by Meghna Pant
The penthouse was large, but chopped up as most Mumbai homes were, with every room buzzing with activity, like a beehive. Below, the city stretched out in all directions, humming and clanking like an engine, unwavering in its business, the streets coiled into knots. But none of its chaos reached the guests, who’d left the streets behind, the city behind, even their country behind, for this apartment could have belonged in New York and this party could have been in Marrakech; there was nothing Indian about it.
Dolly vanished, probably to greet another guest. According to rumours, Dolly hadn’t wanted to move to this towering penthouse because she’d read in Cosmopolitan that high-rise apartments were anti-gravity, putting residents at greater risk of developing wrinkles. Nadia imagined Dolly throwing a tantrum over this, her perfectly made-up face contorted with anger, her manicured fingers curled into thin fists, Makhija reassuring her, making a quid pro quo that allowed Dolly to shimmer in her diamonds and host endless parties in lieu of living here. The rumour, as intended, made Dolly sound like a silly woman, the way in which smart people are often dumb. Nadia didn’t like her the better for it.
Nadia turned to Danesh, who was already nodding to a stout man in the far corner of the room. He absently held her arm for a moment, not taking his eyes off the man, and said, ‘I’ll be right back.’
Nadia knew she’d be alone for the rest of the party.
~
She walked among the swarm of people, noticing a buckle, a detail of fabric, the occasional pensive look, a half-smile from some partially recognizable face. She was dressed wrong, as usual. Though her sari was as bright as the chandeliers in the high ceiling, the women around her were flaunting their assets to greater effect: the lower the neckline and shorter the dress, the richer they were. Yet, despite their many plastic surgeries and boob jobs, most of them looked like elderly girls—girls who were suffering from some wasting disease.
Knowing that no one would wave her over to join their little clique, Nadia searched for another woman she knew would be in a sari, Mrs Kapur. She found her alone, looking soft as a sponge, as if she would return to her original shape if you squeezed her and then let go. But she was someone on whom Nadia could rely and who, in return, only demanded that Nadia behave blandly cheerful.
Mrs Kapur’s light conversational chatter caused a dreamlike state to come over Nadia. Her eyes searched for Danesh and she found him just a few feet away, standing on a rug next to the mini-pond, talking to someone, driven with purpose from one person to another, impervious to everything except his own internal script.
Despite not wearing shoes, he looked taller than anyone else in the room; he probably wasn’t. His dark hard feet sank into the rug. Each joint was capped with a little pink-brown node of skin, each toenail curved forward into the thick wool, and each heel was like the scruffy end of a cricket bat. She knew he hated his feet (as much as he loved the other parts of his body), and didn’t want others to see them; yet he stood barefoot and confident, like it didn’t even bother him.
She wished that, like in the movies, he would turn to catch her eye, and they would stare at each other in the middle of this crowded room, declaring their love in unspoken words. But nothing like that ever happened. He didn’t look at her when other people were around.
Nadia watched him for a while and noticed that he’d spoken to everyone but Dolly. His ignoring seemed deliberate.
Without warning, Nadia was gripped by a dreadful array of feelings, and she couldn’t settle on which one to succumb to first. She excused herself from Mrs Kapur, mid-sentence, knowing she was welcome back there, and walked over to another room, from one room to the next, till she found an empty one. It was a study with a glass cabinet full of mismatched travel souvenirs—a Venetian gondola, a Norwegian troll, the Petronas Towers replica, Japanese ladies in swirling skirts.
Nadia picked up a miniature silver vase, identical to the one she had in her living room, bought by Danesh on a recent business trip to Cairo.
‘Do you know that this vase is a symbol of fertility?’ a man’s booming voice interrupted her. She dropped the vase on the ground and looked up from the clanking into soft brown eyes. She wondered if he was mocking her, if he knew of the phantom pregnancies she’d had, of the foolish time in their thirties when Danesh and she had looked at each other and, thinking their love would last, had bravely said: we don’t need children, we have each other. So the children didn’t come and though she didn’t particularly miss having them, she did wish that there was someone to witness their life, their marriage, someone who would understand, even judge, or hate, but at least be there to see it all. She knew that only a daughter, or perhaps even a son, might have challenged Danesh in his own home, thawed his cold, set ways. For as a wife she could never say or do things that a daughter or son could.
