Only Vijay had a wry, knowing smile on his face.
14
Of Alu Gobi in Delhi
On the way back from Jaipur, we were going to spend a couple of days at my mother’s place in Delhi before heading back home to Bangalore. I was pretty certain that while I had admirably played the part of square peg to the bahu-shaped hole in Vijay’s family, he was going to simply ease into mine with the smoothness of a hand slipping into a well-worn glove.
My mother had already become especially fond of him – in fact, from the first meeting itself. After our wedding, I had remarked to someone that Vijay was clearly going to be like the ‘son that my mother never had’. Unfortunately, my brother Abhimanyu had been hovering within earshot and had come up to me with an indignant ‘Hello?’ I had tried deflecting his ire onto Vijay by telling him that after all, I wasn’t the one trying to edge him out, but he still continued to glare at me as if it was all my fault.
We arrived just before lunch at Mum’s place, and as we sat down, she proudly announced that she’d had Vijay’s favourite alu gobi prepared. Now, I had never been a fan of this dish, but after a few months with Vijay I had come to actually abhor it because we had it so often. However, Vijay’s eyes lit up at the sight of this preparation and he began to tuck in as if he hadn’t eaten in ages.
I had been expecting some delicious non-vegetarian dish, and was vaguely disappointed to note that it was conspicuous by its absence. Further, I strongly suspected that the word had spread about alu gobi being Vijay’s favourite food. We were due to visit my grandma and bua over the next two days, and I now knew that they too would prepare variations of alu gobi for him and then stand back and watch indulgently as he heaped large portions onto his plate and ate with relish.
I gently suggested to my mother that while this was very nice, hopefully we weren’t planning to have alu gobi for each and every meal.
My guess about her feeding plan had apparently been fairly accurate and all my tact and sensitivity in the gentle suggestion was rewarded by her snapping back at me, ‘Oh, come on. Let him eat. He likes it.’
I decided to persist with, ‘Maybe he doesn’t like it all the time.’
My mother turned her gaze back to Vijay and said in a hurt voice, ‘You don’t like it, beta?’
‘Oh, I like it. I like it,’ Vijay immediately assured her through a muffled mouthful, not meeting my gaze.
‘Whatever. Alu gobi, alu gobi,’ I muttered, adding for good measure, ‘everybody loves Vijay.’
My mother ignored me. She fondly watched him eat and murmured, ‘Poor Vijay. Probably hardly ever gets to eat this at home. Hain na, beta?’
As Vijay nodded and made a muffled sound in agreement to this statement, I was rendered speechless. At home, I would typically wave our sporadic part-time cook away uninterestedly every time she asked me what to make – all vegetarian food was the same to me – so she would wander over to Vijay to ask him. He would go into deep thought, looking at the ceiling as if trying to remember some special recipe his grandmother had taught him years ago and eventually say, ‘Chalo, alu gobi hi bano do aaj.’ Almost every day, it was that damned alu gobi. The one Sunday I had insisted that we have something different, Vijay instructed the cook to try something new.
‘So what are we having?’ I asked with some interest as it neared lunch-time.
‘You’ll love it, honey. It’s a special stuffed paratha …’
I nodded in approval and then asked, ‘What’s the stuffing?’
The guilty look on his face was more eloquent than words.
I growled at him that I was ordering a pizza and he protested, ‘But at least try it … have you ever had alu-gobi paratha?’
And now, even my own family had turned against me, making alu gobi at the drop of a hat. Grossly unfair.
Our time with my mother in Delhi enabled Vijay to get to know her a lot better. On Saturday, I decided I needed to go to the parlour with my sister, so my mother invited Vijay to go to the Gymkhana Club with her for a beer. As I watched him get ready to accompany her, I remarked sardonically, ‘Did you ever think you would be drinking beer with your mother-in-law? So much for all those arranged marriage thingies your parents were setting up for you!’
Vijay looked me up and down in a meaningful way and said, ‘Believe me, there is a downside.’ He left before I could figure out a good comeback.
