Cobalt Blue

by Sachin Kundalkar

  I had even told him about these plans. He had said, ‘You are complete in yourself. You’re so clear about what you want.’ I had felt a rush of pleasure at his praise. I had not thought to ask him what his plans were.

  I had another dream, which I’d fulfilled in Pondicherry. I had begun reading English books and, finally, I had even begun to decipher the American accent. I was in awe of how kids in those books and films would think up ways to earn some money doing small jobs for other people during their holidays. I had always dreamed of being a waitress.

  So when I met Madame Eveline in the bazaar at Pondicherry, she appeared to me like a wish- fulfilling goddess. She was standing in front of a fisherwoman, carrying her wooden basket, slippers on her feet but a slash of red lipstick too. She brought each fish close to her face as if she were examining it for clues. The fisherwoman did not seem bothered; this seemed to be a daily performance for her. Then she saw me and began to chatter away in Tamil. I stopped her and asked in sign language how much the fish I wanted was going to cost me.

  Madame Eveline stepped in and began to give me advice in English. She dropped everything and began to choose fish for me. I began to protest but the fisherwoman caught my hand and signalled me to let Eveline do what she wanted. The old woman began to sort through the prawns until she had chosen the best for me. The fisherwoman’s board was messy, as was the sickle with which she sliced fish. Next to her, a cat was eating the offal. I thought the old lady was a little mental but she wasn’t. She was just a loving, eccentric and determined old lady. But this I only discovered later.

  I had no money with me then. What I had brought with me was over. I had to ask him for money for every little purchase I had to make. He never gave me his wallet—not even to make things easy for both of us. Nor did he ever go to the market; but when I asked for money, he’d give it to me.

  After she had selected the fish, Madame Eveline asked me in her French English, ‘Do you make the cooking?’

  ‘No, I can’t. My partner can, though. He’s quite good.’

  ‘My partner makes fish well too,’ she replied. ‘And he keeps my little fish happy too.’

  She winked and laughed loudly. I could only stare at her.

  We walked together to the road. Her ‘partner’ was waiting for her in a jeep. He looked about seventy-five years old. His name was Philip, he said. They had opened a restaurant in the ground floor of their home. They ran it together; he cooked and she sat at the counter, was the chief waitress and also cleaned the place. They had about twenty tables, they said. Only one or two dishes were on the menu, based on what Madame Eveline found in the market. The menu was then written in chalk on a blackboard. She enjoyed doing that, she said. But, ‘Philip often forgets what has been written on the board and cooks something else. And then we fight.’ So now she had another board hanging in the kitchen. They needed some help. They had had two young women living on the premises but had been forced to dismiss them.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were stealing,’ said Madame Eveline. ‘Grain. Money.’

  I got into the jeep and said, ‘Show me your restaurant.’

  When I returned to our room, I told him that I had decided to take a job. No, that I had taken a job. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Now you’ll have something to do.’

  And I did indeed have something to do for the next four months, morning and evening. I suffered through that dream of mine.

  Tomorrow, I must go to Green Earth and meet Sabina. I have to do something for myself, of myself; and I have to live the way I want to live. Whatever it takes. And when it comes to that, what else had I been doing in the last few months?

  The last few months have been odd in the extreme but they have sped by. I haven’t been writing. I haven’t felt like it.

  I’ve been exercising every morning. Warming up for the gym with a jog, I realized that my stamina is shot. Three rounds and I was pooped. I couldn’t manage much that first day. But when I returned to the bike, wiping the sweat from my face with a napkin, I felt fresh and revitalized, as if I had given my mind a workout too. I got home and went to work, reorganizing my room. I dragged the television out into the hall. Took the bags of grain out and dumped them in the kitchen. Ignored Aai’s comments and complaints.

  In the afternoon, I went to Green Earth again. Sabina was really happy to see me. ‘Where have you been? We need some passionate people around this place.’

  I said, ‘Sabina, I need a job. A full-time job. I don’t mind if it’s a lot of hard work. Or more responsibility. I have to support myself now.’

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I was about to suggest that. It’s a field-work job, full-time. We throw in the training. Interested?’

  I wanted to weep. (This keeps happening. Sorry.) Someone needed me, my eyes, my intelligence, my hands and legs. I wiped my eyes on my T-shirt and said that I was.

