Another Country

by Anjali Joseph

  ‘Couldn’t you have lived near them or something?’

  He went off on his usual rant about independence.

  ‘I wish I felt like that,’ Leela said.

  ‘You’re a nice normal girl.’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’

  ‘No, I mean it. Everything will work out. It has to. You need to meet some people. Go out.’

  ‘I am out.’

  ‘Not with me. Let me think,’ Sathya said, ‘if I know anyone.’

  ‘What about him? Shall I fall in love with him?’ She indicated the man in white, who was now off the dance floor, in a booth, still alone, looking grumpy.

  ‘Maybe. He does look a bit like a drug dealer, but if you don’t mind that.’

  ‘It might as well be him. It could be anyone, you know? Have you ever thought that?’ Leela said suddenly. ‘You know, when you fall in love, the randomness of it? Like a feeling is just waiting to get attached to a person? Have you ever thought: Who’ll be the next person to come along and make me unhappy? You know how when you’re in love, you get obsessed with that person and think you see them everywhere? When it’s not them? And then when the person who isn’t them comes nearer, you realise they’re not even attractive? But you thought they were the person you’re obsessed with? What does that mean? Does it mean the person you’re in love with isn’t even as amazing as you think? Like there was this guy I liked, he had dark hair and a beard and every time I saw a man with a beard out of the corner of my eye I’d think: it’s him. But it wouldn’t be – and it’d be someone really unattractive, and then I’d feel strange. What if I was even wrong about him being attractive?’ She finished the saltines. ‘You know?’

  Sathya looked at her disbelievingly, then guffawed. ‘You can be this intense on fresh lime soda? Have a drink.’

  ‘I can’t, I just had jaundice.’

  ‘You should be careful,’ he said automatically. ‘Don’t want to have a relapse.’ He drained his beer, waved at the waiter, and made a gesture of one hand writing on another. ‘I should go, catch the train. Come, I’ll drop you.’

  ‘It’s not on the way.’

  ‘It’ll take ten minutes.’

  The waiter came over. Sathya examined the bill.

  ‘How much?’ Leela asked.

  ‘Shut up. You weren’t even drinking. Come on, let’s go, unless you want to talk to your friend over there.’

  The man in white had his forearms on the table; his head rested on them.

  She wasn’t going home this weekend, the first since her return; but her sense of anticipation had drizzled away. Joan had asked on Friday, though cautiously, since Leela had at first fiercely refused such demands, ‘There’s a meeting for Citiwatch in the evening, on Sunday, at six, can you go?’

  ‘Where –’

  ‘It’s in Colaba. Just pop in, be there for twenty minutes. Take some cards.’ Leela had recently acquired business cards.

  ‘Okay,’ Leela said.

  ‘Wonderful. I’ll give you the address. Oh, it’s in Cuffe Parade – even closer.’

  On Sunday, she was pleased to have the appointment. She had spent the previous day walking around, eating dosa and reading, and had woken early, not tired. The day passed pleasantly: the usual lull of breakfast, the paper, a walk out to check her email, buy some laundry detergent and shampoo. Back in her room, she looked around her and wondered at her life. The rusty table, painted annually in the hostel store with black galvanised paint; the cupboard, the clean but chipped cement and marble-chip tiles, the wooden bed and formica desk. All surfaces in the hostel were wipe-clean where possible; it wasn’t always. Just before Leela had become ill, one Monday morning the dining room had been hushed at breakfast. When she wondered why, Chitra told her that an older woman some of them knew had died in her room that weekend. She was in her late thirties and turned out to have been epileptic; she had had a fit and died without anyone realising till the next day.

  Leela had recalled the perfunctory medical exam she’d had to undergo before being admitted to the hostel.

  ‘I guess they didn’t know,’ Chitra said. ‘Can you imagine, dying like that? The bai said there was blood all over the walls.’

  ‘No one heard?’ Leela felt her mouth become salty.

  ‘Saturday afternoon, I guess everyone was out.’

