, but the truth is that I am happy to just stand quietly next to him and look out of the window at the tops of the trees and buildings that pass by. When I am near him I feel calm. I feel like I feel when I see photos of snow.

  And, as it is supposed to be, we have come to know each other slowly, we have come to know each other like friends come to know each other. Since our first meeting he has told me some small and big things about himself. He always has a cold bath, even in January, he likes to eat uncooked paneer from Quality Dairy in Aurobindo Place, and the smell of petrol makes him vomit. Apart from that, Vineet Sehgal is thirty years of age and he has lived in Delhi all his life. He has a BA in hotel management, he works as a manager in a hotel in Gurgaon and one day he is going to start his own business, his own catering business. His father, who used to work at State Bank of India, died six years ago, and he lives with his mother in Shivalik. His shirts are not sent to a presswallah, his mother presses them. I saw a photo of her on the wallpaper of his mobile, a chubby, fair lady in a baby pink chiffon sari posing in front of Akshardham Temple. And, like me, Vineet has no brothers or sisters.

  Obviously there are many, many things that he has not told me. I don’t know, for example, why at thirty years of age he is still not married. I don’t know if he sleeps properly at night, or if his mother opens the door with a smile when he comes back home in the evening, or if he likes to walk around in the mall. And I don’t know if
he cries. Still, some things I have also come to know on my own. I know that he is an ambitious man. From time to time he has talked to me about saving up money to buy a flat in Ghaziabad or Greater Noida, a nice new flat that has twenty-four-hour power back-up and water supply, a lobby and a children’s park with a jungle gym and swings and a slide, and he says that if he sells the flat that he lives in just now, he will have enough money for the down payment, and if he manages to get a second job at a call centre, the salary from that job, along with his mother’s schoolteacher salary, would be enough to pay for the monthly instalments. I also know from the way that he carries himself, from how he is always so steady, so quiet and steady, whether he is standing in one place and waiting for the train to come or he is sitting peacefully in front of me in a restaurant, I know that he is a man with a lot of confidence, quiet confidence, the type of confidence that normally comes with grey hair, the type that I have only seen in my father or Doctor Sahib. Sometimes I think that maybe Vineet Sehgal has an old heart.

  Then last evening came and we went to India Gate for ice cream. He had walked up to me at the station on Wednesday and asked me if I would like to go with him for a short outing on his motorbike, which had just come back from the workshop. See, I was not born yesterday. I know what it can mean, I know how it can feel, to ride behind a man on a two-wheeler. I know how the man could slowly lean back into the woman sitting behind him until his body is pressing against her chest, while the woman’s hands could move from the handlebar behind her to the man’s waist and then finally rest on his thighs as she leans forward against him. But I also know that this can only happen if a woman allows it to happen, which, obviously, I would never ever do. And I know that he is a good man who would never ever play such games with a woman. So that is why I agreed to go out with him. I agreed to go out with him and I don’t think that it was wrong.

  Actually, I thought that Vineet would ask me some questions. I know quite a lot about him, but he hardly knows anything about me. He knows my first name and he knows that I work at a doctor’s clinic in Gurgaon, but that is all, and so I thought that maybe he would want to know some more things about me. But even yesterday he hardly asked me anything about my life, my home, my family. It is a little bit odd. But maybe he is too shy. Or maybe he does not like to interfere in other people’s lives. Or maybe he is just scared to know too much.

  So we reached India Gate at around seven o’clock. On both sides of Rajpath the lawns were filled with people. All around there were children, children with their families, and there were couples and hawkers and policemen. And above the lawns, on our left and right, balloons, toy helicopters, flashing lights and hundreds of happy voices filled the air. We parked near the middle of Rajpath, where the ice-cream carts were parked. I remained sitting on the bike and he got off. The left leg of his pants had got stuck in his sock. I looked up the road, at the dark shapes of the Rashtrapathi Bhavan buildings, then I looked down the road at India Gate. Both ends of Rajpath were so quiet, and without light. Underneath the evening sky, both ends looked like paintings, the type of paintings that I have seen in Doctor Sahib’s house. It was quite beautiful.

  After some time we walked down to India Gate, without words. When we reached the police barrier we stopped. As I looked up at the monument I tried to count how many times that I had come here. My rough calculation was six hundred times, about forty times every year for fifteen years. I remembered how in the early days Bobby always had to be bought an orange bar or a balloon. At that time there were no police barriers. At that time you could park your scooter anywhere you wanted to. And then I remembered the last time I was there, standing just there in front of India Gate, one and a half years ago in November 2009.That was when the trip to the mountains, to Manali, was planned. It was planned for this summer, actually. We were supposed to be there just now.

  What are you thinking? Vineet said to me.

  Nothing, I said.

  Please tell me, he said.

  I want to touch snow, I said.

  He looked down at his shoes for one second, then he looked up at me. I can’t make you touch snow, he said, but I can buy you an ice cream.

  I asked him for a Vadilal Chocobar, but he bought me a Feast from Kwality Walls, which not only had chocolate on the outer covering, but also one thick piece of chocolate inside, wrapped around the ice-cream stick. It cost twenty-five rupees.

  Do you like it? he said.

  Yes, I said.

  As good as snow? he said.

  I don’t know, I said. I have not tasted snow.