I was later told that my mother and Vijay had a pleasant afternoon at the club, talking about different topics but invariably coming back to complaining about how difficult a person I was to live with. At one point during this stimulating exchange, there was a lull and an old tune started playing in the background, one of those tinny piano numbers that are nowadays usually – and rightfully – relegated to use only in the elevators of the more old-fashioned hotels. Vijay, always prone to bursting into song after a drink or two, started singing softly, ‘De de de de de de re saiba … pyaar mein sauda nahin …’
My mother interrupted him to say, ‘It’s actually ghe ghe ghe ghe and not de de de de …’
Vijay had to respectfully disagree. ‘“Ghe ghe”? I don’t think so, Mummy – “ghe” is not even a word!’
My mother glared at him. ‘As if “de” is a word!’
Vijay realized that this was possibly one of the reasons why my Hindi-speaking skills were not top-notch. ‘But Mummy, “de” means “give” in Hindi.’
Mum recovered to continue, ‘That’s not what I meant. Ghe is Konkani or something. I am not sure, but it’s definitely ghe ghe and not de de.’ To prove her point, she started singing along to the music. Vijay listened politely and when she had finished the entire song, said mildly, ‘Well, that’s not how I remember the song, Mummy. But it doesn’t matter, does it?’ and he deftly changed the subject, probably to some more bitching, with me as the convenient scapegoat.
They finished lunch and came home. After Vijay had his afternoon siesta, he stretched and went out towards the kitchen in the hope that someone would make him a nice refreshing cup of tea.
My mother had apparently been lying in wait for him. She suddenly materialized in the hallway, with her laptop balanced on one arm and pounced on him. ‘See, Vijay! I googled it … It’s ghe ghe and not de de.’
Vijay reeled backwards, never at his best when just awakened from a long nap as she proceeded to show him how her finding was corroborated by the Youtube video of the song. Frankly, as he later confided in me, it was quite traumatic, and not at all in the spirit of the weekend to find your mother-in-law springing out at you from dark corners, brandishing heavy objects and shouting incoherent things such as ghe-ghe-de-de in your ear.
It was thus that Vijay discovered that my mother could never lose an argument. Period.
My mother had always been the same. In my childhood, it had been a series of ‘I told you so’s and ‘Because I said so’s – the former said triumphantly and the latter said in a dangerous tone that you did not argue any further with. But with the advent of technology and the democratization of information, it had become, ‘I Googled it and here it is! Hah! I told you so.’
More of Mother Dear’s quirks were exposed to my husband on this selfsame visit. She had lost her cellphone and wanted to get a new SIM card activated, and so called the nice people at Vodafone for the same. Towards the end of the conversation, the chappy at the other end of the line gave her a fairly long drawn out and extended parting, including wishes for the Guru Purab festival, which happened to be that day.
Hanging up a tad impatiently, my mother tossed the phone aside on the bed and declared to us, ‘These people at Vodafone just memorize dialogues and spew them at the customers mindlessly. He was going on and on … “Chitraji, Chitraji …”’ She then proceeded to mimic the man in a breathless and high-pitched tone. ‘Chitraji, aapko-aur-aapke-parivaar-ko-Vodafone-ki-tarf-se-iss-Guru-Purab-ke-liye-bahut-bahut-shubhkamnaaye-aapko-Vodafone-call-karne-ki-liye-bahut-bahut-dhanyawaad …’
We laughed at her imitation, b
ut when there was a lull in the merriment, we all became aware of another sound – a tinny voice emanating from her phone, which she had apparently omitted to switch off successfully. ‘Chitraji …? Chitraji?’ The hapless customer service executive’s voice rang quizzically through the room as he attempted to get my mother back on the line.
We all stared at the phone, frozen. Then, mortified, my mother sprang into action, quickly picked up her phone and switched it off, supremely embarrassed. For some reason, she refused to share in our mirth at the situation. And for some reason, her SIM card activation took many days longer than expected.
