BLOOD RED SARI

by Banker, Ashok K

  ‘Madam, kisi ne aap ke darwaazey pe pishaab kiya hai.’

  She frowned, pausing to look up at him. Was he serious? Even with his heavy Haryanvi accent, she had had no difficulty understanding him at all – despite her Gujarati primary schooling, English-medium secondary schooling and college education, she had picked up Hindi and most of the north-Indian dialects quite well in the past few years. With the kind of clients and cases she got, it was a necessity. But why on earth would someone piss on her front door?

  He saw her expression and mistook her lack of response as stemming from the language barrier. This was the first time he had actually spoken to her, since he was mostly off duty by the time she came to work. ‘Man come to madam office in night time, trying make piss on office door.’

  She resisted the urge to cover her mouth. However polite he may be for a Jat, she didn’t think he would appreciate being laughed at openly. She managed to turn the action into a touch of her forehead.

  ‘Where is the man now?’ she asked.

  He flapped his hand, imitating a bird flying away rather than a man running away. ‘Not here. Gone. I wait for you to come. You want make police complaint?’

  ‘Nahi, ji,’ she said. ‘There is no need. Thank you, Shri …?’

  ‘Rajendra Powar. Most welcome, madam. It is my job.’

  She nodded and started rolling towards the entrance. He followed her a few steps, still speaking.

  He grinned widely, displaying paan fragments stuck in his front upper teeth. ‘I am matric pass, madam. Wanted graduate. But having to do job. Came Dilli.’ He spread his arms, indicating the world, the city, his uniform, the universal condition of humanity.

  She felt uncomfortable at his following her and spilling uncalled-for personal information, but didn’t want to seem impolite. She mustered a polite smile. ‘Thank you, Rajendraji,’ she said, and rolled into the foyer.

  The power was out, of course; after all, this was Delhi. The lift cage and stairway was in darkness, only a glimmer coming down through the stairwell, but she knew the place like the back of her hand. She turned the wheelchair right, then left again around the generously curving passageway. The old-worldly spaciousness and accessibility were a blessing. No new office building in the heart of Delhi could ever provide her with this much space on a ground floor, apart from the quiet and peace. She turned again into near-pitch darkness and slowed the chair. There was only this last stretch of the corridor and all the three doorways lined up in a row belonged to her ‘office’ apartment.

  The strays had smelt her and came forward eagerly out of the darkness to greet her, ragged tails wagging, the tapetum in their eyes glowing in the darkness. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom and she didn’t want to run over any of the pups, so she paused to pat and cuddle them. They were all gets from the same middle-aged bitch she called Justice. As in, Justice is a bitch, her patent line, delivered so many times over the years that it had become her trademark, her calling card, and at times even an insult yelled at her across crowded smoky bars. Justicebitch!

  Justice permitted her sons and daughters their licking and yelping and tail-thumping for a moment or three, then barked, the sound echoing up the stairwell of the empty building. When they didn’t comply, she began nosing and snarling them out of the way. Nachiketa thanked her and rolled towards the office door. As she unlocked the heavy padlock and yanked back the rusting bolt, she the pungent odour of male urine hit her. She grimaced as she tried to imagine a man standing here in the dark, unzipping himself, pointing his penis at the door and urinating on it. The dogs must have been out foraging at the time, otherwise Justice alone would have made a hasty snack of the man. That was why even the security guards discreetly allowed the dogs and even helped feed them at times – there is no better helper for a nightwatchman than an adopted stray.

  She rolled into the office, only Justice following behind. The younger dogs knew well enough to remain outside the sacred sanctum, where they sat patiently, tails thumping happily on the wooden passage floor, awaiting their usual breakfast of biscuits. Justice escorted her imperiously through the musty outer room filled with glass-fronted wooden cabinets and sagging desks, all packed and piled high with bulging files full of legal documents. On Shonali’s desk, an ancient Pentium III computer acted as a repository for the practice’s entire store of electronic files. In the innermost room, a master bedroom converted to her private office – her chambers, as Shonali grandiloquently referred to it – where her ageing but wonderfully comfortable old chair awaited before her desk piled equally high with files and more files, she opened the drawer in which she kept the doggie stuff and tore open a fresh packet of biscuits.

