A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  ‘And in the meantime, if you need money, ask me. Look upon it as a loan if you want. Don’t let pride come in your way.’

  ‘Pride? What pride do I have, Baba?’

  To her own surprise and consternation, the tears she had suppressed a little while back, gush out.

  ‘That was stupid of me,’ she says when she has managed to control herself. ‘And don’t worry, if I need any money I will ask you. But living here free, I think I can make what we have last quite a while.’

  ‘The girls need things, don’t they, clothes and all that, apart from fees and books?’

  ‘I won’t let them want, Baba.’

  ‘Good. And why don’t you call some of your friends home? That girl with the silly laugh—what’s her name ...?

  ‘Vani?’

  ‘Yes, call her home. You need company.’

  He’s confused, he thinks I’m still a teenager, that I can find comfort in the company of friends. Yet, when I was at home, he disapproved of all my friends. Boys, especially. He saw me once with a boy and said, ‘Remember my dignity.’ And then I found Gopal right here at home ....

  The sound of Hrishi’s motorbike rouses her. ‘There’s Charu. Time for our dinner.’

  ‘That fellow’s rash. I don’t like Charu going out on his motorcycle.’

  ‘It saves her time, Baba. And, anyway, how else would she go for her evening classes? There’s no bus going that way.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be having a motorcycle at all, not at his age. His parents spoil him.’

  ‘Let them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let them spoil him. He’s their son after all.’

  He seems taken aback by her retort. For a moment, he stares at her silently.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m a stupid old man,’ he says after a pause.

  ‘Old, yes, stupid, no.’

  He goes on as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘I can’t believe it myself, that I’m old. I look at my hand,’ he holds out one and there is a distinct tremor in it, ‘and I think—but that’s an old man’s hand! Is it really mine? Strange how quickly it all happens—it’s over in a flash.’

  She closes the door gently behind her when she goes out. Baba doesn’t like any noise—the knowledge is part of her. Yes, I thought I knew him, but this—he’s never spoken like this before. And as she stands there, thinking of her father, a strange thing happens. It is like a visitation, an apparition that she sees, not all at once, but gradually, developing before her like a sketch, the lines finally becoming a recognisable figure.

  Kalyani. It is Kalyani she sees standing before the closed door, banging on it with her open palms, shrieking out something, slumping at last on the floor, her head resting against the still closed door. All the sounds fading away, finally leaving a silence that enclosed the thudding of a heart. The heart of a child who stood there terrified, watching her mother lie in a huddle. No sounds at all except this throbbing rubadub rubadub. And the child going down stiffly, holding on to the banister, her wet palms making a sliding sound on the smooth surface, her legs wobbling, thinking—I didn’t see it, I saw nothing, nothing happened.

  Now, after all these years, it can no longer be denied. It did happen. I saw it, I saw my mother lying there. And a little later I saw Goda helping her down, and Kalyani, as if foreshadowing her old age, bent, clinging to the banisters, her face spent and hollow.

  Who was it had told her once about a person walking through a glass door? Sumi can’t remember, but the story has stayed with her and comes back to her now. ‘And can you believe it, afterwards there was the shape, the exact shape of that person in the glass. The edges were bloodstained, tiny drops of blood, it looked quite pretty really, like small red beads decorating the glass.’

  Sumi hadn’t believed the story then. Surely, she had argued with whoever it was had told her this, no one could walk through a sheet of glass! Even if it was a new unoccupied house, they’d have drawn a chalked cross on the glass, wouldn’t they? And even if such an unlikely thing were to happen, let’s say you don’t notice the glass because you’re in a hurry, or looking the other way and you run into it, surely the glass would break and shatter into bits! Punching the shape of your body in the glass? What kind of an impossible story was that?

  And yet the image of a blood-edged human shape has remained with her. And now, remembering Kalyani banging wildly, vainly, at the closed door of her husband’s room, she thinks—yes, it could happen. You can walk out leaving your own blood-edged shape behind.

