by Ashok Banker
‘The Queen’s Necklace turns gold,’ the ad said on the day the new lamps were installed. Jay looks back at the lights of Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade; he feels a strange stirring of national pride when he looks at this view. Probably because this is the closest Bombay will ever get to looking like Manhattan. Sometimes, looking at this neo-jewelled coastline, he pretends he’s a hotshot yuppie in a Madison Avenue ad agency, creative director with a slew of Clio Awards under his belt and a list of a half-dozen eight-figure spending clients. And, of course, a corner office.
He asks Meera how much she figures an executive earns in the States.
‘What kind of executive?’
‘An account executive. Someone like me, say.’
‘How many years’ experience? Three? Iguess about thirty grand.’
‘Wow. That’s... how much? Over three lakhs!’ The dollar is at Rs 10.42 today.
‘You can’t just compute it in rupees.’
‘I know, but it’s still a lot.’
Under the flyover, on the right, Hindu Gymkhana grounds, a wedding. A fleet ofelephants, bedecked Raj style, a massive mandap, cars triple parked on the pavement—BMWs, Mazdas, Mercedes, Porsches, Suzukis, Hondas, Contessas, and even a few Fiats and Marutis.
‘That diamond merchant’s daughter, he spent some crores on the wedding, did you read about it?’
‘Three crores. Thirty million. What a waste.’
‘If he gave the money to account executives, we wouldn’t have to go to America,’ Jay says wistfully. Meera laughs. Jay goes on. ‘Three crores! That’s three million dollars! For one-tenth of that, I’d sign a bond for life!’
Meera looks at him, eyes smiling, flashing in the dark rear of the cab. Passing the CEAT neon sign above the aquarium, her face lights up in strips of fluorescent pink and orange. She brushes a lock of hair back from her eyes; he notices her eyebrows: thick, dark, brush-like.
‘You have lovely eyebrows.’
‘You have terrible taste.’
They both laugh at that. The taxi meter drops with a ping. He points to it, grinning. ‘You’re so beautiful, I can’t keep my eyes on the meter!’
‘Hey, I know that line. It’s. . . it’s. . . come on!’ snapping her fingers, rolling her eyes.
‘Manhatten. Woody Allen .’
‘That’s it! I saw it last year. On video.’
‘I saw it last month at Sterling. Morning show.’
‘Yeah. I remember someone telling me it was running. I wanted to see it on the big screen. But I never got around to it. Is it still on?’
‘No. But Blues Brothers is running. Seen it?’
‘Is it good?’
‘I loved it. I saw it three times.’
‘Really? Who’s in it?’
‘Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi. And Ray Charles. And Carrie Fisher.And—’
‘Ray Charles? The musician?’
‘It’s a musical.’
‘I love musicals. Grease.’
‘Grease 2.’
‘Annie.’
‘Fame.’
‘All That jazz.’
‘Gigi.’
‘Les Girls.’
‘The King and I.’
‘Oklahoma! ’
‘Elvis. Any Elvis.’
‘Any musical.’
They laugh.
Outside the window, Chowpatty. Traffic jams. He keeps his eyes on her. In this semi-light, her high cheekbones, dark hair, light skin, whispering silk saree, the shape of her thighs beneath the fabric; he can’t remember when he’s sat this close to such a beautiful woman before in his life. Tuli? Forget it. No comparison. Tuli has breasts, true.
But for everything else, look at this female. Just look at her. And not-bad breasts too. In any case, can you really judge a woman’s breasts when she has her clothes on? All you can see is the way she carries them, which Meera does a lot better thanTuli. Tuli slouches slightly, Meera thrusts them forward, makes the most of them. Jay has told Tuli so often to straighten her back, but she always folds inwards, her chin dragged down by the weight of her large breasts.
‘What?’
‘Uh, nothing.’
‘Are you sure? For a minute, I thought you were going to propose to me.’
‘Maybe I am.’
‘Then you couldn’t have picked a worse time. I’ve decided not to even think about getting hitched for the next five years. Maybe ten.’
