Ashish nodded frantically. Sunder’s father continued to chomp; then he picked up a remote control from a silver dish next to him. He raised it commandingly and pressed a button. An enormous plasma television behind Ashish lit up, showing the business channel CNBC. The remainder of the meal passed in bug-like silence.
‘We’ll go and chat now,’ Sunder told his mother after dessert. She smiled vaguely, yes, whoever the hell you are, go ahead. They went into Sunder’s room where they played computer games and then lay apathetically on the bed. Ashish, still in social mode, felt obliged to do something, whether that was jump on Sunder (unlikely) or at least make conversation; he must be here for a purpose, the invitation must have meant something. He leaned on his elbows and looked towards the darkened windows, where the blinds were pulled down against the afternoon heat; the air conditioner was blasting again, and a lamp was on.
‘So what do you think you’ll do after, you know, we finish college?’ Ashish looked across at Sunder, who scowled.
‘Who cares? College is a total hassle,’ said Sunder darkly. ‘If I feel like it I might drop out.’
‘Without a degree?’ It was as though he had suggested jumping off the edge of the map.
‘What does it matter? I’ll join the business anyway, work for a year or two, do an MBA in America, get married.’
Ashish stared at his hands. ‘You want to get married? Don’t you feel too – young?’
Sunder looked into the middle distance, which happened to be the direction of the No Fear poster. He shrugged. ‘People in our community always marry early. My dad says it keeps you out of trouble but it’s not like it stops you doing what you want,’ he said.
Ashish examined his fingers. ‘Right.’
When he got home, no one had the time to ask him how his lunch had been. His uncle cocked an eye at him from the book he was reading; his aunt was bustling around getting ready for the wedding.
‘We should go soon – are you ready?’ Lakshmi mami was becoming nervous already, or irritated, it was hard to tell. Ashish glanced up, then back to the newspaper he’d picked up.
Mohan mama was immoveable in his chair, a book in his hand. ‘We have to be there at seven, it’s four now,’ he said.
‘We have to be there at six thirty and,’ Lakshmi moved over to peer at the clock as though she had not already just done so, ‘it’s nearly four thirty now.’
Ashish darted a glance at the clock. It was slightly after four fifteen. There was a brief lull.
‘Well, I’m going to be ready to leave by five, anyway,’ announced his aunt, rustling towards the bedroom. She wore a silk sari and her good jewellery; the dot of vermilion on her forehead marked her readiness for a celebration.
Mohan turned a page; the fan rotated quietly above him and Ashish; below, the lane was still. In half an hour or so children from the surrounding buildings would emerge from enforced naps and begin to play cricket, football, or another game that gave them a pretext to shout and break loose from the good behaviour demanded in afternoon hours.
‘Do you want to take a bath before we go?’ came the cry from the bedroom.
Mohan read attentively, holding down the page with his hand. The other side of the book stirred under the fan.
‘If you want to have a bath I’ll fill up the hot water,’ the voice persisted.
There was no answer.
Ashish read the same paragraph in the newspaper for the third time and thought about going to his room before the conversation between his aunt and uncle took its usual turn. Tardiness was the one thing his aunt couldn’t bear; she would, he knew, become more and more importunate, her bossiness disguising distress at his uncle’s inaction, and perhaps also at the fact that she was obliged to wait for him. She would continue to hustle, he would continue to resist, until they were actually on the point of being late; then he would snap at her, telling her that she was becoming neurotic and it wouldn’t take them more than twenty minutes to reach the wedding. She would mention the Sunday evening traffic and burst into tears of frustration; he would stomp off to get ready. Then, a little late, flustered and chastened like children, they would set out in their best clothes, making a distinguished couple.
