by Farahad Zama
“What are you talking about? Mr Naidu wasn’t rich. He barely had enough to survive from harvest to harvest.”
“A god has problems that only he sees and a dog has problems that only it feels. You insult our difficulties by referring to a landowner’s issues in the same breath. I have work for only nine months of the year. The other three months, my family has to starve. How do you think I feel when my child cries with hunger and I can give her only thin gruel that swells her belly but doesn’t fill her?”
“Can’t you go to town and find work there?” asked Rehman.
“Do you think it’s so easy? Some of us have chains that bind us here and won’t let us leave.”
They turned at the end of the path and came to the president’s house, fronted by a flower garden. Apart from the temple, it was the largest building in the village, three storeys tall. A car stood, covered by a tarpaulin, under a shed open on three sides. A large Alsatian dog stared at Rehman, panting with its tongue hanging out. Rehman was glad to see that not only did it look well fed, but it was also chained. The president sat in the garden, in the shade of a fragrant sampangi tree.
“What nonsense are you filling my guest’s ears with?” he said to the labourer.
“Nothing, sir,” said Sivudu. He didn’t stand straight any more – his shoulders were hunched and he kept his eyes on the ground. “I was just saying that I am lucky to work for you, sir. I can eat almost all year round.”
“Quite right,” Mr Reddy said, twirling his moustache. “You’ve wasted enough time. Go and dig the compost into the roses now.”
Sivudu glanced at Rehman with hooded eyes and moved away. Mr Reddy and Rehman went into the house.
“Why did you want to see me, sir?” said Rehman.
The big man ignored him and hollered into the interior. “Get a tea for the visitor.”
Rehman gazed around him. A garlanded picture of Lord Venkateswara hung on one wall. The opposite wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling picture of the Gateway of India on a bright sunny day. The people milling around the foot of the massive monument looked tiny. A row of motorboats were moored along the jetty behind it.
Rehman’s eyes left the picture and scanned the room. The floor was laid with marble and all the furniture was solidly made in what looked like teak. A display case at one end showed off a number of brightly coloured soft toys still in their plastic covers to ward off the dust.
Rehman was pleasantly surprised when a teenage girl, slightly better dressed than a servant maid, came in with a cup. Different rules apparently applied here where the offering of tea was concerned.
“What about you, uncle?” said the girl.
The president shook his head and she went out. “That’s my niece,” he told Rehman. “My cousin’s daughter. She lives with us.”
And works for her supper, thought Rehman, taking a sip.
“I heard that your father runs a marriage bureau,” the president said.
Rehman was astonished. “How do you know?” he asked.
“We get the paper here too,” said the man. “The Marriage Bureau for Rich People – that’s your father’s, isn’t it?”
Rehman was never comfortable with his father’s frank admission of wealth as a criterion for selecting his clients and he squirmed. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Excellent,” said Mr Reddy. “I’ve known about you coming and helping Naidu at the farm for years, but I never gave it much thought. I can see that scions of wealthy families have their own ways of thinking. I am really impressed with your dedication to a late friend.”
Rehman tried to shrug this off. Why was he being praised so much? What did the president want? Did he want to take over Mr Naidu’s lands? His eyes roamed again over the large hall with the car outside and the gold rings on the president’s fingers.
“We are not rich,” he said at last. “Just middle class.”
The president tapped his nose with a finger as if sharing a secret. “I understand,” he said.
Rehman sipped his tea and waited for the other man to speak.
“I am looking for a husband for my daughter, Roja.”
“I see,” said Rehman.
“I want Roja to marry my cousin’s son, the brother of the girl who brought you the tea.”
Why are you telling me this, thought Rehman, but he kept silent and just nodded.
“The boy already helps me with the business. There won’t be any money or property division issues, if Roja marries him. He will stay with us in this house, so my daughter won’t have to move out. I have ambitious plans for my political career and when I move on to a bigger stage, I can make sure that my daughter’s husband takes over my position on the village council.”
“Sounds ideal,” said Rehman diplomatically.
“Exactly,” said Mr Reddy. “He takes my every wish as his command and never answers back. The boy would make the perfect son-in-law.”
“Women are strange creatures,” said Rehman. “I don’t understand why your daughter would refuse to marry such a paragon.”
Mr Reddy shook his head. “If your son doesn’t listen to you, you can beat him. What can you do with a daughter? Nothing, that’s what. Take it from me, never have a daughter; always go for a son. That way you won’t have to pull your hair out with frustration.”
Rehman nodded. “Wise words, sir. I’ll keep your advice in mind,” he said.
“Anyway, I am at my wits’ end. I’ve suggested a few other men, but Roja just laughed them off. She wants a city boy.”
“Sir,” said a voice from the front door. Sivudu stood just outside and to one side, only half visible. “I have finished.”
“What are you standing there for? Am I expected to shout for you now? Come here so I can talk softly,” said the president loudly.
The man wiped his feet on the mat and walked in hesitantly. “Can I take a break, sir?”
“Did you interrupt me to ask that? Couldn’t you have waited until I was free? Lazy workers, all the same, you will do anything to avoid your duties. No, you cannot take a break. Take the dog for a run now.”
