Motherland

by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

  As we made a turn on the dance floor, I saw my uncle standing a few feet away. As soon as the music stopped, he approached us.

  “This is my niece. Have we been introduced?” my uncle said.

  “I didn’t know, Mr. Pillai, I am sorry. Ravi suggested asking her to dance, I assumed she was here with his family,” Suraj said, his words nervously tripping out on top of each other. He gave my uncle his business card and said, “I work for Mr. Sethi and Mr. Menon. It is good to make your acquaintance, Mr. Pillai.”

  “Likewise,” my uncle said, and led me away, his hand tightly over mine.

  “1 thought you’d forgotten about me. Where have you been all this time, Sanjay uncle?"I said.

  “With some colleagues I haven’t seen in years. I trust Lalu introduced you around?”

  “Yes, she did, but I was wondering when you’d come back and rescue me,” I said.

  “You don’t like Lalu?” my uncle said.

  “Well, she’s a little cold.” Bitchy was what I meant.

  “She can take some getting used to. But she and Ravi have had us over a number of times, and they’re really quite a lot of fun. Who else did you meet?”

  “I didn’t catch all the names—there were so many funny names, like Bunny and Baby and Cuckoo.”

  “This set uses pet names more than we do,” my uncle said. “Especially the ladies. Your aunt and I have been trying to think of nicknames for ourselves before they think of ones for us.”

  The music stopped and a stocky mustached man climbed up on the band’s platform and announced awards for the year’s events. My uncle took second place in tennis, within his age group, and first place in table tennis, across all age groups. The fat lady won two trophies, in golf and in darts. The bumblebee won for biggest jackfruit in the harvest festival. Reema auntie won a first in gardening for her tulips.

  “Reema will be happy,” my uncle said. “Her tulips won last year, too.”

  “How does she grow tulips in this kind of weather?” I said, thinking of our tulips pushing through the last crusts of winter snow in March.

  “The tulips bloom in the cool months, in November, December,” he said. “And before the hot months and the monsoon, by February or so, Reema pulls the bulbs up and puts them in the refrigerator until September. Look in the butter compartment, you’ll see.”

  Dinner was served out on the verandah and on the patio just beyond it. The food was good, but very spicy, and I couldn’t balance my waterglass with my plate. I ate a lot of naan to calm the burn, and then some plain rice too.

  I surrendered my plate to an impatient waiter, and went to the row of sinks on the far side of the verandah to wash my hands and mouth. When I came back to the milling people, my uncle had disappeared. I stood on tiptoes and tried to find his slightly graying head among the others. I went back inside, where the dance floor was empty except for a few bedraggled flowers. The musicians were on break, wiping instruments clean, readjusting music sheets, getting drinks from the bar.

  I went behind the bar toward the dim lights in the next rooms. This side of the club was much darker, less lighting, more wood, with smoke thickening the air. Bottles of imported liquor stood on side tables, clusters of men were playing billiards, or playing cards, or standing and talking. Some were smoking cigars and pipes and, because they were planters and this was not Bombay or Delhi, chewing tobacco. Everyone looked up as I walked past them, but anyone whose eye I caught politely looked away.

  “I’m trying to find my uncle, Sanjay Pillai. Do you know where he might be?” I asked the group encircling a billiards table in the middle of the room.

  After a long awkward silence, one man said, “I just saw him step out, I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “He’s not in this round, but he’s in the next one,” another man volunteered.

  “Would you like me to go find him for you?” said the first man, pausing as he chalked up a stick.

  “No, thanks, you look like you’re in the middle of a game,” I said, venturing closer to the billiards table. “Is this like pool?”

  “A little. The scoring’s different. And the size of the table. Do you know how to play pool?”

  “My friend at home in New York has a pool table in her rec room. So we play sometimes, but I’m not as good as she is. She can even beat her brother and he’s really good.”

  “So you’re Sanjay’s niece from New York?”

