by Ashok Banker
‘See you.’
‘Bye.’
When she pulls up in a cab outside the theatre, he comes down the marble steps and grins. She smiles back curiously. He pays the taxi driver. She’s wearing a yellow and red saree and small gold earrings.
‘Saree?’
‘My uncle. So orthodox. It’s painful.’
‘Anyway, you like sarees.’
‘You don’t.’ She slips her hand into his.
‘Depends.’ He presents the tickets to the concierge.
‘On what?’
Walking up the stairs to the balcony. ‘ On where we are and what we’re doing.’
‘We’re at Sterling cinema hall and we’re going to watch Rocky III.’
‘Aha.’ Showing the tickets to the usher, being shown into the theatre to their seats . The immense 70 mm screen—one of only two in Bombay—is blank, grey.Village People s YMCA is playing on the muffled sound system. The balcony and dress circle are only half full, mostly with college coeds. A large group of maybe twenty boys and girls, the boys in one row, the girls in the row below, flirting, flicking paper arrows, nudging each other and making jokes about ‘girlfriends’
and ‘boyfriends’. Junior college types. Jay breathes a sigh of relief when the usher leads them to corner seats well away from the rowdy bunch.
‘What do you mean, aha?’
He smiles at her as she adjusts her saree, shifting on the vinyl-upholstered seat. His seat creaks rustily.‘You’ll find out soon.’
‘No fooling around, okay? My friends are here.’
‘Where?’ Looking around the hall. On the screen, slides advertising restaurants, boutiques and jewellery stores begn to flash. The music has changed to Queen’s Another one bites the dust. The junior college boys begin to sing along with the chorus, stomping their feet loudly in time to the backbeat. The usher, leaning against a pillar drowsily, looks up at them but says nothing. Two girls sitting in the row behind the stomping singing junior collegians say something loudly to one of the boys. An argument breaks out. Jay takes Tuli's hand in his as the lights dim. He caresses it. It is two-thirds the length of his own hand, whiter, and smooth as a baby's cheek. He places it on his thigh. She takes it away and puts on the hand-rest between them. He puts his hand on her bare midriff, slides it up until it massages her breasts. She seems to yield, softens, moves against his grasping fingers; but when he moves his hand under her blouse she stiffens and takes hold of his hand, putting it down on the hand-rest. On-screen, a movie trailer comes on. An overloaded truck overturns in slow motion, guns are fired, a girl screams and leaps off the top of a skyscraper, and Jay feels a painfully hard erection pushing at his trousers. He slips his hand down the side of the hand-rest, lets it rest on Tuli's thigh for a moment, the synthetic fabric of her saree grainy and frictive to his sensitive fingerpads. He grips her thigh and slides his hand up to thejunction of her thigh and crotch.
Abruptly, she shoves his hand away. ‘JAY, BEHAVE YOURSELF.'
Jay's heart stops. Even in the semi-darkness he can see heads turning. Some of the junior college boys start ‘yay-yaying' loudly.
One of them emits a shrill wolf whistle that echoes in the large theatre. His erection wilts; his cheeks burn. ‘Stop it, Jay.'Tuli's voice is softer this time, but there is a strange note in it; she is ... crying?
‘Tuli?What the hell did I do?What is it?’
Rising, she pushes past him and runs down the steps to the glowing red EXIT sign. He follows her, ignoring the ‘What, man?' jeers of the college boys.
He emerges from the hall in time to see her disappear into the ladies’ toilet. He almost follows her in, then stops and waits outside.
When she emerges, her eyes are wet and sunken, not red, her eyes never get red when she cries. She starts towards the stairway that leads down to the lobby; he walks quickly up to her. ‘Tuli? Tuli? Tuli, hold on a minute.Where are you going?’ She stops, one hand on the wooden banister. He sees their reflection in the display window with publicity photos of Stallone bashing and being bashed under the floodlights, as well as in the mirror on the wall of the staircase. He has a fleeting impression of a little boy reaching out to stop a woman.
‘Tuli, what did I do? Why did you have to shout like that? God, it was so embarrassing.’
She doesn’t look at him.
