Three Bargains: A Novel

by Tania Malik

  “It didn’t take much for me to tell him. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled hearing that he could help couples like us,” said Mr. Ganguli. “And I was right.”

  The lawyer had helped Pandit Bansi Lal place a child a year before. From the adoption agencies, one was never sure what child from what poor family one would get, and the lawyer assured Mr. Ganguli that Pandit Bansi Lal only dealt with babies from good families. The pandit had contacted him recently. A baby would soon be available.

  “After everything, we didn’t need much time to think about it,” Mr. Ganguli said, as his wife dabbed her eyes with her dupatta. “Pandit Bansi Lal wanted money, of course. I borrowed from my brother, we sold some of Bhavna’s jewelry, but it was all worth it when that night he put the baby in my arms—”

  “The child was ours from then on,” his wife interrupted, a little defensively, unable to stanch the flow of tears streaming down her face.

  Mr. Ganguli patted her hand. “Pandit Bansi Lal told us that an underage girl from a rich family had the baby, and would never look for it. He never said anything about the father. And since it was all under the table, we did not ask many questions. All we wanted was a healthy baby. We didn’t care about anything else.”

  Madan was glad Preeti spoke up, because he could not get the words out. “You . . . you both? You’re the people who took the baby?”

  Mr. Ganguli nodded. “I filed the birth certificate papers, after paying off the filing clerk, with our names as parents.”

  Preeti turned to Madan, her face wet with tears, and he wondered when he would cease giving her reasons to cry. Bhavna Ganguli reached over to the side table and placed a mahogany photo frame in Madan’s hands. Preeti leaned in to look.

  A young man and woman stood next to each other, smiling. A curve of a beach, a few palm trees, a white building in the background. The clean-cut young man had his arm over the woman’s shoulder.

  “That’s in Goa, last year,” Mrs. Ganguli murmured.

  Madan touched the glass reverently, his finger tracing the outline of the taller figure. “Is this . . . ?” the words could barely escape his lips. They dried on his tongue and clung to his heart and the roof of his mouth.

  “Is this him?” Preeti asked.

  Mrs. Ganguli leaned over too. “Oh, no, that’s our son Naveen. This”—her finger tapped the young woman grinning through the glass at Preeti and Madan—“is Nitasha,” she said. “This is—she is who was given to us—who came to complete our family.”

  Madan felt the gentle weight of Preeti’s hand on his. “It’s the girl, Madan,” she said. “A girl.”

  Madan looked at the picture of the girl in a blue T-shirt and white shorts, a tanned, pretty face, her hair hanging loosely over one shoulder.

  “Is she here?” asked Preeti, looking around the place.

  “Not at the moment,” said Mr. Ganguli. He traded glances with his wife. “She knows she is not ours by birth. We’ve told her.”

  “Though she’s so smart she would’ve figured it out herself anyway.” Husband and wife shook their heads and shared a small private laugh, as only parents who recognized the specialness of their child could.

  Mr. Ganguli said, “Look, you said this morning that all you wanted to do was make sure she’s all right. As you can see, she’s everything to us, to her brother. It was never a question with us; no matter how she came to us, she could never be more ours than if we . . .”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Madan, but he sounded befuddled, as if he couldn’t comprehend what they were saying.

  Then he heard Preeti’s voice, strong and clear. “We are grateful,” she said. “We are grateful for all you’ve done, and yes, Madan wanted to make sure that she was all right. But Mr. Ganguli, Bhavna-ji, we’ve gone through a . . . a very bad time recently and it made Madan look for . . . Nitasha.”

  A name, thought Madan . . . Nitasha. He held the picture frame in his hands, seeking it out again and again, his reflection superimposed on the smiling girl’s.

  “But if Madan could meet her—he won’t say what you don’t want him to say—but, we would be so thankful.”

  Madan looked at her. How was she able to articulate his thoughts when he himself did not know what was going through his own wandering, agonized mind?

