Sarojini spent the morning reading. She had her lunch and a long siesta; sex had soothed her, relaxed her body, and now induced sleep. In the afternoon she had the driver take her out. ‘Show me the sahib’s office. I don’t want to go in but just see what it looks like. Then take me to a bookstore.’
‘Sahib’s office is in Nehru Place. The offices are in high rise buildings with many lifts. He has the two top storeys of a block, what will you see from the ground? And I don’t know of any bookstore. Sahib does not buy books. You give me the address and I’ll take you there.’
Sarojini did not know the names of any of Delhi’s bookstores but knew that there were a few in some place called Khan Market. ‘Take me to Khan Market,’ she ordered curtly, irritated with the chauffeur’s indifferent manners. She may be his master’s paid companion, but how was he to know that? She was determined to have them all respect her.
Khan Market was closer than she had thought. And crammed with cars. The driver dropped her in front of a bookstore, Bahri & Sons. This time he got out and opened the car door for her. Her curt tone had obviously made a difference. ‘I will find a place for parking, memsahib, and come back for you here after you have seen this and other bookstores.’
Sarojini looked at the books on display in the windows. Instead of going in she decided to take a look round the market to see what else there was she could buy. She went from one shop to the other looking at what they had to offer. There was just about everything anyone could want: six book stores, eight magazine stalls, shops selling saris and suit lengths and children’s garments. Shoe stores, chemists, green-grocer’s, butchers, halwais, paanwalas, a florist, an ice-cream parlour and a couple of restaurants. From a green-grocers she bought half a kilo of baby corn which she had never seen before. At the florist’s she picked up a dozen bright red gladioli—Mohan had no flowers in his house or garden. Her final purchase was from The Bookshop—an illustrated edition of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s rubais. It was as good a primer as any to introduce a man to English poetry.
Her arms full of flowers, two plastic bags in one hand, her hand-bag slung over her shoulder, Sarojini waited outside Bahri & Sons for her car. She was startled by a girl’s enthusiastic cry: ‘Aunty Saroj?! What are you doing here? Remember me? Sheetal?’ It was one of her old students now married and settled in Delhi. ‘Oh … Hi. I’m here for a few days to do some shopping and sightseeing,’ replied Sarojini, trying hard to keep the panic out of her voice.
‘You must come home, Aunty. My husband would love to meet you. Have lunch or dinner with us. Give me your address and telephone number.’
Sarojini felt cornered. ‘I’m not sure if I can make it this time, Sheetal. I don’t know the address or the telephone number of the people I’m staying with. You give me yours and I will ring you up.’
The girl quickly scribbled her telephone number on a slip of paper. ‘Please, please don’t forget to get in touch with me. Can I drop you somewhere?’
‘No, thanks, my host has lent me his car for the afternoon.’
Just then Mohan’s Mercedes pulled up. A line of cars lined up behind it and began to honk impatiently. Sarojini got into the car, waved the girl goodbye and was driven away. She sank into the seat and sighed with relief.
Sarojini reached home, and asked the bearer to put the gladioli in a vase. She took a shower, got into her nightie, and went through her ritual of lighting agarbatties and invoking the blessings of Saraswati. She folded her hands and began to chant:
Thou lady clad in celestial white
A garland of snow-white flowers round Thy neck
A stringed viol in one hand, royal sceptre in the other,
Thou Goddess divine seated on a lotus flower!
To Thee, The Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, I make obeisance
For Thou art the embodiment of learning;
With Thy sword of knowledge, slay the ignorance that is within me.
To Thee I pray and make my offering.
Having propitiated her patron goddess, she drew a chair to the balcony and awaited Mohan’s return from office. As on the evening before, she watched the sun go down, the evening star twinkling a little less brightly in the sky lit by the waxing moon. She had not noticed earlier that in the garden were two pine trees. She did not think pines could grow in the plains. But these two looked as lush and healthy as any she had seen in the Shivaliks. She must ask Mohan where he had got them from.
