She nodded at me, motioning for me to precede her, when I asked, ‘Where are you off to?’
‘The market,’ she said, ‘I’m picking up some supplies.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk with you,’ and she fell in step with me.
We made our way towards the market, ambling peaceably when Shanti yanked my arm. There was an elderly man—silver-haired, trim, dressed in a dark grey Lacoste tracksuit—power walking on the opposite side of the road, and Shanti stood on tiptoe to whisper to me, ‘Do you know who that is?’
The man had passed by us, and I turned to inspect him. He didn’t seem familiar to me, but Shanti was saying, ‘He’s a very big man, Baby. Big, important man.’
I nodded, disinterested, and then Shanti added, ‘He has a big house beyond the market,’ and I snapped my fingers. ‘That’s the local celebrity, isn’t it?’ and as I scoured my memory for the name Mrs Bhatnagar had mentioned, I turned again to look at the retreating back. He wasn’t tall, and looked like he was in his sixties or seventies, but he walked briskly, and had an erect bearing that gave him an air of purpose. ‘Raja!’ I said, clapping my hands, ‘That’s Raja Singh, isn’t it?’
Shanti nodded. ‘He used to know your mother.’
‘Ma?’ I asked. How had their paths crossed? Mrs Bhatnagar had said something about Raja Singh owning a TV station, but Ma was a print journalist. ‘Are you sure?’
But then Shanti shrugged. ‘I don’t know, baby,’ she said. ‘I seem to remember your Ma talking to him when they passed each other on morning walks, but I may be wrong,’ and I turned away from my scrutiny of the retreating back. He was just a social acquaintance. It wasn’t him, then, who had written that letter to my mother. We walked towards the market, and when I slowed down in front of the convenience store, Shanti cleared her throat. ‘Not here, baby,’ she said, and pointed towards an antique store at the corner of the market. There was a tiny lane past the shop, so small that I had never noticed it before, but Shanti gestured towards it, and I slipped in through it. There was a smaller set of stores through the lane, a sort of a slapdash bolt-on to the main market, and as I walked in, I saw baskets bursting with aubergine and okra and guavas and mangoes. There was a riot of colour around me, and of smell, more vibrant than the packaged produce we normally picked up, and as I walked in, I saw a little child, three years old, maybe, resting on its haunches. Its gender was unclear, as it was dressed in a greying vest and shorts, but it eyed me with an unblinking, frank curiosity. I smiled at it, and Shanti, who had been silent during our walk to this smaller market, called out, ‘Gautam, what are you doing out here alone? Where is your mother?’
The child blinked, and then returned to his survey of me. ‘Come,’ Shanti said, leading me by the elbow. She took up a basket and began to load it with vegetables.
‘Okra!’ I cried out, and as the child moved to get a better view of me, I felt my churlishness. Shanti smiled, and I added in a softer voice, ‘Must you?’
‘Baby,’ she said kindly, ‘these are our vegetables.’ I must have looked bemused, as she added, ‘This is food for Pradeep and me.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded, embarrassed, ‘Of course,’ and watched as Shanti proceeded to add food to her basket. She picked long stems of green beans and potato and mustard seeds and curry leaves, wrinkling her nose at a papaya, and I thought to myself how little I knew of the tastes of the woman who had been responsible for so much of our childhood. She paused in front of a carton of eggs, and I wasn’t sure if she ate eggs or was worried about their cost. I thought of purchasing a carton for her, then worried about causing offence, and in the end, I made an excuse and fled. The little boy shuffled to the entrance of the shop to watch me leave.
I smiled at the child, but he didn’t acknowledge my greeting. His eyes were glued to my face, his eyes unsmiling, and curiously wary, as I turned quickly away.
I had just left the store when I heard someone greet me. Hands were folded, and a small, wiry man bowed his head as he said, ‘Namaste Didi.’
I was so taken aback that I didn’t recognise him for an instant, but then he looked up, and I smiled back at him.