  ‘These are wheat,’ she said to Justice, who watched patiently. ‘Healthier for you than the usual glucose biscuits. These have fibre.’

  She placed the opened packet on her lap and manoeuvred the wheelchair back through the office, expertly avoiding the desk corners and dangerously piled stacks of files that threatened to topple over at a sneeze. Putting down the economy-sized packet of Britannia Vita Marie biscuits, she sat back and observed Justice watching with maternal pleasure as her brood consumed its breakfast gratefully. Only when all the pups had all finished did the proud bitch eat her share. ‘That’s Justice for you,’ Nachiketa whispered, nuzzling the dog one last time before turning around. Time to get to work on that brief.

  She felt the right hand wheel of her chair encounter something bulky and stopped, wheeled around, and then backed up to try and spot it. It was difficult to see clearly, but it appeared to be a yellow manila envelope on the ground just inside the doorway. It had probably been pushed in through the mail slot, though it looked almost too big to fit. Couriers would do that sometimes rather than come back the next morning to deliver, and they would scrawl an indecipherable signature on the proof of delivery slip themselves. Nachiketa had bawled out more than a few courier delivery boys for doing that before, and her forehead puckered with the folds of irritation that always formed when she was bothered.

  She peered and strained, trying to see if it was something important. She considered trying to pick it up. But it had slipped partly under the edge of a table. Picking it up would be awkward and best not attempted; she would have to wait for Shonali or the peon. Somehow, in the dim gloamy light drifting in through the cracks in the shuttered wooden windows, she could see just the label on the front of the envelope. Her name was on it, neatly printed with black marker but no address. That was odd; it meant that the package had been hand-delivered rather than sent via courier or registered AD, the usual choice for legal documents.

  Justice trundled over, sated with wheat fibre biscuits, and sniffed curiously at the package. When she snorted and snuffled loudly, Nachiketa realized that the package had caught some of the spill of man-urine from the door. The bastard must have stuck his penis into the mail slot to do his nastiness. She grimaced and backed away. That decided it. She wouldn’t be touching the package until someone had opened it and gotten rid of that pee-soaked envelope. And if the contents were pee-soaked too? Well, she would deal with that later – or Shonali would. She sighed, patted Justice, and rolled off to switch on the generator and start her day.

  1.3

  THERE WAS AN UNUSUALLY large number of cars and bikes in the side lane adjoining the gym when Sheila drove up that morning. Since the gym occupied the entire three-storey building and the other shops in the lane were grocery and general provision stores, she assumed that the increased parking occupancy meant increased attendance at the gym. That was usual for post-holiday Monday mornings. After the long weekend spent partying, indulging and overeating, people invariably felt guilty and hit the gym hard. That was also the reason why new memberships spiralled during the first week of January, after the party and holiday season ended, apart from, of course, the ambitious new year’s resolutions. By mid-week, regular attendance would even out, and the mad January rush would always ease off by March when the financial year-ending
required many to put in longer hours and overtime and the newbies began to feel frustrated by the lack of noticeable change even after three months. Most people lapsed in March, not realizing that physical fitness and weight loss are ongoing lifestyle commitments, not short-term goals to be achieved and then forgotten.

  Salt Lake City, Kolkata, was probably the most modern part of this ancient city and its residents were all immigrant professionals who had come here to work on short- or long-term assignments. That meant that they were more focused on furthering their careers than keeping fit. Though it was named for the salt water marshes that had been reclaimed to accommodate the commercial interests that dominated the conscience of modern Calcutta, its more intransigent residents still preferred to call the area by its old name, Biddhanagar, partly because the old guard found it offensive to share a name with an ‘Amrikan’ city.

  She took a moment to walk around the building, checking that the glass-fronted windows had been cleaned well, the sign was working, and the facade spic and span. Glancing up, she could see lycra-suited members on the long line of treadmills and cross-trainers, sweating away in air-conditioned comfort behind the tinted glass. The glass front was a better advertisement than any hoarding or press ad as the building faced a key side road that connected a major residential neighbourhood to a main arterial road. Most of her clientele came from that residential neighbourhood and their being able to actually look into the gym and see the people working out there as they drove by was a powerful incentive to come in and sign up. Sheila thanked her stars that she had been able to get this property on rent at a time when Kolkata’s real estate had not yet begun to try and play catch-up with the rest of the country’s skyrocketing realty prices. Her lease was secure for another year-and-a-half at the present rate, and though she knew that the owner would expect a substantial increment, she was more than willing to pay. She had broken even this year, and if all went well, the gym would be profitable enough for her to pay more rent as well as open another branch or two. She had been looking for suitable properties for the branches and she was determined to find places that had glass-frontage similar to this Salt Lake City one. If possible, she would make that the signature of her She’s Here chain of gyms.

