Vertigo

by Ashok Banker

  After all, we're not strangers, are we? It takes half an hour of probing and cajoling, pleading and insisting, but eventually she begins to speak:

  ‘There was this guy in Ahmedabad, before we shifted to Bombay. He was my brother's friend. I was fourteen, he was eighteen.’ Jay stiffens at this, thinking she’s going to come out with some sordid account of how she lost her virginity in the back seat of an Ambassador ten years ago while he’s been holding on to his like his life depends on it; but she sees the anxiety on his face and touches his cheek, smiling gently: No. Nothing happened between us. But I had a big crush on him.

  What do you call it? Infatuation. There was this Paul Anka song that was popular then: Diana. It was a guy singing to a girl, but the words went straight to my heart—I’m so young and you’re so old—and I used to play that record every time he came over to our house. Finally, he got the message, and one day, when my brother was in the bathroom, he passed me a note. It was the name of a restaurant and a time: 6.30.

  I went. He took me for a drive in his car with the windows rolled up so nobody could see inside.'This reminds Jay of Meera'sVolkswagen, but of course he doesn't say so; he just listens.

  Tuli: ‘We didn't do much, just drove and talked. About my school, his college, our parents, their business. He was in his second year commerce, but he wanted to quit college, start his own business. He talked a lot about setting up a factory to manufacture switches.’

  ‘Switches?’ On—off buttons? For lights. . .'

  ‘Oh. Yeah.'

  ‘We met two or three times after that. He was very nice. I think I was really falling in love with him.We had even started discussing marriage, about him speaking to his parents to take the proposal to mine. Then one day, he was very upset about something. His father had told him that there was no question of getting into the switch-making line because he was the eldest son and he would have to take over the family business. The family business was of manufacturing yarn— kapde nu dhandho— and Gaurav hated that. So he was very angry. He said he wanted to drink beer and he took me to some permit room and drank five bottles of beer and grumbled about his father.‘

  ‘Five's a lot,’ says Jay, thinking of his own non-capacity for alcohol.

  Then he started abusing his father, and I told him to take me home. I was scared. I had never been to a permit room before. Have you?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, I guess so,’ Jay says, not sure if she means a bar in a restaurant or a real shady joint like the ones in Fort where girls in short skirts wait on the tables and where they sell hard liquor by the quarter-bottle.

  ‘On the way home, he stopped the car on a dark lane and started telling me that he was madly in love with me and wanted to marry me right away. I told him we couldn’t get married right away—I didn’t know what else to say, he was so drunk—because the priests would all be sleeping at that time.’

  ‘Touche,’ Jay says, grinning at this little touch of absurdity. He loves absurdities; there are days when he feels everything about life is absurd, especially the notion of sanity.

  Then he started to ... touch me,’ Tuli says, biting her lips, her voice perfectly calm and unemotional, no soap-operatic histrionics for her, thank you: ‘He tried to kiss me. I slapped him. He got more agitated.

  Then I got out of the car and ran down the street. I ran until I was sure he wasn’t following me, then I found an autorickshaw and went home.

  My parents were waiting for me, very worried. I told them my friend was dropping me home and her car got spoilt. Then, like a fool, I called his house to see if he had got home safe.’

  ‘That must have been a king-sized crush you had,’ Jay says, more than a little jealous. He can’t rememberTuli ever calling him up to find out if he reached home safe; then again, he doesn’t have a phone, so how could she call him?

  ‘I never saw him after that. He tried to apologize to me for that incident, but I refused to see him again. I told him that if he tried to talk to me again I would tell my brother. He stopped calling me.’

  Jay deliberately lights a cigarette, knowing that she hates him smoking when he’s with her. She takes the cigarette from his mouth and tosses it out the window.

  ‘You could give somebody a burning head,’ he says, coolly lighting another. This one he doesn’t let her grab, shifting away each time she tries to snatch it away. She gives up and shakes her head in disgust:You men.

  ‘So that’s the story of your great first love?’

  ‘I haven’t finished. After some months, I heard that he was going out with another girl. She was older than me but also from a decent family.’

  ‘You call your family decent? I thought your father made his money by hoarding sugar and selling it on the black market.’

