The director was pleased with himself and extended his hand. Sen acknowledged his boss’s wit by taking his hand. ‘Thank you, sir. I think I will go home.’
‘My god, you are a Sahib! I hope your wife is not a Memsahib. That would be too much of a joke.’
The director left but his betel-stained smirk lingered on like the smile of the Cheshire cat and his last remark began to go round and round in Sen’s head with an insistent rhythmic beat. ‘I hope your wife isn’t a Memsahib, not a Memsahib, not a Memsahib. I hope your wife is not a Memsahib.’
Would his wife be a Memsahib, he mused as he drove back home for lunch. It was not very likely. She claimed to be an MA in English literature. But he had met so many of his countrymen with long strings of firsts who could barely speak the English language correctly. To start with, there was the director himself with his ‘okey dokes’ and ‘by gums’ who, like other South Indians, pronounced eight as ‘yate’, and egg as ‘yagg’, and who always stumbled on words begining with an ‘M’. He smiled to himself as he recalled the director instructing his private secretary to get Mr M.M. Amir, member of Parliament, on the phone. ‘I want Yum Yum Yumeer, Yumpee.’ The Bengalis had their own execrable accent; they added an airy ‘h’ whenever they could after a ‘b’ or a ‘w’ or an ‘s’. A ‘virgin’ sounded like some exotic tropical plant, the ‘vharjeen’, ‘will’ as ‘wheel’, and ‘simple’ as ‘shimple’.
~
There was much crying at the farewell and the bride continued to sniffle for a long time afterwards in the car. She had drawn her sari over her forehead down to her eyes and covered the rest of her face with a silk handkerchief into which she blew her nose. When Sen lit his pipe, she firmly clamped the handkerchief on her nostrils. ‘Does the smoke bother you?’ was the first sentence he spoke to his wife. She replied by a vigorous shake of the head.
They stopped at a mango orchard by the roadside to have lunch. His mother I had made two separate packets with their names in Bengali pinned on them. The one marked ‘Sunny’ had roasted chicken and cheese sandwiches. The other contained boiled rice and pickles in a small brass cup with curried lentils. His wife poured the lentils on the rice and began to eat with her fingers.
They ate without speaking to each other. Within a few minutes they had an audience of anxious passers-by and children from a neighbouring village. Some sat on their haunches; others just stood gaping at the couple or commenting on their being newly married. Sen knew how to deal with the rustic. ‘Are you people hungry?’ he asked sarcastically.
The men turned away sheepishly; but the urchins did not budge. ‘Bugger off, you dirty bastards,’ roared Sen, raising his hand as if to strike. The children ran away to a safe distance and began to yell back at Sen, mimicking his English. ‘Buggeroff, Buggeroff,’ they cried. ‘Arey he is a Sahib, a big Sahib.’
Sen ignored them and spoke politely to his wife. ‘Pardon the language,’ he said with a smile. ‘Would you like to sample one of my sandwiches? I don’t know whether you eat meat; take the lettuce and cheese; it is fresh cheddar.’
Mrs Sen took the sandwich with her curry-stained fingers. She tore a strip off the toast as if it were a chapatti, scooped up a mixture of rice, curry and cheddar and put it in her mouth. She took one bite and stopped munching. Through her thick glasses she stared at her husband as if he had given her poison. She turned pale and, being unable to control herself any further, spat out the food in her mouth. She turned her face the other way and brought up the rice and curry.
‘I am dreadfully sorry,’ stammered Sen. ‘The cheddar upset you. I should have known.’
Mrs Sen wiped her mouth with the end of her sari and asked for water. She rinsed her mouth and splashed it on her face. The lunch was ruined. ‘We better be on our way,’ said Sen, standing up. ‘That is if you feel better.’
She tied up her brass cup in a duster and followed him to the car. They were on the road again. She fished out a silver box from her handbag and took out a couple of betel leaves. She smeared one with lime and catechu paste, put in cardamom and sliced betel nuts, rolled it up and held it out for her husband.
‘I’m afraid I don’t touch the stuff,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’ll stick to my pipe if you don’t mind.’ Mrs Sen did not mind. She slipped the leaf in her own mouth and began to chew contentedly.
