In answer Ranu slammed the door. Divya went back into the house, feeling sick. She wondered if the old fellow was ill again. She let him run little errands for her, like getting the milk from the milk booth in the mornings, for which she would give him a little money or food. He was a small, thin, emaciated, bird-like man, with a slurred speech that had resulted from some disease of his middle age. Sometimes he would tell her stories of his bygone days and she would nod at intervals although she hardly understood any of it, except a word here or there, like bicycle, or river, or tomato chutney, which, put together, made no sense at all. In her more fanciful moments she had thought that perhaps the old fellow was an alien, speaking to her in an exotic tongue or in code, delivering a message that she had to try to decipher. But he was just an old man down on his luck, with no place to go but the nest of rags at the top of the stairs, subject always to the whims and frightful temper of his daughter-in-law. Divya resolved that later on she would find out if the fellow had fallen ill. He hadn't come by yesterday for the milk. She would have to send Vikas to the milk booth today.
Divya was hungry.
She had been cleaning all morning and had skipped lunch. By the afternoon, the house was sparkling. She hadn't known what to do with most of the things that they had accumulated—the piles of books on the floor all over the house, the loose photographs on every surface like schools of dead fish, the magazines sliding off stacks in the bathroom. But she had found in herself unexpected reserves of cunning—she'd hidden piles of books behind the beds in the bedrooms, given the magazines to the kabari man without asking Vikas if he wanted to keep any of them, collected the photos and put them in a plastic bag in the clothes cupboard. The cleaning woman, who was lazier than a street dog in the sun, loved parties and had worked with great enthusiasm to make the floors shine, knowing that some of the good food would come her way later on.
Late afternoon, Divya was standing in front of the stove, stirring the matar-paneer. There was sweat gathering on her forehead, under the hairline, and steam rising off the big karhai as the peas bubbled in their sauce of onions, ginger, tomatoes, cumin and coriander. Big chunks of paneer like white barges in the gravy, and the aroma! The aroma was enough to make the head swim. Divya had never been so hungry, and was regretting not having had lunch. She was paying for it now: her stomach rumbled, her mouth watered, she felt faint with desire. It should have been easy to munch something while cooking.
But the fact was that she was afraid of the cook. Damyanti was a small, stern woman who stood no nonsense from her employers. She took great pride in her creations and had, Divya thought, an unreasonable code of conduct: you did not eat before your guests, you did not filch from the serving dishes, and there was no need to taste the food unless you wanted to insult the cook. Damyanti had already scolded her once for trying to throw away the carrot-tops.
"You've left so much of the carrots on this, I can easily take it home and put it in a sabzi; and the greens can go to Karan's cow. Don't you know what happens to those who waste food?"
The reason Damyanti could bully her employers and get away with it was because her cooking was sublime. The fact that she had condescended to stay and cook for much of the afternoon meant that Divya was, by tacit agreement, completely under her thumb.
"What happens?” Divya asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
"People who waste food end up being reborn as nali-ka-kidas,” said Damyanti, setting hot onion pakoras into a cloth-lined serving dish. Divya shivered. Imagine that, having those horrible, long feelers, living in dark drains, emerging at night to eat the leavings of others!
The matar-paneer was done; Damyanti was setting up the big dekchi for the rice, putting in the ghee, the cardamom, a cinnamon stick, cloves. It smelled like heaven. Divya clutched the wall with one hand. The thought occurred to her that she should let the party go to hell, dismiss Damyanti and sit on the kitchen floor, surrounded by vats of fragrant dishes, and fall upon them in a frenzy. She collected herself. Maybe she should simply go get the parathas she had been saving in the fridge. They would taste divine, even cold. She had surely never been so hungry as now!
But Damyanti (coming to get the dhania leaves) caught her at the fridge, with her hand clutching a piece of paratha halfway to her mouth.
"Chee chee!” she said. “Don't you know what happens to the woman who eats during cooking? Do you want to make all the food jootha?"
