The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  But Nawab Mohammed’s assessment turned out to be devastatingly accurate. Dev was never able to truly make the new voice his own, give it the conviction it needed, imbue it with tunefulness or soul. By the time he gave up on his lessons, there was rarely a night that he wasn’t going to visit his Auntie. It was her libations that helped ease his way deeper into the responsibilities at the studio, whispering to him that this was not a slide into obscurity or failure but merely a step on the way to attaining his dream.

  chapter fourteen

  THE ACADEMIC YEAR STARTED IN JUNE, SO I HAD TO WAIT UNTIL OUR SECOND summer in Bombay to enroll for my B.A. Paji made the choice of college easy. He recommended the highly reputed Sophia, followed by St. Xavier’s, or failing both, Elphinstone as a distant third. I immediately struck them all off my list. Instead, I decided on Wilson, not only because he hadn’t mentioned it, but also because it was right across the road from Chowpatty.

  On the first day of classes, I walked the familiar route towards the sea. It was the week before the start of the monsoon, and the skies overhead were gray and ponderous. In contrast, my mood was lighthearted, even optimistic. This would be a welcome change, I was beginning to realize, from the cooking, the shopping, the mindless haggling with which I pretended to entertain myself. Even Dev had wished me luck as I left the house, and said he would arrange for dinner that evening.

  But my spirits settled as soon as the college came into view. I looked at the dark stone buildings, at the Gothic arches over the windows, at Wilson in Old English lettering spelled out above the iron bars of the fence. I had walked past the college so many times before. Why did it feel, as I passed through the gate today, that this was a prison to which I had been sentenced?

  Beyond the walls was a courtyard, with a central fountain of three nymphs spouting water from their mouths. Students sat on the grass and stood around in knots—a few hung up a sign announcing an annual Bazaar Day. I knew they must be sixteen or seventeen, only a few years younger than I, and yet I felt the chasm of an entire generation between us. Listening to their chatter, I was reminded of Roopa’s girlfriends in college, whose parents were only educating them so they would be more marketable for marriage. (Wasn’t that why Biji had relented about Roopa attending as well?) Once, I would have yearned for such company, for the chance to meet day after day to flirt and gossip. Now, after all I had experienced, what could I possibly have left in common with such classmates?

  The first lecture, on Indian history, made me feel worse. I found it impossible to concentrate on the civilizations that had taken root along the Indus Valley—all I could think was how pleased Paji would be by the image of me sitting there. The weeks to come on these wooden benches, the months under the fans rotating lazily overhead—had he made me trade in my baby for this? I stared at the pages of my blank notebook, the ink glistening on the nib of my new fountain pen. Each word I jotted down in the next four years would be in accordance with what he had planned. I imagined him nodding in satisfaction—“Another new idea’s been nudged into our Meera’s head.” The resentment was so sharp that I could taste it in my mouth—a bitterness, like the quinine we used to swallow in Rawalpindi for malaria. I tried to pull my mind towards the lecture, to the names of civilizations like Harrapa and Mohenjodaro, to the centuries before Christ when they flourished. But the chalk marks kept leaping and diving on the blackboard, the instructor’s voice rising and falling like waves in my ears. A peon went by at last, ringing a large handheld bell to signal that the period had come to an end.

  I rushed out of the classroom, through the hall, down the college steps. The waves were not only audible now but visible as well—I could see them flowering in blooms of white all along the arc of Marine Drive. I crossed the road and walked down the beach. The sea was engorged and foaming, as if the spirit of the monsoon strained inside, waiting to be delivered from its belly. Further up, a sand sculptor was smoothing out the previous day’s deity carved into the ground, to start afresh. I thought about going back to attend my other lectures—English literature and civics, Hindi and world geography. But the clouds cast an irresistible melancholy over the beach, and the churning water kept me spellbound the whole afternoon. At three, I finished the lunch I had brought and started back home.

