Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  One evening Manju and Phuphiji were both present while Shakuntala was serving her husband his meal. When he had finished and was dabbling his hand in the finger bowl held for him by his wife, Phuphiji suddenly got up and, stepping close to Shakuntala, stood on tiptoe to look at her ears. She peered and squinted as if she couldn’t see very well: she with eyes as sharp as little needles! “Are they new?” she asked.

  “He gave them to me when Manju was born,” Shakuntala replied quite calmly and even smiled a bit at the transparency of Phuphiji’s tactics.

  “Ah,” said Phuphiji and paused. Her nose itched, she scratched it by pressing the palm of her hand against it and rubbing it around and around. When she had finished and emerged with her nose very red and tears in her eyes from this exertion, she said, “But he gave you some new ones?”

  “Yes,” Shakuntala said.

  “I haven’t seen them,” Phuphiji said. She turned to Manju: “Have you?”

  Manju was silent. Shakuntala could feel that she was very tense, and so was Phuphiji. Both of them were anxious as to the outcome of this scene. But Shakuntala found herself to be completely indifferent.

  Phuphiji turned to Shakuntala’s husband: “Have you seen them?” she asked. “Where are they? Those new earrings you gave her?”

  Shakuntala knew that Phuphiji and Manju were both waiting for her to speak so that they could deny what she was going to say. But she said nothing and only handed the towel to her husband to dry his hands. She didn’t want Manju to have to say or do anything that would make her feel very bad afterward.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Phuphiji said. “Go on, ask her: where are those new earrings I gave you? Ask. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

  For one second her husband looked at Shakuntala; his eyes were like those of an old bear emerging from his winter sleep. But the next moment he had flung down the towel and stamped on it in rage. He shouted at Phuphiji and abused her. He said he didn’t come home to be pestered and needled by a pack of women, that’s not what he expected after his hard day’s work. He also shouted at Manju and asked her why sit on his back, let her go home and sit on her husband’s back, what else had she been married off for at enormous expense? Manju burst into tears, but that was nothing new and no one tried to comfort her, not even Phuphiji, who busied herself with clearing away the dirty dishes, patient and resigned in defeat.

  That night passed slowly for Shakuntala. She lay beside her husband and was full of restless thoughts. But when morning came and her teacher again failed to show up, then she did not hesitate any longer. She went straight to his house. She walked through his courtyard where they were hammering pieces of plywood together, up the stairs, past the music school, and up to his door. It had a big padlock on it. She was put out, but only for a moment. She went down to the music school. Several thin men in poor clothes sat on the floor testing out drums and tuning stringed instruments; they looked at her curiously, and even more curiously when she asked for him. They shrugged at each other and laughed. “God knows,” they said. “Ever since she went, he’s here and there.” “Who went?” Shakuntala asked. They looked at her again and wondered. “His wife,” one of them said at last. Shakuntala was silent and so were they. She didn’t know what else to ask. She turned and went down the stairs. One of them followed and looked down at her from the landing. As if in afterthought he called: “He sits around in the restaurants!” She walked through the courtyard where they stopped hammering and also looked after her with curiosity.

  Shakuntala had lived in the town all her life, but she was only familiar with certain restricted areas of it. There were others that she knew of, had seen and of necessity passed through on her way to somewhere else, but which remained mysterious and out of bounds to her. One of these was the street where the singing and dancing girls lived, and another was the street where the restaurants were. The two were connected, and to get to the restaurants Shakuntala had first to pass through the other street. This was lined with shops selling colored brassieres, scents, and filigree necklaces, and on top of the shops were balconies on which the girls sat. Downstairs stood little clusters of men with betel-stained mouths; they looked at Shakuntala and some of them made sweet sounds as she passed. Here and there from upstairs came the sound of ankle bells and a few bars tapped out for practice on a drum. The street of the restaurants was much quieter. No sounds came out from behind the closed doors of the restaurants. They were called “Bombay House,” “Shalimar,” “Monna Lisa,” “Taj Mahal.” Shakuntala hesitated only before the first one and even then only for a moment before pushing open the door. They were mostly alike from inside with a lot of peeling plaster-of-Paris decorations and a smell of fried food, tobacco, and perfumed oil. The clientele was alike too. There was no woman among them, and Shakuntala’s presence attracted attention. There was some laughter and, despite her age, also the sweet sounds she had heard from the men in the streets.