‘Tuli, talk to me. Come here, sit down here, talk to me.What’s the matter?What did I do?’
He tries to pull her over to a couch. Two ushers with torches in hand stand by the theatre door, watching them. Tuli seems drugged, insensate. But she lets herself be tugged at, taken to the couch, made to sit down. Jay looks around desperately, sees the snack counter.
Would you like something to eat? Tea, coffee? Soft drink?’
She doesn’t answer. He looks at her, aware of the ushers out of the corner of his eye, wishing they’d go the hell away. A couple come sprinting up the stairs two at a time; the girl’s breasts jiggle with every step. They go into the hall; one of the ushers follows them in.
‘Tuli, talk to me, please.’
‘Jay …’
‘Yes? Yes? Look, I’m sorry if I hassled you in the hall, but come on, Tuli, did you have to shout?’
‘Jay, I’m going away.’
‘But you were going to watch the movie anyway. At least let’s sit somewhere and talk. Come on,Tuli, I bunked work to be with you.’
‘Daddy’s being harassed too much by the income tax people. And in any case, my uncle and my cousins are all settled over there. They even have their green cards. My uncle’s going to sponsor us. Mummy and I will go first, Daddy and Bhaiya will follow later.’
He looks at her. She is staring down at her palms, placed one over the other on her lap. ‘Tuli, what are you talking about?’
‘I told you they were talking about going abroad.’
‘Abroad?’
‘States.’
‘For a holiday, you mean?’
‘No.’
‘What, perrnanently?’
She glances at him, her head lowered, then looks down again.
‘Okay, so even if they’re going, what does that have to do with us?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘You don’t mean to tell me. . . look, you don’t have to go with them.
You can’t just go off like that.’
‘It’s all fixed, Jay. I can’t stay here alone. My uncle’s selling off his flat here, the one we’re staying in right now. I can’t stay here alone.’
‘But we’re getting married. Okay, let them go. We’ll be getting married, you’ll be with me.’
She looks up at him again with a strange look in her doe eyes.‘ Oh, Jay. I don’t know what to say.’
‘What? Say what?’
She mumbles something he doesn’t catch. He leans forward impatiently. ‘What? I didn’t hear you.What did you say?’
She looks away and emits one thin sob. No teardrops fall though; just that one involuntarily sob, like a polite cough. ‘It’s all fixed.’
‘What’s all fixed? For god’s sake, Tuli, talk to me. What are you telling me? I don’t understand this.What? What? Be clear.’
‘They’ve found a guy. In States.’
‘A guy?’
‘A proposal.’
‘A marriage proposal? For whom? For you? But you said they’d already agreed to our marriage. You said that was all fixed.’
‘I didn’t want to worry you. You always get so worked up.’
‘Obviously I get worked up. This is my future,Tuli. This is not some matrimonial ad I’ve replied to. I want to spend my life with you,Tuli.’
‘Daddy wasn’t in favour of you. Mummy said she would try to convince him, but now of course there’s no question.’
‘Don’t say that. How can you say things like that? Don’t you love me? Don’t you want to marry me? I thought you want to marry me.
I thought you love me.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then how can yo
u—And what do you mean it’s all fixed up? You mean ... you’re going?’
She shakes her head miserably, frowning with the effort of making him understand the futility of her position. ‘I can’t do anything, Jay.
You know that.’
‘You can tell them how you feel.’
‘I can’t go against my father.’
A sudden suspicion strikes him, like the sulphurous head of a match striking the phosphorescent strip on the side of a matchbox: ‘Tuli, do your parents know you’re in love with me.’
She throws her hands up in despair. ‘Jay, you don’t understand.’
' Oh.’ He looks down at his shoes. The multiple reflections reappear, giving him three different angles of this exciting fight to the finish in his life; the championship bout of his career; his own private Rocky III.
