Vertigo

by Ashok Banker

  ‘We’ll see.We can lunch out too.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘I’m broke,Tuli. You know my situation. I can barely manage to scrape enough together to have lunch every day. I’ve been eating vadapao on the street.’

  ‘Just once, I’ll be with you all day. And maybe...’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll figure out something. But, you’re not going to tell me at the last minute that you can’t come, are you?’

  ‘I’ll meet you at 9.30 at the small college gate.’

  ‘Okay. But...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t have your chums, do you? That’s the excuse you used last time.’

  ‘What difference does it make? We’re not going all the way.’

  ‘Come on,Tuli.Why not?We’re getting married.’

  ‘I’ve got to go now. Chalo, see you on Saturday at 9.30

  ‘How about a goodbye kiss?’

  ‘Not on the road, Jay. Bye.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Bye.’

  chapter nine

  His mother rolls over while he’s shutting her cupboard. He doesn’t know how she heard him; he was stone-quiet. But there she is, a silhouette lying on the bed, her swollen face dimly visible in the grainy grey light from the window behind her; her eyes glare at him like an animal caught in the flood of a jeep’s headlights.

  ‘What did you take?’

  ‘Nothing, Mama. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Why did you touch my cupboard?’

  ‘I was just looking for the brown towel.’

  ‘Don’t touch my cupboard.’

  ‘I didn’t take anything, Mama.’

  She rises, cursing at the aches and pains she attributes to cancer, Aids, diabetes, myasthenia gravis. .. everything but liquor. Slowly, she lumbers towards him, fumbles with the rusty iron key, swings open the ancient wooden cupboard (his grandfather’s before he died), and checks a certain hiding place.

  ‘There was two thousand here.’

  ‘I’m broke, Mama. Tuesday is pay day, I’ll replace it.’

  ‘Why do you need five hundred rupees? Where are you going?’

  ‘To work.’

  ‘Today’s Sunday, isn’t it?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Your office is closed on weekends.’

  ‘You know I work late sometimes. Or go in on Saturdays sometimes. Even Sundays.’

  ‘Why? You don’t get paid overtime. Why should you give them more than their money’s worth?’

  ‘Mama, I’m an executive, not a typist. I’m in the management grade. Management doesn’t get overtime.’

  ‘Then why are you going? Give me that money.’

  ‘I need it. I’ll pay you back on Tuesday.’

  ‘Give it heeeeeere! ’This last word is stretched out in a snarl that rises until the ‘rrr’ is more a roar than anything else. It is accompanied by a clawing motion that almost succeeds in its attempt to repossess the pilfered cash. Jay steps back expertly, stuffs the notes hurriedly into his jeans pocket. A veteran of such scenes, he has wisely left this cupboard-dipping to last, so he is fully dressed, shaven, bathed, combed, et al, ready to go. He edges back towards the main door; his mother comes stumbling after.

  ‘Mama, it’s my money after all. I earn it, for god’s sake. Besides, you’ve already got through the month, you don’t need that much money.’

  ‘That’s my interest.’

  ‘Interest? I thought you spent all your investment capital years ago on those nursing homes.’

  ‘For twenty years, I fed, clothed, educated you. I invested crores on you. This is my interest.’

  ‘You didn’t invest crores! Lakhs maybe. And I’m taking care of you aren’t I?’

  At the bedroom door now, backing up slowly—don’t make any sudden moves, nothing that will get her excited, you still have to unlatch the door, slip off that chain bolt which always sticks, easy, easy.

  ‘Where are you going. I know you’re not going to office. You never wear jeans to office.’

  Smart. So damn smart sometimes he can’t believe this is the same woman who, after her last nervous breakdown, had to be fed, clothed, even bum-washed (by Jay, who else) for six months. Now look at her.

  ‘Okay. I’m not going to office. I do go to office on weekends, but today I have some other work to take care of.’

  ‘You’re not going for an interview because no advertising agency is open on Saturday.’

  What is this woman, clairvoyant?

  ‘I’m going to meet my fiancee, mama. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  His mother stops. Her lips curve in a snarl, teeth flash in the still semi-dark curtained living room: ‘Tulee! ’ So much contempt in just two syllables. ‘That Jain whore? You’re going to meet her? I want my money back. No. Give it here. You’re not spending my interest money on that slut. GIVE IT HERE!’

  Lunge and parry, retreat before thrust; sidestep and parley, dodge and dance.

  The chain bolt sticks. So what else is new.

