by Shona Patel
“What should I wear?” I asked, looking helplessly at all the saris strewn on the bed.
Asking Manik for his opinion was a mistake. I held up one sari after the other. He said “this one,” then “no, that one” and then, “hmm, maybe...oh well, they are all very nice,” which was no help at all.
“Do you really want my serious, honest opinion?” he asked.
“Yes.” I waited while he pondered.
English ladies dressed conservatively, from what I could gather: muted colors—navy blues, creams and grays. Evening dresses were tailored and understated, jewelry minimal—a string of pearls or a brooch, at the most. What they spent a lot of time on was their hair. I was the opposite. My hair was usually just looped into a casual hand bun. My saris, on the other hand, were gorgeous and unseemly flamboyant. I wished I had a more sober sari in a beige or cream. That way I would blend in better. But Mima would say that was dressing like a widow.
Manik flopped down on his back and pillowed his head on his crossed hands. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “How about the Goldilocks apron?”
“Uuff!” I said, flinging a pillow at him. I wished Manik would not joke when I asked him a serious question. Sometimes communicating with him was like sticking the tail of the donkey on its head.
I finally settled for a blue silk with aqua undertones and a thin vermilion-and-gold border. Even that, when paired with a matching vermilion blouse, made me look embarrassingly queenly.
The sari needed ironing. I wondered if I could trust Halua with the flattop iron he warmed over the kitchen coals. He would most definitely burn a hole in the delicate silk, I decided.
“Move over, Manik. You are crushing my sari,” I said, giving him a little push.
Manik ran his finger along my midriff. “Your skin is so soft,” he murmured, “just like silk.” One arm threaded around my waist, while the other fumbled clumsily with the hooks of my sari blouse.
I tried to wriggle out of his grasp. “I can’t do this right now, Manik. Please, don’t you understand? I am all rattled about this club evening.”
“I can derattle you, my darling,” Manik murmured, worming his fingers inside my blouse.
I sighed—it was no use. We had reached the point of no return.
* * *
Don’t ask me why, but I had expected Debbie to be a pukka English memsahib, a younger Mrs. McIntyre perhaps, but I was in for a real surprise. As usual, Manik had left out all the details when he talked about her: “Lovely girl, Debbie” was all he ever said.
Debbie had “gone native,” as they say. She was a free spirit who had little interest in housekeeping and saw no glamour in playing the memsahib. The daughter of a famous English playwright and a London stage actress, she was beautiful in a careless way, with a sweet dimpled face, big brown eyes and her hair cut in a short bob. Debbie wore faded blue shorts and an old kamjari shirt of Rob’s and walked around barefoot, as did her three-year-old, Emma, who had streaky blond hair that badly needed combing and the startling blue eyes of her father. Emma was dressed like an Indian servant child, in a cotton bordered skirt and cheap plastic bangles. There was a big mosquito bite on her cheek.
The Ashtons had just got a puppy that went by the name of Pekoe, like the tea. It was a brown mongrel with dopey eyes and a big splotch on its head, like a milk drop. Emma clutched the struggling puppy to her chest with its legs dangling. The puppy finally broke free of her clammy grasp and crawled under the coffee table, where it chewed on a naked doll with hair as blond and wild as Emma’s.
The Ashtons’ bungalow was a mess. The hedges were overgrown, the grass scuffed and patchy with outcrops of dandelion. There was a sandbox in the middle of the lawn with half-buried tin cans, spoons, old tennis balls and other mishmash of a child’s world.
“Did you have an arranged marriage?” Debbie asked. She sat cross-legged on the sofa like a yogi, holding her teacup with both hands.
“Not exactly,” I said. I watched little Emma push small pieces of a cucumber sandwich through the holes in the wicker on the back of her mother’s chair. Emma stared back at me with bold, defiant eyes.
I told Debbie how Manik and I had met.
“Beautiful,” she said dreamily, “so romantic.”
