by Farahad Zama
She hung up, feeling much better. Not everybody had abandoned them.
♦
Calm descended once more in the office of the marriage bureau. Aruna went back to her typing and Mr Ali to preparing ads for the weekend papers. For a long time, as it went about its business the gecko on the wall of the office heard only normal, everyday sounds – the clicking of the computer keys, the scratch of the pen as Mr Ali pared down the ads to their bare essentials – he had to pay for them by the word – the whirr of the fan above them and the noise of the traffic outside.
A grating noise disturbed them, making Aruna wince. The gecko quickly scurried away behind the meter cabinet. Mr Ali looked up, frowning. The iron gate of the front yard had been pushed open so violently that it had gone past its usual stopping place and ended up scraping the cement yard. A thickset man with wild hair shambled up the path and onto the verandah.
“Ish thish the marriage bureau for rich people?” he asked.
“No,” said Mr Ali and waved discreetly to Aruna when she looked at him in surprise.
The newcomer stood unsteadily, the top half of his body swaying. He stared at them owlishly for a moment. Aruna noticed that his eyes were red and baggy. He seemed at a loss for words. After a long moment, he steadied himself and stood up straight and tall.
“Shorry,” he said and stumbled out.
“Why – ” said Aruna.
“Do you want to take him on as a client?” asked Mr Ali.
Aruna nodded and went back to her typing, pleased that Mr Ali, with his quick thinking, had been there at the time.
Mr Ali finally put down the pad of advertisements. “If the boy from the newspaper comes, give these to him,” he said.
Aruna smiled and continued typing. She was given these same instructions every week without fail. Mr Ali closed the front gate and went back into the house through the side alley.
About five minutes later, the front gate was again pushed wide open, causing Aruna to wince as it scraped on the ground. The sound seemed to grate on her very soul, like nails going down a slate. She looked up to see the shambling man returning. He came straight towards the table and leaned over it, pointing a finger at her over the computer monitor. Aruna held her breath and tried to not to show her disgust as the smell of alcohol washed over her. The man wagged his finger and Aruna finally had to breathe in to avoid fainting. Nausea rose in her and she hurriedly stood up.
“You lied!” said the man, breathing another bout of alcoholic fumes in her face.
She gulped and clenched her fists tightly, digging her nails into her palms. A sheen of perspiration appeared on her forehead that had nothing to do with the heat.
“You – ” said the man.
“Excuse me,” said Aruna and, pushing past him, she ran off the verandah.
“Hey!” shouted the man. “Where are you going? Where is everybody?”
Aruna heard no more because she was throwing up over the potted plants in the small front garden. She was barely aware of Leela, the maid, calling out for Ali Madam.
Mrs Ali came and gave her a glass of cool water from a bottle that had come straight out of the fridge. “Wash your face,” she said. The splash of water felt good.
“I am sorry,” said Aruna, looking at the mess over the plants.
“No, no, don’t worry about it. Leela will wash it off.”
The maid was already drawing water from the well as Mrs Ali led Aruna back into the house. As they crossed the verandah, she saw Mr Ali talking to the drunk.
“You shouted at a pregnant woman,” said Mr Ali. “That’s not acceptable.”
“How was I to know that she was pregnant? I just thought she was chubby.”
Aruna stopped and glared at the man, but he had his back to her, facing Mr Ali. Mrs Ali dragged her away. “Come on now, it’s not good for you to get stressed.”
“I am not stressed,” said Aruna in a fierce whisper. “But how dare – ”
At that point the man turned towards her and, if looks could kill, Leela would have been drawing many more buckets of water from the well to wash away the pile of ash that he would have formed.
“You lied to me,” said the man to Mr Ali. “This is the marriage bureau and you said it was not.”
“Oh! Marriage bureau? I thought you said Marigold Row.”
“There is no such place as Marigold Row,” said the man, peering at Mr Ali suspiciously.
Mr Ali returned his gaze with a guileless look. “What do you want, anyway?” he said. “I don’t think we have any suitable matches for you.”
