Priya

by Namita Gokhale

  Suresh was not home. Luv wasn’t bothered by his father’s absence. In fact, by the time Ramdhan brought him a cup of hot tea and biscuits, he seemed to have distinctly cheered up. ‘It’s cool to be home, Mom,’ he smiled. ‘It really is. You mustn’t take notice of all the garbage I talk.’

  I smiled back idiotically in response. My first born has that effect on me. He is, like Kush, smarter and brighter than Suresh or me, though maybe we might match them if there was anything around to wake us up. This generation is just more focussed and determined than we ever were. Better looking too!

  In the afternoon, father and son spent what Suresh likes to grandly call ‘quality time’ together. My husband emerged from his fathering session looking sanctimonious. Luv was half-dozing on the settee, looking bored but complacent. He winked at me as I walked into the room. ‘Take my advice, Dad—’ he exclaimed cheekily to Suresh’s departing figure, ‘get a life.’

  ‘If only . . .’ I told myself. ‘Me too, please!’

  Suresh was leaving for a day for Chennai, to lay the foundation stone for something or the other. We hadn’t talked to each other all through the morning; that was increasingly the pattern of our lives. Now he planted a kiss on my cheek as he left. ‘Everything all right, Priya?’ he stated, rather than asked, and departed without waiting for a reply. Only for you, I thought to myself.

  ‘I have to go to Mumbai for a day,’ I called after him. ‘Bhaiyya has invited me there—I’m to be the chief guest for an awards ceremony.’

  ‘Make sure Madam is looked after in Mumbai,’ he barked, in the direction of his Assistant Private Secretary. ‘And take Luv with you, Priya.’

  He left in a flurry of excitement and importance I would never have imagined possible for the stolid lawyer I had married in that other lifetime when we were young. It demonstrated only that anything is possible; in fact, as I sometimes feel, the more unlikely a thing is, the greater the chances of it happening.

  I was still not used to Luv’s new look, to the very odd safety pins. That night, he came to my bedroom with his face scrubbed clean and his long hair tied up in a ponytail. My heart skipped a beat. This was my baby—mine once again, even if the safety pins were in his face rather than in his diapers.

  My sons speak to me in English, sometimes Hinglish. ‘Kya baat hai, beta?’ I ventured tenderly, in what is, after all, our mother tongue. Luv remained silent and unresponsive, and I switched back to English. ‘Is there a problem, son?’

  ‘Of course there is!’ Luv wailed. ‘Why else would I leave my life there and return to all these bakwaas things I had left behind? Oh Maa, I need you! I missed you so much—’ And he burst into sobs, my tough independent son.

  ‘Oh Maa, I need you.’ Indian mothers sacrifice their entire lives, in films and in real life, only in the hope of someday hearing these precise words. I concealed my joy and gratification behind a mask of motherly concern. ‘No beta, no tears, men don’t cry!’ I exclaimed, stroking the hair I had once brushed and combed and oiled.

  That seemed to accelerate the tear trigger. After a range of ‘Oh Maa, oh Maa’ sobs, Luv stopped weeping and switched to a subdued sheepish smile.

  ‘Umm . . . Maybe you should know that I was engaged to be married. Was. It’s all over now. We’ve broken up. I’m ready to start life afresh.’

  ‘So he isn’t gay.’ The thought flashed through my mind like a strobe light. The visible lack of suspects in my sons’ sexual lives had often puzzled me, there was an unspoken fear I lived with, too afraid to name it.

  ‘Who? When? Where?’ I asked, trying from experience to curb my raging curiosity. Ask no questions, and it is possible you may get replies from your children.

  ‘Well—it—she—was a girl called Monalisa. Monalisa Das Mann. She was—is—a Bengali Sikh from the States. Classic ABCD. Doesn’t know her butter chicken from her hilsa, and wants to return to her roots.’

  I disliked her already, this girl called Monalisa. ‘What’s an ABCD?’ I asked, though I knew the answer. It was the sort of question Luv wouldn’t object to. By demonstrating my ignorance rather than my curiosity, I might elicit more answers. That’s always been my strategy with the boys.

  ‘An American Born Confused Desi,’ he replied patiently. ‘Monalisa’s parents are academics. Her mother specializes in Virginia Woolf and Commonwealth literature—her father teaches a course on D.H. Lawrence and another on Dislocation and Hybridity. All po co and loco.’