  I obviously did not want Vineet to know where I live so I told him that I needed to buy onions and that he should drop me at the vegetable seller in the market, which he did, and then I walked alone to my house. It was almost nine o’clock when I entered, and Papaji and Mummyji were lying on their cots in the hall watching some TV serial. I had told them that I was going to Sarojini Nagar with my friend Rosie, a very sweet nurse from the clinic, to help her buy some things for her daughter’s wedding. They would not have understood if I had told them that I was going out with a man. So, I greeted them both, picked up the dry clothes from the veranda and went into the bedroom.

  Bobby was lying down with his headphones stuck in his ears, listening to music on his mobile, his feet hanging off his folding cot and his eyes closed. All six feet of him were quiet and steady. Bobby is a big, strong boy. I only give him Mother Dairy token milk because the cream in packet milk is not properly mixed in. I give him two glasses daily without fail and when he was younger I gave him three glasses. I poked him in the stomach. His eyes opened, he smiled for one second, then his eyes closed again. He behaves a little bit oddly these days. He says that he does not like school, but it seems that he has girl problems. So, I was folding the clothes and trying to talk to Bobby, trying to make him smile for me again, when suddenly my mobile beeped. I took it out of my purse. It was an sms from Meena, the name that I used to save Vineet’s number. He wanted me to call him up. I deleted the sms then and there, and finished folding the clothes, and then I went into the bathroom and called him up.

  Like me, Vineet was also whispering. Maybe his mother was nearby. He asked me if I had had a nice time, he was worried that maybe I had got bored. I told him that I had had a lot of fun, I told him that I had not had such a lot fun in a long time. And that was actually the truth.

  And then suddenly he said, I like talking to you.

  What did you say? I said, even though I had heard what he said.

  I like talking to you, he said.

  Thank you, I said. What else could I say?

  It is the truth, he said.

  Then I laughed.

  It is cute how you laugh, he said. You laugh like a schoolgirl.

  But I am not a schoolgirl, and he knows this. I am a wife and a mother of a fifteen-year-old boy. This he does not know. And he does not have to. Who is he to me? He is just some man who I saw on the Metro, and I don’t know how but we started talking to each other, and I don’t know how but we have become something that is a little bit like friends, and that is all. We go on short outings together. That is all. And he has not even bothered to ask me anything about myself. If he does ask me, which I don’t think will happen because he seems to be the type of person who does not care about such things as your father’s name, your husband’s name, your address, your work and what not, but if suddenly for some reason he does ask me, I will tell him. I will tell him anything he wants to know. I will tell him everything. What do I have to hide from him?

  Still, I know that I have to be careful not to take a wrong step. That is why I always say to Bobby, Watch your step. Watch each and every step you take. People will tell you to walk holding your head up high, but I think that you have to keep your eyes on the ground and watch where you put your foot. We hear it on the train daily, Mind the gap. When you get on to the train, Mind the gap. When you get off the train, Mind the gap.

  My name is Mrs Renuka Sharma. I am thirty-
seven years of age and a married lady. I am a respectable married lady who hails from a good family, and I have a child and a respectable job, and a mother-in-law and father-in-law. I am not a schoolgirl, and even when I was a schoolgirl, when I was Miss Renuka Mishra, even then I actually never did the types of things that other girls of my age did. There was no bunking school to meet a boy, or notes or love letters exchanged, or phone calls in the darkness when the grown ups were sleeping. And it was not that I could not catch the attention of the boys loitering around me. Actually, I was quite a pretty girl, quite a clever, pretty girl, and I don’t like to boast, but the truth is that I did break some hearts in the boys’ school on the opposite side of the road. Still, I think that I knew at that time, just like I know now, that such foolishness is timewaste.

  2

  Sunday, 8 May 2011

  I don’t like Sundays. Actually, what I should say is that I don’t like Sundays any more, not since my husband left and went to Dubai. I wake up each Sunday morning and there is no job to go to, there is nowhere to go to at all. When my husband was here we would go to meet his parents in Ghaziabad for tea. From time to time we would go to watch a film at Shakuntalam. And as long as it was not raining or too cold, we always went to India Gate in the evening. It is not actually meeting people or watching films that I miss, and there are hardly any benefits to such things anyway, but at least there was always some plan. There was always some reason to get out of the house, and I would wear a nice sari, and from the cupboard I would take out smart shirts and pants for my husband and son, which I would press again and lay out neatly on the bed, and they would wear these clothes and then we would go out. Now my husband works in a foreign country, so there are no outings, and my in-laws live with me, so there is nobody to go and meet, no reason to dress up, and on most Sundays we just sit in the house, Bobby, my in-laws and I. It is true that this is the day when I get some time to do a little bit of stitching or darning, when I can re-arrange the cupboards or clean the fridge. Still, how long do such things take? I try my level best to convince Bobby to come with me for a walk to IIT or the Rose Garden, or to go to India Gate for ice cream or to one of the malls in Saket. Sometimes he does agree to accompany me, but I know that he would prefer to sit in front of the computer or watch some stupid cooking show on TV or lie around with his headphones on. It also seems that he likes this girl with green eyes at the bus stop and he does not know what to do, because Bobby is actually just a good, simple boy, and so sometimes he just lies on the divan with a long face doing nothing at all. But children are like this these days. At least my Bobby tries to make his mother happy from time to time.