I handed her what I carried, another Harrod’s bag.
‘You fool,’ Jane cried, taking a look inside the bag. Then she planted a full-blooded kiss on my lips shamelessly.
Jane knew the museum, but not what I wanted her to see - its Indian section. She had a hundred questions to ask. Why did they paint such tiny pictures? Why did that goddess have four arms? Was this chair made of solid gold? Why this, why that?
‘Why do these swords and daggers have so many rubies and sapphires on them?’
‘They were made for Maharajahs and Mughal princes, baby.’
‘Does it make killing kinder with a bejewelled knife?’
‘These instruments of death were made to impress each other.’
‘They were hypocrites, your bloody Mughals.’ Jane insisted we did more culture. The air of museums and galleries proved to be a tonic to us both. There was a large Goya exhibition at the Royal Academy. The Spaniard took her breath away. We also went to see a living Spaniard’s pictures, Picasso’s, in a small private gallery in South Molton Street. She liked him even more.
‘Dad hates him. But I love him.’
In another gallery another day, we saw ‘action paintings’, the work of a group of artists called COBRA. Late the same afternoon, Jane took me to see a short film about COBRA artists at Hampstead’s Everyman Cinema. We saw in it an artist attack a canvas with a palette knife and thick paint like a maniac.
‘How passionate. As if he was making love,’ Jane commented.
On a visit to the British Museum, we loved everything Egyptian. But my love got besotted with the Elgin Marbles.
‘And you say they were all stolen by us?’
‘The whole world knows it’s true.’
‘In that case, we should give them back.’
‘Don’t say it too loudly, or they’ll throw us out.’
In the Tate, we enjoyed more Picassos. But Jane’s favourites were the Gauguins and the Van Goghs, especially the Van Goghs.
‘Poor sod. Cut off his ear for a woman.’ As Jane said that, I realised I would have cut off both my ears for this one.
One boy, one girl, one room. A complete world.
‘Raavi, I am so happy. I could die of it.’ She lay naked under the window with a glass of red wine, eyes closed.
‘Silly Billy.’ I too was naked. The afternoon sky had become very dark with flashes of lightning over Camden Town, followed by crackling thunder after an interval of only a few seconds. Minutes later, it became almost black and the flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder were simultaneous. The storm was being pulled towards us. Rain began to pelt down, huge drops hitting the roof deafeningly. The transformation was sudden and it was breathtaking.
‘Touch me,’ Jane said, extending her free hand towards me.
I moved closer. She was spread before me like a dream, aglow with yearning in the darkened room. I knelt by her side and brushed her hardened nipples with my lips, her navel with my tongue and then her thighs. I put my tongue deep in her.
‘Ummm,’ Jane muttered, pressing my tongue deeper. She heaved - she was almost gone. But she gently held my head back, saying, ‘Let’s go on the roof and make love there.’
‘What, in the storm?’
‘Yes. In the storm.’
‘But the lightning is striking right above us.’
‘I want you to make love to me in the storm.’
‘Lightning never strikes lovers, they say in India. So we should be safe. But are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ Jane opened her eyes and ran up the narrow staircase to the roof. I picked up something I thought we might need and followed. She had opened the Yale lock and was on the roof, lying down on its hard and wet surface. ‘Come inside me.’
Lightning flared riotously only a few hundred feet above us and rain hit our naked bodies, and Jane moaned deliriously as we made love. In a mighty gust of wind, we heard the door slam.
‘Oh, no,’ I said as I balanced myself on my elbows. Within minutes, the storm had moved on. The lightning became distant, the rain stopped. Suddenly, it was daylight again.
‘Buggery,’ Jane cried - We could be seen from the tall Houses behind my street. My knees and elbows hurt, but I found myself smiling. ‘You might like to know we are locked out, Baby.’
‘Oh, my God. People can see us!’ She clung to me, as if by doing so she had made herself invisible.
‘You are a funny girl, you know. What an idea!’
‘Raavi, what are we going to do?’
‘You’ll have to climb down the drainpipe, sweetheart.’
‘Can’t we kick the door in?’
‘Let’s try.’ We tried. It was useless. The door was solid.
‘Oh, shit,’ Jane wailed. ‘I am sure people can see. what on earth are we going to do?’