  But why am I thinking of the past, and my mother’s past, at that? Today, now, this moment is enough for me; she had said this to Gopal once.

  ‘But, Sumi, even this needlepoint of a moment, this now, is receding from you as you speak of it, it is becoming the past. How can you disclaim the past? It is never possible.’

  She had laughed then at Gopal’s sophistry and argued against him. Once it’s over, I’ve finished with it, she had said.

  No, that’s not possible, it’s never possible. Gopal was right. Kalyani’s past, which she has contained within herself, careful never to let it spill out, has nevertheless entered into us, into Premi and me, it has stained our bones, Premi’s more obviously perhaps, but mine as well. And will this, what is happening to me now, become part of my daughters too? Will I burden them with my past and my mother’s as well?

  ‘In our children, my dear Copperfield, we live again.’

  But do we also, like limpets, like the Old Man, climb on to their shoulders, taking a free ride on their lives? She thinks of this when Goda, a dedicated matchmaker who takes a creative pleasure in arranging marriages, speaks to Kalyani about a ‘boy’ who’s come from the States and wants to get married before he goes back. Though the conversation is between Kalyani and Goda, the girls seem to understand that it is directed at them.

  Charu enters into it head-on, asking ‘Will I do, Goda-ajji? Amma, you had better give her my photograph and yes, my horoscope too. I hope you have one ....’

  ‘Silly girl! Everything is a joke to this child.’

  ‘I’m not joking, I’m dead serious. Goda-ajji, do you think I’m not a suitable girl? What’s wrong with me, tell me that.’

  ‘Really, Kalyani-akka, this girl is ....’

  ‘It’s Aru’s turn first. Yours comes after that. Until Aru is married, we’re not giving your photograph or horoscope to anyone.’

  ‘Crushed! I think it’s terribly unfair. Why do I have to wait for Aru? You better hurry up, Aru, or else all these wonderful boys will have got married and ....’

  ‘I’m never going to get married.’

  Aru’s tone, unlike Charu’s, is wholly serious, her face makes it clear that she means what she says.

  ‘Aru, you shouldn’t talk that way.’

  Aru says nothing, just gives Kalyani a level look. And it is Kalyani’s eyes that fall, Kalyani who changes the subject.

  I must move out of this house, Sumi thinks, I must look for a house for my daughters and myself, I can’t go on living here. But how and where do I begin to look for one?

  Sumi finds a most unlikely ally in her search for a house. It is on an impulse that she enters an estate agent’s office, impelled into it by the sight of the board outside, thinking—yes, of course, I can get a house through an agent. When she enters, however, her heart sinks at the sight of the overweight, coarse-looking man in the tiny cubicle. She almost turns round to go out again, but the man, speaking into the phone, takes her in with a quick shrewd glance and gestures to her to sit down. His conversation on the phone sounds more like a quarrel, his voice rude and sharp, the words and language scarcely concealing contempt.

  ‘What can I do about it? You should have thought of it earlier.’ Finally saying, ‘It’s your problem, not mine,’ he puts down the phone and turns to her.

  Sumi is to realize later that he talks to everyone in exactly the same way, there is nothing personal in his acrimony, it’s part of him. Now, however, she is put off. And yet,
to her own surprise, she finds herself listing her requirements when he asks her, ‘And what do you want, madam?’

  He doesn’t seem to be listening to her, he’s fiddling wth some papers on his table, tapping his fleshy beringed fingers on it, impatient, as if waiting for her to finish and go.

  ‘Right,’ he says when she has done. ‘We’ll do it.’

  He always speaks in the plural, she realizes this, too, later, though the only other person in the office is a boy who takes pleasure in being ruder and surlier than his boss.

  ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’

  She’s reluctant to leave on that uncertain note but he is already dialling a number, obviously finished with her. She stands up, still waiting. He seems surprised to find her not gone.

  ‘You have your own transport? Right, come tomorrow. This time. I’ll show you some houses.’