Debbie had met Rob Ashton on board the Eastern Saga when she was sailing home from her first vacation in India. Rob was headed to Dublin on home furlough. Everything about India had charmed Debbie—the colors, the beautiful, warmhearted people. Even the heat and the mosquitoes were no bother. She hated going back to dreary old England. Then there was Rob, with his tanned good looks, his blazing blue eyes and his blond hair whipping in the sea breeze. He had seduced her with card tricks and his stories of Assam. At the end of the journey, Debbie didn’t know if she had fallen in love with Rob or India. She wanted them both.
I asked Debbie how she spent her time. Not surprisingly, I learned she played tennis, hunted and fished with the boys. She was also an aspiring writer working on her first novel—a sizzling romance set in Assam, she said, between a chokri girl and a young assistant.
“You never get to know the real India if you live in the tea gardens. It is a cloistered existence. The English are very tight about socializing.” Debbie brushed the crumbs off her shorts. “They don’t mix with Indians. That’s why I was excited to meet you. You are different, though. I thought you’d be more traditional.” She smiled her dimpled smile. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Layla. You are wonderful. You are very easy to be friends with.”
“Everybody thought Manik would come home with a village bride. They don’t expect me to speak English, which is surprising, because most Indians speak English anyway,” I said.
“They don’t speak as well as you do. You have almost no accent. Your English is excellent.”
She pivoted around suddenly. “Emmi! Give me that!” She pried the sandwich from the child’s fist and flung it over the balcony rails.
The puppy scampered out from under the coffee table, bright-eyed, thinking perhaps she had thrown a ball, and little Emma quickly pounced on him and dragged him off to read him the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
“Look, Pekoe, it’s Uncle Jimmy,” she said, pointing to the red-haired giant in the storybook.
Debbie laughed. “That giant looks exactly like our manager, Jimmy O’Connor. He is such a gruff man but he has a big soft spot for our Emma.”
Emma stuck a finger up her nose and looked at Debbie defiantly.
“No, Emmi, that’s very rude. Please stop that!” Debbie wagged her finger sternly. She turned to me. “Uncle Jimmy has certain talents that Emmi admires. He has a missing forefinger and amuses Emma by sticking the stub up his nose. It looks like his finger has gone right into his brain!” Debbie pinched Emma’s cheek playfully and laughed. “You love your uncle Jimmy, don’t you, my pet?”
“I am going to marry him,” said Emma coyly.
“Well, that’s an interesting thought!” Debbie gave me a wink. “I am sure your daddy will be very happy having his tyrant boss as his own son-in-law—imagine that?”
I may have fretted less about what to wear had I known I’d be arriving at the Mariani Club in a battered, topless army jeep driven by Debbie Ashton. The floorboards had tennis-ball-size holes through which gusts of air rushed up my legs, causing my silk sari to billow out like a parachute. I did not know whether to hang on to my hair, my sari or my life.
The jeep, I learned, was Rob’s anniversary present to Debbie, bought off an American GI. It was a ferocious thing with an awful growl. Debbie was often seen belting across bumpy tea-garden roads in her khaki shorts and oversize shirt, her wild hair flying. Sometimes little Emma rode along clinging like a burr. Thanks to her, I arrived on my first day at the Mariani Club looking like a storm-wrecked sailboat. Debbie in her faded summer shift and open-toed sandals looked no dif
ferent from when we started out.
The Mariani Planters Club was no posh English country club but a beat-up homely establishment designed for camaraderie and sport. There were two scuffed grass tennis courts, a decent-size swimming pool, a large dance floor and a Ping-Pong table. This was the place where planters played, hung out and got hopelessly drunk. If anything made the isolation and loneliness bearable for tea planters, it was the Mariani Planters Club.
There was something about the very smell of the place, a mixture of beer and tobacco, muddled with the wet, whooshing blast from the air conditioner, that made the toils of the workweek slip away. The Mariani Planters Club was the only place where a Junior Assistant could share a round at the bar with his bristling, formidable seniors. If the whiskey-emboldened youngster leaked out a pet peeve or two about his tyrant manager, his audacity was graciously pardoned. These incidents were rarely hashed over. Such was the unspoken rule. Loosening a valve or two was what the club was for. It was the only way to survive.
