An Extraordinary Destiny

by Shekhar Paleja

  As soon as he returned to Bombay, Reza had a passport-sized photo taken and sent to his village, to his younger brother, with instructions to take it to the girl’s family. Even if she knew about him only having one eye, he didn’t want to frighten or repulse her on their wedding day. He only hoped the photo would get there in time.

  Now as Reza sanded the jewelry box, a present for Shareen, he considered how many days’ leave from work he would ask for. Since the shop wasn’t busy, Anush sahib might allow him to take as much leave as he wanted, but of course that would mean less pay. Nearly ninety percent of his salary was sent home every month, and every paisa was well used for everything from feeding his younger brothers and sister to paying for their schooling to buying medicine for Nabil chacha. The little bit he kept for himself he used for seeing old films on Sundays. The new releases were too expensive.

  Reza hoped Shareen would get along with his mother, that they’d be able to raise a few more chickens and goats. Would Shareen be happy in her new home? Did she know that Reza only came home for one month a year? Most of the older men in the shop who had wives and families back in their villages barely spoke of them, while a few talked about theirs longingly, non-stop. As Reza ate his lunch in the courtyard, he wondered what marriage would be like.

  AT THE NIKAH, Reza sat behind Nabil chacha, while his bride-to-be, Shareen, sat behind her father. An imam led the ceremony in which Shareen’s father gave her away and Nabil chacha accepted her into his family. The whole while, Reza was trying to spot Shareen, who was sitting among her mother and sisters. All the women’s heads were covered by their dupattas and the sisters all looked alike, as they had in the photo. The girls stole quick glances of Reza and his family. Eventually Reza deduced that Shareen was the one who kept her gaze down the whole time and never once glanced at him. Had the photo of him reached her in time? Did she find him repulsive?

  When it was time to bid goodbye to her family, Shareen clutched her mother and sisters and father and they cried together in embrace. While Reza’s mother and sisters received Shareen into their family, Shareen’s eyes remained downcast, never once wanting to glimpse Reza.

  Just as they were all about to begin the small but festive dinner, a loud commotion was heard not far away. Reza saw his brothers getting involved and ran towards the fight.

  “How dare you not invite me? My eldest son’s marriage—” It was Reza’s father. Drunk. Reza hadn’t seen him in nearly ten years.

  Spotting Reza, his father said, “Ah, there he is. Let me see you, behta.”

  Reza’s two younger brothers couldn’t keep their father back and he stumbled towards Reza.

  “What are you doing here?” Reza asked, full of shame and anger. Word was that his father was working periodically in neighbouring villages, tilling fields, picking garbage, whatever he could to buy tharra—a potent moonshine made of sugarcane, rotting fruit, and other chemicals. It had blinded a neighbour and induced liver failure in another, but the lethal side effects didn’t stop poor villagers from drinking it. Before Reza began working in Bombay, his father often stumbled home late at night, drunk, shoving and slapping Reza’s mother for keeping money from him that he’d earned so he could go buy more alcohol or gamble. He would rage at the top of his lungs, then cry for forgiveness. With tears in her eyes and a croak in her voice, wielding a knife, she’d say, “If you ever come back here again, I will take your life, by Allah, I swear!” It would keep him away for a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks. Then he would sober up and everything seemed a bit better until he started drinking again. It continued like that until Nabil chacha, Reza’s maternal uncle, came to live with them. Reza had no idea what Nabil chacha had said or done to his father, but he hadn’t returned since. Reza felt useless for not being able to protect his mother all those years ago as a young teenager while he worked in the furniture shop, not knowing if she and his siblings were safe. The shame still clung to him.

  “I came to give you my blessings,” his father said, with tears in his bloodshot eyes. Reza could smell the tharra on his breath. It reminded him of the same antispetic hospital smell all those years ago when he was blinded.

  People were beginning to gather.

  “You have to go,” Reza said calmly.

  “My eldest son gets married and I don’t get invited?”

