A Breath of Fresh Air

by Amulya Malladi

  They both became silent as soon as they saw me with the tea. I wondered if they really thought their voices didn’t carry to the kitchen, or if they were merely pretending that I didn’t know they had been talking about me.

  “It is Babli’s birthday tomorrow,” Divya Auntie said, sipping her tea daintily, giving my mother sly looks. Babli was Divya Auntie’s two-year-old granddaughter. “You should come, Anjali.”

  The army officer was going to be there and I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “I will,” I said, biting my lips to stop them from curling into a smile.

  “Go early,” my mother suggested casually. “You can help Divya Auntie in the kitchen.”

  I nodded and raced upstairs to my room. I sat down on my bed, heart thumping. He looked like Dev Anand, I thought to myself, as a crazy excitement ripped through me. I was going to be married to an army officer and we would have parties and places to go. And I would have a handsome husband; it was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

  Since I had finished my B.A. in English Literature, I wanted to hurry up and get married. Not getting married soon meant that I would have to go to the university to do a master’s. My parents had been quite clear about that. I had to at least be “B.A. pass” to get a decent husband, and if I didn’t get married a year after I finished the three-year course, I would have to do a master’s in a subject of my choice.

  “Your chances will be better with an M.A.,” Mummy would say. “Better the education, better the husband.”

  Although that was not always true. Sometimes the girl was too educated and too smart and too independent and she never found a good husband. Men were not interested in a career woman; they wanted a wife, a lady, not some mannish woman who wanted to compete with them.

  And I didn’t want to study anymore, I wanted to have fun—and what could be more fun than marrying an army officer?

  I started to plan the wedding. I knew my friends would be horribly jealous, but then all of them were not fortunate enough to have my good looks. Even though I told everyone that I didn’t think I was pretty, I knew otherwise.

  I stood in front of the mirror primping my hair. My hair fell straight to my waist and shined if I washed it with the expensive shampoo. I would do that tomorrow, I thought happily and then turned around to open my closet. I went through the hangers, looking for the right sari to wear. There was the yellow silk one with the red border, but that made me look old. It was heavy with gold embroidery and old-fashioned sari-border work. There was the black one with the small golden flowers, but I knew that wouldn’t work. Mummy would never agree to a black sari. She would ask me, “Who died?”

  I fingered through silk and cotton and finally came upon the sari my grandmother had given to me on my eighteenth birthday. It was ivory silk with tiny blue and gold flowers, and it had a thin dark blue and gold border. I had the perfect blue silk blouse to go with it. It had a low back and made me look sexy. I couldn’t wait to enchant my army officer.

  The next day I spent hours on my hair, straightening it in the sun as I dried it painstakingly with a thick black comb. I ran the comb through my hair more than a hundred times, while I let the sun seep into the silky strands to remove the moisture from them. My mother came to my room and saw the sari and nodded approvingly. But her face fell with dismay when she saw the blouse.

  “No, you can’t wear that blouse,” she said, horrified that some of my back would be bare.

  Didn’t she understand? He was an army officer. He was used to seeing modern women, and I needed to look like one to attract his attention.

  “This is how they dress these days, Mummy,” I said airily. “I like this blouse. It makes me look modern.”

  Mummy was of course displeased, but she understood that an army officer would want a fashionable wife and she agreed grudgingly to let me wear the blouse.

  She lent me her prized pearl necklace and earrings for the occasion. We both knew why I was dressing up for the birthday party of a two-year-old, but we didn’t say anything. It was understood that these things were better left unsaid, in case the match didn’t work out.

  I looked gorgeous.

  My eyes were sparkling and expensive rice pearls dangled from my ears, partially hidden by my long straight hair. I wore high-heeled black slippers and my toenails were painted a dark brownish-red. I even wore lipstick—a light shade, of course. It was one thing to look modern and quite another to look like a tramp, and I knew the difference. I was not going to let this opportunity slip by because of the clothes I was wearing. I wanted to look like a modern woman sprinkled with a little bit of the traditional—a good-looking, young, cultured woman, ready to marry an army officer.