Later that evening, we were all watching TV together in my mother’s room. She wanted to change the channel but was unable to find the remote. She cursed the cleaning lady Parvati for having misplaced it, and flitted about the room in a highly irritated frame of mind. She was talking to herself and saying, ‘Just look at this woman Parvati, where on earth has she kept the remote control. Of course, she has kept it here behind this chair, in a place where I will never find it.’ She looked behind the chair and was surprised to see it wasn’t there, and continued, ‘Oh! Not here? Well, if she had kept it here, I would have found it.’ She grumbled to herself some more before remembering something and saying brightly, ‘Oh, yes, actually, I think I took it outside when I went to answer the phone and left it there on top of the computer.’ She then blissfully trotted off to retrieve it from the other room.
I watched her leave the room in amusement, thinking, ‘How weird Mum can be sometimes.’ I noticed Vijay giving me a sidelong glance.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He checked to make sure my mother was still out of earshot, reached out and held my hand fondly, and whispered, ‘Honey … you know … I finally understand. It’s not your fault. I now see where you get it from.’
15
A Home of Our Own
‘It’s just perfect! I can’t believe how perfect it is. Is this a dream? Pinch me, please. Ouch, no, don’t, it’s just a figure of speech … never mind!’
Despite my bruised arm, I was ecstatic. Vijay and I were actually buying our very own home together.
It was large, even airier and sunnier than the company-owned flat in which we were currently staying. It was perfectly laid out and within a very nice and well-located new complex, so after clarifying the price and reconfirming the number of zeros in the stated amount, Vijay went ahead and arranged the loan and did all the paperwork, and soon we found ourselves landlord and landlady of our very own humble castle.
With the overwhelming realization that this was truly our place, we proceeded to set it up exactly the way we wanted.
Our bright-blue sofa set was by now worn but even more comfortable, and of course was the central piece of furniture. The television was placed squarely and respectfully in front of it. Our daring combination of curtains, this time in orange, blue and white, decorated the windows.
Perhaps the only classy elements of our décor were the paintings, and these were completely fortituous acquisitions. In his earlier years, Vijay had a struggling artist friend who created more paintings than he could house, and Vijay had agreed to take them off his hands. When I had first moved in with Vijay, I had seen these lying about stacked together in the storeroom. The theme of the paintings was jazz: and each was of a man playing a particular musical instrument – the bass guitar, the trumpet, the drums and so on. These weren’t exactly abstract but you had to focus to make them out because, interestingly, the artist-friend had gone for the effect of vibration and fuzziness in the paintings, to give the impression of the musicians playing in a smoky little club throbbing with music. They were large paintings in shades of brown, black and white – there were six in total and I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Now, in our new flat, Vijay and I finally proceeded to put them up all over the place. I stood back in the living room to admire the effect. It was stunning.
The artist friend had moved to the US many years before and achieved some success, and didn’t show any signs of wanting his paintings back. Good thing too, because he would have had to fight me for them. It did occur to me once or twice that if I killed him, their value would go up, but I quashed the thought as an extremely unworthy and shameful one. In any case, I didn’t plan to ever sell them.
My mother came to town and helped set up the new flat, presenting us with a pretty wooden nameplate which she had got made for us in Delhi. It said ‘Sharmas A-24’. We loved it, even though I couldn’t stop myself from muttering something about how it should have said Lal-Sharmas. In fact, we would grow to love this nameplate so much that we would later use it for all our subsequent homes and this would turn away many a confused would-be visitor, who would call and say, ‘But I was looking for 1-D, and it said A-24.’ For the moment, we just thanked my mother warmly and hammered it on the wall outside the apartment in a solemn little ceremony. We stood back to admire the effect. Sharmas, A-24. It looked pretty cool.
One of my favourite spots in our new home was the balcony – it faced the outside of the complex. We liked this fact because it meant that we would get some privacy. The only thing that marred an otherwise perfectly lovely view was a most unsightly yellow building some distance away, which was an eyesore to end all eyesores. Still, if we ignored this building, the landscape around was green and pretty, and the mild weather of Bangalore made most mornings there an absolute pleasure. Vijay and I had many heart-to-heart, if slightly one-sided, conversations over steaming cups of tea, made, of course, by my own expert hands.
