by Farahad Zama
‘What do your parents say?’ asked Mrs Ali, leaning forward.
‘They don’t like it, but what can we do? We are poor and need the money to survive. Until recently, I was doing my MA, but our family finances have suffered lately and I had to leave my education and take up a job.’
They were all silent for a moment, then Mr Ali said, ‘We start at nine, close for lunch some time between twelve thirty and one and open again at three in the afternoon. We stay open till seven. Sunday is our busiest day, so you would have to come in for work on that day. You can take Monday off instead.’
‘Those times are very good compared to what I am doing. I don’t mind coming in on Sunday either. I work every other Sunday in Modern Bazaar anyway. What is the pay?’ asked Aruna.
‘What do you get paid in Modern Bazaar?’ he asked.
‘They pay me fifteen hundred rupees a month,’ replied Aruna.
‘We can only pay you one thousand here,’ said Mr Ali.
Aruna’s face fell. ‘I like the hours, but I cannot afford such a big drop in salary.’
Mr Ali nodded and said, ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. The salary is one thousand but, in addition, for every member who joins while you are in the office with me, you get twenty-five rupees bonus and for every member who joins when you are on your own in the office, you will get fifty rupees as bonus.’
Aruna looked sceptical.
Mr Ali raised a finger and said, ‘At least one member joins each day and sometimes, two or three. You will definitely earn more here than you are earning in Modern Bazaar.’
Aruna was silent for a moment. Then she looked at Mr and Mrs Ali and said, ‘Thanks for the offer. I will need to think about this.’
‘Don’t leave it too long. Another girl is coming for an interview this evening,’ said Mrs Ali.
Mr Ali watched Aruna close the gate and leave. He turned to his wife and asked, ‘Have you asked another girl to come in the afternoon?’
Mrs Ali laughed and said, ‘You are such a buddhoo! Of course nobody else is coming for an interview. But the girl doesn’t need to know that, does she?’
Mr Ali was silent. He had often wondered how his wife would have fared had she run her own business. He was sure she would have been very successful.
Mrs Ali said, ‘Why did you offer to pay the bonus? You might end up paying lots of money to her.’
Mr Ali smiled. ‘I want to pay lots of money. The more I pay means I am earning even more.’
He could see the doubt on his wife’s face.
‘Do you remember when we were building this house, I went to the quarry to select the best granite stones for the floor?’ he said, pointing his finger down towards the polished ground.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Ali looking puzzled, no doubt wondering what granite tiles and quarries had to do with marriage bureaus and assistants.
‘Quarries are difficult places to work and I was expecting a hard taskmaster driving the poor workers. Instead I found a gentle-looking man with round glasses sitting in an office while the workers toiled away in the hot sun. I was surprised and asked him how he got his people to work like that and he told me that he paid his workers piece rates - the stone cutters, the saw operators, the haulers - each worker got a certain amount for every sheet. He said they managed themselves and if somebody was being lazy, they sorted it out themselves because it affected all of them. I don’t want to be sitting here all the time looking over the girl’s shoulder. I want her to work by herself.’
Mrs Ali nodded and said, ‘Imagine if the government had paid you by the number of files you cleared while you were in service. How much more efficient would you have been?’
Mr Ali laughed and said, ‘I don’t know about that, but I can tell you that Muthuvel, Rao and Sanyasi wouldn’t have come in at ten, gone to the canteen for a long tea break at eleven, lunch at one, an hour-long afternoon tea and samosas at three before leaving the office at five sharp.’
Fifteen minutes later, a potential client came in and Mrs Ali went back inside the house. The man’s name was Joseph. His grand-parents were lower-caste Hindus who had converted to Christianity. He was looking for a groom for his daughter - caste or religion no bar.
In Mr Ali’s experience, it was actually more difficult to find a partner for somebody who said ‘caste or religion no bar’. It was ironic but true, thought Mr Ali, that the more specific the requirement - a Turpu Kapu from the Krishna district who owned at least twenty acres of land, for example - the easier it was to find a match. Also, Christians who were from higher castes looked down on the lower castes, calling them converted Christians.