  I was losing the thread. ‘Have you met her parents? I hope she isn’t pregnant. Does anybody know?’

  An amused smile broke through the tragic pose. ‘Know? Does anybody know?’ he said, mimicking my tone with cruel accuracy. ‘Yes, Mom, everybody knows. Or will know. Monalisa is busy writing a misery memoir . . . a tell all non-fiction narrative about our breakup. Now she says it’s healed her. She wants us to get together again.’

  ‘Is she a nice girl?’ I asked.

  Luv winced. ‘Don’t tread on me, Maa, with your middle-class definitions. No, Monalisa Das Mann isn’t nice. She’s insatiably sexy, intolerably bright, weirdly wicked. But no, Monalisa cannot be classified as a nice Indian girl. That’s why I fell in love with her!’

  ‘So let me find you one,’ I said. ‘A nice Indian girl . . .’

  A mask descended upon his face. ‘Read my lips,’ he said, the muscles of his face settling and resettling in a way that might have been comic if I wasn’t so concerned. ‘I’m still hurting. I need time. I need to stay at home for a month, maybe a year. Turn vegetarian, eat dal chawal, learn classical music—maybe the sitar.’

  ‘And take the safety pins off your face,’ I ventured. Luv ignored that.

  ‘Or I could learn vocal music,’ he enthused, ‘instead of the sitar! Join a gharana, loop up with tradition. That would be cool. I need to know India again, to connect with my inner self. Not by scrabbling for political power, like my esteemed twin Kush—but something more spiritual. Maybe I should join yoga classes. Or a Vipassana course. Could you find me a guru?’

  ‘The guru will find you,’ I replied loftily. Indian spirituality is like a game of table tennis, one just has to know how to return the ball. And Luv certainly has no aptitude for politics, he’s too nice for it. ‘I’m going to Mumbai tomorrow,’ I continued. ‘Maybe you could come with me. Your Papa isn’t in Delhi either—it would be a nice change for both of us.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he replied. ‘And I don’t want to call him Papa anymore. What’s the right word in Hindi, Maa? Papa ji? or Daddy ji? Maybe Babu ji? or Pita ji? Ya, that’s it! Pita ji!’ This was accompanied by a maniacal laugh. Then he was gone, fled from the room, my son, my little boy.

  Luv returned, holding my painting in his hand. ‘Who did this?’ he asked, in a tone I couldn’t decipher.

  ‘I did,’ I confessed, a little uncertain—was that the right answer?

  He embraced me with one hand, waving the painting up and down with the other. ‘My mother is an artist!’ he cheered. ‘I knew it all along! I’ll get it framed and hang it in my room, Mataji.’

  That made my day. How we doting mothers just need a few kind words!

  Kush called too, from the US. He seemed in exceptionally good spirits. ‘I just spoke to Papa in Chennai,’ he said, ‘so I thought I better talk to you as well, Mummie. I’ve bought you some really nice skin care cream from here. Don’t let my evil twin take over my kingdom while I’m away.’

  WE WERE BOOKED ON THE 9 O’CLOCK FLIGHT TO MUMBAI. I CALLED Suresh on his mobile before I left home, but there was no answer. I checked the number of his hotel with his PA and dialled again from the landline. The reception kept me on hold for a very long time, during which I listened patiently to a jhinchak piano version of a Bollywood remix medley.

  Finally, a woman picked up the phone. ‘Hello,’ she said, in a sultry sort of voice.

  ‘May I speak to Mr Suresh Kaushal, please?’ I asked politely. There was a sort of echo in the phone connection, and I could hear my question re
peated loud even as I said it. ‘May I speak to Mr Suresh Kaushal please?’ Maybe the speakerphone was on.

  ‘Oh, Suresh is in the shower!’ the voice drawled. ‘Who should I say called?’

  ‘This is his wife,’ I replied.

  ‘This is his wife,’ the line echoed again, in a high voice that sounded oddly self-conscious. A suppressed giggle on the other end, and then the woman who had answered the phone put it down again.

