Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  She could have vomited. It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd brought decent presents, books and records or things like that, but she could tell with one touch, with one glance even, what was inside their daintily wrapped-and-tied bestowals which grew in a gaudy pile on a corner table: Twenty-five per cent panties. Twenty-five per cent handkerchief boxes. Twenty-five per cent purses. Twenty-five per cent hairbrush/manicure sets. The usual. The aunties liked to give practical, useful things. After all, what could a growing girl like Saroj want besides panties, hankies, purses or hairbrush/manicure sets?

  She was still in the middle of Premavati Auntie's fat embrace, her nose nudging the prickly rose brooch holding Auntie's sari in place on her perfumed shoulder, taking in the intoxicating scent of Evening in Paris, when, over that shoulder, she saw Ganesh signalling and it looked urgent. She had to keep smiling and nodding at Premavati Auntie a good three minutes more while she gushed out some story about the film she'd seen with her daughter at the Hollywood and how they'd have loved to have Saroj there and how much she would have liked it. Fat chance. Everyone knew Baba didn't allow his daughters to go to the cinema, not even to Indian films.

  And then Premavati Auntie pulled away and took a little flat, soft, pink-wrapped gift out of her voluminous plastic handbag and crushed it into Saroj's hand saying, 'Here you are, dearie, I do hope it fits!' She planted a wet birthday kiss on a reluctantly offered cheek, pinched the other cheek and shook it, and waddled off to chat with Rukmini Auntie.

  As Saroj turned to follow Ganesh into the kitchen a little hand grabbed hers. ‘Saroj Auntie, you promised to help with my kite — Shiv Sahai's is all finished and you promised!' piped a squeaky voice at her side. She smiled as she met Sahadeva's eyes. Sahadeva, her little cousin, Shiv Sahai's twin, Balwant Uncle 's little boy. Balwant Uncle and his wife were modern, teachers, he of history, she (retired) of biology, and they gave her worthwhile birthday presents. Last year a microscope, this year a chemistry set. They said she had a mathematical mind, which should be cultivated; and they were people who took her seriously. They lived in Kingston, near the sea, and she visited them once or twice a week, with the excuse of helping the boys with their schoolwork, and because Baba had selected Cousin Soona as Saroj's playmate. But she also went there to escape to the seashore, to get a glimpse of the ocean, to run for miles along the Sea Wall, to wade, barefoot and curly-toed, into the foaming sheet of warm brown water when the tide rolled gently in and licked the beach.

  The ocean was freedom. Standing at its edge and gazing far out into the horizon, eastwards, she felt a deep, yearning ache that rose out of some unknown kernel within her, that reached out, far far out, to that distant horizon, to the unseen shores that lay beyond, and further, to the endlessness of the sky, to the endlessness of time.

  'Yes, I know, Sahadeva. Look, I can't stop now but I'll phone you in a day or two, okay?'

  'You promise, Auntie?'

  'I promise.' She patted him on his tousled little black head, smiled again, and showed him her crossed fingers. 'Cross my heart and hope to die. And we'll make the best kite that ever was. Okay?'

  'Okay Auntie, and we'll win next Easter, I just know it!' Sahadeva scampered off.

  Ganesh had disappeared into the kitchen. She found him emptying a plate of samosas into his school bag.

  ‘You crazy, or what?'

  'I took out my books first. Come, let's go up to the tower, I'm going to lose my mind if I stay here a moment longer and I've got some news for you.'

  'Okay, wait a minute.' She went to the fridge, opened it, took out two Jus-ee drinks, orange and lime crush, and stuffed the bottles down the front of her dress. Ganesh grinned.

  'You think you're hiding anything? Two grapefruits would be better. More authentic.'

  'Shut up.' She took the drinks out again because Ganesh was right. He held out his school bag and she laid the bottles on top of the samosas.

  'The bag's going to be all greasy and full of crumbs afterwards, you know.'

  'Oh, I'll give it a shake. Okay, let's go. Don't stop for anyone.'

  Ganesh and Saroj pushed their way across the crowded drawing room, through the milling, munching relatives, smiling into this face and that, murmuring excuse me, excuse me please, till they reached the square stairwell which led down to the front door and up into the tower.

