Sonu’s face was flushed. I put my hand on her forehead. It was hot. ‘Sonu, you want me to stay here with you for some days?’
She shook her head vigorously and managed to come out with five words: ‘Go home to your Papa.’
I sensed I was not wanted. With a heavy heart I drove home. My father was surprised to see me back before I was expected, and without Sonu. I told him what had happened. ‘She will be back when she’s better,’ I assured him. ‘She is very delicate,’ he replied. ‘She has been brought up in a rich home and was probably unable to eat hotel food and bear the cold climate.’
I had brought the half empty bottle of Scotch with me. ‘Pitaji, do you mind if I have a drink in your presence? I’m tired and a little upset with the way Sonu’s parents spoke to me. They think I’m responsible for her fever and sore throat.’
‘Go ahead. Don’t mind what they say. They are probably as upset as you are.’
I had a couple of whiskeys—neat, as there was no soda in the house. I asked the cook to make me an omelette, had it with a slice of bread and retired to my bedroom.
My mind was very perturbed. What if Sonu died? Her parents would accuse me of murder: they looked like the kind of people who would. But how could there be any danger of her dying? All she had was fever and a sore throat. Perhaps her period was due in a couple of days: many girls are out of sorts when the curse is about to come over them, I reasoned. I slept fitfully.
My arrival at the office was not expected. In my absence Vimla Sharma had ensured that everyone came on time and cleared the work on their their desks before they left. She was not the seniormost of my staff but they all knew that being my secretary she was closest to me and I trusted her.
I explained to her what had brought me back earlier than planned. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ she asked solicitously.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ I assured her.
I went through the files for orders received, orders fulfilled and the accounts. Everything was running smoothly. At eleven I drove to Sonu’s parents’ home to see how she was doing. I went to her room. She was sitting in an armchair wrapped in a blanket. Her fever had abated—perhaps due to the drugs administered to her. Her throat still hurt but she was able to mumble a few words. I had to cheer her up. ‘It was great fun being at Timber Trail Heights, wasn’t it? The best five days in my life.’
She smiled.
‘You must come home as soon as you are well.’
Once again she nodded her head.
Her mother came in. ‘How is my beta feeling?’ she asked without acknowledging my greeting.
‘She’s much better,’ I replied. ‘Fever has come down. She can speak a little.’
My mother-in-law continued to ignore me and kept up a monologue with her daughter. I decided to return to my office. ‘I’ll drop in again tomorrow, some time,’ I said to Sonu. Once again she nodded her head. I did not say goodbye to her mother—the fat bitch.
I went to see Sonu every morning. The fever left her, her throat cleared up. She missed her period. She was angry.
‘Why didn’t you use condoms?’ she demanded.
‘You didn’t ask me to; I didn’t take any with me. If you did not want to get pregnant you should have taken precautions. In any case if you don’t want a child you can have it aborted. At an early stage it is a very simple operation.’
She turned her face away. I noticed her breasts looked bigger: just five days of hectic sex had filled her up. Her mother came in looking as sour as ever. ‘You could have been more patient: she is only a child of twenty-one. There was plenty of time to start a family.’
I didn’t answer back. Only noticed how closely her daughter resembled her. A little more fat round the face, bottom and belly and the two would be like twins, though over thirty years apart.
The family now had yet another grouse against me. However, I made it a point to visit them once every day; if not mid-morning then on my way back from the office. My father wanted to see Sonu but I put him off with one excuse or the other to spare him the indignity of being cold-shouldered.
In ten days Sonu was up and about. But every time I suggested she come home she had some excuse to put it off. ‘I’m not well,’ she would say one day, and on another she would whine, ‘I keep throwing up …’ And each time she would add, ‘You are out all day, who will look after me? Not your old man. Mummy says I should stay here till the baby is born.’
I did not like her calling my father ‘old man’. I also thought she was behaving badly. ‘It’s a strange marriage,’ I said with some sarcasm. ‘A five-day honeymoon and the bride refuses to return to her husband’s home. Did I rape you or treat you badly? Don’t you want me to make love to you again? You seemed to enjoy it while it lasted.’