  She took the stairs and was greeted by her employees at the reception and foyer. She was that rare variety of boss: tough but fair. She treated her staff well and paid them decently and led by example. It had been hard at first, finding women trainers in Kolkata. Harder still re-training them to meet the standards she wanted to work by. But the difficult days were past now, and she had a very good team here. The well-groomed and well-toned young women in the gym’s stylish red, grey and black tracksuit uniforms who stood out among the members working out on the first floor were constantly approached by rival gym chains now, offering higher-paying jobs at Gold’s, Sykz, Zaf, or whichever new franchise was aggressively setting up shop in the small but growing eastern market. It was a matter of pride to Sheila that her attrition rate was less than 10 per cent annually.

  She took a moment or two to walk around the floor, greeting members warmly regardless of whether she knew them. At this time, they were mostly younger corporate executives working out before going to work. In a couple of hours, they would all be gone and the more matronly Bengali housewife crowd would arrive to put in a futile effort at combating the growing middle-age bulge. Sheila found it hard to work with those women, but this crowd she enjoyed. In turn, they loved having her work out with them because her superior fitness level brought out the competitive spirit in them. She caught one or two of them glancing at her and flashed quick smiles of greeting, guessing that there were some who probably desired to do more with her body than match its fitness level. The fact that She’s Here was LGBT friendly was a major part of the reason for its success – although in the early days it had seemed a negative point. Two of its three floors were women-only and the third was mixed. In fact, Sheila suspected that even the negative buzz about her establishment being a ‘lesbian pickup joint’, as some wags called it, had only helped make it famous. Not to mention the hordes of misguided middle-aged Bengali men who joined up with obscure fantasies and absurd assumptions that lesbian women were nymphomaniacs who slept with women only because they couldn’t find suitable men to satiate their lust! She knew that most people, like the two young women over by the shoulder press machine checking her ass out as she walked across the floor, assumed she was of a same-sex persuasion herself. She did nothing to discourage the notion and, in fact, it made no difference to her at all if people thought of her as a lesbian. Sure, she was completely and unequivocally heterosexual, but so what?

  She finished the round and went into the back office area, breezing past the administrative staff with quick hellos. In her office, she opened the blinds and blinked as the east-facing windows let in the bright early sunshine, buttery warm even through the tinted glass. She watched the traffic on the road for a moment, idly going through her chores for the day. She had an appointment with the KMC ward officer to get formal permission for the renovations and slight expansion she wanted to carry out. Some bank work. Miscellaneous things around the gym. A new batch of trainees to induct before she handed them over to her chief trainer’s capable hands. A meeting with the chartered accountant to go over tax-saving measures before the financial year ended. Some calls to make to the equipment suppliers about irregular servicing and other matters. But before all that, the best part of the day: her workout! She was already dressed in her track and sweatshirt with the gym’s logo, so she was good to go.

  She put her handbag down on the desk and saw the yellow manila envelope addressed to her. It looked thick and important. Documents? She couldn’t recall anything that was supposed to come her way except perhaps … yes, it was probably something related to accounts. She hoped it wasn’t income tax forms from the chartered accountant; she hated those fucking things. Whatever it was, she would look at it later. Right now, workout!

  She was pretty sure that before she finished, the two attractive young executive types who had been checking her out earlier would try to proposition her. She was used to it. She might even flirt with them awhile before turning them down ever so gently and coquettishly.

