by Meira Chand
As soon as he saw her fall, Sham feared she had hit her head. There was no resistance as she touched the water. She slid under and reappeared, her mouth open, flower petals settling on her face. She began slowly to sink again, floating out into deeper water. Rani stopped in flight, hands pressed to her cheeks in horror. There was a sudden roar from Mr Hathiramani. Sham jumped in and swam out through the cool, muddy-tasting water towards Mrs Murjani. He reached her and pulled her limp body back on to the steps. Rani rushed up and knelt down by her mother. Mr Hathiramani, the driver, and the watchman crowded up behind her. People began to gather about them.
‘Turn her over,’ Sham ordered. ‘Get that stuff out of her mouth.’ Rani quickly scooped flower petals off her mother’s tongue. They stretched her out on her stomach, Sham pressed rhythmically down on her lungs.
‘Will she be all right?’ Rani sobbed.
‘She didn’t have time to swallow much,’ Sham reassured.
‘This is your fault,’ Mr Hathiramani accused.
‘It is not his fault,’ Rani defended.
‘Do not take his part, daughter. He is a bad boy. For what reason has he brought you here?’ Mr Hathiramani replied. Mrs Murjani stirred and coughed and regurgitated a mouthful of marigold petals.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Sham said, sitting back, freeing Mrs Murjani from his grip.
‘It is not his fault,’ Rani shouted again, seeing her mother pulling herself up, the moment of danger behind her.
‘What has happened?’ Mrs Murjani asked, looking about her in a dazed fashion.
‘All is well. You have recovered.’ Mr Hathiramani waved away the crowd of people who had collected around them. Mrs Murjani sat up.
There was a terrible taste in her mouth and the same foul smell still about her. Her hair had collapsed and dripped down her back, her clothes were plastered to her. There was a gash on her head, which Rani was dabbing with a handkerchief. It took her a moment to recall events.
She gave a sob. It was no dream; the day was real. And the man who had caused such trauma squatted down now beside her.
‘He saved your life,’ Rani hissed, pushing her face right up to her mother’s.
‘Saved my life?’ Mrs Murjani echoed. ‘He has ruined yours.’
‘Afterwards we will talk,’ Mr Hathiramani said. Mrs Murjani was helped up the steps, and placed in the safety of her own car. She sank back, drawing a deep breath of its familiar smell, of soft leather and fine wax. Mr Hathiramani sat in front, Rani beside her mother. The watchman ran ahead of the car, clearing spectators out of the way.
Mrs Murjani stared out of the window and saw again, like the slow rewinding of a reel of film, a vision of her dreadful journey; the black rocks and the pounding sea, the beach strewn with laundry and the dhobis’ repulsive deposits. The pyre still smoked in the crematorium, children jeered before the hutments. At last Sadhbela enclosed her, and she shut her eyes in relief at return. In the lift Gopal had inserted a chair, to carry her up to her home. She was safe; the thought settled about her with the comforting clank of the lift. She walked as imperiously as she could in her dishevelled state, upon her one heel, through her open front door. She saw again the glint of the sun on her chandeliers and crystal chairs, and the ethereal view of the sea as it met the horizon, disentangled at last from life below. Rani clicked her tongue in annoyance, coming in behind her. She rushed straight to her room and slammed the door.
Mr Hathiramani did not hesitate, but walked in at the open door behind Mrs Murjani and Rani. ‘It is necessary, sister, that I speak with you. The matter is of the utmost urgency,’ Mr Hathiramani said.
Mrs Murjani turned to face him. Her clothes dripped upon the green carpet, her hair trailed wetly about her neck, jasmine and marigold petals clung to her still. It was difficult, in the closed confines of her home, to ignore the terrible smell she released. Mr Hathiramani cleared his throat, he held his diary before him.
‘I would have spoken before, but I did not wish to accuse unjustly, without sufficient evidence.’ Mr Hathiramani stepped forward and opened his diary on the seat of a nearby chair.
‘Here, sister, and here and here.’ Mr Hathiramani turned the pages, pointing to comment after comment, sighting after sighting of Sham and Rani.