Sivudu stood his ground for a couple of seconds, then turned away. The president shouted after him, “And why have you entered the house with dirty feet, tracking manure in?”
Sivudu just continued walking away.
“You called him in, sir,” said Rehman.
“You have to be careful with workers. Never let them become complacent,” said Mr Reddy. “Anyway, why are we talking about unimportant matters? We were discussing my daughter’s wedding. She has a lot of gold jewellery and I have set aside a large sum of money for her dowry. Does your father have any Reddy caste matches? Their family has to be of similar status to our own.”
Like Naidu, Reddy was both a person’s surname and his caste.
“I don’t know,” said Rehman. “He must have. There are lots of members from different castes.”
“If I give you all the details, will you ask your father to send me the names of any suitable bridegrooms for Roja?”
“Oh, no, sir. I don’t get involved in my father’s business. I will give you his phone number. It will be best if you contact him directly. In fact, you should probably go and visit the marriage bureau yourself. My father runs it from our house and you can easily go there in a few hours in your car.”
“All right,” said Mr Reddy. “Give me your address. What time is he open?”
Rehman thought for a moment. “Mornings before noon or before seven in the evenings,” he said. “My father has a siesta in the afternoon and won’t see anybody before four.”
Mr Reddy got to his feet. “All right, young man,” he said.
Rehman wrote his father’s details on a piece of paper, stood up and handed it to his host. “I’ll be off,” he said.
The big man escorted him out of the house. “Why do you neglect your own father’s business and waste your time looking after some other man’s affairs? If you were my son, I wouldn’t let y
ou be footloose like this.”
Thank God you are not my father, thought Rehman. Your daughter is no fool, to try to get away from you. Rehman smiled as he took his leave, not trusting himself to speak.
Seven
Pari closed the gate and walked past the guava tree on to the verandah. Mr Ali was talking to a young man who had the name of a courier company printed on his shirt and Aruna was typing something on the computer.
She waved to them both and went through into the living room. Mrs Ali was not there. The Alis’ house was long and narrow with all the rooms in single file. Pari passed into the bedroom, then into the dining room and finally into the kitchen. Her aunt wasn’t there either, but there was a pan bubbling away on the hob. As she watched, the water started boiling over the sides of the pan. Pari rushed to lower the flame.
Mrs Ali came in from the backyard with a pan full of prepared fish pieces ready for cooking. “Thanks for taking care of the dhal,” Mrs Ali said. “It took longer than I expected to clean and cut up the fish.”
“Why are you cooking lunch so early?” Pari asked.
“I am just getting some of the ingredients ready for later,” said Mrs Ali.
She scooped up a few lentil grains from the pan on the back of a wooden spoon and poked them with a finger. Satisfied, she switched off the gas and turned to Pari.
“Come on, let’s sit under the fan in the living room. I’ll finish it off later. What did you pack for Vasu’s lunch?”
“Rice with tomato khatta and soya bean fry.”
Mrs Ali smiled. The chopped tomatoes cooked with onions, mustard seeds and curry leaves was a favourite of Rehman’s and Vasu had taken it for his own.
Pari continued, “I packed chicken curry the other day, which he loves, but the boy sitting next to him turned out to be a Brahmin and complained that it stank, so Vasu has told me to pack only vegetarian food.”
“Children are like that,” said Mrs Ali. “They are so easily influenced by what other kids say – it is scary.”
They reached the living room. Mrs Ali switched on the fan and the two women sat down next to each other on the settee. Mrs Ali’s eyes went automatically to the corner where she had noticed a cobweb some days earlier when Mrs Bilqis had visited them. The room was now spider-free but checking the corner had become almost a reflex for Mrs Ali.
They were silent for a while, listening to Aruna and Mr Ali’s voices on the verandah. A motorcycle went past, its exhaust making a loud noise.
“Mrs Bilqis came to see us,” said Mrs Ali.
Pari’s body went still. “What did she say?”
“You know what she wants.”
“That woman is unbelievable. I’ve already refused her – very clearly. Why did she come to you?”
“Forget the woman and why she came here. Do you not want to remarry at all?”
“I…er…don’t know,” said Pari slowly.
Mrs Ali remembered finding Pari alone on the beach when she had lost her job. “Is it because you still love your husband? Do you think marrying again is wrong?”
“Yes…No…I am confused. Why do I have to make such difficult choices? Why can’t my life be simple?” said Pari, her voice rising at the end.
Mrs Ali reached out and held Pari’s hand. “Into each life, a little rain will fall,” she said. “But everyone must suffer the sun burning down too. That’s just the way it is. You loved your husband dearly and losing him was a terrible tragedy. They say that those whom Allah loves, He gathers back into His embrace more quickly than others and that’s obviously what happened to your wonderful husband. The question is, what do we do now?”
“Are you telling me to forget my husband?” asked Pari, withdrawing her hand from the older woman’s.
“Would you forget him if I asked you to?”
“No,” said Pari, shortly.
“Then why do you think I am saying that? You are taking this the wrong way. Perhaps I am not expressing myself properly. You will remember your husband for ever. In your mind, he will always be young and handsome, the perfect mate. I pity the poor man who comes into your life next. The reality of him will never match up to the memory of your first husband.”
