by Nillu Nasser
“Arjun told me about Akash Saheb’s wife and the fire.” Muna dipped her head forward and allowed her hair to partially shield her face. “You didn’t consider tracking Akash Saheb down, marrying him?”
“I am Muslim by birth, Muna, just as you are a Hindu. I may not practice the religion of my ancestors, but Akash came from a traditional family, and there was no prospect of us marrying. There were two reasons for his parents not to accept me. I am Muslim and he was already married. His wife was alive. No. It was best for me to forget about him, to concentrate on Arjun and our future.”
“I am sorry, Maa. I wish it could have been different.”
“How can I explain it? You’re so young. You don’t know your own strength yet. It took me a long time to give voice to what I think I knew all along. It’s why I was scared but I wasn’t crushed when I realised I would be an unmarried mother. It’s what Papa tried to teach me all those years. That I am enough. Even without a man, I am enough.”
“He sounds like a good father.”
“He was,” said Soraya.
“Did you love him? Akash Saheb?”
“In my way. But you understand, the personal is political. There is nothing more personal than the bargaining that goes on within marriage. I’ll do your laundry; you bring home the bread. I will look beautiful on your arm; you give me children. I will cook for you and keep the house clean; you be successful at work. I was glad to be free of that.”
Muna blinked and stared at the horizon, uncomfortable with Soraya’s directness.
Soraya rose and walked to the pool, where she trailed a toe in the cool water. “I admire you, Muna. I knew you were different from me when you married my son.”
“I love him. We’re not perfect, but I love him.”
“I know.” She paused. “Help me make Arjun understand. I don’t want this anger to consume him.”
“I’ll try but he needs time. And it doesn’t help to have Akash Saheb under this roof, when all those years he was absent.”
“Akash doesn’t know yet he is Arjun’s father. I owed it to Arjun to tell him first. They can’t be together until Arjun can think clearly, until his anger has subsided.”
“Just give him some space. He will come ‘round. And I will try to soften him.”
Soraya nodded. Then she turned towards the house, her orange scarf making waves in the air as she went. At the pool, Muna listened to the quiet.
Chapter 23
Designs and fabrics covered Jaya’s desk like a quilt and she found it impossible to narrow them down. She hated how men could disrupt her focus with such ease, a careless word, unwanted touch, a casual affair. Today she channelled her warrior self with a corseted top and stern pencil skirt in raw silk. Her eye make-up was winged, large slashes extended far past the corner of her eyes. She wore this armour with ease, her shadow self, the one she adopted to make her way in the world. Her real self came to life mostly in Firoz’s studio. She counted the hours down to nightfall, after she had cooked for her parents, when she could head to her art class and paint her frustrations onto a canvas.
At lunchtime Ravi came to find her. He took in her elaborate attire and wolf-whistled, low and clear. A friend of his nearby tittered. Ravi shooed the woman away, jocular, roguish.
Jaya’s hackles rose.
His demeanour changed when he turned back to her. What did he remember from their date? She surveyed him unkindly, her nose lifted into the air a notch. He was dressed in muted colours, as if he had decided to blend in for once rather than stand out. Or maybe because he has a hangover and it would make his headache worse, thought Jaya, cattily. It made her feel better to witness him looking worse for wear. She still felt a keen disappointment at his behaviour.
“I can’t remember how I got home last night,” he said, sheepishly. “One minute we were at your sister’s place, I was singing at the top of my lungs. The next I was waking up in bed feeling nauseous.”
“You didn’t drink that much, but it hit you like a wave,” said Jaya, her voice tart, keeping him at arm’s length.
“Sorry about that,” he said, colouring, red cheeks against slick hair making him look effeminate. He propped himself up against her desk, a barrel on stout legs. Whatever she had seen in him had faded fast. “When can we pick up where we left off?” he whispered in her ear, an attempt to be sexy that made her skin crawl. His pores reeked of alcohol.