  “Please,” Preeti said.

  “We told her you were coming here today. Her brother took her out so we could meet you first,” Mrs. Ganguli said. “She’ll be going back soon to school in Boston. She’s at MIT, doing her master’s in chemical engineering.”

  “She’s old enough. The decision is hers,” Mr. Ganguli said.

  They all turned as the lock on the front door clicked open. A young man stepped into the room. He was nearly as tall as the doorway and they could see the resemblance to the Gangulis.

  “Dad?”

  Mr. Ganguli rose up hurriedly. “Naveen, come in,” he said. To Madan and Preeti he said, “This is my son.”

  Naveen continued to look questioningly at his father, and when Mr. Ganguli gave him a small, firm nod, he moved aside. “She was impatient,” Naveen said to his father.

  Madan should have been looking at the door but it was too much, and he turned to Preeti, and saw her smile, rise up and walk toward the door with her arms stretched out. His gaze trailed Preeti to the girl who had jumped out of the picture frame and into the doorway. Mr. and Mrs. Ganguli stood on each side, and her brother behind her, protecting her, but Preeti broke in and gave her a loose hug. “We’re very glad to see you,” she said. And Madan stood up and made himself put one foot before another. He wondered why he was moving so slow, when he should be running, flying, but he kept on until he was beside Preeti. The girl put her hand out, and they shook.

  “I’ve been waiting for a long time,” Nitasha said.

  “Not as long as me,” he said.

  Mrs. Ganguli broke the ensuing hush that fell between them by urging everyone to sit down. Preeti sat on another chair, giving Nitasha room next to Madan. There were things he knew in life he would never forget, whether it was the gleam infusing Arnav’s being as he trained his eyes on the checkered flag at the end of the raceway, or the comfort of Preeti’s head on his shoulder, or the way Nitasha sat angled on the sofa, the poise with which she sized him up, her parents in her line of sight behind Madan, her loose hair falling around her shoulders, her eyes dotted with sparkling copper.

  “Dad and I were discussing what I should call you,” she said, and her tone was city-girl strong, the bonds anchoring every corner of her life never in doubt. Her family was here, she was in her home and who was Madan? Someone to whom she could give no name.

  “Whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll answer to whatever you call me.”

  He would forever remember this conversation, he thought, awkward at times, the silences filled by the Gangulis or Preeti. He would have liked to stay on, ask her about things—he knew not what—but how could he not know what was her favorite color, and did she like tennis or cricket, and who were her best friends, and did she prefer Italian food or Chinese?

  But she was meeting up with some friends for dinner. Though Madan was reluctant to leave, he understood from the look Preeti gave him that it was best to let them be, best to give everyone a chance to catch their breath.

  “These youngsters,” Mr. Ganguli said, “always so busy. She has so many friends she has to see before she returns. No time for her old parents.”

  Nitasha hugged Mr. Ganguli, and said with a smile, “Please, Dad. Stop with your emotional blackmail.”

  Before they left, Preeti insisted that the Gangulis come for dinner at their house. They looked hesitant, even a little uncomfortable at her suggestion, but she did not let them think it over, continuing to insist, taking down phone numbers, saying she would call to confirm. “My parents would like to meet you both,” she said. “My chacha was a high court judge, recently retired,” she said to Mr. Ganguli. “And you will meet our friend Ketan-bhai and his family.”
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  She chatted on until they were unable to refuse. They saw Madan and Preeti off, seeming more than a little stunned by what they had let her talk them into. Even Madan was not sure why she was being so insistent.

  Their car was boxed in between two others, and once they managed to squeeze out and get back onto the main road, he asked, “Are you sure about inviting them over?”

  She stared straight ahead into the swallowing darkness and said with her usual firmness, “Let them come to the house and see where we live. And you must invite Mr. Ganguli to see the offices. Let them see we are decent, solid people. They will see what is past is past, and we must make sure they’re comfortable with us.”

