Our boss was going on about his pet subject when I arrived a little early one payday. Jagan, Prohit, Hari, Ranji and Co listened as if they were listening to the greatest story ever told - they valued their jobs. By just moving his index finger he found me a place in the raptly attentive audience. I loved to hear him talk about the war, as I never understood what had happened.
‘The Churchill - all England have to fight the Hitler. Others come after - Monty-Shonty. Later. But first is the Churchill and last is the Churchill, man with the finest hour. It is he who give it to England. An why are you all looking at me like idiots? Haven’t you got work to do? Go get changed. Go. Customers coming.’
‘Swami sahib-ji, sir, it was you who called us to hear the lecture,’ Ranji dared say once and received the look he deserved.
‘Go, go, go.’
We were paid in ten shilling notes. ‘More notes make you feel richer,’ Gokul Swami used to say. Perhaps he felt so himself, shelling out so many notes. He would hand out our brown envelopes at three p.m. or so on payday. Today he handed me mine as the others did what they were dying to do, escape from the lecture theatre. I made my way to the Gents to get changed.
‘Better is you count while you change,’ Mr Swami said. I counted. My boss had made a mistake. There were nineteen ten-bob virgin pink-brown notes instead of eighteen. A voice in me said keep quiet about the extra. But RKM could not.
‘Mr Swami, you made a mistake,’ I said, coming out.
‘Shhh. Mistake on purpose.’
‘But?’ I couldn’t believe another rise so soon.
‘No but-shut. What but-shut? Put in pocket.’ I did, said thank you very much and turned.
‘Listen,’ Mr Swami called me back. ‘Mrs Isswami say you go and put sofa back. Pooja isseason finish.’ I knew there was a catch. It wasn’t a rise or anything of the sort. Only coolie money. I didn’t like it.
‘Mr Swami, I am only a temporary waiter in your restaurant, not a family servant. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I want it to be properly understood.’
‘What you talking about servant-shervant? Nonsense.’
‘I have a feeling I am being treated as one.’
‘Nonsense. Go see she treat you like son.’
‘But I have an appointment at four.’
‘Who you meeting? English girl? English girl good for what? How many times I told you keep arm length from her?’
‘I am not meeting an English girl, sir.’
‘Promise? Good. Go then. Mrs Isswami very, very nice.’ Mrs Swami was. Very, very nice.
‘Mistake God made - He forgot to put the England in the Siberia. Mistake we made - we came here,’ she said, brushing snow off my coat with her hands.
‘Good mistake, Mrs Swami.’ I pointed to her body gold.
‘Hard work. All his life.’
‘In India too they work. All their lives.’
‘Also a matter of karma. English karma better. English people must have done good things in their last life.’
‘The sofa, Mrs Swami?’
‘First tea-cup.’ I drank the tea in double quick time. I wanted to move the furniture as fast as I could and get the hell out of there.
‘You are missing home? Is written all over your face.’ I did not want to talk about home. Not with Mrs Swami.
‘Come on Sunday for home-cook lunch. Tell Auntie what you like and she cook. Just like your mother.’ I could not understand any of it. Me, a mere waiter being treated by her as a son? The furniture moved, I made a run for it.
‘On Sunday at one.’ Mrs Swami stopped me at the door.
The three extra ten-shilling pinkies in my pocket were singing notes of delight, making me go a-ting-a-ling like a bicycle bell, as Ranji would have said. I threw in a few more and went where I had been longing to go – Harrods. The famous Sale was in full swing. I treated myself to a shirt and a nice tie. Then I came face to face with someone who had made a small contribution towards my shopping.
‘Hello, sir.’ The man was taken aback - an Indian waiter in Harrods!
‘Hello, there,’ he said with a warm smile, and nearly stopped. But he did look back as he walked away.
Saturday was long in coming. We took the train from Paddington. Fifteen minutes later, we had arrived in Little India. The streets were small-town English, but those who packed them were grey-brown men, women and children in heavy-duty Saturday shopping clothing. A newfound affluence shone in every face, but it had not been kind to the ladies; their bosoms bulged and hips flared.
