The Many Conditions of Love

by Farahad Zama

  ♦

  Half an hour later, they were back at the restaurant with Pari in tow. On the way from the restaurant, Aruna had decided that she didn’t want to tell Mrs Ali what was going on. She knew that Pari lived in a room opposite the Alis’ house, so they had gone straight there. Pari had immediately left Vasu in her landlady’s care and come with them.

  “Where is he?” asked Pari.

  “That way,” said Aruna. The trio went down the path and on to the sand. The beach was dark and stretched for miles in both directions, the only light coming from the soft glow of the surf. The pounding of the waves was a continuous roar. Pinpoints of lights tinkled far away and the stars hung low in the moonless sky. Tiny soft-shelled crabs skittered along the sand, diving into small holes as they walked past.

  “There he is,” said Ramanujam, pointing to a seated figure.

  “Let me go on my own,” said Pari. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Husband and wife nodded, and Pari walked alone towards Rehman. Crossing the sand with her shoes on was difficult, so she kicked them off, continuing barefoot, even though she felt squeamish about the crabs.

  As she approached him, she saw that Rehman had taken off his shirt and was bare-chested. A wave rushed up the slope, reaching Pari’s knees and more than halfway up the seated Rehman’s chest. Pari stood still while the water swirled round her legs and then receded. She dropped to her knees next to Rehman and touched his bare shoulder.

  “Let’s go home, Rehman,” she said.

  He turned to her, taking his fixed stare off the horizon. “She left me,” he said, his voice hollow.

  “I heard,” said Pari softly.

  He laughed wildly, a dry sound. Another wave engulfed them and Pari gasped even though the water was warm. She tightened her grip on Rehman’s surprisingly muscled shoulder as the undertow tried to sweep her away.

  “Do you know why she dumped me?” he asked.

  Pari shook her head, trying to look puzzled. It seemed a good idea to keep him talking.

  “She didn’t understand that you don’t have to take one big step. You can do it in small stages, each one not very painful…” said Rehman.

  “What steps?” said Pari, genuinely mystified.

  “First, you change the clothes you wear – it’s a bit uncomfortable, but doesn’t really signify anything, does it?”

  He looked at her and she nodded.

  He continued, “You give up your promise to an old man and abandon his grandson.”

  “You didn’t abandon the boy,” said Pari. “He lives with me and you will still spend a lot of time with him.”

  “He is Lalitha’s son and I gave him up like so much unused furniture that was getting in the way.” Rehman’s gaze went back to the horizon.

  Pari looked at him sharply. A line from King Lear came to her mind: Alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds do sorely ruffle; for many miles about there’s scarce a bush.

  Rehman continued, “Once I discarded Lalitha’s son, it wasn’t any trouble at all to give up any ideas of fighting for other people and just look out for my own self.”

  He stood up and walked deeper into the sea and Pari followed him, half afraid of his fey mood. Rehman stretched up to his full height and opened his arms wide to the uncaring sea. Pari glanced over to where Aruna and her husband were standing. They were almost indistinct against the trees but it looked as if they were huddled in each other’s arms.

  “Free!” shouted Rehman. “I am free! Do you hear me? I renounced Lalitha, gave away her son and then abandoned her father’s cause. Compared to that, you are nothing.”

  He held his pose for a few seconds more, then dropped his arms, turning away from the water. “Come on,” he said. “I have work to do.”

  Pari trotted behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides. “Rehman…” she said, once they were above the water-line. The cold she felt was not entirely due to her wet clothes and the strong breeze.

  He turned and stood stiff as a policeman’s lathi. “Yes?” he said.

  She reached out and cupped his chin in her hands. His eyes were tiny mirrors that glittered like cold ice. “Rehman, trust me in this. I speak from experience. You don’t have to be strong – it’s OK to let go.”

  “Let go?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, her hands falling to her sides. “Weep for what you have lost.”

  Rehman stared at her with an unseeing gaze for a long moment, then sank to the ground as if his knees had turned to sand; his head dropped to his chest and he started crying.

  Epilogue

  After an undefined passage of time, a young pair who were not a couple were sitting on a mountain top. From their perch, they could see the beach of that dreadful night’s events and the same tireless sea. The man’s cheeks were hollow and his long kurta hung loose on his body as if he had lost a lot of weight very quickly. He had a straggly beard. The woman was fair and her salwar kameez fitted her well. She had a long nose.

  “Look at the sea,” muttered the man. “It never gives up trying to meet its lover.”

  “Turn this way,” said the woman, pointing in the other direction, due west. “Isn’t the sunset beautiful?”

  The red ball of fire was sinking behind a further mountain, setting aglow the trees along the skyline. The man stared at the glorious sight and appeared unmoved.

  The woman continued, “A nawab’s family want to see me.”

  The man looked puzzled. “So?” he said.