  She ignores the bait: ‘That poor girl was ruined. She became pregnant.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jay doesn’t have any snappy comebacks to this one. He knows what it means to a conservative Gujarati girl to become pregnant before marriage.

  ‘And it was the same guy. Gaurav.’

  Jay waits, expecting more, but Tuli seems to have finished. She reaches into her handbag and takes out a slim golden hairbrush, and begins to brush her long gleaming hair.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it still doesn’t answer my question.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Why you don’t want to have sex with me before marriage?’

  She sighs. ‘Jay, I saw what happened to that girl. She was ruined.

  Gaurav refused to accept that the child was his, and she tried to commit suicide and had a miscarriage. It took her seven years to get a husband—and she was still beautiful and her father was offering fifteen lakhs as dowry. But her in-laws found out everything after the marriage. Her husband was so angry that she had been with another man before. And year before last I got the news, when I went to Ahmedabad— when you thought I went to get engaged, remember? —’

  Of course he remembers.

  ‘—I heard that her in-laws and husband had poured kerosene over her and set on fire. They said it was suicide, but everyone knew they killed her.’

  ‘Did they get caught?’ Jay asks, enraged.

  Tuli shakes her head.

  ‘Fucking bastards,’ he says.

  ‘And I don’t want that to happen to me, Jay.’

  ‘But,Tuli, that’s absurd.We’re getting married, there’s no question about that. And anyway, I don’t have any bride-burning intentions. I wouldn’t mind it even if you had slept with this guy, whatever his name is.’

  ‘Not you, silly. I mean some other family. In case—just in case something happens and we don’t get married, then I don’t want to suffer like how Ranjana suffered.’

  ‘But,Tuli, why should you marry anyone else? What’s stopping us from getting married today if we feel like it? Okay, maybe the priests are sleeping at this time,’ he injects a grin to underline the quip, and is pleased to see a smile tinge her lips, ‘but we can walk into a court and have a legal marriage. We don’t have to wait for your parents’

  approval. I’ve got a good job, I’ve got my own place, what more do you want? Let’s do it. Let’s get married today. Now.’

  She smiles. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Why not? What’s to stop us? Once we’re legally married, your parents will have to accept us. They won’t have any choice. It would cut out all the bullshit about my family background and how much gold jewellery my mother has and all that crap.’

  And, as he says the words, he really believes them, believes them with all the self-righteousness of his hot-blooded youth.

  ‘Jay, I want my parents to be happy with my choice. I want them to accept us. I want to be accepted by the society. I don’t want to hide away like a criminal. And I can only get that acceptance if we do everything the right way.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says glumly. ‘Back to square one.’

  ‘You have to talk to your father, there’s no way to avoi
d it.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve told me.’

  ‘Jay, listen, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘I’m listening. I’m becoming an expert at it.’

  ‘What about talking to your grandmother?’

  ‘Are you crazy?What would she do?’

  ‘Not your mother’s mother, your father’s mother. Dadiji.’

  ‘Her? Why?’ She likes you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘She likes me because I’m a man and I still carry the family name, and because my father doesn’t have any other sons—only a daughter by his second marriage—and because my two aunts don’t have sons too, only daughters. In short, because I’m the sole male heir and descendant of the Mehta clan.’

  ‘She likes you. You told me she used to keep asking you when you were getting married. She even asked you if you wanted her to find a nice girl for you.’

  ‘So? You want me to tell her to go ahead, find me a nice Gujarati wife with a big fat dowry who’ll obey my every command like I’m Shiva descended to earth?’

  ‘No, silly.Why don’t you talk to her about bringing the proposal to my parents?’

  Jay looks at her. She’s serious about this, it seems. And when he thinks about it even superficially, he can see it’s a shrewd idea. His grandmother is the epitome of Gujarati orthodoxy. Enlisting her aid would be equivalent to getting Indira Gandhi to endorse Pinch detergent powder. But then he remembers all he’s heard from his mother about how her in-laws mistreated her after marriage and that old familiar outrage swells up in him again. ‘No,Tuli. I can’t.’

  ‘But why? Don’t you see what a difference—’

  ‘I see. Of course I see. Yes, you’re right, she would agree, and she would be able to convince my father too. But,Tuli, I hate that woman.

