The Five Dollar Smile: And Other Stories

by Shashi Tharoor

  But I didn’t. Poor Amma had been so desperately keen on coming to attend the new boutique opening, and despite my reluctance I had agreed to escort her. Father had a minor desk job in the editorial department of the city’s leading paper, and he often got these invitations. He always brought them home proudly as if to show to Amma and me he wasn’t as much of a failure as we knew he was, and they lay on the solitary bedroom table as cardboard symbols of his prestige. We rarely used them.

  But this was one time Amma was insistent. She had always been anxious to see how the mod sophisticates she had heard about lived; now here was an opportunity to see them in their natural habitat. She couldn’t throw away this chance of a lifetime, and she couldn’t go alone. So she dragged me along.

  The fat lady reached the elevator, and the attendant stepped aside in deference to let her in. She was about Amma’s age, I guessed; she wore a wig, an excess of makeup, a lot of real-looking jewelry and an air of haughty superiority. A reek of some expensive perfume preceded her by a good ten yards. Amma stepped back uncomfortably into the darkest recesses of the elevator as she entered.

  The door shut and the elevator proceeded smoothly upwards. I saw Amma trying not to look at the fat lady, and I felt a wave of pity and compassion surge up in me. Instinctively, I put a hand on her arm. Don’t worry, Amma, I thought, I’ll protect you. “Protect you?” the words mocked me in my mind. “From what?” I hastily dropped my hand from her arm.

  The elevator stopped, the door opened, and the fat lady stepped out first. It was natural, unquestioned; it was her due. I let Amma follow and then stepped out too, with a “thank you” to the attendant. He ignored me completely.

  Amma was overawed by the landing leading to the suite where the boutique was; the wall-to-wall carpeting, the air-conditioned atmosphere, the little groups of suited-and-booted people. Suddenly I too felt out of my class. I started wishing I had paid more attention to my appearance. I looked into one of the mirrored columns and hastily, furtively, smoothed back my hair.

  People were walking into the boutique now. There were not very many of them; perhaps fifteen, perhaps twenty. We were late; the speeches and ribbon-cutting, if there had been any, appeared to be over. People were standing around in twos and threes, sipping coffee served by a uniformed waiter and examining some of the objects for sale. Amma and I hesitantly went in. No one took any notice of us whatsoever.

  The waiter passed us, looking through us without pausing in his stride. I thought at first that the coffee had to be paid for, then saw him offering steaming hot cups of it to all the visitors. Anyone who chose to could take a cup of coffee. I felt a wave of anger rising up in me. We had been insulted.

  I halted him as he turned back with a half-empty tray by physically standing in his path. “Here too,” I said. He glowered at me resentfully for a second, then proffered the tray to me. I took a cup and waved him on to Amma. Reluctantly he complied. Amma refused him with a thank you and a smile.

  “Why did you do that, Amma?” I asked after the waiter had moved away. “I thought you liked coffee.” She didn’t reply; instead she looked around her and said, “Come, let’s see what there is here.” I followed her to the tastefully decorated section for men’s garments.

  There were a few people looking at the clothes put up for sale. A young couple hovered around indecisively, and a smiling salesgirl came up to them and asked, “Can I help you?” They said “No, thanks,” and she went away. She saw us, equally uncertain, but ignored us all the same.

  Amma looked at the impressive array of shirts, ties and jackets before her. One jacket, in black leather, especially attracted her. “I’ve always wanted you to have something like this, son,” she said, “and God knows we haven’t been able to afford to buy you anything. But looking at you in your plain clothes, and seeing these boys here in such fine attire—I want you to have this. I know it will suit you, my son. You are a handsome boy, and this will look good on you.” She fingered the sleeve. There was no price tag attached. Poor Amma was captivated by it. I wanted to say no, Amma, I don’t want it, I don’t need it at all, I am quite content with the clothes I have, but I could imagine myself in that leather jacket, the envy of the boys and the wonder of the girls in the neighborhood, and no words came out of my lips. I watched her, half in hope and half in anticipation.