  Not once did I stop to think why I should want to marry an army officer, or what I would be getting into. I didn’t want to look beyond the parties and places I thought I would be going to. It seemed irrelevant. I was raised to be married, and it was time. An army officer seemed glamorous and polished, far from the unsophisticated men Divya Auntie had brought for me before. An army officer meant quality and I wanted to marry quality. A man who didn’t fart in public, or stick his finger up his nose, or burp loudly, like my father and uncles did. I wanted a man who was elegant, like the men in the suit ads on television.

  I looked at myself in the mirror one last time and gave a dazzling smile. I stood five feet three inches, not too tall and not too short. My hair fell in practiced disarray around my shoulders and my face shined like a thousand-watt bulb. There were advantages to being fair-skinned. Anything I wore, no matter what color it was, no matter the texture of the cloth, looked good on me. And if I applied Fair & Lovely religiously to my face, the sun didn’t darken my skin much either.

  Yes, I thought, I looked perfect. But I would look even better with an army officer at my side. As I walked the short distance to Divya Auntie’s house, I wondered if I should’ve worn something green in recognition of the army. But then again, I didn’t want to be too obvious.

  THREE

  ANJALI

  I made tea for Sandeep and myself. We sat down to enjoy our late evening drink on the open veranda. It was September and Ooty usually started to cool down then. The evenings were not unpleasantly cold, but I was wearing my woolen sweater and socks for warmth. I set my tea aside and walked around the veranda, my mind far away from Sandeep, who was talking about visiting my parents. I stopped in front of a window and saw my dull reflection. How long had it been since I had had the time to see what I looked like? I was perpetually in a hurry, trying to get from Point A to Point B.

  Now I stood in front of the window, and saw myself as someone else would see me. I was old and tired, the wrinkles on my face hidden because of the dull light, but that was not what struck me. What struck me was how tired my eyes looked.

  This was bound to happen, wasn’t it? People grew older and they grew wiser and their eyes reflected their knowledge. My eyes reflected mine. If I died with my eyes open, people would say, “She lived a weary life.” And they would be right.

  Even the small gold earrings didn’t glitter anymore; neither did my mangala sutra. They had all been so bright, so yellow when I first got them. I touched the gold chain of the mangala sutra, let my fingers feel the texture of the interlaced gold. When Sandeep and I had married, neither of us had much money, not that things were much different now. We hadn’t been able to afford an expensive mangala sutra, which hadn’t mattered to me. The necklace symbolized marriage—its cost was irrelevant.

  I wouldn’t have been so flexible when I was twenty-one. I would have demanded the most expensive mangala sutra because it was a status symbol and I cared about status symbols in those days.

  “What do you think, Anjali?” Sandeep’s voice intruded on my thoughts.

  “Do you think I am beautiful?” I asked, staring at my reflection.

  “Always,” he said almost negligently. “How do you feel about going to Hyderabad in the winter holidays?”

  I turned
around. “I don’t know. I don’t think Amar in his condition . . . I don’t know. How about you?”

  Sandeep’s eyes glinted with amusement. “What is going on in that head of yours? I just told you that we can take Amar because he is feeling a little better.”

  I bit my lip as I realized what was wrong with me. I had lost my youth and Prakash reminded me of the time when I was carefree and beautiful. Now I had responsibilities, I didn’t care what I wore, and I was hardly beautiful. The only man who thought I was beautiful was my husband. I had lost more than that; I had lost the fragrance of my youth, the belief that tomorrow would be a wonderful day. Now I was contaminated with the truth, and the truth was simple—life was sometimes very predictable and tomorrow was going to be just as dull and uneventful as today.

  “Anjali?” Sandeep questioned simply. “Are you here, or are you someplace else?”

  I turned to face him and smiled because his eyes were laughing at me. He found my day dreams, as he called them, amusing.

