Moreover, it turned out that Tanvir had a real talent for retail management. He was organised (to the point of being irritating), he did not waste time engaging in long conversations with members of the public or with ‘trade bods’ (to the point of rudeness). He also had a great memory (essential when prices changed so often) and a feeling for the market. Not long after taking over the shop, there had, for instance, been a newspaper report that there was a shortage of bog rolls in parts of the Far East and Europe. Tanvir bought a large volume of stock, stacking so many boxes in so many nooks and crannies that it became, ironically, impossible to shut the door of the indoor toilet and bathroom that he had persuaded the landlord to allow him to install. He had done a brisk trade for months afterwards, selling them in packs of half a dozen, years before the invention of the multipack. He had also spotted a sugar shortage at an early stage and devoted time and effort to finding loose supplies and then packing it himself into individual bags. This enterprise had been less successful, if you offset the profits against the cost of the mouse infestation that subsequently plagued the shop. But it was another illustration of the indefatigability of Tanvir’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Though if you had asked Tanvir for the secret of his success, he would have had the humility to acknowledge luck. He realised he had been fortunate to have been plucked out by Mr Bains, who had given him the kind of apprenticeship that British grocers stopped offering in the nineteenth century. He had also been fortunate to have been forced to abandon counter service in the first week of ownership. It was done out of necessity: with two people suddenly running a shop that had been staffed by four, they simply couldn’t afford to spend all day pulling things off shelves and out of cabinets. But it turned out to be the right thing to do. The older folk got used to it, and pilferage didn’t turn out to be a problem.
In a way, even the emergence of supermarkets turned out to be a blessing in the end, for it brought home the importance of diversifying. Tanvir realised he had to sell as large a range of produce as possible. So, as well as expanding the number of newspapers and magazines, the shop started offering stationery, bacon, knitting wool and haberdashery. Housewares, toys, cosmetics, flowers, greetings cards and light bulbs. Sanitary towels, hair sprays, false eyelashes, boxes of tissues. It went well. Turnover increased and he had plans to boost it further by installing a cigarette vending machine outside the shop, setting up a travel concession to arrange taxis or coaches for day trips, and, if his wife permitted it, the piping of music through the store, which, he had read, had the effect of relaxing customers, who may then be inclined to buy more.
Which brings us to Tanvir’s greatest piece of luck: Kamaljit. He adored his wife for a great many reasons. The way she had planted and tended scores of rose bushes in the back garden, transforming a patch of concrete into something glorious. How she decorated the house and put a candle on the table when they ate dinner together. It still stunned him that this unobtainable girl, whom he had so adored from afar, now massaged his feet when he was tired, kissed him good morning and good night. And she never ceased to surprise him, whether it was getting him flowers on his birthdays – a woman buying him flowers, how about that – or proffering opinions on which clothes did and did not suit him.
But the quality he most admired in Kamaljit was patience, something he knew he didn’t have enough of. Take the time when Stan the roofer popped into the shop one Friday afternoon, revealed he had forgotten to pick up some butter and cheese from the supermarket, and asked for some on tick. Tanvir was incensed at the man’s nerve, wanted to throw him out for the cheek, but Kamaljit took over and gave Stan what he wanted. And sure enough she was proved right in the end. The next week Stan paid off his debt and spent £5 in the shop.
Kamaljit had a way with people. She also had a way with him. He knew he could be uptight, had overheard the newspaper boys mimic and mock him often enough. But Kamaljit never criticised him for the way he sometimes gave people extra money in change to avoid saying the number nine out loud, how when brushing his teeth he had to spend ten seconds on each individual tooth. If anything she indulged what he liked to see as meticulousness, becoming as methodical as he was. She got up half an hour before him every day to make sure there was a cup of tea waiting for him when he came down. She made sure to cook saag on Wednesdays, mince keema on Fridays and what they called English ‘dinner’ every Saturday: chicken and mash sloshing in pints of watery gravy. She also wilfully succumbed to a daily routine as rigid as that of a school day. They would serve customers together during the morning and evening rush, but otherwise Kamaljit would work in the mornings, Tanvir in the afternoons, Kamaljit doing housework and Tanvir doing admin or going to the cash and carry while away from the counter. Then, late in the evening, as Kamaljit cooked, caught a bit of telly, dealt with any late customers, Tanvir would kick back in his favourite place, his study.