  Come to think of it, I don’t exactly love my father either, you know. You were telling me about that girl who got burnt by her in-laws. Well, my mother got burnt up too. She got charred on the inside.

  I hate those damn Gujarati hypocrites.’

  Tuli is silent for a moment. When he tries to put his arm around her, to try to make contact with her, she pushes him away roughly.

  Don’t touch me,’ she says.

  ‘Tuli, I didn’t mean you. That comment about Gujaratis, it was referring to my—’

  ‘Fine. I know. You were talking about your family. I know how much you hate your family. But, Jay, don ’t you see? Your hate for your family is going to make it impossible for us to ever have a family.’

  He is stunned by that. Struck speechless for ten minutes. She gets up from the mattress and prowls around the room, gesturing with jerky spasmodic movements talking in staccato bursts, like a faulty machine gun: ‘I’m not willing to become a social outcast. I can’t marry you without my parents’ consent. First of all, I don’t want to hurt them. But most important, I don’t want to make a mistake like Ranjana made. I want to marry you, Jay, of course I do, but I want to do it properly. It’s easy for you to say let’s run away, let’s get married now. You used to say that three years ago, when we first met. But what would we have done if we had got married then? We would have been living with your drunkard mother, with your salary from DM hardly able to pay your mother’s wine bill.’

  ‘Is that what you’re bothered about? Money?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says clearly, nodding her head once, distinctly. I care about money. Money means a lot to me.'

  She comes and kneels before him, on the floor, clutching his hands, shaking him: ‘Jay, everything I've ever had, my clothes, my handbag, my books, my earrings, everything belongs to my father. I've never owned anything of my own. You keep saying Gujarati girls have no individuality, no pride of self. Don't you think I want to be on my own? Don't you think I want to live as I please—on my own terms?'

  ‘Then why don't you get a job? A career?'

  ‘You think my father will let me? He'll throw me out of the house If I go for a job interview tomorrow.'

  ‘Let him. You can get a place of your own, like I did.'

  She shakes her head, clicks her tongue in exasperation. ‘That's just it! You're different. You never had any family or social status to begin with, so you didn't have to worry about losing it. You had nothing to lose. I have the whole world to lose. Besides, tell you the truth, I don't think I could succeed at a job. I'm trained to cook, sew, have children, raise a family, buy jewellery, not to be a career woman like that friend of yours, Meera.'

  He gets a jolt at the sound of Meera's name coming from her mouth but keeps a straight face. He has never seen Tuli like this before; she seems possessed, as if some spirit has taken command of her for a brief instant. Perhaps the spirit is her, the real Tuli, struggling to be let out.

  ‘The only way I can get out. . . be on my own,' she says, saying each word separately, like a different sentence, ‘is by getting married.'

  He stares at her. ‘Does that mean you don't give a damn who you marry, so long as you marry somebody?'

  ‘Of course not. It just means that I have to make sure I follow all the rules.'

  He nods, exhaling smoke. He has smoked three cigarettes down to the filter without tasting them. He stubs out this one on the back of a matchbox and puts the stub into the empty cigarette packet to be disposed of later. Tuli suddenly leans forward and kisses him on the lips, her thick rubbery lips smothering a last puff of smoke inside his mouth. ‘Woof,’ he goes, as she breaks away coughing. They smile at each other. Yes, he thinks, I do want to marry this girl. I don’t understand her, and I don’t understand why I want to marry her out of all the women in the world, but I do. And by god, I’ll do anything I have to to make her happy.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to my grandmother.’

  She smiles. And she kisses him again. This time it lasts so long and gets so involved, he regains his erection. ‘Hey,’ he says, breaking away for a moment. ‘I thought we were talking about sex.’

  She puts her arms around him. ‘We were,’ she says.

  chapter thirty

  But then Pinch starts and for the next two months he barely gets time to sleep or eat, let alone go talk to his grandmother—whom he hasn’t met in years—about taking the proposal to Tuli’s parents. Tuli tells him not to worry. After that last conversation, she seems changed, softer in tone, easier to talk to. She even laughs at some of his jokes, wonder of wonders. ‘Don’t worry about the marriage,’ she tells him on the phone during an abbreviated lunch break in the middle of a Pinch technical presentation being made by the R&D department.

