The waiter brought two masala omelettes and a plate heaped with neatly cut slices of bread. The oil was still fizzing over the yellow surface and the aroma filled Ravan with a heady sense of expectation. He was grateful that he was not born a cripple, without a nose and a stomach and was able to enjoy these celestial aromas. A pronged instrument and knife had been placed next to the plates. Aunt Lalee struggled to cut the omelette with that strange spoon and knife but it jumped out. Ravan tore at his with his fingers and ate in a daze. The omelette was as thin as crepe, the oil a trifle rancid and his mother’s omelettes were fatter and far more tasty but they could not compete with the thought, thrill and ambience of eating out. As if all this were not very heaven, Aunt Lalee ordered a Coca Cola for him and a cup of tea for herself. The Coke bottle was sweating on the outside and cold as liquid ice inside.
He felt his throat turn transparent as he sucked up the frozen fluid. It was sweet and bitter and he hoped that the bottle was bottomless and he could keep drinking from it till the breath went out of his body. He made a racket sucking the bottle dry and then the straw till its sides collapsed upon themselves.
‘Why don’t you wring the bottle, there’s bound to be some drops left in it,’ Aunt Lalee suggested to him. He was about to when he realized that she had got up.
Shankar-rao sat up to drink the tea that Parvatibai brought him.
‘I’ll go to the market and be back within an hour and a half,’ Parvatibai told him. He had no idea why she was volunteering this information when all these years she had left without a word. She took the large, folded tote bags from the hook on the back of the door, then stopped and put her foot on the chair.
‘This anklet’s a nuisance,’ she muttered almost to herself. ‘The sari keeps getting caught in it.’
She placed the bags down on the floor and bent down to adjust the anklet. The sari must have got deeply entangled for it took her some time to free it. The delicacy of her fingers and the curve of the anklet around her firmly moulded ankle bone were all the more appealing because she was so unconscious of the grace and sensuousness of her gestures. Look at her, she was stooping down, those two lifebuoys at her breast bobbing up and down ever so gently and yet her sari had not drifted off her shoulder.
She looked up and saw her husband staring at her. She picked up the tote bags and left.
When she got back the doors were locked. That was unusual. Everybody in the chawls left the doors open for cross ventilation. She knocked. Nobody answered. She knocked again. The silence continued. Were brother and sister engaged in intimate converse? If so, where was Ravan? She relaxed when she saw that the window into the common corridor was open. How naive could she be? As if those two gave a damn or could be trusted to behave themselves just because the window was open or Ravan was in the house. She walked over to the barred window and drew the curtain aside. Shankar-rao, his sister and Ravan were smirking and trying to suppress their laughter.
‘Ravan, open the door.’
‘Stay where you are, Ravan,’ Aunt Lalee said.
‘Ravan, please open the door. I need to make preparations for tomorrow’s meal.’
Ravan fidgeted. Surely a red shirt, a trip to Elephanta and an omelette and Coke could not, he thought, make him betray his mother. He was wrong. Even without the prospect of a visit to the blue mountains and the shimmering lakes of Kashmir, he would have turned his back on his mother. There are, he would find out, few thrills greater than stabbing someone you had loved without thought and without restraint all your living years. He stole a glance at his mother and then sat with his head between his knees. A hot wind of guilt singed the back of his neck.
‘Even your son has abandoned you, Parvatibai.’ Aunt Lalee sliced betel nut into micro-fine slivers with her nut-cracker, put three quarters of them in her mouth and slipped the rest into Ravan’s hand. She picked up her pallu and held it uncertainly, not quite knowing what to do with it and then flung it over her shoulder. She walked over to the window. ‘Have you come to some kind of decision about non-vegetarian dishes for your husband’s sister?’
‘I would be happy to, if I had that kind of money.’
‘Do you want to starve the baby that’s growing inside me?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Why don’t you take on some more customers, raise the price of the meals, take up some extra work.’
‘You can’t get customers overnight. But even if I could, I can’t handle any more single-handed. And we’ll need to buy more vessels and more stoves. Will you help?’
‘While I’m in the family way?’ Lalee seemed deeply offended.
‘All the women in the chawls work till the day they deliver. They say it makes the delivery easy.’
‘I’m not one of your women from the chawls. I’m used to a better lifestyle than this wretched place offers. Anyway it’s up to you. You want to come in, you have to do what I tell you.’