She did not have any answers. ‘Mummy says pregnant women should not have sex. There is the danger of the child being aborted.’
Frustrated, I did not go to see Sonu for a whole week. Nor did I ring up to find out how she was doing. It was a bad beginning for a marriage meant to last a lifetime. I was determined to call her bluff. If necessary I would move the court for the restitution of conjugal rights. Fortunately better sense prevailed as the Rai Bahadur’s family realized they were in the wrong. It was Sonu who rang me up. She complained, ‘You haven’t come to see me for a week or more; are you angry with me?’
‘Yes, I am,’ I replied bluntly. ‘And with your parents. They have no right to keep you away from your lawfully wedded husband. They make me feel as if I have committed some crime making their daughter pregnant.’
‘Don’t talk like that!’ she pleaded. ‘I’ll come over whenever you want me to. I’ll only spend the day in my parents’ home when you are in office.’
‘I’ll pick you up on my way back from the office. Be ready with your things: six o’clock sharp.’ She was waiting for me on the porch that evening with two suitcases beside her. No parents, no brothers. Her servant put the cases in the boot and we drove off without any greetings or farewells.
I took her hand and said, ‘Remember, now you belong to me, not to your parents. You go to see them with my permission and come back when I tell you to do so.’ I felt it was better to adopt the macho attitude of a Hindu husband.
My father welcomed her home. He had the cook make a special meal for her: he had been told that pregnant women crave spicy food. She ate very little, complained of nausea and rushed to the bathroom. ‘Pregnancy sickness,’ my father pronounced. ‘It will go in a few weeks.’
I was very gentle with Sonu that night. She let me lie with her, her head on my arm. ‘I must see my gynaecologist before I let your thing perform more tricks on me,’ she said putting her hand on my erection. I did not push her. We spent the night in the same bed without having any sex.
In the morning I dropped her at the entrance gate of her father’s home. ‘Six,’ I repeated.
That became the pattern of our married life for the next six months. Her gynaecologist told her there was no harm in having sex for a few months, but nothing very hectic lest the foetus be disturbed. So we had sex occasionally. It was not the same as it was during the five-day honeymoon. It was a tame affair. I could not enjoy sex that was not full-blooded and where I had to be careful and gentle all the time. And Sonu became bigger and bigger by the day. Her breasts became swollen, her belly protruded as if she had a pitcher tied to it. She became positively unappetizing. I found my eyes wandering towards other women. Somebody had told me that a man’s adulterous instincts are at their highest when his wife is pregnant. But I resisted. I refrained from adulterous intercourse during Sonu’s first pregnancy.
After the eighth month, with my consent, Sonu moved into her parents’ home. There she would be examined every day by her gynaecologist. The nursing home where she was to deliver her child was near their residence. It was her first delivery, probably a difficult one, and they did not want to take any chances.
In the ninth month of Sonu’s pregnancy I was woken one ni
ght by the persistent ringing of the telephone. Sonu had gone into labour and had been taken to the nursing home. I told my father and left immediately. When I got there Sonu’s father was in the waiting room, her mother with her in the labour room. The Rai Bahadur barely acknowledged my greeting and didn’t say a word to me for the hour we sat facing each other. There were other families in the room chatting away merrily and asking the nurses coming in and out of operation theatres for news. Over an hour later a nurse came out and asked, ‘Mr Mohan Kumar?’ I stood up. So did Sonu’s father. ‘Congratulations,’ she said, ‘you’ve became the father of a boy.’
Sonu’s father asked her, ‘How is she—my daughter?’
‘She’s fine,’ replied the nurse. ‘We had to give her a whiff of chloroform, that’s all. She had a normal delivery. It’s a big boy, eight pounds. He will grow to be a tall man like his father. You can see them after half an hour when the baby has been bathed and cleaned up.’