Jaya stood, pushing back her swivel chair. Granted, she was unpracticed in delivering romantic signals, but it appeared Ravi had short-circuited, that he had ignored her bristles and interpreted them as attraction. Where once his persistence had impressed her, now it grew tiresome.
She cut through his dance. “I’ve decided, Ravi.”
“Decided?” he said, puzzled.
“At the restaurant in Juhu you asked me to hold off before I made a choice.” She ploughed on, determined to have her say, put up her walls. “I want to be friends,” she said, not caring if he took offence at the limp olive branch she offered. Her hands instinctively reached for the stack of newspapers, her ritual of scanning for Akash’s name as instinctive to her as breathing.
“You want to be friends?” Her rejection of him clearly stung. He did not move from his perch on her desk, but stayed there, obstinate and still.
“Do you even remember what happened last night?”
Their colleague still lurked in the background. Ravi noticed and grew bolshy.
“I’m a drunk, not an amnesiac.” He held her eyes, pinning her like a butterfly against a board. “Come now, Jaya, you did ask for it. A thing cannot come into existence without a cause that produces it.”
Jaya’s hackles rose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that a girl like you can’t invite a man to an intimate evening, spout words about freedom, and be surprised.”
“Cause and effect. That’s your excuse?” said Jaya, ice lining her voice.
“It’s as good as any other.”
Fury filled her, transporting her back to her parents’ kitchen, another man, flames that rippled through the oxygen-less air. “And the fire. That was my fault too, was it?”
“Well, he left for a reason, didn’t he, Jaya? And you lit the match.”
She ignored the gasps behind her. Their audience had grown. Ravi couldn’t hurt her. She had told herself the same things a thousand times before.
“And what did I do to deserve an arsehole like you?” She sank into her chair, holding up her hand to wave him out of her vicinity, brushing him away as if he were a mosquito. She burned with anger, and this time it made her strong, not weak. She knew now that Ravi was a pretender, just as Akash had been, and she would not let a man fool her. Not anymore. She was no longer a mosaic built entirely of duty, sacrifice and submission. Power surged through her “Leave, Ravi!” The starched nature of her clothing produced a stiffness in her movements. Together with her makeup, it imbued her with the look of a geisha. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ravi flounder, his mouth open like a goldfish’s. She sensed his eyes on her back before he scurried away.
That would teach her to be more discerning about who she invited into her life.
Ruhi stopped by the house while Jaya was making roti for dinner. Jaya had been surprised to see her. Usually family gatherings happened at the weekend and not mid-week. Still, it was a welcome balm to have Ruhi visit. It took the edge off the atmosphere. Naturally warm and intuitive, Ruhi sidestepped their mother’s prickles with ease.
This evening they didn’t have that problem. Mondays were a favourite of Jaya’s. Their mother attended laughing club. As soon as she returned, her face sour despite the hour long laughing therapy, Jaya would leave for the art studio. Sometimes the best way for her mother and her to coexist was to be passing ships in the night.
Usually, Ruhi welcomed the chance to spend time alone with their father. Tonight, she insisted on helping Jaya in the kitchen. More than that, Jaya noted the sting in Ruhi’s voice when she
had greeted him. She had neither teased nor embraced him. Their father had noticed it too, especially with Ruhi, his favourite, the one who had a sunny disposition, who had provided him with a grandson and socialised with the film industry’s superstars. Papa was fragile these days, more alert to slights, less able to shake them off or counter them as he had done as a young man.
Jaya pitied him.
“What was that about?” she asked her sister, dipping into a whisper to prevent their father from overhearing.
Ruhi shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You were harsh with Papa. Has he annoyed you?”
“I’m just having an off day, that’s all, Jaya.” She avoided Jaya’s eyes.
“Go make it up to him before Maa comes home.” She could have worded it better. Ruhi was bound to take aversion to her bossy tone.
“No,” said Ruhi, a jagged edge to her voice.
Jaya let it go. “Fine, help me with these then.” She handed Ruhi a spoon to butter the roti.