‘Why did you not speak of this to me sooner?’ Mrs Murjani demanded in a hoarse, uneven voice. The smell about her was overpowering, Mr Hathiramani edged away. Mrs Murjani gave a shudder, her teeth began to chatter. Her legs felt weak, but she dare not sit down and stain the satin chairs. Already the carpet squelched beneath her and would need immediate attention. She wished Mr Hathiramani would leave.
‘He is a bad boy, sister. From the day of his return I have been watching him. He wanted your money, nothing more,’ Mr Hathiramani announced.
‘She is so innocent, he has misled her,’ Mrs Murjani wailed, the knocking of her teeth hindering her voice. ‘What could she see in such a boy?’ she cried out suddenly, distress breaking all reserve.
Mr Hathiramani shrugged, retrieving his diary from the chair. ‘His talk is clever, his trousers are tight. He has lived in Foreign. Nowadays, modern girls look only for such things,’ he answered, remembering suddenly the words of his wife.
14
Sham watched Mrs Murjani’s car draw away down the narrow road to Sadhbela. Rani’s face peered anxiously at him from the back window, as the car rounded a bend and disappeared from view. He walked slowly, filled with growing anger, his clothes soaking wet, his hunger ripe. He bent to wring out his trousers, and was pushed off balance by a woman leading a cow. Under a rattan awning beneath a tree, a barber cut a client’s hair. A man behind a stall of groceries yawned and scratched his stomach. Set back off the road beside the stall was the open green door of the Hanuman temple his mother often visited. The interior was cool and dark, and as he watched, a plain, thickset woman emerged and reached up to touch the bell above the portal. It clanged lethargically. The woman met Sham’s eyes and smiled; her teeth were wide and square.
‘You’re all wet. What happened?’ she asked. He was taken aback by her sudden, familiar approach.
‘Have I become so fat and old while you’ve been away? Don’t you recognize me? I’m Lata Watumal,’ she laughed.
He started to protest, but she cut him short with another laugh. ‘Why are you all wet?’ she repeated and he told her about Mrs Murjani’s accident, omitting her reason for being by the tank.
‘Then you saved her life,’ Lata stated. ‘She must be very grateful.’ Sham wrung out a corner of his shirt and did not reply.
‘I met your mother. She told me about your job,’ said Lata. ‘I’m also working now.’ He looked at her in surprise, unable to imagine her behind a desk.
‘It’s so interesting.’ Her face lit up. ‘I cannot understand why Mohan is against the factory. It could do better if he would give interest to it. My father is old, and he has not managed things well. I have given Father a detailed plan of the changes there should be, but he only said, what can you know, you are a woman. He did not even read my plan. It hurts me to see the whole thing running down, and going to waste for no reason.’
Sham was surprised to find that Lata Watumal had such strong feelings. ‘I expect you will get married soon. That’s why your father does not take you seriously,’ he said.
‘I shall not get married now. At this age who would marry me but old men with grown children? I do not want to get married; I would rather work. It gives me a good feeling,’ she explained, as they came within sight of Sadhbela.
Sham looked at her critically. In spite of her weight there was a purposefulness about her. Her hair was drawn back into a severe pony tail, her hands were small and pliant. He could imagine them moving quickly among sheaves of papers and her eyes, coming up against complex columns of figures, quickening in interest; there was nothing lethargic about her. She seemed suddenly as suitable behind a desk as involved with pots and pans. He observed her with new respect.
She s
miled as she stepped out of the lift on the sixth floor. ‘Maybe Mohan will listen to you if you speak to him about the factory. Please come and talk to him sometime.’ She turned towards her door; Sham watched her walk away.
*
It was the wedding season. Every day the fanfare of bands heralded processions of joyful families, leading bridegrooms on white horses or brides in flower-latticed cars. During these auspicious months Mrs Watumal suffered from recurrent depression, and a vicious migraine. She had awoken that morning in reasonable health but, by eight thirty, had taken again to her bed. Lata massaged a balm of astringent herbs on to her mother’s brow and tied a red scarf, rolled into a rope, tightly about her head. Mrs Watumal lay in her darkened room, and groaned at the sound of marriage festivities in the courtyard of the next building.
