by Marisha Pink
THIRTY
THE night marked a return to insomnia for Arun, who tossed and turned, consumed by his anxieties over the impending conversation with Arthur. By the time the morning came, he resembled the walking dead and, exhausted from his restless night, the last thing that he felt like enduring was a confrontation. Despite Chandni’s rousing pep talk, in the cold light of day he knew with near certainty that whatever arguments he put forth, however calm and rational he remained, Arthur was not going to be pleased or supportive of his decision to stay. The only unknown was what the extent of his displeasure would be and he had been acting so strangely towards Arun since Catherine’s death that it had become difficult to predict. When she was alive, Arthur had never cared too much for bonding with his son, taking as little interest in his personal life and activities as Catherine would let him get away with. Yet now he seemed to want to know everything, to be involved in every decision and to control the outcome of every situation, and Arun didn’t know how to handle him.
When he made the familiar journey into the city with Lucky, Arun was largely silent, lost in thought whilst his brother’s banal chatter amounted to mere background noise along with the passing traffic. Lucky dropped him outside of the internet café that had become his second home over the previous few days and, after waving goodbye, Arun trudged inside, already weary from a conversation that hadn’t yet begun. It was too early to call home, so Arun used the morning to continue with his medical college research, sending e-mails to various agencies that could help with the application process in a bid to distract himself from what lay ahead.
At midday, he made his way to one of the small wooden telephone booths at the back of the café and, securing the door so that his conversation could remain a private one, nervously dialled the fourteen digits that would connect him with Arthur. It was stiflingly hot inside the booth and while the telephone rang once, twice, and three times, he felt sweat begin to cascade down the sides of his face, his pulse quickening in apprehension.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Arthur, it’s me.’
‘Aaron! How are you?’
‘I’m good, thank you. How are you?’
‘All’s well at this end. Starting to make preparations for your return; I’ve just had the cleaners in.’
Arun’s stomach lurched as he steeled himself for the conversation that he had been dreading all morning.
‘About that, Arthur, I um … well I’ve decided to stay a little longer.’
‘Is there anything special that you want? Anything that you’ve been missing?’
‘Arthur, did you hear what I said?’ he croaked, his palms beginning to sweat so much that he found it difficult to grip the receiver.
‘I could ask Aunt Ruby how to make her shepherd’s pie. I know it probably won’t be as good as when she makes it herself, but I know how much you like it.’
‘Arthur, stop, please, listen to me. I’m not coming home; I want to do my degree out here,’ he said, somewhat more forcefully than intended.
There was silence at the other end of the line, save for the sound of noisy, heavy breathing, and after three long minutes Arthur had still not uttered a word.
‘Arthur, are you still there?’
‘What do you mean you’re not coming home?’ he growled finally, in such a low and irritable voice that Arun quickly recognised his father was on the cusp of exploding.
‘I … I want to stay in India.’
‘Yes, I understood that part, Arun; why?’ continued Arthur, impatiently.
‘Because … my life here is … good. I’m happy … relaxed … and every single time I think about having to leave it feels all wrong. I think … I think this is where I belong, Arthur.’
‘Nonsense, Aaron. England is where you belong, with me,’ spat Arthur dismissively.
‘Arthur, let’s both be honest for a second,’ he began boldly, deciding that there would be no better moment to address the elephant that had been in the room for the last nineteen years, ‘you and I don’t exactly fit the stereotypical father–son mould.’
‘That’s not true,’ lied Arthur, unconvincingly.
‘I think we both know that it is.’
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘I’m not doing anything to you, Arthur; this isn’t about you. There is just something about this place, something about being here, that feels right for me.’
‘You belong here with me; it’s what Catherine would have wanted. It’s what I want, for us to be a proper family.’
‘We are family, Arthur, but –’
‘No, no we’re not; you were right. I know that I haven’t been a good father in the past, but I’m trying now, Aaron. I’ve been trying for months because really we’re the same, you and I. All we had was Catherine and, sure, Aunt Ruby might come and go from time to time, but it’s just us now. It’s just us and so you can’t leave me. We have to stick together … we’re all that we’ve got,’ he pleaded pitifully.
Arun was stunned into silence by Arthur’s ramblings. Finally his odd behaviour, his sudden care and concern over the past few months made sense: Arthur was afraid of being alone. With Catherine gone Arthur had nothing, but he was wrong about one thing, because Arun did have something and it was so much more than he had ever dreamed would be possible.
