by Manil Suri
“Me? Hah! So many years, I’ve been driving. Fiat, Ambassador, even imported, no problem. I can show you, now only, let’s go to your car.”
Mr. Jalal waved him away, saying he did not need a driver.
“Even Indira Gandhi I once or twice drove,” Vishnu cried after Mr. Jalal, who did not look back.
When his badgering did not yield results, Vishnu tried another tactic. Mr. Jalal came downstairs one morning to find him polishing the car with a filthy piece of cotton.
“All clean and shiny, sahib,” Vishnu said, saluting smartly. Then, noticing one of several oil stains he had missed, he spat robustly into the cloth and rubbed the moisture into the metal.
“There,” Vishnu said, and Mr. Jalal noted that the stain was now evenly distributed over a larger area.
The morning came when, against his better judgment, Mr. Jalal caved in. After checking Vishnu’s breath to make sure he hadn’t started drinking already, he instructed Vishnu to drive them to the Binny showroom at Opera House. Relaxing in the backseat, Mr. Jalal noted that although Vishnu’s chauffeuring was not anything Indira Gandhi could have possibly been accustomed to, it was a luxury, nevertheless, to be driven around.
“This was very nice, but we really can’t afford to keep a driver,” he told Vishnu afterwards, offering him a two-rupee note.
“Who said anything about money, sahib? I just want to do it to get a chance to drive again.”
Perhaps Mr. Jalal should have listened to the warning bells beginning to peal so lustily in his head, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked Vishnu to drive him the next day to Crawford Market. There, while he argued with the merchants about the price of a basket of mangoes, Vishnu stole away to the keysmith to have the car key duplicated. And that night, as Mr. Jalal fantasized about being driven to Juhu Beach or perhaps even Versova, Vishnu and Padmini were coasting in the Fiat along Marine Drive, enjoying the sound of the waves rolling in rhythmically from the Arabian Sea.
A BREEZE BLOWS down the staircase. Vishnu can suddenly smell the sea.
“I feel so light. Like I am floating,” Padmini says, opening the car window and holding her head out.
Vishnu looks at her, her face framed against the yellow of the dupatta billowing up around her. He puts his hand on her thigh, and she does not push it off.
“Someday, I want to ride in an aeroplane,” Padmini says, closing her eyes against the wind, and Vishnu’s hand glides against her skin and meets no resistance.
“Will you take me on a plane?” she asks again later, searching his face, as he unbuttons her blouse in the backseat. They are parked just below the overlook of Hanging Gardens, in the darkness of a building under construction. Down below, curving next to the inkiness of the bay, each pearl of light glitters in its setting along Marine Drive. He lays his cheek against her breast, and feels the resilience of her flesh.
“We’ll go together—we’ll go to Agra, and see the Taj,” he says, rubbing his nose against her nipple, and smelling the scent of her which attar cannot conceal.
“Promise?” she says, her eyes wide, wary, like those of a child trying to decide whether to believe an adult.
Vishnu looks from the bareness of her neck to the strand of lights stretching by the sea below. “I promise,” he whispers.
His lips close around her nipple. She arches her back to put more of her breast in his mouth. He takes it in greedily, first the dark ring around the nipple, then the mound of flesh that follows. But part of her breast spills out. He feels it press against his chin, his cheek, and buries his nose in its warm attar-laden scent.
He moves down her torso. Her skin is silver in the light floating in from outside, smooth and glistening like the surface of a freshly caught pomfret. She undulates under his lips, pressing her chest, her abdomen, her pelvis against him, offering each in turn to be anointed by his tongue. He runs his fingers across the softness of her belly, then grazes the stubble on his chin against it. She tries to move away, but he grabs her breasts and holds down her body, then runs the bristles across her skin again. He feels her writhe beneath him as his chin descends down to her groin. Wisps of hair start curling against his face and he stops, but she clasps his head and drags it lower. She thrusts her pelvis towards his mouth, he feels her wetness smear against his lips.
He breaks himself free of her hands and hoists himself on his forearms. Tonight will be different. Tonight, she will not be the one in charge. He pins her hands above her shoulders. Her elbows strain against the air, they rise and fall like wings next to her head. Tonight, he will take what she reserves for the big sahibs, take what she has teased him with but never given. He looks at the surprise clearing her eyes, satisfied.
