by Ashok Banker
He leaps to the front door, looks out. The lift indicator shows the lift is on its way down. He runs back inside, to his room, to the balcony, leans out dangerously far, trying to see her emerging from the lobby, ready to yell, plead, beg; but only some children dressed in school uniforms burdened with enormous bags full of school books come tramping out. He waits, growing wild with despair. A laugh from behind makes him swing around, startled. She is in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, laughing.
‘You ran right past me,’ she says. ‘You thought I’d gone?’
He can’t believe how she’s playing with him, teasing him. He’s going crazy with confusion. ‘Damn it ,Tuli,’ he shouts, ‘don’t do this!
Don’t fuck me up like this.’
She pouts and rises from the bed, plucking her little crocodile-skin purse, moving to the door. He slams the door shut, pushing against the doorstopper so hard, the rubber squeals a protest. He curses, kicks the stopper up, shuts the bedroom door, drives the latch home.
He turns to her, angry, half-crying with rage. ‘Talk to me,’ he pleads.
Just talk to me please.’
She reaches for the latch. ‘Let me out.’
He holds her hand. ‘I can’t live without you.’
She struggles to free herself from his grasp. ‘Let me go!’
‘First talk to me.’
‘Unlock this door. Let go of me.’
She twists and tugs at her hand, pushing against him, visibly upset.
He lets her pull her hand free, but puts his back to the door. ‘Tuli, what did I do? Did I do something wrong? Did I say something? Tell me what I did.’
She rubs her wrist, a faint red ring mark visible where he’d held her. ‘I have to go home,’ she says. ‘Please open the door or I’ll scream.’
‘Tuli, this is me. Jay.'
Again, coldly: ‘Open the door please.'
For a moment, he almost gives in to his fury, almost flings the door wide open, lets her go without saying another word, walk out of his life forever; then he regains control of his emotions and says gently:
‘I got the flat.'
She looks at him; really looks at him. For the first time since she's walked in, he sees a trace of the old Tuli here. It gives him hope. He goes on, talking quickly, quietly: ‘I paid the deposit, advance rent, brokerage, everything. I've taken possession.We can go there now if you like.'When she doesn't respond, he adds, ‘It's our place now, baby.
Our flat.'
She looks down, turning her purse over and over again. Somehow, in the struggle, the rubber band holding her ponytail has snapped and now her hair falls forward over her face.
He reaches out slowly, touches her arm. She shivers, keeps turning the purse. ‘I'll do anything you ask me to, baby,' he says. ‘Just say you're mine. Only mine.'
She looks up at him. He thinks she was on the verge of tears but now her eyes are dry and clear, light brown and filled with an impenetrable opaqueness. She turns and goes to the balcony, looking out at the view. A gentle sea wind ruffles her open hair, swirling it around her shoulders. She leans both elbows on the railing, staring out at the slice of bright-blue sea visible between two buildings.
He walks out to the balcony, stands beside her. They stand silently for a few minutes, neither saying anything. After a while, he begins to feel the anger flowing out of his fingertips, evaporating in the warm cheerful sunshine falling on his hands and face. The sun lights up her face, makes her eyes sparkle like cold diamonds; her hair catches the light, returns a reddish sheen that comes from the henna she uses to condition her hair once a month. Downstairs, a fish vendor in her tucked-up nine-yard saree is slicing up a pair of pomfrets for a housewife standing by with a steel thali in hand. A pair of calico cats sniff around the feet of the fisherwoman, waiting for the unwanted parts which she tosses down on the asphalt driveway. The steel thali catches the sun for a moment, turning it into a shimmering shield. Jay warms his hands in the sun; he is cold, very cold.
