(Un)arranged Marriage

by Bali Rai

  As I sat there lost in my own thoughts, Inderjit appeared with Jasbir in tow and tapped me on my shoulder.

  ‘Shall we go and have a biri, bhai-ji?’ asked Jasbir.

  I shrugged my shoulders at him. ‘I want to get some proper ones, like I brought with me from England. Can you show me where the shops are?’

  Both of them smiled and nodded in unison before gesturing for me to follow them. I tossed the empty bottle into a cardboard box next to the manjah before following them through the courtyard, past Avtar’s daughters and out into the village. The main part of the village lay to the north of our house and as we walked I noticed that the further we ventured into the village, the smaller the houses became. Inderjit told me that the houses around the shops were the ones owned or, in most cases, rented by the poorer people, the servants and a few migrant families. Most of them only had a couple of rooms and small courtyards crowded with animals and children wearing ragged clothes. Each house was ringed by a stone wall that looked as though it had been put together by a blind man, the stones jutting out at all angles, unevenly.

  ‘Some of the richer families own them,’ said Jasbir. ‘They used to be pens for water buffalo and goats years ago.’

  The streets were much narrower too and the one that we took weaved its way up into the main square. Every so often we passed alleyways that were so dark and narrow only one of us at a time would have been able to pass through.

  ‘What’s down there?’ I asked as we passed by. Inderjit looked at Jasbir before answering.

  ‘Let’s get your cigarettes and then we’ll show you,’ he said, winking as he did every time he told me something that he thought was important.

  The bloke at the shop where I bought the cigarettes knew Inderjit and Jasbir well. They told me that they always bought their packets of biri from him and that he was cool about not telling anyone. I asked them why that was and Inderjit laughed and made a suggestive comment about the shopkeeper and someone else’s wife. The thought of two people in this village having an affair kind of shocked me because I had always thought that it was something Punjabi people just didn’t do. The way you’d hear my old man tell it, the problems of the world were those that were created by white people and Punjabis just didn’t get involved. I mean, my family couldn’t even mention a pregnant woman without getting all embarrassed about it, and here I was buying fags from a man who wasn’t going to grass me up because he was having sex with his neighbour’s wife. Here. In my old man’s village. I just wished that I had the guts to tell the old man about it, challenge him with it. Hey Dad, you’re always banging on about Punjabis having better standards and morals and stuff, well how do you explain this? Forget it. Man, he’d probably have died of a stroke or something.

  On the way back out to the fields we passed some more narrow alleyways and gullies. I asked Inderjit again to show me what was down there but he just shook his head.

  ‘I have to do a lot of work today so I can’t take you. And you can’t go on your own, not down there.’

  ‘Why not, what’s so bad about going down those alleyways?’ I asked him, before unwrapping my pack of fags, which were called ‘Four Square’ and looked just like the ones you get in England.

  ‘Bad people, bhai-ji. Druggies and whores. It’s not good.’ He winked at me again, cocking his head to the left.

  ‘Once Onkar went down there and he took some pheme (opium),’ said Jasbir. ‘After they found him, our dads, they broke his legs and locked him up for months.’

  ‘No way,’ I began to argue, only to have Inderjit put me right.

  ‘It’s really true, that’s what happened. Only bad people go down those dark alleyways, looking for loose women or drugs. My dad told me that good Punjabis don’t do things like that. Not Jat Punjabis. Only chamarr do those things.’

  I looked at them both for a moment before shaking my head. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me. My old man was such a hypocrite going on about the ‘drugs society’ and black people all the time. Here, right here in the village he called home, there were drugs and prostitutes and people having affairs, yet I hadn’t seen one white person or black person anywhere. Where was his stupid, racist theory about the social problems in England now?

  I began thinking about home again after that and when we got to the fields I told my cousins that I would see them later after they had done their chores. I wanted to be alone so I walked out past all of the rice fields into a grove of mango trees and sat down underneath the one that gave me the most shelter from the sun. I lit up a fag and thought about Ady and Lisa and then, as a huge wave of homesickness took over me, I started to cry as it finally dawned on me, after nearly two months, that Lisa really was no longer my girlfriend, and that I hadn’t seen my best friend for so long that I’d almost forgotten the sound of his voice.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  August

  RANJIT, JAS AND Gurpal spent their final week visiting Jas’s family and doing last-minute shopping. They were returning to Leicester two weeks earlier than us because Ranjit had to go back to work. The day that they left Adumpur in a battered old Ambassador taxi was a bad day for me. I envied them and felt homesick like never before. I mean, on and off, I suppose that I had enjoyed it – my holiday – but I wanted to go back home desperately. I wanted to do all the things that I did when I was at home, in Leicester. Catch the bus into town on a Saturday, have a Big Mac, go to the pictures, that sort of thing. I wanted to find out what Ady had been up to since I had been gone, hang out with him, go to some clubs and stuff, just listen to him talking about all his ‘runnings’. I wanted to be able to wake up in the morning without being covered in a layer of sweat, to use a normal toilet and a normal shower, eat fish fingers and pizza. Basically, I wanted my old life back, boring as it had been before I came to India.

