The Colour of Love

by Preethi Nair

  I had been about nine and at that age one auntie looked pretty much like another: centre-parted hair in bun, red dot on forehead, lots of gold jewellery and all neatly wrapped up in a sari – the wearing of socks and sandals depended on how old they were.

  ‘Yes, but still, best not to be late.’

  ‘Yes, Auntie, we really have to go.’

  She nodded, smiled at Raj, embraced him in her bosom thanking him once again, and then we left.

  One hand was on the steering wheel, the other hand was holding mine and after much conversation from him, we got to Raj’s house in Sutton. I say house but it was more of a mansion. His mother was waiting for us saying that his father would be back shortly as he had gone to play golf.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Nina. It’s so lovely to meet you finally,’ she said, kissing me on both cheeks.

  She was completely different from the bun and dot look I had envisaged for her. Instead she had a side-parted bob, lots of diamond rings on her manicured fingers and was wearing black chiffon trousers and a long red top.

  ‘Nice to meet you too, Auntie.’

  ‘Come through, come through. You’re even prettier than on the photo I was sent. Normally it’s the opposite. They do themselves all up, the mothers send the photos, and then they come here and you think dinner and dog.’

  ‘Dog’s dinner’ was the phrase she was looking for but instead I sensed that she wasn’t a woman who took kindly to being corrected. ‘Thank you,’ I replied instead.

  She led us into the sitting room, which was incredibly spacious with minimalist furniture on oak-wood flooring. I had tried to persuade my dad to get rid of the Seventies-patterned carpets we had, and to convince him to put down some laminate flooring, but he said that it looked cheap. I wondered what Raj thought about our sitting room stuffed with brown leather sofas and the elaborate chandelier that my dad had got off a man he knew down the market. It didn’t work; not that much in our house actually did work.

  ‘Tea? Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

  ‘Raju, will you get me some juice. Get some for Nina as well. Nina, you’ll have some, no?’

  I didn’t get a chance to answer before Raj was sent off.

  ‘So Nina, you’re a lawyer I hear … for artists, no? You must come across some famous people.’

  ‘Some,’ I said.

  ‘How interesting. Uncle and I know Ravi Shankar.’

  I said I didn’t represent him.

  She laughed. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they laugh and hers was an elongated ‘Ha', which sounded fake.

  ‘We’re all so excited about the wedding. I was speaking to your mother and we’ve both got it in hand. No expense spared. I don’t mean to be rude but I want to give you both the best possible wedding and that doesn’t always stretch to the modest wage of a bus driver.’

  ‘He’s also an electrician,’ I added.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My father, he’s also an electrician.’

  ‘Yes. We were thinking the Café Royal, and if that was booked maybe the Hilton on Park Lane and definitely no plastic plates. I find that so crude.’

  Raj came in with the juice.

  ‘No, Raju, I’m just telling Nina maybe the Café Royal for the wedding and reception.’

  ‘Whatever Nina thinks best, Ma.’

  ‘She has far too much to worry about with her career and this networking that they are all doing. It’s agreed, then, your mother and I will take care of it.’

  I thought about the other two candidates before me who had fallen by the wayside and I was positive that she had had something to do with it.

  Then his dad rushed in. A nice, quiet, sedate man, the only offensive thing about him being his chequered trousers.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Nina,’ he said shaking my hand. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Wash your hands and get changed,’ Raj’s mother ordered.

  He went upstairs and came back down after a while and then we all had lunch. She’d thrown together a buffet with quiches and salads. I thought that if she served this to my father he’d be violently sick on her rosewood table as he couldn’t cope with ‘English food’ and couldn’t swallow anything that wasn’t wrapped in a roti.

  Raj sat next to me, occasionally squeezing my hand under the table while she fired out questions that she alternated by talking about herself. By the end of the afternoon it was decided that she would take charge of the preparations. With the speed she had us out of the door I was sure that she would be on the case that very moment.