The same day, after Tuli leaves, he goes over to the clinic at Bandra where Mama had stayed once, several breakdowns ago. He speaks to the matron on duty, a thin nurse with a pinched face and bad teeth. She calls out to two ayahs in white sarees squatting on their haunches against a white-tiled wall, chattering in Gujarati. She asks if either of them would be interested in nursing a drying-out alcoholic. They shrug and rattle off excuses in a mixture of Marathi and Gujarati. Jay speaks to them directly. The darker one introduces him to another ayah, a shrewd-looking woman with a moustache of fine downy hair. She asks Jay curt questions about how much he will pay, the living conditions, food, the condition of the patient, why he isn't admitting her to a nursing home, etc. Finally, she tells him to come back at 7 in the evening for her decision—she has to ask her sister for approval. Jay asks her why she can't ask Sister right away—he thinks she means the matron—but she is referring to her real sister. He agrees to come back in the evening.
The rest of the day he passes in a kind of stupor. He sits on his bed, back to the wall, knees drawn up to his chin, thinking about nothing in particular. He remembers his mother sending him off to school, rising at dawn to prepare one of his favourite snacks—French toast or cheese omelette sandwiches—for his tiffin box, waking him up at 7, nagging him through his morning toilet. The years flicker across his mind's eye like an old black-and-white footage from a 1930's newsreel.
He falls into an uneasy sleep in this uncomfortable position, has disturbing dreams, wakes up sweating, back aching, throat hurting.
He has slept past his mother’s lunchtime. He goes to her room and finds her lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, fingers toying nervously with a hole in the bedsheet. Her eyes flicker, blink, focus on him. She rises with exaggerated slowness on one elbow, smiles weakly at him. She has been responding for the last week or so, but he doesn’t know which he hates more: this nervous half-tearful anxiety or the catatonia. He leans against the wall. Seepage from a leaking pipe in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom has turned the wall damp and cold. He shifts uncomfortably, finding a slightly drier spot.
His mother smiles weakly again, opening and closing her parched lips, which she constantly wets with her tongue. She seems to be trying to ask something, but can’t form the words. Jay explodes with irritation.
‘What? What is it? Speak, Mama. Come on. You’re not dumb.
Speak!’
She stares round-eyed at this outburst, a child confronted with a furious parent. He goes up to her. She cringes, literally putting her hands before her chest, shivering with fear.
‘Mama, it’s me, Jay. I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be scared of me. I just want you to talk, to be yourself. You’ve got to snap out of this coma.’
She stares at him, eyes filled with hurt, betrayal. He takes her hands. She starts, terrified. He keeps his grip gentle, voice reassuring.
‘Mama, I’m trying to get someone to take care of you. An ayah.
Full-time. I have to go back to work, you know. You want me to go back to work, don’t you?’
She is looking down at her hands. She extrudes her lower lip, shrugs, turns her palms upwards slightly: I don’t know anything any more.
He sighs, breathes out. She glances at him, a furrow of anxiety appearing on her brow.
‘What? Me? I’m fine. I just want to get back to work, Mama. I have to get back to work.’
She looks at him with an unmistakable question in her eyes. Perhaps it is to elicit and answer this very question he has come here now.
‘Why do I want to work? That's obvious, Mama. I have to earn.We can't survive on nothing.’
She looks down again, defeated. He sits quietly with her for a moment, waiting for further questions, but there are none. He serves lunch for her; alu matar, masoor dal, and brun pao. She has started eating on her own now, but she slops food on her clothes, and picks desultorily at the vegetable. He loses patience and feeds her himself.
She looks at him gratefully, chewing the peas as carefu
lly as rare steak. He smiles briefly. He is thinking about the job interviews he went for the month before the previous, whether it’s worth following up any of them after all this time. He holds a handful of food to her mouth without looking, doesn't notice her shaking her head to indicate she’s had enough, and smears the food on her cheek accidently.
‘Damn! ' he shouts. ‘Why can't you eat your food like any normal person? Look at this mess!’
She cowers against the bedstead, dal dripping from her cheeks, hands raised in supplication. He slams the plate down on the table, goes into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe her off, comes back to find her standing by the window, looking out. ‘Mama? What are you doing?’
He goes over to the window, peers out. On the tarred asphalt of the building's driveway lies the steel plate, upside down, the steel katori beside it, still rolling to and fro on its side, both surrounded by a splotch of yellow dal dotted with green peas. He stares at the fallen plate, then at his mother. She goes back to her bed and sits down, staring dumbly at her hands. ‘Mama, are you crazy?Why did you throw that plate out?’
