by Shobhaa De
All in all it was a pretty painful and confusing period for me. Rearing its head above everything else was the guilt of having left a loving companion of four years. One whose only disqualification was his ordinariness. But in those days, the catch phrase of the time was “We’ve grown in different directions. We don’t speak the same language any longer.” This was true, of course. Our conversation had been reduced, a long while ago, to absolute basics such as, “What do you want to eat? Where do you want to go? What shall we do on Saturday night?” So long as we were “doing” something, it was all right. But it was impossible to be in a room together with just conversation or rather, the absence of it, between us. He was a genuine person, but as Anjali had so aptly dismissed him after their one solitary meeting, “Sweet and all that . . . but not husband material. You’ll tire of him, darling, if you haven’t already.”
The other man surfaced in Bombay after a month. A month in which I was bombarded with letters, cables and orchids. I remember the first time the orchids arrived—I was mesmerized by their strange, erotic beauty. Two deep purple and white blossoms on one slender, green stem, delicately hanging over the neck of their test tube-like container. They were just so breathtakingly beautiful. “Who sent you these?” Anjali demanded as soon as she spotted them on my shabby table in the bedroom (it was she who visited me now, rather than the other way around). I had got away on the day of my arrival by brushing aside her question about the watch but this time it would be more difficult I knew. I wondered why I didn’t tell her outright but even as I dissimulated I knew why I wasn’t telling her the truth—it would only lead to a scene involving someone whom Anjali did not own in the first place.
I said I’d bought the orchids myself. “Oh don’t be stupid, sweetie. You couldn’t afford them. Why are you lying? Go on, tell me, is there someone I don’t know about? He’s got to be rich if he has sent you these. And he has to have good taste too. Do I know him?” I stuck to my guns and my story. She was smart enough to recognize a rebuff when she saw it. In any case, Anjali was not that interested in me anymore. She only needed someone to talk to for she was in the throes of a crisis. “A MAJOR one, darling,” she said. “Not the everyday kind.” My first question was, “Have you met someone else?” Anjali didn’t reply immediately. She pottered around my bedroom in her impossibly high heels, then said suddenly, “Let’s go to the Sea Lounge. I’ll tell you all about it.” I should have refused to go and then my entire life may have turned out differently. Fate, karma, whatever you choose to call it, is a potent force and I’m living proof that it rules our lives. How else can you explain the fact that as I sat bored in the Sea Lounge, looking out at the sea and half listening to Anjali rabbiting on about what a bastard Abe was, my future husband walked in. Given the two men constantly in my thoughts, you would imagine that a third would be too much but that’s the way things work, don’t they? One moment you think you cannot take anything more, you are stretched way to the limit and the next you surprise yourself with the things you find yourself capable of. Well, anyway, to get back to the events of that morning, Anjali was playing the injured wife, the pathetic martyr, but I with a combination of my newfangled American ideas and boredom was being militant: “Why don’t you fix that bastard—just leave him.You don’t need the guy. You’re doing OK.You’ve got a place of your own. Why do you even need another man in your life? Why can’t you do this for yourself and on your own?”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. “I’m not strong enough. I will die if I have to face the world alone without a man by my side.”
At this precise moment, my husband-to-be walked into the restaurant. He saw us sitting by the large bay windows and walked up with an easy stride.
“Hi!” he greeted me and held out his hand. I extended my right one automatically.
“No . . . the other one,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just show me.”
Half amused, half irritated, I put my left hand into his.
“That’s good. I see you aren’t married yet. Or engaged. So can we have dinner tomorrow night?” I groaned. “No.” If there was one thing I didn’t need in my life at that point, it was another man. He wasn’t fazed by my reluctance. “Maybe you’ll change your mind. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Briefly, Anjali forgot about herself, her attention diverted by the new arrival. “Who’s he? Quite dishy, actually. Hey—what’s with you? Why did you snub him? You know, I think you are crazy! What do you want—to die a virgin spinster?” It didn’t take me long to deflect the conversation, distract her with some piece of gossip and switch the topic back to her.
“The new man in my life” called promptly at nine the next morning.
“Listen, I thought I made it clear I wasn’t interested,” I said testily.
“I heard you. Why don’t you tell me all about it over dinner? How about the Rendezvous?”
“Forget it. I do have a boyfriend (two, in fact, I thought to myself), you know,” I continued.