He caresses her lips with his cock. She turns away, but he follows her mouth and caresses it again. He plays along the line at which her lips meet, his dark brown skin stark against the redness of her lipstick. She does not turn away, but keeps her mouth closed.
He bears down on her wrists. Lipstick smudges her teeth as he coaxes apart her lips. He pushes against her mouth, presses his weight against her face. But there is no entry. She stares at him from the car seat, her head very still.
“Please,” he whispers. “Just once,” he says. He relaxes his grip.
She makes no move to free her hands. Her eyes are fixed upon his face, contemplating him with a composure he finds disconcerting. He sees a determination move into them, a self-assuredness that spills over and ripples down across her features. Slowly, deliberately, she parts her lips.
“Just this once,” she says.
Gratefully, he eases himself into the admittance he has been granted. The snugness of her lips closes around his flesh and he feels her tongue explore the length of him. She takes him in deeper into her mouth and he sees the sureness mount in her face. As he is engulfed by the rhythm of her efforts, as he loses himself in sensation, he sees the sureness ignite in her eyes, until he can discern no iris, no white, no pupil, just an organic and unyielding resolve, that erupts from deep within her and exposes him to the core of her being.
“Let’s run away,” he says afterwards. “Just keep driving, and never come back.”
“Where would we go?” she says, her eyes closed.
“Anywhere you want, anywhere the car will take us.”
“Take me to Lonavala, then.”
It is still dark as he drives down the winding road from Hanging Gardens. He looks at her, asleep on the seat next to him, her arms tucked tightly under her dupatta to keep them warm. Behind her, soft and unfocused, the lights near the sea blossom occasionally through the window. Above, the branches of mango trees stretch thickly across the road, their leaves reflecting whatever dabs of moonlight are to be found.
A gust of breeze, cool and salt-laden, blows in from Padmini’s window. He reaches across her seat to roll up the glass. “No, leave it open,” she says, stirring. “I like the cold.” She turns back to sleep.
Vishnu follows the road curving into the darkness ahead. Soon he will pass the Towers of Silence, where even the vultures must be at peace at this time. Then he will see the lights of the flyover, guiding cars through the air all night. He will ascend high above Kemp’s Corner, and try to glimpse the sea through the gaps in the skyscrapers. The sun will not rise for many hours, and it will be a long drive through the night. And all through the journey, he thinks to himself, Padmini will be asleep by his side.
MRS. LALWANI LIVED in Colaba, way up near Sassoon Docks.
The cab had barely passed Churchgate when Mrs. Asrani started to grumble.
“What kind of arrangement this is God only knows, that we have to drag our daughter halfway across the city. Everyone knows the boy is supposed to come to our place—not this neutral-veutral territory.” She glared spitefully at the taxi meter, which, as if to mock her, made a “plink” and displayed a new number in the rupee slot.
“It’s better this way, Aruna. Think how bad it would’ve been with Vishnu at home. Besides, we’re already at C
hurchgate, so it won’t be that much more.”
“You think I care how much more it will cost? You think I would worry about a few rupees when my daughter’s future happiness is at stake?” Mrs. Asrani inhaled several gulps of air and puffed up in outrage.
“All I said was the distance—the distance won’t be that much more.”
“Yes, yes—you don’t have to give me geography lessons. I’ve lived in Bombay all my life. Shyamu, get back in from the window—do you want your head to get cut off by a BEST bus?”
The counter made another plink and Mrs. Asrani resisted the urge to accuse the taxiwalla of having tampered with the meter. These people were all robbers. She’d already had to shout at the driver twice about the route he’d tried to take them by. She hated taxis, thought they were a tremendous waste of money—it was better to wait for a bus and be late than flag a taxi down. She had tried, over the years, to impress this ideal upon Mr. Asrani, but suspected he remained secretly errant.
“Shyamu, didn’t I say to put your head back in? Think of how foolish you’d look walking around without it—everyone saying that’s the boy who stuck his head out and got it cut off by a bus.”
She’d had to succumb today because of all the jewelry and silk Kavita was wearing. Mrs. Asrani looked at her daughter, sitting serenely between Shyamu and herself. How she glowed. It was as if a complete transformation had taken place—so stubborn one minute, and then so docile and agreeable. Kavita had even allowed herself to be led to the kitchen and taught how to make gulab jamuns. (The lesson had been a disaster, and they’d had to stop at the halwai to get a box, but that was beside the point.)