Mohan, waiting for his father to appear for breakfast, leaned idly over the living-room balcony, staring down at the next-door activities. A band in white uniforms braided with gold filled the air with the brassy rhythm of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. A net of fairy lights cascaded from the fifth-floor home of the bride. A sizable group of hermaphrodites had gathered about the gates, preparing to invade the building to curse, or offer dances of lewd blessing. Their coarse hair was coiled with jasmine, and about their masculine bodies were dirty, garish saris, in sharp contrast to the gold-threaded silks of the women of the bride’s family, assembling in the courtyard. Young or old, these women were large. Looking down from a height upon them, Mohan saw their hips as shelves upon which rested the twin globes of breasts, and the plump, padded bolsters of arms and shoulders. He wondered what it might be like to be pressed into such a mound of soft flesh, so vast it could never be contained in a hand, never entirely subjugated.
He saw Padma Pumnani emerge from the entrance of Sadhbela, and leaned further over the balcony to observe her. She stopped before the excitement of the band. He was always alert for a glimpse of Padma, slim, a year younger and even prettier than Lakshmi. He watched her turn out of the gate and walk away up the road, hips swinging teasingly.
In the next-door courtyard the hermaphrodites broke through restraining men, streaming into the building with deep-throated, threatening cries. The band played on. In the road a pink snake of firecrackers was unrolled. A crowd of vagrants and children had assembled in the hope of alms. The lepers from outside the nursing home began appearing upon their crutches, waving rotting limbs, demanding right of way. The band changed to a military march. Moving about the courtyard below, the shelf-hipped women appeared to twirl in their bright draperies, like figures on a musical box. Mohan was so immersed in a vision of whale-sized limbs imprisoning him in their grip, that he did not hear his father join him on the balcony. Mr Watumal gave a deep sigh.
‘Yet another wedding. I pray before I die I may see similar lights of celebration strung from our own balconies.’
Mohan opened his mouth to speak, but his reply was lost in the ear-splitting explosion of the firecrackers, dancing about in the road like a live thing, filling the air with sulphur. It was some moments before the noise abated. The road was left littered with a confetti of red and white paper. Immediately, the wedding car emerged from the compound into the road, covered by a lattice of flowers. Further cars rolled out in procession, to follow the marching band on its way to the wedding. Behind them the hermaphrodites shook large knuckled fists, displeased with the amount of their gifts, and strode angrily away, saris swinging about muscular legs.
Mohan sat down at the table with his father; Sunita was peeling fruit. She yawned, still in pyjamas and a cotton housecoat, her hair unbrushed. On the narrow balcony adjoining the kitchen, Lata fried thick koki on a griddle. She had been up for some time, and was already bathed and dressed. It was one of those periods when they were forced to abandon preparation of food in the kitchen, because of the leakage from the Murjanis’ bathroom. Water dripped on to the gas stove, making cooking impossible. At these times they used a kerosene stove on the balcony, but repairs seemed always temporary; sooner or later water dripped again.
Mr Watumal stared down at the familiar sight of his knees below the glass top of the table, and the strip of Elastoplast running under his plate. Everything hung in folds on his frame – clothes, skin, features. He looked mournfully at his son. ‘I have decided to retire,’ he announced.
Lata, coming into the room with a plate of koki, froze momentarily. Mr Watumal sighed, overcome by weariness. Mohan choked on his tea.
‘How will we live?’ he inquired in an urgent tone. He was used to a regular handout of cash to pursue a life in coffee shops, in search of easy business. He was forever involved in complex new ventures, that always evaded a satisfactory climax.
‘I am no longer a young man. It is time for me to put aside everyday cares, and think of higher things,’ Mr Watumal said. ‘Usually, at this time in life, a man has already grandchildren and a prospering son.’ He broke off a corner of a koki and began to chew it slowly.
‘From where shall we get money?’ Mohan demanded again. His father regarded him calmly. The bags of flesh about his eyes did not conceal their shrewdness.
‘You shall make it,’ Mr Watumal replied, and returned his gaze to his koki.
‘I?’ Mohan swallowed. ‘How shall I make enough to keep us all?’
‘By going each day to the factory. Lata has learned many things there, coming with me as she now does. She will help you.’ Mr Watumal watched with interest the deepening shock upon Mohan’s face, and the rage that began to replace it.