  She is certain he will have forgotten all about her, but when she goes to him the next day, he is ready and waiting for her. The first day sets the tone for their joint search, which is what it becomes. He speaks to her in English, calls her may-dum, she speaks in Kannada, calls him Nagaraj-avare. Neither gives in; she is careful never to lapse into English, only occasionally fumbling for a word. If he does slip into Kannada once in a while, he corrects himself almost immediately.

  She soon learns that they are speaking different languages in more ways than one. ‘This is a good house, madam. One room, hall, nice kitchen. It is correct for you.’

  But when she gets there, she finds the hall is only a passage, the room airless and narrow, the kitchen has no sink ....

  ‘Good house, madam, no problem of security.’

  And it’s just two rooms in the midst of a nest of similar two-room homes.

  And so it goes on.

  He listens with unflappable composure to all her questions, her complaints. Only once does he retort, and then not with anger.

  ‘Madam, you want a house worth Rs 5,000 for 1,000. Who will give it to you?’

  She begins to realize that he is evasive, devious. He takes her to see houses to which he does not have the keys, promising he’ll get the keys the next day if she likes the house. And they peer through the windows like a pair of voyeurs.

  ‘Nagaraj-avare,’ she says in exasperation once when he takes her to a wholly unsuitable house, ‘I have three young daughters going to school and college. I can’t possibly live in a place where there are no buses, not even a proper road.’

  ‘Madam, I will try to get a good house for you and your daughters, but you also have to adjust a little bit. See, it is like this. My wife goes to buy a sari. They keep showing her saris and she says, show me this colour with a different border, this design in another colour. But in the end she buys a sari, doesn’t she? She wears it, doesn’t she? She begins to like it, doesn’t she? A house is like that. Start living in it and it becomes yours, you will like it. People who build houses for rent don’t build for you. If you want a house with everything the way you like, you will have to build your own.’

  Build your own house?

  That evening she begins doodling on a piece of paper, doodles that soon become a sketch. A sketch of a house, her perfect house, it is supposed to be. But a strange thing happens. When it is done, she finds she has drawn a sketch of this, the Big House. She destroys it and starts afresh, but once again it is the same. It is as if there is a tracing of this house already on the paper, on any paper that she begins to draw on and the lines she draws have no choice but to follow that unseen tracing.

  Sumi has so far kept her house-hunting crusade secret from everyone, even her daughters, but Aru and Charu see her with Nagaraj and it is out. The girls are so aghast at the thought of her going about with a man like Nagaraj that the fact that she is looking for a house is almost forgotten.

  ‘Ugh, Ma, how can you! Going about with a creep like that! That cap of his and those dark glasses! And that shirt! My God!’

  ‘Don’t be such snobs,’ Sumi says reprovingly, but she knows what they mean. She had felt that way herself at first; now she knows him better. And their relationship has changed. For one thing, he has begun speaking to her in Kannada which makes their conversation more natural. And if, because of the language, there is a kind of brusque familiarity in the way he talks to her, there is nothing offensive about it. He treats her, in fact, like a nutty relation towards whom he has some duty.

  ‘Don’t tell people your husband is not living with you,’ he suggests when she has explained her household to a prospective landlord. ‘People think wrongly, sometimes they take advantage of you.’

  Something, she realizes, he has never done. In fact, it is only now that he reveals his knowledge of the fact that she will be living alone.

  ‘What do I say? Do I tell a lie?’

  ‘Say he has been transferred. That he is working abroad—America or Dubai or something.’

  Ever her rejection of his ‘correct’ houses does not seem to anger him any more. She wonders whether his patience, surprising in a man normally so rude and impatient, comes from some soft sentimental core in him that responds to her plight, to the fact that she has three daughters. (She has seen his children’s names on the spare tyre of his scooter.) Sometimes, in her more cynical moments, she thinks the change in him dates from the day he saw the Big House.

  ‘Rented house?’