But despite the bonhomie, an invisible thread of hierarchy prevailed. The standing joke among young assistants was that the size of peg of whiskey varied by rank and it was measured by the matchbox. Junior Assistants were entitled to a peg the height of a matchbox sitting on its flat side. The manager’s peg measured the matchbox on its striking edge, and as for the superintendents, company directors and other bigwigs, their pegs equaled the matchbox tall side up.
Debbie was greeted with cries of joy from the lads at the bar. She slipped easily into male company, I could tell, and stayed clear of the other wives. She slugged beer, shot darts and engaged in silly competitive sport like picking a matchbox off the bar with her teeth or laying bets with young assistants on who could shimmy up the veranda pole the fastest.
After his tennis game, Manik appeared all showered and fresh in his white slacks and open-necked shirt. He did not seem to notice my disheveled appearance. After a perfunctory round of introductions, he hit the bridge tables. Mrs. McIntyre led me over to the senior managers’ wives gathered in the cushioned seating area adjoining the bar. They were dignified, coiffured ladies, each trailing a perfumed cloud of rose, lavender or patchouli.
“Oh my, isn’t she the perfect little princess!” cried Mrs. Gilroy, flashing me a gold-toothed smile. “Look at that gorgeous sari, will you!”
As usual, the ladies were surprised to learn I spoke perfect English and did not have an arranged marriage. Most foreigners, I discovered, had a morbid fascination with arranged marriages.
“So how did you meet Manik Deb, dear?” asked a matronly lady with a doughy face and high bosom that crept up to her chin. She was introduced as Mrs. Howard. “We hear young men and women don’t have much opportunity to meet together alone in your society.”
I wondered how to answer that question. “We were introduced by a family friend,” I said finally and smiled, thinking of Boris Ivanov. Technically speaking, it was true.
A pretty woman had just entered the bar. She had a round country-milkmaid face and was girlishly dressed in a gingham pinafore with her hair tied in a high swinging ponytail.
“Oh, there’s Laurie Wood,” said Mrs. Howard. She turned to the other ladies. “Wouldn’t it be lovely for Layla to meet some of the younger ladies? Laurie! Laurie, dear!” she called, waving her hanky edged with tatting lace. The girl waved back, signed the bar chit, picked up her orange squash and walked over to the group.
“How do you do, Mrs. Howard,” she said politely. She shot me an awkward glance and nodded at the ladies. “Good evening.”
Mrs. Howard tugged her arm, “Laurie, dear, have you met Layla? Manik Deb’s wife, of Aynakhal?”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Laurie. She extended her hand then pulled it back, as though worried perhaps of some hidden protocol in our culture. She fanned her face instead. “Gracious, it’s hot in here!” she said, tossing back her ponytail.
“It would be lovely, dear, if you could introduce Layla to some of your friends,” said Mrs. Howard. She turned to the other ladies. “Don’t you remember how lonely it was at the beginning? I must have cried for a whole month!”
“My goodness, the endless surprises!” laughed Mrs. Gilroy, flashing her bullion teeth. “I’ll never forget finding the six-foot python behind our rosewood Georgian sideboard. It had climbed up the mulberry tree and dropped into our dining room through the open window—can you imagine? I was laid up for weeks from shock.”
“My biggest challenge was communicating with the servants,” said a frail-looking lady in cat’s-eye glasses. “One winter I took to bed with a chill. I asked the bearer to bring me some hot milk and a hot water bottle. He brought the hot water bottle but not the milk. When I asked him about it, I found he had put the hot milk inside the hot water bottle. My Hindustani has improved greatly since.”
All the ladies laughed and Laurie Wood shifted her feet. Every now and then her eyes darted toward the door leading out to the hall.
“Are your friends here today, Laurie? Be a dear and introduce Layla around, will you?” said Mrs. Howard.
“Certainly,” said Laurie in a bored voice. From her diffident manner, I suspected Mrs. Howard must be their manager’s wife—in other words, Laurie’s husband’s boss. I was beginning to feel like an unwanted wart foisted on Laurie’s arm.