Parvatibai took a long time to answer. ‘I’ll do as you say.’
There was mutton, fish or shrimps for lunch in Shankar-rao’s sister’s plate twice a week. Parvatibai took care to cook Lalee’s special food when Ravan was at school. Shankar-rao was the one who suffered the most. The smell of the non-vegetarian food was overpowering and his stomach rumbled and rioted. He asked Parvati to give him just a little bit, a mere taste of it. She said, ‘Ask your sister.’
‘May I?’ he asked Lalee.
‘What for? Are you pregnant?’
One afternoon when Ravan came back from school, he hung around the kitchen as if he had something on his mind. In the good old days Parvati would have administered a straightforward emetic like, ‘Out with it. What’s the problem?’ or a deliberately distorted one, ‘So, your teacher’s asked you to stand outside the class for the next seven days because you didn’t do your homework?’
‘What rubbish, you don’t know a damn thing.’
Either way, the effect would be the same. Ravan would unburden himself for half an hour or so while Parvati pottered around. Most of the time the absolution would be in the confession itself, but sometimes Ravan would get angry and ask her, ‘What’s the point of my going into this long spiel if all you’ve got to say is “huh, huh” every five minutes.’
‘If I give you advice, are you going to follow it?’ That would shut Ravan up till the next occasion when he had something urgent to impart.
Their relationship was a little strained now, at least from the son’s side, but Parvati was certain that if she carried on in a business-as-usual manner, things were bound to come to a boil and her son would spill whatever was bothering him. Ravan went through his routine. He stuck his hand in the sliced cabbage. Parvati said, ‘Stop it.’ Soon he was playing with the uncooked rice soaking in water in a pan. She cracked his knuckles with the rolling pin.
‘Can’t you sit still?’
‘Where are Dada and Aunt Lalee?’
‘They didn’t tell me but they were talking about seeing some filim.’
‘Ma …’ He seemed to be having trouble getting to the point today. ‘Ma …’
‘I’m here Ravan.’ Parvati smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be here whether I’m wanted or not.’
‘Am I going to have a sister, Ma?’
‘I don’t know. It could be a brother.’
‘Who is the father?’
‘Your father.’
‘No, it’s not, it’s not,’ Ravan yelled lunatically. ‘You are lying. I know you are. I hate you. I hate you.’
‘That’s enough, Ravan.’
Why was he screaming? A tantrum wasn’t going to change anything. There was a bad taste in his mouth. It had, he was sure, something to do with growing up. He hadn’t just lied to others, he was willing to practise deceit and prevarication upon himself. Hadn’t he known from day one that his father and Aunt Lalee were carrying on? He found it puzzling that he had gone to such lengths to sustain the pretence when the concerned parties hadn’t given a hoot.
‘I would prefer a sister. Eddie has one. What shall we call her?’
‘That’s up to them, your father and his sister.’
‘I wish they would ask me. I would call her Neeta like the heroine in Dil Deke Dekho.’
Ravan seemed to have run out of steam. Parvati had the feeling that Ravan’s long preamble had nothing to do with the intent of his visit.
‘Shall I get rid of her?’
Parvatibai looked uncomprehending.
‘Not the baby. Aunt Lalee.’
Shankar-rao and Lalee got back by seven o’clock.
‘Where’s Master Ravan?’ Lalee asked Parvatibai.
‘Practising tae lando or whatever they call it, with his teacher, I guess.’
Lalee switched on the ceiling fan. ‘How come there’s no breeze? Is the electricity off?’ She looked up and saw a hook on the ceiling instead of the fan. ‘Where the fuck is the fan? Parvati!’ She was screaming now. ‘Parvati.’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t say yes. What did you do with the fan, you bitch?’
‘Sold it.’
‘What?’ Lalee asked hysterically. ‘Whatever for, you stupid woman?’
‘You said you wanted mutton and fish.’
‘What’s that got to do with the fan?’
‘It paid for the food.’
‘Look what you’ve gone and done.’ Shankar-rao was beside himself with rage. ‘We’ll have to suffer because you wanted some fancy stuff for yourself.’
‘Don’t you worry, I’ll make that bitch get the fan back if it’s the last thing I do. Get it back, you hear, get it back.’