They got to the rest-house in good time, The rest-house bearer took in the luggage and spread the bedding rolls. He asked Mrs Sen what they would like for dinner. She referred him to her husband. ‘Just anything for me,’ he replied, ‘omelette or anything. Ask the Memsahib what she would like for herself. I will take a short walk before dinner.’
‘Don’t go too far, Sahib,’ continued the bearer. ‘This is wild country. There is a footpath down to the river which the Sahibs who come to fish take. It is quite safe.’
Sen went into the bedroom to ask his wife if she would like to come out for a walk. She was unpacking her things. He changed his mind. ‘I’ll go for a short stroll towards the river. Get the bearer to put out the Scotch and soda in the veranda; there’s a bottle in my suitcase. We’ll have a drink before dinner.’
His wife nodded her head.
The well-beaten fisherman’s footpath snaked its way through dense foliage of sal and flame of the forest, ending abruptly on the pebbly bank of the river. The Ganges was a magnificent sight; a broad and swift-moving current of clear, icy-blue water sparkling in the bright sun. It must have been from places like where he stood, he thought, that the sages of olden times had pronounced the Ganges the holiest of all the rivers in the world. He felt a sense of kinship with his Aryan ancestors, who worshipped the beautiful in nature, sang hymns to the rising sun, rised goblets of fermented soma juice to the full moon and who ate beef and were lusty with full-bosomed and large-hipped women. Much water had flowed down the Ganges since then and Hinduism was now like the river itself at its lower reaches—as at Calcutta where he was born. At Calcutta it was a sluggish expanse of slime and sludge, carrying the excrement of millions of pilgrims who polluted it at Hardwar, Benaras, Allahabad, Patna and other ‘holy’ cities on its banks, and who fouled its water by strewing charred corpses for the fish and the turtles to eat. It had become the Hinduism of the cow-protectors, prohibitionists—and chewers of betel leaves. That must be it he thought cheerfully. His was the pristine Hinduism of the stream that sparkled before him; that of the majority, of the river after it had been sullied by centuries of narrow prejudices. He walked over the pebbled bank, took up a palmful of the icy-cold water and splashed it on his face.
The shadows of the jungle lengthened across the stream and the cicadas began to call. Sen turned back and quickly retraced his steps to the bungalow. The sun was setting. It was time for a sundowner.
Tumblers and soda were laid out on the table in the veranda. The bearer heard his footsteps and came with a bunch of keys in his open hand. ‘I did not like to open the Sahib’s trunk,’ he explained. ‘Please take out the whisky.’
‘Why didn’t you ask the Memsahib to take it out?’
The bearer looked down at his feet. ‘She said she could not touch a bottle of alcohol. She gave me the keys but I don’t like to meddle with the Sahib’s luggage. If things are misplaced . . .’
That’s all right. Open my suitcase. The bottles of whisky and brandy are right on the top. And serve the dinner as soon as the Memsahib is ready.’
It was no point asking his wife to sit with him. He poured himself a large Scotch and lit his pipe. Once more his thoughts turned to the strange course his life had taken. If he had married one of the English girls he had met in his university days how different things would have been. They would have kissed a hundred times between the wedding and the wedding night; they would have walked hand-in-hand through the forest and made love beside the river; they would have lain in each other’s arms and sipped their Scotch. They would have nibbled at knick-knacks in between bouts of love; and they would have made love till the early hours of the m
orning. The whisky warmed his blood and quickened his imagination. He was back in England. The gathering gloom and the dark, tropical forest, accentuated the feeling of loneliness. He felt an utter stranger in his own country. He did not hear the bearer announcing that dinner had been served. Now his wife came out and asked in the quaint Bengali accent, ‘Do you want to shit outshide?’
‘What?’ he asked gruffly, waking up from his reverie.
‘Do you want to shit inshide or outshide? The deener ees on the table.’
‘Oh I’ll be right in. You go ahead. I’ll join you in a second.’ Good lord! What would his English friends have said if she had invited them in this manner! The invitation to defecate was Mrs Sen’s first communication with her husband.