‘I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Baman Tata,’ the man said, extending his hand. His name sounded familiar and Nadia placed him at the centre of a recent scandal, as the man whose wife had left him for a potato-chip baron, earning him the nickname Batata. Baman Tata—Batata. They were a tough crowd.
Nadia was struck by his appearance.
He wore a plaid suit with pencil lines of gold, and a gold tie. The skin on his face was lumpy, like the surface of sour milk, he had thick brown lips, like those of a smoker woman, and his hips were plump. He was probably in his forties, losing hair like most other men, a few strands of grey poking out from beneath the gel plastering his scalp; would anyone dye such a scanty crop of grey?
He was in many ways plain, but so were, in her opinion, most men his age. Where did he get his confidence from then? It could only be from too much money or too little happiness.
She said her name and by the blank look on his face, she assumed he’d never heard of her.
‘I didn’t mean to follow you here—’ he said.
‘You followed me?’ Nadia asked, surprised. She sensed his resolve, and there was a twitch of alarm inside her.
‘I do apologize. I meant no harm,’ he said quickly. ‘You are so beautiful. A vision in gold. So feminine in this sari, unlike all the women outside. I couldn’t help myself.’
Nadia was startled. In a way she was honoured that he chose her, but it also seemed like a violation of her, as a woman alone in a room.
Be polite, agree with people even if they ask for everything without knowing anything about you, is what her mother had taught her. Retaliate quietly, by making your own wrong assumptions, she had learnt.
‘I … uhm … am married. I have a husband, outside,’ she said weakly, still hoping that the word ‘husband’ might carry the weight of pride and reproach.
‘So you’re married?’ he said, very lightly, as though marriage was a matter for amused contemplation.
She laughed in a way she hoped was disarming, her mask of brightness securely in place: spirited and capable, not crumbled and damp.
‘Yes, very happily. Very happily married.’
His leaky eyes widened, and he laughed, ‘That’s the biggest lie man has invented—happy and married in the same sentence.’
She detected a stupid triumph in his presumptuous voice and wished that Danesh was here to tell him that there was something like a happy marriage, that Nadia had shown it to him. But Danesh wasn’t here, wasn’t looking for her, and would not until after dessert at exactly thirty minutes past twelve, when amidst the clinking of the champagne glasses he’d tell her they were leaving, insisting that it was an appropriate time for a good guest to set out.
‘So where is this very-very-happily-married husband of yours? And why has he left you alone? Or is it you that left him?’
Nadia stared at Baman, not wanting any silences out of which ugly truths might tumble out. Danesh had a horror of any kind of negative talk about them, however remote. Quietly, Nadia shared the same fear, often dreaming of huddles of women gathered around a dark sticky centre of deception, shutting her out with their lowered voices and smouldering glances. What if Na
dia told this strange man the truth? What then?
She bent down to pick up the vase. He kneeled down next to her, staring into her eyes: ‘You are really quite beautiful.’
Then his fingers were on her face, coursing lightly over it. Her skin tingled under the trace of his touch, bursting to life. Her face, which she had forgotten, came back into focus, emerging like a butterfly from an extended cocoon.
‘Beautiful in such a simple, earthy way. Like a lotus.’
Nadia saw his lips pucker. Baman Tata was leaning over to kiss her. For a moment she almost relented, curious to know what it’d feel like to be kissed—really kissed—after years, to have her lips meet another’s, to communicate what words couldn’t. But her legs resisted, making her stand up straight, and she walked off, leaving Baman on the floor with the vase.