‘Because I want to be someone on my own, not just a Mrs Someone.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘No you don’t. You’re a man. You don’t know what it means to be a Mrs Someone.’
‘Neither do you.’
‘My mother’s a Mrs Someone. My sister’s a Mrs Someone. I’ve had some good examples.’
‘You don’t like marriage?’
‘I love marriage. I just don’t want it to happen to me.’
‘But you’re beautiful.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s a shame.’
‘You mean all these glorious feminine charms wasting away for want of appreciation? I get my share, thank you.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
‘I’m sure you don’t.’
‘But it’s still a shame.’
‘Oh, I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I wouldn’t think so. Not after the way Chris has been talking about you in office.’
That comes at her from a blind side. She stops still; freeze frame.
‘Oh.’
He flushes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why should you be sorry?’
‘I upset you this morning too.When I mentioned it.’
‘You didn’t upset me.’
‘You were crying. You said so.’
‘You didn’t upset me. I upset myself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I have a knack of upsetting myself. Screwing up my own life.
So tell me, what’s Chris been saying about me?’
‘Things.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, you know, bed things and stuff.’
‘Like how many times he fucked me?’
His turn to be shaken.
‘It’s okay, Jay. You can be frank with me. I’m a big girl now.Whatever it is, I’ve heard it before.’
‘He said stuff. .. I didn’t like listening to it.’
‘Did it ruin the image you had of me?’
‘I didn’t like him saying it in the office. To all the guys.’
She bites her lips. Looks away suddenly. He watches her watching the Kemp’s Corner flyover rise beneath them, fall away behind. ‘He said it when everyone was around?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was there?’
‘Everybody. Karan, Jogi, Mittal, Isaac, Khan.’
She covers her mouth with both hands. ‘ Oh god.’ After a moment:
‘Fucking bastard.’
‘He always talks about his... er... conquests, you know.’
She looks at him directly. A Thums Up neon sign is reflected in her eyes. ‘What did you think of me after he said all that?’
Jay shrugs.
‘Tell me.’
Another shrug.
‘Was that... was that why you stopped talking to me? Why you started giving me the cold shoulder?’
He avoids her eyes.‘No, no. I told you, I was just...’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’
Useless to lie; those eyes are drilling into him. ‘I guess so.’
Meera’s quiet for a while. Then, as they’re passing Haji Ali, ‘Are you uncomfortable being with me?’
‘Are you crazy? You’re the most beautiful thing...’ He stops. ‘Of course not. I was the one who asked you. Fact is, I feel lousy because I’m broke.’
‘Fuck the money. I know a little about your problems, Jay. That’s one of the reasons I said yes when you asked me. I think you need someone to talk to.’
‘I guess I do. Yeah.’
&nb
sp; She puts her hand on his thigh. ‘Talk to me.’
He swallows, doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t say anything.
chapter fourteen
‘Fuck going to a restaurant,’ she says at Mahim.
Jay avoids looking at her. Her hand is still on his thigh. ‘You don’t want to go to a restaurant?’
‘Let’s go to my place first, get my car, pick up some booze, drive out to Bandstand.’
‘You have a car?’The signal changes, they lurch forward. But the other stream of traffic is held up.
‘A second-hand Beetle.’
‘AVolkswagen? Really?’
‘It’s at my building.We’ll take the cab there. Cool with you?’
‘Sure, sure.’
She takes her hand off his thigh, as if she hadn’t been particularly aware that she’d left it there in the first place. She informs the cab driver of the minor deviation in destination. The traffic cop bleats; finally the choked traffic squeezes past the bottleneck: their cabbie guns his accelerator.
Along Mahim causeway: the smells of fish, metallic automobile pollution, rotten creek water, a sudden whiff of her perfume; tantalizingly familiar but nameless.
‘How’s Auntie Margaret?’ she asks.
He looks at her. Her face is sympathetic, sincere. ‘Same.’