  Now Leela imagined a man, perhaps the kitchen manager or someone else, supervised by the punctilious hostel accountant, collecting the furniture from that room and having it repainted, and the bai who must have gone in to clean away death from the walls. Still, she couldn’t feel it was a failure of the hostel and its uniform, provisional way of life, whose temporariness she enjoyed. But would you be happy, she argued with herself, as she watched a football game below in the lane, if you lived like this for ever, if you could? With the same job, the same life? Without possessions, an apartment of your own, children – but the children were indistinct. It was the fear of not having the things others had, rather than the desire for those things.

  Sitting in the door with her mug of orange tea, she lost track of time. The sky paled, and a smoke-like darkness began to smudge it. No time to think about what to wear. She changed quickly and left the hostel as dusk fell.

  The meeting was in a building near the Colaba Woods, a long tree-lined park around which some elderly men and a woman were walking. It had an Arthurian name she couldn’t remember. Guinevere? Lancelot? Camelot, that was it; a Deco building with a low, wrought-iron gate and trees behind the wall. Who calls a building Camelot, she thought, but remembered having a friend, when very young, who lived in a dusty Deco building in Colaba called Hampton Court.

  ‘Agarwal,’ she said to the watchman who stopped her near the gate.

  He nodded.

  Leela waited for the lift, with a middle-aged woman and a young man. The woman was talking. The man, Leela thought, must be her son, though she was so much smaller, and elegantly dressed where he was tall, bearded, not unhandsome, but with a linen or khadi shirt not quite tucked in, and slightly crumpled chinos.

  ‘Probably darling, but that isn’t the point,’ the older woman was saying. ‘You’ve been back for a couple of months now, you should get involved with something, at least reconnect with people.’

  Her voice remained soft even as it insisted, in a way that impressed Leela. But when the other woman turned a quizzical face towards her, she looked down at her worn chappals and was embarrassed. This would have been a good moment to introduce herself, and say something in a loud, confident voice. The presence of the young man, and the woman’s elegance – she wore a short, dusty pink silk kurta, white pyjamas, and dull gold ear studs that Leela liked against her silver hair – made her remain silent.

  The lift came, and the young man opened the door. He waited first for his mother, then for Leela, and the thought came to her and made her smile with its unexpectedness, that he would often be opening doors for his mother and her, and that at some time she might tire of it.

  ‘Which floor?’ the older woman asked. She looked at Leela.

  ‘Two please.’

  She pressed only the second button; they all got out together.

  ‘Are you going to the Agarwal house?’

  ‘Yes. Are you going to the Citiwatch meeting?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The other woman laughed; she seemed to be amused by the question.

  ‘Er, I’m Leela Ghosh, I work at the Sohrab Trust.’

  ‘Oh? With whom?’

  ‘Joan Mascarenhas.’

  ‘I know Joan. I didn’t know there was someone else there now. Has Radha left?’

  ‘She went to London, she works in an auction house.’

  The young man was ringing the doorbell. As footsteps came towards it, Leela was saying, ‘I’ve only been there a year – not quite.’

  A woman opened the door and pounced on them. ‘Welcome, welcome, come in! Shalini, Vikram, how are you? My God, you’re looking so handsome and grown up!’

  Leela sm
iled behind them, wondered whether to remove her sandals, didn’t see any at the door, regretted briefly having worn the kolhapuris in which she walked everywhere, and drifted uncertainly past the hall, the open doorway to the kitchen – a bearer looked out – and into the drawing room.

  Knots of people, mostly women of a certain age and income, had gathered and were talking with enthusiasm around different focal points: a marble planter that might have come off the set of a Pirandello play; a side table that held a large bronze Natraj; and a walnut sideboard on which stood a silver tray and bottles of liquor. Next to it, a small, reproving looking man in white uniform of short-sleeved bush shirt and trousers, his hair neatly oiled, his spectacles of wire. Leela looked on as a taller, baggier man, his beard silver, came up to say something to the bearer, then watch him administer a drink, whisky with several ice cubes.