  She found him in the third one she entered (Bombay House). He was one of a group lounging against the wall on a red-leather bench behind a table cluttered with plates and glasses. He was drumming one hand rhythmically on the table and swaying and dipping his head in time to a tune playing inside it. When Shakuntala stepped up to the table, the other men sitting with him were astonished; their jaws stopped chewing betel and dropped open. Only he went on swaying and drumming to the tune in his mind. He let her stand there for a while, then he said to the others “She’s my pupil. I teach her singing.” He added “She’s a housewife,” and sniggered. No one else said anything nor moved. She noticed that his eyes were heavy and with a faraway blissful look in them.

  He got up and, tossing some money on the table, left the restaurant. She followed him, back the same way she had come past the restaurants and through the street of the singing and dancing girls. He walked in front all the time. He was still singing the same tune to himself and was still at the introductory stage, letting the raga develop slowly and spaciously. His hand made accompanying gestures in the air. He also waved this hand at people who greeted him on the way and sometimes to the girls when they called down to him from the balconies. He seemed to be a well-known figure. Walking behind him, Shakuntala remembered the many times she had stood in the doorway of her house watching him as he walked, slowly and casually like someone with all time at his disposal, away from her down the street; only now she did not have to turn back into her house, no she was following him and going where he was going. The tune he was singing began in her mind too and she smiled to it and let it unfold itself in all its glory.

  He led the way back to his house and they walked up the stairs, and first the men in the courtyard and then the men in the music school looked after them. He unfastened the big padlock on his door. Inside everything was as before when she had visited him in his sickness, except that the sewing machine was gone and the air was denser because no one had opened the window for a long time. His bedding, consisting of a mat and tumbled sheet, was as he must have left it in the morning. He wasted no time but at once came close to her and fumbled at her clothes and at his own. He was about the same age as her husband but lean, hard, and eager; as he came on top of her, she saw his drugged eyes so full of bliss and he was still smiling at the tune he was playing to himself. And this tune continued to play in her too. He entered her at the moment when, the structure of the raga having been expounded, the combination of notes was being played up and down, backward and forward, very fast. There was no going back from here, she knew. But who would want to go back, who would exchange this blessed state for any other?

  ROSE PETALS

  He loves being a cabinet minister, he thinks it’s wonderful. His bearer comes to wake him with tea early in the morning, and he gets up and starts getting dressed, ready to see the stream of callers who have already begun to gather downstairs. He thinks I’m still asleep but I’m awake and know what he is doing. Sometimes I peep at him as he moves around our bedroom. How fat and old he has become; and he mak
es an important face even when he is alone like this and thinks no one is watching him. He frowns and thinks of all his great affairs. Perhaps he is rehearsing a speech in Parliament. I see his lips move and sometimes he shakes his head and makes a gesture as if he were talking to someone. He struggles into his cotton tights; he still has not quite got used to these Indian clothes but he wears nothing else now. There was a time when only suits made in London were good enough for him. Now they hang in the closet, and no one ever wears them.

  I don’t get up till several hours later, when he has left the house. I don’t like to get up early, and anyway there is nothing to do. I lie in bed with the curtains drawn. They are golden-yellow in color, like honey, and so is the carpet, and the cushions and everything; because of this the light in the room is also honey-colored. After a while Mina comes in. She sits on the bed and talks to me. She is fully dressed and very clean and tidy. She usually has breakfast with her father; she pours the tea for him and any guests there might be and takes an interest in what is being said. She too likes it that her father is a cabinet minister. She wants to be helpful to him in his work and reads all the newspapers and is very well up in current affairs. She intends to go back to college and take a course in political science and economics. We discuss this while she is sitting on my bed. She holds my hand in hers and plays with it. Her hand is broader than mine, and she cuts her nails short and does not use any varnish or anything. I look up into her face. It is so young and earnest; she frowns a little bit the way her father does when he is talking of something serious. I love her so much that I have to shut my eyes. I say “Kiss me, darling.” She bends down to do so. She smells of Palmolive soap.