  ‘Jay, I’m not letting you go to that whore. Not with my money.’

  ‘Mama, it’s my money. I need it. I’ll return it on Tuesday. Tuesday is pay day.’ This is beginning to get to him. Damn lock. Finally, it yields.

  But not her.

  An arm with lethal claws grips his denim shirt hard enough to rip the fabric if he tries to wrench away. ‘Give me back my money.’

  ‘I have to go. Please leave my shirt.’

  ‘First give me my money.’ In a totally different tone: ‘At least have your milk.Who’s going to drink all that milk? I buy it for you, my son, my raja beta.’

  ‘Mama, that milk is sour. It has to be thrown out.’

  ‘Nonsense. What is dahi? Curd? Curdled milk. It’s very good for the digestion. Shall Iget you a glass?’

  A sudden idea. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’ll drink it?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll drink it.’

  ‘Now that’s like a good boy.’ Finally, she relinquishes her kamikaze grip; the sleeve is permanently wrenched, even after three washes, two weeks later, and several ironings, the crumple will stay. He squeezes his arm, restarting the choked circulation.

  She brings the milk triumphantly to where he stands, sweating, by the dining table; an enorrnous glass swirling with poorly blended milk and chlorinated municipal H2O.

  ‘Mama, it’s not boiled. And why did you mix water?’

  ‘It’s better. Having neat isn’t good,’ touching her belly in the vicinity Of her liver, ‘bad for the liver, too rich.’

  ‘Mama, people fight with milkmen if they put even a drop of water. You mix half a glass. Come on, Mama, I can’t drink this I’

  He holds the glass up to the light. A brown smudge of god-knows-what on the rim. ‘Look at this, the glass isn’t clean.’

  She snatches the glass from him, lifts up her nightgown, dirty, tattered, unwashed for over a week, lifts it right up, revealing naked hairy thighs, a disgusting glimpse of pubic thatch (he looks away), and wipes the rim of the glass. The hem of the nightgown is stained with milk when she drops it. He doesn’t know which is dirtier now: the glass or the nightgown.

  ‘Mama, please.’ She is holding the glass up to his lips, trying to pour it forcibly down his throat; but he isn’t a child any more, he’s strong enough to resist.Who knows how many dirty-rimmed water-polluted unboiled glasses of milk she’s forced down him over twenty years.

  Okay, it’s unfair to say that. It’s only the last ten years or so that she’s been this bad. Still. The buck for in this case, the milk—stops here.

  ‘No!’ Too loudly, too forcefully, he lunges, trying to correct his moment of red-hot fury, fails, and sees the oversized glass of milk smash on the tiled floor, splattering his mother's nightgown, his shoes, the lower half of the wall. The flaking paint welcomes another interesting stain to its collection of exotic accidental art. Here is a splash of beer from the night two years ago when he lost his temper and tried to break every
bottle of alcohol in the house (including the cologne—over there, on the right). Here is some coffee which she threw, two years ago, when he tried to convince her he was old enough (at eighteen) to be drinking beverages other than milk and water; quite clearly, she disagreed. Here is. .. ah, but then who has the time for such nostalgic reminiscences, Proust was a lucky bastard, born wealthy enough to be able to afford the luxury of emotion recollected in tranquillity. But not Jayesh Mehta.

  ‘I'm sorry, Mama. I didn't mean too drop it.'

  She stares sullenly, accusingly, not at him, but at the stain on the wall: Rorschachian patterns speak eloquently on the cracked plaster and peeling paint. He backs away again towards the main door.

  (This can't go on any more, it's got to end, got to, maybe Tuli's right, maybe I should move out, because if this carries on for even another few months, I'll I'll I'll... kill her?) And instead of horror or shock at the blood-curdling thought, he feels only... resignation.

  Got to get out of here. Twists the doorknob, opens the door, a blast Of cool November air on his hot sweaty face, notices the milk beads glistening on his keds, will wipe them downstairs, outside the building, first must get away away away from her.

  Final shot: She is just beginning to turn as he shuts the door, her hands hanging limply by her side, nightdress splattered with milk, surrounded by an explosion of glass and (oh god, she's barefoot) white blood. Something has died here, it seems. Something dies here every day, it seems. Perhaps someday, someone will die here too.