Divya never found out what terrible fate would have resulted from her almost-lapse because at that precise moment Vikas came in with the cake, laughing and trying to fend Charu off because she wanted to see what it looked like. Divya had to put the parathas back and make room in the fridge for the enormous cake. Vikas touched Divya's disheveled hair as she turned away—she suppressed a desire to bite his hand.
"Are you going to face the guests like this, Divu? They'll be here in an hour! Go dress!"
"I have to get the chholey cooking,” she said irritably, following Damyanti into the kitchen. There was a knock on the back door.
"I'll see who it is!” Charu said, flying off resplendent in a new blue dress, happy because the cake was her favorite kind, triple chocolate. Divya went back into the kitchen, got the other karhai on the stove, put in the oil and the spices and the onions. When Damyanti's back was turned for half a second she popped a piece of paneer into her mouth from the dish of matar-paneer, and burnt her mouth. She could hear Charu talking to someone at the door, running into the house and back to the door again; she heard the soft, hesitant, mangled words of the old man upstairs. So he was up and about, the old fraud! Pissing in his bed, stinking up the stairs, giving her a headache first thing in the morning! And she had had to get the milk herself earlier, because Vikas had to go out to get the drinks! Tears welled up in her eyes. If only she could eat something! How absurd this was, to be afraid to eat in your own house!
She was about to purloin another piece of paneer, burnt mouth or no, when Vikas came in.
"Divya, you'll never believe what I saw in our room! A mouse! Really, when will you stop feeding every living creature in the area! They think our house is a hotel! And we have all these people coming ... where did you put the rat poison?"
He had gotten it last week, a small blue vial of death that she hadn't been able to bring herself to use. It stood on the highest shelf in their bathroom.
"It wasn't there,” he said when she told him this. “Divya, really!"
He knew she didn't like using the poison, but the traps they had used hadn't worked either. Vikas had taken the traps to the park every morning and let the mice out, but they had wasted no time in returning. Stricter measures had been called for.
What Divya remembered was this: she was ten years old, and had been visiting an aunt's house in the summer. It was an old bungalow, ridden with denizens of all kinds, including an army of mice. Her uncle had set poisoned food all over the house and killed off the army. Divya had a vivid memory of the tiny corpses, their bodies twisted with the final agony, all over the house. Then, a day or two later, there had been the smell in her room, which had finally been traced to a nest behind the big wooden cupboard. Twelve baby mice, pink and hairless, had died of starvation after the adults had been killed. All the time Divya had been reading her mystery books and sipping her lemonade, those babies had been dying slowly. She had cried for days.
"Vikas, this is no time to be setting out rat poison,” she said, but he was already distracted by the pakoras. “Smells good,” he said wistfully, leaning over the glass-covered dish.
Before Divya could utter a word, Damyanti had put two pakoras and some tamarind chutney on a plate and handed it to him, all the while smiling approvingly as Vikas ate. Divya stared at him, and then at her, speechless with indignation.
"But...” she started to say, when she heard the fridge door open and shut and there was Charu walking past the kitchen door in her blue dress, holding Divya's precious parathas in her hand.
In an instant she was in
front of her daughter, confronting her, snatching the parathas away. She stared at Charu, breathless with anger.
"What are you doing with my parathas?"
Charu stared back, eyes wide with confusion.
"I was just giving it to the old man, he said he was hungry, Ma—.—.—."
There was a roaring in Divya's ears. She felt momentarily dizzy.
"Tell him we can't spare any,” she said, more harshly than she had intended. “Don't you have better things to do? Where are the presents you were wrapping for your friends? Did you get enough for the other children, too?"
An expression she could not identify flickered over the child's face. Divya knew Charu was not happy about the other children, the strangers who would be coming to the party. Apart from Charu's three friends there would be a fourteen-year-old boy, the nephew of Vikas's new boss, Mr. Lamba, and an eleven-year-old girl, daughter of the Pathanias. But all that—the sulks and protestations—had been over and done with, or so Divya thought. She saw the tears rise in Charu's eyes.
"It's my birthday,” the child said, fiercely. “You're not supposed to scold me on my birthday!"
