Three Bargains: A Novel

by Tania Malik

  He heard movement in the hallway and everyone stopped talking. He knew who it was.

  Her hair was more white than gray and she stooped a little. She was heavier.

  “Ma,” he said, and then he choked. “Ma.”

  She shuffled slowly toward him. Nima bounced on the sofa, the thumps and creaks of the cushion springs filling the room. Swati caught her, stopping her mid-jump.

  Madan’s mother put her hand to her chest. It looked like she was going to collapse in a heap, and Jaggu rushed to her side, clutching her arm, trying to make her sit in a chair.

  “Jaggu,” Madan’s mother said, leaning on him but refusing to sit down, “is that your friend?”

  “It’s your son, Ma,” Jaggu said.

  She pushed Jaggu away, pulling her sari tighter around her shoulders. Her befuddlement cleared, replaced by the cold intensity of nothingness. “I have no son,” she said to Jaggu.

  Swati began to sob and say, “Don’t say that, Ma. Don’t say that. It’s Madan-bhaiya.”

  “My poor girl, still so simple. When will you learn? If you had a brother, he would never have neglected his duty to you, or to his mother. He wouldn’t have been so foolish as to see beyond his status, never would have thought himself so high and mighty that he could follow the stars in his eyes and put us all in jeopardy. And you . . .” She twisted back to Jaggu. “It’s your business if you bring people from the street into the house, but either he goes or I go.”

  “It’s my house,” Jaggu said.

  “You’re right,” she said, and they watched her stiffened back retreat out the door, Nima trailing after her grandmother and asking for a snack.

  That night, Madan finally returned Ketan-bhai’s calls, the rising and rolling hum of Jaggu’s argument with Madan’s mother vibrating through the walls. His mother had threatened to return to the temple, spend the night in the streets if she had to, but Jaggu firmly and unequivocally had insisted that no one was going anywhere. “We are all finally together,” he said. “For now, no one is leaving this house.” Madan stayed in his room, grateful for Jaggu’s unfaltering hospitality.

  Ketan-bhai answered at the first ring, shouting into the handset, “Where the hell are you?” Not waiting for a reply, he continued, “Going off like that? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I had to leave for a few days.”

  “Tell me where you are. I’ll come get you.”

  “I’m not in Delhi,” he said. “I have something to attend to.”

  There was silence on the other end. “Madan,” Ketan-bhai said at last. “To disappear like this on Preeti? To leave her, after Arnav? Madan, there is only so much she can take.”

  “I know,” he said. “I need a little time to sort out a few things.”

  “I’ve said what I want to say. When can we expect you back?” When Madan was noncommittal, he hung up with a long, resigned sigh, saying, “Call her.”

  Madan tried to call Preeti but she didn’t answer.

  When he woke the next morning, the sky was bright, and outside on the lawns there were women everywhere. Squatting, sitting cross-legged, standing, the ends of their saris covering their heads or tucked into their sides. And from what he could make out, they were all sewing. Cloth of different shapes, sizes and colors lay strewn around, bits of thread hanging off everything, measuring tapes and chalk littering the ground. His mother sat on a wicker chair in one corner of the veranda.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “It’s what she does,” said his mother, nodding toward Swati, barely visible in the milieu of women, giving orders and instructions. His mother’s pinched expression and the hostility of her tone and carriage made it clear that she was anwering him unwillingly. She removed a package wrapped in plastic from a pile next to her and tossed it to him. Inside, he could make out a cream-colored table mat set, beautifully embroidered with a red paisley pattern. On the outer package, a green sticker with a flower logo in the corner read Gorapur Mahila Cooperative.

  “They’re from the slums around town or they’re farm laborers’ wives,” his mother said, sticking to the matter at hand. “She teaches them to sew and embroider. They make all sorts of things: tea-cozy sets, table mats, tablecloths, bedding sets, quilts. They sell them at the tourist rest stops and home stores. One lady from Delhi buys a lot and sells them in her boutique.” She paused as the maid brought Madan his tea. “Swati sets a quota for them to complete every month and what profit they make is divided equally among all the women in the cooperative. It supplements their income, helps feed the children when the men have drunk away the money, and helps send their children to school.”