‘Namaste,’ I said, ‘Your mother is just inside buying food.’
He nodded at the news, and folded his hands again. ‘I’ll take your leave, then,’ he said, and hurried away.
I returned home to a text from Benjamin. There hadn’t been any communication for weeks, and as I checked my phone, more out of habit than any real expectation, I saw that he had written. The message itself was short: ‘You back?’ and I switched my phone off. I wasn’t going to reply.
Maya and I hadn’t returned to the second floor since our last excursion, though the words were never far from my mind. Often, when I was drifting—my eyes heavy in the midday sun, or as Mrs Bhatnagar accosted us on our walks—the script flashed through my eyes. I could close my eyes and imagine the words were there, right in front of me, tangible almost, urgent and overbearing like a fruit on the turn.
I saw last night as a meeting between old friends. That you considered my conduct overfamiliar fills me with endless regret.
‘Well?’ Someone would speak in a raised voice, looking as if they had been expecting a response, and the charm would break. I would shake my head and laugh. ‘It’s too hot,’ I would complain. ‘I’m still getting used to Delhi’s heat.’
There would be nods, or a joke about how foreign I had become, but occasionally I caught Maya looking at me, and I knew she was thinking of the letter too. Once she said to me, ‘I wonder what the words mean,’ and I pretended not to hear her. Maya’s world had been so cloistered that I wasn’t sure she read the same meaning into the words as I did, and I worried, after all her losses, about disturbing her equilibrium.
She persevered. The next time we were alone and on the veranda, she recited a phrase from the letter: ‘that you considered my conduct overfamiliar,’ and I knew she was as haunted by the note as I was. Did she think Ma’s benefactor was male? Did she think he had suggested onerous terms for the deal? Or did she think his familiarity had been more personal in nature? And that was where I grew more unsure in my mind. Had there been a spurned advance? But it was Ma. Ma. Dour and unadventurous and unfriendly. She barely changed her clothes, never wore perfume or makeup. She was hardly likely to be the object of anyone’s attention.
‘What do you think the words mean?’ Maya asked, turning to me as if I was the older one, as if I could read into the meaning of those opaque, impenetrable words.
I tried to ask Tasha-di about the letter when Maya wasn’t there, but she didn’t provide any colour on the letter. She claimed a loss of memory, focussing instead on the magazine. She gave us the proof copy to take home, and told us she was happy to answer any questions we had on The Satirist, but it was clear she was unable or unwilling to divulge information on the letter or its writer.
We followed her lead then, and when we were alone after dinner, Maya often pulled out the proof copy to peruse it. Her wonder zeroed in on Ma’s passion, and on her entrepreneurialism. ‘Just imagine,’ she said to me, ‘Ma set up a magazine all on her own.’
‘Yes.’
‘Her own magazine!’ She looked at me, nodding as if to spur my enthusiasm, and said, ‘She wasn’t content to just sit there and work for an organisation. She wasn’t going to do an editor’s bidding.’ Here my sister fell silent, and I briefly debated asking her about her own patchy writing. Had she not enjoyed the stories she had been assigned? Had there been creative differences? Had her sexism proceeded from her experiences and not from Ma? Maya had been a promising writer all her life. As a child, she was always running off to write in her notebook, or to send her dolls off on assignments, and when she had gone to college, she had edited her student newspaper. She had won several journalism prizes, and had been offered jobs by India’s leading dailies, but somehow, over the years, her output had fallen.
When I asked, Ma usually muttered something about print journalism dying
out, and I knew enough about their lives to know that the demands Ma placed on Maya’s time were incompatible with a career. Maya always agreed with Ma’s analysis—yes, things were terrible in print journalism. Newspapers were shutting down daily, as were magazines, and instead, the only news that was flourishing was run out of online ezines. She nodded, Ma mourned a changing world, and I made soothing noises, but now, as I watched her gush about Ma’s initiative, I wondered if she thought of the career that could have been hers.