  “See me, you buddhoo,” she said. “They want me to marry their son. Imagine that – an orphan girl like me marrying into royalty. I will be a princess. Isn’t that what happens in a fairy tale?”

  The man’s look of despondency lifted a bit and he looked at her with more interest. “Congrats,” he said. “But is it your fairy tale?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly, considering. “But it will be worth finding out, don’t you think?”

  He nodded. Gloom settled over him like an old cloak too comfortable to cast away and the conversation sputtered to a halt.

  “How long does it take for a broken heart to heal?” he asked after several minutes.

  The woman looked into his face and she suddenly appeared wise beyond her years.

  “I have some knowledge of these matters,” she said. “The sadness will always be there. But your heart will mend and happiness can find a home in it sooner than you imagine.”

  Extracts from Mrs Ali’s English Essays

  Extract 1

  I haven’t written any English for several months. I was writing regularly and then we went to visit Paris father who was very unwell at that time. You know how it is when there is a break in the routine? Rehman got these papers about cotton and they were very interesting, so I decided to start again.

  For me, cotton is a very ordinary plant. It used to grow in my neighbour’s backyard when I was a girl. From what I remember, many green pods appear on the branches and slowly become bigger and bigger. Finally, they burst open and white fluffy cotton appears. I used to pull it out and feel the small, hard seeds inside the soft fibres. These seeds are entangled in the long threads and quite difficult to remove. I wonder how they remove all the seeds from all the cotton in the world. It must be a lot of work.

  According to Rehman’s papers, cotton has been grown and used in India for more than six thousand years. About seven hundred years ago, cotton reached northern Europe where they did not know anything about it except that it came from a plant. Because it looked like wool, they thought that it came from plant-born sheep. They thought that little lambs grew at the ends of the branches of cotton trees. When these lambs became hungry, the branches bent down so they could feed. It is unbelievable what people make up when they don’t know the truth. Rehman tells me that in Germany, cotton is still called tree wool!

  For a simple plant, cotton had a big impact in world history. When the British first came to India, they used to export beautiful muslin and ca
lico cottons to their own country. Then they destroyed the weaving industry here and raw cotton started to be sent from India to be turned into cloth in a city called Manchester and re-exported back here. Then cotton started to be produced more cheaply in America because they used unpaid slaves, and Indian farmers suffered. When the Americans started fighting among themselves in a civil war, these cotton supplies got cut off and people started buying it from Egypt. The Egyptian government took out loans to grow even more cotton. But then the war in America ended and the Egyptian government went bankrupt and Britain took over Egypt as part of their empire.

  We have started using foam mattresses now, but until recently we slept on mattresses stuffed with cotton. After a couple of years, the mattress becomes hard. We then look out for a pedlar who softens mattresses and pillows. He is easy to recognise because he carries a long bow over his shoulder. For a small fee, he attaches his bow to a wall, slits open the mattresses and pillows, and takes out all the cotton. He then twangs (is that the right word?) the string of the bow through the packed cotton until it has become fluffy again. This is hard work and takes him a long time. Cotton dust gets everywhere. If you pay him, he will also replace some of the old cotton with fresh cotton that he carries with him. He then stuffs the soft cotton back into the mattresses and pillows, and stitches them up again. They are much fatter and more comfortable after this.

  Cotton crops attract a lot of pests, and farmers have to make heavy use of chemicals to control them. Not only is this bad for the environment, but they have to take loans from moneylenders and banks to pay for this. When the crops fail, they get into a lot of trouble and we hear of many sad stories of farmers killing themselves, like Vasu’s grandfather.

  Extract 2

  The other day Pari made bone soup. It is not a dish that I had ever made. We normally don’t have bread, or soup for that matter, but the combination was quite nice. I was busy looking after Vasu so I didn’t see how she made it. I asked her later for the method and this is what she told me. This soup will serve four as a starter or two people as a full meal.

  ½ kg lamb bones (preferably leg) with some meat on them, cut into 2-inch-long pieces if possible

  2 medium-sized tomatoes, cut into eight pieces each

  1 medium-sized onion, diced

  2 carrots

  diced salt, to taste

  ½ teaspoon ginger paste

  1 teaspoon garlic paste

  1 tablespoon oil

  ½ inch cinnamon stick

  2 cloves

  Cover the bones, tomatoes, onion and carrots with 3 cups of water in a large pan. Add the salt, and the ginger and garlic pastes, and boil until the vegetables are very soft.

  Remove the bones from the pan and separate the meat. Set the meat aside and discard the bones.

  Liquidise the rest of the soup and strain.

  Heat the oil in a pan big enough to hold all the liquid, and add the cinnamon stick and cloves. After a few seconds the cloves swell up. Then pour the soup into the oil and add the meat.

  Serve hot with bread.