‘The People of Southall,’ Ranji said, ‘have eaten themselves from wall-to-wall. English coat doesn’t suit Indian woman. The sari suits even big boobs and big behind. Not so the long coat It turns her into a sack of popatatoes. Bursting.’ The shops were also bursting.
‘Will India ever be like this, Ranji?’
‘What full of sacks of popatatoes?’
We loaded ourselves like camels with the boss’s shopping and headed for Ranji’s aunt’s street. Strings of coloured light bulbs draped the marriage house from top to toe. It shone like Harrod’s on Christmas Eve. The snow setting made it into a dream. As we got close to it, we saw a knot of people, mostly men, standing idly outside it.
‘Wait a minute,’ Ranji said. He sensed that something was wrong. After parking our stuff safely, we had only to set foot inside to find out what. Men, women and children in colourful, festive clothes filled the place but the expression they wore was fit only for a funeral. Ranji looked at me. ‘Fuck me rigid,’ he uttered. The wedding house was in mourning. A young man came and embraced Ranji in greeting.
‘Oi, Biloo, what’s this? An untimely something?’
‘What shall I tell? Believe it or not, she’s run away.’
‘Who?’ It was a stupid question - even I had guessed who - and Biloo didn’t bother to answer Ranji.
‘The barat groom’s party is on its way for wedding and dinner. Should be arriving in one hour. We have lovely dinner to give, but no lovely bride. She’s gone.’
‘Where’s Auntie Dikshit?’
‘She’s going.’
‘Where?’ Stupid question number two.
‘There.’ The man raised a finger above his head. ‘She’s collapsed under the weight of grief. Her heart is failing. It’s touch and go. Any minute. Unless Divia comes back.’
‘Did she have a secret lover?’
‘No. And that is the thing, you see?’
‘No. Explain like a man’s son.’
‘She had her best friends Rani and Geeta and Chandi helping decorate her. Then she dismiss them, lock herself up, open back window and vanish. In thin air. In white snow.’
‘Divia must have a secret lover.’
‘No. Rani says she gives guarantee. She knows everything.’
‘I don’t buy that.’
‘True, she does, that Rani. She says she run away not because she don’t like the groom man who is handsome. She run away because she don’t want to get married so young - only eighteen, bloody hell. Don’t blame her. And Rani says she knows where she gone. But she won’t open her mouth because of friendship. Bloody Rani. And in the meantime life is going out of Auntie Dikshit like air from a flat tyre.’
A great tragedy was unfolding. The barat, two hundred plus of the groom’s party, was coming from Bradford in coaches and cars. It was on the road. It could not be contacted. Whatever would happen when it got here? SHAME. I suggested to Ranji to beat a retreat and leave the poor folk alone, rather than add to their embarrassment by hanging around. As he decided what to do, word came that they were taking Rani to see Auntie Dikshit - when Rani saw the state she was in, she might open her mouth.
We followed Rani and the others. Auntie Dikshit was a sight. A typical Southall lady, she was sprawled out on a double bed, gasping for breath and frothing. Every other second she threw her arms and legs about and broke into an uncontrollable sobbing fit. Ladies tending to her had to sit on her feet and hands to contain her. It was a heart-re
nding spectacle. Rani’s heart was rended.
‘OK. I’ll tell you where Divia might be. At Miss Black’s, her old English teacher. But don’t go to fetch her. She might do something silly to herself. Let me phone Miss Black.’
‘Just tell her what she’s doing to her mother,’ said Ranji. Rani was right. The bride-to-be was with Miss Black. Rani first spoke to Miss Black, then to Divia and to Miss Black again, telling her what her ex-pupil was doing to her mum.
‘Miss Black, I don’t think her mum will last much longer. She is half dead already really.’
‘Oh, dear. That won’t do.’ We heard Miss Black crackle. Rani shooed us away and spoke to her best friend once more. When she had finished, she stood up, radiating a look of triumph.
‘Let’s go and fetch her.’ Rani went with Uncle Brij and Auntie Devki in their car. Geeta and Chandi went with them. They were back in twenty minutes with the runaway bride, duly dolled up in red silk, the bridal colour, looking ravishingly beautiful. As for Auntie Dikshit, she made the quickest recovery in medical history. With the bride back in it, the marriage house began to pulsate with life, a colossal beehive gone colossally mad.