‘But there is nothing to do, there is no hope for that place. I’ve told you before, we should sell it. All it gives us is trouble with the unions. If I am to go there each day, how shall I pursue my own business ventures? I’m just about to finalize a deal. It will give me partnership in a new firm that is going to purchase government rest houses, and turn them into small luxury villas. Just think how many mouldering rest houses there are all over India. We shall buy them up cheaply and install air-conditioning, spring mattresses—’
‘Bah!’ Mr Watumal spat out a crumb of koki with the exclamation. ‘Tell me, has one of your ventures ever got beyond the coffee shops where you plan them with your friends? You’re wasting your life.’ Mr Watumal thumped the glass top of the table in sudden frustration.
‘Daddy, please. You’ll break the table again,’ Lata screamed.
‘You’re known as a waster,’ Mr Watumal thundered. ‘That is your reputation. Upstairs they have a thief, and down here we have a waster. I tell you this bluntly, face to face. This was the reason your engagement was terminated. It became known that you do no more than sit about in coffee shops, and spend your father’s money. Hathiramani has disclosed this news, but how can I remonstrate with him? Has he told lies to spread mischief? No, he has done no more than tell the truth.’ Mr Watumal’s voice rose dangerously.
‘Calm yourself, Daddy,’ Sunita begged. ‘It is bad for your blood pressure.’
‘I have this blood pressure only because of you children. Idle son and ageing, choosy daughters. Who is to marry you all to give us grandchildren? Even your mother you have made ill.’ Mr Watumal wiped tears from his eyes with a napkin.
‘Do you realize the contacts I have, the kind of people I meet in hotels; millionaires, foreigners, bankers, the elite of the business world? One deal with men of this kind and I’m made for life,’ argued Mohan. He already saw his easy days retreating. He remembered the excruciating boredom of his time at the factory: the silent machines and abusive, striking men blocking their exit from the building, the dismal account books that no doctoring could enliven, the growing interest on large amounts of borrowed capital.
‘We should cut our losses and sell off the factory,’ Mohan announced.
‘Who will buy it?’ Mr Watumal replied. ‘To sell we must first pay off the liabilities.’
He had suffered several sleepless nights after learning from his wife the reason for Mohan’s broken engagement. But, where his wife vie
wed Mr Hathiramani’s comments as an act of betrayal – to her any subterfuge was permissible to bring about a wedding – Mr Watumal could not feel such aggression. He knew it was Mohan who was at fault. The idea of retirement had come to Mr Watumal suddenly. He felt too tired to cope any more. Things could hardly be worse than they were; on his own Mohan might show initiative. All Mr Watumal wanted to do was sleep.
He looked about their dingy room; the scratched wooden panelling on the walls, the frayed brocade of the sofas and chairs, the broken glass casing of the hidden lighting, the cracked plaster planters, the abundance of Elastoplast. Even the fronds of Lata’s devil’s-tongue plant seemed without vitality.
‘We are in need of a policy of dynamic action,’ Mr Watumal decided. Even the saying of these strong words made him feel better. ‘My dynamic action is to retire. Now let us see your use of it.’
‘Dynamic action?’ Mohan scoffed and, pushing back his chair, walked off abruptly to his room, slamming the door behind him. A mournful expression settled once more upon Mr Watumal’s features.
‘Go and tell him again, Lata, that from tomorrow I shall sit at home. I shall not relent. He will receive no more money from me. Let him earn his own.’ Mr Watumal reached out to pick up the morning paper. Lata and Sunita exchanged nervous glances. In her bedroom Mrs Watumal groaned.
*
‘You’re not paying attention, Mohan,’ Homi Engineer protested.
Ranjit Singh agreed. ‘Maybe he’s fallen in love.’
It was some weeks since Mohan had met Homi and Ranjit. Because of his father’s stubborn attitude, business discussions with his friends had had to be abandoned. He looked about, glad to be back in the Taj coffee shop. He had the feeling of returning to the world after a long, confining illness. Incarceration for days in the depressing factory, as if in a twilight world, where nothing moved and the machines grew dust, had worked a terrible change in Mohan. His father did not stir from the house, lethargically collecting from here or there the interest owed him on the bits of money he lent in various quarters of the city. It kept them in food, but little more. In the factory Mohan thumped desks and shouted orders. He locked out all the unruly workers, enticed them back in and then locked them out again, in fear of further disorder. They wanted more money and there was none. They wanted better conditions, and there was no money to improve things. A few machines started up and were stopped almost at once. Mohan studied account books and slammed them shut.