  Over the years I have trained myself not to fly into jealous rages. A happy secure marriage is founded on trust. I must trust Suresh, it’s a reasoned approach, not a form of denial. But the phone call set me thinking. It’s not that I’m stupid, only that, like other Indian women of my generation, I’ve been trained to always shut my eyes—in prayer, in marriage, during the afternoon Horror Show. Think of our epics. In the Mahabharata, Queen Gandhari blindfolded herself, she shut her eyes and stopped looking at the world because her husband was blind. It’s in our culture.

  I could confront him. Ask who she was. Suresh would present a convincing defence and leave me looking feeling, foolish. After all, it wasn’t as if I could walk out on him, leave him—such manic, unconceivable thoughts! Being an Indian wife, being a woman past fifty, I calmed myself down and refused to think about who might have taken the call in my husband’s hotel bedroom while he was in the shower.

  It’s a short flight to Mumbai, just an hour and fifty minutes from Delhi, but a lifetime away for me. I was a Bombay girl when I got married. It has a new name now. And in thirty years it has grown so much that I scarcely recognize it, while I’ve morphed into one of those Dilliwalas that Mumbaikars are both in awe and slightly suspicious of.

  I had been invited by the RSSMS, a Marwari Social Service Institute. Something to do with a rapidly expanding Pharma Company of which my brother Atul is a Director. His boss Mr Mittal has ventured into a ‘Swadeshi Foodmart’ retail chain, possibly prompting them to decide that I was the person best suited to hand out their ‘8 GR8 Indian Women’ awards. It was only family loyalty that had made me overlook my dislike for Atul’s obnoxious wife Dolly and reluctantly accept his summons to be the VVIP chief guest.

  Luv and I landed at Chhatrapati Shivaji airport at midday. I draped my pallav elegantly around my shoulders as we alighted. I had dressed carefully: chiffon sari, pearl necklace, a nice handbag. I was pleased with the effect, but my artistic son was forthright in his condemnation. ‘You look so dated, Mom!’ he exclaimed, with a candour I did not find disarming. ‘So last century. Like an old hull enroute to the ship-breaking yard at Alang to be dismantled! What’s the image? Who are you trying to project?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just being me,’ I said casually, though I was actually furious with Luv for his thoughtlessness, too near the truth if only I could admit it.

  ‘What is a face really? . . ..That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest?’ he persisted. The young think they have a monopoly on being cruel. Luv wasn’t actually looking that great himself, what with his strategically inserted safety pins and his dirty unwashed hair and the torn jeans that cost a fortune. But the rules of the game forbade me from voicing this. It wasn’t cool.

  ‘Picasso said that, not you!’ I retorted. That startled him— would he suspect that I had been snooping through his papers?

  My brother Atul had made his way inside the security cordon to receive us. Breaking security protocol is another way of showing off. Dolly and Atul are always desperately trying to demonstrate their status and self-worth against the unexpected barometer of my husband’s dizzying rise up the greasy pole of national politics. That’s what I think, anyway. And it’s pathetic.

  It’s unsettling to observe them together, Atul and Luv. There is something of my brother in my sons, in the slightly receding chin, the slouch of the shoulders. I hope the resemblance ends there; Atul has never figured in my pantheon of heroes. Would he have been better if he had gone through a safety pin phase?

  I am still a Bombay girl at heart. The smell of the city, remembered and forgotten—the sharp reek of Bombay Duck, the stench of drying Bombil fish, the sudden sea breeze—connected me to the young woman I once was. We were in the middle of the monsoon season but magically it wasn’t raining and all of Mumbai seemed to have hung their washing out to dry. Every window in the city threw out flexed aluminium spokes to salute my arrival, the waving vests and underwear and multicoloured saris flagging their affectionate welcome.

  The air conditioning neutralized the smell of fish. The car smelt only of my brother’s aftershave, slathered on in industrial quantity. My son’s unexpected resemblance to my brother began to get on my nerves. I caught a sudden glimpse of my face in the rear view mirror, the neck grey, scraggly, wrinkled as chicken- skin, grotesque. This was not me—Priya Kaushal—as I remembered her to be. Kush’s expensive ultra skin-care cream was spot on. I rearranged my chiffon sari pallav and concentrated on looking important and imperious. That’s the thing about growing older— you notice it happening to other people and then, one day, it hits you that you are one of them.

  I was booked at the Taj Mahal hotel, in the old building. We took the Parel road. My son was behaving like a tourist. ‘Look Maa!’ he exclaimed, tugging at my sari. ‘It’s so cool! We’re passing Dharavi— the largest slum in Asia . . . Shit, man, that’s where the action is! I want to check out Dharavi—maybe this afternoon?’