‘Does she still drink?’
‘Yeah.’
She shakes her head sadly. ‘I remember her from the time you two came over for Kalyani’s wedding. I was doing my last year in school then.’
‘I remember.’
‘She was so beautiful. I fell in love with her. She was a very beautiful woman. Everybody said she was the most beautiful woman at the wedding. And you looked so handsome—you were wearing a jodhpuri, a grey jodhpuri.’
‘Yes,’ he says, surprised.
‘She was holding your arm when you entered. She looked so young. I thought you were a couple. I hadn’t seen you since we were babies. Afterwards, my parents were talking about you, that’s how I found out.’
‘What were they saying about me?’
‘Oh, you know, the usual.’
‘About my mother?’
‘I think so.’
‘About her drinking?’
‘Suppose so. She was carrying a bottle in her purse, wasn’t she? I saw her drinking from it.’
‘What else were they saying about me and Mama.’
‘Actually, they were wondering why you’d turned up for the wedding. I mean, you never used to mingle before. And since your parents... split up... you were totally cut off from us—from all your father’s relatives, they said. So why that sudden visit?’
‘My mother wanted me to see my father’s family. For them to see me. She wanted me to get my stake in the family property in case anything ever happened to my father.’
‘You’re legally entitled, aren’t you? Under Hindu law?’
‘Yes, but my father had just remarried at that time. My mother was worried that he would get another son by his second wife—
which he didn’t—and try to cut me off completely.’
‘And?’
‘He never gave a damn about us. He wouldn’t even talk to either of us at the wedding. Kept avoiding us.’
‘I remember there was a big scene between your mother and father. She started hitting him or something.’
‘She was drunk by then. Angry because he was avoiding her. Finally, she spoke to his second wife, Sundri. That woman called her a drunk, my mother got mad, abused her. My father slapped my mother. She got hysterical.’
‘He slapped her? Really? I never heard that!’
‘I was there. He slapped her first. That’s why she attacked him.’
‘I heard that your mother came up to your father’s second wife—
Auntie Sundri—and started abusing her. Then, when your father told her to go away, she started hitting him for no reason at all.’
‘He slapped her first.’
‘God, Jay. It must be terrible for you.’
‘It wasn’t a big deal. I’ve seen worse.’
‘No, I mean living with your mother. It must be really horrible.
How can you carry on? Doesn’t it affect you?’
‘It rips me apart. But it’s not all her fault.’
‘I know, the drinking’
‘No,’ he says with vehemence. ‘That’s what I keep telling everyone but nobody seems to understand. Drinking is not her main problem.
My father screwed up her life. Drinking is the result, not the cause.’
‘Don ’t get upset.’
‘I’m not upset.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten so personal.’
‘You didn’t get too personal. I can talk about it. No problem. This is the way things are, what’s wrong with talking about it.’
‘Hang on, I’ll just tell Right. Building ke andar... Bas. Kitna hua? Yeh lo. That’s my car.’
He walks around the bright-yellowVolks, looking at it without really seeing anything. His eyes are locked on an eleven-year-old image. His father slapping his mother, the faint smile of arrogant satisfaction on the bastard’s face; turning to his second wife, putting his arm around her, leading her away; his mother leaping at his back, clawing at him, ripping his suit, leaving three-fourths of a fingernail embedded in his shoulder, screaming abuses louder than the mournful background whine of the shehnai; the flower-covered walls encaging them; people—his father’s sisters, mother, relatives—turning to see his mother screaming: ‘YOU FUCKING BASTARD I’LL KILLYOU
KILL YOU KILLYOU KILU KILU KILU,’ his father flinging her back, against Jay; her writhing, twisting body, the bare skin of her belly hot against his palm as he holds her, her saree coming undraped in the struggle, the petticoat hiking up, the watching men staring at the exposed flesh, the naked glimpse of a thigh; himself repeating feverishly desperately, Mama, don’t, everybody’s looking, Mama, don’t, come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s—’
‘So what do you think? I call her Sixty-Nine.’