  “Yes, I’m Maya,” I said. “How do you know Sanjay uncle?”

  He didn’t answer me, calling over his shoulder, “Come here, Ravi, Chirag, see, here is another example. This girl is Sanjay’s niece, pure South Indian, and see how light-skinned?”

  Ravi and Chirag came over, ice clinking in their glasses, liquid sloshing over the edge, I moved back a little to keep my dress from getting stained. All three were my uncle’s age, married, moneyed, confident of their charms, confidently in charge of this club, this company, this evening. They peered at me and, sensing their open appreciation, I stood taller, kept my hands still at my sides.

  Chirag said, “She’s light-skinned yes, Giresh, but not that light-skinned. I still say there is no way to tell a Sri Lankan girl from a South Indian one.”

  “You’re wrong, I tell you, Chirag. Our girls are much fairer. That woman Dhanu, they should have known right away from looking at her that she was a Sri Lankan and kept her away from Rajiv Gandhi. She was so dark, almost black. They should have known.”

  Ravi spoke, “Listen to yourself, Giresh. You’re saying just by looking at her I can know whether she’s the type of girl who will strap a bomb on a belt around her hips under her nice clothes and blow us all up?” I felt them looking at me, as if they were trying to imagine what it would all look like, the bomb, the belt, my hips.

  “Of course she wouldn’t,” Giresh said. “It’s not the pretty ones who become killers, it’s the dark, homely ones who don’t have any other way of getting attention. Blowing up leaders is the only way dark-skinned girls will ever get to have their picture in magazines.”

  “You don’t need to do something like that, do you?” Chirag said. His voice was low, intimate. I shook my head no, tried to smile. There was a certain tension, but I felt unafraid in this room full of men, full of ice and warm gin. It was the first time I’d felt really awake, alert, all evening.

  “Are you going to play or talk?” another man said to Giresh. Giresh gave me an apologetic smile and stepped up for his turn.

  “If he loses he’s going to blame it on you, you know. He’ll say it’s because he was trying to keep Sanjay’s niece entertained, and he was too distracted to play well,” Chirag said to me.

  “If she plays, maybe she’ll trounce you,” Giresh said to Chirag.

  “I’ll play if you teach me the scoring first,” I said.

  “Sanjay, what do you say, shall we all play?” Ravi said to my uncle, who had just come into the room.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, coming to stand next to me. “If you’re tired now, the driver can take you home, it’s no trouble.”

  “I’m not tired, Sanjay uncle, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” my uncle looked steadily at me. “You look tired—maybe we’ll get some fresh air.”

  My uncle walked me to the verandah out back. The remains of dinner littered the fabric-covered tables. Light, filtering through the windows of the club, brightly illuminated the porch, the patio, the sprawl of gardens beyond.

  “These are colleagues of mine,” my uncle said. “Please be careful.”

  “What do you mean, Sanjay uncle? What have I done wrong?”

  “It’s not just what you do, it’s what everyone else does. You don’t see any other ladies in the billiards rooms, do you? If the men are drinking a lot, or if they are talking freely, some will be embarrassed that you are there, they will be less comfortable, have less of a good time. This party is for everyone to relax among friends. Do you know what I am trying to say”

  “They came
up to talk to me, I didn’t make them,” I said. I felt defensive.

  “I know, Maya. I just don’t want anything to go wrong. I will bring you here some other night and teach you billiards, maybe next week,” he said, his tone softening. “It’s probably a dangerous thing to teach you, you’ll be better than me in no time, won’t you?”

  “Do you want to send me home now?” I asked stiffly.

  “Stay if you want to, there’ll be dancing for another hour or two, and usually there are games for everyone together, charades or something. We can go home together. Shall I take you back to Lalu or to Bunny or someone?”

  “No, I can find my way. I promise I won’t cause trouble. I’ll see you later at charades,” I said.