  He should have realized that the Gangulis didn’t have a chance once Preeti unleashed her complex social skills on them. And in this matter, she was right. They had to show them there was nothing to fear from Madan meeting their child. His last glimpse of Nitasha was of her standing at the top of the stairs, saying good evening before she turned to answer her cell phone.

  “If I’d known going to the temple could make a day turn out like this, I would’ve gone much earlier,” he said, more to himself than to Preeti.

  “You went to the temple?” Her voice was sharp with surprise.

  “Yes, this morning, to the Hanuman Mandir near the house.”

  He waited for her to comment. When she didn’t, he tried to get a good look at her, but it was dark, and she was facing away from him, looking out the window, her arms crossed around her middle, shivering as though cold. He reached out to turn up the heat, but an unsettling thought came to him that it was not the temperature causing her to shake. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that his wife was silently, and heartily, laughing.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE SMALL MOSQUITO IS A BIG MONSTER. WARNINGS ABOUT dengue virus were appearing on billboards across every bus stop, signaling the start of summer, but already the air was so thick and viscous that standing outside for even a minute was akin to walking through a heavy brush of glue. Madan waited in the cooler confines of his car, while Preeti stepped into the bakery to pick up something to take to the Gangulis’.

  Tonight they were attending a jagrata at the Gangulis’ place, a night of continuous worship devoted to Durga Mata. He glanced up from his phone to see Preeti talking to a couple of ladies outside the bakery doors, and went back to reading the Internet article he had pulled up on his phone.

  All these years Nitasha was so close, less than an hour, yet more than the breadth of his life away. Maybe they walked the same markets, visited the same restaurants, stood next to each other somewhere, all the while unaware of the other cutting across their path.

  The many images he formed and re-formed of her were like a string of paper dolls. Questions swarmed through him, like what attracted her to this stream of academia—chemical engineering—and he tried to imagine if this mix of science and industry would have caught his interest if he had gone on with his education.

  She was to leave for school in a few days. How quickly the time had flown. They had met the Gangulis for dinners as Preeti had planned, Mr. Ganguli duly visiting the factories and offices. So far, Nitasha had never shown anything but eagerness to see Madan, yet he could sense she was maintaining a safety zone, taking full stock of him before committing fully to his reappearance.

  A luncheon had taken place in a small French restaurant a few days ago, just Madan and Nitasha, and he had waited then for the inevitable questions. “I know I should ask why,” she had said. “Why you didn’t keep me and all that, why you came looking for me now, but . . .” She paused, as if not wanting to hurt his feelings. “Is my mother, the one who gave birth to me, is she around, alive?”

  “You were born when we were younger than you are now,” he said. “In a place where some lines could not be crossed, and the repercussions for any breach was not affected by birth, or life or death.”

  “She does not want to see me,” she said. Nitasha’s frank look belied the disappointment he knew she must feel.

  “Neha”—and Madan said her name so Nitasha would have some part of her—“was ready to break the system, start a revolution, when I knew her. She knew what she wanted to fight against, but she stumbled, because she did not know what she was fighting for.” Nitasha gave him a quizzical look, and he said, “It’s something I was told once. What I’m saying is she tried, but the fight crushed her. She has had to forget what defiance is to live in peace.”

  Nitasha turned her gaze to the window, the white glazed glass blurring out the shrubs and asphalt, the humans and animals choking the lane on the other side, her casually tied ponytail brushing the collar of her shirt. He had no sixth sense, but he knew she filled in the empty spaces, coloring in the broken lines to create a picture that resembled a truth she could live with.

  “One day I’ll show you Gorapur, and when you see it you’ll understand.”

  “I would like that,” she said.

  “I understand that you tried to find us as well. Why did you look?” he asked.