  ‘May I help you?’ A large lady in a loud, printed silk blouse and slacks came up. Bits of her blinged: earrings, buttons, shiny discs on her sandals. Leela liked her on principle, but felt tired and exasperated at always being the person who, by dint of scruffiness, or youth, or not being known, must be addressed in this slightly hectoring way. She smiled.

  ‘I’m Leela Ghosh, from the Sohrab Trust. Joan Mascarenhas asked me to come along and say hello.’

  ‘Ah, you’re Leeeeeela!’ Leela felt sure this lady had not before been aware of her existence. ‘I’m Shilpa Agarwal.’

  ‘Hello,’ simpered Leela.

  ‘So lovely to meet you Leela. Now, I hear a bit of an accent. Where are you from?’

  ‘I’ve spent some time in England,’ Leela said.

  ‘Oh really? Where did you do your college?’

  ‘Cambridge.’

  ‘How wonderful!’ Mrs Agarwal was steering Leela through the crowd. ‘Tea?’ They stopped at a table with a tea and perhaps a coffee pot on it.

  ‘Is there any coffee?’

  ‘Of course. Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just sugar please.’

  When Leela had a cup of coffee, Shilpa Agarwal got a plate and put two bhajias and a canapé on it despite Leela’s demurrals. ‘Veg? Really? That’s interesting.’ She steered Leela further into a corner. ‘Now, what do you know about Citiwatch?’

  ‘Well, of course, I know about your campaign for safer road crossings,’ Leela said, dredging this from a memory of a newspaper article some months earlier.

  ‘Ah yes. Well! We are an organisation formed by several friends, concerned citizens you might say, in 1997, in order to really do something about the city. We love Mumbai, Leela.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Leela agreed. She let herself go glazed and limp under the speech that followed, in which she also made mental notes for future reference: parks, open spaces, citizens’ action.

  Before Shilpa seemed to have drawn to a conclusion, she became bored. ‘Leela, just one minute, someone I must speak to over there.’ Leela agreed and was left standing next to a corner table. She was out of the flow of the room, to her relief, and stood near a sofa with claw-ball feet; she looked sideways out of the window and wondered how soon she could leave.

  ‘Hi,’ said a voice. Lurking not far away was the tall, bearded young man of the lift.

  ‘Oh, hi.’

  He leaned a bit towards her, apparently less a gesture than a habitual, courtly tropism. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Leela. What’s yours?’

  ‘Vikram. Vikram Sahni.’

  She smiled aggressively at him.

  He grinned back. ‘So you’re here for work.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you enjoy these occasions very much?’

  She grinned. His voice was soft, its inflections more neutral than most people’s. ‘Yes, they’re my favourite thing.’

  He smiled, apparently quite guilelessly. ‘I thought they must be.’

  ‘What about you, why are you here?’

  He nodded towards the colourful figure of Shilpa Agarwal some yards away. ‘Family friend. My mother’s also involved.’

  ‘In Citiwatch?’

  ‘Mm.’ He nodded. ‘They do some good things, civic work.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Leela, a bit embarrassed.

  ‘But these occasions are slightly deadly.’

  She gave a cautious smile.

  ‘They’re the sort of thing,’ he went on, ‘that makes me wish I’d stayed in my bedroom and disappeared.’

  She looked at him a bit irritably and waited.

  ‘A headstand. I call it my disappearing act.’

  ‘A yoga headstand?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve only been doing it for a year or so.’

  ‘Unsupported?’ asked Leela.

  ‘Haan.’

  She was envious. ‘Why disappearing act?’

  He grinned again. His teeth were large, whitish. ‘Your mind goes blank. Like in meditation, but it’s more of a physical effect in the sirsasana.’

  ‘No thoughts?’

  ‘Some. Not many though. It’s quiet, in a different way from just, you know, being quiet. Reading or something. It’s not like that.’

  She nodded, and watched his face for clues about this interesting subject. He had a confiding manner; she already felt less estranged from him than from most people. He was tall, well made, in the French expression, and not from going to a gym but probably from a childhood of regular sport. Some nostalgia arose in her for the time of order that his body represented.

  He was looking at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. ‘I go to this meditation group sometimes. You could come if you wanted, it’s open to everyone.’

