Haunting Bombay
Page 5
“Namaste Maji, Auntieji.” Lovely smiled demurely as she entered, proffering a box of mithai. “Mummy went to Ghasitaram’s shop this morning.”
“He makes the best pakwaans!” Dheer splurted out, recalling the crispy fried shell topped with steaming channa lentils that he bought whenever they visited his father’s friend on Narayan Dhuru Street, just two blocks from the shop. And where, just a lane away on Kalbadevi Road, workers pounded small ingots of silver into the impossibly thin sheets of foil used to decorate sweets.
“I’ve only brought laddoos today,” Lovely said, opening the flap.
Dheer immediately circled around her like a moth, curling his pudgy fingers around a sticky, yellow ball of sweetened chickpea flour.
“I have this for you, too,” Lovely said, handing him a Cadbury chocolate.
“Thanks didi!” Dheer said, respectfully referring to her as elder sister before pocketing the chocolate and vanishing into his room.
“For me, for me?” Tufan greedily inquired.
“Nothing today,” Lovely patted him on the head. “But when the next Popeye comes out, I’ll bring it for you.”
Tufan grabbed a laddoo and trudged away.
“Don’t have bad thoughts about anyone while you’re eating,” Savita called after him, “or you’ll get a tummy ache.”
Nimish remained on the outskirts of the room, a stack of books in hand.
“What are you reading today?” Lovely asked, turning to him.
Nimish looked down at the books, trying to make sense of the titles as his heart raced. He had loved Lovely from the time she wore knee-length frocks. Loved her so much that he sneaked to the opening in the wall that separated their yards and gazed every night at the tamarind tree that grew in their backyard. The tree had been planted at the turn of the century when the Lawate’s bungalow on Malabar Hill had belonged to a Sir Ryfus Peyton. According to local lore, Sir Ryfus had gone on business to the Portuguese colonial port of Goa, on the coast just south of Bombay, when an impudent local boy spat out an insult before darting away.
Tamarind-head, Sir, the guide had told him, shaking his mosquito-bitten fist in the air. The bloody coolie just called you a tamarind-head.
Ryfus quickly learned that his fellow colonials placed tamarind pods in one ear when having to cross into the native quarter. The bloody natives actually believe that the pods are inhabited by evil demons, the guide further explained with a guffaw. Sticking them in our ears is a great trick to keep them from harassing us.
When Ryfus returned to Malabar Hill, he immediately had a tamarind tree planted, hoping that the tree’s special powers would work in Bombay as well. They did work, too well perhaps, driving Ryfus back to England long before the rest of his countrymen followed.
The little tamarind tree continued to grow undisturbed, pushing out green feathery foliage adorned with clusters of small yellow-and-red-striped flowers, and bearing sour fruit every winter that was plucked and used for the treatment of ulcers, constipation, and fevers, as well as a souring agent in cooking. Lovely had always had a fondness for the tamarind’s long pods with their brown, edible pulp that was both sweet and sour.
Stay away from the tree, her mother Vimla had warned her since she was a girl. It’s unwholesome. Evil-evil spirits live in it at night; see, even the tree’s own leaves curl up in fright.
But Lovely had not kept away. The tree had become her solace, the only place of escape in her overly protected life. At night, while her family slept, Lovely often climbed from her window to rest against the tamarind’s cool, gray bark.
And Nimish watched her every night, creeping to a small opening in the remote end of the dividing wall and peering through it. He urged himself to approach her but, paralyzed by uncertainty, always returned to his bed desolate, with a tortured mind.
Nimish, of course, told no one of his feelings or of his nocturnal escapades. Romantic love was filmi, not daring to appear in a proper Hindu household like theirs. He knew that his marriage, like those of generations before his, would be arranged to a woman whose astrological chart matched his. His family was Punjabi, originally from the northwestern region of India, while Lovely’s was Maharastrian, from Bombay itself. Their families, however close, would never consider a marriage outside of their regional communities. Yet, where Lovely was concerned, Nimish’s usual rationality fell away.
Nimi, your future wife’s already written in the stars, his mother had always told him.