Ruhi accepted the spoon absent-mindedly, weighing the silver up in her hand. Jaya passed her the margarine and resumed shaping the dough in the palm of her hands, rolling it out, then transferring it to the iron griddle. The bread sizzled, black discs appearing to dot the finished form. Next door, their father unmuted the television, comforted by the sound of women at work in the kitchen.
“It was fun the other night, wasn’t it?” began Ruhi. She swirled a gloop of margarine on a hot roti with the underside of the spoon. The margarine became a pool of shimmering yellow on its surface.
“Yes. Until we left. Ravi drank more than I thought. He tried to kiss me.”
That caught her attention. She glanced up. “Did you kiss him back?”
If Ruhi had been herself, she would have been more excited. She understood how Jaya enjoyed being alone, but simultaneously craved the validation of a partner.
Jaya hesitated, reluctant to admit her momentary lapse with Ravi. She was thankful now that he had pushed hard, that he had revealed his true character. She was even grateful that Akash had invaded her thoughts. “No. He misread my signals. I didn’t want that at all.”
“I know you like to be in control but take the kiss as a compliment. He likes you,” said Ruhi, sweeping the flour off the work surface into her palm.
“He was pushy, Ruhi, aggressive even. I saw him today at work, and again he was brazen, unapologetic for misreading me. As if I had led him on. To be honest, he’s a first-class jerk.”
“Oh.” Shocked, Ruhi hugged her sister, suddenly an open book once more. “I’m so sorry. How dare he? Are you okay? I wish I’d asked Vinod to walk you home.”
“I’m okay. It’s not your fault,” said Jaya. She meant it. “I sent him packing today with his tail between his legs. It felt good.”
“Maybe we both got him wrong, maybe Ravi wasn’t the man we thought he was.” She paused and stared at Jaya with an intensity only shared by sisters.
“Spit it out, little sister.”
“Well, he woke you up to the possibility of a relationship. I know some people can be happy alone Jaya, I just don’t think you can.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.”
“I knew a woman once, a long time ago, who was brave enough to love someone when she didn’t know if he loved her back.”
“Ruhi...” A low voice, a warning not to go any further.
“I like who the woman is today. But I miss the other girl, the one who believed in love.”
“That’s enough, Ruhi.” Jaya frowned.
“None of us are static. We change from one day to another until we don’t recognise the person we were a few months before.”
“You sound like one of those things from China with the little shreds of paper in them.” Jaya fumbled for the word. She grasped it from the floating baubles in the tree of her mind. “A fortune cookie.”
“Vinod, Maa, Papa, Ravi, Akash, you, me... we show different faces to different people. We all have secrets buried under our skin. We can never know how a chance encounter, a lie, an accident, a misunderstanding can change us.”
Jaya shook her head, nonplussed. Even now, she hugged the secret to herself about how Akash had watched her burn through their kitchen window, compelled to protect him in absentia. Would her sister be so understanding if she knew? “What has gotten into you today, Ruhi? Go home, get some sleep.”
Ruhi smoothed down her t-shirt. “Maybe you’re right. I keep putting my foot in it.” She sighed. “I better go and make amends with Papa.”
Jaya watched her sister’s disappearing back, noting how she had mentioned Akash when she had avoided saying his name for decades. How odd. She shrugged and, chores accomplished, made her way upstairs to prepare for art class.
A lamp sat on the desk, casting shadows across the Red Room. Deep in concentration, Akash was writing his second letter to Jaya. He had spent most of the day sweating over the words, using sheet after sheet of paper. He had no inkling whether Jaya had received the first letter yet, but writing to her the first time had broken a dam. Pouring himself into a letter to her became a tenet of his day, replacing his prayers at the river. Now he knew she lived, he fretted over every word that could not express the fullness in his heart, every choice of phrase that might give away his identity and void his contract with Ruhi to remain anonymous. He composed a sentence or two then, unsatisfied, scrunched up his words into a ball and tossed them away. The wastepaper basket overflowed.