  That week, I tried several times to sit through my lectures. But the classroom felt airless and suffocating each time, and the blood pounded so loudly in my ears that I thought my head would burst. Only the beach calmed me. I sat on the sand and imagined how different my life would have been with a child, how focused I would be, how active and happy. Perhaps I should simply go home to my chores, I thought, lose myself again in their vapidity. There would even be a sense of empowerment in not returning, in thwarting the future Paji had ordained for me. But then the idea of him shaking his head at the failure he’d been expecting all along stopped me.

  The rains drove me back indoors. I looked into spending my time sipping tea in the girls’ canteen, but the principal, Dr. Airan, often roved around outside, trying to catch students who were not in class. He was known for terrorizing not only the students but also the faculty, wielding not a timepiece or wristwatch but the very desk clock from his office each morning to check whether any of his professors were late ascending the staircase. I didn’t want to attract his attention in case he knew Paji and started sending reports to Delhi.

  The only alternative was to force myself to sit through the lectures. Fortunately, most of them were in Room 403, one entire wall of which consisted of a row of windows facing the sea. On clear days, the entire bay of Chowpatty opened up through the windows like in the panels of a painting. I found that glancing at this panorama from time to time helped me breathe. When the professor’s voice became too oppressive, or my thoughts too claustrophobic, I followed the cars whizzing up and down the toy track of Marine Drive. Then I tried once again to turn to world economy or Shakespeare or the Indus Valley.

  I INTERACTED WITH almost no one in college. Although some of the friendlier girls struck up conversations in class or the canteen, I was never more than polite. My feeling of otherness was too great, my sense of isolation too deep. Then, around the middle of the term, one of the male students started following me.

  I first noticed him at the beach, reclining on the sand with his head on a blue cloth book bag. The monsoon had abated, and I had brought my lunch outside after a long time. I recognized him from history and perhaps civics as well—he always sat in one of the back rows monopolized by boys. As I watched, he propped himself to a seated position and bought a cone of peanuts from a passing hawker. I thought he glanced my way as he paid for his snack, but I was careful not to look back.

  The next day, he came into the library while I was reading the newspaper, and made his way to a table a few spaces from me. I didn’t look at his face, but I could tell it was him, from his nubbly blue bag. He opened a book and held it awkwardly in the air, so that it was in line with where I sat. I didn’t wait for him to start eyeing me while pretending to read—I replaced the paper on its rack and left.

  After that, he seemed everywhere. Gazing at the sand deity being carved on the beach, I picked out his face from the ring of onlookers tracking the sculptor’s progress with me. He paced back and forth outside the open door as I sat in the girls’ canteen sipping tea. Once, he showed up while I was haggling with a roasted-corn seller on Marine Drive. He now seemed to be in all my classes, not just in history and civics. I kept wondering if he would leave the safety of his bench at the back to try and come sit next to me.

  By now, I had managed to take several good looks at him covertly. He was younger than I had thought at first, probably not yet seventeen. There was the faintest of fuzz sprouting from his chin, the galaxy of pimples on his face seemed to rotate every week. His hair was long, and stiff with pomade, as if he had tried to forcibly straighten out the curls. He wore a good-luck charm around his neck, the black cord wound so tight that his throat muscles strained against it when he c
oughed. There was a sweetness about him, an innocence, an earnestness, that came through even while he was stalking me.

  Although every effort was made at Wilson to keep the sexes segregated, there was no dearth of furtive romance. Each afternoon, the alcoves along the balcony floor of the library were filled with couples pretending to study together (until one day Dr. Airan banned boys from climbing the stairs). Girls living in the hostel at Gamdevi were reputed to be particularly fast—some of them openly strolled around campus with male classmates, though even they weren’t bold enough to hold hands. Was this the way these courtships started? I wondered to myself. Did my student think me unmarried, given that I didn’t mark the parting of my hair with vermilion or wear a mangalsutra necklace?

  I knew I should tell him at once to stop what he was doing. Hadn’t such games, after all, led to my initial rashness with Dev in the tomb at Nizamuddin? But this student had never harassed me or even approached me in any way, so what sense did it make for me to initiate contact? Given how unlikely it was that I would ever speak to him or confront him, what danger could there be in carrying around some idle romantic notions to amuse myself?