The study hadn’t been part of Tanvir’s grand improvement plans, which had, among other things, seen the removal of the hatch from which newspapers had been sold in the mornings and which had given the customers an excuse not to come into the shop, and the excising of a partition that had shortened the depth of the shop by about twelve feet. If he had had any intentions for what had been his bedroom when he started lodging with the Bains, it was to turn it into a nursery. However, years of having sex month after month at predetermined times, of Kamaljit raising her legs against a wall and staying in position for up to an hour afterwards, had produced no child. Gradually, without acknowledging it to Kamaljit, or even to himself, he had begun to make the space his own. First, a wood-topped Alma Series 8100 desk, bought from a nearby estate agent, when it was closing down. Then, a glass fibre and polyester chair, and a set of plastic stools which stacked into one another and could be used as occasional tables. Finally, his pride and joy, a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Like everything else in his life, the study was highly organised. All the piles of newspapers and magazines had been stacked according to date, his books – The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton, The Dead Zone by Stephen King – were arranged alphabetically on the shelves, and the stationery on his desk arranged symmetrically and in lines. The only disruption came in the form of the occasional boxes of stock scattered over the floor and the shelves.
As you might expect, he had a routine for what he did when he came up each evening. He would pour himself a slug of whisky from the bottle he kept concealed from Kamaljit in his filing cabinet, sit down at his desk and tally up the day’s takings, move to his armchair with a copy of the dictionary and commit a single new word to memory, read an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and then, reclining in the armchair, make his way through the evening paper, starting with the back page (not out of interest, just to have something to say to customers), and flicking through the classifieds for bargains and business opportunities before making his way through the main news section.
And it was when he was going through this ritual one November evening in 1975 – having memorised the word ‘pulchritudinous’ from the Collins English Dictionary; scanned an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the Karankawa, an extinct group of Native American people; and read about how the national final of the Bus Driver of the Year contest, which had been held in Wolverhampton for the first time last year, would not be held there again – that he was stopped in his tracks by a headline declaring, ‘Migrants want their culture taught at school.’
The article continued:
An immigrant organisation has demanded the inclusion of Asian and West Indian cultural activities in Wolverhampton school programmes. The local branch of the Punjabi Workers’ Alliance said it was ‘alarmed at the programmed murder of Asian and West Indian cultures in Wolverhampton schools’.
Mr Patwant Dhanda, chairman of the PWA, announced his intention of starting a hunger strike outside the Wolverhampton Town Hall in support of eight demands, including the teaching of minority languages in schools, the replacement
of imperial history with black and Asian history, the promotion of black teachers, and a ban on National Front supporters working in education.
It was only after Tanvir had got to the words ‘National Front’ that he noticed the steel tumbler in his hand had become deformed. That man Dhanda was insufferable. There was no escaping the fat sod. Just a month after Tanvir had married Kamaljit, Dhanda had taken a bride fifteen years his junior, the extravagant wedding ceremony highlighting the meagreness of Tanvir’s own. Just a few weeks after Mrs Bains had departed for Southall in distress, preferring to live with her sister than her own daughter, Dhanda had decided to convert his drapery store into a grocery shop, informing Kamaljit (he always spoke to her rather than Tanvir) after the fact that he would remain true to the non-compete agreement he had struck with his great friend and mentor, Mr Bains. Then, in the five years that Tanvir and Kamaljit had failed to conceive, Dhanda had fathered no fewer than three children: two daughters and, most recently, a son.