“Yes, I know you had one—that’s in the past tense according to market rumors.” OK. So, this was one wise guy. Behind my obvious irritation, there was also a grudging sense of approval. I sort of liked his head-on, dead-on approach. There was none of that standard game-playing, the obligatory mating dance. And like he said over a fresh lime soda at the Sea Lounge six days later (when I finally folded): “Look, you have nothing to lose by marrying me.You could do a lot worse. And I need to know now because I’ve a job offer in Switzerland that I have to reply to. If the answer from you is yes, I’ll stay on in India. Otherwise I’m going.” I said yes eventually. And all my fancy ideas notwithstanding that’s how I got married. Pushed into it by an “acceptable” male who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
CHAPTER 4
IF I’VE GIVEN THE IMPRESSION THAT I GOT MARRIED IN A MAD RUSH to the first acceptable man, I must be forgiven. For my husband-to-be and I did go way back.Yes, I did have a boyfriend (of sorts) before Bunty and it was he. I met him when I’d just joined college and a few weeks before I met Anjali. He was in his final year. We were introduced by the basketball coach one evening. “He’s been wanting to meet you for a long time . . . he likes your game,” said the coach, and I blushed.
“Don’t worry. It’s OK to be complimented,” laughed the senior and asked whether I’d like to drink something cold in the college canteen.
“No, thanks. I’ve got to rush,” I said and left to change. When I got out of the ladies’ locker room, he was still around, chatting with the coach. He saw me and walked up quickly. “Here, let me take your stuff.”
“It’s OK. I can manage.”
“Reach you home? I’ve got a car . . .”
“I just have to cut across the maidan. I think I’ll walk.”
“Mind if I walk with you—I could do with the exercise.”
“Why don’t you go to a gym instead?”
“Am I bothering you? Do you have a jealous boyfriend or something?”
“No, you aren’t bothering me and I don’t have a jealous boyfriend.”
“Then?”
“Then nothing.” I started to walk across the quadrangle briskly and he followed.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you with that remark about your game. If that’s what you are annoyed about, I’m sorry—that Aslam—he should never have told you.” I was beginning to feel like Sadhana or Saira Banu rebuffing Dev Anand’s or Joy Mukherjee’s advances in a silly comedy. I half expected the tall boy behind me to break into a song Tumse achcha kaun hai? I handed him my books wordlessly and said, “OK, why don’t I hitch a ride with you?” I’d seen Suzanne Pleshette doing the same with Troy Donahue in a teen film once.
We dated for a bit . . . not real dates, what we called “group outings.” Safety in numbers. We’d all pool in and go for a cappuccino to a popular café of the time—Bistro’s. Since I wasn’t allowed out in the evenings, these dates were generally during college hours or right after, when one c
ould safely lie about tutorials. He was pleasant. But bland. He didn’t set my heart on fire. We used to go for eleven a.m. jam sessions and dance to “Black Is Black.” The Rolling Stones had just arrived on the pop scene and all of us panted to the insistent rhythm of “Satisfaction.” And then I met Anjali. She stood my life on its head and one of the first people to get shaken off was my boyfriend. Frankly it meant very little to me that we no longer saw each other quite as often. He graduated soon and faded from my mind entirely. I saw him on one final date before my life went on fast forward.
One afternoon, he was waiting for me outside the college gates. “I came to tell you I’m off.”
“Off?”
“Yes—I’ve got admission. It’s not a fantastic university or anything, but I’m going to America. Anyway . . . it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“What are you going there for?”
“Oh, to study, learn, enjoy myself.”
“Scholarship?”
“No, my marks weren’t good enough. Dad’s paying.”
“Where?”
“Texas.”
“When?”
“Two weeks from now.”
“Good luck.”
“Wait a minute . . . I came to ask you whether you’d have dinner with me on Saturday night. Not alone, of course, I’ve also invited Ranjana and Sumit—by the way, they got engaged last week.”
“Good for them.”
“Will you come? I mean, this is going to be goodbye—at least for the next three or four years.”
“I’ll have to ask my parents.”
“Shall I call you later tonight? I don’t mind coming over and asking their permission, if that’ll make things easier.”
“No, it’s OK. I’ll handle it myself.”