  He shuts the door on her and is gone.

  chapter ten

  Jeans, leg warmers, silk stockings, swirl skirts, jumpers, cardigans, sweaters, jackets, scarves, shawls, dupattas, blue, black, purple, mauve, crimson, ochre yellow, cerulean blue, wool, acrylic, cotton, silk, long necks, high cheekbones, blue eyeshadow, black kohl, mascara, copper-brown lipstick, high heels, Keds, sneakers, sandals, long legs, shapely legs, thick thighs, hairy arms, manicured nails, bulbous earrings, silver nose rings, open hair, dark hair, brown hair, hairbands, slim waists, small breasts, broad swishing hips, boyish athletic hips, dark eyes, light eyes, black, blue, grey, green, brown, soft voices, deep whisky voices, tinkling laughter, foreign accents.

  ‘Waiting long?’

  He blinks. Sitting here on the low wall, back to the college, watching Three-four hundred girls go by, it's easy to forget why you're here in the first place. He lowers himself to his feet, dusts the seat of his jeans, grins. His lips are a bit cracked, chapped in the cold—he can never remember to dab vaseline before going to bed—they hurt a little, he wets them, looks at her. She’s in blue denim overalls with a red and white striped tee shirt buttoned all up except for the top button, white Keds with fluorescent orange laces, a transparent Swatch, the kind which lets you see the gears and stuff inside, eyes rimmed with kohl, whitening the whites, deepening the dark brown eyes, lips and face make-up-free, arms smooth and hairless (for once), a silver chain around the slim fair neck with a name pendant: Tu1i.

  He glances at her Swatch. His HMT is dysfunctional; it collided with a briefcase at Bandra station two months ago and the man at the repair shop said it would cost 140 bucks to fix; he surrendered it over the counter but hasn’t been back to collect it—for want of the ransom.

  ‘Is that thing correct?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can’t be. It was 9 sharp in the station clock when I got off, so I must have reached here at twenty past, max twenty-five.’ Her watch shows 9.30, which is impossible because he knows he’s been here at least twenty minutes, maybe more.

  She shrugs. ‘It’s a little slow. I think it was 9.40 when I left.’ She stays a few minutes walk from here, at Radha Mahal, prime real estate on the tip of Scandal Point, Breach Candy; 4,000 rupees a square foot, flats that cost as much as buying out a small company.

  ‘But you have a lecture at 9.45 .’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not attending it, am I?’ She peers up at him, the sun growing from behind his short-clipped black hair. ‘You want me to attend?’

  ‘What I mean is, you would have been late for the lecture. What if you had to attend? I mean, you were supposed to be here at 9.30, you left home at 9.40.’

  ‘You’re mad because I’m a little late.’

  ‘You’re always a little late,Tuli.’

  ‘You don’t want to go today? Did you have a fight with your mother? I can always attend my lectures.’

  ‘Hi,Tuli!’ a pair of girls sing out, bouncing past, a ponytail and a princess cut bobbing jauntily; nice breasts.

  ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is, you’re always late, that’s all.’

  She touches his arm, pointing to Ramnik Stores, the little provision shop that also serves snacks and soft drinks, a sort of stand-up refreshment centre for the collegians. A van is unloading trays of pastries, hot samosas (you can see the steam), patties, et al. ‘I'm hungry.’ She has an attention span of maybe five seconds, or this is just her way ofsaying ‘let's change this topic, okay?’ Probably both. She's already started towards the store, assuming he'll follow. He does, after hesitating for a second, watching her small tight buttocks clench and unclench inside the close-fitting overalls; she walks a bit flat-footed but that's what makes her breasts—large for her narrow frame, sitting high on her projecting ribcage—so visible when she walks.

  Question: Out of all the girls in the world, out of all the girls in this college for that matter, whyTuli? Why this spoilt, temperamental, irresponsible, unintellectual, snobbish, sexy-but-not-sexually-willing nineteen-year-old undergraduate? Why not any one of these brown bombshells striding past? Why not a girl more sexually with it, who doesn't get him so hot and bothered and then leave him with his hat on his erection? Why not a girl with more culture, who understands and frequents the restaurants, clubs and theatres he reads about in the society pages and admires from afar? Why not a girl who arrives on time? Why not a girl who reads Dostoevsky, or Henry James, or Martin Amis at least (Tuli manages maybe three books a year: the latest Sidney Sheldon, the latest Danielle Steele, the latest Jeffrey Archer)? Why not a girl who knows how to play a musical instrument, or writes poetry, or daubs acrylics on canvas paper or, or, or...