None of these things had bothered him, in themselves. It was true that the number of guests at his wedding had not exceeded a few dozen, and that at the wedding Mrs Bains had heartily embraced the convention for the mother of a daughter to cry through proceedings. But being married to Kamaljit was prize enough. Meanwhile, Dhanda had, in ostentatiously and sanctimoniously honouring the non-compete arrangement in memory of Mr Bains, chosen to focus on Asian supplies, which was, as far as Tanvir saw it, a laughable strategy. The retail sector was in flux, what with the challenge of rising costs, complex red tape, a weak economy, endless stoppages due to industrial disputes, a sharp increase in unemployment, chronic inflation and food shortages. But it was obvious that Asians would eat less and less food from the subcontinent as they integrated. With the arrival of frozen food and ready meals, the trend was towards convenience food, not towards Indian dishes that took half a day to cook.
As for Dhanda’s children, well, the truth was that Tanvir rather liked life as it was. It was nice not to have to share Kamaljit. But it did sometimes grate on Tanvir that his wife was bothered by Mrs Dhanda’s fecundity, her desperation for a child evident in her ever-increasing superstitiousness and religiosity. And he resented Dhanda’s grocery venture for the same reason he resented this plan of his to mount a hunger strike. The man was, like the Sikhs who were opening separate temples for different castes around Blakenfields, in defiance of the founding principles of their religion, trying to recreate the Punjab in Britain, complete with its repressions and divisions between Jat and Chamar.
There had been a time when he had gone along with it all. But he was young then, trying to impress Kamaljit, and he only kept the turban and beard now because he thought he looked better in them. In reality he was agnostic, flirting with atheism, and sometimes he even found himself agreeing with the opposition. At least, he had shared the anxieties of Enoch Powell when he objected to Britain taking in tens of thousands of Ugandan Asian refugees when dictator General Idi Amin expelled 80,000 from the African country. Why should hard-working men like him subsidise these people? And when more recently Powell’s replacement, Conservative MP Nick Budgen, had caused consternation in the Asian community for remarking that ‘when the Asian girls reach the age of sixteen or seventeen, Dad trots off to India or Pakistan and sells her to the highest bidder’, he did not identify with the outrage. After all, had that not almost happened with his wife and her sister?
As for Dhanda’s idea of teaching Indian culture in English schools, he saw through it straight away. Having lost half the Punjab during Partition, and failed to create an independent Sikh state after Partition, Punjabi Jats like Dhanda were trying to make up for it in England. It was infuriating and Tanvir felt so incensed that, after refilling his misshapen tumbler, allowing himself one more drink than he would normally permit himself on a Thursday, moved to his desk, grabbed some writing paper from the top drawer and, with his Parker fountain pen, began writing a letter to the editor.
Dear Sir,
Your pulchritudinous publication bears witness to the fact that colour prejudice is a fact of life in Britain. Just last week you reported a judge in a Birmingham Crown Court saying ‘Roughing up of coloureds is almost a hobby in some parts of the Black Country.’ More recently, we have read about Nellie Jones, Labour councillor and school governor of St Luke’s infant school, accusing other governors and the vicar of attempting to keep Indian and Pakistani kids out of school.
Tanvir stopped, reread his words and wondered if he should start again. That day’s letters pages featured missives on a vast array of subjects, from asking for house lights to be turned down during symphony concerts at the civic hall to benefits (‘When I was a child every unemployed man was given the task of clearing roads and pavements after a bad blizzard. Why is this not done today?’). But the thing they all had in common was personal stories. Maybe he should tell his own tale. He started again.
Dear Sir,
Your pulchritudinous publication bears witness to the fact that colour prejudice is a fact of life in Britain. And as someone who runs a shop in Blakenfields, I have to live the reality of racialism. Rare is the week that passes without my wife and I being threatened or abused for our colour.