The only thing missing is the pounding background music. They sit silently for a while. Then Tuli talks. She talks to him about her parents, and how orthodox they are, and how she can’t bear to hurt them after all they’ve done for her, how Jay’s father and grandmother did make a good impression on them but the fact that he is in ’service’ went against him, that they feel she would be marrying below their level, that Jay wouldn’t be able to give her all the things she’s used to, wouldn’t be able to sustain her at the same standard of living she’s been used to, and after all her parents have done for her, how can she hurt them? And now that they 're migrating to the States, she can't possibly stay here alone, and most of her relatives are already over there anyway and—
Jay's ears fill with a strange humming that grows until it fills the entire universe; surely everybody else must hear it too. He glances around at the man behind the snack counter, the usher smoking a beedi surreptitiously, the flies hovering over an abandoned cup of coffee. The humming grows deafeningly loud, like the rushing of blood in one’s ears; it blots out everything, except Tuli's voice, which continues from a great distance, rolling and rumbling down a long dark tunnel. He closes his eyes and feels a fly buzzing against his eyelashes, then settling on his lips. He makes no move to brush it away. A single tear wells up in his right eye and tries to escape. He blinks several times and it absorbs back into the eye. His left eye remains dry and hot. The fly cleans its wings on his lips. He remembers reading an award-winning advertisement about flies—they defecate over a surface, then eat, then vomit, then eat again. The fly tries to enter his mouth, but can't get through his pursed lips. It buzzes between his lips. In his private darkness, he hears the click-whoosh of the door to the hall opening and the footsteps and voices of more latecomers going in; briefly, the rousing theme music of the movie—
Eye of the Tiger. An image of Stallone working his sweat-slimy muscles as he rolls a high punching ball flickers on the inside of his eyelids. He feels the urgent need to urinate, to drink a hot beverage, to smoke a cigarette, to run barefoot on wet grass, to fall backwards into a cool swimming pool, naked, to keep his eyes closed thus, forever, forever, all day.
chapter forty-seven
Four months later, Jay wakes up in the small hours—the fluorescent digital alarm clock says 3.26—and raises himself on his elbow. His pillow is wet. He looks around the room, at the shadowy shapes of the teak wood bedroom furniture. The night is quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a car screeches around a curve, a dog barks mournfully. To the east, the muted rattling of a train fades away. He listens to the silence. A soft sea wind blows in from the open balcony door. His shorts are damp with semen; he masturbated himself to sleep earlier.
Eventually, a little after four, a plane passes overhead, its rumbling shivering down through the night to his terrace flat, setting his bones trembling.
Tonight,Tuli and her mother are flying to the USA.
Perhaps that is their flight.
chapter forty-eight
The days pass like a nightmare. The nights begin and end without a middle. He wakes every night around the same time. Sometimes he sits on the balcony ledge, five floors above the street, feet dangling out precariously, a cigarette trailing smoke between his limp fingers, eyes closed. Sometimes he drinks a cup of hot milk; hot enough to scald his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The next day he has a blister on his tongue-tip.
Work goes smoothly. He starts on a new project—a range of herbal shampoos. He reads thick files of research on shampoo usage, buying patterns, brand development, building loyalty, below-the-line schemes and their effectiveness in price-sensitive markets, the problem of how to adapt Western technology to meet Third World consumer needs, the impossibility of successfully combining the action of a shampoo with the action of a conditioner in one formula.
Twice he goes to meet his mother, but turns away at the gate of the building. The third time, he goes up the steps quickly to avoid being recognized by the liftman, checks the floor to make sure nobody is in sight, then slips that month’s envelope in through the mail slot.
This is the sixth month he has not seen his mother.
In the seventh month, he is called out of a meeting by Suchitra who never leaves her reception desk but has done so because it is an emergency. She tells him that there is a man on the line saying something about his mother.
The man is Mr Lobo, his mother's next door neighbour. The man who wanted to buy his mother's flat for thirty-seven lakhs. He speaks in the same quiet calm voice, like a doctor explaining a very serious ailment to a patient: the ailment is serious, the patient is his mother.
He returns to the meeting and tells Dave about the phone call. Dave tells him he can take the rest of the day off, but to call in the next day if he's unable to make it.
He is trembling when he gets out of the cab and looks at the peeling white paint of Bhabha Hospital. It takes him twenty minutes to find the ICU because only one lift is working and a long line of visitors are waiting before him. He asks a nurse the way and she points to a green door with several pairs of shoes before it. He removes his shoes and leaves them with the others, pausing to arrange them beside a pair of Kolhapuri chappals. He goes inside the ICU.