She doesn't answer. Instead, she reaches for her plastic bottle, drinks water with a disgusting sucking-gurgling sound. And he knows it's useless to ask her why again. He knows why. She threw the plate out because she blamed the food for his temper. For coming between them. So what will she do once she learns—if she doesn't know already—that it's because of Tuli that he’s getting this ayah, hunting for a job, and because of Tuli that he'll soon be moving out of this house, staying apart from her, his mother, for the first time in his life.
What will she do then? And, more important, what will he do?
chapter twenty-three
The next Monday, he wakes up early, even before the milkman comes.
The nights and early mornings are still a bit chilly, but a cold shower acclimatizes him and he feels good, standing before the washbasin in his banian and towel, shaving. He prefers the tube shaving creams, but has switched to the cake type in the last few months, for economic reasons.
He wets the old brush, its bristles stiff and yellow with age, rubs it briskly in the Godrej shaving cake, working up a good lather. As he applies the lather to his cheeks and chin, he hears the ayah stirring in the kitchen. She began working for them on Saturday. She is charging thirty rupees a day plus all meals, and has warned him that if he expects her to stay on for more than two months, she will raise her rates. He has no idea where he will get the money from—especially if she quits before his PF money comes—but the anxiety is a familiar one, easily pushed to the immense section of his mind marked ‘Money Problems’.
He shaves once in the direction of the growth, then lathers again and shaves upwards, against the growth. The ayah emerges from the kitchen, goes into the bathroom. He splashes water on his face, washes off the suds. In his bedroom, he is unable to lock the door while he changes because the bathroom is attached to the room, so he is forced to keep the towel wrapped around him as he pulls on a pair of trousers. He needs new clothes too. These pants are the only really decent ones he has left, and he only has two good shirts. Combing his hair, it occurs to him that he lives in a flat worth thirty-seven lakhs, has possession of another flat for which he pays more rent per month than the average per capita income of an Indian citizen, and yet he has only one decent set of clothes, a hole in his socks, and only two pairs of briefs. The ayah emerges from the bathroom and asks him if he wants tea since she is making some for herself. He notices that she didn't ask his permission, and is tempted to tell her that if she wants tea so often she can bloody well buy her own sugar and milk, but he can't afford to lose her, so he simply says yes, he will have some.
The tea is too sweet, as he expected. Jay is sure she will consume more sugar in a single day than he consumes in a week, but he keeps his misgivings to himself. She asks him what she should cook for lunch—she has agreed to cook too, on condition that she gets to eat as much rice and dal as she pleases—and he points out the yam in the vegetable basket. He leaves her holding the large brown yam which closely resembles a swollen ankle and foot, and goes out without checking on his mother. He is scared she might ask him where he is going. Since the plate-throwing incident, she has been recovering rapidly—if regaining her natural bellicosity and paranoia can be called recovery—and he doesn't want a scene now. He shuts the door softly behind him, hardly able to believe that this is really happening, that he is able to leave without the anxiety of how she will manage while he is gone, without the aching tension at the back of his head while he is out: Got to get back soon, Mama’s alone at home. He doesn't wait out in the corridor for the lift, but goes down the stairs. Meeting the Secretary of the Society on the first floor, he is a little startled but has the presence of mind to wish the old balding Sindhi a good morning.
As he leaves the building, walks out the driveway, he keeps expecting any minute to be called back, but no cry rends the misty morning, and he crosses the road and is on his way to the bus stop.
Synergetics India Ltd has two entire floors in a prime office building on Rampart Row. Jay is impressed and depressed by the thick pile of carpeting and original oils hanging on the pastel-shade walls in the large reception. Even the sofa for visitors is upholstered in genuine leather. Everything gleams with success, even the eyes of the smartly groomed receptionist who watches him look around. ‘May I help you, sir?’
‘I'm... I'm here to see Mr... Rai.'
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘Yes. Er... 9.30.’
‘Your name, sir?’
‘Jayesh Mehta.'