‘Sixty-Nine?’
She points to the side of the car: A big black circle, the number 69
in black inside it.
‘Oh.’
‘Come on,’ gesturing to him to follow her into the building.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m sick of this damn saree. I want to change. You’re not in a hurry, are you?’
He thinks of Mama sitting alone on the sofa, her back to the window, pouring her drink, sloshing it over the newspaper-covered table, muttering and giggling to herself, raising her glass to drink toasts to the empty flat.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No hurry.’
Meera's flat is a one-room kitchen with a terrace. The 15x18
room is dominated by a large Persian rug with a lot ofroyal blue and parrot green in its weave: on the floor baithak-style mattresses with lots of fluffy cushions and bolsters; Chinese rice-paper lanterns in two corners exude a soft warm glow when Meera flicks a switch; magazines— Elle, Vogue, Time, Newsweek, Paris Review, TLS—in a fan-arrangement in the third corner, alongside a row of books and CDs stretching from wall to wall.
‘Give me a minute,’ she says, unwrapping her saree right there in front of him.
He stares at her. ‘You're... er... changing? Should I go out?’
She grins. ‘Why? 'Too late. The top half of her is unwrapped already, blue silk blouse cut low in the front, backless; she starts on the lower half, he turns to the door. ‘I'm outside.’
‘Hey,’ she calls out. ‘You can check the kitchen. I think there's beer in the fridge.‘
There is. He hunts around for an opener. There's a lot of foreign stuff in here; microwave oven, dishwasher, washing machine; the fridge is stocked with imported cheese, chocolates, meat loaf, olives, sandwich spread. But where is the opener? He calls out uncertainly,
‘Meera?’
‘There's no opener. Have a can.’
Foreign beer. Heineken. He
takes hold of the tab, pulls too hard.
The ice-cold brew bubbles over his fist, froths and foams noisily. He puts it to his lips, keels back, feels the wonderful sensation ofcold beer roaring down his throat.
She comes in, buttoning up a white shirt, her hair half in half out the collar, in jeans so tight he can see the shape of her vulva. A glimpse of pink nipple and white breast as she sashays past him; she’s not wearing a bra, as usual. Her snugly denimed rear rubs against his crotch (deliberately?); his penis jerks and grows. He concentrates on the beer. ‘This is great stuff.’
‘I never touch it. You can take it if you like.’
‘Then why do you buy it?’
‘Someone brought it over. Are you hungry?’
She finishes buttoning the shirt, rolls up the sleeves, shakes her hair out. She looks good enough to eat. ‘Very.’
Let’s stop at Kook’s, pick up some food, and go to Bandstand.’
She looks at him sideways, her lashes curling. ‘Unless you want to stay in.’
‘No.’ A little beer spills down his throat. ‘No.We’ll go out.’
She nods. ‘Whatever you like.’
He’s relieved when they are out of the flat. Her desirablity is too much for him to cope with for an extended period. He also observes how her businesslike demeanour seems to vanish the minute she steps through the door; she sheds her office-self along with her office clothes. Off with the day—Meera, on with the night—Meera. He is also curious about all the foreign stuff the flat is filled with, but isn’t sure how to go about asking.
On the ground floor, a door opens and releases television sounds.
Chhaya Geet, that song that’s playing everywhere these days: Ding dong, oh baby sing a song. An old white-haired woman who looks too weak to stand emerges, draws the door shut slowly, looks up, sees Meera bouncing down the steps, Jay stepping after her. Jay feels her eyes on him, frowning, peering.
‘Hi, Auntie.’ Meera sings, tilting her head to reduce the height-difference between them.
The old lady is still staring at Jay. To Meera she says, ‘Again you are doing the same things, no. You gave me your promise.’
Meera laughs. ‘Auntie, Jay is an office colleague. He just came with me upstairs for five minutes.We’re on our way out. See?’
Shaking her head disapprovingly, lips pursed, ‘You gave me promise.’