~
It was Nadia’s first victory over a man in many years. She imagined Baman chewing on his words, his actions, as she often did after meeting a person. He’d follow her, she knew, to apologize for his impudence—impudence being his habit, and apology his way of sustaining that habit.
Nadia walked to her husband, noticing from afar what a good-looking man he was: a tall man with an upright, square face, tidy dark hair springing straight up from his forehead and strong hands with fingernails as clean as soap. A man like that would never have looked at her, even in her heyday, which she believed was in her early twenties. She had him because his mother had liked her plain looks, her yielding manner, her soft chapattis and misleading childbearing hips.
But in the early days of their marriage he had told her otherwise. In warm whispers he’d said he loved her, her simplicity, her stillness, her strength, speaking to her like a boy who’d caught a luminous butterfly. Nadia held on to the memory of these compliments the way a rock climber holds on to a sturdy ledge.
Now as she stood beside Danesh, he glanced at her for only a moment before turning back to the man he was talking to.
Nadia tried not to focus on the way her stomach curled. After all, Danesh had lost his way with her a long time back; twenty-one years of marriage had rid him of any interest in his lightweight and easy-to-brush-aside wife. Now whenever they met someone, he’d direct his attention resolutely towards that person, as if he was a ball facing the front wall of a squash court.
It wasn’t his fault though, but Nadia’s. She had drawn a false picture of marriage, despite being told several times that the real thing could never live up to the expectation. It was nothing unusual, her psychiatrist had convinced her, later asking if Danesh made her feel like the furniture at home, an oft-used term Nadia took to mean someone essential who went unnoticed. She’d said no, she was not like furniture but like the air Danesh breathed, something he needed all the time without being aware of it.
She heard trolleys being wheeled forth and knew, without turning around, that dinner was being set: platters of shrimp, sushi, slices of roast beef, duck a l’orange, and a sculpted pyramid of caviar on a salver with points of toast. Various finely cut vegetables would be fanned out on a platter, preserving their colour more faithfully than the vegetables she regularly saw.
An hour later, the dessert tray would come: a tall meringue cake dwarfing the coconut lime tarts topped with kiwi—even if it was out of season—and chocolatecoated pastry horns stuffed with whipped cream, none of which would be touched by the calorie-conscious guests. Then, among much cheering and toasting, two servants wearing chef caps and white gloves would wheel in another silver trolley with champagne glasses.
Indulgences were served like clockwork to the exacting stomachs of the rich.
Sometimes Nadia wondered if things would be shuffled around—the champagne glasses coming out before dessert or not at all—but it was a game, and the routine worked with the predictability of a dull old spinster.
Her roving eyes caught Baman’s. She realized how disconnected Danesh and she appeared from each other. Danesh engrossed in someone else, Nadia shifting in awkwardness as though lacking something essential, both of them facing each other at an angle that suggested a quarrel. She could cry for her humiliation.
No, she scolded herself. She would not let herself be this way. Especially not when Baman Tata was staring at her with a peculiar gentleness, like she was some kind of nourishment.
Glad for his stubbornness, glad that at least someone knew what to do, she walked over to him, firm, smiling. He was picking up sushi rolls with his fingers, tossing them straight into his mouth, sipping white wine from a full glass. Danesh would never be caught indulging like this in someone else’s home, barely touching the food or drinks, to make it known to the host that he was there for nothing else save their company.
‘So you must be planning to be very very happily married sometime in the future?’ Baman said, grinning, teeth bared.
The possibility of a smile brushed Nadia’s lips. Baman Tata was disarming in a way that she hadn’t first recognized.
‘I can only account for what I did in the past, and present, not in the future,’ Nadia replied, finding it a rather clever phrase.
‘Do you talk to him about that, really talk about your past, future?’
Nadia looked at him to see if he was still mocking her, but she saw a rare sincerity in his eyes, as if his question had been spawned from the slime of some long-nurtured realization.
‘We communicate,’ she said evenly, not to betray her hurt at the truth.