‘The fee is five hundred rupees, sir,’ said Mr Ali, finally.
‘Do I have to pay it up front?’ asked Joseph. ‘Once I give you the money what incentive do you have for finding my daughter a match?’
‘We have helped many people. Look at our files. Why wouldn’t we help you?’ said Mr Ali.
‘I’ve got a different idea. I won’t pay anything now, but if my daughter’s marriage is fixed, I will give you two thousand rupees. What do you say? Fair’s fair,’ said Joseph, cracking his knuckles.
Mr Ali stood up and said, ‘That’s exactly the reason why marriage brokers are not held in much regard. As you know, they don’t charge money up front and ask you for payment when the marriage is agreed, either a fixed fee or a percentage of the dowry. Then they push unsuitable matches just to get their fee and you cannot respect or trust them. That’s not how we work. It takes money to advertise, print the lists, for postage and other things. Whether your daughter finds a match depends on a lot of things - including God’s will, but my expenses still have to be paid. Please think about it and get back to me.’
He showed Joseph out.
A few minutes later the gate opened again and Mr Ali looked out through the thin curtains into the bright sunlight. Aruna and an older man were in the yard. The older man looked around the garden and said something to Aruna and she smiled and nodded. Mr Ali came out from behind his desk and called out to his wife.
Aruna introduced her father, Mr Somayajulu, to both of them.
‘Namaste,’ said Mr Ali to Mr Somayajulu. ‘Please sit down. Would you like some water?’
‘No, please don’t trouble yourself,’ said Aruna and her father together.
The sun was high and it was very hot outside now. Aruna’s father wiped his brow and tonsured head with a white cotton shawl that was over his left shoulder. Mr Somayajulu looked like a typical elderly Brahmin. He was wearing a Gandhi-like dhoti loincloth and a long shirt. His head was shaven except for a small tuft at the back. Three lines of white ash were smeared across his forehead.
Mrs Ali went inside the house.
‘Your house is very cool,’ said Mr Somayajulu.
‘Yes, we are lucky,’ replied Mr Ali.
Mr Somayajulu said, ‘It is not luck. You have left the area in front of your house un-built and planted those trees. That’s why your house is cool. In the past, all houses used to have trees round them and they kept the houses comfortable. Nowadays, people bribe building inspectors and use up all the available land with no place for trees or plants. No wonder it is getting hotter every year. You have done a very good thing, leaving some land aside.’
Mrs Ali came back with two glasses of lime juice for Aruna and her father.
Aruna said, ‘I would like to try the job for a week. If it works out, I will stay on permanently. Is that OK?’
Mr Ali thought for a moment and looked at his wife. She nodded in agreement and he turned to Aruna. ‘That’s fine by us.’
Mr Somayajulu said, ‘I came to see where Aruna will be working. You obviously look like good people, and it is all right here. You cannot just let a young daughter go into anybody’s house on her own, can you?’
Aruna looked embarrassed at her father’s words, but Mrs Ali nodded and said, ‘You are absolutely right. One cannot be too careful nowadays.’
Aruna smiled and said, ‘I will tak
e my father back now and go to Modern Bazaar to take one week’s leave. I will then come back to start work.’
Aruna’s father said, ‘Don’t start the job today. It is amaavaasya, the day with no moon. It is bad luck to venture anything new. Start tomorrow.’
Aruna looked at Mr Ali doubtfully. He waved his hand dismissively and said, ‘That’s no problem - tomorrow’s fine. I was wondering why no new clients except that Christian called today.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day, precisely at nine, Aruna walked in. She was wearing a simple, well-worn cotton sari. Her long hair was oiled and braided into a pigtail reaching to the small of her back. She had a bow of fragrant white jasmine buds tucked in her hair, a small bindi on her forehead and a faint mark of sacred white ash on her neck. She had obviously gone to the temple before starting her new job. Mr Ali pointed out an old wooden chair with a cushion and two battens screwed loosely into its arm rests. Once Aruna was sitting down in it, he showed her how to use the two battens to extend the arm rests in front of her. Mr Ali then placed a hardboard plank on the extended arm rests. His assistant now had a ready-made table for working.