After he’d left I wondered why I hadn’t said no right off. As it was, the cold war with my parents over Anjali was hotting up and I had no desire to exacerbate things. But then I felt sorry for the chap. And I’d probably never see him again. I managed to wangle permission and on the appointed night he collected me at my house (my parents were duly impressed by his quietly rich background) and we went to The Other Room which was considered the choicest restaurant in those days. It was what Father would have described as a “nightclub” (thank heavens he didn’t know where we were going), since there was a live band and an antiseptic cabaret. It was certainly the swankiest place I’d ever been to, all red velvet, gilt and mirrors. Just like a whore house in John Wayne westerns. I tasted lobster for the first time in my life and loved it. Also, I had my first sip of a Bloody Mary (didn’t love it). It was a fabulous evening—the ultimate I’d experienced in luxury this far. The other three seemed to take it so much in their stride . . . I felt somewhat awkward for a bit then stopped being uptight and we danced to “Blue Moon” and performed an energetic cha-cha-cha to “Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” We walloped down crepe suzettes flambéed at the table and smoked menthol cigarettes. I felt terribly soigneé and sophisticated . . . till the strap of my ugly sandal broke on the dance floor. But even that didn’t spoil anything. Though I couldn’t have imagined then that I would eventually marry the man who kissed me softly, chastely and said, “I’ll write to you from Texas . . . wait for me.”
Write he did. One funny letter. I don’t remember if I even replied to it. It didn’t inspire a response. But I found it amongst my personal possessions years later and we both laughed at the memory. I can’t recall how many years it was that he stayed abroad studying law—or was it chartered accountancy? Disgraceful that I didn’t feel interested enough to ask such basic questions before I agreed to marry a stranger. A stranger who danced the foxtrot gracefully and enjoyed Dave Brubeck. Maybe at that point those two seemed important enough qualifications. Maybe I didn’t really want to know anything further.
I was urged by the ad-film man to find out more about my future husband. There was a feeling of doom about the older man’s exhortations (contained only in letters for I refused to see him even though he kept popping in and out of Bombay) during this period. He steadily grew more paranoid and even funded a little investigation into the husband-to-be’s affairs. “The man doesn’t amount to very much. He’s just another rich bum who’ll bore you once you’re through counting all the diamonds. Get out of it RIGHT NOW, before it’s too late.” Jealousy, I thought to myself darkly as I read the letter. Nothing but. Foolishly, I even shared these dire warnings with hubby-to-be who dismissed “the old man” and his “warnings” with a careless laugh. Bunty, of course, had obediently stopped calling or trying to see me so he wasn’t a problem.When he dies I expect he’ll go straight to wimp heaven.
But back to the husband. Sonny boy was expected to take over Daddy-O’s hundred-year-old export-import firm—but all the two-hundred-year-olds employed there couldn’t quite relate to the younger Sheth’s newfangled ideas and methods. To begin with he wore three-piece suits to sit in a stuffy office full of dhotis-topis. He wanted to modernize the musty place, put in air-conditioners, water-coolers, a western-style toilet in place of the squatter’s hell. He also wanted to do away with the cabin system and introduce American-style open work stations. He hired the first woman in the firm and never mind that she was only a secretary. He brought in a qualified accountant and sacked the doddering old munimji, who kept the books like his ancestors had done before him, full of strange squiggles and esoteric entries that only he could decipher. Thrown out along with the old earthen matka that held the drinking water supply for the entire office was the bulky filing cabinet. A xerox machine moved into the place vacated by a loyal peon whose only job had been to make sure there was enough masala chai brewing through the day and paans at regular intervals.
The only traditional thing he did in all this time was probably our wedding. We went through the whole ritual but I insisted (and my father backed me up) that there be no Arabian Nights party to follow the wedding. I reckon that was the last battle I won for quite a while in our marriage.
Initially the husband talked to me about his plans for the firm and like a dutiful wife I listened and tried to show some enthusiasm. All this faded to nothing by the end of the first year of our marriage. (It wasn’t the only thing that faded.) But even though we no longer talked about the business I could see the firm reflected the husband’s attitudes exactly—flashy but lacking in depth. He spent hours and hours at the lush Willingdon Club (golf in the mornings, squash in the evenings and plenty of vodka-tonics in between), presumably courting new clients. His expense account exceeded the firm’s billing, and no wonder too. Everything was “charged” including our honeymoon! He ran up fantastic bills all over town and in other cities as well. “I’m leaving on a jet plane . . .” became more than just a funny song in our lives. If my crusty old mother-in-law (very active as a far-from-sleeping partner in the firm) thought anything was amiss, she certainly didn’t say so, at least not in my presence. I was studiously excluded from the cozy mother-and-son après-dinner business chats. “Why don’t you relax in your room? You’ll be bored listening to all this . . .” she’d say sweetly but firmly, as she instructed one of the servants to escort me back to our section of the enormous house, with a warm glass of milk to soothe me to sleep.