At that moment Divya was aware that certain knots had come into being in the smooth tapestry of her life, knots she would not necessarily know how to untangle, but there was Vikas calling out that the Chaturvedis were already here, and Charu was already at the door, talking to the old man. Damyanti took the parathas from Divya's limp fingers and pushed her, not ungently, in the direction of the bedroom.
"Get ready for your guests, I'll do the chholey,” she said, and Divya went to change her sari and wash her face and put on some lipstick, feeling dazed, feeling as though something momentous had happened or was about to happen. The book she was reading, The Aliens of Malgudi, lay on the dressing table; she stared wistfully at the lurid cover, with the spaceship and the buxom space-bandit Viraa. The plot had to do with Viraa discovering aliens disguised as humans, living in the town of Malgudi. They were from some planet light-years away. Divya wondered how she was going to survive.
As for the Chaturvedis, she should have remembered from the gossip that they always came at least half an hour early, possibly because Mrs. Chaturvedi—an inveterate gossip and interlocutor—liked to have her victims to herself before the others came.
The party was in full swing. Divya dashed from kitchen to drawing room, from guest to guest, until the world became a blur of silk sarees and lipsticked mouths opening and closing, the clink of glasses; the flow of myriad streams of conversations, none of which made any sense to her. In the kitchen she took a moment to wipe her brow. Just then Mrs. Lamba loomed large in the kitchen doorway, resplendent in green silk.
"My dear, what a lot of trouble! Look at you, all sweating! You should have got the whole thing catered. I will give you my caterer's telephone number. He does some very nice European-style hors d'oeuvres..."
"Aha, but, Mrs. Lamba, you must try these pakoras...” Mrs. Raman said brightly, munching away behind her. Mrs. Lamba condescended to nibble at one.
"Not bad,” she said in a surprised tone. Damyanti, wiping the serving dish for the chholey, glared at her.
Vikas came in wanting more glasses. There weren't enough at the bar. The Saikias and the Bhosles were here. And where was the fruit juice for the children?
Over the next hour or so, Divya caught a few glimpses of her daughter. Charu wouldn't look at her. The girl's laugh was higher than usual—she was in the middle of her little circle of friends. At the periphery were the eleven-year-old daughter of the Pathanias and the fourteen-year-old nephew of the Lambas. Divya went over to make sure they weren't feeling left out. No, Charu was nothing if not kind-hearted—she had served birthday cake to everyone, and now the two had been invited to play a computer game in Charu's room along with the inner circle of friends, and they were all trooping off together. The Lambas’ nephew looked frankly bored; the Ramans’ daughter cast a despairing glance at her parents as she left the room.
So much unhappiness, Divya thought suddenly. She was feeling better, with some pakoras in her stomach, but now a wave of anguish swept through her. She looked at the women, clustered together, their face paint standing out garishly in the light. It was one of those moments when everyone had run out of conversation at the same time, like actors taking a break from their roles. Mrs. Lamba's fleshy face looked haggard, Mrs. Raman's, nervous. In that moment she had a sudden shock of recognition, a fellow-feeling she could not explain. Then Mrs. Chaturvedi leaned toward Mrs. Lamba with a conspiratorial look, and the buzz of conversation resumed. What were they hatching now? Whose reputation was being built up, or destroyed? By contrast the men seemed less sinister, talking in loud voices about the latest financial news—they were like little puppets, moving and twitching to order, while the women, with Mrs. Lamba at the center, controlled the strings. Why had Divya had that sudden moment of empathy with the women—no, empathy was too strong a word—but why she had felt what she felt, she did not know.
She had a sudden longing for the days when Vikas was still a junior manager in the company and birthdays, and life itself, were less complicated. Then, she could ensure everyone's happiness. Charu could be comforted with a hug. But look at her now, with that veil over her eyes, taking a tray of soda to her room for her friends. She didn't like the way I snapped at her, Divya thought. On her birthday too! She's getting all sensitive and dignified now. Every year she steps away from me, one step. Two steps. And look at Vikas! He looked the genial host, pouring the drinks, laughing at Mr. Lamba's jokes, but she could see the strain on his face. Her poor Vikas, growing up, growing old. Worried about creating the right impression. The old Vikas had enjoyed making cartoons of his superiors, shared jokes with her about how stupid office politics was. She felt sorry for him, having to laugh at those jokes of Mr. Lamba.