  “How did it happen, Ma?”

  His mother’s voice thickened. “We didn’t stop living because you decided you didn’t want anything to do with us.”

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  But she held up her hand to stop him. “I have put a stone on my heart all these years not knowing if you are alive or dead, and now you reappear like you just went out for lunch.”

  “You talk as if it was all my doing,” he said. Had she forgotten the choice she had made, how she’d cast him off with her piercing denouncement? “I asked you to come with me. I could have taken care of you both.”

  He stood in anger as if to leave, but his mother said, “Sit. Jaggu told me a little about what happened to you, with your son.”

  Madan noticed Swati glance at them, her smile faltering, and he took a seat. They both watched her move through the throng of women. She still walked with an odd, rolling gait.

  Madan said, “You were telling me about her.”

  “Something in her snapped back after you left. She kept waiting for you to reappear, kept asking for you. It brought her out of the trance she was in.”

  “I can’t believe Jaggu is my brother-in-law. How could I have missed that?”

  “I didn’t think much of all their meetings at first. I thought it was good for both of them. Then all of a sudden he’s saying he wants to marry her. You can’t miss your friend that much, I said to him. I mean, Swati has her problems; they never went away. But he got help for her. It took many years, but he didn’t give up.

  “Your bapu was a difficult man, but he was my husband. There’s always someone we can’t imagine our lives without. I feared that man alive, and I feared what would happen when he was dead. And it terrified me more than anything that you had no such confusion.”

  “Ma—”

  “I know why. You had Avtaar Singh. You recognized something in Avtaar Singh’s soul, a kindness, a gentleness, that no one else could see. And this connection bound you both, leaving all of us out.” Her gaze bore into Madan. “Avtaar Singh never spoke of you. Never asked if we had seen or heard from you. Acted like you were never there. Like you never walked with him, or stood with him, or lived for him.”

  Madan watched the tea leaves swirl a slow and sleepy dance to the bottom of his teacup. “For him, the dead are better left that way,” he said.

  CHAPTER 21

  “

  BHAIYA, DO YOU HAVE ANY PICTURES?” SWATI ASKED. THEY were sitting on the veranda later that afternoon, after the trip to the toy store that Madan had insisted on. Her children were running around them, toy airplane and dolls in hand.

  It hadn’t occurred to him to bring photos along. He was not sure where the photo albums were anyway; Preeti handled the picture-taking and cataloging. He was about to shake his head, but in a burst of inspiration reached in his jeans and took out his cell phone. “Maybe . . .” he said, pressing buttons, scrolling through the options. “There may be something in here. Let me check.”

  He had not gone through the pictures in his phone for some time. The screen blinked as the photos changed, and then it blinked again and Arnav stared back at him. Madan still couldn’t look without that excruciating stab to his heart.

  He had taken Arnav to the children’s play area at the City Club. Preeti had insisted they become members, but the only part o
f the club Madan ever visited was the playground. While Madan was on the phone, Arnav had run from swing to merry-go-round, and finally at the slide he said, “Look, Papa, look at me!”

  He had been at the top of the slide, arms triumphantly up in the air, when Madan had snapped the first shot. The next picture of Arnav’s was of him at the bottom of the slide, rosy cheeks flushed with energy and excitement.

  Madan handed the phone to Swati. “This is—” It was hard to say his name. “This is Arnav.”

  She took the phone and turned it toward the light, his mother peering over her shoulder. Swati scrolled backward and forward. Arnav at the top of the slide, Arnav at the bottom. “Bhaiya,” she said. “He looks like you.”

  Jaggu came around and looked over Swati’s shoulder as well. Quiet tears ran down Madan’s mother’s face and she dabbed her eyes with her sari. Swati scrolled down further.

  “The others are from work,” Madan said, but she angled the phone to him.

  “Is this . . . ?” she asked, holding the screen up so he could see.