  Two

  2.1

  ATTINGAL HAD CHANGED SO much in thirteen years, she almost began to correct the cab driver before she realized he was going the right way. Not just Attingal, NH-47 had changed. Hell, Kerala had changed. She liked the wider roads, the vaulting flyovers and swooping bridges. She didn’t like the hoardings leering like mendacious highwaymen at every bend in the road. For every man or woman in a setmundu she saw one in tee shirt and jeans. The cars, the same models that had turned Mumbai roads into roaring rivers of steel and chrome, were here. Expensive tourist taxis ferrying foreigners from the airport to five-star resorts. Volvo buses carrying white faces under blonde hair peering out through tinted windows. The bristling profusion of advertisements that formed a welcoming committee at Trivandrum Airport had already informed her of the fact that most of the world’s leading hotel and resort chains now worshipped at the altar of God’s Own Country. The new terminal itself, fully air-conditioned and as modern as Mumbai’s own Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, had intimidated her almost as much as the body search. The other changes she viewed en route evoked mixed feelings. On the one hand, she was proud to see Kerala finally making an entry into the 21st century. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder if it had been brought or bought.

  The turn off to Varkala looked much the same except for the oversized hoarding advertising a housing colony with the dreadful name ‘Papanasam Paradise’. ‘All apartments sea view!’ boasted the signboard. She wondered where those sleek glass-and-steel multi-storey towers were scheduled to rise. Surely not here? Still, the crunching of sand beneath the Esteem’s tires, the glimpses of the blue ocean behind the swaying palms, the smells of drying fish, and that peculiar odour that was home eased her heart and made her resolve to act c
alm and dignified. She owed that to Lalima’s memory. Whatever else had happened here, it took away nothing from what Lalima and she had shared for that one glorious summer. She bumped her nose on the half-wound window trying to see the cliffs as the car took the last curve; and suddenly, as the old mossy gateposts appeared, she felt a terrible longing to see Lalima’s fifteen-year-old face again, laughing with her tongue out in that peculiar canine way, just for a minute or two, just one glimpse. Oh damn. Oh fuck. She couldn’t do this alone. She had to, she must, she would. Damn you, Lalima. You ditched me and left. Again. And this time you went so far, even a passport and visa won’t get me there.

  The old house looked the same, barring one or two minor changes. There was a dish antenna perched on one corner of the roof and most of the roof tiles were broken or displaced, no doubt during one of the several winter monsoon storms that hit this part of the coast hard three years ago. She had read about the storm and felt vaguely guilty for not being there, as well as relieved that she wasn’t. Looked like Philip, Graham and Isaac hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet, or perhaps, judging by the overall rundown condition of the garden and grounds, the rusting iron gate off its hinges and overgrown well-mouth in the courtyard, they simply couldn’t be bothered. She admonished herself with a pang of remorse: There could be another reason and you know it. They might not be able to afford repairs. But a part of her, the mean bit, snorted and said, Yeah, sure, but I bet they found money to drink every day. Besides, how much would a few tiles, some general maintenance cost?

  She walked around the house, putting off the inevitable as long as possible. The ancient Chevy Nova – its tires gone, resting on rims that had warped over time, streaks of rust like veins of copper in a mine visible beneath a thick patina of encrusted dust, leaves and bird droppings – was in the back garden, which now resembled a wilderness. It made her sad to see the vehicle in that condition. They had had quite a few happy times in that car, before Achchan fell ill and died and things went from sad to fucking miserable in the Matthew household. She remembered one particular long trip that they took to Mariam Appachchi’s house in Mundakottukurussi where the Big Fight happened. It was undertaken before the night of the Big Fight, and that trip was pure gold, or as close to it as was possible in the Matthew household. She could still remember how happy she had been, thinking that maybe now things would be all right, they would be a real family at last, the way Lalima’s family was, or Varkey’s. For the first several hours of the trip, things had actually been wonderful, with all of them singing old songs and everybody still sober, and the sheer pleasure of going somewhere, anywhere, had suffused her with a warm, fuzzy hope. But after they stopped for lunch, ‘just one quick beer’ had led to another and then to several more, and then they were back on the road. And as the kilometres sped by, the exhilaration of being together rushing headlong along a country road had begun to wane, and the bickering and drunkenness began, and then the arguments and fights and slapping and punching and abusing and shrieking and threats of murder and maiming. It was then that she had come to realize with growing horror that it was actually worse than before; she was trapped in this metal coffin with her mad, violent family; and now, looking back, she knew that it had been then that she had finally accepted that she must leave this madhouse and seek a new life elsewhere. It had taken her another three years to get out, but that day had been the beginning of the end, even before they actually reached Mundakottukurussi and the Big Fight happened. As for that delightful event in the Matthew family history …