“I don’t want you to send any more matches for my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Now Mr Ali was puzzled. “What has your daughter got to do with us?”
“My father who is my daughter’s grandfather…” began the man.
“Yes, I can understand that bit. Go on.”
The man either was not aware of Mr Ali’s sarcasm or, if he was, he ignored it. “My father has joined your bureau on behalf of my daughter.”
Mr Ali went to the computer that was still switched on. He minimised the file that Aruna had been working on and said, “What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Sujatha.”
A few keystrokes later, Mr Ali remembered the rich, older man who had been accompanied by his nephew. He hadn’t met Sujatha, but, judging by her photo, she was a beautiful girl. Mr Ali remembered what a surprise it had been that somebody like her had to become a member of the marriage bureau.
“Are you Sukumar?” he asked.
The man nodded. “I want to withdraw my daughter’s membership. We are not interested in getting her married any more.”
“Why not?”
“What’s it to you? I am the girl’s father and I say that I don’t want to belong to your agency. That’s it. I shouldn’t have to argue with you.”
“You didn’t become the member. Your father did. So only he can withdraw the membership.”
“She’s my daughter and if I say no, it is no, do you understand?” Sukumar’s voice rose until at the end he was shouting. His eyes bulged and his expression became choleric as he brought his hand down hard on the table, making Mr Ali jump, along with the computer screen. Sukumar continued, “I don’t want any more matches coming for Sujatha. I’ve had enough of that nonsense.”
Mr Ali said, “Uh, your father – ”
That was evidently the wrong thing to say because it enraged Sukumar so much that he grasped Mr Ali by the collar and tried to lift him off the floor.
“What are you doing? Let go of me. Violence is not the way we do things here.”
“I’ll show you how things are done,” said Sukumar, withdrawing one hand and forming it into a fist.
Mr Ali wriggled, trying to free himself, but Sukumar’s grip was strong. Mr Ali kept silent because he was afraid that if he made a sound Aruna and his wife would come out onto the verandah, face to face with this madman. Where was Rehman? What good was a son who wasn’t around to protect his aged father?
Sukumar drew his hand back like a boxer, ready to deliver a knockout blow. Mr Ali’s eyes closed involuntarily, unable to watch it approach, but still he stayed silent. His collar was suddenly released and Mr Ali winced, expecting the blow, but unable to move and evade it. One second, two seconds, three…A noise of something being hit reached his ears, but he felt no pain. He cautiously squinted out of one eye and peeked out, then snapped both open when he appeared miraculously to be alone on the verandah. “Where – ”
Sukumar lay on the floor, having passed out.
Mr Ali’s legs felt as weak and wobbly as a piece of Madugula halva. He simply had to sit down. I must call the police, he thought. He had been threatened before, most memorably by Aruna’s father-in-law, before the rich man had been reconciled to his doctor-son marrying a girl from a poor family, but this was the first time that he had come face to face with physical violence. The English were right – a man’s home was his castle and anybody who threat
ened it had to face the consequences. He reached for the phone.
♦
“Thank you for not involving the police. The shame would have been too much to bear,” the older man said, leaning on his stick. Within twenty minutes of receiving the call from Mr Ali, Sukumar’s father, Mr Koteshwar Reddy, had come with his assistant-nephew and the nephew’s son.
Mr Ali nodded. “It’s all right,” he said. “Luckily nothing happened.”
Bobbili, the nephew, and Bobbili’s son, Venkat, hooked Sukumar’s arms over their shoulders and lifted him up. Sukumar was still unconscious but his expression had a placidity that belied its earlier passion. The two men dragged Sukumar out to the car.
“You have put my family in your debt,” Mr Reddy said. “Thank you. I’ve always known that my son’s alcoholism was ruining Sujatha’s marriage prospects, but I never thought he was spoiling his daughter’s future so directly.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I’ve always said that once Sujatha was married, she would inherit all my wealth and that Sukumar would have to go to her for his allowance. Money is a bad thing, Mr Ali. It can make even parents turn against their children.”