What was the point of it all?
As the evening wore on, she knew that she had achieved some degree of success. Damyanti had left around the middle of the evening and she had managed the serving of the dinner mostly on her own, with some help from Mrs. Bhosle and Mrs. Raman, two ladies on the outer perimeter of Mrs. Lamba's circle. Whether it was Damyanti's cooking or whether Mrs. Lamba had been feeling indulgent, she felt as though she had passed some kind of test, that she had crossed an invisible barrier and was now one of Them. She didn't like it, didn't like pretending to like it. She wasn't as good at acting as the other women. But for Vikas ... she looked across at him, and he raised his head and met her gaze, and in his look was relief and humor and the reassurance that the evening would soon be over ... yes, she would do it for him. At least for another half an hour, or however long it took for the last glasses to be set down, the last goodbyes said.
Then she heard a child scream.
The children had been running around, playing some kind of crazy game, after having sat still through dinner. The Lambas’ nephew, Ajeet, had started them on it, Divya thought, against Charu's wishes. But he had the authority of being fourteen and having traveled all over the world with his parents (his speech was peppered with references to London and New York and Sydney), and he was already beginning to develop an air of studied cynicism, a man of the world. Divya could sense Charu being pulled in, and repelled, and pulled in, and repelled, and had suffered for her daughter, who still would not look at her. She wanted to tell her that the world wouldn't care for her hurt feelings, that she needed to be stronger and less vulnerable to everyday hurts if she were to survive; she wanted to tell her that the kind of men that grew from boys like Ajeet were bad news, all preening, fake charm and pretended indifference ... look at him, manipulating the younger ones just because he was bored and wanted whatever entertainment the situation had to offer...
In the split second after the scream Divya established that it was not her Charu, and that the sound came from outside the apartment, from the vicinity of the back door. She was already moving toward it, and so was Vikas, and Mrs. Pathania, whose daughter it was who had
screamed. At the back door she saw that the children were clustered at the top of the stairs that led to the terrace; there was a faint smell in the air, not urine. The landing was very quiet, with only one light burning over the stairway, and the servants’ quarter door (she noted as she ran up the stairs) was locked.
The children moved aside to let her see; Mrs. Pathania's daughter was already half-falling down the stairs into her mother's arms. What Divya saw was the old man curled up in a nest of rags, clutching his throat with both hands, quite dead. His hooked nose, protruding from his too-thin face, gave him the appearance of a strange bird; his heavy-lidded eyes were open and staring at some alien vista she could not imagine. At the same time she was aware that Vikas was gently ushering the children down the stairs, and the Lambas were coming up to look. She started to say:
"He's sick, poor man, I'll get the doctor,” for the sake of the children, but the boy Ajeet interrupted her.
"He's dead,” he said scornfully. He gave her a defiant half-grin. “I kicked his foot, so I know."
At the precise moment before the Lambas reached the landing, Divya saw two things: the piece of paper in the dead man's hand, and the blue vial of rat poison standing quite close to his ragged pillow. In that instant she had swooped down and gathered both items, covering them with the pallu of her sari. She turned to face the Lambas. Mrs. Lamba gave a high-pitched cry and fell against her husband, who, not being built to handle the weight, tottered against the wall. Mrs. Bhosle took over, muttering words of comfort and calling for brandy, giving Divya an unexpectedly sympathetic look. Mr. Lamba drew himself up to his full height. Divya noticed that the tip of his nose was quite pale.
"What is the meaning of this! Who is this fellow?"
"The father-in-law of my neighbor's servant,” Divya said. “They don't feed him—"
"I don't care who he is,” Mr. Lamba said. “How can you tolerate having riffraff living in your building? The man could be dangerous! Or have a disease! Like AIDS!"
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