  She sipped her Coke and looked as if she were too embarrassed to answer. “I wish I could say it was some amazing reason,” she said. “I mean, I love Mom and Dad. But look at me. I don’t look anything like them. I was on a school trip with my friends and someone asked if I look like my mom more or my dad, and I said neither. They joked and said, ‘So do you look like the milkman?’ and for a while they called me Dhoodhwali, you know, Milk-Delivery-Girl. Very amusing. And it just got me thinking, where did all this come from?” She pointed at her face, circling a few times. “Of course, when we couldn’t find anyone, and Dad told me to let it go, I did, but it didn’t stop bugging me.”

  Dad. The way she said it, with a sense of possession. It reflected the same tone with which he would address Avtaar Singh, and people would turn and look and understand the sense of belonging that existed between the two individuals, of which no one else was a part.

  Avtaar Singh would say everyone began life with a finite number of breaths, a certain number of heartbeats, and when your quota was over, it was the end. What struck Madan, sitting with Nitasha, noticing their physical similarities, was that the two of them were raised by men who had no say in their births. By men who, nonetheless, had invested devotedly in their breaths, and in their heartbeats. Who passed on their convictions and their presumptions without fanfare, but with care and effort, and who had seen in them a way to assuage their own demons. They were the master builders, defining to them their value to the world.

  It seemed to Madan that each child and parent were predestined to be bound to one another, each offspring ending up with the person fated to be the architect of their life. Some children, he supposed, landed straightaway in the arms meant for them. Some, like Nitasha, like him, took a more circuitous route.

  He had watched her cut into her grilled chicken and spear a baby carrot as she hopped from topic to topic, saying she was considering turning vegetarian but did not want to give up fish, “So I may become a fisheterian,” she had said. “Wait until I confuse every auntie in the colony with that word.” And she had grinned at herself and her mangled word, and he had felt proud of her. Though he had nothing to do with how she spoke or how she thought, or how she turned out, he saw that if he had taken her and run, or she ended up with some other lucky man she called “Dad,” it didn’t matter how they got her here, only that she was.

  Madan continued now to study his phone, waiting for Preeti, thinking that he should remember to ask Nitasha for her email address before she left. If she would like, that is, to keep in touch. He was about to click on another article when Preeti returned, slipping into the air-conditioned coolness of the car.

  “Who were they?” he asked, starting the car back up. Usually he didn’t ask, but she looked upset.

  “Kiran Bajaj and Mira Mittal. Their sons go to his school . . . used to go to his school . . . I mean, they still go—” She gave up, impatiently snapping her se
atbelt. “It’s not the same,” she said.

  He didn’t know what to say. It was not the same to mingle with Mrs. Bajaj and Mrs. Mittal, or Mrs. Khanna or Mrs. Sidhwani. There was no foothold, no reason to linger and murmur with this one and that, irrevocably yanked, as she was, from discussions centering on school and homework and birthday parties, and where Rohit was going for skating lessons, and whom Chetan was seeing for extra tutoring. Where before the ladies’ conversations circulated round and round like water going down the drain, all that remained now were forced pleasantries. No, it was not the same.

  The sky curved pink with the setting sun. They waited in a line of cars for the traffic light to change. The honking began when the light turned green and no one could move. Once again, the carefully planned boulevards of the city were defeated, this time by a car at a standstill in the middle of the road, its occupant busy feeding a stray cow his leftover lunch through the window. When the other drivers collectively tried to surge forward and go around the vehicle and cow, they blocked each other and were now stalled crisscross all over the road. The driver of a two-wheeled scooter, attempting a U-turn to get out of the mess, found himself tangled in the oleander bushes of the center divider. Finally, a rickshaw driver decided to be traffic cop and stood in the middle of the road, shouting, swearing and directing cars out of their conundrum and around the oblivious bovine pleasurably masticating on cold chapattis.

  “This is Delhi,” Madan said. “In its order there’s chaos, and within this chaos there’s order—much like life.”

  “You’ve become such a philosopher in your old age,” Preeti said.