“We’re out by the Ping-Pong table,” Laurie said to me, nodding toward the door.
We walked past the bridge tables where Manik was intensely absorbed in his game with three other assistants: Larry Baker, Alasdair and a mongoose-looking fellow with a sorrowful face he had introduced as Flint. Manik’s eyes were narrowed and one finger absently tapped his whiskey glass. He looked over the top of his glasses and caught my eye. Everything okay? he seemed to ask. I nodded and pointed at the door and followed Laurie Wood out into the hall.
The group of young women stood at the far end of the hall by a Ping-Pong table. They turned their heads to watch as we navigated the length of the dance floor. Laurie walked with exaggerated slowness by my side, taking tiny steps.
“Blimey, how do you even walk in that...?” she said, sweeping a hand toward my sari.
“I’m used to it,” I said. “Besides, I walk faster than this, you know. I don’t really have bound feet.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know, like the Chinese?”
Laurie gave me a blank look and shrugged. She turned to wave girlishly at her friends. The veiled look she exchanged with them seemed to say listen, this was not my idea.
“This is...” She turned to me, already forgetting my name.
“Layla Deb,” I said.
There was an awkward silence. The ladies regarded me like an exotic but potentially dangerous animal. After a few stilted introductions, they concluded I did not speak sufficient English and resumed their conversation as though I wasn’t there. Listening to them, I gathered they were an unsure lot, still struggling to come to grips with the oddities of Assam, the intricacies and challenges of playing the memsahib. They spent a great deal of time complaining about the “natives” or gossiping about who was having an affair with whom. It seemed a fair amount of bed swapping took place with or without tacit permission.
It was hard to imagine what it must have felt like landing in Assam from some distant, foggy shore, halfway around the world. It must have hit new brides with the impact of a sledgehammer. Assam, in many ways, was like being trapped in a swamp, where everything clawed and bit, and cries for help were swallowed by the screech of monkeys. The very delicate ones would take it the hardest, I imagined. The extreme humidity made hair collapse like a ruined soufflé. Lipsticks melted, nails chipped trying to open bloated drawers and high-heeled shoes took a nasty beating they did not deserve. Even a short walk from the parking lot to the club could risk a twisted ankle or a miserable step in the mud. I gathered when the young tea wives ret
urned home on vacation, they were light years behind fashion with their bad haircuts, homemade dresses styled from Butterick paper patterns and Indian Bata sandals. The men were feathered warriors, whereas the women had turned into dowdy sparrows. In every way it was grossly unfair.
Betsy Lamont was newly married and in her early twenties. She was the wife of Danny Lamont, the Assistant Manager of Chulsa Tea Estate, and a high-strung beauty, groomed tight like a neatly clipped hedge. The other wives did not have the heart to tell her she was fighting a losing battle. Betsy sported an ugly purple bruise over her left eye. I was wondering if Danny Lamont was a wife beater, when I learned otherwise.
Hullock apes were the bane of Chulsa Tea Estate. The assistant’s bungalow was in a deeply forested area, right in the middle of the monkeys’ den. Not only did the Lamonts have to contend with howls and shrieks at the crack of dawn, but the rascals peeped into their bedroom and wandered in at any given opportunity. Betsy found a monkey smashing her lipsticks on the dressing table. The brazen creature bared its awful teeth and flung a hairbrush, narrowly missing her eye, before jumping out of the window and crashing into the mulberry tree.
“How dreadful,” said Molly Dodd. She was a big-boned, flat-chested English girl with doleful eyes and terrible posture. “S’pose you have to keep the windows closed now all the time.”
“I hate those filthy monkeys,” said Laurie Wood, twirling the end of her ponytail with her finger. “Why don’t you get Danny to shoot the bloody creatures.”
“What, and have the servants blame us for killing their monkey god?” Betsy threw up her hands. “You can’t kill monkeys, you can’t kill cows and you can’t kill...God knows what else. Danny says it can start a labor riot. Anything can start a damn labor riot. Bollocks! They’re just damn coolies, for Pete’s sake. Take away their jobs. Make them starve to death. It’ll teach them who’s the boss.”