  ‘Nina, are you having second thoughts after meeting mine now?’ Raj asked when we got outside.

  And instead of saying yes I saw where the vulnerability that made him wear his T-shirts inside out had come from. Maybe I could look after him, maybe he could look after me, maybe we could take care of each other, so I said, ‘No backing out now,’ and squeezed his hand.

  Though the days were getting a little longer the space between my two worlds was increasingly widening. I let others organise my life while I threw myself into my paintings. All the anxiety and doubts were splattered onto canvas and the more I needed to believe that it would all work out and that marrying Raj was absolutely the right thing to do, the more inanimate the objects I chose to paint became and the more I tried to bring them to life. One day it was a concrete brick painted on rough strokes of green grass; the next it was a red iron-oxide bicycle wheel on fresh white snow.

  The following week I went through a phase of painting houses. Derelict houses whose colours and symmetry hid their state of disrepair, and then I painted houses in the style of rich sari fabrics set against grey backgrounds, and then grey houses set against rich sari-coloured backgrounds. When I got home, a selection of engagement saris were sprawled across my bed and my mother sat waiting for me asking me to choose. Every day it was the same routine. I would fold them away, not choosing any. She just thought I was playing a guessing game with her and this heightened her excitement.

  The Christmas holidays came and I couldn’t paint in the studio as it would appear strange that work had not given me the customary days off, so despite the fact that I yearned to be in the studio I busied myself shopping and buying Christmas gifts for everyone – not that we ever celebrated Christmas.

  Every Christmas morning as a child I’d go around to Ki’s house. My mum would drop me in the morning and collect me in the evening, and though Ki’s mum invited her in she was always in a hurry to get back to the garments she had to stitch. Ki’s parents were also Hindu but they would still put a tree up in the run-up to Christmas and a mountain of presents for Ki would be underneath. There would always be something there for me too. Ki would open her presents before I came, bar one of them, and we would sit and open these together.

  When we were seven my dad told us that Santa Claus was an invention so that people could make lots of money, but when we asked Ki’s dad if that was true he said that Santa was as real as people believed him to be. Weeks before Santa came, Ki’s dad would sit and help us write letters to him and Rudolf. We had to think very carefully about what we put in these letters as they always brought us the number one item on our list. This year I couldn’t face Ki’s parents and put off going to see them yet another day. Instead, I handed my mum and dad their Christmas gifts.

  ‘You should not do these things, beta,’ my mum said, ripping her present open. ‘We don’t even celebrate Christmas.’

  ‘They’re only …’

  ‘Gloves,’ she said with a hint of disappointment, and then almost immediately she perked up knowing that they might only be gloves but this was no consolation prize; she could put them on and hug her real prize (her future son-in-law) in all weathers.

  ‘Open yours, Dad.’

  ‘I know what it is, it’s a CD. You can put as much wrapping around it but I cannot be the fooled.’

  He tore the wrapping open and his eyes lit up in a way that made m
y mother suspicious.

  ‘Show,’ she demanded.

  ‘You’re My World,’ she read. ‘Thirty-fifth Anniversary Collection. Cilla Black.’

  ‘Only the Cilla,’ he said, trying not to appear embarrassed. And then he completely changed the subject. ‘Why the English peoples are eating the ugly bird on this day? Somebody is probably telling them that this was the Jesus’s favourite food and is making the money from this. They may not even be having this bird where Jesus lived.’

  ‘Dad, not everything is about making money, sometimes people do things because they love to and there’s nothing else in the world that they would rather do. Take Cilla, for example, she sings because she loves it.’

  ‘No, Nina, she is singing because she is making the money.’

  ‘But before, when she didn’t have any, she was singing.’

  He stopped to think about this and then said, ‘Don’t talk about the Cilla now, Nina, you knows your mother doesn’t like her.’

  Christmas passed as it did every year with my dad lying on the sofa waiting for the Queen’s speech and then dozing off, looking like an exhausted, tanned Santa who had just come back from his holidays in the Bahamas. My mum was busy pottering about preparing for the engagement party that was to be held on Boxing Day.