  The Roy mansion rested solidly on tall, heavy columns to protect the living quarters from flooding during the rainy season. But whereas most houses had an open staircase leading up to the front door, theirs had a dog-leg staircase housed in a tower shaft. The tower jutted forward at the front left corner of the house and extended above the roof into the little windowed eyrie, girded by a narrow widow's walk. House and tower were built entirely of wood; horizontally planked, pristine white, generously windowed. Rows of twelve-paned sash windows, enclosed by sloping, top-hung Demerara shutters, regulated light and shadow, heat and coolness, within the house. In the mornings and late afternoons the shutters stood open to let the cool Atlantic breeze sweep joyously through light-flooded rooms. Under the scorching midday sun Ma closed the shutters and hushed the house into sleep, to dream in a cool, moist half-light behind jalousied walls, withholding its secrets from the brash, brazen outside world.

  But the tower room was all windows, without shade. Open the glass panes and the wind sailed through, a cleaning, vigorous wind that swept away care and uprooted disquiet. Up here you felt tall, free, strong. Up here, nothing could touch you. It was a refuge from the heat of the day, a sanctuary from the pain of living. An escape from the fate of being born a Roy.

  Saroj and Ganesh took the stairs three steps at a time. Once in the tower they flung themselves in relief onto the bare scrubbed floorboards, gasping for breath and laughing.

  'So, what’s the emergency?' Saroj said.

  'I spoke to Kevin Grant on the phone this afternoon and he knows him.'

  'He knows who?'

  'That boy, of course, that Ghosh boy, your prospective bridegroom. Now, take a deep breath, Saroj, and hold on tight, here's my hand, grip tightly and don't faint. Ready?'

  ‘Let me guess…’ Saroj paused to think. ‘…he's a sixty-year-old widower with dentures and a leaky bladder. Baba's importing him from Calcutta and he's bringing a brood of seven bawling snotty-nosed infants, and . . .'

  'A good guess but remember, the decisive word is boy. Even Baba wouldn't call anyone over forty a boy.'

  'Well, then. He's that lovely ten-year-old kid who sells the Argosy at Camp Street corner and Baba found out he's really the illegitimate heir to the Purushottama millions and wants to make an honest man out of him, and . . .'

  'Illegitimate? Saroj, where on earth did you learn filthy language like that? I mean for heaven's sake, do you even know what it means, and does Baba know about this ?'

  'Okay Gan, that's enough. Tell me before I throw myself out of the window'

  'Well . . . brace yourself.'

  She gripped the railing till her knuckles turned white and her arms shook, opened her eyes wide, gritted her teeth and said through them to Ganesh, 'Okay, I'm ready. Tell me the whole truth, and then I'll dictate my epitaph.'

  'Well, in one word, he's a twit, a twat. He's fifteen, and he's in 5c, a puny little drip with protuberant teeth and slicked-back greasy hair and his name is Keedernat. But he likes to be called Keith. Keet for short.'

  Saroj giggled, and relaxed. 'Is that all?'

  'Do you need more? Oh Ghosh! Let me see, maybe he has BO, I'll get a whiff of him on Monday and let you know. Or maybe . . .'

  Saroj tuned out. All of a sudden she couldn't play the game any more. She slumped against the wall, weary of Ganesh and his eternal banter, his refusal to stop joking and jesting for just one moment. Gan had taught her to see a light side to everything. To stand back from life and laugh. To see the world as a stage, the figures on it comic characters acting out their parts, they themselves the only knowing ones, the only ones with dead-pan faces but sniggering souls. The two o
f them side-stepped through life mocking at its vagaries and thumbing their noses at its twists. That's the way Ganesh liked Saroj, and she played the part, for him. That is, in his company she played the part. On her own she couldn't do it. Because it wasn't real. It wasn't her. She was playing the part of a person playing a part, and right now she'd forgotten her lines and all Gan's prompting was in vain.

  She looked at him, pleading with her eyes for him to stop, and said simply, 'What shall I do?'

  She could see the word 'murder' forming on Gan's grinning lips, but then he must have caught the expression of liquid agony in her eyes because he stopped, regarded her in a moment of rare silence and said, 'I don't know, Saroj. Can't you just, well, flatly refuse?'

  She gave him a look which was supposed to be withering, but it's hard to be withering when despair is nipping at your heels.

