Deranged Marriage

by Sushi Das

  In those early days, my attempts to understand Australian political news usually ended in frustration and boredom since all the names, places and events were unfamiliar to me. Mostly I found the news dull and parochial, although Paul Keating’s toppling of Bob Hawke as prime minister four days after we arrived in the country was quite exciting. (Years later Keating would not deny Hawke’s revelation that during a private conversation, Keating had referred to Australia as ‘the arse end of the world’. Man, how Australians hated him for saying that!)

  John started work as a lecturer in international relations at La Trobe University and I envied him having a purpose in life. I spent all day in the flat pacing up and down like a maniac or leafing through the local paper looking for a job. But there seemed to be no jobs I could actually apply for. Hairdresser, typist, dental assistant, bricklayer – I was qualified for nothing. One day John came home to find I had ringed Sandwich Hand, Leaflet Deliverer and Home Help on the jobs pages.

  ‘You don’t have to do jobs like that,’ he said. ‘You have a Bachelor of Arts degree and several years’ experience in the workforce. You have enormous potential and lots to offer. Have confidence.’ As always, John was there to support me, but I felt my confidence slipping away.

  The phone hardly ever rang and even when it did it was usually somebody who had dialled the wrong number. On one occasion Isucceeded in making a complete goose of myself. The phone rang and I ran to answer it, half-hoping it might be Vin.

  ‘G’day. Can I speak to Bruce, plaise,’ said a gruff but nasal male voice.

  ‘Bruce?’ Surely there weren’t actual people called Bruce or Sheila in Australia? ‘John? Is that you?’

  ‘No. Is Bruce there?’

  ‘Stop mucking around,’ I laughed, and then, getting into the spirit of the joke, added, ‘Yeah, mayte, Bruce is roit here eating a Vegemite sandwich. Wanna speak to him, do ya? He’ll be down the pub this arvo.’

  ‘Look, who is this?’ said the voice, clearly irritated. ‘Is Bruce there or isn’t he?’ Realising that it was not in fact John on the other end of the line, I winced.

  ‘Er, sorry, I’ll just check if he’s here,’ I said, and covered the phone with my hand, bit my bottom lip and allowed a bit of time to pass. ‘No, sorry, I’m afraid Bruce isn’t here.’

  ‘Well, why the bloody hell didn’t you just say that in the first place so we could have avoided all this piss-farting around?’

  That was a most unfortunate exchange but at least the phone rang that day. The doorbell never made a sound and nobody ever walked past the front window. Each day was filled with the ugly cawing of crows and the unfamiliar medicinal smell of eucalyptus leaves. Time passed. My confidence continued to shrink and my alienation grew. I now understood how Mum must have felt washing nappies in cold water and pushing me around in a pram in the park all day.

  One Saturday our neighbours, Arthur and Janet, invited John over for a beer. They didn’t ask me so I stayed in the flat. John returned after an hour looking perturbed.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a bit weird.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Arthur drinks a lot of beer. He told me to be careful of Asians because they can’t be trusted.’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said John, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Is that why they didn’t invite me? Because I’m Asian?’

  ‘No, I don’t think they think you’re Asian. Asian in Australia means Far Eastern.’

  ‘So what am I?

  ‘You’re Indian.’

  ‘No, I’m not, I’m British. My passport says I’m British.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but you’re still Indian. Anyway, count yourself lucky. I suspect being Indian is better than being a Pom in Australia.’

  I encountered little overt racism in those early days, but there were plenty of occasions where my ‘difference’ was pointed out to me. Once in a while someone would mimic an English accent in my presence, which varied from Arthur Daley’s cockney to an exaggerated snooty haw-hawing. A woman I used to see regularly in a local shop once said, ‘You look different with your hair tied up – more foreign.’

  The most confronting experience I had was in the State Library. John was browsing the shelves while I took a book to a nearby communal table and sat next to a woman, possibly in her fifties or sixties. She turned to look at me. ‘Don’t sit next to me,’ she said loudly, so that other people on the table looked up. ‘You’re disgusting and you smell.’