  My reveries about him were very different from my fantasies of Dev when I was seventeen. He was never shirtless or indecent in any way, I never followed him into a tomb, the cord around his neck did not metamorphose into a snake. Rather than amorous, my affection was maternal more than anything else. I wanted to cradle his head in my lap, rock him to sleep in my arms. I wanted to run my hands through the locks of his hair on days he allowed it to curl. If ever I pressed my lips against his, I wanted no wetness to taint our kiss.

  The evening came when my student followed me after school. I caught glimpses of him loitering in front of a cigarette shop, examining newspapers spread out by a pavement vendor. At the Nana Chowk intersection, I paused in front of the window of the Bata shoe store to see if he would come up. But he stopped as well, pretending to be engrossed by the wares of a tea grocer.

  I imagined leading him back home, walking up the steps, leaving open the door. Dev wouldn’t be home from work for another few hours. What would I do if my admirer, like a stray dog, followed me up?

  Perhaps I could pet him, lay out a plate of biscuits, and watch him eat. Fix him a cup of tea, the beverage that still seemed to have him entranced in its charms at the shop down the street. And after I have fed him and quenched his thirst, what then? Do I hug him and muss his hair to test my theory of motherly affection? Am I surprised when I discover the feelings he carries for me?

  I could usher him into the bedroom after his feeding. Watch him take off his shoes and stand skittishly by the door in his bare feet. Do I boldly reach up to brush a crumb from the corner of his mouth? Catch a glimpse of his tongue as it nervously licks his lips clean?

  And then? Do I go over to the bed and pull back the sheets? Does he waver a bit, then lie down next to me? His fingers too timid to make contact, but the desire so strong I can hear it thump in his heartbeat. I lie there and inhale the scent of his adolescence, let his presence envelop me.

  Try as I might, I was unable to proceed further with this reverie. The image of his skin against mine eluded me. I looked at him watching the bins of tea so innocently. Wasn’t I too young to have so disengaged myself from physical needs? Had my experiences with Dev drained all desire from me?

  Even if I could complete my fantasy, where would it take me? How would my life be better if I were to cast my lot in with his? Would we run away together, settle down somewhere to begin again? What made me imagine he would be an improvement over Dev?

  It was time, I decided, to confront my admirer. To disentangle myself from the game he was playing. “Hello, listen?” I said, striding up to the tea store. He looked up too late, unable to make a getaway. “Why are you following me, what do you want from me?” A flash of panic arced in his eyes. His complexion turned white, as if guilt was a lightbulb illuminating his face.

  I could tell he was ready to bolt, so I softened my tone. “Did you want to ask me something?” He stared at me, his expression unchanged. He swallowed so hard that I thought the cord around his neck would break. Each instant he stood there represented a separate trembling decision not to flee. I spoke even more gently. “You do know I’m married, don’t you?”

  He stared at me, then shook his head mutely. He swallowed again, and I thought he was going to say something. But he went back to examining the tea bins, perhaps to hide his disappointment. His gaze roved over them as if trying to identify the one in which the secret to happiness lay hidden.

  It was his shyness that made me feel the stirring. The painful self-consciousness coming through, the discomfort he radiated at not fitting in. Without thinking, I extended my fingers towards him in empathy. As if we were in some foreign country where it was perfectly reasonable for a woman to reach for the hand of a man.

  For an instant, he began to extend his hand as well, as if to clasp my palm and shake it. Then he realized what he was doing, what I had said. His neck stiffened, his eyes widened, and his whole body seemed to shrink from my fingertips. He began to walk backwards, first in small steps, then in more reckless strides, until he had cleared the tea shop, then the tire shop after that, and the restaurant that was next in line. He turned around and ran, weaving through the people shopping for shoes and tires and tea, then abruptly veered off the pavement onto the road. I caught my breath as a tram clanged by, but he sprinted nimbly around it, reaching the other side safely and continuing towards the police station at Gamdevi. I watched as long as I could for the white of his shirt as it bobbed down the street, the illumination of the lampposts coloring it yellow each time he passed underneath. Then, wrapping my untouched fingers in my dupatta, I turned around to make my way back home.