  Reza’s mother hissed, “Get him out of here now, before the bride’s family sees!”

  Nabil chacha was sick and no longer able to protect the family. Reza realized he was the man of the house now. Grabbing his father’s collar, he pushed him back. His father’s thin frame was light. It took much less physical force than Reza imagined to keep pushing his father, but inside the weight multiplied as his father’s eyes welled up with tears. They were out of sight now from the main wedding party. His father fell to the ground. Reza grabbed his foot and twisted till the man began to scream in pain. Reza realized his father was no longer the menace capable of torment. He was just a frail man, fading away. Through tears, Reza said, “Don’t ever come back.”

  AFTER DINNER, ONCE everyone had gone home, Nabil chacha said to Reza, “Your brothers put him on a bus to Surat. Don’t worry, I doubt he’ll return.”

  They listened to the crickets begin chirping and after some time, Nabil chacha said, “Your brothers helped me make a bamboo screen for you, so you and your wife can have some privacy.”

  Reza blushed and said, “Thank you.” He set it up so that his bed with Shareen in the corner was enclosed. Nabil chacha, his mother, and sister would sleep at the other end of the hut while his brothers slept outside, as they always did, except during the monsoons.

  Shareen continued to avoid Reza and went to help his mother and sisters in the kitchen. It was ridiculous, they still had not spoken to each other and at this rate they never would as Reza was due back to Bombay soon. Anush sahib had only permitted Reza a few days’ leave.

  Reza went outside and sat with Nabil chacha, who was smoking a beedi. The crickets in the lemon trees chirped loudly. The air was wonderful out here away from the city. No oils or lacquers or musty sawdust. No rickshaw diesel fumes, no cars and buses honking.

  “What’s on your mind, behta?” Nabil chacha asked, blowing smoke at the stars.

  An owl screeched in the distance, at which the crickets’ chirping subsided for just a moment and then resumed. Reza said, “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed now. Good night.”

  “Good night, behta.”

  Inside, behind the bamboo screen, Shareen was already in bed, turned away, facing the wall. Reza undressed to his underwear and got into bed. He could see her torso rising and falling with each breath, and it quickened as he settled himself under the thin cotton sheet. They lay for a while in silence, trying to breathe normally. Although she was thin, the curve of her hips was exquisite. It reminded Reza of a Victorian chaise longue he’d been working on.

  “Are you alright?” Reza asked.

  “Ha, ji,” she said, using the respectful suffix for addressing an older or higher status person.

  “You don’t have to be scared of me,” he said.

  Remembering the jewelry box, he got out of bed, found it in his bag, and returned. “I made this for you,” he said. As he reached over her back so he could offer it to her, he caught a scent of jasmine flowers near her neck. It was the most divine thing he’d ever smelled. He’d never been this close to a woman before.

  With her back to him, she accepted it, saying, “Thank you.”

  “It’s empty. But I hope you’ll be able to fill it one day,” he said.

  She said nothing more, leaving him to listen to the crickets until he fell asleep.

  - 9 -

  1996

  ONE DAY, DURING THE PROCESS of cleaning the shop in order to sell the property, while he was overseeing the workers cleaning the first godown level, Anush turned on an old band saw and grabbed a piece of wood to feed it, mostly to pass the time. Just as the spinning blade was about to slice the wood, Reza l
eaped over a worker to press the emergency stop button.

  “Arre! What do you think you’re doing?” Anush said, rebuking his employee.

  Reza showed Anush that the safety latch wasn’t properly secure and explained, “Sahib, the wood might have snapped back into your face. Very dangerous.”

  Without thanking Reza, Anush retreated into the office and lit a cigarette. Showing gratitude to Reza in front of all the other employees wasn’t in keeping with Anush’s plans of preserving a separation between him and the workers. And yet the guilt from the night of the fireworks all those years ago still swirled heavily in him. He willed himself to contain it. He wasn’t going to let an accident from a long time ago cloud his judgment. Cleaning up the shop and selling the property to prove to the old man that he was dependable was his main purpose.