  Amma caressed the jacket, and took it off its hanger. “Come closer, my son,” she said, placing it against my body so she could see me with it. “It looks wonderful. I wonder how much it will cost.”

  “Here, you can’t touch the articles,” the salesgirl said, coming up behind Amma suddenly. “Can’t you see the sign?” she pointed to a PLEASE DON’T TOUCH card among the clothes. “Don’t you know English?”

  Amma flushed a deep red. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled in confusion, hastily trying to put it back. “I was just . . . I didn’t see . . . how much does it cost?”

  The salesgirl took the jacket from her hands and looked at her pityingly. “Seven hundred rupees,” she said.

  Amma was completely thrown off her guard by the entirely unexpected figure. “What . . . pardon me . . . seven hundred rupees?” She asked in confused embarrassment.

  “That’s right, ma’am,” the girl said, placing the jacket back in its place. “And please don’t touch the clothes.”

  “It’s all right, Amma,” I said. “I didn’t want it anyway. What shall I do with a jacket like this?” Amma still looked miserable, so I added, “Anyway it’s far too big for me—I’d look like a scarecrow in a wrestler’s leftovers if I wore this.” She wasn’t consoled.

  Just then a famous radio disc jockey entered the boutique, and all eyes turned in his direction. Tall and ruggedly handsome, he wore a silk shirt and scarf and flared trousers, and I envied him like hell. He strode to the men’s clothing salesgirl and said, “Hi.”

  “Oh, hello, Jay,” the girl said, “we’ve got something you’ll really like—the newest thing in ties, and so inexpensive. Isn’t this one fabulous? And it’s just seventy.”

  “Hmm,” the deejay said in casual approbation, flipping through the ties on the rack. Somehow I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was everything I wanted to be, impressive, polished, well-dressed, popular—and rich. Amma was looking at him too, sorting the ties out, liking one color here, objecting to another’s width there, and all the while her eyes were traveling from his hands to the PLEASE DON’T TOUCH card nestling unnoticed among the little heap of sartorial rejects at the bottom of the rack. Suddenly I felt physically sick; I wanted to get out of there, get out of the rarefied, air-conditioned atmosphere, off the wall-to-wall carpeted floor, away from the mirrors on every column that thrust reminders at me of what I really was. A kind of nausea overtook me, and momentarily my head swam, converting the floor, the walls, the mirrors, the designs and patterns and decorations and clothes, into a whirling, twisting question mark, asking me, “What are you doing here?” And suddenly I realized I didn’t know, I didn’t know what I was doing there, and the question mark straightened itself out in my mind to an arrow, a line, and I knew where the line led—outside, to the relief of the hot pavement and the elegiac gloom of the evening shut out by the brocaded, mirrored walls of the Plaza Lounge.

  “Amma,” I said, clutching her sleeve. “Let’s go.”

  But she didn’t seem to be listening. There was a strange, semi-determined, half-surprised look on her face, and she was moving away from me. I recognized that look; I had often seen it when I had done something wrong at home and she had turned on me breathing “ingrate.” Suddenly I realized what she was going to do. I tried to stop her but she had already reached the counter.

  “Here,” she was saying in a loud, shrill voice of complaint, “I thought we weren’t supposed to touch the clothes.”

  An offended silence descended upon the congregation. Faces turned to look at us. Amma looked up, a trifle defiantly, expecting an apology or a reprimand but prepared for either, at the salesgirl. The deejay, too,
turned from his flirtation with the ties and the women and gave us the benefit of a mildly offended look. Then he turned back and resumed his conversation with the salesgirl. The hubbub of voices around us resumed. The pause was over; our clumsy intrusion had largely been forgotten. But in the harder lines of the salesgirl’s face I knew it would never be forgiven.

  “Amma—let’s go.” She stood still for a moment, incredulity and hurt writ all over her face, and then slowly, resignedly, without a trace of bitterness or resentment, subsided and walked away from the counter. When she spoke there was a break in her voice.

  “Yes, son—let’s . . . go.”