Exactly at 6.30 p.m. the iron front gate opened and the Mercedes slid in noiselessly. Coming up the stairs Mohan got a whiff of agar. As he came up onto the balcony he noticed the vase full of gladioli and an unopened parcel on the dining table.
‘I see you’ve been shopping,’ he said by way of greeting.
‘I went to Khan Market and got the flowers for you. And some baby corn, it will go nicely with your dinner. I’ve also bought you a book of poems.’
‘A book of poems?’ he asked in a tone of surprise. ‘I haven’t read poetry since I left school. Jack and Jill, Twinkle, twinkle little star, Mary had a little lamb—that kind of kid stuff. I don’t understand poetry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, ‘I’ll read you some verses. If you don’t like them, I’ll take the book back to the shop.’
Mohan opened the parcel and was impressed with the binding and illustrations. ‘Bookstores don’t take back books they’ve sold. And you’ve inscribed it to me: “To Mohan—with love”, if you please. I’ll try to read it.’
He went to his room, had his second shave and shower, got into his sports shirt and slacks and joined her on the balcony. He took out bottles of sherry and Scotch from the drink cabinet.
‘Don’t give me more than a glass,’ pleaded Sarojini. ‘I was a bit tipsy last evening. I needed something to fortify myself. One will do me nicely today.’
Mohan handed her a glass of sherry and sat down with his Scotch.
‘What was your day like?’ she asked.
‘Not bad, I received a big order for readymade garments from the United States. Should bring me a lot of dollars. You’ve proved to be a grihalakshmi—’ he said and winked at her, ‘—the money-bringing goddess of the house.’
‘I may have brought you some lolly but can hardly be described as a housewife—that’s what griha means, you know.’
They both laughed. Sarojini opened the book of rubais and said, ‘Listen to this one. It’s my favourite!’ Her voice was professional—loud and clear:
Ah love, if thou and I could with fate conspire
To change this sorry scheme of things entire
Would we not shatter it to bits
And remould it nearer
To our hearts’ desire?
‘How do you like it?’
‘Very nice, who wrote it?’
‘Omar Khayyam, in Persian, translated by Fitzgerald. He wrote many lovely rubais on the joys of the tavern and the passage of time.’
‘One verse is enough for one evening,’ Mohan said in a tone of finality. ‘I won’t be able to digest more.’
They had their drinks. Sarojini was persuaded to take a second glass of sherry. They had dinner together. Then Mohan lit his Havana cigar. The impatience of the evening before had gone. With the cigar in his mouth he went down to lock the main gate and the doors, stood facing the hedge and went through his ritual evening urination. He came up, stubbed out his half-smoked cigar in the ashtray and went to the bathroom to gargle away the smell of tobacco from his mouth. When he returned, Sarojini stretched her hand out to him. He held it for some time; then pulled her up to her feet. ‘Time for bed,’ he announced.
She followed him to his bedroom. Mohan was pleased about the way in which the equation had changed within twenty-four hours: last evening he was the pursuer and she the frightened little doe dreading the hunter’s dart; this evening she was Diana, the huntress, pursuing the boar into its den.
This time she did not plead with him to be gentle nor show any fear of his overs
ized weapon. She gazed on it with admiration, caressed it lovingly with her fingers and directed it to its goal. Mohan found the second encounter as pleasurable as the first. The first was conquest, the second consolidation of what had been conquered. He slept so soundly that he did not know when Sarojini left his bed to return to her own.
The first few days went by pleasantly. However, Mohan sensed growing resentment among the servants. How was it that if the lady professor had been transferred to Delhi she did not go to teach in any college nor go round looking for a place of her own? They learnt from the driver Jiwan Ram that all she did in the afternoons was visit bookstores, museums, art exhibitions and historical monuments. Dhanno turned positively hostile. She said nothing but stopped even looking at Mohan. She swept and mopped the floors in sullen silence and then strode out with her broom, mop and bucket. Even when he gave her an extra two hundred rupees she took it without a gesture of thanks. And once he overheard her say to the cook while having the mug of tea he gave her every morning: ‘I don’t know what she is to the maalik, she does not behave like his sister.’ The cook snubbed her, ‘How does it matter to you? You do your work and don’t buk buk so much.’