  It was a picture of Preeti, from the shoulders up. Madan was sure he hadn’t taken it. She was dressed in a glittering outfit, the kind she used to wear when they went out for the evening. Now their lives were all “before” and “after.”

  He nodded. “That’s Preeti. My wife.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Swati said. His mother took the phone and examined the picture of her daughter-in-law.

  “Why didn’t she come with you?” Her eyes were dry now, her voice back to its strong and sharp tenor.

  “I wasn’t sure what I would find here, if there was anyone still around.” He left it at that, but his mother seemed dissatisfied with the explanation. “So,” she said, “why did you come back?”

  “Ma!” reproved Swati.

  “No, no. It’s all right,” Madan said. “But first, there is something else I need to tell you all.” He was going to say it straight, but yet he took a moment to bolster his resolve. “The new township, Jeet Megacity . . .” He turned to Jaggu. “I’m responsible for the project. I have a major stake in it.”

  They stared back at him, as if he had shouted at the top of his voice but they had not heard.

  “Jeet Megacity is your doing?” asked Jaggu.

  Madan nodded. “Mine and a number of other people’s.”

  “You fucker,” said Jaggu, forgetting about the presence of his wife and mother-in-law in his astonishment.

  “What’s he talking about?” Ma asked. “That place you took us to see, Jaggu? With the tall buildings and those workers?”

  “Jaggu took us for a drive around there,” Swati said. “Everyone is talking about it, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.”

  “I haven’t seen it,” said Madan to his stunned audience. “The opening ceremony was due to take place soon. I had planned to come then.”

  “Back in Delhi, my family and friends—they know nothing of you and of my life here. I’ve told them nothing,” he admitted.

  “What?” Jaggu exclaimed.

  As the last of the sun’s rays faded and people retreated into their homes, drew their curtains, turned down their lamps and tuned to the night’s news on their televisions, Madan talked without disruption. Even if they wanted to interrupt, they did not know what to say.

  When he wound down, Swati said softly, “I wish we could have met him. I wish we could have seen Arnav.”

  Madan glanced at his mother. She was quiet, listening carefully, but not showing any reaction. “You’ve not finished,” she said.

  Jaggu and Swati turned to him again. “No,” Madan said. “I need to tell you the real reason I’m here. The other reason. I wanted so much to see you all again. But there’s something else. Since my son, there’s something I keep thinking about.” He hadn’t fully known that that was what he was after in Gorapur until he heard himself say the words.

  “You don’t know of this, but on the morning of the day I left Karnal, I ran into Pandit Bansi Lal at the hospital. He had the baby in his arms.” He did not pause for long because he could see they were anxious for him to continue. “Do you ever wonder what happened to the baby?” When no one answered, he continued, “I want to know. I want to find out what happened to him or her.”

  His mother looked stunned. “You came back for this?” She stood up, vibrating with anger. “You need to go back to your wife and get on with life. How long are you going to hang on to the past? What is the use of uncovering all that mess? Didn’t it cause us enough trouble the first time around?”

  She shuffled away, and Swati went after her. Jaggu glanced uncomfortably at him.

  “You really want to do this? Look for this child?” Jaggu asked.

  “I know now that I have to, Jaggu.”

  “Then I’ll help you,” his friend answered, ready at Madan’s side, as always.

  Madan’s plan had been to go first to the old pandit in search of the baby he had taken, but Jaggu explained that Pandit Bansi Lal had died some years before. There had been only a handful of people who knew about the baby. If Pandit Bansi Lal was not around, who else would be able to give him information? Was this other child lost forever too? Madan considered his options. No, he realized. There was someone else he could try.

  In the car the next day, Madan looked out the window at the blurring landscape. Jaggu had easily tracked down Neha’s address. Her husband owned a string of petrol stations along the highway, and was well known in the Ambala area. He listened as Jaggu told him about Neha’s wedding, which had taken place shortly after Madan left.