  Suddenly, something the size of a golf ball expanded in my throat and I immediately felt tears in my eyes. Memories of the two bikers sniffing the air for the smell of curry filled my head. John, who had heard the exchange from where he was standing, immediately came over. ‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you want this woman to sit next to you?’ he demanded of the old lady.

  ‘Because she’s disgusting,’ she replied. She stood up, picked up her bag and coat and walked off. By now everyone at the table and onlookers nearby were staring at me, in silence. John asked me what had happened.

  ‘Nothing, nothing happened. She just said she didn’t want me to sit next to her. I want to get out of here. Let’s go, please,’ I said fighting back tears.

  Sitting in the car on the way home John expressed his anger at the woman. I sat wondering why I hadn’t responded to her offensive remark. We were about halfway home when I suddenly said, ‘Turn around, go back to the library. I should have said something to that woman and I didn’t.’

  John immediately did a U-turn and drove back to the library. When we entered, the old lady had returned to the table and was sitting in the same seat. I approached the table and she looked up. ‘Not you again,’ she yelled. ‘I don’t want you to sit next to me. I don’t want people like you to sit next to me.’

  Everyone around the table looked up again. I stood frozen to the spot. Words were stuck in my throat at unhappy, awkward angles and I couldn’t cough them out. John leapt in. ‘Why don’t you want to sit next to her?’ he demanded. ‘Is it because of the colour of her skin?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The woman stood up, grabbed her bag and started marching towards the library counter. John followed her. ‘Turn around and answer my question,’ he yelled. But she ignored him and continued towards the counter. ‘You haven’t got the balls, have you?’ shouted John. ‘You haven’t got the balls to answer me.’

  By now, it seemed everyone was craning to get a glimpse of the exchange that had disturbed the hush of the library. The old woman finally reached the counter and we heard her tell the librarian, ‘That man is harassing me.’ She turned and pointed at John, who halted in disbelief.

  ‘Me? Harassing you?’ he bellowed. Before he said anymore I grabbed his sleeve and he turned to look at me, eyes wide open.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And so we left.

  Many times over the next few months I shared my experience in the library with people I met, and the circle of friends John and I were becoming part of, and each time their response was almost exactly the same.

  ‘God! She sounds like she was a bit crazy in the head.’

  Quite possibly she was mad. And quite possibly she was racist too. What interested me was people’s immediate readiness to address her possible insanity rather than her possible racism. I suspect the woman was probably nuts, but I’ll never forget how her comments made me feel: small, humiliated and very far away from safety.

  I was never quite sure who or what I was meant to be in this new country. Perhaps it was just as well I was in Australia – a nation of people constantly trying to work out who they were, apart from Aboriginal people, who all had a very clear idea of who they were, except nobody seemed to be listening to them.

  John and I found Australians fiercely friendly and shockingly suburban. They lacked the gritty edge of Londoners, preferring to live their lives in a comfort zone of conformity. Curiously, they were alwa
ys looking for endorsement. Wherever John and I went, people wanted to know what we thought of Australia. They would be overjoyed to hear positive remarks and go cold on us if we were less than effusive. They were maddeningly oversensitive to criticism by outsiders, we found, and so we learnt to keep our thoughts to ourselves, which only served to deepen the alienation.

  All new migrants feel alienated. And all migrants have some negative feelings about their new country. Voicing that negativity uncoils the intolerably tight knot that develops through homesickness, isolation and unbelonging. But in Australia, where migrants are expected to be grateful for the opportunities offered to them, any negativity is met with flinty faces. So migrants to Australia learn the mantra that Australia is god’s own country, where it’s beautiful one day, perfect the next. Woe betide anyone who doesn’t stay on message.

