Saraswati Park

by Anjali Joseph

  Now he was back in his own world, or in Saraswati Park at any rate. The room reminded him of his defeats, and the disappointments of the years: the damp marks on the walls, the stains and specks of black on the yellowing paint spoke of lives lived imperfectly. He went to the cupboard and examined himself in the rusty mirror on the door, under the miniature but brave image of Viv Richards and his on-drive. Ashish’s eyes had something new about them – maybe recent events had taken the obstinate shine from him. Otherwise, he resembled the boy who’d moved his things in a suitcase and a carton from Esplanade Mansion less than a year ago. Suddenly the floor tiles felt agreeably cold under his feet and he sighed and remembered that first day. Lakshmi mami had made him come in with the right foot first, for good luck. Would things have been worse if he’d put the left foot first? Where was his aunt anyway? When would she return?

  The door swung open and his uncle leaned in. ‘Go to sleep now, there’s a lot to do from tomorrow,’ he said. He peered at Ashish. For a moment they regarded each other, one wanting to ask a question that couldn’t be asked – is everything going to be all right? – and the other wondering, as ever, what was wrong with the boy and whether it was in some way his fault. Their eyes met; Mohan smiled. ‘Good night. Sleep soon,’ he said.

  Ashish nodded. He went and brushed his teeth and came back to his room to scramble into his nightclothes. The worn cotton felt nice. He turned out the light and lay down, pulling the sheet about him.

  He was, he knew, defeated already. Saraswati Park had got him in the end. He was what he was – just a middle-class boy who’d been preoccupied with a sense of his own difference. What made him special? Then there were the exams, a forthcoming trial, and he would again be in a mess – he saw his mother’s face, as on the day his parents found out he had to repeat his final year – then he thought irrelevantly that it would be nice to see his parents again, but also that he missed the old house – and he wondered about his aunt – when would she be back – it wasn’t the same now she was gone, it was makeshift and sort of fun but ultimately exhausting without her – then about his uncle, what was he up to, how was he coping – then about Megha, when would she come back – and about Sunder, would he have changed the way he wore his hair? It had been so long since they’d seen each other, he couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if they met again. But in a weird way he felt he’d always know what was happening in Sunder’s life – at a strange, elemental level – perhaps that was nonsense though – and he remembered Narayan’s flat, it was the last thing, with a jolt of pain, and then he was dreaming. He was outside a door, ringing the bell, and there were voices inside, laughter too, but they wouldn’t let him in.

  Three weeks later, the night before the first exam. Without knocking, Mohan came into the room. He shut the door behind him and looked around at the piles of notes on the bed, the desk, the bookcases. Ashish cringed, waiting for a rebuke.

  But his uncle appeared energized. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Paper?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ashish held up a sheaf.

  ‘Pens?’

  ‘Mm.’ He indicated the desk.

  ‘And you know the kind of questions you have to prepare for?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a list.’

  ‘All right. You sit at the desk, begin with the first one. I’m going to make some coffee.’

  ‘Okay.’ He sat down, one foot tucked under him, and began with a question about King Lear. An unwanted image of Narayan lying back in the bed in Kalina passed through his mind, but he banished it; the heath, instead he would think about the heath. The yellowness of the light bulb had become a line right behind his eyes; just then his uncle appeared with a tray on which there were two cups.

  ‘I made a whole pot of decoction,’ Mohan said. And while Ashish wrote, rubbing his forehead from time to time, his uncle moved about behind him, sorting the different papers and clipping them together. It was warm and dry outside; there had been dust storms but the first rain seemed to be holding off. In the intense atmosphere of the electric-lit room, Ashish was suddenly calm. He wrote, and after an hour his uncle removed the paper from the table and said, ‘Start the next question.’ He put a fresh cup of coffee in front of Ashish, who barely looked up. When he had done one question paper, he leaned back in his chair, stretched, and rubbed at his eyes. He squinted into the darkness; there was a flash of white opposite and one of the owls was sitting in the window in Gopal, winking at him.

  ‘That’s good luck,’ observed Mohan.