Ashish was looking forward to a few hours alone. He wanted to lie on his bed without his clothes, thinking about exactly what had gone on between him and Sunder for fifteen feverish minutes that afternoon, when the door of Sunder’s bedroom had been not just shut, but locked, and only the orange glow of the light above the desk interrupted the near-freezing darkness of the air-conditioned room. Right afterwards, Sunder had darted into the adjacent bathroom and Ashish, disoriented, had wiped his thigh with the nearest thing to hand, a pair of socks (made by the family firm?) and checked his clothes and hair. Then his friend had emerged from the bathroom, looked at him impassively and said, ‘Do you mind, I’ve got to go out with my parents in half an hour’, and Ashish had been, on the whole, relieved to leave. He could have the actual enjoyment of the moment now, if his aunt and uncle would only finish their Laurel and Hardy routine and be gone; he looked forward to lying in his room while outside birds cried at the dusk, and his physical sensation of emptiness found its counterpart in the movement of Sunday afternoon into Sunday evening, that most depressing of times. He listened now to the rain. It fell soft and thick, and the air cooled and, in turn, became damp and tender.
Chapter Eight
Mohan came home one evening to find unusual smells in the house. His wife raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Ashish is cooking,’ she announced.
‘Cooking! Very good!’ He went to change his sandals and wash, and a little later ventured to the kitchen. Ashish was busy stirring milk into something lumpy and white in a saucepan on the stove top.
Mohan smiled and raised his eyebrows at the boy. No response. He cleared his throat. ‘What are you making?’ he enquired.
‘Baked vegetables,’ said Ashish tersely. ‘Can you pass me the book there?’ He pointed with one floury hand. Mohan picked up Thirty Recipes for Everyday Cooking and handed it to him.
‘Damn,’ muttered Ashish.
‘Carrotshalfcuppeashalfcupbabycornhalfcupmushrooms halfpacketoptional…half cook the vegetables until blah blah, heat the butter until – hmm – fry the flour until cooking smell is perceptible –’ he gave the air a strong sniff and regarded his uncle suspiciously.
‘I think it’s burning,’ Mohan said.
‘Damn!’
Ashish turned off the stove, moved the saucepan with an ill-tempered clatter, and wiped his hands on his t-shirt. He marched out of the kitchen.
‘Eh, Ashish,’ his uncle began to protest. But Ashish was intent. He returned almost immediately, carrying the cordless telephone. He flipped to the back of the book. ‘It says here that if you have any problem with the recipe you can call Yezdi Sodawaterbottlewala himself, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Indian Record office – 2287,’ he began murmuring to himself.
‘Yezdi Sodawaterbottlewala! Oh, this is his book.’ Mohan reached out a hand for the book; the boy must have found it wherever he’d wedged it into the shelf.
Ashish made a reproving noise and twitched the volume out of reach. ‘Mohan mama.’
‘I know him, you know. We were at school together.’
‘Really?’ Ashish looked up; he had a flour smear on his cheek. ‘You never said,’ he observed, returning to the page with the number on it. ‘His columns are always in the newspaper.’
‘We didn’t really keep in touch, something happened,’ Mohan was saying, almost to himself, as Ashish dialled and then listened.
‘Hello, may I speak to Mr Sodawaterbottlewala please. This is Ashish Datye.’ A pause, then: ‘Sir, I’m calling about your baked vegetable recipe. From Thirty Recipes for Everyday. Sir. Sir, it’s the white sauce, it’s very lumpy. You say cook till you smell the – sir. No, I – sir. Okay sirthangyousir. Sir onemorething sir,’ Ashish was, Mohan could see, quite enjoying himself, ‘sir, my uncle says you were at school with
him sir? Mohan Vithal Karekar. Yes, he’s right here. Yes, he said. Yes hold on sir.’
Ashish held out the cordless phone. Mohan was appalled. ‘He wants to speak to you, Mohan mama.’ The boy shoved the white handset at Mohan and returned to the stove.
Mohan coughed. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Mohan?’ The voice, high-pitched and ridiculous, hadn’t changed. Despite himself he grinned. ‘Yezdi.’
‘How are you, Mohan? It’s such a long time since we’ve spoken. I wasn’t sure if you were even still in Bombay.’
‘Yes, I’m still here,’ he said, wondering if Yezdi meant that he thought he, Mohan, might have died or something.
‘We should meet. That was your nephew I spoke to?’
‘My sister’s son. He, uh, likes cooking.’