  My uncle left the verandah and went back to the billiards room. I was tired of adults, tired of trying to make sense of them and make sense around them. I didn’t want to go sit with Lalu or anyone else. But going home felt like admitting defeat. I looked out from the verandah at an enormous grid of half-grown trees. A labyrinth was mapped out there, but the bushes were only waist-high, so it wasn’t much of a labyrinth yet. I opened the patio gate to walk out to see it up close.

  “I don’t think you should go out there.” It was the chemist.

  “Why not? I always walk in our compound at night.”

  “But this is much nearer to the woods, and there are wild boar around here at night,” Suraj said.

  “Wild boar? You’re serious?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Look, they’ve destroyed these flower beds. Look here.” There were deep jagged furrows through the flower garden just outside the gate. The blossoms were mashed and the roots bared to the sky.

  “A wild boar did that?”

  “Yes, and see over to the left of that tuberose, you can see the footprints, hoofprints actually.”

  “Where are you looking, I don’t see,” I said, leaning over the gate next to him. He was pointing to the left and I pointed at what I thought was a tuberose. “You mean over there with the pink buds?”

  “No, farther to the right, the one with the white flowers, see?” Suraj said, touching my hand lightly in a leftward nudge to direct my vision. It was so quick and light it almost seemed as if it hadn’t happened. He had held my hand earlier when we were dancing, but that was just part of dancing. His hand touching mine out here in the quiet half-light half-dark felt like a whisper, a question, a declaration.

  “Yes, I see now,” I said, even though I didn’t.

  “Then do you see the footprints, they’re just next to the rose?” he said.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, trying to sound like I did. “But I want to see how the labyrinth works. Why don’t we go out there just for a few minutes? I’m not ready to go back inside the club with those stuffy people.”

  “But the boar could come back. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “If you’re there, there’ll be two of us. We can warn each other if it’s coming and run back inside the gate, or we can make some noise and scare it away.” I lifted the latch on the gate and took a couple of steps. If he wanted to be alone with me, this was his chance.

  He hesitated, but he followed me to the gate, saying, “You know, my father climbed his first tree when he saw a boar, and he didn’t even think he knew how.”

  “I’ve never seen a real-life labyrinth,” I said. “Whose idea was this?”

  “Mr. Sethi, one of the senior vice presidents—he was posted in England for a few years, and he was taken to all these fancy homes and gardens, and he wanted to try to make one like what he saw there.”

  “Right now, it’s too easy to see the exits. I wonder how long it will take for the trees to grow and knit together.” We walked through the first few turns and twists of the maze.

  “Not very long, everything grows fast here. They started growing these trees two years ago, and they’re already three feet. Come, let’s go back to the clubhouse, Maya, people might wonder where you are.”

  “Do you think when it’s finished, we could actually get lost in here—or only kids would?”

  “1 saw the blueprints that Mr. Sethi had given to the club to work from, they’re pretty complex. Of course, there’s only a certain number of options, and with adults, they’ll try each one and narrow it down to the right way out. The difference with children is that they aren’t logical like that.”

  “Let’s crouch down so that the hedges are over our heads, and see if we can find our way out.” I knelt down on the ground and waited for him to do the same.

  He reached down and put his hands around my waist. He pulled me up off my knees so that I was standing facing him. I thought he was going to kiss me then.

  “Maya, what are you doing?” he said. “Now you’ve gotten mud all over your dress, what will people think?”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” I said, brushing at it with my hand. The dirt faded into the black part of the dress, but the cream-colored border showed the grass stains and dirt in high relief.

  He took out a handkerchief and handed it to me.

  “I don’t think that’ll make a difference,” I said, handing it back to him.

  “You could at least try,” he said.

  I took the handkerchief from him again and rubbed it across the border, where the brown and green were already set like indelible ink. “See? It won’t come out until it’s washed or dry cleaned. But I don’t think it’s ruined.”