‘Arthur,’ he began slowly, ‘I know that you’ve been trying … and just because I’m not there, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone … but I have to get on with my own life too. I’ll come to visit regularly and maybe you could even come and visit me out here from time to time. I’d –’
‘They’ve done this to you, haven’t they?’ exploded Arthur, switching angrily.
‘Done what?’
‘I warned you about this; they’ve brainwashed you into thinking that you can’t leave. I bet that temple’s trying to turn you into some bloody robe-wearing Hare Krishna chanting fanatic,’ he spat, his soft pleading tones abruptly replaced by the shrill sounds of a venomous rage.
Being kind and honest had done nothing to convince Arun of his obligation to return home and now, appearing to have run out of options, Arthur had resorted to forceful bullying instead.
‘Arthur, it’s not –’
‘No, Aaron, this whole thing is ridiculous. What on earth are you going to do there? How are you going to support yourself?’
‘It’s okay, Arthur. Lucky and Hanara have already said that I can stay with them whilst I complete my college applications. Then, hopefully, if I get accepted next year I can move up to Mumbai.’
‘NEXT YEAR?’
‘Yes, next year. It’s too late to make an application for this year’s intake.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ began Arthur, his voice now ten decibels higher than it had been at the start of the conversation, ‘you have already had a gap year and you have a place to study medicine at Oxford University starting in two months’ time that most people would kill for. Yet you want to throw it all away and waste another year for the chance to maybe, maybe, study at some unrecognised, backwards institution that no-one’s ever heard of? Can you not hear how ridiculous that sounds?’
‘The colleges here are actually very well-respected, Arthur,’ he answered coolly. ‘A lot of them are public, which means that I can’t apply to them, but there are some great private ones too.’
‘Oh we’re going to private college now, are we? And how much is that going to set me back?’
‘It’s really not as expensive as it sounds; the fees are about the same as they are back home, maybe even a little cheaper. The course is shorter too, so overall it should cost you less,’ Arun pleaded.
‘You’re wrong.’
‘I’m not wrong, Arthur, I’ve done my research and –’
‘It’s not going to cost me anything, Aaron. Now you listen to me, and you listen to me good,’ growled Arthur, the tone of his voice disturbingly menacing. ‘You went to India to find Kalpana. You should have
come home as soon as you found out that she was dead, but you wanted to get to know your brother and sister, and I was more than understanding of that fact, especially given all the rubbish that they’ve filled your head with about your mother paying for you. Next you say that you want to stay to see that rash festival, and still I didn’t say anything. Then you want to play happy families in some pokey little village all summer and I thought to myself, okay, maybe you need to get it out of your system. But this is where I draw the line.
‘If you think that I’m going to just sit back and watch you throw away your future, throw away everything that your mother worked so hard to provide for you, and pay for the pleasure, then you’ve got another thing coming. It’s Oxford in October, or nothing at all. And if you are not on that plane in four weeks’ time, then don’t bother coming home again. Ever.’
An uncomfortable silence prevailed, punctuated only by the sound of Arthur’s ragged breath on the line. Arun was dumbstruck and the unexpected finality of Arthur’s last words felt like a punch to the gut.
‘Arthur … Arthur, I –’ he croaked, unable to get any words out.
‘I have to get dressed for work now. I will see you in four weeks.’
Before Arun could protest any further, Arthur was gone. He tried to steel himself against the small desk inside the cubicle, but it was futile. The emotions involuntarily bubbled up inside of him and tears pricked the corners of his eyes. Soon they were in free flow, cascading like waterfalls down his bronzed cheeks until he could no longer hold it all in and, bending over the desk, he sobbed uncontrollably into his arms. He had expected an adverse reaction from Arthur, but he had never imagined that he would be so unforgiving and so final. He wept and he wept, overcome with exhaustion and emotion, the tension in his body slowly releasing itself, until the shop assistant was soon knocking at the cubicle door with concern.
Arun wiped the moisture from his face with the back of his hands and emerged from the cubicle looking more strained than he had when he had first entered. The shop assistant opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind before any words came out. Numbly, Arun paid for his call, unable to see how many rupees he had placed on the counter through his bleary eyes, and then stepped out into the stormy afternoon showers. The rain was oppressive, the fat drops of water beating down hard on his back like the lashings from a whip, but the pain was strangely gratifying. It was several hours before Lucky was due to return and collect him, but he couldn’t face sitting in front of the computer, continuing with his research as planned, so he walked. He walked through the rain in no particular direction and to no particular destination; he just had to keep moving.