The one bright thing about the whole business was that my parents finally thought I’d done something right. I could tell from the proud ring to Father’s voice when he introduced his only married daughter that he thought I’d done very well for myself indeed. “Good family,” he’d say. “Prominent people. Comfortable life. Her husband is a very busy man . . . travels abroad all the time. See that cuckoo clock? He got it from Switzerland. And the pop-up toaster—excellent machine . . . four toasts at one time. Two minutes—and out they come. All automatic. Of course, we never ask for anything, but he’s a generous man.” I’d squirm through these occasions but also feel happy for them. If my marriage pleased them so much, made them so proud, I reasoned, it must be a pretty terrific marriage. Only . . . it wasn’t. We didn’
t go foxtrotting every night. And after a point, I couldn’t bear to listen to Brubeck’s Time Out. “Brandenberg Gate” gave me a fever. It still does.
CHAPTER 5
ANOTHER CHAPTER, ANOTHER CHRONICLING OF DEFEAT.ANJALI’S DIVORCE (yes, it finally happened) wasn’t easy. While Abe wasn’t bothered one way or the other, Anjali suffered in style: she wept into expensive Swiss hankies or into whisky-sours in various five-star bars.There were suddenly a whole host of sympathizers—mainly male—willing to listen to her tales of neglect, abuse and torture. “What a bastard that man is,” would run their refrain, as they counted the minutes to when their sympathetic shoulder could be switched for an even more sympathetic bed. The man she had lined up as a prospective mate did the disappearing act once he discovered she was really serious about the divorce. “Bastard! Bloody bastard!” she sobbed over the telephone, slurring those simple words. “Can you imagine—we’d even gone house-hunting? Now, what will that estate agent think?”
It was a period when I had a whole lot of thinking to do for myself and I was really tired of her sob stories. Even so, I couldn’t tell her to get lost when she’d show up crying, “Darling one, you are the only real friend I have. I can’t trust any of those other bitches. They are keeping miles away from me anyway . . . afraid I’m going to steal their bloody husbands.What shit! Why would I be interested in those creeps?” I suppose I was “safe.” To start with, I wasn’t a part of her charmed circle of so-called friends, so the question of my passing on her sordid little secrets did not arise. And even though I had married well in my parents’ eyes, well wasn’t well enough in Anjali’s eyes.
So, there we were, stuck in our own ways. I was stuck in an increasingly meaningless marriage. And she in a meaningless divorce. Despite my early feelings about what I thought was a horrible marriage, latterly I’d been urging Anjali to be pragmatic. I kept telling her to stick around Abe. “You are used to him.You know what he’s all about. How are you sure you’ll get a better deal with someone else? And look what the other man did—ran a mile when he realized you meant business.” She wasn’t convinced. I even urged her to remain single for a while. “I can’t, darling. I need a man. How will I go to the club alone? What about parties and plays and things? I hate to walk into a room without a man next to me. And then, no one will invite me without Abe . . . or someone.” I didn’t see her point. Given my disappointing husband I’d created a liberated woman fantasy persona for myself—passively and secretly of course. I thrilled to the exploits of Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer, read Fear of Flying to bits. Women, it seemed, for the first time, could have control over their lives. The scene was changing, even in Bombay. Women worked, women married, women divorced and women remained single. It wasn’t such a big deal. Knowing all this I wonder why I didn’t do anything about my own situation and concentrated on trying to get Anjali to stand on her own feet. Perhaps it was because I was a coward or because I didn’t want to be known as a failure. Whatever my reasons at the time Anjali seemed a good person to try my liberated-woman ideas on. Life, I would tell her, was about to begin for her especially as Abe was willing to set her up in some style—flat, car, driver, an annuity. But she blew it—as I’d blown it by not walking out on my marriage after that first dreary year.