  ‘Is it a specific method?’

  ‘Not really. It has a link with the Pondicherry ashram. But it’s just a place where people go to meditate together. It’s nice.’

  ‘Where does it happen?’

  ‘Near Churchgate. Monday afternoon, usually, but late. When do you – I suppose you’d be at work?’

  ‘Oh, I can probably get out of the office. I finish at five thirty-six but I can get out earlier once in a while.’

  ‘They do it on Saturday afternoons too. Do you work on Saturday?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head quickly and smiled in mock shame.

  ‘I could put you on the mailing list. What’s your email address?’

  His mother appeared. ‘Darling, we need to leave now if we’re going to get home in time to change before we go out.’

  Leela started, as though caught out. She smiled a social smile at Mrs Sahni, who looked back at her, then smiled quickly and charmingly.

  ‘Ah, oh, okay,’ said Vikram. ‘Mummy, do you have pen-paper?’

  ‘Just a minute.’ She had glasses on, and began to rummage in her small, elegant bag.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ said Leela. ‘I have a card.’

  Mrs Sahni stopped and stared.

  ‘Ah, sorry. I mean –’

  ‘Leela is interested in our meditation group,’ Vikram said without embarrassment. ‘Give me a card,’ he told Leela.

  She gave him a card. Mrs Sahni was still examining her.

  ‘All right, darling?’ she asked her son, and smiled at Leela.

  ‘Bye,’ he said to Leela. He put out a hand, and its largeness and warmth enclosed hers for a moment, then he loped off with his small mother without looking back.

  Chapter 26

  ‘More coffee?’

  ‘No.’ Leela unfolded her legs. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back,’ Vikram said. They got down from the marble ledge where they’d been sitting next to the open window, a mosquito gadget behind her burning its sweetish-smelling tablet.

  Not since she’d been in Bombay had she found this kind of friendship: a relaxed expanse of time spent with someone, sometimes eating or drinking beer, but mostly talking. There was an eagerness about him that she had to respond to.

  They went down in the lift and out of the lobby, the somnolent watchman rising from his stool as they came out. The night was warm as bath wat
er. They rounded the corner, where heavy bougainvillea spilled over a wall. ‘This corner makes me think of Pondy. Honestly, Leela, you should go to Pondy.’ He was smoking a cigarette and threw the end at the base of the wall.

  ‘Pondicherry?’

  ‘Go to the ashram. It’s a great place. Just to walk around – it’s like the quiet parts of Colaba but quieter. Cleaner. A great place to meditate or just be.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be able to meditate anywhere?’

  ‘Yeah, in theory, but some places …’ His attention was always wandering; it would come to a point, though it was hard to predict what made him pause; then it would drift. But when it did pause, there was an intensity that she liked.

  They walked down a side lane, past a hotel, an attar shop, a bundle of human being sleeping in a doorway, someone smoking near a cigarette stall. A rat was busy in the gutter.

  The sound of their chappals, the swish of her trouser hems against each other, brought back an early memory: her father taking her to school in the rains, the legs of his corduroy trousers singing as they brushed each other; the sound and the need for hurry; the green, guttery smell of the rain.

  At the hostel, Vikram said a brief goodbye at the last streetlamp before the gate. He didn’t linger. Last week, she’d tried to give him a hug, and he’d stood, patient but board-like, before smiling and leaving. He always waited until she walked into the gate. Leela, embarrassed, would avoid the eyes of the older nightwatchman, who sat on his stool late at night singing his prayers. She’d go in, sign the register, get her mail, and walk up the stairs: the lift was shut off at ten.

  The fluorescent light of her room would be transformed against the darkness, and she’d sit on her bed, staring through the window, or stand on the balcony, feeling the night and its warmth, and the small distance from the room where she’d been talking to Vikram. The city stopped being an entity in itself; it became a backdrop.

  On Monday afternoon for the fourth week running she loitered outside a building on A road, Churchgate. Opposite, a college or club had a dowdy sign; people filed in and out. Cars jostled for parking space.