  We’d been here six weeks now – a long time, or at least it felt like it; I’d had enough of all the dust and the heat and the insects that were three times the size of the ones back in England. I did ask the old man about it, about going back with Ranjit, but apparently there was some kind of problem with our return tickets, something about seats being unconfirmed. Our tickets and passports were with some local travel agent in Jullundur being sorted out and the agent had promised my old man that he would get them back to us in a fortnight at the latest. Two more weeks at least. Then again, I had lasted six weeks already, so another two wouldn’t make all that much difference. At least that’s what I kept on telling myself anyway, to stop my brain from going haywire. Two more weeks of warm cola and dodgy fags. Two more weeks, man.

  I spent the time hanging out with Inderjit and Jasbir as they went about their daily chores. Everyone would be up by six at the very latest and we’d all have breakfast together as a family. My dad and his brothers would go off on some business or other and leave the women to prepare the food for the day and to tidy the house and stuff. I’d shower and then go and find Inderjit and Jasbir. We’d leave the house by seven in the morning and go out to the fields to check on the tube wells, or walk the water buffalo down to the lake that I’d seen on my first day in Adumpur. There were the two cows to milk and eggs to collect from the dozen or so hens that were kept out at the farmhouse. By eleven it would be too hot to work in the open and we’d go and chill out under the shade of the mango grove, talking about stuff and smoking fags. Then we’d head back to the village and spend the afternoon wandering around the village or kicking around a football that my old man had got for me from Jullundur. A couple of times I asked Inderjit to take me down one of those forbidden alleys, but he kept on refusing, reminding me about what had happened to Onkar. Eventually I gave up on the idea.

  By the time it got to five in the afternoon we’d be back at the house, drinking tea and listening to the stories that our fathers told each other as they got drunk on home-made corn whisky, dhesi it’s called, or on the really strong-tasting Indian beer which I was allowed to have a bottle or two of. Supper would be at about seven a
nd by eight it would be pitch black and the moths and fireflies would dance in the glare of the light bulbs that lit up the veranda. Each night I pestered my dad about the passports and the tickets and each day he’d laugh and tell me to be patient.

  ‘I’m going to start thinking that you don’t like your real home,’ he’d reply.

  ‘But it’s not my real home.’

  At that he’d wink at my uncles and laugh out loud. ‘And if the goreh kick you out, then where are you going to go?’

  After supper Inderjit and I would go up to the second floor of the house and up again via the stone stairway and out on to the open rooftop. In the darkness it was a bit scary being up there, not knowing how far you were from the edges, around which a half-meter-high wall ran. But at least it gave us some privacy whilst we had a bedtime cigarette and it gave me a well-needed break from my old man’s lectures.

  It happened during the ninth week of my stay in India. I should have seen it coming a mile off, I really should. Only I didn’t. I just kept my eyes closed and ignored all the little signs that were right there in front of my eyes all the time. It was a Tuesday morning and my dad was sitting out at the farmhouse by the well with both of my uncles, reading a hand-written letter. He looked up as I approached the house from the fields with Inderjit in tow, called me over and then continued to read the letter in his hands.

  ‘That agent, Manjit, the one that has our tickets and passports. He had a problem at his office and they have been stolen,’ he told me, without looking up. For a moment what he told me failed to sink in, to make any sense, and then suddenly it hit me. I – we were stuck here. Indefinitely. I looked at my Uncle Gurvinder, who nodded and told me that what my father was telling me was all true.

  ‘People here pay lots of money for passports. It is a big business, Manjit,’ he told me.

  ‘But . . .’ I tried to say something that would make sense, something that would change the whole situation and make it better, solve the crisis. I couldn’t. I had been counting the days that we had left in Adumpur, convincing myself that this week, our ninth week, would be the last in India, that we’d soon be on our way back to Delhi and then on a plane home to England.

  ‘We have to go to Jullundur to sort it all out,’ said my dad quietly. ‘Maybe even go to Delhi, to the head office for the ticket company. The British Embassy too.’

  ‘When? When are we going?’ I started to feel impatient. I wanted to leave right away, get it all sorted out as soon as possible. My life was on hold, like a football player waiting for his dream transfer move to go through. Even though it was so hot and dry, my body felt cold, like someone had swapped my blood for water with ice cracked into it.

  ‘We are going – Piara, me and your mother. Bilhar and his wife are going to see her family in Phagwara, and you are not needed anyway. We can sort it all out without you being there.’

  ‘But I want to go, Daddy-ji. I’m bored with hanging around in the village. I want to go and see the rest of India.’ I glanced at Inderjit, who looked a little bit upset at my words.

  ‘I know, Manjit, I know,’ replied my dad. ‘All this cannot be helped, can it? It is not my fault that our things have been stolen.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ I began, before he cut me off by raising his hand.