  Settlement of the physical self can come relatively quickly. The body adjusts. But settlement of the mind takes longer because the mental self must negotiate the three stages of culture shock: the early romance of arrival, the resentment of the new country, and finally reconciliation through the passage of time. Romance, resentment and reconciliation – they’re always the same, no matter which generation. And, just as Mum did when she moved to England, I leapfrogged stage one and went straight to stage two. ‘I don’t like it here,’ I complained to John. ‘I haven’t got a job and haven’t got any friends. I want to go home.’ But he insisted we give it a chance, at least a year.

  Lack of work leaves time to think – too much time to think. For the first time since I had left my parents’ house I was enveloped in genuine silence, which forced me to reflect on what it meant to marry out. As the first in my family to break the tradition of arranged marriage I had opted out of my family’s community. I had no right to draw on them for support now. And anyway, my family was far away – not just emotionally, but physically too.

  Memories from the past intruded on my thoughts daily. Mum and her ‘bastard bloody!’ I shouldn’t have pulled away when she tried to hug me that last evening together. Dad and his undesirable elements! They had both meant well, hadn’t they? They hadn’t cast me out. They could have done. But they hadn’t. They still considered me their daughter. They had done their best, hadn’t they? Perhaps we all needed time away from each other. Perhaps, despite my protestations, I had come to Australia to put myself into voluntary exile. It was better for everyone that I got out of their hair. Yet now, on the other side of the world, they seemed before my eyes all the time.

  So I decided to send them a letter. Not a letter with words on paper but a cassette recording of my voice and John’s voice. I wanted it to be real. John and I talked to them as if everyone was in the room with us – Mum, Dad, Vin, Dinesh, Raja – all the while recording ourselves. The next day I put the tape in an envelope and sent it to Twickenham.

  Then, a month later, a small parcel arrived in the post for me – with a London postmark. I ripped it open quickly and a cassette fell out. I rushed to the hi-fi, stuffed it in and pressed play. At first there was silence, then muffled sounds. Then suddenly Mum’s voice burst into the room: ‘Hello. Hello, Neelum. Iss the mummy here.’

  She’d used my other name, the name only my family used. I felt a tsunami in my chest. That same feeling when I came out of the school gates and Mum was standing there with all the other mums, waiting to collect us – that huge, unmistakable wave of relief that she was there for us. Mum, with her lovely red lipstick – she’d smiled when she put it on. Mum, with the plait down her back, the mole on her chin. Mum!

  Then there was Dad on the tape. ‘Hello, Sushila and John, your dad here. I love you both. Thank you for your tape. It was very nice. Sushila, you still have that cough.’ And it didn’t end there. There was Vin and Dinesh and Raja, and Twinkle, Ash, Peen and my uncle and aunt too. All of them laughing, giggling, joking about Kylie and kangaroos again. Weakened by the sounds of their happy voices, I burst into tears – lots and lots of big silly tears.

  The tape marked the beginning of the end of the Ice Age. Australia is nearly 11,000 miles away from Britain. Intensity of signal strength usually falls off with distance. But signal strength between parents and children, as measured in love, does not obey that rule. In fact, distance, while it has the annoying propensity to deepen nostalgia, can also soften memories of hurt. Australia’s tyranny of distance, so often maligned for the ills that it brings, wafted my way a boon of warm family feelings that created the first cracks in the pack ice.

  After that, letter-writing seemed easier, phone conversations warmer. Even breathing seemed less laboured. Perhaps it was the thaw, or just the passage of time that relaxed the fibres of our life in Australia. The following year I completed a postgraduate course in journalism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (now, bizarrely, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University) and I was ready to apply for jobs.

  I sent my CV everywhere, including to the Australian Associated Press, a national news agency, which responded with a flat rejection. But someone had told me that news-agency work was the fastest way for a new journalist to learn the trade so I rang the Melbourne bureau chief and begged him for a job. He said he had nothing available so I offered to work for no pay for a week (work experience to some). He said that might lead to issues with the journalists’ union, so I offered to work for free for just one day. Clearly a patient man, he eventually asked me to come in for ‘a chat’ the following day.