  Ashish laughed. ‘Some people say owls are bad luck. Anyway, I think I need Saraswati, not Lakshmi, Mohan mama,’ he said. The goddesses were sisters. One dispensed wisdom and learning: her familiar was the swan; the other conferred prosperity, and hers was the owl.

  ‘It’s all the same thing,’ his uncle said calmly. ‘Just names for things that don’t have names.’

  ‘But Lakshmi and Saraswati don’t come to the same house,’ Ashish argued. He picked up his coffee cup and stared into the grounds at the bottom.

  A hand dropped onto his shoulder. ‘That’s rubbish. Look – there are owls in Saraswati Park, aren’t there?’

  An early, deluded bird began to sing.

  ‘Oh god!’ said Ashish wildly.

  ‘No no, it’s not four o’clock yet. Come,’ said Mohan. ‘Work for a bit longer, then you can have a bath and breakfast.’

  Ashish obediently bent his head again. At five his uncle told him to sleep for an hour; he curled up in bed. He didn’t sleep, exactly; his mind had become bruised and seemed to be bashing itself about inside his skull, but he fell into a heavy trance, dry-mouthed, and when there was a brief rain shower outside, his body relaxed under the blanket. Almost immediately, his uncle was saying, ‘Six o’clock, get up now,’ and Ashish was stumbling into the bathroom towards a bucket of hot water. Grey, early light came in through the modest slatted window. He heard a bird trill – wretched thing, it had no exams to sit – and he soaped himself automatically and found his eye staring overlong at commonplace things: the shine on the chrome-plated tap, and the crusting of minerals on the edge of the copper pipe that ran out of the water heater.

  On his bed he saw a clean shirt and a pair of trousers; he smiled at the visit of the phantom valet. When he came into the living room, his rucksack in his hand, his uncle was fully dressed. Breakfast was on the table, and more coffee.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The station roared with passengers, porters, valedictory relatives; the train doors hung open and people hurried out with their parcels and luggage. Mohan stood near the bookstall. He clutched his bag and bottle of water, felt dazed, and, like a reformed lecher who sees a girl walk past, covertly eyed the books. A young man came right up to him but it was only when the voice said ‘Mohan uncle!’ that he blinked.

  ‘Arre, Chintan.’ He shook hands briefly with his wife’s great-nephew, whom he’d last seen at his wedding, five years earlier. Chintan had been a thin, pale young man; now he’d filled out.

  ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, you’ve put on weight,’ Mohan began to tease, out of form, but Chintan had become more brisk too.

  ‘Let me take your bag, Mohan uncle.’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ But Chintan dived around him, wrested the bag away, then set off at a great pace, throwing snatches of conversation over his shoulder. ‘Car…nightmare to park at this time of day…just over here…’

  Mohan followed him, dodging between passengers and hangers-about, while a nasal female voice announced from the loudspeaker, ‘The delayed train for Bangalore is about to arrive on platform number three.’

  It was blindingly hot and dry, even at five in the evening. Mohan hurried after Chintan through the car park. In the sun, he felt his skin begin to tingle, then give up and yield its life to the unrelenting air; a person could desiccate, simply shrivel away here. When they reached a small, white Maruti, Chintan stopped abruptly. He unlocked the boot – white sun flashed off it into Mohan’s tired eyes – stowe
d the bag, and smiled. ‘Atya will be pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘It’s been very nice for us that she could come.’

  Mohan got in, banged shut the tinny door and folded his legs; the passenger seat seemed to have been wedged forward. The interior of the car was hot and airless. He tried to wind down the window. It stuck.

  ‘Oh yes, that window doesn’t work,’ Chintan said. ‘Baba’s much better, the doctor says he’s out of risk.’ He shoved five rupees at the parking attendant and shot into the middle of the road, making the good luck charm that hung from the rear-view mirror shake wildly. He honked at a man driving two black water buffalo past the exit. ‘These people don’t even look…But he needs rest for some time and, of course,’ he turned and beamed, as one who is revealing an insight, ‘he’s not getting any younger.’

