by Chatura Rao
After he’d taken a bath and eaten hot theplas (and lavished praise on Sarojben for her skills–he secretly enjoyed watching her eyes disappear), he went into his room, shut the door and phoned his mother.
Uma received his call in a single ring. His voice became warm as he spoke to her.
She told him about planting a plum tree in their small yard and the three children she helped with their Maths and English studies. They were from families that could barely afford their children’s school fees, and while Uma could not help them with this, she tutored them, so the fees that their parents paid did not go to seed.
‘Prema got 78 percent in Maths, believe it or not! Her father finally agrees that she is a clever girl.’
‘Ma, your own son was not good at Maths. Why didn’t you tutor me?’ he teased. ‘My father would then have agreed that I’m not stupid.’
‘Oho, you were okay in Maths, Veeru. Prema’s father is very kind to us,’ she added. ‘Before Diwali he came to help us clean the lofts. Your papa suspected there was a rat living up there, remember?’
After Aboli’s death when he’d come home, she’d fed him his favourite food and did not complain when he rose abruptly from meals to walk in the hills. His parents let him sleep when he could, at whatever time of day or night, wherever he wanted to as if glad that sleep had claimed their haggard son and might repair the damages of grief. They did not ask him for his time nor expect him to participate in their errands or housework.
By and by he spoke about Aboli and his mother listened, her eyes tender.
‘We always played on the same team,’ he said once. ‘If just for a change I insisted she partner with someone else and play against me, she’d start dropping shots.’
‘On purpose?’ Uma asked.
‘Haan. She’d say later that she wanted me to win, but she knew quite well that I like a fair game. It’s just her way of bugging me into partnering with her whenever we play mixed doubles. Played . . .’ he corrected himself, losing the smile that had crept onto his face.
‘Did she play well?’
‘Yes. But not as well as me!’ he grinned as if bantering with Aboli still.
Some stories brought tears to his eyes. Uma would take his head in her lap. She’d pray silently for the girl gone, and for her son who had lost the chance to bring her home.
7
I
design flats. Not houses, really. Mumbai has little space for independent houses,’ Reva had told him the evening of Aboli’s birthday in Nashik. She had recently joined a small architecture firm as a junior partner.
‘There’s just five of us. We try to understand what people need in a home. Even if it is tiny, a home should have as much light and air as possible. And the best utilization of space.’
Suveer was fascinated by her sense of order and system, her formal structuring of things. His work was with ideas and with intangibles such as bytes and file formats. He liked that she made things: concrete spaces within which people’s lives could take shape. How useful, how not whimsical he smiled, but Reva didn’t notice. She was drawing grids on a paper napkin, to show him how an initial layout was designed. Reva, he felt, even as a girl, had been earth steady, with her dusky complexion, thick hair and large eyes that stayed on things and people even after others had looked away.
He found her confessing then, in a lower voice that he had to strain to hear. ‘I lost what I thought of as home when it was sold and broken down. I guess I don’t have one now.’
‘Where do you and Tarun live?’
She paused a moment, hesitating.
‘We rent. Maybe that’s why I’ve never thought of it as home,’ she said.
In truth, Tarun had done all the work. He’d selected the area and the apartment. He had found them that miracle: a luxurious place at a reasonable rental. She knew that it was an apartment most people would aspire to live in. She felt guilty about wishing for a quieter home in a less commercial area. Now she contented herself with saying, ‘I want people to have the kind of home they want. There are some who have never really had a home, of course. I’m luckier than them. Perhaps less kind, too.’
‘How do you mean?’ Suveer had asked.
‘Some years ago when I was doing my Masters in Architecture,’ she said, ‘I was collecting data about the government’s housing policy and its lacunae. I had made my way to a homeless women’s shelter called Mitraa, close to Dadar Station in Mumbai.
‘It was at a green cottage in need of painting, surrounded by shade trees. I was standing at the porch when a girl called Hamida walked up with Lila, a social worker from Mitraa who I knew.
‘Hamida surprised me. She made me confront my stereotypes, I think, because she was not dressed as I’d have expected a resident of this place to dress. She was wearing a checked shirt half-buttoned over a cotton slip which passed as a tank top, the shirt collar and her shoulders thrown back to reveal pale, gritty skin at her neck. She was pretty with brown hair and eyes.
‘Lila introduced me to Hamida as an architect writing about housing issues. She said hello warmly, but I had to feign ease. Truth is, I felt embarrassed by the contrast between our circumstances.’
Suveer raised his eyebrows.
‘I have a roof over my head. Despite this I feel unsettled,’ Reva explained. ‘And these women . . . who knew what circumstances had forced them out of their families! Before I left my apartment to set out for Mitraa, I’d dug through my clothes to find old, worn ones that I thought might help me merge into the place I was going to visit. How could I have hoped to merge in just by donning a change of clothes?’
‘We fool ourselves sometimes,’ Suveer said.
‘I’ve fooled myself quite a lot,’ she admitted. ‘So, Hamida was in her first year of a Bachelor’s Degree at Bhavan’s College. On a smooth academic ladder, at twenty two you would have completed your Bachelor’s Degree. But Hamida was not born to such a life. She shared with me, quite honestly, that her parents lived on the street, in the open. They used no shelter, except for a plastic tarpaulin in the rainy season.