  ‘No, it belongs to my parents.’

  ‘When you have this, why do you go searching for houses?’

  ‘I want something of my own.’

  Silly fool, his look had seemed to say.

  Now here he is, once again promising her a house.

  ‘I know you will like this one. I am showing you first because I think it is right for you, very safe for you and your daughters.’

  She has learned not to take his professional spiel seriously, but a note of excitement in his voice, unusual in so phlegmatic a man, promises something positive.

  ‘They are an old couple, they want a decent family—like yours. They are more interested in good people, in decent company, than in money. I told them about you and they are willing to adjust a little about the rent, maybe even the deposit.’

  When she sees the house, a brand new apartment built above an old home, she is hopeful for the first time.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she says when they have gone through the house. ‘I’ll take it.’

  For a man who rarely smiles, it is as if he is beaming.

  ‘Right, we’ll make it final. If we don’t do it, someone will come tomorrow with money and we will lose it. You have your cheque book with you?’

  ‘Yes, but I may not be able to give them the entire amount today.’

  ‘No problem, give some, now. If they like you,’ and it’s like some magic formula, this mantra of liking, ‘they won’t mind.’

  ‘Ramchandra Rao at home?’ he asks the woman who silently takes the keys from him.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Will he be back soon? Can we wait here?’ Without waiting for an affirmation, he tells Sumi, ‘You sit here, madam, with Amma. I’ll wait outside.’

  The woman does not sit; she stands leaning listlessly against the door, scarcely aware of Sumi.

  ‘If I could have some water ...?’ Sumi asks.

  They will like you, he had said. But she doesn’t even look at me.

  But when the woman returns with the water, she sits opposite Sumi and watches her with an intent look that is as disconcerting as her earlier indifference.

  ‘How many children do you have?’

  The question comes the moment Sumi puts the glass down.

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Sons? Daughters?’

  ‘Daughters.’

  ‘We have only one son.’

  The sense of something wrong makes itself unmistakably felt. Sumi feels a prickling of her skin, a premonition of something fearful coming.

  ‘He died three months back. In a car accident. He was returning from Mysore.’

 
There is nothing that can be said to a person who looks this way, who speaks this way.

  ‘We built the upstairs flat for him. He was to get married. If we live together, Amma, he told me, there will be problems. But I don’t want to go far away from both of you. He said that. I don’t want to go far away, he said ....’

  Sumi’s hands begin to shake. Don’t, she wants to say, don’t tell me anything; but it is as if she has been struck dumb. The woman cries with dreadful ease, like a person who has had an enormous amount of practice. Sumi, unable to remain still any longer, puts out a hand, but even before she can touch her, the woman says, ‘Go away’. Sumi draws her hand back. ‘Go away, just leave me alone.’

  Sumi is starting her vehicle when Nagaraj, hearing the sound, crushes the stub of his cigarette under his foot and comes rushing to her.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why are you going? He’ll be here soon, I told you we have to ....’

  ‘I don’t want the house.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I said I don’t want the house.’

  ‘But what happened? Did the woman say something?’

  Can’t he hear her moaning? She is desperate to get away from the sound.

  ‘I don’t want the house. Is that quite clear?’

  He stares at her. There is no doubt she means what she is saying.

  ‘All right. Do what you want. I can’t waste any more time on you. It’s impossible to deal with you. Namaskara!’

  He claps his hands together with such force, the sound is like a shot.

  She has gone some way before she realizes she does not know the way back home. She has followed Nagaraj to this place and there are no landmarks she can remember, to orient herself. She is coasting along slowly, looking at the signboards on shops, hoping for some clue, when she sees the board.

  ‘Shree Manjunath Press. Prop. C.D. Shankar.’

  Without thinking, she enters the gate. Three children are playing in the courtyard. The oldest, a girl, seeing her instantly asks, ‘You want Gopalsiruncle?’

  She does not at first understand the girl, the three words running into one making of it a strange, unrecognisable name.