  When they got to the house, the door was opened by Malti, Chintan’s wife. She looked tired, a little plumper after marriage and her hair was done differently, but she was otherwise the same. She was a bright, capable girl. The child trailed behind her, a little boy – Sachin, hardly three years old. Lakshmi came out. Mohan and she smiled at each other awkwardly. They didn’t touch; he stood holding his bottle of water and she said, ‘So the train was on time.’

  ‘Yes, only about twenty minutes late.’

  ‘Come, I’ll make tea,’ Malti said. ‘Meet Baba, he’s been looking forward to seeing you.’

  The invalid’s bedroom was just off the living room. This person in the bed, looking frail at the centre of a small galaxy of medicine bottles, glasses, thermometers, magazines, coasters, trays, was Mahesh, Lakshmi’s nephew, though he was about her age and more like a cousin. Mohan and he shook hands. The other man’s hand was limp and thin; his eyes were rheumy and he coughed uncontrollably; but he knew who Mohan was.

  ‘So, come to take your wife back?’ he said straight away, began to laugh, and then coughed instead.

  Mohan looked down at the wasted face. The bedside table was crowded with postcards, a packet of playing cards, a small towel, pill bottles. ‘And how are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m all right,’ but he started to cough again; spittle flew out and Lakshmi helped him wipe his face. Malti appeared with the tea and they sat around and sipped it. The man in the bed became a sort of polite attraction as he alternately talked, asked questions, and fell silent; perhaps he was dozing.

  Chintan had taken Mohan’s bag to the room where Lakshmi had been staying. The bungalow, old and reasonably large, was in a part of town that had once been considered far away; it had become more central as the city expanded. Lakshmi’s eldest brother Bhaskar had bought a plot of land under a scheme for government employees; as in so many things, he’d been lucky, and the house was now worth much more.

  ‘You can have a bath if you want, I’ve put the geyser on,’ Chintan returned to say.

  Mohan went and began to undress in the odd-looking bedroom. It had white panelled cupboards, a dark red plush rug, which should have been the last thing anyone wanted in this climate, and even a fairly old looking air conditioner, as well as highly polished brass ornaments sitting here and there. He wondered if this was the room that had been decorated for Malti and Chintan when they’d married.

  The bathroom too had been redone relatively recently, with white fittings and gold trim. The work was slightly shoddy; bits of cement showed, and the large synthetic tiles weren’t well grouted, but it was a contemporary idea of luxury. He turned the shower on, watched a stream of hot water come out, stood under it, and felt his skin revive. He lathered himself with the familiar citrus soap and saw his wife’s bottle of amla hair oil on the sink; this meeting was both ordinary and utterly strange. There was an unexpected shyness about it, meeting like this in someone else’s house, as though they had been a young couple instead of two greying people with four grown-up children (and Ashish, he reminded himself – he must telephone the boy and find out if all was well). And his mind went back to the first time he’d seen Lakshmi. Mohan’s reaction to Vivek deciding that he should stop studying and start work had been muted, but suddenly he’d said he wanted to marry. Their mother had agreed; Vivek hadn’t felt able to say no. Few girls were suggested; there wasn’t much money in the family. Then Vivek had heard of a family living in Tardeo, not the same sub-caste, but there was a girl, a little educated, whose parents were keen to marry her soon. She was just seventeen. Mohan and his brother went to meet her one Sunday. Her parents were there, they talked, and the girl served some tea and food. He saw that she was pretty, but they didn’t speak to each other. Her brother had impressed him though; he was so educated – thin, fiery, and contemptuous looking. He was a lecturer in a college. When they went to the door, he’d heard the brother, Satish, murmur something to the girl, who suddenly flashed a grin of pure mischief at Mohan. He’d gaped at her; the grin, when her father turned, had gone completely. But this was the girl, he’d decided then and there.

  He turned off the shower, dried himself, came out of the bathroom, and looked in his bag for clean clothes.

  ‘What were you laughing about?’ he’d asked her, of course, later, and she’d smiled and said she didn’t remember.