‘Only one thing. Climb down the drainpipe to the kitchen. There’s a window there.’
‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘How can I? I’m a Paki, aren’t I? If I’m seen, they’ll call the police and have me arrested for indecent exposure.’
‘And what will they do if they see me?’
‘Reward you for being a sight for sore eyes.’
‘What if I slip? That’ll be the end of me.’
‘Don’t worry, you won’t slip. It’s a mere six feet to the kitchen roof and the window. Where’s your Dunkirk Spirit?’
‘In Dunkirk. I don’t like it, Raavi.’
‘I don’t either. But what can we do?’
‘Okay, I’ll try. I bloody have to, haven’t I?’
‘Careful. Careful.’
‘Is anyone looking? Six feet, did you say?’
‘Don’t think about anything. Don’t look down. Just hang on to the drainpipe and climb.’
‘Raavi’, she called out as she went up.
‘You are doing fine. You are almost there. That’s it – there.’
‘Oh, buggery. I don’t believe it. The window is shut.’
‘Is it? Don’t worry. I’ll go down and open it.’ The thing I had picked up on my way up to the roof was the Yale key. I had slipped it under the strap of my watch. Now I took it out, unlocked the door and ran downstairs. I opened the kitchen window and pulled my love in.
‘You bastard! You son of a bitch!’ My love hit me on the chest with clenched fists and screamed and yelled and went on hitting me. Then she wrapped herself around me and laughed.
‘It wasn’t that difficult,’ she admitted. Nor dangerous. Only a little scary.
COME DINE WITH ME
Even from the street I could smell and tell. HMS Swami was loaded twice over the regulation limit, like an East Pakistan river ferry, and about to go under like many such ferries. Premonitory voices told me to stop, turn back and…
Lord Rameshwar opened the door. ‘At last,’ he said with a toothy grin and clasped me in his arms like a longlost one and only son.
‘Lord Rameshwar!’ By now we were surrounded. ‘Really!’ I cried, shame oozing out of every pore of my body.
‘So, I am sentimental. So what? Not my fault. I am Indian.’
‘But so am I, Lord Rameshwar.’
‘You can’t understand. Too young and too self-busy.’
I knew Lord Rameshwar was an unpredictable man. But this was unpredictability carried beyond the gates of Bollywood into the Arabian Sea of Absurdity.
‘Where have you been since you become English teacher? Months. Relegated us all to the warehouse of oblivion, hain?’
‘All right, all right, Rameshwar. Wipe them crocodile tears. Let him in.’ My boss rescued me. I was allowed to advance.
The entire Gujarati population of Southall had congregated under the Swami roof, clamouring legions of it - man, wife, kid-kiddies, song, scream, laughter and tear. Most of the gentlemen had come here in the wake of Indian Independence in 1947 when they were still British subjects and free to settle in Britain. Hardworking, they had a one-word dictionary: That word was MONEY and they knew how to make it, being Guj
arati. Wives followed, founding dynasties.
‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy!’ Little Bobby came tumbling down the stairs, howling in pain.
‘Darling. Darling.’ Mummy fainted.
‘Mummy. Mummy!’
‘What?’
‘I bit my tongue.’
Cute Lil Simmi was curled up in an armchair. She was turning the pages of an old copy of Chandamama for children in Hindi that she couldn’t read. She started weeping just like that, first gently then loudly. Her father, Manilal of India Travels, picked her up. ‘Simmi, piece of my heart. What’s the matter?’
‘Swallowed my sweet, Dad. I was having such a nice party in my mouth. I swallowed my sweet.’
‘Never mind, Mum will give you another.’
‘Simmi, bitia, you look lovely. Give us a flirt,’ the host said. The little girl obliged and fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly and everybody cried, ‘WOW!’
Kaku was lying lordly on a sofa. A man came and gently rearranged him to make room for himself. Kaku didn’t like it. He went down on all fours and roared like a tiger, putting his lamb of a young mum to shame. Mum pulled the palla of her sari to cover her head bashfully.
‘Kaku, come here.’ Kaku disobeyed and went on roaring till he collided with Bubbles, who was having a serious argument with Dimples. I thought of Jane. She must be getting off at her Wich station, I thought, and wished she was with me - she would would be a hit here.