We waited half an hour. The nurse asked us to follow her into Sonu’s private room. Sonu looked exhausted and pale. Nestling against her bosom was a blob of downy hair and puckered flesh frantically searching for its mother’s nipple. Sonu put it in its mouth. I put my hand on Sonu’s forehead and then kissed the baby. ‘Was it difficult?’ I asked.
‘Not very. The pain was terrible. I’m glad it’s over. What does your son look like?’
‘Can’t say yet. He looks very angry. And hungry.’
I sat with her and her parents for half an hour till the nurse ordered us to leave. By the time I got home it was early morning.
My father was waiting for me. I gave him the news. He was delighted. ‘Our line will go on!’ he said. ‘Mubarak—congratulations! You must take me along the next time you go to see her. I must have a look at my grandson … We must think of a nice name for him.’
In the office I sent for mithai: laddoos, gulab jamuns, rasgullas, to be distributed among the staff.
During the weeks Sonu was away, I made an important decision. I asked a property dealer close to our house to find me a bigger house with a garden in an upper-class residential area. My firm was making a lot of money and I was determined now to move out of the house gifted by Achint Ram. To put him in his place, I’d buy a much larger house than what he had given his daughter. Of course, it would not match her father’s mansion, but I could give Sonu the feeling that she had not done too badly with me. This time buying a house would not be a problem: I still had no real black money, but I could now pay a part in rupees and the rest in dollars, for which there were many takers.
I did not tell anyone about my decision, not even my father. I wanted it to be a big surprise to Sonu and a gift for my newborn son. A week later the realtor came by with a map of New Delhi indicating where the kind of house I wanted would be available and on what terms. I spent a morning travelling with the realtor from one large house to another. I settled for one in Maharani Bagh, not far from where I was living. It was a double-storeyed bungalow with a lawn in front, a modest courtyard at the back, two garages, three big rooms and a terrace on the first floor and a large reception room, two bedrooms, a study and a kitchen on the ground floor. There were servant quarters in the rear. I fell in love with it at once. The owners, an elderly couple shifting out to Chandigarh, were willing to hand over possession as soon as the money was paid to them. I had my company lawyer draw up the agreement for sale and handed the couple a lump sum in cash as part payment.
After the deal had been finalized, I told my father. He was somewhat dismayed. ‘Isn’t this house good enough for you?’ He had spent almost his entire adult life in a government flat and every house looked to him too large for comfort. ‘You see it, you will love it,’ I assured him. ‘You have to give it a name.’
The morning after my son was born, I took my father to see the house. He was very pleased with what he saw. He had chosen a name for my son—Ranjit Kumar; the house was to be named after him—Ranjit Villa.
This is the house I live in today in the style expected of a youngish millionaire. I got pricey interior decorators to do it up. I engaged a Mug cook; the young fellow who cooked for us till then became his assistant, bearer and masalchi. The house had its own cleaning woman who lived in the quarters. I took her on so she could stay where she was. I also engaged a part-time gardener and a chauffeur as I found driving in Delhi somewhat tiresome.
I was impatient to bring my wife and child to the new house I had bought for them. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can take them home now,’ Sonu’s gynaecologist told me. ‘I’m always available at all hours. But if Sonu feels nervous, I suggest you hire a night nurse who can keep an eye on the baby so that the mother can sleep undisturbed and only be woken up when the baby wants to be fed.’
The Rai Bahadur did not bother to consult me. ‘For a few days she will stay with us,’ he told the doctor. ‘We will have a day and night nurse for as long as the baby needs breast-feeding.’
So that was that. While I was in the office, Sonu and the baby were shifted to the Rai Bahadur’s residence along with two nurses. I only found out when I went to the nursing home to see them. An undeclared tug-of-war restarted between us. I did not go to the Rai Bahadur’s house that evening.
The next morning when I met Sonu I complained. ‘You did not bother to let me know you had returned home. I looked such a fool when I went to the nursing home. What must the staff have thought about our relationship?’