But from the time he could remember, Nimish had decided that he would break with ancient tradition and, come what may, marry Lovely. He struggled to contain his emotions now, and fumbling with the stack of books, wiped his spectacles with the edge of his shirt.
“Tell her, nah, Nimi,” Savita jumped in, pointing to a book with the title Scinde; or, the Unhappy Valley by the famed explorer Sir Richard Burton. “This one looks interesting.”
“‘How lovely are these oriental nights,’” he obediently read from a marked page. “‘How especially lovely, contrasted with the most unlovely oriental day. ’”
How very Lovely, Pinky thought, her chest tightening.
Savita snorted. “And what’s so lovely-flovely about English sky the color of rotting rice and cold so severe that it sucks the heat from their big-nosed faces?”
Lovely hid a smile behind her hand, demurely casting her eyes away from Nimish.
And then adjusting the string of aphrodisiacal mogra flowers tucked into her glossy hair, she turned to Pinky. “Come, hawa-khaneka hai? Maji thought it would be good for you to have some fresh air. Let’s go to the park.”
Pinky nodded, noticing Nimish’s flushed cheeks with a stab of jealousy.
After they left, Maji turned her attention to Lovely’s mother, Vimla, who had just arrived to discuss the latest marriage proposals brought over by eagle-nosed Mrs. Garg from down the lane, a meddlesome woman who considered herself the neighborhood matchmaker despite a remarkable record of lack of success. The first offer had come when Lovely was merely fourteen, but now that she was of proper marriageable age, the trickle had become a veritable flood.
Mothers across their Maharastrian community wanted seventeen-year old Lovely for their sons, not only for her stunning looks but also, more practically, for her family’s wealth and their reputation for absolute strictness with their daughter. Modern girls, Maji and Vimla often lamented, had lost all sense of dignity, wearing makeup and prancing about town after college classes as if they were shameless film stars. These padi-likhi girls think they are royalty simply because they can read and write was Maji’s stark assessment.
“My Lovely will be compliant,” Vimla declared.
“Yes-yes, she’s a good girl.”
“And her dowry’s almost ready now. My jeweler brought the final sets just yesterday. All the pillow cases have been embroidered and even the refrigerator’s ordered.”
“And that Singer-finger machine?”
“That too, though I’ve left out the sewing scissors.”
“Yes-yes, nothing sharp to brandish at her new husband!”
The two women chuckled and then, intently sipping their chai, proceeded with the business of finding a suitable groom.
“She’s so stubborn sometimes,” Vimla Auntie bemoaned, opening her cherry-colored cloth satchel of proposals which she kept tied with a bit of gold thread procured from the temple. “Finding fault wth every single boy.”
“In our day, girls had no choice,” Maji said, studying a black-and-white photo of a young man with a heavily oiled mustache.
“Whattodo? Children don’t follow the old ways anymore,” Vimla chirped helplessly as she remembered her late husband’s frequent beatings, his merciless fists at her stomach, her face, her spine.
“Lovely will do as you ask,” Maji said, patting Vimla’s knee.
“I have this uneasy feeling,” Vimla suddenly confessed, tears welling up in her large eyes. “As if something terrible will happen before I get her married.”
Vimla nodded, wiping her face with an embroidered handkerchief. Still, that feeling persisted, like an encroaching shadow. She busied her hands leafing through the pile until she found the most recent one: a young doctor with wheatish complexion whose hobbies included collecting American cars and lepidoptery. “How about this one?”
“No,” Maji said with a click of her tongue, “Dekko, nah? See his eyes. They are hard-hard like stone. He will not treat your Lovely well.”
Vimla glanced at the young man’s handsome face, the curve of his nose, the trim moustache, before studying his eyes. Yes, they were hard eyes, she noted with surprise. And they bore an uncanny resemblance to her own dead husband’s.
Gathering storm clouds widened their hazy sway, but the sun still beat down with feverish intensity. Pinky and Lovely found a shady spot and spread out a sheet. They sat silently for a while, their thoughts falling into separate realms with the effortlessness of windswept leaves. A wig-shaped cloud of flies collected over the penguin-shaped trash receptacle. Nearby, children screamed in delight as they played in the giant Old Woman’s Shoe. Young men stared openly at Lovely, trying to catch her eye as they swaggered by while old men stole longing glances only to be thrashed by their wives’ purses and led away by their leathery ears.