Mohan’s ardour for the lady professor lessened. He did not follow her to her bedroom as often as he had done during the first week. Usually it was she who indicated by gestures while they were having their pre-dinner drinks what she had in mind. She would throw back her arms over her head to stretch herself; it was the traditional Indian angdaee, exposing her bosom with languor and wantonness. She developed a liking for sherry: three to four glasses every evening. She had Omar Khayyam to back her up. One evening she said, ‘You will like this one; it is in praise of wine.’ She read aloud:
Awake! And in the fire of spring
The winter garment of repentance fling;
The bird of time has a little way to go
And lo! the Bird is on the wing.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Mohan naively.
‘It is very simple. Don’t ever regret what you are doing. You have only one life to live. Live it to the full. Time flies as fast as a bird on the wing.’
‘Makes good sense to me,’ said Mohan. ‘That’s exactly what we, you and I, are doing.’
‘Precisely!’ she replied in her didactic manner. ‘Follow the dictates of your heart and tell the world to go to hell.’
That night was made for loving. A full moon washed the garden with milky whiteness. Moonbeams filtered through the pine trees. When Mohan went out to urinate against the hedge she could see the stream pour from him. ‘Hey Mister!’ she shouted to him. ‘What do you think you are doing in my garden?’ He turned and shouted back, ‘You want to see what I’m doing? Have a good look.’ He thrust out his pelvis, pointed his member towards her and sent a jet of urine in her direction.
‘Shameless creature!’ she said flirtatiously as he came up to the balcony.
‘Shameless you! You asked me to show you what I have. Here, you can have a closer look.’
He sat down in his chair, legs apart, exposing himself to her. She undid her dressing gown and came over and sat astride him. She put her hands on his shoulder and leaned back, so they could both see and marvel at how a small opening like hers could swallow up his huge organ. All of it, down to its hairy roots. They made love not in the privacy of their bedrooms but in the moonlit balcony. Anyone peering over the boundary wall could have seen her bouncing in his lap. It was more gratifying for both than their previous encounters in bed.
‘Have you done this on the balcony before?’ she asked him as she got up and tied the cord of her dressing gown.
‘Never! You think I’m mad?’
‘We are both a little mad,’ she said laughing.
That night they slept in the same bed without a stitch of clothing between them. Mohan was woken by the cook banging on the rear door. He quickly slipped into his dressing gown and hurried downstairs. She simply picked up hers and ran stark naked to her bedroom and bolted it from the inside.
From almost the time their relationship began, both Mohan and Sarojini had known that it could not last very long; the world outside which they pretended did not exist would eventually catch up with them. But not in the nasty way it did.
Came the first of November. While Sarojini was having her bath, Mohan put an envelope with Rs 10,000 on her pillow. When she joined him for breakfast she just said one word, ‘Thanks.’ He said nothing.
The crisis came the next morning. Mohan was scanning the pages of The Hindustan Times. He had no interest in politics and the paper had little besides politics to fill its pages. The page he usually scanned casually to see if he could recognize the names or faces of the people in it was the one which carried obituaries. That morning there were lots of boxed items with photographs of the people who had died the day before and several ‘In Memoriam’ messages for people who had died that day some years earlier. He went down the columns and stopped midway. Right in the centre was a picture of his father-in-law. The accompanying text read:
‘We deeply regret to announce that our revered father Rai Bhadur Lala Achint Ramji suddenly left for his heavenly abode on the evening of 31 October. Cremation will take place at the Lodhi Road crematorium at 11 a.m. on 1 November. Chautha/Uthala will take place at Mata ka Mandir, Friends Colony East on Sunday, 7 November at 4 p.m.’