Ranji’s aunt’s hands were full. But she dropped everything when she saw her nephew and clasped him to her spilling cleavage. Then she went berserk. She started hitting him, yelling, ‘Son of a whore, son of a pimp,’ and Ranji laughed. Dumbfounded, I looked at the fifty women and children who stood witness to this touching aunt-nephew reunion.
‘She is happy. He never comes, bad boy,’ Biloo said.
It was time for Ranji to introduce me. Auntie Dikshit smiled broadly - only a know-all sage would have guessed that she had just been at the verge of extinction. Covering her head with her sari, she passed a hand over my head with auntlike love. She stole my heart with the touch of her hand.
‘Ranjit is family. So are you. And this family only has one thing to give - love. But today it has another - good food. So eat. And stop not. When you stop eating, I stop talking to you. Hear me?’ I fell in love with Auntie Dikshit.
The house on the right and the house on the left of the marriage house had been loaned to the Dikshits for the occasion. One hundred men – clean-shaven, moustachioed, bearded, turbaned, bald; two hundred women - fat, thin, beautiful and ugly; and three hundred children, filled them. There were only half a dozen white faces among them. Ranji took me on a conducted tour. Halfway through we gave up. We were finished by the shimmer of silk, the stab of red lips and the arrow of mascaraed eyes. We fell in love in every room on every floor and those eyes said ‘we too’. But we were not allowed to talk. So the twain could not meet.
‘India fucking India,’ Ranji moaned. ‘Even in England it has us by the balls. Queen Victoria still rules us. Even here.’
We ate like pigs. We went to sleep with ten others in the same room. Like everyone else, we slept in the clothes we wore.
‘We Indians believe in togetherness.’ were Ranji’s last words as a sort of ‘good night’.
GURUS AND GOONDAS
Mr Gokul Swami noticed my new shirt and tie straight away. The ‘thirty-two-tooth grin’ it brought on him made me wish I was dead, or at least had not worn them. For I could hear him think, Ah, the boy wanted to impress. So he went and bought these to wear.
‘Issmart. Tip and top. Hey, Issweetness. Come look.’ He helped me with my coat and led me to the living room. He sat me on the sofa I knew so well and then sat down next to me, embarrassing me by sitting so close to me - the sofa was half a bloody mile in length. A strong smell of paraffin came from a tall cylindrical heater next to the gas fire. There was another equally strong smell. It came from half-burnt joss sticks stuck in the earth of a potted plant on the mantelpiece. The blend! Can people be smell-blind?
‘I hate this country,’ he sighed.
‘But you love it, sir, being a Queenist and a Philipist.’
‘Look - two heaters in one room and isstill my hand is frozen.’ Mr Gokul Swami gave me his hand to feel. It was ten degrees warmer than mine. I was still feeling his hand when Mrs Swami walked in and I felt an utter idiot - holding her husband’s hand. ‘Issweetness, you tell him how I hate this country.’ My boss made no effort to retrieve his hand.
Mrs Swami wore a blue sari with red and white flowers and a green cardigan. She aimed an endorsing smile at us, hitched up her sari and settled down in front of me in a chair with a deafening thud. I stood up and gave her the little something I had brought for her, a box of Cadbury’s chocolates.
‘Arre baba, what? Can’t accept. Not this house,’ she said, astonished, as if I was offering her something contraband, narcotics of some sort.
Now I was astonished. I didn’t understand. Everybody gives gifts. Especially to one’s boss, or, in this case, to his wife. In India, the bosses expect gifts, expensive gifts. A box of chocolates back home would be an insult to the boss; it would mean you didn’t want to stay in your job.
‘What Issweetness mean is you take it back and eat in your room. Gujarati house this. Explain the rest another time. Now drink. In issmart society they drink before dinner. You drink?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good boy. As I expected. But make exception today. Exceptional day.’
I failed to see what was exceptional about today. Perhaps being invited to lunch by an Indian boss, whose food I ate daily in any case, did make it exceptional.
‘How about we share a beer bottle? I like beer on Sunday. No work. No worry. Queen in the Buckingham. Macmillan in the Downing. I am in the Pimlico. Peace and quiet.’