‘She had come to Mitraa when she was fourteen, tired of being beaten up by her alcoholic father. She also wanted to study. She wanted a better life, for herself, her mother and sisters.
‘I admired Hamida. I was quietly exalted to have her as a friend. Then came the test.
‘A few weeks later, as I was having dinner with my cousin’s family, Hamida called me. She said she was in trouble. She’d been debarred from taking her final exams for lack of minimum class attendance, which was, as a rule, 75 percent. She said quite honestly that she’d received a warning letter from college a few months ago which she had ignored.
‘She asked if I would go with her to college and appeal to the Principal to allow her to take the exams. The next day she and I travelled twenty kilometres on the local train to her college. To be honest I felt quite out of my depth sitting on the old sofa outside the Principal’s office. I had never been in this situation myself. What “additionals” was Hamida asking me, in quick, conspiratorial whispers, to negotiate for? “And didi . . . ” she added, “don’t tell them about my parents.”’
‘In my heart, though, I felt I was doing the right thing appearing on Hamida’s behalf. She must be given a second chance, if she was indeed sorry. At the very least she needed a fellow citizen to show faith and solidarity, at a time when she stood to lose her place in the uphill scheme of things. Maybe this threat of debarment would make her do better the next chance she got?’
‘You were right to take a chance on her,’ Suveer said with certainty.
‘The college principal didn’t think so,’ Reva responded. ‘I had barely begun my appeal when Mrs Sinha, who had a huge red bindi placed unequivocally between her grey eyes–I still remember it–flamed belligerently at Hamida and me. “There is nothing to discuss,” she said.
‘I had to take a deep breath–I’d never been good at confrontations. I said that this girl made a mistake. I tried to
explain that she was from a very underprivileged family. But Mrs Sinha fixed a cold eye on Hamida and said that she has zero percent attendance. Hamida half-turned as if to slink out of the room, her mouth opening in a grimace of a smile. Her teeth were tobacco-stained, edged a revolting orange.
“‘Look at her smiling,’’ Mrs. Sinha pointed out. “She’s not even sorry.’’ It was a smile of resignation. Hamida had been expecting a rejection.
“‘And you,’’ the Principal turned to me, “are encouraging her truancy. Rules are rules!’’
‘Hamida was already at the door. Mrs. Sinha turned back to the stack of papers on her table. Only I paused in the middle of the still room, the last to realise that there was nothing left to say.’
‘The Principal was right in her way,’ Suveer commented. ‘We live in the real world where rules apply.’
‘Not always,’ Reva countered. ‘Often biases rule, so some people get away with acts that others are punished for.
‘I found Hamida a job at a call centre that my friend Derek manages. There was such hope and enthusiasm in her at first. She was excited that with the salary she earned she could rent a place and move her mother and sisters in with her . . . she had to get them off the street as soon as possible, she would keep saying. They were living a dead-end life.
‘A week later, Derek sent me a message. Hamida had asked for a day off two days into the job, saying she had very important work. Her request was turned down. No bunking, Derek had told her.
‘Another week went by and I found out that Hamida had skipped three days of work. I didn’t know what to think. She had promised so sincerely to work hard. A slow anger began within me. When Hamida called me the following night, I sifted through her words, searching her tones for untruth.
‘She said that she had skipped work last week for an important reason. Her mother had saved some money to build a house on a plot of land they owned outside Mumbai. She had asked Hamida to speak to a mason about the costs and timelines. Since masons leave their homes to go to work early and may return late at night, she’d had to take time off from work to chase them down.
“I suppose you couldn’t meet them on some Sunday, or on your day off from work,” I asked coldly.
‘She explained that she could not wait to make enquiries. Her father would spend the money in a trice. “I know you understand my situation, didi.”
‘I should have understood how much she needed for her family to get off the street. She’d said so often enough. But I didn’t believe her need for shelter was overwhelming enough to risk her new job.
‘I said that this was just her excuse to skip work. “If you lose the job, it will be your problem, not mine, nor that of your employer. I see your old habit hasn’t gone.” Then I heard myself say, “Zero percent attendance in college meant not one mistake, but a mistake repeated many times. ”
‘There was a pause, a thick silence between us. Perhaps Hamida’s mouth was pulled into a grimace of a smile. I mumbled that she was to call and let me know if she still had the job. Hamida said yes, or maybe it was just a sound I imagined I heard her make.
‘My words haunted me even as I returned to my research project and the known parameters of my middle-class life. Hamida did not call back and though I wondered what might have become of her, I didn’t call her either. I could not fully forgive her for throwing the chance I’d given her.
‘But in the days that followed, I couldn’t forget her. I kept wondering if my words had weakened the tenuous thread of faith that had held together Hamida’s dream of studying, working and making a home for her sisters. I worried, as I bought fruits and helped my cousin’s children with their homework, that the girl might take the track that runs, not towards personal grit, but towards the city’s grime that Mrs Sinha had seemed to think she was destined for.’
‘So, did Hamida continue or quit?’ Suveer asked.