The air conditioning is very powerful, cold gusts of air swirling around him as he comes in from the hot June day. A young doctor on duty listens to his stammering explanation and points to a curtained-off bed, the last but one on the right. He pulls the curtain aside slowly.
At first, he thinks the doctor has made some mistake, but then he hears the loud strained breathing of the patient and recognizes it as his mother's. She sounds like she's sleeping off a particularly large dose of country liquor; in a way she is. She is yellow with jaundice, her body puffed and bloated. Her swollen stomach rising and falling with her rattling loud breathing. Her knees are bent and raised, her right hand flung over the edge of the bed, an intravenous tube leading from it up to a saline drip. Her face is blotched with white spots.
There is crusted blood on her nose and around her mouth, which is wide open and quivers with each tortured exhalation. A strange apparatus emerges from between her upraised legs to a pan under the bed. This pan is full of thin treacly blood. The apparatus is a pair of catheters from her nether orifices. She is bleeding to death in a jaundice coma. Her swollen, blue, yellow, white face is unnaturally large on the small white hospital pillow. Her hair is much whiter than when he last saw her. He trembles at the sight of her, unable to walk away, hypnotized into sick fascination by her grotesque state.What hurts most is seeing this familiar face in such alien surroundings.
The patient in the next cubicle is attached to a lung machine. The equipment makes strange inhuman sounds which are nerve-racking in this silent mausoleum atmosphere—like a tap dripping at long intervals on a frozen winter night.
Jay leans forward, forcing his lips down, down to his mother's jaundiced yellow skin, pressing them dryly against her hot parched forehead, then drawing back abruptly as he realizes he might catch something. ‘I'm sorry,’ he whispers, then looks around, embarrassed that someone, the doctor, the nurses, might have heard him. Nobody is looking th
is way. He mouths the words again, silently: I'm sorry.
Lobo comes that evening and talks to him in the corridor outside the ICU, beside the array of shoes and slippers. He tells him how the cleaning woman rang his bell that morning and complained that Jay’s mother hadn't been opening the door for the last two days; and that she hadn't been paid last month’s salary in full because of some dispute over a quantity of missing sugar. Lobo got the watchman and liftman to break down the door and they found Jay's mother in her bedroom, lying on the floor in a very large pool of blood and vomit. A doctor living in the building pronounced her a jaundice patient in a coma and called an ambulance to have her taken to hospital. Bhabha was the nearest hospital, and being a government one, Lobo knew it would not cost Jay much. He accompanied her here, had her admitted, and paid the Rs 400 deposit for admission to ICU. No bed was available at that moment, so he waited with her in the corridor until another patient expired of cerebral virus. The doctor in charge of ICU, a Dr Chattopadhyay, asked him a lot of questions about her condition and how she had been allowed to come to such a state. Lobo explained his position and said he would try and contact the son as soon as possible and ask him to come over. Then he went back and searched Jay's mother's flat until he found a small brown telephone diary. He began dialling every number in the book, asking forJay Fernandes, because he had no idea that Jay went by his father's name while his mother retained her maiden name. Finally, he was able to get some news at some company called DM, where a very cooperative gentleman came on the line and informed him that Jayesh Mehta was no longer working with them but he could give him a number where he could be contacted. Lobo then called the number, which turned out to be another company, and a lady with a very nice voice said Jayesh was in an important meeting at present but could she know what this was regarding. Lobo told her and Jay came on the line. And here they are.
Jay thanks him profusely, almost brought to tears at the thought of such neighbourliness. He had always thought Lobo to be a Scroogish recluse who kept his fortune tightly held to his thick chest. Now, he revises his opinion drastically. After Lobo leaves, sitting on the uncomfortable plastic chair near the lift—visitors are not allowed to stay with patients in the ICU—he thinks back to the last time he saw his mother. She had no jaundice then. He thinks of the months he never went to see her. It is certain that if he had, he would have detected the jaundice in the first stage and would have had her treated.