Lovely was immune to the attention, as if unaware of her own beauty. Pinky meanwhile tried to contain her envy and suspicions about Nimish. Does she love him, too? Lovely had shared many things with Pinky over the years, advising her on her pending menstrual cycles and suggesting a diet of sky fruit and ashoka bark to stimulate her growing breasts. But despite their intimacy, their implicit trust in each other, there was a line beyond which Lovely fell into a brooding silence, her face dark and unreadable. And so, knowing that she could not ask about what transpired in the garden at night, Pinky decided to broach another topic, one that had pressed against her thoughts with equal urgency that day.
“Do you know, didi,” she began, “that one of our bathroom doors is bolted at night?”
There was a look of confusion on Lovely’s face, then a sudden realization. She brought a delicate hand to her lips. “Oh?” she said.
“You know, don’t you?”
Lovely shook her head.
“You know!” Pinky shouted, grabbing Lovely’s arm. “Please tell me!”
Lovely sighed, remembering the day it had happened. She was only four then but had climbed into the tamarind tree that morning while her parents slept. She had spied her older brother, then still a boy, cut across the yard and into the passageway to the next-door bungalow. He entered from the side door, which was unlocked at sunrise to allow the servants to come and go. Time passed and then he returned with packets of biscuits stolen from Maji’s pantry, already stuffing the contents into his mouth. She had not told her parents, especially not later, after what happened that day. All these years, it pained her to have kept quiet and now there was no point in telling.
She sighed again. “It was Savita Auntie who made that rule about bolting the door. You know how she can sometimes be, believing in all those old-fashioned superstitions.”
It was true, Savita was always battling shadowy beings and malevolent neighbors, both of which she believed caused all sorts of trouble with the good fortune she had worked all her life to secure. She brandished her kajal eyeliner pencil like a sword to protect her sons from any ill will that might be circulating about, drawing black dots behind their ears to ward off the Evil Eye.
“But her bathroom door is unlocked at night,” Pinky said.
“I don’t know anymore than that,” Lovely said, turning away from Pinky. Her golden dupatta slipped from her shoulders causing sharp intakes of breath from passing men. And her sloping hips flared the ridge of her kameez just so.
A WITCH
The AC whirred; thunder rumbled across the night sky. Even as the dense air lay upon her like a stack of bricks, Pinky had the sensation of a thick drapery falling away, of something lurking just beyond.
She stood and paced the room, waiting for Maji to fall into her usual deep sleep pattern which included talking, whispering, and sometimes even praying, her fingers moving in sync as if handling a rosary. Pinky’s insides itched; her thoughts raced, each one of them leading back to the bolted door. She had asked Dheer about it yesterday and had even tried to bribe Tufan, but neither twin had any answers. She had no choice but to go directly to her aunt.
Savita was the only daughter of an influential family from Breach Candy, the old and exclusive British enclave. She had learned her lessons well: how to choose the right set of coruscating jewelry, how to butter up her husband’s business partners, and how to drape her fulgent body in exorbitantly priced chiffons. But most successfully, she had learned how best to make her friends jealous: with words spoken over a cup of piping hot chai. Nimish is such a good boy. Will no doubt take over his father’s shipbreaking business one day. One spoon of sugar or two? And Dheer, he has such a good memory, I tell you. Remembers each and every item he ate for dinner the week before! And little Tufan, so clever. Scored first in his maths class! Biscuit? No, no you must try one, they’re imported.
Competing with her friends for who had the Most-Number-One-First-Class-Life had become a veritable athletic event, with a new tally calculated each week in the minds of the contestants. One week, Zarine placed first when her cousin-sister announced her engagement into an influential automobile family. The next, Anjali, because she registered for a painting class despite her in-laws’ objections. Mumta sneaked into the lead when she hired a second driver with an uncanny resemblance to film star Dev Anand. And Zarine’s perpetually youthful face kept her in the running long after she eloped with a skinny foreigner who had come to Bombay on a Fulbright.