“It’s pretty drastic, though, putting a daughter in control of her father’s money. He could not have been happy about that.”
“My son has no control. I’ve given him chance after chance. He has always lost money by the truckload. I’ve given him perfectly running, profitable businesses and he has run them into the ground. He has started his own ventures and I’ve backed him, but they’ve always failed. And as for the money he has wasted on the demon drink, don’t even ask. He takes loans everywhere in town and Bobbili runs around sorting out the debtors. But I never realised until now just how low he has fallen – wrecking my granddaughter’s future for his selfish purposes. That I cannot forgive.”
Bobbili came back. “Let’s go, Uncle,” he said, taking Mr Reddy’s hand.
Mr Reddy nodded. His body seemed to sag and he looked older than before.
Mr Ali stared after them as they slowly made their way off the verandah, into the yard and out of the gate – Mr Reddy limping on his bad hip and the faithful assistant keeping pace with him.
A Hindi phrase came to Mr Ali’s mind: bhoot sowaar, which literally meant, demon ride. There were many demons riding the tormented Sukumar, he thought, and frowned.
Ten
The supporters of the ruling party thronged down the road in a noisy procession, as if they were a bridegroom’s family going to a wedding hall. Several motorbikes and three-wheeled auto-rickshaws came past, festooned with banners, flags, slogans and almost life-size pictures of the party’s leader looking down on a smaller picture of the candidate. The last vehicle in the group loudly played songs from Telugu films, interspersed with snippets of speeches from the party’s state leader.
Mrs Ali came to the gate when they stopped outside her house.
“Please vote for us, madam,” said one young man, in jeans, T-shirt and a bandanna.
“Why should we vote for you?” said Mrs Ali. “Once the election is over, you’ll all disappear and won’t be seen again until the next election. The mango season comes every summer, but politicians are seen only once every five years.”
“Aye, oldie – ” began the brash youth, before he was pushed aside by an older man.
“Namaskaaram, Anuria,” the old man said, with a practised smile and a respectful bob of his head. “Ignore the young man’s rudeness, madam.”
Mrs Ali softened and asked, “Aren’t you the corporator for this ward?”
She had seen him the previous year, walking down the road with a municipal engineer and inspecting the storm drains. She had also seen him on television, being interviewed about using a fogging machine to kill mosquitoes.
“Yes, madam. This time, both the municipal and the state elections are being held together. I hope you’ll vote for our party again.”
“What’s this I hear about the road widening?” she asked.
“How did you find out about it? The news is not supposed to come out till later,” he said. “I mean – ”
Mrs Ali frowned. “Till after you have been safely elected, you mean. If the road is widened, we’ll lose half our house. Where are we supposed to move to at our age?”
“We are trying our best to stop it, madam. But it is a central government order that all roads connecting to the national highways have to be one hundred and twenty feet wide. And we are not trying to hide the bad news till after the election. After all, the ruling party in central government is different and it is they who are to blame.”
“I don’t understand all the politics. I’ll vote for anybody who’ll protect my home.”
“We understand, madam. There are many houses and shops down this road and it is wrong to demolish them. That’s what we are trying to tell the central government.”
The procession had moved on and the candidate hurried to rejoin them. Mrs Ali turned back, distraught. As there had been no news about the road widening programme, she had convinced herself that Shyam, the meter reader, had been mistaken and that it was just a rumour. But the corporator’s response showed that their house could indeed be demolished soon. On her left grew the guava tree that shaded the front and, underneath the tree, several curry-leaf plants and a henna plant. The house would lose a lot of its beauty and value, and the government would give them a pittance as compensation. What a disaster to strike in their old age!