‘You could have rung up before going there. They wanted the room for another expectant mother, so I had to leave.’
‘When are you coming home?’
‘Give me a few more days here. I have to feed this brat every four hours. He sets up such a howl if his meal is delayed by a few minutes. Here I have these two nurses and my mother to look after us. Mother says we should choose a nice name for the boy.’
‘We already have one. Father’s chosen it: Ranjit Mohan Kumar. I like it. It was my great-grandfather’s name.’
‘So you let your father decide his name without consulting me? I am the boy’s mother, in case you’ve forgotten.’
Every time we talked to each other, it became an argument. I was determined not to let her have her way over our son’s name. ‘Ranjit Mohan Kumar it is going to be. I’ve named our home after him: Ranjit Villa. You will see it on the door when you decide to come home.’ I said nothing about having bought a new house and let her presume I had given our old house a new name.
I let her spend another fortnight in her parents’ home. Then my patience ran out. ‘You have to come home now,’ I told her over the phone one afternoon. ‘I have cleared one bedroom for your nurses for as long as you need them. Your parents can come to see you every day if they like while I am in the office. You can spend weekends with them if you like.’
She knew I meant business. She told her parents. Very reluctantly they agreed to let her go. Not on the Saturday following because Saturday was inauspicious, being the day of Shani—Saturn. Sunday would be better. I turned up on the morning of the following Sunday. She had accumulated a lot of baby’s things: bed sheets, soft blankets, nappies, talcum powders, gripe-water bottles and a huge teddy bear. There was not enough room for everything in my car, so one nurse got into the Rai Bahadur’s car with the baggage. Sonu took the front seat beside me, the senior nurse, with the baby in her lap, took the rear seat. I told the Rai Bahadur’s driver, ‘You follow me.’
‘Sahib, I have been to your house many times.’
‘Follow me,’ I told him again, ‘it’s not the same one.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Sonu.
‘To your new home. I kept it as a surprise for you.’
I pulled up at the gate of my new house and pointed to the brass name plate. ‘See! Ranjit Villa.’
I thought she would be happy to see her large new house named after her son. What I saw was sullen resentment written all over her face. ‘Without consulting me, without telling me!’ she snarled. I knew she would have m
ore to say on the subject when the nurse was not within earshot. The nurse’s reaction also quietened her. ‘Mr Mohan, what a beautiful house you have! My! My!’ she gushed as I took them inside and showed them Sonu’s and the baby’s bedroom: silk bed covers; large, soft feather pillows imported from Germany; a baby’s cot; bathrooms done up like in five star hotels.
My father did his best to welcome them. He applied kum kum powder on Sonu’s and the baby’s forehead, waved hundred-rupee notes round their heads and pressed them into their hands. The servants came in. I introduced them in turn. They touched her feet. ‘Mem-sahib, aap ko bahut bahut mubarak ho,’ said the Mug cook, congratulating her in his Bengali-Hindi accent. The bearer she already knew. The jamadarni introduced herself as just the jamadarni, the woman who did the floors and the bathrooms. ‘So the staff has also been appointed without consulting the mistress of the house!’ remarked Sonu very acidly when we were left alone. ‘All I have to do is to eat what is offered to me, sleep with you when I’m expected to and be the wet-nurse for my own child.’
I was exasperated. ‘Is there anything I do which pleases you? I’ve done all this to make you happy. All the thanks I get is a barrage of criticism.’
I stormed out of the room. I hoped this would make her feel she had overdone it. She went round the house inspecting the rooms. She went to the kitchen and asked the cook what he had made for lunch and supper; she came down and went round the reception room. I could hear her open the drinks cabinet and examine the cut glass. Finally she came into my study where I was pretending to work. ‘I’m sorry to prove such a damper,’ she said apologetically. ‘Everything is carefully laid out. You can do very well without me.’
‘Well, I’m glad you like the place.’
‘What about your nurses?’ she asked.
‘Ask them their food preferences and tell the cook,’ I replied.
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