She walks her glossy fingernails over a push-button intercom, speaks softly and replaces the receiver. ‘Mr Rai will be with you in a minute. Please take a seat, sir.’
He sinks below knee level in the deep soft sofa. The magazines on the glass coffee table before the sofa are new, the current issues, and he can't decide whether to pick Time, Fortune, India Today, Business India or the Economist. To his left is a lamp with a shade which makes him feel like he's in the lounge of a five-star hotel. He realizes that the faint soothing music isn't coming from his head but emanates from a speaker in the ceiling directly above him. Muzak, that Richard Clayderman guy. Jay recognizes the piece; the title theme from Chariots of Fire. He leafs through the Economist. A peon in a smart grey-and-white uniform comes by bearing a tray laden with steaming cups and saucers. The receptionist asks Jay if he would like some tea or coffee. He declines. The peon puts a little paper coaster on the receptionist's desk and places a cup with a saucer on the coaster. Jay notices for the first time that the receptionist doesn't have a switchboard like most others he's seen before. He wonders where the telephone operator sits. An article by Peter Drucker catches his eye. He's hardly begun reading the lead when the receptionist informs him that Mr Rai will see him now. He goes straight down the corridor as instructed and turns right. The second door has a brass nameplate: Devendra Rai, Product Manager. Jay knocks twice. Someone calls out: ‘Come in please.’ He turns the brass doorknob and goes in.
The cabin is larger than Jay’s bedroom, larger than Chris’s cabin, larger than the cabin of Shenoy, CMD of Fortham’s. The steel-grey carpeting outside has given way to beige, the walls are pale ivory. The prints on the walls are of Renaissance classics. Instead of a conventional desk, a round mini-conference table with five chairs around it occupies the centre of the room. At the far end of the room is a large French window. The building overlooks the docks. A wall unit, straddling the door, consists mainly of bookshelves. There is even a small refrigerator in one corner! The room is brightly lit, but there is also a Philips Pluton lamp on one shelf of the wall unit, which, he realizes, contains a pull-out writing surface. Jay has never seen a cabin like this before in his life.
The man sitting at the conference table in rust-brown trousers with a white shirt and black suspenders is short and has a thick trim bread shot through with grey. He rises to greet Jay, putting down a smouldering thin-s
temmed pipe and comes around the table, both hands outstretched. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jay. Call me Dave.’ He leads Jay to the table, pulls out a chair for him and adjusts it after he’s sat down. Then, in the same soft accentless English: ‘What will you have? Coffee? Tea? Or a soft drink?’
‘It’s all right, really.’
‘Or would you like some lemon tea? That’s what I’m having.’
‘Okay. Anything s fine.’
Dave picks up the intercom: ‘Sunder? Two lemon teas please. And biscuits.’ He picks up the pipe and taps it out. The tobacco smells fragrant and wonderful to Jay. Dave puts down the pipe, clasps his hands together and smiles at Jay. ‘So? Meera has told me some very good things about you.’
‘Yes. I mean, uh, we’ve worked together.’
Dave nods. ‘Jayesh, I’m going to ask you a few questions. Be absolutely frank with me. I’d appreciate it.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Dave waves that away. ‘Dave, please.We use first names here at Synergetics. Even the MD.’
A knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ The same peon Jay saw at the reception enters carrying a tray. He sets down a pot of tea, two cups and saucers with slices of fresh lime on the side, sugar, and a plate of cashew and salt biscuits. He presents a bill which Dave signs with a quick economical flick of his wrist, then leaves, shutting the door very carefully. Dave pours out two cups of tea, keeping his forefinger on the lid of the pot. He inserts the slice of lime, stirs it gently in the tea, and sips it delicately. Jay does the same. He takes too big a sip and scorches his tongue, but the fragrant lime-tinged flavour is exquisite.
The tea must be imported, he concludes. Dave puts down his cup:
‘What do you want to do, Jay? In life, I mean.What are your ambitions?’
To marry Tuli and see my mother lead a normal life again, he wants to say—he did ask him to be ‘absolutely frank’, after all—but knows that isn’t what Dave is asking.
‘To be successful. To do my job as well as I can.’