‘I’ll try,’ Parvati said meekly, ‘but then you won’t get your fish and mutton.’
‘Fuck the mutton and fish.’ There was a nasty edge to her voice. ‘Have the fan fixed.’
On Thursday after Lalee left around 11 o’clock, Parvati took a bath and was fastening her blouse, one hook at a time, when Shankar-rao came in to have a glass of water. Parvati turned her back on her husband and tried to get the remaining two top hooks into their loops. Shankar-rao put his glass on the floor, went over to where his wife stood, and put his arms around Parvatibai. He had his hands full.
‘What will your sister say?’ Parvatibai asked gently.
Shankar-rao went to the copper pot in which the drinking water was stored. He drank half a glass and stopped. He seemed to have resolved something of importance and urgency in his mind. He put the glass down and came back to Parvatibai. He held her tight. This time his wife did not resist.
War. Not the make-believe, playful variety that Shankar-rao and his sister had indulged in on the night that woman moved into Parvatibai’s home but the real thing. Parvati was clear in her mind that there would be no quarter, no mercy, and she would take no casualties. No holds barred and it would be a fight until one of the parties was routed. She knew that she didn’t stand a chance in a head-on confrontation. She would fight a war of attrition, employ guile, deceit and guerrilla tactics. She would retreat, admit defeat, cringe, grovel, collapse, beg, suffer any ignominy her enemy was pleased to inflict upon her. But she would not give up.
What then was the difference between her and the other women? None. Except that she had not started this war. It had been thrust upon her. She was fighting for her home, her son and for herself. She had discovered that when you are ranged against devious and evil people who will stoop to anything and stop at nothing, you must be willing to confront the injustice and evil in you. You may pretend or even believe in high-mindedness and the victory of light over darkness but there is no escaping the fact that you too will soil your hands, be brutalized, debased and demeaned. Was it worth it? It is a valid and relevant question but you may ask it only after you’ve won.
Winning itself was going to be a complex and fraught affair for she could not vanquish the enemy without winning one of them over. And here was the trickiest part: which enemy had ever been asked to restore, perhaps even invent, her husband and rival’s self-esteem and confidence?
Shankar-rao was a hungry tiger. He had no time for foreplay. He took possession of the room, annexed the chawls, ascended the walls and paced the ceiling impatiently, leapt down, mauled and pushed aside whatever stood in his way. He was ravenous and he would brook no delay. He would rip his prey and eat her flesh, bones and all. Then suddenly without prior notice, the very intensity of his rage and lust seemed to sap his energies. He looked distraught and distressed and in need of help. Parvatibai invoked the name of the god of war, the one with the third eye who destroys to create a new order. Har Har Mahadev. Shiv, Shankar, Mahadev, they were all names of the same god, her own husband’s namesake. It was an irony that did not escape her. Even when she was warring with Shankar, she had to take his name before battle could be joined. Unlike her rival, there was no soundtrack to Parvati’s combat. She was a frogwoman, a commando who had to slip into enemy territory, lodge the explosive charges carefully, check the contact, start the clock ticking and then run for cover. Without stealth and guile, frantic excitement and impatience would get the better of Shankar-rao. Even now he was raring to go. If she couldn’t slow him down, Parvatibai was certain, all would be lost. He tried to tear her blouse open. Fortunately all that overwrought haste made him clumsy.
‘Easy, easy. We’ve got the whole day ahead of us,’ Parvatibai told her husband.
‘Have we?’
‘Ravan comes back from school at four.’
Parvati had taken off her blouse now. Shankar-rao was trying desperately to swallow his wife’s right breast in one gulp while undoing the knot of her petticoat. She took hold of his hand firmly, exhaled and pulled her stomach in and slipped it inside her petticoat. Shankar-rao’s hand was trapped between her belly and the string of her petticoat. If only she could distract him for a while, maybe, just maybe … But he was in no mood to listen. He had to enter her now, now before it was all over. She guided his hand to the crevice. It gave him pause. She let him explore her. A strange thought entered his mind: could it be possible that giving pleasure was one of the most erotic things a human being was capable of?
Even then, they had a long way to go. If he had his way he would have forced his fist inside her. She undid her petticoat and put her palm on the back of his wrist. She stroked his hand slowly, very slowly till he calmed down and echoed her rhythms.