  “Who cares if it’s ruined. How can you walk back to the clubhouse like that?” His voice was tense and clenched. “Do you understand what your uncle will think? Do you know who your uncle is? He could have me sacked, and I won’t even have a chance to explain. Not that I would blame anyone for not believing me. I should never have been out here alone with you.”

  “I can tell them nothing happened.” I looked at him, I tried to make him look at me. “Why are you so mad?”

  “They’ll think you’re lying when you say nothing happened and they won’t blame you for lying. Because you would want to protect your reputation. They’ll think I came after you.”

  “But they know you, they won’t think that once we explain.”

  “I was doing so well at the company, I might even have gotten posted abroad, away from these riots and government problems and whatnot. Maybe Singapore, or even America, somewhere with good laboratories where I could do advanced work. And now …”

  “Stop it. You’re being ridiculous. Look, I’ll fix everything, don’t worry,” I said.

  “You can’t ‘fix’ it, you don’t understand how things work here. God, the longer I’m out here with you the worse this looks. At least go back inside now, and I’ll figure out by myself what I’m going to do.”

  There had to be a way out of this. I was starting to realize even if I’d done nothing wrong, I’d have to explain to my uncle what I was doing out here in the first place. After I’d already told him that I would be careful and not cause trouble. He was just like my mother when things went wrong, he never got mad at me, he got disappointed. They were both like that, they would just close up and back away from you and they wouldn’t want to share with you or laugh with you about anything for awhile. “Maybe they didn’t even see you come out here,” I said.

  “No, the bar staff saw you going into the gardens. They told me to stop you. I should never have let you force me to come out here.”

  “I forced you to come out here?” I thought he came out here because he liked me, but now that was too embarrassing to say. “I thought you wanted to be out here, too, away from all those boring people.”

  “Those people are people I work for, people whose respect I want. I only came out here to keep you from getting into trouble. Which was a big mistake.”

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s a big mistake to be around me. If you can just stop hating me and listen for a second, I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Go bring me food from the tables on the verandah, anythi
ng dark, like chicken curry or black bean curry. I’ll say a waiter spilled a plate of food down the front of my dress. In case anyone is looking, go by the side and stay out of the light and I’ll wait here.”

  He brought back a heaped plate of food. I scooped some black beans into my hands and smeared it across the border of my dress. I held the dress away from my body as I dipped the hem of it in the plate to soak up the curry. 1 squeezed the hem to get out the excess liquid, and the fabric bled oily dark reds and browns onto my hands. I threw the plate of food into the hedges, and dried my hands by wiping them through the grass.

  He held out his handkerchief again and I used it to blot the last of the curry off my fingers.

  “That should do it,” I said. “Should we walk back now?”

  “I’m sorry you had to do that to your dress.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s just a dress.”

  “I’m sorry I was getting rude. I was nervous. Can you understand?”

  “I guess,” I said, not looking at him as we approached the exit to the maze.

  “Maya,” he said. He tipped my chin up with his hand so that I had to look at him. “I don’t hate you. You’re a nice girl. Maybe sometime over the summer you can ask your aunt and uncle to invite me over for tea or dinner or something.”

  “Is that because you want me to like you or you want my uncle to like you?” I said.

  “That’s not a very polite question,” he said.

  “I like honest people more than polite people,” I said.

  “I want you both to like me. That’s honest, isn’t it?” he said. “I went to college up north, that’s the only reason I even know how to talk to a girl like you. We don’t talk about ‘liking’ girls here, not unless you’re marrying her.”

  “I know that. 1 just meant like me as a friend,” I said, although I hadn’t really.

  “1 like you as a friend already, okay?” he said, but there was a long silence after that and he looked at me in a way that made me feel giddy and tremulous. “But even as friends, I can’t invite you anywhere that will be proper to your aunt and uncle, so I’d like very much for you or your uncle to invite me to see you at your house or here at the club sometime.”