‘Very good,’ said Yezdi. ‘So let’s meet, Mohan. How is your schedule these days?’
‘Well –’
‘Do you know the Indian Record office?’ This was another irritating question; everyone knew the Indian Record office, which was opposite VT.
‘Obviously,’ said Mohan, slightly tetchily.
‘How about tea tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow – tomorrow I can’t.’ This was untrue.
‘Friday?’
‘All right.’
‘Will you come to the office? At five, say? I’ll come downstairs.’
‘All right.’
‘See you on Friday then.’ Yezdi hung up.
Mohan stood looking at the handset. He sighed, and felt a vague sense of unease.
Ashish had taken the saucepan off the fire and was looking at it with triumph. ‘He said wait for it to cool and then add the milk,’ he explained happily.
Mohan went outside to replace the receiver.
‘Why is he cooking?’ he asked his wife.
‘He wants to invite one of his friends tomorrow. I asked him what he wanted me to make and he suddenly got very excited about this recipe. He said he wanted to make it himself.’
Mohan raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s using a book written by Yezdi, you know, who I went to school with.’
‘Of course.’
‘Ashish rang up, for the recipe, and I spoke to Yezdi as well,’ he went on, frowning and rearranging some jars on the table. ‘We may meet – ah, for tea.’ He didn’t look at her, but picked up and examined a jar, and felt the coating of rust on its lid.
‘Good,’ she said absently. It was getting to be time for one of her serials; she made purposefully for the television, a cup of tea in her hand, and began to unzip its plastic cover. ‘Your tea’s in the pan on the stove,’ she said, a last bulletin to him. The television came on, with a possessive little buzz, and after a tiny silence the insanely enthusiastic voices of actors in commercials began to spill from the set. Mohan moved towards the living room window.
At first the television had been on only in the evenings, when the serials she followed were screened at eight or nine. There’d been one, to begin with; now there were at least two. When she was in communion with the set he sat near the window, reading; he would look back to see the flickering light, and her face rapt. From time to time he rose, and went to stand behind her; he never sat down, even if he watched for a few minutes continuously, because that would have indicated submission to the foolishness on screen.
‘So that’s why you kept coming home late?’ a horrified woman said. She put her hand to her face and gasped. It was hard to tell her age because she wore so much make-up; however, it was certain that she was a virtuous character, because her eye make-up didn’t make her look like a female demon: the villains always had absurd and frightening eyeliner. Her gasp replayed itself three or four times from different camera angles; one shot went close to her face in staggered degrees that rhymed with the music’s exaggerated horror.
‘They spin out one incident for a long time,’ Mohan remarked.
His wife was hooked, but she smiled and said calmly, ‘Yes, that way the script lasts longer.’
He returned to the chair.
Some time ago, Lakshmi had begun to turn on the television in the morning too. It began with the news, which included updates on the weather; that made sense in the rains, although the television often announced a rainfall more dramatic than the one actually taking place. ‘City paralysed by heavy rains’ ran the ticker at the bottom of the screen, which showed a familiar photograph of a flooded, low-lying subway. But the photograph was from a month earlier; that day the rain, although heavy, was normal: the trains continued to run.
Then there was, on a Hindi channel, the television astrologer. ‘Today is not a good day for Virgos,’ he said calmly. He wore a kurta with gold buttons. ‘Virgos in advanced age may face severe health problems because of Rahu. Those who have been unwell for some time could pass away today or between today and Thursday.’
‘And Libras?’ the newsreader asked helpfully. This man, one of Mohan’s favourite television personalities, was almost definitely wearing a toupee. His hair was improbably thick and dark; it sat in a fat cushion above his forehead. He wore spectacles, and wrinkled his brow when a serious item came on the schedule.
‘Libras – your ruler Venus is in debility so you may experience some tiredness. Avoid heavy food.’
And so the television, and its compelling chatter, had hijacked the morning as well. Ashish would wander in after his bath, take up the remote and flick to a music channel, where the latest English and Hindi tunes blared; his aunt, after a pause, would come and watch half a song with him, then flick back to the news. Mohan, since it would have been too churlish to turn off the television, sometimes changed to a Marathi news channel. But he missed the silence.