Delhi’s heat was relentless. I wore looser clothes, sticking largely to the whites that were preferred by most of Delhi in the summer, and tied my hair up in a bun. And still there was no relief. It intensified overnight, raking the grass, drying the petals on the bougainvillea in our veranda to a crisp, and burning my scalp anytime I was outside until I began to long for the relief the monsoon brought. The sun rose before I did, and by the time Shanti was in my room, drawing open the curtains, complaining about the dust that had already accumulated in the room, I knew rest was impossible.
We began to take our walks earlier. At this hour, we were untroubled by Mrs Bhatnagar, though we came across joggers completing a quick circuit of the area. ‘Corporate people,’ Maya said in explanation. ‘They’re getting in their exercise before work.’ She nodded at a few, though no one stopped to make conversation.
‘Lots of new faces around.’
Maya nodded. ‘There are so many corporate rentals in the area now,’ she said. ‘The place has grown transient.’
A grey-haired man speed-walked past us, and I nudged Maya. ‘That’s Raja Singh, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘He’s not a common sight as he travels so often. But whenever he’s in Delhi, he’ll take his morning walk. Very often he’ll invite a colleague or business associate to join him, and they will have a business meeting as they walk.’
‘A true power walk, then.’ I watched as he zoomed on into the distance. An idea was beginning to form in my head. It was nothing concrete, not just then, but I asked Maya, ‘Are there any offices in the area?’
She laughed and asked who could afford the local real estate prices, and I replied, ‘We could.’ It took a while to explain to her that we were both unwilling to let go of the house. Maya frowned at me as I spoke, arguing that she had agreed to let in builders, and I had to point out to her that she hadn’t met any she had liked.
Maya paused. Raja Singh had vanished from view. The day’s heat was rising, and I spied a bead of perspiration above her lip. Her hair, tied into a tight bun, was starting to escape from its restraints, and under the sunlight, I saw white strands of hair. She flashed me a thin, strained smile, and said, ‘We can’t just let anyone in, Siya.’
‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘But Delhi must have one trustworthy builder.’
She remained unsmiling. ‘You don’t know how unscrupulous these people are.’
‘Come on…’
‘No,’ she said. Her eyes flashed. ‘You don’t know what India is like.’ I bristled at her words, but she carried on. ‘They’ll make endless promises to get the contract, and then deadlines will slip. You’ll have to monitor them constantly to make sure they aren’t using substandard products…’
She was ready to carry on, but I held up my hand. Ma had been paranoid and resistant to change, but I hadn’t realised how closely my sister resembled her. There she was, hands on hips, blowing air out through puffed up cheeks, and I said, ‘You’re probably right, Maya. And maybe there’s another solution.’
It took a while to communicate to her that we could hire out the ground floor as offices. Maya complained no one had ever done that before, and when I told her about the room Ma had rented out near our school, she had more objections. That was a middle-class area, and ours was more exclusive. There was sure to be resistance from the neighbours. I pointed out that our neighbours were transient now, professional families out during office hours. Chances were they wouldn’t even know of any change we made. Maya then worried about the permissions required to change the use of a domestic building.
‘We’ll have to think about builders again if we’re to partition off the ground floor,’ she told me triumphantly, and I sighed. ‘We’ll be back to square one.’
‘But maybe not,’ I said. It was too hot to walk now, and though we remained standing as we had been when we started the conversation, we were beginning to attract attention. A few boys passed us by on an errand to the market—to pick up milk or bread or eggs—and noticed us rooted to the same spot on their return. They dawdled, hoping to catch a whiff of drama, some sighting of a scandal or a tiff. Little urchins gathered around them, as did stray dogs, and I saw that we had gathered an avid audience.
I guided Maya back to our home, and once inside, I took her around the ground floor. ‘This,’ I said, pointing at the library. We both winced at the sight of the caved-in bookcase, but the space itself was large. Papa had come here of an evening, sitting among the leather clad books until he was called in for dinner. There was a small drinks cart—untouched for years—in one corner. The crystal decanters, dusty now and unpolished, still contained inches of an amber liquid I took to be scotch.