  She reached into Ganesh's bag and took out the lime crush and an opener, then removed the crown with a click. But she didn't drink. The bottle still in her hand, she glanced at the window facing Waterloo Street, at the spectacular panorama of Georgetown's treetops, glittering roofs, sky, frayed clouds drifting by, and in the distance a glimpse of the Atlantic.

  'As a last resort I could jump from here.'

  'You never said that, Saroj, and I don't want to ever hear it again.'

  'But if I don't do something, Gan, it'll all happen the way it did with Indrani. This whole Ghosh business will just keep rolling on, gathering momentum, and one fine day I'll wake up and I'll be Mrs Keedernat Ghosh.'

  'Look, Saroj, just take it easy. Indrani's sixteen; you'll be sixteen too before this gets really serious. Plenty of time. What I don't understand is why Baba chose someone like that. I mean, a girl like you, good looks, respectable family, money, brains — you've got everything going for you. Why didn't he aim higher? Why didn't he nab a Luckhoo, for instance?'

  The Luckhoo family was Georgetown's most prominent Indian law clan. Now they really had everything: Oxbridge educations, judgeships, knighthoods, and a couple of boys of marriageable age.

  'Well, that's quite obvious. D'you think any of those Luckhoo boys would even dream of having their brides chosen for them? I mean, for goodness' sake, where are we living, in some Bengali village or what? And as for you . . . you wouldn't be so flippant about the whole thing if you didn't have some trump up your sleeve about this Narain girl. What're you going to do about it? Seriously, now?'

  'It's easier for me. I'm going to go to university in England and that'll solve a few problems. All I have to do is never come back. They'll get over it. One good thing about these long-term engagements is that they give you long-term time for evading them. I'll just disappear from the scene — poof!'

  'Maybe this Keedernat boy will go away to study too, and never come back!'

  But Ganesh shook his head. He leaned against one of the windows and stretched out his long, lean, jeans-enclosed legs.

  'No such luck, Saroj. Baba'd have chosen an older fellow for you in that case, someone who's already in England and coming back in a couple of years. Like he did for Indrani. This Ghosh boy'll sit a few O-Levels next year, pass two or three, and then go straight into his daddy's business selling dry goods and saris. They'll let him work a couple of years, and then he'll marry you when he's eighteen and you're sixteen.'

  He dipped his hand into his bag and took out two samosas, threw one to her, and crunched his teeth into the other one. An expression of pure delight slipped over his face. 'Mmm . . . How Ma gets them to taste this way I'll never find out. I've tried and tried but mine just aren't the same.'

  Saroj felt a tweak of irritation at Ganesh. He was so shallow! How could he speak of Saroj marrying the Ghosh boy in one sentence, and in the next of Ma's samosas?

  Ganesh adored cooking, and there was nothing Ma could cook that he couldn't, but he still hadn't figured out that certain something, the magic ingredient which made Ma's dishes exquisite works of art, and his, by its lack, just tasty food. Ma knew all the secrets of cooking. She knew which foods were sattvic, raising your mind to great heights, which foods were rajasic, exciting the mind and heating it to seething point, and which were tamasic, dragging it into heavy, murky depths. Cooking was a matter of control: when to add what and exactly how much, not even a grain more. Control of heat and moisture, keeping temperatures right, regulating the flame, for fire could create as well as destroy. Regulating water, which could give life as well as it could drown, and could enter the dish uninvited as drops on a callalloo leaf. But that was mere technique. Ma added mystery — touching each ingredient as if it were to be cooked for God himself. The first spoonful of each dish was an offering, not to touch human lips. Ma spoke to food and sang to it. Ganesh knew the techniques but not the mysteries of cooking.

  Saroj refused to be drawn into a discussion on Ma's samosas.

  'I mean, what a drip!' she exclaimed. 'The very fact of him letting himself be chosen just proves he's a drip. Any self-respecting boy would refuse.'

  'Well, how d'you know he hasn't, or he won't? For all you know he's right this minute raising hell and threatening to slit your throat if they force you on him. Of course, he hasn't seen you yet. That'll change matters.'

  'But what'll I do, Gan? I can't marry him. Apart from him being a drip, I won't ever marry anyone Baba chooses. I wouldn't even marry Paul McCartney if Baba chose him. I won't marry, ever!' It was an agonized wail, a cry of desperation.