  I finally chose an orange silk sari with small gold-embroidered elephants. With anticipation, Mum picked out the jewellery, ironed the sari and brought it into my room.

  ‘I never thought I could be this happy, beta.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I replied, thinking that the only other way I could make them any happier was by producing a child a year after the wedding. When I went to bed she came to kiss me on the forehead. The last time she did that I was six.

  Early next morning the bell rang. It was the make-up lady. I couldn’t believe Mum had arranged for a lady to come.

  ‘What’s the point of wasting the money trying to fool him? He already knows what Nina looks like.’

  For the first time ever I agreed with my dad but Mum seemed to derive some kind of pleasure watching my hair being put up in ringlets and my skin being plastered with foundation. After I put my sari blouse on, the lady attempted to patch up the scarring on my arm with powder, and that’s when I lost my temper.

  ‘If they can’t cope with seeing that they can stuff the wedding. Is that why you asked her to come, so she can cover that up? There are some things you just can’t cover up, Ma,’ I shouted.

  Sensing that the entire wedding marquee she had constructed in her head was about to come crashing down, she made out as if it were all the make-up lady’s fault and asked her to leave.

  ‘I’m sorry, beta, I didn’t tell her to do that.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I just asked her to put some colour on you. No need to be upset, it will all be OK.’

  My dad salvaged the situation with a diplomacy that I didn’t even know he was capable of.

  ‘This is for you, Nina, your mother and I bought this.’ He opened the box and pulled out a necklace – a simple silver chain, not at all like the heavy gold pieces I would have expected.

  ‘Thank you, it’s beautiful,’ I said as he put it on for me. ‘It’s just nerves.’

  My Auntie Leena and Uncle Nandan were the only people from our side of the family who were invited to witness the actual engagement ceremony, but a whole collection of various family members and distant relatives were called to congregate at Raj’s house later that afternoon for lunch. It was on Raj’s mother’s insistence to have it at her house as she said it was probably bigger. My uncle and aunt were both tearful when they saw me, probably because I had given them hope by agreeing to an arranged marriage – if I could do it, maybe their two younger daughters who showed absolutely no inclination would go the same way.

  Raj’s family came in their convoy at exactly eleven o’clock. ‘Don’t look out of the window,’ my father yelled as he pulled down the net curtain. Two of the leading honchos responsible for the matchmaking also got out of one of the cars; they had come to preside over the proceedings. Their granny-like appearance and hobbled walk were deceptive: these women were capable of handling an AK47 and taking out any unnecessary obstacles in an instant. Raj’s mother was in her full regalia and she instructed her husband to straighten out her sari as she approached our door. Behind them all was Raj, swamped in his new grey suit.

  The bell rang and my father ran to open the door.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said to them all. They began taking off their shoes and Raj’s mother, bewildered at the state of the carpet, kept glancing at my father hoping that he’d tell her not to bother. She looked as if she’d never stepped foot in a semi and was staring at the Seventies retro wallpaper while leaning against the door which had some dodgy Christmas lights precariously suspended around it; my father had bought them from the market especially for the engagement. I was worried that she might electrocute herself if she moved her hand any further but my mum saved her from this when she asked me to go and touch their feet. Once they had all assembled in the hall, I had to bow down to the honchos and my future in-laws. Insisting I did not need to go all the way down was also part of the whole routine but no one except my father-in-law-to-be did this.

  Raj and I smiled nervously and were quickly ushered into the sitting room and asked to sit on the floor next to one another. Those who could find space made their way into the Land of Leather showroom. Raj’s mother sank into her seat and had difficulty getting up when it was her turn to place before me the gifts they had brought. The honchos were getting impatient and began coughing and spluttering; it was taking too much time, they needed to be fed.