However, when the PWA talks about introducing Indian studies in schools, does it also want to preach to young minds the bigotry of the caste system? A system where, for centuries, high-caste Hindus and Sikhs in India have not only discriminated against but inhumanely treated their brothers whom they call scheduled-caste or untouchables.
I know that last week you reported a judge in a Birmingham Crown Court saying ‘Roughing up of coloureds is almost a hobby in some parts of the Black Country.’ We have also had reports on how there have been five assaults on Indians in Wolverhampton pubs in just one week.
But these stories are fairy tales compared to the stories the Indian press carries about people being raped, killed, beaten and robbed as a result of their caste. The fact is that in India, someone of my caste could only escape their position if they joined the army, or became a priest, or were a talented singer or wrestler. But here I have built a thriving business and can consider myself an Englishman equal to any other. I feel liberated, and as far as I’m concerned the Indian culture that the PWA wants to preach should go the way of the Karankawa.
Yours sincerely,
Tanvir Banga
Proprietor, Bains Stores
He reread the letter, changed ‘Proprietor’ to ‘Director’ and, satisfied with its content, took another swig of whisky and imagined the look on Dhanda’s face when it was printed. No doubt he would respond in some way via the PWA, raise the issue at the temple run by Jats, where he was a member of the committee, and find a way of informing Tanvir’s mother-in-law, who seemed to have rebonded with him over their shared loathing of Tanvir. In turn, she would find a way of letting Kamaljit know her feelings.
But it was time he stood up to them both. Over the years he had tried everything he could to win over Mrs Bains, abandoning his bedroom whenever she visited so she could relive the days when she was queen of the castle, trying not to take offence when she mentioned Surinder’s elopement in the same breath as his marriage, as if they were on the same moral plane. But it was to no avail. She was determined to treat his introduction to the Bains family as a calamity, never gave him the benefit of the doubt and tended to make the worst possible interpretation of his actions, even taking offence when he put up a shop sign which kept her late husband’s name, seeing it as an attempt to cover up his caste. Sometimes she became tearful at the very sight of him. Frankly, he should have done something like this years ago. If he could have, he would have taken advantage of the newspaper’s dictation service right then, which allowed readers to phone in their letters. But the line closed at half five. So, instead, he folded the letter and sought an envelope to put it into. And it was only when he was about to seal it that he thought of a possible obstacle. Kamaljit.
She was a supportive wife, but had weaknesses. Sh
e was fearful of confrontation, indulgent of Dhanda, claiming that in the absence of her mother and sister he was the closest thing she had to family, romanticising his relationship to her late father. She also longed, to Tanvir’s intense frustration, for her mother’s approval, and couldn’t always be relied on to be on his side when it came to anything to do with religion. They rarely argued, but when they did, the trigger invariably had a spiritual aspect. They had fallen out when a guru she had consulted about her failure to conceive had suggested they fast, hammer a nail into the corner of every single room, and bathe in milk once a week. She had objected on moral grounds to Tanvir’s introduction into the shop of men’s magazines, fought his plan to sell booze, and even complained, on occasion, about the sale of meat products.
Tanvir had won the argument with the porn, arguing tenuously that if he could deal with flogging sanitary towels to female customers, she could serve men’s magazines, which happened to offer excellent profit margins. He had won the argument on serving meat too. But he had conceded on booze. Marriage, after all, was about compromise. Communication. Women were a mystery to him, but he understood, from the women’s magazines he occasionally flicked through, about the importance of talking things through. And with that in mind, he emptied his tumbler, brushed his teeth in the bathroom downstairs to remove any signs that he had been drinking, and went to tell his wife about his planned response to Dhanda’s hunger strike.
He didn’t find her, as expected, in the kitchen – though he saw from the frying pan on the hob that she was making samosas. He didn’t discover her in the living room either, though he could tell from the neatly rolled-out dough and the saucepan of spiced mashed potatoes on the coffee table that she was probably planning to fill the samosas in here, doubtless in front of Coronation Street. She was in the shopfront, cleaning the counter.
Marriage Material Page 20