A strong sweet smell of coconut oil and roses assailed Sen’s nostrils as he entered the dining room. His wife had washed and oiled her hair; it hung in loose snaky coils below her waist. The parting was daubed with bright vermilion powder to indicate her status as a married woman. He had no doubt that she had smeared her body with the attar of roses as her mother had probably instructed. She sat patiently at the table; being a Hindu woman, she could not very well start eating before her husband.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting. You should have started. Your dinner must be cold.’
She simply wagged her head.
They began to eat: he, his omelette and buttered slice of bread with fork and knife; she, her rice and lentil curry mashed in between her fingers and the palm of her right hand. Sen cleared his throat many times to start a conversation. But each time the vacant and bewildered look behind the thick lenses of his wife’s glasses made him feel that words would fail to convey their meaning. If his friends knew they would certainly have a big laugh. ‘Oh Sunny Sen! How could he start talking to his wife? He hadn’t been properly introduced. Don’t you know he is an Englishman?’
The dinner was eaten in silence. Kalyani Sen emitted a soft belch and took out her betel-leaf case. She rolled a leaf, paused for a split-second and put it in her mouth. Sunny had promised himself the luxury of expensive Havana cigars over his honeymoon. He took one out of its phallic metal case, punctured its bottom with a gold clipper and lit it. The aromatic smoke soon filled the dining room. This time his wife did not draw the fold of her sari across her face; she simply clasped her hands in front of her mouth and discreetly blocked her nostrils with the back of her hands.
They sat in silence facing each other across the table; she chewing her leaf—almost like a cow chewing the cud, thought Sen. He, lost in the smoke of his long Cuban cigar. It was oppressive—and the barrier between them, impassable. Sen glanced at his watch and stood up. ‘News,’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘Mustn’t miss the news.’ He went into the bedroom to fetch his transistor radio set.
Two beds had been laid side by side with no space between them; the pillows almost hugged each other. The sheets had been sprinkled with the earthy perfume of khas fibre and looked as if they also awaited the consummation of the marriage performed earlier in the day. How, thought Sen, could she think of this sort of thing when they hadn’t even been introduced! No, hell, barely a civil word had passed between them? He quickly took out his radio set and hurried back to the dining room.
He tuned in to Delhi. While he listened to the news, the bearer cleared the table and left salaaming, ‘Good night, sir.’ Mrs Sen got up, collected her betel-leaf case and disappeared into the bedroom.
The fifteen minutes of news was followed by a commentary on sports, Sen had never bothered to listen to it. He was glad he did because the commentary was followed by the announcement of a change in the programme. A concert of vocal Hindustani music by Ustad Badey Ghulam Ali Khan had been put off to relay a performance by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from New Delhi. Ghulam Ali Khan was the biggest name in Indian music and even the Anglicized natives had to pretend that they admired the cacophony of gargling sounds he produced from the pit of his stomach. Members of the diplomatic corps were known to sit through four hours of the maestro’s performance lest they offend their Indian hosts or be found less cultured than staffs of rival embassies. The Czech Philharmonic had come to India for the first time and the wogs who ran Delhi’s European Music Society had got away with it. Pity, thought Sen, he wasn’t in town; he could have invited the right people for dinner (tails, of course!) followed by the concert. How would his wife have fitted into a party of this sort?
The sound of applause came over the air, followed by an announcement that the opening piece was a selection from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. Sen was transported back to the glorious evenings at Covent Garden and the Festival Hall. Smetana was followed by Bartok. The only thing that broke the enchantment was the applause between the movements. How could one expect the poor, benighted natives to know that the end of a movement was not the end of the symphony!
There was an interval of ten minutes. The last piece was Sen’s favourite—Dvorak’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor. He poured himself a liqueur brandy (VSOP), drew a chair and stretched his legs on it. He had never heard Dvorak as well performed even in Europe. A Cuban cigar, an excellent Cognac and the world’s greatest music, what more could one ask for! He gently decapitated the cigar of its ashy head, lay back in the armchair and closed his eyes in complete rapture. By the final movement he was fast asleep with the cigar slowly burning itself out between his lips.