  From a bag, Raj’s mother took out a red sari, gold necklace, silver anklets, a nose ring, some bindi and lastly a hairy saffron-stained coconut and gave it all to me. There it was, the fated coconut finding its way back; once thrown hastily over a bridge, now participating in an engagement. How events had precipitated since that day – back then I was certain that I was getting engaged, but not to a complete stranger. Jean: what would he be doing right now as I sat with this family accepting a ring from my future husband.

  ‘It’s a family heirloom,’ his mother said as Raj slipped it on my finger.

  It was enormous and I wondered if the candidate before me had sausage-shaped fingers. It was also very ornate, with clusters of diamonds set around a huge emerald, not at all like the single solitaire Jean had produced.

  ‘Such thin fingers you have, Nina,’ she commented. ‘And I meant to ask you earlier, what happened to your arm?’

  My mum, bewildered that the proceedings had taken a diversion, hastily added, ‘Nina had an accident with fire when she was little. The ring is beautiful.’

  ‘Show,’ my dad indicated. As I lifted my hand to show him, the ring fell off. There was a gasp from one of the honchos – perhaps she felt it was a sign of foreboding. No one paid her any attention. Dad picked up the ring and studied it closely. ‘Very good. You can see good quality diamond don’t go black.’

  The ring he had bought my mother under duress for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary had turned a funny black colour and had left ugly stains on her hand. ‘I paid a lot of money for that but I was the fooled,’ Dad had said to Mum.

  I wanted Jean to come and rescue me – to get me out of there. Raj’s mother instructed Raj to get it altered as soon as he could.

  Raj and I were then fed sickly sweets and that was it – we were officially engaged.

  ‘I am the proud,’ my father proclaimed, closing the ceremony. They were all given tea and savouries and then it was time to make our way over to Raj’s house.

  His family left first and we followed half an hour later. Everyone was talking excitedly in the car but I didn’t feel like I was there with them; it felt as if it was all happening to someone else as I sat in silence looking out of the window. We parked in the drive along with a fleet of other cars and then I participated in a foot-stepping ceremony before entering h
is home.

  Red bindi mixed with water in a bowl waited for me on the porch. My sari was lifted up as I placed my feet in the bowl. My right foot had to enter his house first and just by the door was a white sheet so that the stained footprint could tell everyone that I now belonged to Raj’s family. They all clapped and cheered as my red footprint left its mark. I was now one of them. It was too late to back out.

  Crowds of people came up to us to wish us well; endless streams of uncles and aunts who fed us even more sweets. Then, after lunch, a group of uncles got out their thablas and started singing and a chorus of aunts joined in. Some, like my mother, wailed; others clapped. As their clapping grew more and more frenzied, people felt that they had no option but to get up and dance. Raj sat by my side throughout it all, watching. He needed taking care of as much as I did and although we didn’t know each other that well there was some level of understanding. After being fed more tea and sweets it was finally time to go home.

  My parents and I got back about seven o’clock. I ran inside, grabbed my car keys and immediately went out again.

  ‘Where are you going?’ my mother shouted.

  ‘There’s something I’ve forgotten.’

  Without getting changed, I got into my car and drove to Ki’s house. I sat in my car outside her front door for ten minutes before getting out, overwhelmed with sadness. Sadness because it was Christmas and she wasn’t around, sad because she wasn’t there to stop me getting engaged, sad because there was only one light on at her parents’ house. It had been at least six months since I’d seen her mother. Despite the fact that the house wasn’t well lit, I knew she was in. ‘Auntie, it’s me, Nina. Open the door,’ I shouted through the letterbox. She came to the door, opened it, and tears welled in her eyes when she saw me. I could barely bring myself to say hello. She held me and the two of us stood in the hallway for a while, understanding the other’s pain in a way that nobody else could. It was dark inside, no Christmas tree, no lights.

  She didn’t ask me why it had taken me so long to come round but just wiped her tears with the end of her sari, wiped mine and then cupped my face in both her hands and whispered, ‘You look beautiful.’