The day after was to be a public holiday; already Saraswati Park was in festive mood. From one of the Gogate flats pop music blasted out, the same two or three songs in English, over and over.
The theme tune of Daughters of the House began to play. Lakshmi got up; with a yawn of satisfaction she went into the kitchen. Mohan followed her to get a glass of water. Ashish’s baked vegetables were safely in the small oven that Megha had brought home once, and which they hardly used. Lakshmi was helping Ashish to clear up the clouds of flour and cheese that had settled.
‘I could call Satish tomorrow,’ she said to Mohan, but he was feeling irritable, because while sitting in the chair he’d been trying to work out the details of the story he’d begun earlier, and it had been noisy, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from listening to her soap episode; now he had a vague anxiety about whether Aarti, who had murdered her husband and buried him in a chikoo orchard, would be found out by her sisters-in-law, and when the husband’s ghost would get around to visiting her. No one should watch television, he thought bitterly. He frowned and knitted his eyebrows in response to her remark.
She was surprised; he was usually encouraging about seeing Satish. ‘Otherwise he’ll be alone all day,’ she pointed out.
‘What’s the difference with any other day?’ asked Mohan, for the sake of argument, thinking more of his story than of his brother-in-law, though a vague unpleasantness remained in his mind from the last time they’d seen Satish.
‘Well, I don’t have to,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ll call him another time, or I’ll go to see him.’
Mohan noticed his nephew giving him a blank look before leaving the room. He sighed. ‘How long will dinner be?’ he asked, though he wasn’t especially hungry.
‘Soon,’ she said, ‘just as soon as I’ve cleared up this mess.’ She turned her back on him.
Chapter Nine
Ashish woke, as usual, to the electronic howl outside. He groaned, and mashed his face a little more into the pillow. Dr Gogate’s car alarm went off at the same time every day, prompted by the passing of the milk delivery man on his bicycle. The pealing would continue until everyone in the surrounding buildings had noticed – everyone, apparently, apart from the doctor. Was he in the toilet? Taking a bath? Saying his prayers? Engaging in tantric rituals w
ith Mrs Gogate (her face displaying modest unwillingness, modulated by wifely indulgence)? It was hard to know but impossible not to wonder, and Ashish sat up and yawned just as the alarm was finally deactivated.
The car was a Honda, large and sleek; the doctor kept it parked outside the flats. Ashish feigned a lack of interest, but when he was passing it he experienced conflicting desires: one was to look at it carefully and catalogue its features – power steering, airbags, central locking, hydraulic brakes, and extra-powerful air conditioning; the other was to find something sharp, a key would have been ideal, and make a nice bright scratch along the new paintwork.
But he was happy this morning as he disentangled himself from the sheet. Sunder had come over for dinner yesterday. It had been a little odd, of course; the flat wasn’t exactly what Sunder was used to, but Ashish thought it had gone off fairly well. They’d eaten the baked vegetables he’d made, and his aunt and uncle, subdued by an earlier quarrel, hadn’t asked too many embarrassing questions. Mohan mama had tried, briefly, to talk to Sunder about books, but Ashish had rounded this off swiftly. Sunder, as ever, hadn’t been talkative; he and Ashish had gone up to the terrace after dinner.
The evening was midnight-blue and humidly warm; a single fluorescent light at the other end of the terrace cast a greenish glow that hardly reached to where they stood. Ashish was suddenly conscious of the social niceties; he felt they should converse for a while, and even peered theatrically over the terrace wall, observing to himself that he could see the watchman’s hut and the banyan tree. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ he said. He wanted Sunder to acknowledge Saraswati Park in some way, at least make the conventional remarks.
Sunder belched slightly, then put his thumbs in his belt loops and stared into the nightscape of darkness, fluorescent light, unidentified roofs, and old trees that made dark masses near the ground. He obviously had no idea where he was, and, equally plainly, was wondering how long it’d take him to get back to civilization.
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