  ‘It is God’s will,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. I realized that he was about to launch into one of his lectures about kismet and all that other religious stuff and I turned away and started to walk off towards the main part of the house. I had tears in my eyes as I made my way up the stone stairway to the first floor. I didn’t even want to go up there but I couldn’t face letting any of my family see me cry.

  Later on Inderjit tried to cheer me up by buying me a Campa Cola which I was really grateful for. Not because of the heat and the fact that I was thirsty. The bottle felt warmer to the touch than my skin did. It was because Inderjit had no real money of his own which meant that the twelve or fifteen rupees that he had paid for the bottle were far more than he could really afford. When I said as much to him, he laughed and told me that he had scrounged the money from my old man anyway, which made me laugh out loud. We shared one of my fags out in one of the corn fields and then made our way back to the village. The air was cooling by then and a soft breeze made its way across the flat fields which stretched for miles in three directions away from the village. As we entered the courtyard of the house, Harry was wiping his face and neck with a towel. The sweat created damp patches on his cotton top, across his chest and back, and around under his armpits.

  ‘Try washing yourself, Harry. You might even get to like it.’ I laughed as I interpreted what I had said in English into Punjabi so that Inderjit would get the joke. Harry pretended that he hadn’t heard me. ‘Are you deaf or what?’ I continued, reverting to English. This time he looked up, giving me the most evil stare that he could manage. I started laughing again and told Inderjit about how smelly Harry got during English summers.

  ‘You think you’re so clever, hey? Try laughing next month when you’re still here, innit. See if you get so cheeky then.’ Harry had walked over to us and stood face on to me, squaring up like the lead gorilla in the pack. I’d seen that happen once on some nature programme on BBC1 and I always thought of it whenever Harry decided to act like the tough guy.

  ‘Well even if I am still here, I ain’t gonna be the only one, am I?’ I retorted.

  Harry almost began to reply, before catching himself and standing back. I wondered what had made him back off so quickly – it was so unlike him – but then I heard my old man’s voice boom across the yard from one of the lower-floor rooms.

  ‘Bilhar!’

  ‘Better go running, Harry – tough guy like you wouldn’t want to get whipped by his old man, now would you?’ I smirked at him, really piling it on thickly, trying to get him to react, but he didn’t. He just whispered that he would sort me out later and then headed for the house. I turned to Inderjit and smiled. ‘Did your older brothers ever bully you, too?’

  He smiled and then bent forward, rolling up his left trouser leg, to show me a deep scar that ran from his knee all the way up his thigh, about seven or eight inches. It was a kind of dark pink colour against his tanned brown skin and it looked horrible. ‘Lally did this to me with a hand scythe about two years ago.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, staring at his scar. It was kind of interesting and sickening at the same time, looking at it.

  Inderjit just smiled at me. ‘I saw him coming out of one of those alleyways, back near the square, and I threatened to tell my dad.’

  ‘And he did that to you? That’s terrible.’

  ‘Well, I told you what happened to Onkar after he went down there.’

  ‘Yeah fair enough, but to do that to you . . .’ I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.

  ‘It’s all right. It looks a lot worse than it is. The cut wasn’t very deep, Really. Anyway I got my own back.’ He winked at me and smiled again.

  ‘How?’ I was curious about how you made up for being stabbed in the leg by your brother.

  ‘Lally and Rajvir got married young.’ He looked around and put his finger to his lips, before dragging me as far away from the house as possible. I was standing almost eyeball to eyeball with the biggest of the water-buffalo when he continued his story. ‘They didn’t want to have children too soon. I heard Lally talking to Rana about it. So Rana gave Lally these things, in a box, and told him to wear them but not to tell my dad.’

  I looked at Inderjit in surprise, trying to work out where his little confession was heading.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘I found out where he kept this box of things and I stole one when he wasn’t looking. You put them on your . . .’

  I started laughing, nodding my head, as he tried his best to describe a condom to me. ‘So you stole one of his condoms?’ I winked back at him in the way that he normally winked at me.

  ‘No, no, bhai-ji,’ he said. ‘I took the whole box the next day while Lally
was in the fields, and I poked little holes through the foil of every single one, with a very thin needle so that he wouldn’t know.’ At that he started laughing.

  I just looked at him, my mouth wide open, not realizing the full implication of the secret that he had just told me. Then it sank in and I laughed so much that my belly felt it was going to burst and tears streamed down my face without control. Lal’s wife, Rajvir, was ‘she of the unspoken pregnancy’. What a way to get your own back.

  I had taught Inderjit how to greet people in the way that me and Ady did back in Leicester, by balling our fists and touching each other’s outstretched hands so that the knuckles collided, the ‘cuff’ as it was called. After telling me his story and seeing how much it made me laugh, Inderjit offered me his fist, rather than me initiating it as I normally did. I returned his cuff and only stopped laughing when I felt like my insides might explode with the pain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  August