Mrs. Asrani supposed that was what the prospect of marriage did to young people. She tried to remember how she had been at that age. Had she gotten all dressed up, had she tried to make gulab jamuns as well? She looked at Mr. Asrani, sitting at the front window next to the driver, the wind from Queen’s Road ruffling the few locks that still ringed his head. How much like a child he was, enjoying his window and his taxi ride, just like Shyamu at the window behind. An unexpected clutch of emotion appeared in her throat. How long ago had that been, how many years had passed by already. The feeling spread upwards from her throat, through her mouth, up her nose. So long they had traveled together, an endless cab ride with just the two of them. Like that saying about life being a journey that can only be shared with one person. Mrs. Asrani sat in the backseat of the cab, staring through the window, unaware of the tear that rolled down her cheek and wet the cover of the box of gulab jamuns in her lap.
She was still moist-eyed when Regal Cinema flashed by. Something about the sight didn’t seem right. Suddenly, Mrs. Asrani realized what her momentary lapse had cost her. “Who told you you could bring us from here?” she shouted at the driver. “Everyone knows to go through Cooperage. Isn’t your meter fast enough, that you have to take us the long way as well?”
The taxiwalla stared at the road and kept driving. Not satisfied that she had made her point, Mrs. Asrani continued, “Click, click, click—every time I blink there’s a new number on the meter. You’d think we were being driven to Poona, looking at the fare.”
The driver stopped the taxi and got out.
“He’s leaving,” Shyamu exclaimed. “Look, he’s going to the chaiwalla shop.”
“What?” Mrs. Asrani tried to look past Kavita and Shyamu, but couldn’t see anything. “What is he doing?”
“He’s ordering tea,” Shyamu said delightedly. This spectacle was an unexpected bonus to the luxury of a taxi ride. “Can we go, too?”
“The scoundrel. The cheat. This is the reason. This is the exact reason why I never go in a taxi.” Mrs. Asrani emphasized the words as if they were the final moral of a tale, being underlined for the benefit of the listeners. She turned to her husband. “Well, don’t just sit there, jee, ask him to come back.”
“After what you said?”
“What did I say? What’s wrong with the truth only? The meter is still on, you know. Go—you’re the only one here who knows how to deal with these people—go—all the taxis you like to take.”
So Mr. Asrani went and talked to the taxiwalla, who came back, once he had finished his tea. They proceeded to Mrs. Lalwani’s building without incident, the taxiwalla, newly refreshed, ignoring Mrs. Asrani’s mutterings from the backseat about reporting him to the authorities.
When it was time to pay, Shyamu, in the hope of coaxing out some last bit of entertainment from the drama, pointed to the meter and remarked loudly how high the fare seemed. For this effort he was roundly slapped, not only by Mrs. Asrani, but by Mr. Asrani as well, and yanked sniveling up the stairs to Mrs. Lalwani’s apartment.
AT FIRST, KAVITA did not look at him. This was the way brides-to-be were supposed to behave. Their stories written by their parents and the boy and the boy’s parents, but not by themselves. What was the use of looking, when they had no say in the matter anyway? If fate decided, they would see the boy soon enough when he pulled back the gunghat on the wedding bed. A face they would have to see for the rest of their days together on this earth.
She would be just like one of those brides-to-be who had gone before. Who had sat in countless rooms all over the country like this, and waited silently. Afterwards, she would dance like Nutan in Saraswatichandra. Hide her tears in her dupatta while singing that she loved her new life so much she had forgotten her father’s house.
Kavita’s heart fluttered with a feeling of oneness with her predecessors. What an injustice to have to go through this. She tried to latch on to the thought, to try and experience exactly what they must have felt. But Nutan kept distracting her. Nutan dancing with all the other women in her new household. Nutan singing about sending messages of happiness back to her mother. Nutan wearing that beautiful embroidered cream sari, though it was hard to tell on the VCR, especially in those older films that weren’t in color.
“Kavita, dear, this is Pran.”