  Extract 3

  Many people in Vizag are becoming richer, of that there is no doubt. The sheer amount of money that is being thrown around nowadays is astonishing. Shops used to be small with one or two light bulbs at the most, but now they are huge. They have wide fronts and they have bright lights all year round, not just at festival time. Earlier, if a shop was big, colourful and employed lots of salespeople, people used to say that the shopkeeper must be adding the cost of all that show into his products and they would go to a smaller place. Now it is the other way round. People are dazzled by the glamour and don’t care about the cost.

  Rehman’s father tells me that they use different currencies in different countries. I had always known it, I suppose, but it is not something I had ever thought about. I saw this table in a magazine recently:

  Currency Rate in rupees

  US dollar 45

  Pound sterling 80

  Euro 60

  Swedish kroner 300

  What is surprising is that so many people have so much money to spend when prices of everything are soaring. Tuvvar dhal, the lentils used for making sambhar, cost about sixty rupees a kilo. I remember a time, not that long ago, when it was around twenty rupees. I use sunflower oil for cooking and it costs over one hundred rupees a litre. Others who are not so well-off use groundnut oil, which is about eighty-five rupees. I pay Leela, our servant maid, five hundred rupees each month for cleaning the house once a day and doing the dishes twice a day. She works in five other houses, so her monthly earnings are about two thousand five hundred rupees. Poor people like her hold a white ration card while middle-class people like us hold a pink card. The government supplies white-card holders with five kilos of (poor-quality) rice per family member for two rupees a kilo. They also get some palm oil for cooking at thirty rupees a litre.

  I think life is actually more difficult for lower-middle-class people. They earn about ten thousand rupees a month but their outgoings are bigger. The rent is higher. They have to pay for a mobile phone, petrol for the scooter, school fees for the kids and many other expenses. And they do not have a white card, so the government does not help them as much. And while everybody in a poor family works, only the men tend to work in the middle classes. This is changing slowly as more women are starting to work. I can see this in the marriage bureau. Earlier the kind of richer people who come to us for matches used to ask for girls who would be housewives, while now people are asking for career girls. Strangely, poorer people still look for a stay-at-home wife when you would think it should be the other way round. I suppose it shows that the more money you have, the even more money you want.

  One interesting fact I found out is that many countries of Europe have decided to give up their own type of money and have a common currency. I am very surprised at this because I have only known about countries splitting up. Pakistan separated from India and my uncle and his family migrated over there. The rest of our family stayed behind in India. My grandparents were never the same afterwards. As children, whenever we saw a plane in the air, Azhar used to shout to my grandmother, “Look, daadi. Chaacha is coming to see you.”

  My poor grandmother! Losing a child like that, never again having contact with my uncle, not knowing how he and his family fared – it was very difficult for her. Did the great men who partitioned the country for their selfish reasons think about ordinary people like my grandmother and how her eyes never stopped searching for her missing son even on her deathbed? It is good that the people of Europe are going in the opposite direction, burying their differences and getting together, rather than finding silly reasons to fight with each other.

  Extract 4

  Years ago, when you were invited to a wedding, the choice of gift was simple. You just gave money and the amount depended upon how rich you were and how close you were to the people getting married. The usual gift was one hundred and sixteen rupees for close family members or half that, which would be fifty-eight rupees. You could also give twice or four times that amount. I heard about a contractor who gave one thousand one hundred and sixteen rupees for an official’s daughter’s wedding but no ordinary person could afford that kind of money in those days. Weddings have always been expensive affairs and the gifts helped pay for some of the cost. You had to be careful to keep track of what everyone gave because you had to give back the exact same amount when it was your turn to be invited or it would be a disaster. People would feel insulted and relationships could break down.

  I think it all started to go wrong around the time that Rehman was a small boy. It was suddenly considered – what’s the word – tactless to give money and people started gifting household items, usually pressure cookers or milk cookers. I remember that when Chote Bhabhi, my youngest sister-in-law, got married, they were given five milk cookers as presents. At least, these gifts were useful, even if you couldn’t use all five of them, but then things got worse.

  I do
n’t know if they changed because gift and novelty item shops opened, or if the shops came about because of the change.

  Regardless of the cause, it suddenly became unfashionable to give useful items. Gifts now have to be useless. So people give photo frames, or plastic and melamine trays, or crockery, and things like that. Because nobody actually uses these items, people just give them as gifts at the next wedding they go to. The items have to be stored as carefully as any precious jewels; after all, it is cheap to pass on as a gift an article that’s chipped or scratched.

  I think this mania for giving useless items must be something to do with people getting richer and having more money. I went to my servant Leela’s daughter’s wedding a few years ago and they received money and steel utensils as gifts. I wonder what happens to people’s minds as they become wealthier.

  You have to be careful to remember what everyone has given you because if you gift them back the same item as they gave you, it would be a disaster. It would be seen as an insult and they may cut you off. Some things never change.

  EOF