  While the workers continued to clean, Anush explored the glass cabinet that housed all his grandfather’s miniatures and after wiping away the cobwebs, he was surprised to find they were exquisite in detail—some were made with multiple types of wood: all kinds of chairs and tables, carved, sanded, and elegantly finished with stain. There were also old furniture design books with handwritten notes in the margins. Over the next few weeks, Anush had to meet with lawyers and various city officials every now and then in order to get the paperwork going on selling the property, but he much preferred being at the shop, in the office, leafing through furniture books, matching the pictures to his grandfather’s miniatures. He began reading about various unique styles: straight high fiddlebacks, intricate Chippendales, majestic federal ovals, regal Hepplewhite shields, proud Sheraton parlours, graceful renaissance revivals, sweeping rococos. In the collection of miniatures, Anush came to see that his grandfather had taken some of the designs from the books and added his own touches. It seemed the old man had a fondness for curves, sweeping arches, gibbous circles, a preference for subtle S lines.

  Anush kept playing with various pieces of wood, cutting, sawing, chiselling, even learning how to use the lathe. Apart from the satisfaction of cutting something in two, Anush liked working with his hands. For several more weeks he studied his grandfather’s notebooks, learning about mahogany, teak, sandalwood, shesham, walnut. He’d had no idea that different woods could have such individual properties, that there existed nearly two hundred and fifty types of oak alone, that the grains of wood were all unique. He began to identify the different types of wood in his grandfather’s miniatures and slowly began to take an interest in the stockpiles of antiques in the godowns. Some pieces weren’t even intact, but the shop had a sizeable, albeit disorganized, collection of antique and heirloom pieces in the godowns: parts of dressers, backs of chairs, legs from tables, stacks of old wood lying in dusty piles, covered with cobwebs.

  Then one day Anush had a flash of inspiration. He descended into the godowns and once he had all the workers’ attention, he said, “We are going to organize everything in the godowns and start making vintage furniture again.”

  On the ground floor, Anush began to construct the first of his grandfather’s miniatures to scale—a simple chair with spade-tapered legs. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Anush called Reza up and said, “I’d like to make one of my grandfather’s miniatures come to life. Can you help?”

  Reza nodded. “Yes, sahib.”

  Reza spent a couple of hours a day on the ground floor with Anush and the rest of his day in the godowns with the other workers. Even with Reza as his assistant, it took Anush weeks to get the chair to look anything like the miniature, and even then it was crude, but he had a natural inclination for the work. After a couple of months the shop was clean and organized, but the workers were bickering among themselves as to how and what sorts of pieces to make. The godowns needed a supervisor but Anush didn’t want that role. He was happy to work on the ground floor. He liked working with wood, yet he knew very well he couldn’t tell his father that. He wondered if the old man even knew that Reza was still at the shop. It was unlikely. He had probably long forgotten the half-blind lift boy who was surprisingly skilled at woodwork. The plan all along had been for Anush to sell the place, so he eventually telephoned the old man and explained. “There’s quite a market now for antique Indian furniture, especially with all the Europeans and Americans travelling here these days. There’s profit still to be made from the all wood in the godowns.”

  “I’ll give you one year,” his father said and hung up.

  Anush was elated not only to keep making furniture but also to no longer have to meet with lawyers in court and bribe various city officials to obtain the mountains of paperwork for the sale of the building. Aware that he was deviating from the original plan of seeing this task through to prove to the old man that he was determined, trustworthy, Anush no longer liked the idea of parting with the shop, despite the fact that the money from the sale of the property would be considerable as developers would likely raze the current building and replace it with a residential tower. However, Anush reasoned, the Sharma empire was growing, and they weren’t in dire need of money from the sale of one tiny old building.