  “Do you do this when you are teaching in class?” he asked, holding his hand out to me. “You start talking about Hemingway and fall into the other world?”

  “No, I don’t.” I walked to where he was sitting and placed my hand in his. He tugged at it and pulled me onto his lap.

  “No,” I protested when he held me close. “What will the neighbors say?”

  “That the professor and his wife are very much in love.”

  I looked into Sandeep’s eyes. He had taken his glasses off and I was suddenly, crazily happy. Sandeep had the kindest eyes and I found comfort in knowing that they would always be kind. Tomorrow might not have many possibilities, but Sandeep would always be there for and with me.

  “And are we very much in love?” I asked impishly.

  “Yes.”

  And that was enough for us. When Amar was born and the doctors had told us that he was a very sick baby, Sandeep told me, “As long as you and I and god are together, we can do anything.”

  “Why do you want to go to Hyderabad?” I asked patiently. “You know my parents still don’t approve of you and . . . I just don’t see any reason to go there.”

  Sandeep hugged me close and leaned his forehead against my breast. “Amar is better, but he is going to get worse. He is getting worse, and I just want him to see his grandparents.”

  My eyes filled with tears because I knew what he meant. He wanted Amar to see his grandparents once more before he died. Our child was going to die and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  No, my mind protested. He wasn’t going to die. I told myself I should not even think it. A miracle would happen. He would live—a normal life. It would happen. It had to happen.

  “Since your parents won’t come here, we should go there. There can’t be any pride in this, Anjali. They are old and they should see Amar.”

  I held Sandeep’s face close to my heart and struggled for an emotional balance that was slipping away. How was I supposed to forgive my parents because they were old?

  We held each other tightly and tried to forget about our fears and our dreams.

  I heard the moan first and an instant later Sandeep heard it, too. We disentangled ourselves and all but ran to our son’s room. We always left a small night light on and his bed was enveloped in a red halo.

  Amar’s eyes were clenched tight and his face was twisted. I sat down on the bed and held his hand. I stroked his forehead and tried to soothe him without waking him up. Sandeep watched from the side of the bed, his face blank, his expression unfathomable as if he didn’t want anyone to see what he was feeling. As if he was feeling nothing, even though I could hear his soul weep. He always looked like that when Amar had a nightmare, or a panic attack, or when he was in pain. Amar’s arms flailed like the fins of a fish that had been pulled out of water. He shook frantically for a moment and then slid back into sleep.

  I continued to hold his hand, cursing fate for what had been done to our son, and I felt anger surge through me like it was new and fresh. Its taste was acrid and once again I hated Prakash, effortlessly and hungrily.

  Not seeing him for fifteen years had eased the pain and the anger. But now he was here, just a few kilometers away, sleeping with his pretty wife, not knowing what he had done to me, to my son. Prakash had no idea what we had been through and how much he was to blame.

  My favorite author without doubt was Saki, also known as H. H. Munro. I loved his quirky short stories and took pleasure in teaching my students to love them, too. We followed the syllabus provided by the school board, but I always added a short story here and a short story there from Saki’s delectable collection.

  I enjoyed teaching ninth grade English. When I was young I hadn’t paid any attention to what I was reading. Life was a series of Mills & Boon novels, full of fantasy, romance, and unconditionally horrible chauvinistic men. Then one day I discovered Graham Greene and his The End of the A fair . I was smitten. Here was beautiful writing. It probably had not happened overnight—I had not changed from an airhead to a serious woman in a flash. It had taken time and it had taken several bad experiences. I grew up and growing up for me had also meant discovering something new to enjoy and love. Literature had given me a means to end the drudgery of my superficial life where I was more interested in finding a husband than finding myself.

  As I did my master’s in education, I knew I wanted to teach English. I wanted everyone to read good literature and enjoy it the way I did. I didn’t want them to end up in a waste-land of contemporary thriller fiction. I succeeded with some, while others hid Danielle Steele and Sidney Sheldon novels in between the pages of their textbooks.