  That sort of talk gets my goat. ‘Dharavi isn’t Disneyland, Luv,’ I snapped. ‘You don’t go there to send out post-cards on poverty! Remember, your papa’s a politician.’

  ‘But it’s so totally awesome,’ he replied. ‘I mean, it’s about the human spirit, about endeavour. All those slumdogs carrying on with their lives anyhow. I know all about it—I’ve seen this cool docu on it, on Discovery. And then I know this guy in New Mexico whose brother made a documentary film about it . . . Garbage recycling, illicit liquor, informal industries—in fact, did you know that they even do cough syrup and whiteners to get high? It’s all there, a real glimpse into the real India. Weird!’

  Atul had been trying to get a word in. ‘Dharavi is really growing very fast indeed,’ my brother declared righteously, as though the credit for this accrued somehow to him. ‘And there is a reputable tourist company that is running safe and reliable “Reality Tours”. They take you around in an AC coach and the profit is ploughed back. Five per cent returns to poor!’

  I shut out his bleating and looked outside. An abandoned textile mill had a red flag hanging limply from the roof. A sign carved on the cement façade said ‘Swadeshi Cotton Mills; Mumbai 1953’. That was the year I was born. I was as old as that building. It was as old as me.

  ‘Dharavi is on take-off now,’ my brother continued. ‘It is full of promise. Three thousand crore rupees turnover . . . Great redevelopment plans . . . Our Chairman says . . .’

  ‘Maa, I’m confused. All this nine per cent growth rate and all that buzz! Where’s it really happening?’ Luv asked me. We had both completely ignored Atul, but he seemed not to have noticed.

  V.T. loomed ahead. Victoria Terminus Station in all its restored glory. It looked magically young again, every stone shining as though it had suffered a facial. And then we were at the Taj Mahal hotel, the old wing gracious and well maintained, the ‘new’ tower wing still looking like a tacky Air India advert. The Gateway of India standing guard, with its usual crowds of people and churning ferry boats.

  If Paro could see me now! I glided up the black marble steps into the humming lobby, in my designer glasses and my discreet chiffon sari, the pearls on my neck soothing the sag. I was somebody now, not the mousy secretary she had once scorned.

  The Taj Mahal Hotel is a mystical temple to success. Its over- decorated lobby was bathed in a cool soft light that muted the throbbing clash of colours. Atul’s chairman, a smiling Mr Mittal, was waiting there, flanked by two young women brandishing garlands of marigold flowers. These were presented to me and Luv. Mr Mittal handed me a bouquet of pink roses for good measu
re and then they left. I felt important, even if the pink roses clashed with the yellow garlands.

  ‘Dolly will call you later in the evening, Priya Didi,’ Atul declared virtuously. It was only recently that he had begun calling me Didi—I am a year younger, so the seniority lay clearly not in age but social hierarchy. I waltzed through the corridors into the polished lift.

  There was a mosquito buzzing around the room, the only irritant in a world of grace and serendipity. I ordered a pot of Darjeeling tea and luxuriated in the moment. ‘You have arrived, Priya Kaushal,’ I told myself, as I preened before the misted-over antique mirror. In the dim light, with the curtains drawn, I looked rather good. Luv had made one of his mysterious disappearances, muttering about elusive friends in Colaba. On an impulse I picked up the leather bound telephone directory nestling besides Gideon’s Bible and an abbreviated Bhagavad Gita. ‘Sita Sewing Machines’. There was no entry under the head. I persisted, squinting through my reading glasses under the bedside lamp until I discovered the name I was looking for, the Marine Drive address. Then I rang the number.

  ‘Hullo Hullo Hullo Hullo’ on the other side of the line, from what sounded like a Nepali cook or bearer.

  ‘May I speak to BR Sir, please?’ I requested, nervously reverting to the role of secretary, factotum and part-time lover. There was a moment of silence and then I heard the beloved fruity voice which still had the power to make me swoon.

  ‘Who is this please, calling on a landline in the age of cellular communication?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s me, Sir. Priya, Priya Kaushal. I’m calling from Mumbai . . .’ I murmured apologetically. Why was I still calling him Sir?