  He shook out the kurta and slipped it over his head, then stepped into the pyjamas and tightened their drawstring; this was always a comical moment, when one’s clothes, apparently designed for an enormous person, were reined into shape. Newly clean, he floated into the corridor, still remembering that day, the light outside the door and how he’d looked back to see if she was still laughing; in the dark passage he hadn’t been able to tell. His mother had thought he could have married better. Lakshmi had no dowry to speak of, but he’d been adamant. Vivek had just been relieved that the girl’s family were keen and it’d all be simple; Sharmila, Vivek’s wife, was happy that it was so easy to dominate the younger sister-in-law.

  Mohan went into the living room, where Lakshmi was sitting on the sofa with Sachin. Malti was on her way back to the kitchen. ‘I’m making dinner, it won’t be long,’ she said apologetically. He thought with sympathy that she had a lot to do: the old man; and of course her husband and son; now guests too. His wife looked up when he came in, then back at the television. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. He sat on the velvet sofa, and the child came to him, holding a toy; he began to tell Mohan an incoherent story.

  ‘This is Bhalu, he goes to school…’ and he shoved the toy, a faded teddy, at Mohan.

  ‘Does he?’ the letter writer said absently. He took the bear and put the child, who wriggled like a puppy, on his knee. Sachin began to climb all over Mohan. ‘Which standard is Bhalu in?’

  ‘Tenth!’

  ‘Oh, so old?’ He looked across at his wife, to see if she’d smiled, but the light from the television was shining on her face. She turned slightly and met his gaze, then turned back to the television. He felt a moment’s panic, and forgot to listen to Sachin who, piqued, got up on Mohan’s thigh, held his shoulder, and began to bang on his chest.

  ‘Hm, hm. Gently, gently,’ Mohan said, removing him.

  ‘Bhalu’s done all his homework!’

  ‘Has he?’ What was she thinking, he wondered – she seemed so assimilated here, yet surely that couldn’t just have happened. When would they talk? He began to wish Chintan, Sachin, Malti, the old man, all would disappear suddenly, like in the Arabian Nights, and he and she find themselves outside the city walls, away from the hubbub and able to speak. This longing, to talk, to not be alone, to explain himself – now he remembered, that had been why he’d wanted to marry. As a child (he didn’t recall when the habit dated from, it was so old) he’d kept a running narrative in his head, commenting, explaining the things that happened. But there’d never been an appropriate listener. His sister didn’t understand, his brother wasn’t interested; friends could only take so much of his thoughts and dreams. It would have been impossible to talk to his father, who was utterly abstracted, or to his mother, down-to-earth and harassed with a thousand things to do. Then h
is father had died and the future Mohan had silently planned had vanished; he had been going to be some sort of scholar, a person with a great many books who sat at a desk and wrote all day. That was over; he’d decided that at least this loneliness must end. Marriage was surely the answer. Finally there’d be an audience: a sympathetic person to absorb and applaud his ideas, their shape and expression.

  But his wife had turned out to be a talker herself. She had her own narration, so confident that he was never sure whether his made any sense to her; then, later, he’d begun to feel that maybe his private thoughts were simply meant to stay that way. This was one of the secret jokes about marriage. People turned out to be exactly the opposite of how they’d seemed at first; they then went on changing randomly, as though enacting a hypothesis of unceasing chaos. He tried again to read Lakshmi’s expression in the flickering light of the set, but couldn’t. This fugue, for example, and his own ultimate, tardy, but not really reluctant pursuit: could he have predicted it? He softened, thinking that he never would have imagined such distance could grow between him and this simple, engaging girl; he’d been certain she’d always be around, chattering about something, and he’d be smiling, half admiring, half bemused or irritated.

  ‘Bhalu’s done his homework and now he wants to tell you a story.’

  ‘Does he? What’s the story?’ He bent and listened to the child, who stopped kicking, and began to recount something rambling, without sense, but that seemed to comfort him. Mohan held him with one hand and patted his stomach with the other while he prattled.

  Dinner was in the same room. Malti reappeared with food and fresh puris; Lakshmi went to help Mahesh with his food. Mohan sat and ate meekly under the tube light, amid the patter of the television. Chintan meanwhile told him about his job, his hopes and plans. He was doing an MBA by correspondence and thought of working abroad. Malti smiled when she heard this familiar conversation; but she was busy, fetching more food and then taking the plates away.