  “You should’ve seen Gorapur,” said Jaggu, “it was like the President was coming to visit. Trilok-bhai spared no expense. I guess he had to prove something to the world, and himself, that his money could still get him what he wanted.” Jaggu gave a cynical snort. “Pandit Bansi Lal did the ceremony, can you imagine? What were they all thinking while Neha walked around the fire?

  “We never went anywhere near it, not your mother or me, but for the rest of the town it was a good time. When it was Rimpy and Dimpy’s turn to get married, Avtaar Singh, of course, outdid his old friend, and we went around holding our full stomachs for days.”

  Hearing the names of the two constant companions of his childhood startled Madan. While everyone else had crossed his mind at some point, he had not thought about Rimpy and Dimpy in years. “Where are they?” he asked.

  “Dimpy lives nearby, in Chandigarh. Her husband is the regional bank manager of some American chain of banks. Rimpy got married right after Neha, to an investment banker. They settled in Singapore.”

  “They’re not together?” Madan asked. “They live so far away from each other?”

  Jaggu nodded. “It was never the same between them after that Karva Chauth evening. I think Dimpy never understood why Rimpy spoke up like that and behaved the way she did.” He sighed. “I see her sometimes—Dimpy. She comes with her family to see a movie. I make sure she gets the VIP box. She always stops to say hello and to ask about Ma and Swati.”

  A herd of bleating goats circled their car. They were passing through a town no bigger than a thumbprint, the traffic choking the main road slowing them to a crawl. Everyone honked, yet no one moved. The goatherd swung his stick at his confused animals as they trotted away, swarming around lorries, horse carts and motorcycles. Jaggu inched the car forward into the emptied space, bursting free at the end of the thoroughfare.

  “How strange,” said Madan, “that Rimpy, Dimpy, you, Ma, even Preeti, all your lives, changed because of me. Do you remember me then, Jaggu, at that time, at that age?”

  “That’s the Madan I do remember,” said Jaggu. “This new Madan is the one I have to get used to.”

  Madan let a small smile escape. “I was a simple boy.”

  “You were an atom bomb,” said Jaggu, not unkindly.

  “Are you still angry with me?”

  Jaggu took a moment to answer. “No,” he said. “I can’t be. You’re the one still hurt
ing. The only one still in pain.”

  They found the house easily. High gates corralled large houses all the way down to the end.

  Madan sat in the car and looked up at number 22. Jaggu took a swig of water from the plastic bottle at his side. He didn’t utter a word. Madan continued to sit, looking up at the house.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Jaggu after a while.

  Madan nodded, wiping his palms on his jeans. “I don’t know what to say,” he finally admitted.

  Jaggu put a hand on his arm. “Remember why you’re here. If Neha has any information, something we can use, you need to know. Keep that in mind.”

  Jaggu was right. Finding his child was the most important thing right now. He walked down a short path with green lawn on either side.

  He had barely stepped up to knock on the door when the gate opened. A sleek gray sedan rolled up beside Jaggu’s car. Two girls and a boy tumbled out, tall and gangly in their teenage awkwardness, swinging their backpacks playfully at each other. They looked to be no more than sixteen.

  Madan watched as their mother emerged from the car, hands full of books and lunch boxes. Her hair was untied and long, straight and thick as he remembered it. She flipped her head back, adjusting the dupatta around her shoulders. She looked up, her gaze following her children’s to Madan on her doorstep.

  Her arms gave way. The servant girl ran to pick up the books and pencils and pens on the ground. She ignored her, nearly stepping on her as she walked toward the front.

  The lines on her face mirrored his. She was not the same girl who had met him when night fell on those mountain peaks so high they speared the clouds in the sky. Age, children, time, had thickened her middle and her arms. The salwar stretched across her, too tight in some places. Her face was heavy, but her eyes . . . her eyes, he saw, still glinted with copper.

  “Neha,” he said. The children started at the sound of their mother’s name, so intimately whispered from the mouth of this strange man. No Mrs. so and so. He couldn’t even remember what Jaggu said was her married name. “I have to talk to you.”