  AT THE START OF the second term, Paji launched another of his letters into my world. “You never had very good study habits, so it’s no wonder you did so poorly in your first-term exam. I have come to the conclusion that you need to spend more time with your classmates so that their work example will rub off on you as well.”

  A good friend of his, Dr. Jamshed Dastoor (the same Dr. Dastoor reputed to have been Lord Mountbatten’s personal physician in Delhi), had just moved to Bombay. “By a fortuitous coincidence, his daughter Farida has joined Wilson this year. Please introduce yourself to her forthwith, since she could be just the role model you need for inspiration.”

  I had seen Farida—or Freddy, as she was called by everyone (even the professors reading out the roll call)—in two of my classes. With her startlingly pale complexion and the brazenly plucked eyebrows that climbed high up her forehead, she was difficult to miss—for good measure, she often appeared with an extravagant scarf tied around her neck, as if she had just breezed in from a Hollywood romance. Each morning, a gleaming white Mercedes pulled up to the front entrance of the college to deliver Freddy to her classes. The car remained parked all day under a tree next to the beach, the driver ready to whisk her away to where she wanted at a moment’s notice.

  I ignored Paji’s letter. I had no desire to befriend Freddy. I reasoned that she was much too popular to approach anyway—there was no way to penetrate the protective circle of friends always surrounding her.

  Paji must have contacted Dr. Dastoor as well, because one morning, the Mercedes pulled up beside me as I was crossing Laburnum Road. The door opened grandly, to reveal Freddy, in dark green goggles, waving to me. “I know it’s only a short distance, but why don’t I give you a ride?” I hesitated, then reluctantly got in—it would have seemed too rude to refuse, and besides, people were stopping to look and leer in the street. “I’m Freddy, as you must know—our fathers have decided we must meet. You’re Meera, am I correct? Before I forget, do remember to vote for me in the election tomorrow.”

  Freddy was running to be the president of the English-speaking student union at Wilson—I had seen the cyclostyled handbills that her friends had been passing out. Although the lectures at Wil
son were all in English, the college catered to a large population from poorer areas like Mazgaon and Dombivili, with a majority of the students having graduated from vernacular medium schools. Some of the teachers had even started peppering their explanations with Marathi and Gujarati phrases to ensure they were being understood. “Keep Wilson College English-medium!” Freddy’s handbills urged.

  “We made jokes about you being so quiet because you didn’t know enough English,” Freddy told me after we had chatted a bit. “But now that I’m hearing you speak, it’s all so clear—only a convent school could have produced that accent. It’s good I’m here—just in time to rescue you from the hordes of vernacs all around. Sometimes it feels like we’re stuck in a zoo, with all these beastly languages and guttural sounds.”

  It seemed to take only hours for Freddy’s solar system of friends to start orbiting around me as well. I was invited to play in the badminton courts, drink cups of tea in the canteen, assist in the annual play that the English Club put up (Love’s Labour’s Lost that year). The day the Cream Centre restaurant opened, I furtively hid my jam sandwiches in my purse and walked over with everyone else—Freddy wanted to be the first in the city to sample the sundaes they had been advertising all week in the newspaper. On Fridays, I trooped with the group to the Eros or the Regal or one of the other Hollywood theaters—I would have rather seen a film in Hindi, but was careful not to let my preference be known. Belying Paji’s expectations, the only activity that never seemed to find its way onto the roster was studying.

  DEV WAS QUITE AMUSED the first few times he spotted the Mercedes dropping me off. “I see you’ve made some new friends. Our Meera’s moving up in the world.” Soon, though, his mood darkened. He complained I was not paying enough attention to the meals I cooked and didn’t have time anymore to iron his shirts. He was furious one evening when he came back from work without going to Auntie’s, and found I hadn’t returned. “This Freddy person with whom you’ve fallen in—does she have boys as well riding in that Mercedes of hers?”