‘Umm,’ Sweetness said, reminded of something. ‘The gobi. Needs a drop of water.’ With a tiny fist she measured the water she was going to put in the cauliflower being bhurjified in the kitchen. She gathered herself, sari and all, smiled at me and trundled off, saying over one plump shoulder, ‘Sushma is making mushrooms with imli and coconut milk. You go bonker, Ravi.’
The Swami kitchen was a lighthouse of maddening aromas - crushed spices, roasting spices, frying spice and frying garlic (I had gone half ‘bonker’ already). A number of ladies were noisily engaged there with pots and pans, and I wished she sat by my side. At the same time I also wanted to know what else besides cauliflower and prawns with tamarind and coconut milk was being cooked - I was shamelessly hungry. But you didn’t ask in an Indian household what you were getting. You waited. Yet I asked. I made a calculated remark in the hope it would fetch an answer to my unasked question.
‘Devastating smells, sir.’
‘Chanchal cooking her hubby’s favourite,’ Mr Gokul Swami said, pointing to Chanchal’s hubby, the six foot two, twenty-stone mountain of a man, Mr Bhudia. Mr Bhudia laughed. ‘And Priya is making her hubby’s favourite, puri kachouri. And my Best channa masala.’ I looked around for Priya’s husband and saw him heaped on the floor with a few five-year-olds assaulting him.
Sweetness was back, having watered her cauliflower.
‘Have you asked Raavi for water or tea or something, ji?’ This was what you were asked when you visited someone back home - will you have water or will you have tea?
‘I have. I have,’ lied Mr Gokul Swami - he had forgotten his host’s duties.
‘Why don’t you give him a beer?’
‘Let’s all have beer. You game, Bagria?’ Mr Bagria was my boss’s size, but well-fed. ‘And you, Mrs Chanchal’s hubby?’
‘So what are you doing with yourself these days, Ravi?’ Chanchal came on the scene and asked. She was tall and statuesque, a stately lady. Good-looking too. She should be modelling for Binney Sarees back home. And married to someone younger and a few stones lighter, I said to myself as I took in her shape, form and smile. But Chanchal didn’t seem at odds with her karma. Her smile said she was pleased about it. ‘I hear you been teaching English to English students!’ she added incredulously, answering her own question.
‘That so?’ said Mrs Pearl Necklace, Lil Simmi’s mum, her hand stopping her gaping mouth from widening further. ‘Why not? Why not? But I don’t see teaching line written on your palm. I see a more executive-type line.’
‘But it is just around the corner now, no? When the second Swami restaurant…’ said Bubble’s mother. Mr Gokul Swami gave me a funny look at the mention of his second restaurant. It said - women!
‘All will come with marriage and settling down,’ Simmi’s mum said.
‘Too young. Too, too young. Let him be on the let loose for a while, on the heartbreak circuit for one two years,’ Chanchal said with a mischievous laugh. ‘Plenty of time for boring things like marriage and settling.’
‘Chanchal!’ That mouth gaped again and the same hand shot up, this time in consternation, gestures followed by several other hands and mouths. Chanchal, the beautiful woman married to an ape-man, had uttered an ugly blasphemy of some sort and I wished we would become friends. I wanted Jane to meet her and I wanted Chanchal to teach her how to tie the sari. In fact I borrowed her sari and choli and put Jane in them on the spot and my God, didn’t she look something!
‘Chanchal, what are you saying?’ The young woman kept laughing wickedly. I looked from her to Mrs Pearl Necklace - what were they talking about?
‘I don’t understand, Auntie.’
‘No Auntie Shauntie. Name is Durga, okay? I am modern type. No Auntie Shauntie.’
‘Beer. Beer,’ Mr Bhudia urged Mr Gokul Swami.
‘Help yourself, bhai. And us.’ Mr Gokul Swami pointed to where the beer was - right behind Mr Bhudia in a cardboard box.
As bottles were opened and handed around, I became aware of a pair of hauntingly sad and exquisite eyes. The face they belonged to was spine-chillingly beautiful. She was my age and obviously newly married, for she wore colourful silk and shiny gold ornaments. I picked up from bits of conversation around me that her name was Lakshmi. She hardly spoke and looked unhappy. I wondered who her husband was, for there was no contemporary of ours around. Every male adult in sight was in his late forties or early fifties. As if the tall and pleasant-looking Mr Sethu next to me had heard me think, he whispered, ‘That rag king toad Gopinath’s missus.’