  Tom Hyland was a slow-speaking Tasmanian with an eyebrow masquerading as a moustache. His blue, unblinking eyes stared through his rimless glasses and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows. He studied my CV as I chewed my nails on the other side of his desk. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking – his face gave nothing away, partly because his mouth-mat was obscuring minute southerly facial indicators.

  He asked some general questions. His manner was robotic, but only very slightly, so that anyone communicating with him would still be satisfied he was human. The gaps between his words seemed so long, it was hard to know whether he had finished speaking or had simply paused to think. At the end of the meeting he said, ‘Okay. Come in for one shift. Next Monday.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Hyland, I really . . .’

  ‘. . . at nine o’clock.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  When I arrived for my day of employment he asked me to check whether there was any truth in the rumour that drivers were concealing their car registration numbers from traffic cameras by rubbing them with dry handsoap. By five o’clock I had finished my ‘investigations’, which revealed that the rumour was not true, and had written an eight-paragraph story focusing on the police’s denial of the scam’s success. The reporter at the desk next to mine said, ‘How many yarns did you do today?’

  ‘One,’ I replied. ‘Why? How many did you do?

  ‘Six.’

  I felt suddenly nauseous. Then it struck me. This was a news wire service, not a short-story workshop! I was supposed to be churning out reports by the hour, not taking all day to investigate a minor rumour. I cursed myself for misunderstanding my role. I had had a chance to prove to the boss that I could be a good journalist and I had blown it by being a slowcoach. I filed my story and approached Tom’s desk, half-crippled with embarrassment.

  ‘I’ve filed my story,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Good. Thank you very much,’ he said, looking up briefly from his computer screen. I wondered if he was being sarcastic. I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Okay. I’ll be off then.’

  ‘Yes. Goodbye,’ he said continuing to type. I walked towards the door, hastening my step as I went. There was a burning sensation behind my eyes and I could feel I was about to start crying. I swallowed to hold it all in. Then I heard my name called out and I turned around to see Tom craning his neck over his computer.

  ‘Yes?’ I said thinly.

  ‘Can you do a shift? This Thursday?’

  I sniffed the tears back up my nose bef
ore they ran free.

  ‘Yes, er, yes. Yes, I can.’

  ‘Good. See you then.’

  Within thirty seconds I went from being at the bottom of a trough, my confidence crushed, to flying high above a mountain, jubilation bursting my heart. Had I known that the rest of my journalistic life would follow the same cycle of screeching highs and despairing lows, I might have walked away from it all there and then. But this was a huge moment in my life: I was going to get a second shift at AAP, and many more after that. Tom Hyland had given me my first break in journalism and I thought he was the greatest man alive.

  I worked at AAP for a year before I said goodbye to Tom and his team and joined The Age, a left-leaning quality broadsheet where I really didn’t have to file a story until the end of the day. Things were looking up again. My arranged marriage issues were a thing of the past, my family was back on board and John and I, despite our ups and downs, were chugging along fine in our new country.

  Dinesh, like John, had also tired of the Tories and decided to leave Britain. He and Vin moved to New York, so now Mum and Dad had only my brother left – their future welfare state. Raja, in his early twenties, a handsome young man with a leatherjacket and the gift of the gab, was forging a career in the music business, working as a sound engineer. He had a rock ’n’ roll life but Mum and Dad were sure he’d come good in the end. If there was a moment when everyone in my family seemed to have a relatively stable and happy life, it was then. If only it could have stayed that way.

  My marriage lasted exactly twelve years and nine months. There is never one reason for marriage breakdowns and it can take many years, if not the rest of your life, to work out exactly what went wrong when they happen. John and I simply grew in different directions, always together, but moving outwards from each other, like two separate branches on the same tree. For us, once the decision to go our separate ways had been taken, there was no going back.