  Why not Meera? Why not a career girl who gets a kick like he does out of corporate takeovers, leveraged buyouts, the stock market, advertising campaigns, Iacocca, Drucker, Sculley, Enrico, the Economist, mutual fund ratings in the Asian Wall Street Journal, the junk bond scandal, Saatchi & Saatchi's present state, the feasibility of a hovercraft shuttle service from Juhu Beach to Nariman Point, the new ORG

  report on Brand Consciousness in Rural and Semi-Rural Markets, the latest Thompson Urban Index, the new Pathfinders Profile of the Female Urban Consumer, the merits of C, Unix, LAN, current rate of the rupee versus the dollar, pound, yen, rouble, dinar, riyal, Hong Kong dollar, mark, franc, Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, a 386 liquid crystal display laptop for under Rs 1 lakh, and a new public limited company with letters of intent to export compact disc videos to the USSR?

  Why Tuli?

  He bites into a samosa; at half-a-buck a bite, it doesn't taste as good as he thinks it should, but it's hot and spicy. Wash it down with a styrofoam cupful of Nescafe (aThums Up for Tuli) and it almost drives back the bile that’s been churning in his gut since he left home. No use getting indigestion over spilt milk, especially undrunk spilt milk; he pulls the drapes across that scene, they don't quite shut out his mother's face.

  They could catch the bus to Grant Road station; No. 155 comes by every twenty minutes: Rs 1.50 for both of them. But Tuli hates waiting, so a cab: Rs 4.50.

  Ditto the fast train; rather than cross over to Platform Three and wait eight minutes, they hop on to the slow train just stopped on Platform One. Tuli still hasn't got the hang of getting on. The train starts moving. She grabs hold of some guy’s arm, giggling. Jay always gets irritated; doesn't believe she’s so helpless; then again, until she met him, she'd never been on a local train or bus: always her father's air-conditioned fo
reign car, partly the reason why they spend a fortune on cabs just to get out of the area, to some place (mostly a restaurant he can't afford) out of range of her family. In an orthodox Gujarati (read Indian) family like hers, even to be seen walking with a boy is tantamount to a blot on the family reputation. Is this really 1982?

  Andheri station: a long ragged line for autorickshaws. The sheer disorganization of traffic in the suburbs always amazes Jay; can people really be so uncivilized?

  Their auto driver scoots recklessly around stranded traffic, drives on the wrong side of the road, deftly dodging oncoming vehicles, bouncing them over tar bumps and potholes until Jay's teeth ache from being clenched so hard. Finally, out of the press of the Andheri station area, they zoom along through Four Bungalows, Shastri Nagar, past the RTO Office,Teachers' Colony, and start down the unfinished stretch of road linking the city to the Lokhandwala complex. An abrupt bump bounces Jay's head against a rod in the roof of the rick.

  ‘Fuck! 'Tuli giggles, one foot on the seat, hands clasped over the knee.

  He glances at the curve of her thigh, the fawn of her calf visible below the jumper. She catches him looking, smiles cat-like, places her palm on his thigh; his muscles jump.

  The estate agent is a short thin man with a wheezy nasal voice; he shares an office with a video library. He keeps interrupting their enquiries with long conversations on the phone with other clients; his ad appeared in today's Times, Saturday being the day the Accommodation Available column appears in the Classifieds. He abuses several clients after putting down the receiver, grumbling about the ridiculous questions people ask; Tuli gives Jay a ‘what a creep’ look.

  Lokhandwala Complex is one long street flanked by buildings.

  This street functions as marketplace, shopping mall, strolling lane and parking lot. Jay is amazed at the number of video libraries and estate agency offices. Tuli thinks the place is too crowded and disorganized; he tells her she's lucky she's never seen Vasai.

  The first flat is on the second floor of a building that seems practically unoccupied, although the name-board in the lobby shows that every flat has been sold. The agent, Mr Israni, explains that most have been bought by people as investments, either to resell or give on rent; executives and government employees living in company flats, who might move in here after retirement. The rate is around Rs 1,000 a square foot, though it could vary by Rs 200 either way, depending on the building, location, and the flat itself .Westward-facing flats are preferred, since they get the sea breeze; second floor and third floor flats because they're high enough to discourage burglars and low enough to reach by stairs when the lift breaks down; buildings off the main road because they're quieter; buildings by certain builders—Rahejas, Lokhandwalas, Kukrejas—fetching a premium of as much as 50 per cent because their construction is superior, lobbies have marble flooring, and bathrooms have better fixtures. In the building they're looking at right now, the walls already have cracks, barely two years after construction.