Pari jumped up from the settee. “I don’t understand what, you are saying, chaachi. Anyway I have to go to the market. I’ll see you in the evening.”
Mrs Ali got up slowly, wincing at the twinge in her knee. “Come with me into the kitchen. Help me make lunch,” she said.
Pari looked undecided for a moment, but gave in.
“Mash the dhal,” said Mrs Ali.
Pari nodded and picked up a round-headed wooden mallet. Mrs Ali started peeling an onion.
“Pari, do you want to live in that small room all your life?”
“Of course not,” Pari said. “You know that I am looking for a two-bedroom flat.”
“How can you afford it? You cannot just spend every rupee you get from your pension and savings each month. Your expenses will grow.”
“I’ll get another job,” said Pari.
“It’s not that easy,” said Mrs Ali. “Oh, you will get some job. But it will pay a pittance and you will have to work really long hours. Ask Aruna. Before she became an assistant here, she was working as a salesgirl in a big store. She had to work until eleven at night and do a full shift every alternate Sunday. You can’t even do that because you have Vasu to look after. What’s the fun of working all hours and missing out on caring for your child?”
Pari used the mallet to give the glutinous yellow dhal an extra-hard shove against the sides of the vessel. “Something will turn up,” she said.
“You are talking like the man who got lost in a forest and started praying for help. Later when he came back home and people asked him whether the prayers had worked, the man replied that God did not have a chance because a guide turned up just then to lead him out of the forest. Don’t be silly, Pari. Something has turned up. I remember having a very similar conversation with Aruna before she got married. You think…” Mrs Ali shook her head. “I will tell you what I told her then: the seasons don’t wait for young women to make up their minds. As you get older, it will become more difficult to make a good match. From the photos I have seen, Dilawar is a handsome man with a good job and Rehman says he knows him from when he was a boy. I don’t think you can get a better match if you wait.”
Mrs Ali put a tiny pan, just a few inches across, on the hob and added a teaspoon of ghee. The white fat turned into clear, yellow oil and its rich fragrance filled the kitchen. Once it was hot, she reached for the spice container for some mustard seeds, catching Pari’s eye as she did so. The young woman’s beautiful face was so crumpled and forlorn that Mrs Ali’s heart melted like the ghee.
“Don’t be so sad. I am sorry to speak like this, Pari. You are right. Everything will be fine. Listen to me wittering away; that’s what arthritis does to you. The doctor says there is no remedy for it and you begin to think that all problems in the world are like that – no cure, no cure.”
“What you are saying makes sense, chaachi. It wasn’t that. I just remembered – the smell reminded me – my husband used to love adding ghee to his food. I stopped him because I read somewhere that it raises cholesterol and can cause heart attacks…” Pari’s gaze took on a faraway look and Mrs Ali couldn’t make out what she was thinking. Then Pari said softly, almost inaudibly, “What a silly woman I was, thinking I could plan for the future.”
Unexpectedly, Mrs Ali’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my poor darling. Maybe you are right too. Your uncle and I spent all our youth slaving away on a meagre income but still putting aside what we could. We made enormous sacrifices at that time for those savings, but now the amounts look laughably small. It wasn’t just us – most of the people round us did the same. Were we correct? Some people, like chhote bhaabhi, your youngest aunt, weren’t that careful. They bought the latest saris and visited out-of-town friends and relatives at the smallest excuse. The years passed for them, just as
they passed for us. Who can say who was right?”
Pari smiled at Mrs Ali and gave her a sudden hug. “You are a dear,” she said. “Don’t change your whole life philosophy because of me. I am just a confused woman who cannot make up her mind.”
“What’s burning?” said Mr Ali, coming into the kitchen and looking at the two women in surprise. “What are the two of you doing here, standing right by the stove and acting like kids ignoring their homework?”
Mrs Ali hurriedly lowered the flame. “Nothing,” she said. She gave the onions in the pan a quick twirl with a wooden spatula. “The cooking’s going well.”
Mr Ali turned to Pari and said, “Didn’t you say you wanted to go to the market? A new grocery store, the kind where you go round the aisles with a trolley and pick up whatever you want, has opened in the next street. Let’s go.”
Pari nodded and, a few minutes later, she and Mr Ali were out of the house.
♦
They walked along the dusty edge of the road. “Mrs Bilqis came to the house,” said Mr Ali.
“Not you too, chaacha,” said Pari. “Chaachi was just talking about it.”
“We promised Mrs Bilqis that we would talk to you about the match,” said Mr Ali.
Pari regaled him with big eyes. “Oh!” was all she said.
“Don’t feel that we are putting you under any pressure,” said Mr Ali.
A three-wheeled auto-rickshaw went past With a banana plant sticking out of its open side, almost brushing them off the road and into the gutter of dirty water.
“Well, we are putting you under pressure,” conceded Mr Ali. “But it’s all in a good cause.”
Pari remained silent.
“You are a young girl, younger than most of my clients in the marriage bureau. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you and you cannot live it alone.”
“I am not alone,” said Pari finally. “I have all of you to look out for me.”