Pran? She couldn’t believe it. Pran? The villain who had terrorized so many leading ladies for so many years? Pran of the shifty eyes, Pran of the scheming mouth, Pran, who got soundly thrashed by the hero at the end of each movie. Who would ever name their son after him? Despite her resolve to keep looking downwards, her eyes wandered up to see what this Pran looked like.
He was standing there uncomfortably in front of her, like a boy who had been positioned just so by his parents, and told to wait. She tried to look at him, but he would not meet her eye. He kept looking down, as she had been, and when his mother, Mrs. Kotwani, instructed, “Pran, say hello to Kavita,” a red bloom spread over his face.
“Hello,” he said, still without looking up, and Kavita resisted the urge to act the groom and turn up his face with her thumb and forefinger.
She tried to say “Hello” back in a voice even meeker than his. But it came out sounding assertive in comparison, and she noticed her mother wince. It was going to be difficult to maintain the role of bashfulness she had written for herself. How perplexing that she had to compete for it with Pran.
Mrs. Lalwani and the two sets of parents stood around watching expectantly, as if Pran and she were a biology experiment that had just been set into motion. Even Shyamu was peering out with interest from behind their mother. Wasn’t someone supposed to do something, say something, to propel the action on? She herself couldn’t even decide whether to lower her eyes or keep them where they were, focused on Pran’s chin. Again, she had to stop her fingers from reaching out and gently nudging up that chin.
It was Mrs. Lalwani who finally spoke. “Kavita is doing her B.A. at Elphinstone College,” she said, as if this somehow explained it all, as if this was the reason they were all standing around and taking part in this exercise.
“She went to Villa Teresa,” her mother added, in further clarification of the situation.
“Pran just got a job at Voltas,” Mrs. Lalwani, ever the essence of even-handedness, announced.
There was a moment of silence, as
everyone waited for the revelations to sink in.
“I hear you play the sitar very well, beti,” Mrs. Kotwani said to Kavita.
Shyamu snorted and was dragged away to the bathroom by his father.
“Oh, just a little bit. As a hobby,” Kavita said. She was finally getting into her role, lowering her eyes just so, and allowing the ends of her words to trail off, to impress upon everyone the debilitating quantities of shyness she was struggling to overcome.
“What about you, beta?” Mrs. Asrani addressed Pran. “Do you have any hobbies as well?”
Pran shook his head, at which Mrs. Kotwani tousled his hair. “Of course he does,” she said. “Tell them about your stamp-collecting, Pran.”
Pran did not speak. Mrs. Kotwani turned to everyone. “He’s just so shy,” she announced with a laugh. Kavita felt a stab of resentment at this further encroachment of her role.
Eventually, though, Pran was persuaded to speak. Haltingly, he explained the design of the new water pump that Voltas was developing. Mr. Asrani asked several perceptive questions and nodded with approval at each answer. Mrs. Asrani beamed happily at this test that her husband, at last good for something, was giving the boy. So far, he seemed to have demonstrated an excellent knowledge of the pumps, and final approval for being a son-in-law could certainly not be more than a few questions away.
At some point, the gulab jamuns were brought out, and Mrs. Kotwani remarked on their perfectly round shape, and Mrs. Lalwani bit into hers and pronounced them divine. Even Mr. Kotwani was moved to lay his hand on Kavita’s head in blessing as he passed by on his way to get another one. Shyamu was brought his gulab jamun in the adjoining room.
“I think we should let them have a little time by themselves,” Mrs. Lalwani whispered to Mrs. Asrani, and the elders filed out of the room, with Mr. Kotwani discreetly popping the last gulab jamun into his mouth on his way out.
They sat there in silence, just the two of them, Kavita on a chair and Pran on the sofa near the door. Kavita looked at Pran and tried appraising him as she would a vegetable or a piece of fruit at the market. Somewhat pimply—even his ears seemed to be red from acne. Or perhaps that was just the blush from his shyness again. His nose was too big for his face—perhaps a mustache would help, though then there might be the problem of a disappearing upper lip. She was surprised he did not wear glasses—she expected all engineer types to peer through thick, sturdy lenses. His eyes were a further surprise. The few times she had managed to look into them, they had been soft and brown—she hesitated to describe them as appealing, and settled on pleasant. He really looked scrawny hunched up in his chair like that—someone needed to grab his shoulders and straighten him up.