‘She quit the job,’ Reva replied, ‘and three months later tried to slit her wrist. Her family’s problems and a sense of hopelessness–what she’d been calling “dead-end”–had driven her to it. Lila called to tell me this and to say that Hamida wanted to speak with me, to apologise for not doing the job I’d found her.
‘When Hamida phoned me a little later, I could barely speak with her. Was it guilt or somehow the sense of the end of the road for this strange friendship . . . I don’t know. She said she was sorry. I said it was okay. She said she had reapplied to the same college and was now attending regularly. I said that was a good thing. Then I said I was not feeling well and ended the call.’
They were at an open air restaurant with small electric lights placed in potted plants by their table, and a voluble family group at the next table. By the end Suveer could barely hear her voice above the clatter of steelware and camaraderie, but he watched her speak and could read what she was saying in her few gestures, expressive eyes shadowed with doubt and regret. He wanted to hold her. She was suddenly aware of him and as he took her hands in his, hers trembled slightly.
‘You tried to help,’ Suveer said. ‘In your place most people might have just passed her by.’
Reva inclined her head not convinced of his acquittal of her deeds. She’d often tried to do the right thing by her heart, but she’d not always followed through fully.
‘I’ve been a wanderer for many years,’ he said, ‘travelling between towns and cities. At times I don’t have a place to prop my rucksack for the night. But even in those times, I’m aware that I can go home. I’ve lived in big cities but have never felt comfortable . . .’ his voice tapered off.
‘They don’t start big,’ Reva said, a little tangentially. She removed her hand from his to rummage in her bag for a pen and writing pad. She began to draw in smooth strokes what she meant.
‘A small trading town grows in order to service the surrounding agro-based villages. It offers servicing for agricultural machinery, construction material for building houses …’
‘And shops of course, that sell soap and food stuff and clothes,’ Suveer added.
‘Of course,’ Reva nodded. ‘Factories may come up to process and package agricultural produce. This means more jobs . . . This useful town grows into a city, and then into a larger city, with schools, colleges, technical institutes, etc. People settle . . .’
‘What does that mean, Ms Architect?’ He asked lightly, holding her left hand. He was taken with the woman he’d known earlier only as Aboli’s young sister. He felt sure that she would gain faith in herself in time to come.
‘To settle,’ she explained seriously, ‘is to accustom oneself to a place, and to structure it to support our needs. We arrange our streets, homes and workspaces to reflect our beliefs–the blueprint of the city is like a mirror held up to its citizens.’
‘I’m blinded by your brilliance.’
‘What? Shut up!’ she rapped his knuckles with a spoon. ‘If I’m boring you, well, you started this conversation!’
After dinner, Reva and Suveer walked back to the hotel. They didn’t speak anymore, but matched steps, aware of the city winding down, the streets almost emptied of women now and shutters half-downed over the entrance of shops.
When they reached her room, he paused at the door. She put her hand on his shoulder and reached up to lightly kiss his cheek. He turned his face toward her but she moved her mouth, almost imperceptibly, away.
He smiled slightly, accepting her decision, and turned away to his room.
She stood at her door unsure of where this relationship was headed. He was Aboli’s once and now she was married to Tarun. Yet in this space which was like a pause in time, it seemed natural to come together.
Reva sat lonely on her bed for a long time wanting him. It would be so easy. He was on the other side of the wall; had been there for some years now. But she didn’t feel ready to breach it.
She undressed and got into bed, liking the feel of cotton sheets against her bare skin, some stretches of it hair-roughened and some more sensitive
than others.
Towns and cities grew like the tryst between two people, she could have told him. Dreams had to evolve into a blueprint and these tracings then lined with brick and mortar. Once a structure filled the empty space, everything around it would necessarily change.
8
O
n the other side of the wall from Suveer’s rented room in Puneet Nagar, Mahnoor Sheikh sat with her feet tucked under her, writing in her diary. She was 23 years old, a resident of this working class lane that branched off the main road leading to Bungalow no. 37.
How do I begin to tell of this shame? she wrote, her glass-bangled hand moving unsteadily across the page. I have failed in my duty as a wife. Zahyan is a good man. He provides for me. He has built a life for us with patience and dedication. But I cannot give him the child he needs.
As night falls, I begin to dread the reserve in his eyes. We have tried many times but I become distraught with fear. I admit that I am afraid of the love that a husband wants with a wife, a love where I would have to lay my shame bare. My mother taught me to cover my head and body and to always carry myself with modesty. So how can I uncover now? I cannot reconcile what I was taught with what is now my duty.’
Her panties felt uncomfortably bunched with the heavy folds of her salwar, but she did not move to adjust or make herself comfortable. She continued, her writing sprawling sometimes and at times flattening into illegibility.
Mahnoor’s cousin was a teacher at Hassan College in Baroda a year already when Zahyan got a job teaching Physics to Junior College students. One afternoon in the pause between lectures, Fabeha interrupted his paper corrections. She asked about his plans and prospects for marriage. Zahyan was a good-looking 27-year-old, extremely shy around women. He stared uncomprehendingly and then blushed at her boldness in proposing her own marriage to him.