Under the line ‘Grief Stricken’ were the names of the family members, beginning with ‘Shobha Achint Ram—wife’. Then the three sons and their wives. His wife was listed singly as ‘Sonu—daughter’. At the end were the names of his children, Ranjit and Mohini. The only name missing in the list was his own—Mohan Kumar. Evidently he was no longer regarded a part of his wife’s family. The last item in the obituary was a list of the sugar mills and companies that the deceased had owned.
Mohan told Sarojini about it and said, ‘I am in two minds about going to the funeral. They obviously don’t regard me as a relation any more. But some members of my office staff are bound to go there to condole. What shall I do?’
‘It’s a very dicey situation,’ she replied. ‘But I think it is your duty to attend the cremation. Keep your distance from the family and come away as soon as the funeral pyre is lit. You don’t have to line up with your mother-in- law, wife and brothers-in-law to thank the people present.’
Mohan thought over the matter for some time and decided to accept her advice. And face the music. He rang up his secretary to give her the news. She had already read it in the paper and offered her condolences. ‘Tell the others that the office will remain closed today as a mark of respect for the deceased,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir, I will,’ she replied.
He told the servants that if they wanted to go to the memsahib to condole, they could do so. The professor lady would have her lunch in a restaurant.
At 10.30 a.m. he left for the Lodhi Road cremation ground. ‘Was memsahib’s father ill?’ the driver Jiwan Ram asked to show his concern. ‘I don’t know,’ replied Mohan. ‘I only read of his death in the paper this morning.’
There was quite a crowd at the cremation ground. The car park was full. Mohan asked Jiwan Ram to drop him outside the gate and park the car by the road as he would be leaving before the others. Some people came to condole with him; mostly his staff and friends. Mohan saw the hearse come in, followed by a line of cars carrying members of the family. As the corpse was taken out of the van by his wife’s brothers, there were emotional scenes: people embracing each other, women clasping the widow and Sonu and sobbing. They noticed Mohan, but no one came to talk to him. Sonu was in a white sari and wore dark glasses to hide her tears. Her brothers turned to look at him and as quickly turned away. Mercifully his children had been kept at home.
Lala Achint Ram’s body was placed on the ground and a pandit started chanting mantras. A few feet away some men were piling wood to make a pyre. In the cremation yard some pyres still smouldered; there were others reduced to heaps of ashes.
Mohan stood apart, watchin
g the scene. Suddenly his wife’s youngest brother, whom he detested, broke away from the circle surrounding the corpse and came towards him. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked in a voice loaded with sarcasm.
Mohan did not reply.
The brother-in-law persisted. ‘You need not have taken the trouble. And who is this cousin you have discovered to keep you company?’
‘Mind your own business,’ snapped Mohan and turned away. He left the cremation ground before the funeral pyre was lit.
His mind was in turmoil. He had no doubt his cook and bearer had been seeing his wife and had told her of the sahib’s ‘cousin’ staying at the house. She was not the kind to keep things to herself. He could hear her shrill voice screaming, ‘She is no cousin-vuzun, she is a randee! A whore who answered his advertisement in the papers for a part-time mistress.’
The servants had anyhow not bought the cousin story. ‘There is no rishta-vishta between them,’ they’d told Dhanno. ‘She’s not related to our sahib, she’s just a gold-digger exploiting the sahib. He is very bhola bhala, he does not understand the woman’s cunning.’
The Mohan-Sarojini honeymoon had been soured. Mohan spent the afternoon reading papers and magazines in the India International Centre library. He took a walk round the Lodhi gardens. The trees and the neat-looking tombs depressed him today. By the time he got home, it was dark. Sarojini was waiting for him—not in her nightie, but properly clad in salwar-kameez. He did not go to his room to take a shower and get into his sports outfit. He sat down beside her.
Company of Women Page 5