Suddenly he was in a hurry again. He was out of his trousers and beating at the gates. She was sure he was not going to make it. She took his member in her hand and almost broke it in two.
‘What are you doing?’ Shankar-rao screamed.
‘Trust me.’
He cooled down then though he was wary of her. She led him inside her. He was growing frisky again. Parvatibai clamped down on him, the muscles of her vagina held him in a vice. He could neither move forward nor withdraw. He felt trapped and became frenetic. It was as if someone had caught hold of his throat and was squeezing it till the life had ebbed out of him. He was gasping. What was she doing? He had suspected foul play earlier but like a fool had not done anything about it. He was going to pay dearly for being such a credulous, trusting idiot. She was going to mutilate him. She was going to shut off the blood supply. His thing would go blue, then black, atrophy and fall off altogether, never to rise again.
‘Please,’ he was sobbing now, ‘let go of it. Please, I beg you. It’s the only one I have. Not replaceable, you know. Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll get rid of her. Tomorrow, tonight, now, as soon as she returns.’
Parvatibai did not reduce the pressure for a long time. Slowly, he quietened down. Parvati relaxed. Shankar-rao was pleased to find that he had become the bobbin shuttling back and forth, back and forth, in a power loom. He kept going at an even pace. Afterwards he lay next to her for a long time. He would never know how tense Parvatibai had been and how much she had riding on this single event.
When she got back, Lalee sat down on the floor with Parvatibai, peeled off the tough strands from the sides of the
green beans and threw them into a large brass vessel. ‘That was clever, very clever, Parvatibai.’
Parvati looked up in alarm. Oh God, had that stupid husband of hers told this woman that he had exercised his conjugal rights thrice today. How could he have, he hadn’t had a moment alone with his sister since she had returned. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Parvati. You’ve got spunk. You had me fooled with that business of the fan. Your delightful husband Shankar was only too happy to jump down my throat since he didn’t get to taste the meat and the fish you cooked for me. I didn’t pursue the matter because I didn’t want Shankar-rao’s or Ravan’s evil eye to fall on the food they couldn’t have and on my baby.’ She clutched her stomach protectively and paused for effect. ‘But I owe it to you to give you a word of warning. Nobody humiliates me and gets away with it. See this talisman? My mother and I went to a tantric and he gave it to me. He said that it will, come what may, drive you and your s …’ she checked herself since Ravan was listening intently, ‘you certainly, out of this house before my son is born. This place is going to be mine. I’m going to employ a few cooks who’ll make food for hundreds of people. I’m going to be rich, Parvati, filthy rich. When you want a job, come and ask me. I might think about it, though considering the quality of the food you cook, I wouldn’t give you a job even in an orphanage.’
There were times when Ravan suspected that Aunt Lalee was genuinely fond of him. Every once in a while she took him out to Malabar Hill or for a meal as she was doing today. He wasn’t quite sure why he had gone off her. Was it the comments of the boys in the chawls? They cracked the same third-rate joke every day. Whose turn is it today with Aunt Lalee? Your father’s or yours? He had been foolish enough to suggest once that it was their father’s turn. Hooray, that will make our father’s day. Can we join in too? Mr Tamhane, the clerk from the Metropolitan Court, smiled his thin sticky smile and asked Ravan how his father’s whore was. He had looked it up in the dictionary and was pleased that dirty Mr Tamhane was wrong. His aunt was certainly not ‘proffering sexual favours for monetary considerations’. There was something, about dictionaries, at least the Marathi ones that he knew of, which intimidated and put off Ravan. You went to look up a difficult word and they usually explained it with ten other difficult ones, especially if it had anything to do with sex. Mr Tamhane had of course not stopped there. Is your father the pimp and your mother the madam? Are they planning to expand the business, get a whole stableful of girls to keep young Miss Lalee company? Or is your mother going to turn tricks. I’ll bet she’ll attract more business than your Aunt Lalee. But I must insert a word of caution here. These are, as you are well aware, residential premises. Carrying on corporal commerce here is against the law. I’m afraid one of these days I’ll perforce have to inform the police department of Lalee’s red-light activities.’ Mr Tamhane must have found his own words hilarious for he cackled dryly and then began to cough. Ravan thought he was finished but Tamhane said after he had stopped coughing, ‘Are they married?’
Ravan and Eddie Page 26