Left to his own devices, her husband would have been content to continue living in a rented house all his life. It had been Azhar who had pleaded and cajoled, persuading him to buy this strip of land all those years ago. At that time, all the area around them had been vacant and only one bus route served this neighbourhood. Many people, including her husband’s sister, Chhote Bhaabhi, had told them at that time that they were paying far too much for a small piece of land far from local markets and other amenities. But Azhar’s predictions had come true and now their house was in a busy part of the city with all conveniences near by. The land value had shot up two-hundredfold. Only the other day Chhote Bhaabhi had been saying that they were so lucky to have invested in real estate at the right time and got it so cheaply. Maybe, Mrs Ali thought, it was her sister-in-law’s evil eye that had brought this calamity down on them.
On her right was the well that supplied their water. When they had saved up enough money to get the house built, the very first thing they had done was to get this well dug. She remembered how the old imam of the mosque, Haji Saab, had come with his nephew, Nasrullah, and read a dua, a prayer from the Qur’an, over the spot. Then the well-diggers, a trio of brothers, had marked the circumference of the well, three feet in diameter. Placing a stone at its centre, they had asked her husband to break a coconut on the stone and spill its water around it. After that was done, they had lit a packet of incense sticks, stuck them into the white flesh of the broken coconut and prayed over it to their Hindu gods. Mrs Ali had raised her eyebrows at the imam, but he had shrugged. “They are praying to their gods for success and safety. That’s nothing to do with us.”
She wondered how the new imam would have reacted. If he had objected to the ritual, the diggers might have balked and walked away from the job – after all, digging a well was dangerous. The sides could cave in at any time, burying the men underground, and they wouldn’t have wanted to undertake such a hazardous venture without first propitiating their deities.
It didn’t matter whose prayers had been answered, but they had struck water fairly quickly. The well had never gone dry even in the harshest summers, though it had come pretty close a couple of times. It was unimaginable that the faithful well would be closed up – tears came to her eyes at the very thought. And on top of that, she would become dependent upon an unreliable municipal tap for water – and have to pay for the privilege, too.
On the verandah, her husband looked up as she joined him. “I’ve been thinking about that drunken man who c
ame in the other day, Sukumar. I am sure – ”
Mrs Ali turned towards him, her eyes flashing. “Do you ever think about anything other than your stupid marriage bureau? There is a shahmat, a catastrophe, coming down on our heads and all you can talk about is some client of yours.” She suddenly sat down on the wicker chair and covered her face in her hands as sobs racked her.
Mr Ali thought that she was laughing and looked at her in puzzlement. After a few seconds, he realised that she was crying and stood up, alarmed. “What – ” he said. “Why are you crying?”
He came round the table and stood awkwardly in front of his wife, scratching his head. What did she mean by catastrophe? His wife was a strong woman and it was not like her to burst into tears.
♦
The bulldozers came in the night with the roar of an angry elephant and the smoke of a demon’s belch. Two-hundred-watt bulbs, jerry-rigged on long leads, cast a harsh light on the carnage. The bulldozers heavy arm had already knocked down the front wall and it now pushed against the guava tree. The thin trunk resisted for a moment with its supple strength but the bulldozer reversed a foot, digging its claws into the ground.
Mrs Ali stifled a cry as the valiant tree collapsed with a crack against the house. The bulldozer then, surprisingly gently, picked up the tree and laid it aside. A young construction worker (should that be a destruction worker?) casually reached out, plucked a ripe fruit from the fallen tree and bit into it. Mrs Ali could not even protest.
The bulldozer now assaulted the main house itself. The front wall came down with a resounding roar and a neighbour shouted from an upstairs flat: “Why are you guys making such a racket? I have to go to the office tomorrow.”
Workers quickly separated the iron grille from the masonry. It would be recycled and, hopefully, protect somebody else’s house better than it had done for the Alis. The front yard was churned up, its red soil scattered with rootballs and shards of shattered terracotta. The bulldozer roared again and carved through the verandah, cracking the granite floor tiles and bringing down the far wall. Mrs Ali could have sworn that they had cleared her husband’s office the previous day, but she could clearly see the computer crushed and the wooden wardrobe that he used as a filing cabinet turned into kindling. Photos of handsome young men and beautiful women spilled on the ground, reflecting glossily the industrial strength electric light, while dust motes jumped crazily in the air above them.