The new flat was on the second floor in a well-laid-out, green and spacious complex, which had its own swimming pool and club house. We never actually used either of these but it felt good to know they were there. The complex also had its own basketball court, and this was something that we actually did use a lot. I had played basketball in school and was a pretty sharp shooter. However, Vijay had a good nine-inch height advantage over me, and this made it difficult for me to beat him. In all our one-on-one’s, he would lope past me like a graceful giraffe and score basket after basket. Since I was not a very good loser, I started resorting to more aggressive defense techniques such as pulling down his track pants just as he was about to shoot – a simple pleasure he took away from me by tying his nadas tighter. But we still played almost every day after work.
Unlike most other new constructions in Bangalore, our complex consisted of many buildings spread over a large area of land, each building only four floors high. This was a blessing and one of the primary reasons we had chosen to live here – because it meant that we were not living in large concrete towers, but within fairly small attractively-designed buildings. This also meant a lot of terraces though, for some reason, Vijay and I were the only people who actually chose to use these terraces. In fact, on nights when the weather was particularly pleasant, we dragged heavy razais onto the terrace of our building and fell asleep there, under the bright moon, watching the luminous clouds as they drifted past. On clear nights, we looked up at the stars.
It was on one such beautiful, slightly chilly night, as we lay together under the stars, that I found myself filled with a sense of complete bliss.
Suddenly, Vijay said, ‘Look – a shooting star!’
‘Quick,’ I cried. ‘Make a wish!’
‘Oh … ok! … I wish …’
‘To yourself,’ I hissed, fervently making my own wish, eyes shut tight.
It came to me very simply. I wished with all my might that we would find great happiness in this, our very own home, till the end of our days – or at least for many more years to come.
16
Bye Bye Bangalore
‘What do you mean, moving to Mumbai?’ I cried.
It had barely been a month since we had set up our own home, and now Vijay was suggesting that we leave Bangalore?
He seemed to realize that casually springing this on me over breakfast hadn’t been the best idea. He asked me to calm down, gently taki
ng away the quivering butter knife that I had been unconsciously brandishing.
‘I meant to tell you last night but then I forgot … There’s an open position for business head for Rural in the Mumbai office … it’s my chance to get out of marketing, so I was thinking I’d apply for it … Madhukar said I’ve got a good chance of getting it …’ His voice trailed off.
I seethed. Vijay had a habit of forgetting to tell me the most important things, but this was the limit. The previous night, he had bored me stiff with a detailed description of his conversation about cricket with the tea-boy Jaggan, but had omitted to tell me about a career move he was discussing with his boss?
This role apparently involved heading a relatively new and progressive initiative of the company, a project which distributed its products to the smallest villages in the country, while providing a living to the distributors of these products – usually underprivileged women. Vijay was very taken with this concept because he had, for a long time, dreamt of doing ‘something meaningful’. I had to admit that the role did sound like the very thing for him and muttered my unwilling agreement that he should give it a shot, in any case. But why did it have to be based in bloody Mumbai?
I had a bad feeling that Vijay would end up getting the new job. He had always been very different from the regular hardcore-corporate-types, and had a passion for do-gooding that somehow struck me as highly suitable for a slightly off-the-beaten-track initiative such as the rural project.
But every fibre of my being was resistant to the idea of leaving Bangalore. I sat alone moodily on the chair in the balcony that evening, looking out to the view I loved – including even that unsightly yellow eyesore of a building that I decided had actually been growing on me of late. I didn’t want to move to unknown bustling Mumbai.
I reflected upon how Bangalore had been a great place to be a young, slightly asinine couple getting to know each other. Although we had plenty of impetuous weekend trips out of the city, we had also, over the last year, enjoyed pottering about the various parks, pubs, malls and busy streets of Bangalore. On the rare occasions that we were not slaving away at our desks, we could be found eating bhutta, chaat, and other street food, idly exploring second-hand book stores – or watching the Govinda movies that Vijay would drag me to kicking and screaming.
JUST MARRIED, PLEASE EXCUSE Page 9