‘You only need to use this chair when we are both here. Otherwise, just sit behind the table,’ he said.
Aruna nodded.
Mr Ali opened his filing cabinet - the wooden wardrobe - and asked her to come over. He explained how the files were organised by caste and that there were different files for brides and bridegrooms. There were quite a few photographs in the files as well. There were other files, one per active member, holding their correspondence.
The postman walked in just then - dark, tall and lean. His bald head shone. He had been delivering letters for Mr Ali since they had moved into the house. He lowered the heavy bag of letters from his shoulders and took out about ten letters from the bag and handed them over to Mr Ali.
‘Thank you, Gopal,’ said Mr Ali. ‘I need some postcards. Can I come in today?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Let me find out and I’ll tell you when I come in for the afternoon round,’ said Gopal.
Mr Ali nodded and asked, ‘Do you want water?’
‘No, I am all right, sir. Have you got a secretary?’ Gopal said, looking at Aruna.
‘Aruna is the assistant, just started today,’ said Mr Ali.
Aruna smiled at Gopal.
‘How’s your daughter?’ asked Mr Ali. ‘You won’t need our services now.’
‘She’s doing well. We got a postcard from her just yesterday. She’s happy at her in-laws’. And what jokes you crack, sir. How can a poor man like me afford your services?’ the postman said, laughing.
His white teeth gleamed in his dark face showing his happiness - his daughter had been recently married. Mr Ali knew that he just got by on his small salary. Gopal lifted the bag of letters on to his shoulder, nodded goodbye and left.
‘He is a good man, always cheerful even though he has aged parents and a disabled brother to look after on his income,’ said Mr Ali to Aruna. He tore open the first envelope, extracted the single sheet of paper and said, ‘Every letter must be answered the day it arrives. That is the most important work we have to do.’
He read the letter aloud: ‘I have seen your advertisement for a Muslim engineer . . . fair . . . two older brothers . . .’
He gave the paper to Aruna and took out a slim file which listed all the ads that Mr Ali had placed in both English and Telugu newspapers.
He said, ‘You need to figure out which advertisement the letter is referring to. I always put a code in my ad. See the address in this girl’s letter? It says ME26 after our name. Look in this file, we advertised this last Sunday.’
Aruna looked through the files and found one advertising a Muslim marine engineer, twenty-six, respectable family, seeks fair bride . . .
‘We need to do two things with this letter,’ said Mr Ali. ‘First, reply to them acknowledging receipt and inviting them to join our club. And, second, put it in the client’s file so that we can send it off with more letters after a few days.’
Aruna nodded, frowning with concentration.
‘How do I reply, sir?’ she asked.
Mr Ali opened a drawer in the side of his table and took out a bunch of postcards. They had already been neatly handwritten. He took out one and showed Aruna where the letter began ‘Dear . . .’ and the rest of the line was blank. ‘You have to fill in the person’s name here,’ he said, ‘then turn it over and write their address. Put the card in this basket.’ He pointed to a blue plastic wire basket.
Aruna followed his instructions.
‘You do the next one,’ Mr Ali said.
Aruna opened the letter and scanned it. ‘Sir, this one does not have a code.’
‘This is where we have to use our intelligence. Are they looking for a boy or a girl?’
‘They are looking for a girl, sir.’
‘Which caste?’
‘Brahmin,’ she said.
‘I know the one. Look through the files, there was only one ad last week for a Brahmin.’
Aruna found the advertisement and re-read the letter and nodded. ‘Yes, sir. That’s the one.’
‘Good. You know what to do,’ said Mr Ali.
Mr Ali and Aruna processed the next couple of letters in silence before he left the table and walked into the house to see what his wife was doing.
That afternoon at about half past three, Mr Ali went to the post office on his scooter. The post office was not far - just two blocks away round a corner. Mr Ali parked the scooter on its side stand, took out the postcards and went past the queue of people waiting at the counters into the office.