He needed a break from the page, from the hopelessness of expressing his love for a woman who was his wife but couldn’t know. Above him on the wall, hanging on a small bronze nail, was a calendar. The picture depicted the Gateway of India. He took it down, and leafed through it as he had done countless times while he had been Soraya’s guest. On the streets, he lost his orientation: days blended into weeks, into months, into years. Now, in the womb of his room, evading the emotional strain of writing to Jaya, he resorted to calculations, painstakingly working out how long it had been since the day she had burned: 21 years, 7 months...
A rush of noise in the hallway outside his bedroom jolted him from his focus. Seconds later a fist banged against the door.
“Open up, Akash! Open this door, right now! It’s Arjun. I want to talk to you!”
The moon shone through the window signalling the late hour. Akash’s heart thumped in his ribcage. The atmosphere between him and Soraya’s son remained fraught. “What do you want?”
“Are you going to talk to me through the door? I’m not here for a fight, if that’s what you’re worried about. We need talk man to man.”
Akash opened the door and shrank back towards the bed. Arjun threw him a disgusted glance and sat on the floor in his dress trousers, opened the buttons at the neck of his shirt and motioned for Akash to sit next to him. Silence stretched between the two men until Arjun turned to look Akash squarely in the face, his mouth set in a grim line.
“I’m sorry,” said Akash, unsure of what he was apologising for.
“That’s a little rich after all these years.”
Akash crumpled his face in confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“You’re really going to play the fool?”
“Your mother asked me to stay for two weeks. After that, I’ll be gone. You won’t have to see me again,” said Akash.
“You expect me to believe that you will give all this up in two weeks?” Arjun waved his hand to indicate the sumptuous surroundings.
“I’m not here for your money.” His voice was shrill, showing his fear. He wanted more than anything to be with Tariq in their hovel right now. Even Zahid Khan would be preferable to this. At least he knew what he was dealing with.
“No, just food and a free bed. Those clothes you’re wearing are mine, by the way.”
Akash cowered from the intensity of Arjun’s gaze. “You want me to leave, that’s fine. I’ll say goodbye to your mother, and I’ll go. I understand.”
“She wants
you to stay.” Arjun’s brow furrowed and he let out a low whistle. “You really don’t know, do you? I didn’t believe her but she hasn’t told you, has she?”
“Told me what?” The air crackled with tension.
Arjun got to his feet, and looked down at the older man. “Akash, I’m not just Soraya’s son. I’m yours.”
“What?” Akash paled as recognition crept up on him. “No, that’s not right. Soraya, she wouldn’t have hidden that from me...”
“I’m twenty-two. You do the maths. We’re not so dissimilar, you and me. Look closely.”
Akash’s heart swelled and exploded, shattering into tiny fragments. Jaya, you and I never had a child, but... All that he had missed, all that he had gained, raced through his head until his synapses overloaded. He had a son. He had a grandchild. “But she...she never said.” He wrung his hands together, his eyes imploring.
“No, she didn’t say a word to me either. Until you arrived. And we can’t turn the clock back, can we?”
Arjun placed a hand on his father’s shoulder, where it sat awkwardly. Then he pivoted and left the room, leaving Akash reeling in his wake.
Chapter 24
There could be no doubt of the truth of Arjun’s announcement. The veracity of it hit Akash like an epiphany. Wave after wave of horror crushed him as he absorbed how many experiences he had missed, the irony of being a man who yearned for love and had thrown all his chances away.
The next morning, he went to find Soraya. Wary of overstepping boundaries and of upsetting Arjun, it was the first time he had ventured upstairs in the house. He followed a sound of rustling to a door left ajar and then called out.
“Soraya?”
She emerged, holding a glittery burgundy lengha choli she had been folding. “There was a party at the restaurant last night. I’m just putting everything away,” she said, by way of explanation. “Is everything okay?”