Neither the applause, at the end of the concert, nor the silence and the cackling of the radio woke Sen from his slumber. When the cigar got too hot, he opened his mouth and let it drop on his lap. It slowly burnt through his shirt and trouser then singed the hair on his under-belly. He woke with a start and threw the butt on the ground.
Although the cigar had only burnt a tiny hole near a fly button, the room was full of the smell of burning cloth. That was a narrow escape, thought Sen. He switched off the transistor and glanced at his watch. It was well after midnight. He blew out the oil lamp and went to the bedroom.
An oil lamp still burned on the table. His wife had fallen asleep—obviously after having waited for him. She had not changed nor taken off her jewellery. She had put mascara in her eyes. Her tears had washed some of it on to her cheeks and the pillow had a smudge of soot.
Sen changed into his pajamas and slipped into his bed. He stared at his wife’s gently heaving bosom and her open mouth. How could he? In any case, he didn’t have the slightest desire. He turned the knob on the lamp. The yellow flame turned to a blue fluting on the edge of the wick, spluttered twice, then gave up the struggle and plunged the room into a black solitude.
The bearer came in with the tea-tray and woke him up. ‘Sahib, it is after nine. Memsahib has been up, for the last four or five hours. She has had her bath, said her prayer and has been waiting for you to get up to have her chota hazri.’
Sen rubbed his eyes. The sun was streaming through the veranda into the room. His wife had made a Swiss roll of her bedding and put it away on the top of her steel trunk. ‘I’ll have my tea in the veranda,’ he replied, getting up. He went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and went out.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, I seem to do it all the time. You should really never wait for me.’ He stretched himself and yawned. ‘I am always . . . what on earth.’
His wife had got up and, while his face was still lifted towards the ceiling, bent down to touch his feet. He was her husband, lord and master. He looked down in alarm. She looked up; tears streamed down both her cheeks. ‘I am unworthy,’ she said half-questioning and half-stating her fears. And before he could reply, she drew the flap of her sari across her eyes and fled inside.
‘What the hell is all this?’ muttered Sen and collapsed into an armchair. He knew precisely what she meant. He sat a long while scratching his head with his eyes fixed in a hypnotic stare on the sunlit lawn. He had no desire to go in and make up to his wife.
The bearer came, looked accusingly at the untouched tray of tea and announced that breakfast was on the table. Sen go
t up reluctantly. She would obviously not have anything to eat unless he cajoled her. And he was damned if he was going to do it. Again he was wrong. She was at the table. He avoided looking at her.
‘Tea?’ he questioned and filled her cup and then his own. Once again they ate their different foods in their different ways without saying a word to each other. And as soon as the meal was over, she went to her betel leaves and he to his pipe. She retired to her bedroom. He took his transistor and returned to the veranda to listen in to the morning news.
The arrival of the postman at noon put the idea in his head. It was only a copy of the office memorandum sanctioning him leave for a fortnight. He walked in waving the yellow envelope bearing the legend—’On India Government Service Only.’
‘I am afraid we have to return at once. It’s an urgent letter from the minister. He has to answer some questions in Parliament dealing with our department. I’ll get the bearer to help you pack while I give the car a check up. Bearer, bearer,’ he yelled as he walked out.
Half an hour later they were on the road to Delhi; a little before sunset, Sen drove into his portico. The son and mother embraced each other and only broke apart when the bride knelt down to touch her mother-in-law’s feet. ‘God bless you, my child,’ said the older woman, touching the girl on the shoulder, ‘but what . . .’
Her son pulled out the yellow envelope from his pocket and waved it triumphantly. ‘An urgent summons from the minister. These chaps don’t respect anyone’s private life. I simply had to come.’
‘Of course,’ replied his mother, wiping off a tear. She turned to her daughter-in-law. ‘Your parents will be delighted to know you are back. Why don’t you ring them up?’ A few minutes later Mrs Sen’s parents drove up in a taxi. There were more tears at the re-union, more explanations about the letter from the minister. There was also relief. Now that the bride had spent a night with her husband and consummated the marriage, she could return to her parental home for a few days.
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 32