‘But.’ Mr Gopinath was at least fifty.
‘Arranged marriage - or arranged life sentence, you can say, Raavi. India! I am Raj Sethu. I work at Heathrow airport.’
‘I know.’ I knew the whole Who’s Who of the Swami guest-list.
Just then, Veena and three friends rushed into the room. In the same movement, they rushed out, eliciting a multithroated cry from the smaller children, ‘Veena! Sarita!’ Dimples held an empty Smarties tube in her mouth. Bubbles snatched it away. Dimples pulled Bubbles’ hair. Bubbles scratched Dimples on the face and both started howling. But no one took any notice. The gentlemen were sipping beer and the ladies were gathered around the glamorous newlywed in gold. Annoyed that no one was taking notice of them, Bubbles and Dimples took it out on each other in open warfare. Fierce fighting broke out - scratching, biting, kicking. The mothers came and led their charges away, both screaming:
‘I hate you.’
‘I hate you.’
‘Drop dead.’
‘You first. Now.’
Dinner. The room came alive again.
‘Wah wah, wah wah,’ the gentlemen applauded as piping hot dish after piping hot dish made its appearance on the table. I stole a glance at Lakshmi. She stole a glance at me at the same time and I sighed in longing for my love to be there, inhaling the aromas, eating with me.
‘So?’ Auntie Chanchal demanded of me when I dipped into her Husband’s favourite dish, dandals - cauliflower stems cooked with crushed pomegranate seeds.
‘Finger-looking, begum,’ replied Mr Bhudia for me.
‘Didn’t ask you, ji.’ His wife chided him sweetly, still looking at me.
‘Finger-looking.’ I imitated her husband and loved to see him murder the English language - the Swami house was a licensed abattoir of it.
‘And the mushroom?’ the maker of mushrooms asked no one in particular.
‘I bet you a fiver Queen eating only quarter as good tonight,’ said Mr Bagria, the gold merchant to Mr Raj Sethu. Mr Sethu didn’t find the re
mark interesting, his look said.
‘These English. Lived in India two hundred years, but the damn fools learnt not a thing about food,’ Lord Rameshwar said. ‘What, not eating dandal, Sethu sahib? Masterpiece, janab. Bhudia madam-handmade. Try one or two at least.’
Kaku refused to eat. Mum seated him on the floor cross-legged and pushed a plateful in his lap. Kaku turned his face away. Mum slapped him on his head with the word, ‘Eat.’
‘Didn’t hurt.’
‘Eat.’ Slap on the other side, a little harder.
‘Didn’t hurt.’ Slap number three was a slap on the cheek. Out came the tears and a wail but Kaku started eating - crying, but eating - and I wondered what Jane would have made of all this.
There were at least twenty people in the Swami house. To feed so many was not just a matter of funds, I said to myself. More a matter of the heart. My boss had a good heart. The Bossni too. And now she was smiling at me - she was always smiling at me.
‘Raavi, you eat too, too much. Okay? You hog.’ It was not a reprimand. It was a command.
I sat cross-legged on the floor like in a temple with all the other guests around, heaped plates in our laps. I turned around and saw that Veena and her friends sat behind me with their backs towards us all, facing the window.
‘Veena, piece of the moon, bad manners to give back to guests. Have you no etiquette?’ Sweetness admonished. Veena and friends had no ears either. They burst out laughing and rocked from side to side.
‘Leave her,’ Mr Gokul Swami said. Veena and her friends picked up their plates and vanished up the stairs. They reappeared only when the pudding came. In fact, they brought it. The pudding was kheer, ‘everybody’s favourite’ - rice in milk cooked for two hundred hours on a very low fire. Flavoured with kiora essence, it was ravishing and velvety and it winked at me with raisins and almonds and pistachio nuts.
Veena and her friends were in charge of the kheer. The sexy Sarita and another girl carried the enormous pot between them. A third girl, Shashi, gave out stainless steel bowls and Veena dished out the kheer with a stainless steel ladle. When the kheer quartet came to me, I held my hand up. I didn’t want any - I had eaten ‘too much’. The girl still put the bowl in my hands and Veena filled it, ladle after ladle.
Indian Magic Page 17