  Ganesh chuckled, his good humour rising up through the film of gloom she'd spread across its surface, like a bubble of air reaching for the sky. 'You're too much of a prize not to marry ever, Saroj, it'd be a waste. If Baba had any sense he'd let you look for a husband yourself. You'd have the choice of the pack! If Baba wasn't keeping you like a precious jewel locked away in a safe you'd have half the boys in Georgetown on their knees, licking their lips.'

  'Don't be disgusting. Just tell me what to do.'

  'Well, actually, maybe you should talk to Ma.'

  'Talk to Ma? Are you crazy? Ma approves of arranged marriages, you know that. She helped choose Indrani's. And anyway, Ma doesn't talk. I mean, not really.'

  'She does, you know. She talks to me.'

  'Well, to you, maybe. But you and Ma are different, I mean, you're the same. The two of you live as though in a private world and you speak a private language.'

  'You've never even tried to get to know her.'

  'Ma's a book with seven seals. And if you looked behind them all you'd find is superstition. She's too . . . she's too Indian. It's as if she never left India, she just brought India here into Baba's house and continued to live there. She has no idea what the world's really about, with her Purushottama Temple and sruti box and stuff. She doesn't know a thing about modern life or about me and what I want to be. I don't think she's even heard of Pat Boone, not to mention the Beatles. How can I talk to someone like that?'

  The Purushottama Temple was the centre of Ma's life outside the house — that, and the Stabroek Market. Mr Purushottama, the owner of the temple, was a genuine expatriate Indian who had come with a fortune to Georgetown from Kanpur to 'set the ball rolling', as he called it. He was a big, jovial man, who never wore anything but kurta pyjamas, and he opened the New Baratha Bank on High Street and encouraged, no, ordered, all Indians to deposit their savings there, which they did. As a thank-you he bought a Dutch colonial-style, wooden green-and-white mansion in Brickdam, all louvred windows and stained glass and an open balustraded gallery with ornate columns, gingerbread fretwork and arches all around the first storey. The bottom-house, the area between the pillars on which the house rested, was shielded from public view by a ground-to-ceiling lattice work, open towards the garden and yard at the back, and this is where all the ceremonies and functions took place — Diwali, and Phagwah, Krishna's birthday and whatever else the Hindus cared to celebrate. (Mr Purushottama also bought a mosque for the Muslims, but Saroj didn't know a thing about that.)

  The Purushottama Temple was open to Hindus o
f every variety. Upstairs, in the house, was a puja room for Shiva worshippers, and one for Krishna worshippers; Rama, Kali, Hanuman, Ganesh, Parvati and Lakshmi each had a shrine where worshippers could gather at any time of day or night. Each room was a snug little refuge, complete with carpets and wall hangings from India and pictures of the various deities and decorated with brass ornaments polished and shining. The rooms were usually darkened, the louvres shut, the air thick with the heavy perfume of roses, jasmine, burned ghee and incense. Little oil lamps burned on every shrine, their flames unflickering in the half-light and surrounded with blue-and-golden haloes. At religious functions the entire temple swarmed with Indians. The lattice work was hung with garlands of marigolds; hibiscus blossoms were stuck between the wooden laths and the very air tingled with festivity.

  Sometimes Ma took them all for puja to the Shiva shrine. On the weekends Baba liked the whole family — relatives near and far — to put in an appearance, all spick and span: men and boys in immaculate white and crisply ironed kurta pyjamas, women and girls in their brightest shiniest saris and skirts.

  As a small child Saroj had actually liked the Purushottama Temple. It seemed a place of secrets and stories, full of deep mysteries, an exciting, exotic world aeons apart from reality. She had loved the colours and smells, the veiled idols behind thick curtains, the chanting and the singing and the atmosphere of otherworldy, ethereal ecstasy. All that changed abruptly when she reached the age of reason. Now she found the temple a reservoir of superstition. She still had to go, on Baba's command, but it was with an armoured heart and a cynical mind. Idolatry! Humbug! With turned up nose and slightly curled-up lips she sat through hours of pujas and kirtans; her hands might meet in assumed reverence, her lips might utter the prescribed responses. But inside she knew it was all a lie. It was a world of make-believe for adults.