‘Shame,’ he said, in a way that made the word sound more shameful. ‘If I had the chance, I would listen to your voice all the time, hear every thought you have, every experience, till I could turn you inside out and nothing new would fall out.’
Laughter flexed Nadia’s throat, as she envisioned Baman turning her inside out, as she did with Danesh’s trousers when checking for loose change.
She leaned in and whispered shyly, ‘It’s my birthday today.’ She said it as if telling him that she loved him.
‘That is wonderful! Now we can tell our grandchildren that we met on your birthday.’
Nadia had such a fit of laughter that she nearly choked. She rarely laughed at Dolly’s or any of Danesh’s friends’ parties, for if she stepped out of their highly strung amiability, Danesh would want to leave.
The more money he made, the less he laughed.
And then Baman said, ‘I don’t understand why your husband would ever look at another woman.’ He said it so quietly that for a moment Nadia thought it was her own voice speaking. She looked into his eyes and realized that this was not random flirtation. He had not picked her out for her gold sari or pleasing looks. He thought that she was in the same boat as him. That she would help him piece together why his wife had abandoned him the way others abandon clothes. Empathize with why he’d become a Batata.
‘Is that what you thought of your wife? That she would never look at another man?’ she said angrily.
Baman started, shuffled his feet and took a long sip of his drink, so long that he emptied out the glass.
‘Is that what men still expect of women?’ she continued. ‘That they’ll choose a man they no longer love over happiness? Wake up and look around you. Look at these women; they have choices.’
‘And you?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you have a choice?’
~
Nadia looked at Dolly; it was difficult not to spot her even from afar. She was standing alone, instructing one of her many servants. Dolly was taller than Nadia, but with narrower shoulders and hips, long legs and a stubborn chin. She wore pale green lenses, a surprising colour against her olive skin, and hard to look into. She held her head slightly lowered, slightly tilted, a wariness hardened and deliberate, her attitude indifferent but uncompromising, like a cat’s.
Nadia could detect nothing of herself in Dolly.
Odd choices are easier for men to make, her psychiatrist had said.
‘Are you okay?’ Baman asked.
No, she thought silently, she was not okay. She’d existed too cautiously wit
hin her marriage, Nadia had, as if there were shards of glass all around her. She had to realize that Danesh and her life together was a misstep, not a car crash. Something could change.
She grabbed a drink from one of the trays passing by, took a long swig, and walked over to Dolly.
‘I don’t think we’ve met. I am Mrs Shroff,’ Nadia said, extending her hand towards Dolly.
Dolly spun around with a smile that disappeared when she saw that it was Nadia. She pursed her thin lips firmly and said, ‘I know,’ turning back to a nervous servant, treating Nadia the way Danesh did: as invisible.
Nadia pictured their legs wrapped together, Dolly’s legs bent with the muscular grit of a tree’s boughs, her interest severe, something he’d desire. She imagined him setting down his glass of sour, which he enjoyed after sex, the tip of his little finger muffling the impact of the glass.
‘Are you sure you know me?’ Nadia said.
Dolly’s eyes hovered over the room, indirect but measuring looks, probably seeking Danesh. He must have been talking to someone, for Dolly returned her confused eyes to Nadia. A shroud of unspoken thoughts hung between them. Nadia didn’t yield.
‘Of course I’m sure who you are, Nadia,’ Dolly replied, arching her rather hostile black eyebrows.
‘Not Nadia, I am Mrs Shroff.’
‘Is this some kind of a joke?’
Nadia sensed Dolly’s stony energy, full of contempt.
‘Is it? Tell me, who are you?’
‘You, my dear, have clearly had too much to drink.’
Her ‘my dear’ was cold and patronizing.
‘Who. Are. You?’ Nadia repeated.
‘I am Dolly. This is my house. We are having a party. And you are a guest here.’
‘You are not Dolly. You are Mrs Makhija. And I am Mrs Shroff. Do you understand me, Mrs Makhija?’
For the first time there was comprehension in Dolly’s eyes. Her powdered face turned pale. Anxiety made her eyes blink.