  I’ve told Mummy I won’t marry until next year and she said it’s okay.’

  He breathes a little easier. For a while there, he was actually beginning to worry that she might be tempted by some of those megabuck suitors. So you’ll fend them off,’ he says, and she laughs: ‘Yes. With ten-foot poles! ’That’s a good one. Is this really Tuli?

  ‘Concentrate on your work,’ she tells him, ‘there’s no hurry to talk to Daddy. In any case, he’s so busy these days helping Bhaiya with his building project.’

  ‘How’s that going? ’Thirty thousand is the most he’s ever invested in anything before. Come to think of it, it’s the only money he’s ever invested in anything.

  ‘Fine, fine. He’s going to start construction right after the monsoon.’

  ‘Tell him to build it strong, and not to break any FSI regulations.’

  The Pratibha case has been in the papers lately, and so has the patent joke: Will they demolish the top six floors, the bottom six floors, or every alternate floor?

  ‘Jay?

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I can come over this Saturday.’

  Unbelievable. This can’t be Tuli. ‘Hello? Hello? Excuse me, I think you’ve got a wrong number, madam. I thought I was speaking to Tuli Jhaveri!’

  ‘Jay, seriously.’

  ‘I’m serious. I’m so serious that they’re shifting me to ICU!’

  ‘Jay, come on. I can be there at 10.’


  He stops grinning, realizing she really means it. And there’s something in her tone that makes him frown; some undercurrent of... what?

  ‘Tuli, I have to work this Saturday. You know, that new project I told you about.’

  ‘Can’t you go late?’

  She really does have something up her sleeve. He thinks, working it out in his head, doodling on his pad.

  ‘I have to be in office by 10. Everybody’s going to be here.’

  ‘Go late.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Call up and tell them your mother’s sick.’

  As usual, she knows just the right excuse to make. He glances up; Milind and Sanjeev are coming up the corridor, files in hand, heading back to the large conference room for the post-lunch session. Today’s Friday; the Saturday they’re talking about is tomorrow. ‘Tuli, you mean tomorrow? This Saturday?’

  ‘Yes.We do have extra classes tomorrow, don’t we?’

  Her mother must be passing by. She lapses into this hi-Jyoti-see-you-at-college style to avoid suspicion at such moments. Shrewd Tuli.

  ‘Okay,’ he says at last. ‘Come over. I’ll manage something.’ Okay, Jyoti. See you in college at 1O tomorrow. Bye.’

  ‘Bye,’ he says and looks at the brown Tata Telecom phone on his desk. Something is happening to Tuli, and he intends to find out what it is.

  She comes dressed in a skirt and blouse, her hair unfettered, eyes rimmed with kohl, lipstick-lipped, scarlet-nailed, One Show—fragrant, arms and legs just—waxed, with an air of this-is-as-good-as-it-gets-so-make-the-most-of-it about her. He inhales her smell; not the perfume, her smell, and he smells sex.

  She starts taking off her clothes the moment he shuts the door. In minutes, she stands undressed before him, naked except for a pair of pearl earrings. He stares. She says with a little nervous laugh: ‘Now don’t tell me you’ve got your period!’ and lies back on the mattress.

  So it begins.

  Having discovered sex, real sex, not those frantic masturbations into spit-greased palms over newsglaze centrespreads, Jay starts to feel the first hint of resentment for Pinch.Well into the first month by the time he and Tuli lose their virginity to each other, he now lives, breathes, eats Pinch, Pinch, Pinch. The initial thrill of being selected to be part of such a mega-project has begun to wear off already, giving way to a restlessness, an irritation with all this jargon and analysis. Get on with it, he wants to tell them all; get on with the real work. He knows that multinationals often spend a decade or more preparing for the launch of a new product. In this time, a formidable mass of Pinch data has been accumulated, spelling out everything from the approved procedure for briefing the ad agency right down to what kind of promotional schemes are likely to be effective in different parts of the country. So what are we supposed to be doing, Jay wonders, a little disillusioned that so much work has already been done, so many major decisions already taken. The answer comes at the close of the first month, when they have their third meeting with the MD.