  Quietly, sadly, we walked to the door. No one noticed our exit; it was as if an insect had been removed from a cup of tea, something which ought not to have been there in the first place had been ejected. I evaded the eyes of a passing bearer.

  We used the stairs. When we walked out of the hotel and on to the street the ambience was oppressive. I wanted to pick up a brick, a stone, a tile from the pavement, anything, and throw it at the glass front of the building. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, I didn’t have the right to.

  “Let’s take a taxi, son,” Amma said.

  “No, Amma,” I replied and suddenly the lump in my throat wasn’t that big any more. “We’ll walk to the bus stop. As usual.”

  Something in my tone made her turn and look up at me.

  I smiled. “We’re going home, Amma,” I said.

  I felt the pressure of her hand on my arm as we walked slowly on to join the line waiting for the bus.

  1971

  How Bobby Chatterjee Turned to Drink

  As soon as I walked into the barroom of the Saturday Club I knew something was wrong.

  The Light Horse Bar isn’t normally one of those places where one collapses heavily onto the bar stool and asks the willing Boniface to come up with his strongest. It belongs rather to the quiet, plush variety of cocktail lounges where one threads a business acquaintance through one’s own commercial needle via a few glasses of the needful and then thinks of the bill later. Public displays of emotion, therefore, are as rare as modest copywriters, if not rarer, and the day when Jimmy Khandelwala fell over the precipice of sobriety and smashed a wine goblet back in 1952 is still spoken of with tearful nostalgia by old habitués.

  Today, however, it was easily apparent that the same old h’s would have something more recent to wax eloquent about. For seated on the only occupied bar stool on the premises, tie in disarray, hair looking like something out of a “before Brylcreem” ad, staring with fixed concentration at a half full glass of purest Scotch, and emitting at irregular intervals little growls of varying intensity which increased in volume and depth whenever any solicitous fellow-inmate happened to pass within hand-shaking range, was Bobby Chatterjee, looking like a man who had just seen his mother-in-law’s reincarnation. Now if I tell you that Bobby never touched the stuff in normal circumstances and considered liquor the cause of All the Ills of Our Society, you’ll understand my surprise. Dash it, I was more than surprised; I felt as shocked as a clumsy electrician. Seeking like an American GI in Vietnam for the light at the end of the tunnel, I ambulated on uncertain feet to where two of the ad agency crowd sat, looking grim.

  “I say . . . ,” I began.

  “Say no more,” Jit stopped me with raised palm. “I know what you’re thinking about. In fact, we’re as surprised as you are.” He nodded meaningfully in the general direction of Bobby’s bar stool.

  “You can say that again,” added Ram morosely. “When I walked in, you could have knocked me over with a G-string.”

  I gave him an expressive look, but it bounced off him like a stone off a politician’s car. I mean, I don’t blame him. This was no time for expressive looks. Dammit, this thing was serious.

  “Doesn’t anybody know the reason for . . . this?” I queried, hesitating almost prophylactically before that last word.

  “I do,” said Cedric, emerging from behind us like a villain in the third act of a Victorian drama, “and if you chaps will stand me a John Collins, rally around and I’ll tell you the tale.”

  Establishing consensus with the speed of a Warsaw Pact conference on freedom of speech, we acquiesced in relief and ushered him to a seat. After all, a John Collins was a small price to pay for a true exposé of the present situation. And Cedric is one of those fellows who knows everything; he always seems to have access to more privileged information than the resident CIA agent.

  “Well, what’s it all about?” Jit asked, hardly able to restrain himself.

  “Waiter,” Cedric signaled a passing admiral.

  “Oh—a John Collins, please, waiter,” I said.

  “Sir.” He vanished into the wilderness of bottles.

  “Well?” Ram asked.

  “Ah, Bobby,” Cedric said, pausing while the waiter placed his drink before him, and taking a deep sip while I signed the chit. “You may have noticed, gentlemen, that our usually immaculate friend, Bobby Chatterjee Esq. of It’s An Ad Ad Ad Ad World, Inc., if not exactly disheveled, is looking far from sheveled, to cut a fine phrase, as of this moment. He is also partaking rather generously of alcoholic liquor, the one vice—or so he had assiduously maintained—that he had not yet succumbed to. There is something about. . . .”