  The more he worked on the miniatures, the more he realized there was to consider. He experimented etching with different chisels and files while referring to his grandfather’s notebooks that held countless sketches and scribbled notes. Each time he worked with a different type of wood, he learned something new about its texture, its malleability, its weight, its durability, its resistance to moisture.

  “It’s all in the grain,” Reza explained.

  Some of his grandfather’s notes were indecipherable. The faded ink and slanted letters at times left Anush scratching his head, wondering how demented his grandfather’s mind must have become before he jumped off the balcony. But between the cryptic mess of words, a line or two would become legible: “. . . this season’s shipment of cedar absorbs stain quickly, like a dry desert, unlike last season’s teak, which repels rainwater like green banana tree leaves.”

  When Anush was uncertain how to cut or sand or join a piece, Reza would teach him, and Reza’s status among the workers quickly rose as he became Anush’s assistant. In the godowns below, despite their disagreements and squabbles, the workers began to make some lovely furniture.

  On smoke breaks, Anush would sometimes stare at the old black-and-white framed photograph of his grandfather on the wall. Dressed in a Nehru cap and wire-rim glasses, Praveen Sharma had a docile countenance. Anush began to notice the physical similarities he shared with his grandfather: the thick, jet-black hair, the square jaw. It was the calm look on his grandfather’s face that drew Anush into the photo. Was his grandfather really as serene and undisturbed as his face suggested? Or was there an invisible storm raging inside that led to his madness? Anush’s mother had told him his grandmother had been lost during Partition. Anush’s father had been barely five years old at the time and, apart from the time around his mother’s funeral, they never spoke about it. Over the years, as his father busied himself with business, he and Anush had drifted apart. And now for Anush to ask his father something so personal seemed inappropriate, even outlandish.

  While scanning through his grandfather’s notes, Anush tried to search for clues as to how or why or when his grandfather had gone mad, but it was difficult to tell. It was funny, Anush thought, how a split-second decision like jumping off a balcony could change everything, irrevocably. It was a morbid curiosity Anush found difficult to let go of. Some evenings, while driving home after a couple of drinks, he thought about how steering the Fiat just a few inches to the right into oncoming traffic could change everything permanently. The passing zooms of the trucks held a macabre thrill that made him steer a bit closer towards them. One more inch to the right and what would happen? Would he die and be reborn? Become an ant? An insect? Another person? Would his soul float into the empty darkness of space and meet his mother’s? Or would there be a desolate void of nothing forever? He knew his musings were more pedestrian than profound and tried to veer away from such th
oughts. The more he focused on wood, the happier he found himself. He now received a bullshit-sandwich monthly allowance (that he had to beg the old man to increase). Even though his budget didn’t always afford him the best nightclubs, now he was out on the town most nights. The proliferation of pubs, restaurants, hotels, and nightclubs in the city was relatively new, and like all wealthy Bombayites, Anush enjoyed their novelty and quickly built a name for himself in the burgeoning party scene. During the day, Anush was content working with wood and in the evenings his schedule was rarely empty.

  Recently, after a night of partying, he’d come home and watched a show on Discovery channel about genes and decoding human DNA, how things like depression and madness and mental dementia could be inherited through genes. In his slightly drunken state, Anush wondered if he would, one day, eventually fall prey to one of the billions of spirals of DNA trapped inside him and succumb to his grandfather’s fate—going mad and plunging to his death.

  At the shop, customers—mostly Indian expats and foreign collectors—began popping by every now and then, interested in seeing the furniture that the workers were making. Since Anush was never a pushy salesman—a refreshing experience for foreigners visiting India—word had spread about the quaint heirloom furniture shop. Soon they had sold a few of the items that the workers had made.

  In the evenings, Reza joined the other workers in the courtyard for dinner, leaving Anush alone in the office. Anush had gotten used to Reza’s presence in the office through large swaths of the day and felt lonely by himself in the evenings. Since he wanted to avoid the old man at home, Anush began going to the gym in the early evenings, where he’d put on a bit of muscle.