He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Somehow, in the course of one conversation, the solution that it had taken him so many weeks to arrive at was now the problem. He hadn’t expected everything to run smoothly, but the difficulty should have been gaining acceptance to medical college. Now, whether he gained acceptance or not, without Arthur’s financial support he couldn’t afford to go, and worse, if he didn’t go home, Arthur would never speak to him again. As a child he had often mused that his life would be unaffected by Arthur’s absence, but as an adult he knew that the reality was very different. Arthur may not have been the greatest father, but he was still the only father that Arun had ever known and once again he found himself in a place of impossible reconciliation. He needed to speak with Chandni; she was the only one who would understand and the only one whose doe-eyed optimism could soothe and reassure him.
By the time Lucky picked him up, Arun was completely soaked through. Lucky couldn’t understand why his brother had persisted in walking about in the heavy monsoon rains, but Arun couldn’t bring himself to share the details of Arthur’s horrible ultimatum. When they reached home, he told both siblings that his call to Arthur had gone unanswered and though he hated lying to them, he hated the idea that he might have falsely raised their hopes that he would stay even more. He was silent throughout dinner and when they reached the mandir, he couldn’t focus on the evening’s prayers, desperately scanning the room for Chandni’s diminutive figure.
When he finally spied her, unusually seated several rows behind Hanara, their eyes met briefly across the hall, but behaving more cautiously and more introverted than usual, Chandni was quick to avert her eyes from his gaze. By the time the prayers were over, Arun physically ached from his desire to talk to her, but with Naresh glued to her side it proved impossible to get her alone. At the close of the evening, it appeared that she would be staying on at the mandir until Rajubhai Joshi finished his duties and Arun felt the frustration rise in his chest as the last opportunity for them to talk privately slipped away.
He was as silent during the journey home as he had been all evening, and Lucky and Hanara were beginning to grow suspicious. While they prepared for bed they took it in turns to question his wellbeing, concerned that he was not himself, yet Arun could still not find the strength to relive his conversation with Arthur, knowing the reaction that it would likely receive. Brushing them off, he clambered into bed alongside Lucky and for the first time he welcomed the blackness of the windowless room, its opacity masking the silent tears that rolled down his face as he cried himself to sleep.
When Arun awoke the following morning, he was relieved to remember that it was Saturday, the day that he and Chandni traditionally spent time alone together. Running out of excuses for her to need to venture to Puri and not at all enthused by the relentless monsoon rains, lately they had taken to sneaking between each other’s houses once Rajubhai Joshi had departed for the mandir. The arrangement suited Chandni better because it involved less outright lying and it meant too that they were not reliant on Lucky to ferry them to and from their rendezvous. Today was Chandni’s turn to visit Arun, but with Naresh scheduled to return to Mumbai that morning, she had been unsure about the exact time that she would be able to slip away. Lucky had set off for work early and with Hanara minding the shop, Arun was left to silently pace the length of the house, impatiently awaiting her arrival. He found himself obsessively checking his watch, stunned to learn that only a few minutes had gone by each time, but by eleven o’clock Chandni was still nowhere to be seen and he was growing increasingly anxious.
At midday, he braved the rains and traipsed across the yard to see if Chandni had perhaps visited the shop for provisions, or left a message with Hanara, but his sister had nothing to ease his apprehensions. Arun was baffled, racking his brains, desperate to determine what could be keeping his beloved Chandni away. He was sure that Naresh was scheduled to leave in the morning, but perhaps he had made a mistake? Perhaps Rajubhai Joshi had not gone to the mandir after seeing him off and now Chandni couldn’t get away? There were a million possibilities and he didn’t care which of them was correct, so long as he could see Chandni. He needed to talk to her and to share with someone the details of his conversation with Arthur, before it completely consumed him from the inside out.
At three o’clock, when Arun lay helplessly on his bed on the verge of giving up all hope, there was finally a knock at the door. Instantly relieved, he jumped up and almost fell over himself in his haste to reach the front door. Quickly smoothing out the creases in his shirt and combing his fingers through the tangled mop on his head, he excitedly pulled back the door, but he was not at all prepared for the figure that stood before him.
‘Arun, I think you and I need to have a little talk.’