We often came in here, Maya and I, after our homework was done. Ma was stricter, worried if our homework was finished too quickly, always mindful that our reading materials shouldn’t simply consist of comics and glossy magazines, but Papa, more laid back, and more content in our company, was the parent we gravitated towards. He would let us munch on his snacks, even as Ma warned they would ruin our appetite, and as we wandered into the room that still carried so many memories of Papa years after his passing, it felt a little like we were returning to our childhoods.
‘This?’
‘Yes,’ I said, though I paused before I replied. This room had been our sanctuary, but as I looked around, I saw it was big enough to accommodate our old dining table. An idea was forming in my head, and as Maya was shaking her head in her instinctive denial, I said, ‘I keep thinking of Ma’s magazine.’ This held her attention, and though she didn’t reply, I took heart from the fact that she hadn’t rebutted me.
‘The Satirist,’ I said, painting the words with my fingers. I felt a little like a salesperson, an estate agent, a seller of fantasises, and as Maya paused, expectant, I began to circle the room. The thrill of possibility was beginning to course through me, and I saw now, not simply a use for the house, but a path for Maya, and one for me. ‘Just imagine,’ I told her. I ran to the window, and pulled open the curtains. Light spilled in through the dirty panes, and I leaned forward to open the latch on the windows. These had been untouched in years, probably last cleaned when Papa’s decanters had been, and a plume of dust swirled towards me as the ancient fittings were disturbed. I coughed, rubbing my hands on my trousers, and turned cheerily towards Maya. ‘Just imagine,’ I said, as she smiled and pointed out a dust smudge on my forehead. ‘We could restart the magazine.’
She smiled still but didn’t interrupt.
‘We could hire in journalists.’
‘Really? Who?’
‘Come on,’ I said, turning my eyes on her. ‘You must have friends from your college days you can rope in.’
She shrugged.
‘Tasha-di will have contacts. Or,’ I said, warming to my theme, ‘We can get in some fresh graduates. You can be the editor.’
I expected her to pick up on the million holes in my logic, our lack of funding or experience, but she didn’t seem to notice them. ‘The Satirist’, she said in a ponderous voice, and I nodded.
‘I can do the marketing.’
Maya didn’t ask if I planned to remain in Delhi, and I rushed to say, ‘We can bring in the large dining table we never eat at. That will sit ten, twelve easily.’
‘Yes.’
‘I can help with copy editing, with the layout for the early magazines. We can ask Tasha-di to join us too. And really, we only need one or two others then.’
‘There will need to be distribution cha
nnels.’ Maya was starting to frown. ‘The Satirist folded before it had even begun.’
‘We will launch.’
‘When Ma failed with all her contacts and all our experience? We don’t stand a chance.’ Other doubts, most of them valid, were beginning to assert themselves, but I ploughed on. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘And we’ll have to think of budgets, but surely this is an easier way to use the house, isn’t it?’
She inclined her head. I knew what she was thinking: this was no solution to the problem of the house, but it was something. The magazine would bring some unused rooms into play. Some problems would be fixed. The cracks in the ceiling would keep spreading, more of our ancient furniture would buckle under the weight of Ma’s books, but this was a small step towards recovery. It was something. And, I thought, it was something for the both of us to do while we thought of how to rescue our decaying home.
‘Think about it, Maya,’ I said, as she walked towards the bookcase. Many of the books had spilled out, and were lying on the floor. They hadn’t been gathered up, or stacked in any sort of order. She lifted one, fingering its spine, before laying it flat on a side table. She bent down, picking another volume before placing it on top of the first book. She repeated the process until she had piled four books on top of one another, and then began another stack next to the first.
She worked quietly, and I was unsure if she was unaware of my presence, but I was unwilling to disturb her. Maya created six low piles of books on the circular table, and paused to see the effect. She looked up at me and smiled. There was a light in her eyes, though I couldn’t work out which way her thoughts tended.
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