A few months ago, Mr Ali and his brother-in-law Azhar had been queuing outside the post office for stamps when one of the postmen came out and told them that the postmaster was asking them to come in. Slightly mystified, they both went inside. As soon as the postmaster and Azhar saw each other, they greeted each other like long-lost relatives. They finally turned to a bemused Mr Ali and explained. Naidu, the postmaster, had joined the postal service as a young man. His first assignment was in the port town of Machilipatnam and the postmaster there was Azhar’s father who had treated all the postmen and clerks in his post office like an extended family, inviting them for dinners and advising them when they got into trouble. Naidu had risen slowly through the ranks until finally he became a postmaster himself but, he said, he had never forgotten the old man’s kindness to a callow youth away from his family for the first time. Since then, Mr Ali never had to queue outside again for stamps or postcards. He didn’t even have to use the letter box to post letters.
Inside the post office, at the back, there was a clerk with a big sack of letters who was defacing the stamps on each envelope with a heavy round wooden block. The clerk was a seasoned hand at this task and the ‘thud . . . thud’ of the stamp was quite fast. Mr Ali went to the clerk and asked, ‘Have all the collections come in?’
The clerk nodded and took Mr Ali’s letters with his left hand while his right hand kept stamping on the envelopes on the table. Mr Ali’s postcards were all defaced and pushed into another sack that was already half-full.
Mr Ali went to the postmaster’s desk. It was a small post office and the postmaster sat in one corner at a slightly bigger table than the other people in the office. The postmaster greeted Mr Ali politely and asked him to sit down. Mr Ali said, ‘Naidu, how are you? I need some more postcards.’
Naidu replied, ‘Yes, I know. Gopal told me. There is a big shortage of postcards at the moment. But I rang the head post office and managed to get a few cards for you.’
He turned and asked a clerk to get them out of a cupboard. While waiting for the cards to be brought out, he asked, ‘How is madam?’
‘She is fine. Have you heard about the raid on the post office in the Agency village?’ Mr Ali said.
‘Shocking, sir! Shocking! How can they raid a post office? Is nothing sacred any more? I am telling you, sir, the world is not wh
at it used to be.’
Mr Ali nodded. He knew that, in Naidu’s opinion, the whole country was held together by mail. Naidu had once told him that the British were justified in taking the Koh-i-Noor diamond for their queen’s crown jewels because they had set up the postal service in India.
Mr Ali paid for the postcards and made his way outside. The harsh sun made him blink as he emerged from the dark interior of the post office. As he went to his scooter, he saw a man selling papayas on a cart across the road. He went over and asked the fruit seller, ‘How much?’
‘Fifteen rupees for a papaya, sir.’
The papaya plant in his garden only gave small green fruit with lots of black pearl-like seeds. This new variety of papaya that had just started coming to the market in the last couple of years was different. They were big and, when cut, the flesh was deep orange and there were almost no seeds. They were also much sweeter than the traditional variety. Mr Ali had heard someone mention that these papayas were hybrids from Thailand, but he didn’t know if that was true.
‘I don’t need a full fruit. How much for half?’ asked Mr Ali.
The man replied, ‘Eight rupees. Fresh, sir.’
Mr Ali said, ‘Five rupees.’
‘You are joking, sir. Just cut today on the slopes of Simhachalam. Came straight from the sacred town,’ said the vendor. ‘Eight rupees is a very reasonable price . . . all right, seven rupees.’
The temple town of Simhachalam is home to a famous Hindu temple and Mr Ali wondered if the man would have tried quite the same sales pitch if he had known that his customer was a Muslim.
‘Six,’ said Mr Ali.
The fruit seller pleaded, ‘How can I feed my children if you drive such a hard bargain? Six-fifty, last offer.’
‘Six,’ said Mr Ali, unyielding.
‘All right, sir.’
The fruit seller started packing one of the already cut papayas in an old newspaper. Mr Ali made him cut a fresh papaya, overriding the man’s objections, and went back to his scooter.