  By the time I get up, Mina too has left the house. She has many interests and activities. I’m alone in the house now with the servants. I get up from my bed and walk over to the dressing table to see myself in the mirror there. I always do this first thing when I get up. It is a habit that has remained with me from the past when I was very interested in my appearance and took so much pleasure in looking in the mirror that I would jump eagerly out of bed to see myself. Now this pleasure has gone. If I don’t look too closely and with the curtains drawn and the room all honey-colored, I don’t appear so very different from what I used to be. But sometimes I’m in a mischievous mood with myself. I stretch out my hand and lift the yellow silk curtain. The light comes streaming in straight on to the mirror, and now yes I can see that I do look very different from the way I used to.

  Biju comes every day. Often he is already sitting there when I come down. He is reading the papers, but only the cinema and restaurant advertisements and perhaps the local news if there has been a murder or some interesting social engagement. He usually stays all day. He has nowhere to go and nothing to do. Every day he asks “And how is the Minister?” Every day he makes fun of him. I enjoy that, and I also make fun of him with Biju. They are cousins but they have always been very different. Biju likes a nice life, no work, good food and drinking. The Minister also likes good food and drinking, but he can’t sit like Biju in a house with a woman all day. He always has to be doing something or he becomes restless and his temper is spoiled. Biju’s temper is never spoiled, although sometimes he is melancholy; then he recites sad poetry or plays sad music on the gramophone.

  Quite often we have a lunch or dinner party in the house. Of course it is always the Minister’s party and the guests are all his. There are usually one or two cabinet ministers, an ambassador, a few newspaper editors—people like that. Biju likes to stay for these parties, I don’t know why, they are not very interesting. He moves around the room talking to everyone. Biju looks distinguished—he is tall and well built, and though the top of his head is mostly bald he keeps long sideburns; he is always well dressed in an English suit, just like the Minister used to wear before taking to Indian clothes. The guests are impressed with Biju and talk to him as if he were as clever and important as they themselves are. They never guess that he is not because he speaks in a very grand English accent and is ready to talk on any subject they like.

  Mina also enjoys her father’s parties and she mingles with the guests and listens to the intelligent conversation. But I don’t enjoy them at all. I talk to the wives, but it is tiring for me to talk with strangers about things that are not interesting to me; very soon I slip away, hoping they will think that I have to supervise the servants in the kitchen. Actually, I don’t enter the kitchen at all—there is no need because our cooks have been with us a long time; instead I lie down on a sofa somewhere or sit in the garden where no one can find me. Only Biju does find me sooner or later, and then he stays with me and talks to me about the guests. He imitates the accent of a foreign ambassador or shows how one of the cabinet ministers cracks nuts and spits out the shells. He makes me laugh, and I like being there with him in the garden, which is so quiet with the birds all asleep in the trees and the moon shining down with a silver light. I wish we didn’t have to go back. But I know that if I stay away too long, the Minister will miss me and get annoyed and send Mina to look for me. And when she has found us, she too will be annoyed—she will stand there and look at us severely as if we were two children that were not to be trusted.

  Mina is often annoyed with us. She lectures us. Sometimes she comes home earlier than usual and finds me lying on a sofa and Biju by my side with a drink in one hand and cigar in the other. She says “Is this all you ever do?”

  Biju says “What else is there to do?”

  “Aren’t you awful.” But she can’t concentrate on us just now. She is very hungry and is wondering what to eat. I ring for the bearer and order refreshments to be brought for Mina on a tray. She sits with us while she is eating. After a while she feels fit enough to speak to us again. She asks “Don’t you want to do something constructive?”

  Biju thinks about this for a while. He examines the tip of his cigar while he is thinking; then he says “No.”