‘I also like English Sunday,’ Mrs Swami said.
‘One beer, Issweetness. No, two. Ravi is a big boy. How tall?’
‘Five foot eleven and a quarter, sir.’
Mrs Swami produced two 33cl bottles of Lowenbrau lager.
‘German bottle. Best beer.’
‘But Mrs Swami, I don’t drink.’
‘Make exception. Exceptional day. Civilised country. One drink before food is no harm done. Good for appetite.’
Reluctantly, I accepted the glass of beer and froth. Reluctantly, because in India you didn’t drink with your boss. Then I looked around the room. Two framed pictures on the wall behind the dining table caught my eye - I hadn’t noticed them on my two previous visits. Mr Gokul Swami went and took them off the nails by which they were hung and brought them over to show me. They were watercolours of bleak-looking houses with barred doors and windows. They were strange and sad pictures. But were painted well.
‘I didn’t know you were so talented, sir.’
‘Not me, you fool.’ Mr Gokul Swami slapped me on the thigh.
‘Mrs Swami?’
‘No, no, no. What’s the matter with you? Another guess.’ My boss gave me another slap, as if to help me guess right. I guessed it. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. It was a delicate matter. I was in an Indian house. ‘Yes. Girl is full of talent. Has first-class singing voice too.’
‘Like her Aunt Sona back, my sister,’ Mrs Swami said.
‘See other paintings. All worth framing, no, Issweetness? Food ready? And table?’
‘Veena! VEENA! Come lay the table, girl.’ I felt I should make myself useful. I stood up.
‘Not in my house.’ Mrs Swami pushed me back on the sofa.
Veena arrived immediately, as if she had been waiting outside the door. She wore colourful Indian clothes again and looked very pleased with herself. She was done up like I had seen her the first time - ready for a party or something. But in spite of all that colour and mascara and the rest, she looked what she was - plain. I was ashamed of myself for thinking like that. It was ungallant.
‘Veena, you’ve met Raavi. He’s going to work in Magic Number Two.’ This was the first I had heard about it. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Indian Magic Number Two. Place in Queensway off Bayswater that Rameshwar found. Coming and going area with much passing trade. Taking you there after lunch.’
‘Me? Why me,
sir?’
‘Who else? Those Lallu Panjoo Tom Dick Harry Jagan and Prohit? No customer talk to them. They all talk to you. Beside.’ Mr Swami mentioned the word ‘connections’.
The mother and daughter laid the table. There were only two places and the food came pronto, pronto. Yum yum yum. It was vegetarian and Gujarati vegetarian food was renowned throughout India as being simply the best of the best. Finger-licking best.
‘Indian custom - men eating first. Our culture. Must keep our culture. All India have culture. What? All culture culture and no agriculture. Why we isstarve. Issizzling joke that. No?’ My boss laughed heartily. I laughed like him. The meal over, Mrs Swami and Veena came, smiling identically,
‘My dears, you have conquered,’ Mr Swami told them. ‘Without doubting a shadow.’
‘Without doubting a shadow,’ I concurred with a long nod.
‘Raavi, now we go. Isstraight line to Bayswater.’
We went. Queensway was jampacked, even though it was a Sunday and the pavements were frozen. The place turned out to be quite handsome – twice as large as our Pimlico set-up and better proportioned, too. It was owned by a half-asleep Turk who nodded his head even before you spoke to him.
‘Not even one thou - not even,’ my boss whispered during our inspection of the place. The Turk, hands clasped behind his back like Prince Philip, was miles behind us. ‘Peanut.’
‘Why is it so cheap, sir?’ Was it? I had no idea.
‘Because.’ Mr Gokul Swami did not elaborate. I nodded my head as if I knew exactly what he meant. ‘So what you think?’
‘I think you are onto something, sir.’
‘First we move in. Then we move the Turrki out - he has the upisstairs.’ We nodded to each other and to ourselves as we inspected the place. The Turk followed us at a distance, looking bored. ‘Leave him to me. I’ll handle him. I know his type,’ Mr Swami said to me in Hindi. ‘We are looking. We are looking,’ he said to the man in English. We looked everywhere.
Indian Magic Page 7