  I also read to Amar, who at twelve knew Shakespeare and had read his work. He could quote Portia in the last court scene of The Merchant of Venice, he loved Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and thought Romeo and Juliet was boring. He loved reading Phantom comics and enjoyed listening to old Hindi film songs. He broke my heart. I knew he tried to do more because he knew he didn’t have much time. He loved old Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar songs and played their records again and again on an old LP I had bought from a used music store in my university days.

  He was my favorite student.

  It was a few days after meeting Prakash that I met him again. I was in the teachers’ staff room at school and Mrs. Gujjar, who taught math to ninth- and tenth-grade students, was there as well, coughing loudly into a dirty white handkerchief.

  “Arrey, Anjali, there is someone looking for you,” she said, blowing her nose. “Some army officer.”

  I stiffened and then nodded slowly. “Where is he now?”

  “I sent him to your class, and he said that he would come back if you were not there.” Mrs. Gujjar took a deep raspy breath and sighed. “This climate is killing me. I am going to get TB if I live here any longer. But my husband won’t get a transfer for another year. These government jobs are just . . . terrible. He works so hard in that post office and they pay him peanuts and . . . we have to live here, in this cold pit.”

  I sat down at my desk, put my papers away, and waited. My feet tapped against the cement floor keeping time. Prakash was here to see me and even though I tried, I couldn’t stop the goose bumps from sprouting all over my arms. As I wrapped my shawl tightly around my shoulders, I heard his boots thumping on the floor right behind me.

  I stood up unsteadily and turned. “Namaste,” I all but whispered.

  It seemed so formal to say that to him, but Mrs. Gujjar was in the room, so I could hardly be anything but formal. Ooty was a small place and the last thing I needed was for people at school to talk about Professor Sharma’s wife and the army officer.

  “Can I speak with you?” he asked, and I looked at Mrs. Gujjar from the corner of my eye. She was surreptitiously watching us, trying to draw every piece of information she could from our conversation.

  “Of course,” I said with forced enthusiasm. “Ah . . . please . . . ah . . . we can sit . . . .”

/>   Mrs. Gujjar showed no signs of leaving the staff room, and Prakash shifted on his feet uneasily. “How about out there?” He pointed to the banyan tree right outside the staff room and I sighed. This would be all over Ooty soon—an army officer came to see Anjali Sharma and they talked under the tree. . . .

  “I am so sorry, I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.” Prakash sounded contrite.

  I ignored his feeble apology. “Why are you here?” I demanded.

  “I am sorry about yesterday. I just didn’t know what to tell Indu about you.”

  Indu for Indira. Anju for Anjali.

  “I don’t care what you tell your wife. I don’t know why you are here.”

  “You got married,” he said suddenly.

  “So did you,” I pointed out. “If you don’t mind . . .” I started to turn back to leave, but I stopped when he spoke.

  “I wanted to see you. . . . How are you?” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

  “I am fine,” I snapped.

  “Who did you marry?”

  Was this curiosity or concern?

  “How does it matter?” I was appalled at his audacity to come here and pry into my personal life. If I hadn’t seen his wife yesterday, I would be curious, too, but I had and I wasn’t anymore. “He is a math professor at the College of Computer Studies. He is . . . just who he is. Why do you care?”

  Prakash was a brigadier now. I noticed the stars on his shoulder flaps. He didn’t have any new medals, but there hadn’t been any new wars. His uniform was the same as it had always been. Short-sleeve shirt, pants that were always perfectly ironed, and shoes that were polished so well you could see your reflection in them.

  “I just . . . I felt like things were hanging after yesterday.”

  “Things have been hanging for fifteen years, Prakash,” I said, not giving him an inch. This was how my fantasy had been. He would want to talk to me and I would play the arrogant queen. After Amar’s nightmare episode last night, I was haughtier than ever.

  “I know.”