  “Well you ought to. Everybody ought to. There’s such a lot to do! In every conceivable field.” She licks crumbs off the ends of her fingers—I murmur automatically “Darling, use the napkin”—and when she has got them clean she uses them to tick off with: “Social. Educational. Cultural—that reminds me: are you coming to the play?”

  “What play?”

  “I’ve been telling you for weeks.”

  “Oh, yes of course,” I say. “I remember.” I don’t really, but I know vaguely that her friends are always putting on advanced plays translated from French or German or Romanian. Mina has no acting talent herself but she takes great interest in these activities. She often attends rehearsals, and as the time of the performance draws near, she is busy selling tickets and persuading shopkeepers to allow her to stick posters in their windows.

  “This is really going to be something special. It’s a difficult play but terribly interesting, and Bobo Oberoi is just great as God the Father. What talent he has, that boy, oh.” She sighs with admiration, but next moment she has recollected something and is looking suspiciously at Biju and me: “You’re welcome to buy tickets of course, and I’m certainly going to sell you some, but I hope you’ll behave better than last time.”

  Biju looks guilty. It’s true he didn’t behave very well last time. It was a long play, and again a difficult one. Biju got restless—he sighed and crossed his long legs now one way and now another and kept asking me how much longer it was going to be. At last he decided to go out and smoke and pushed his way down the row so that everybody had either to get up or to squeeze in their legs to let him pass, while he said “Excuse me” in a loud voice and people in rows behind said “Sh.”

  “Why don’t they put on one of these nice musical plays?” Biju asks now, as Mina eats the last biscuit from her tray and washes it down with her glass of milk. She doesn’t answer him, but looks exasperated. “My Fair Lady,” Biju presses on. “Funny Girl.” The expression on Mina’s face becomes more exasperated, and I tell him to be quiet.

  “If you’
d only make an effort,” Mina says, doing her best to be patient and in a voice that is almost pleading. “To move with the times. To understand the modern mind.”

  I try to excuse us: “We’re too old, darling.”

  “It’s nothing to do with age. It’s an attitude, that’s all. Now look at Daddy.”

  “Ah,” says Biju.

  “He’s the same age as you are.”

  “Two years older,” Biju says.

  “So you see.”

  Biju raises his glass as if he were drinking to someone, and as he does so, his face becomes so solemn and respectful that it is difficult for me not to laugh.

  The Minister is very keen to “move with the times.” It has always been one of his favorite sayings. Even when he was young and long before he entered politics, he was never satisfied doing what everyone else did—looking after the estates, hunting and other sports, entertaining guests—no, it was not enough for him. When we were first married, he used to give me long lectures like Mina does now—about the changing times and building up India and everyone putting their shoulder to the wheel—he would talk to me for a long time on this subject, getting all the time more and more excited and enthusiastic; only I did not listen too carefully because, as with Mina, I was so happy only looking at him while he talked that it didn’t matter to me what he said. How handsome he was in those days! His eyes sparkled, and he was tall and strong and always appeared to be in a great hurry as if difficult tasks awaited him. When he went up any stairs it was two, three steps at a time, doors banged behind him, his voice was loud and urgent like a king in battle even when he was only calling to the servant for his shoes. He used to get very impatient with me because he said I was slow and lazy like an elephant, and if he was walking behind me, he would prod my hips (which were always rather heavy) and say “Get moving.” In those days he wanted me to do everything with him. At one time he had imported a new fertilizer that was going to do magic, and together we would walk through the fields to see its effect (which was not good: it partially killed the maize crop). Another time we traveled to Japan to study their system of hotel management because he thought of converting one of our houses into a hotel. Then he had an idea that he would like to start a factory for manufacturing steel tubing, and we went to Russia to observe the process of manufacture. Wherever we went, he drew up a heavy program for us that I found very tiring; but since he himself never needed any rest, he couldn’t understand why I should. He began to feel that I was a hindrance to him on these tours, and as the years went by, he became less eager to take me with him.