  “Oh, cut the sales talk and come to the point,” said Ram, who is only an Account Executive.

  Cedric glared at him but saw unanimity of opinion ranged soundly behind the philistine. “Oh, well,” he said, “if you insist. The reason for all—er—all this—is the universal one: the one cause of all the world’s ills, etc., in short, love. Love came to poor Bobby Chatterjee’s heart and broke it too.” Here he paused for a long sip while the three of us exchanged incredulous glances.

  “Bobby in love? But why, the fellow’s a confirmed misogynist!” Jit exclaimed.

  “Was, and will be,” Cedric corrected, “but not is. Of course, there can be no doubt that the object of our discourse is at the present moment harboring dark thoughts about women in general and one member of the fair sex in particular, and then self-pity will give way to misogyny once more, but there is no altering the fact that love melted his hard, sales-oriented heart for once, and brought with it failure, disappointment, and drink (in that order) in its wake.” Here he paused for breath and another gulp.

  “But a charming, well-endowed, well-mannered adman like Bobby falling in love?” asked Ram, disbelieving. “Go on—tell that to the Marines.”

  “I would, if they’d stand me a chota peg,” rejoined Cedric as he downed the rest of his drink and called for another. “This tale’s enough to take any man down a chota peg or two.”

  We didn’t laugh.

  Bobby met Myra (Cedric said, sipping his second drink reflectively) at the ad agency studios, where she was to appear in one of their shorts—I mean film shorts, not the Jockey type. She was a fairly popular model, you must have seen her in those “Sex and the Single Shirt” ads, and there was an almost philanthropic generousness about her curves. Her figure, in short, would have met even an accountant’s ideal. Account—figure, see? Heh-heh. (Here Cedric took another sip.)

  Well, it was a case of Love At First Sight, and, as it normally is with confirmed misogynists, Bobby soon became convinced that Myra was the only girl in the world. He would worship the very ground she trod on, at least when it was carpeted, and he showered her with contracts to appear in ads for everything from cough drops to laxatives. As a result of all this, as you can easily understand, they were brought together pretty often, and what is called a close friendship soon began to develop. At these meetings Bobby missed no opportunity to show her how much he loved her, and he was soon delighted to find her more than responsive to his scarcely veiled advances. In fact, so Bobby told me, she even winked at him once, which sent him into raptures of sublime ecstasy.

  The culmination of the affair (Cedric said hastily, as Jit glanced at his watch) came in the shape of a verbal invitation, delivered fr
om “her own dear sweet lips” as Bobby put it, to spend the forthcoming weekend at her suburban Budge Budge home. Her father, now away on tour, was some kind of a big shot in a jute mill, and his sprawling bungalow nestling verdantly among garden foliage on the banks of the Hooghly was all hers for the moment. She had no mother. (On this happy note Cedric called for a third John Collins.)

  From what she had told him, Bobby tells me (Cedric said) he got the idea of a pleasant and a romantic weekend in suburban solitude with only Myra for company. This idyllic picture was not, however, destined to outlast his arrival at Myra’s place, smartly suited-and-booted in the nattiest of Burlington creations and looking like someone out of a Marlboro ad. Sophisticated, that’s the word I’m groping for. He looked the charming, scintillating sophisticate that he was. And felt it.

  Till Ali opened the door.

  Bobby tells me he has never had a worse shock. He claims he nearly fell off the doorstep. For the bloke who opened the door was a bronzed, T-shirted-and-jeaned fellow with one of the fiercest mustaches Bobby had ever seen outside the motion pictures. It was black and curved and acquired new dimensions each time Bobby looked at it. And in addition to it all, the bloke was superbly fit and—what’s the word?—lithe, that’s it, lithe as a panther. One got a distinct impression of graceful ferocity, Bobby tells me. It was with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he answered the other’s cheery good morning and entered the house.

  For there could be no doubt about the fact that the mustachioed chap was a rival. Myra had assured him she’d have no relative around.