If Savita had one goal in life, it was to win. Just last month, in fact, she had battled to deny a neighbor membership into her exclusive luncheon group. After a few discreet phone calls to a flock of gossip-prone ladies, concocting a story about how this neighbor rubbed rose-infused curds into her breasts in broad daylight, Savita succeeded in not only barring her from the group but blacklisting her in the entire seaside half of the city. As if to further cement the woman’s humiliation, for months afterwards a rabble of well-bred boys converged at the neighbor’s front gate sporting indecent bulges and binoculars.
Yes, Savita was a formidable opponent and Pinky, more than anyone, had been on the receiving end of her wrath.
The AC unit sputtered loudly then died out. Pinky walked over to it and clicked the knob but no sound came out, not even a wheeze. She sighed. It had broken again.
Maji began muttering, growing restless upon the bed.
Pinky quickly pushed open the two windows that overlooked the driveway and was immediately enveloped by the oppressive night air. Everything outside felt still. Not even the crickets sang. Sweat soaked her nightdress. Thirst gripped the back of her throat. She turned on the ancient ceiling fan which struggled to life, then merely stirred the soupy air rather than bringing relief.
Maji suddenly moaned, gnashing her teeth together. And then her eyes flew open and she shot up to a sitting position, a feat she had long ago ceased being able to do while awake.
Pinky gasped.
“I know, Savita. I know everything,” Maji said, her voice flat, her eyes staring unblinkingly at the opposite wall, saliva dripping from her mouth.
And then with a snort, she fell back in bed and reentered her dream that had been interrupted just as the hunky Prime Minister Nehru leaned in to nibble her ear, cooing Oh my darling, darling Mother India.
Pinky stood there, her heart pounding in her chest. On the bed, Maji continued with her sleep-talking, now whispering something incoherent.
A flash of lightning lit the sky.
“They said she’s a witch,” Maji was whispering urgently, her breathing harsh, fast, almost pa
nicked. “She’s a witch! A witch! A witch!”
Pinky ran out the door before even the thunder had a chance to boom.
The heat in the corridor enclosed Pinky like a hug as she waited in the shadows, her breathing slowing. A few minutes later, Jaginder swung open his bedroom door and slipped into the hallway, his white kurta pajamas flashing in a shaft of moonlight. Soon enough came the muffled sound of an ignition and then the hum of a car, the creak of the front gate. He left the bungalow almost every night. Pinky had no idea where he went, but she knew that his nightly escapades caused Maji considerable distress.
Pinky crept to his doorway and peeked in.
A dim light cast a faint glow across the room, which was decorated in stylish white upholstered furniture covered in hand-beaten metallic sheeting. The furniture had been brought as part of Savita’s dowry, delivered just before the wedding.
Take it back, Maji had said, inspecting the silvery-sheened chairs in horror, recoiling at the thought of bringing white, the color of mourning, into her house at this auspicious time. She did not add that this stark modern set clashed with the majestic hues of the bungalow, her bungalow. Jaginder had remained mute on the topic, secretly intrigued by his future wife’s underhanded power play—she had been to their bungalow after their engagement, after all; she had known its colors, its style.
It was Yamuna, Maji’s daughter, then still unmarried, who had intervened.
No Mummy, she had said, it’s not white. It’s bluish white like that Seijakuji pottery bowl we have from Japan. Almost a milky white.
White is white, Maji had muttered, finally giving in because the dreadful set would be confined to Jaginder and Savita’s bedroom.
Savita sat now in front of her elegant dressing table and lit a candle which glittered off the silver sheeting like a thousand fireflies. A mirror hung on the wall, veiled under a tissue-thin cloth. Mirrors were a rarity in the Mittal household, mainly because Savita felt that malevolent spirits lurked in them, waiting to cast their evil eyes at her boys as spirits often did to those they considered young and beautiful. She kept a thin cotton sheet across her mirror when it was not in use and the only other one, a small oval looking glass on a shiny brass pedestal, was tucked away on Maji’s bureau.