  The family protested. No, that’s not accurate. Aseem abstained from comment. My parents declared their opposition. First, I should finish my MSc, my health was not what it should be, that kind of thing. Baba kept up a steady rattle of protest. I tried to explain it to him.

  ‘I feel fine now. I think I’ll feel awful if I keep sitting around doing nothing.’

  ‘Do what you want after we get you married. Then you don’t even have to stay here. Fight with your husband over whether you should work or not. But if you’re going to live here, you have to follow the rules,’ he said.

  So they had only been waiting for me to get well so that they could marry me off? I lost it.

  ‘Where do these hoary old ideas come from?’ I shouted. ‘Marriage? My marriage? What gives you the right? What did you do with your life? Got married, had children, then what?’

  He was so incensed he started forward to slap me. Aai got in the way. She calmed him down and sent him into another room. Then she came and slapped me and then went with him. Tanay was watching all this, his face the usual picture of sadness. ‘I’m back, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. ‘You can call a halt to the mourning now.’ He said nothing and went into his room. I went into mine and bolted the door.

  In the morning, gym. Afterwards, I ate what I was served in silence. I read the newspaper and at 11 a. m. I was at the office, with Sabina. As the day proceeded, as I looked at slides and listened to briefings, made notes and asked questions, the family and its discontents began to fade. I had two weeks of training and then an interview. If I cleared that, the job was mine. I threw myself into the work and when I left in the evening I was dog-tired. As I was leaving,

  Sabina thrust three folders into my hands. ‘Statistics on the pollution levels at the city chowks, the debates that have been held in the Municipal Corporation and their decisions, and this one on dumping into the river. Bedtime reading,’ she said.

  That morning I’d called Sharayu Maushi and said I’d come over for a chat; but I had no energy left. I walked home through the crowds and the dust. As I crossed one of the bridges, I looked down and saw that it had shrunk to a trickle. The water was dirty and there was rubbish floating in it. I had the data in the files in my hands. That night, I lay in bed with the papers spread out in front of me. It was good sound work, data collected with much trouble and much commitment. There were newspaper cuttings. It was the city’s health report, an X-ray of its interior.

  After a few days, it began to dawn on me that this NGO work was rather pleasant and somewhat superficial. We had a posh office, we had air tickets at our disposal and very little real work. But they did seem to take trouble as well to fight for the causes they cared about. Two of my colleagues had master’s in social work. One of them was an idealist, sincere if aggressive in manner. The other was focused on his career. He was the kind who had turned up here perhaps because he hadn’t got admission into the MBA programme he wanted. Our seniors were a varied bunch of people. All along, I’d been a volunteer so I’d never worked inside the office and I didn’t know any of them. But the training was fun.

  One da
y, I didn’t have anything more to do by three thirty or four. A young man called Ashwamegh had come from Delhi to make a presentation. He had a flight to catch and had to leave. I was like a child let out of school; I rushed off to Sharayu Maushi’s house.

  She listened carefully, attentively. I called home to tell Aai I would have dinner with Sharayu Maushi and she said, ‘Sure. Eat there. Why don’t you live there? After all, you don’t want to live with us, at least not the way we’d like you to live. Stay with her. She behaves like someone your age. A good pair you’ll make.’

  Maushi and I took chairs on to the terrace. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said. I looked at her questioningly. ‘No, you’ve recovered. I can tell from your face.’ I brought her up to date with my life after I had left her home and, when I had finished, she went downstairs and came up with a bottle of red wine, two glasses and a bunch of keys.

  ‘You’re well now,’ she said. ‘Time to celebrate.’

  She poured us both glasses and handed me mine. Then she gave me the bunch of keys. I looked at her.

  ‘First take a sip. Then we’ll talk about the keys.’

  In my eagerness, I took a great big gulp of wine. Not Sharayu Maushi. First she swirled the wine about and stared into its red dark heart. Then she brought it to her lips and took a sip so infinitesimal it could not have even wet her lips. Then she closed her eyes and I could sense the wine percolate through her.

  ‘Our flat in the city is vacant. You can live there, if you want. Keep the keys. Then you can make your decision whenever you want.’

  That was ten days ago. The keys are still in my bag. They come to hand every time I look for something.

  I got home late that night. It must have been about twelve thirty or one. When Baba opened the door, he began to shout, as is now his wont. I didn’t let what he was saying affect me at all. I waited him out. Now, when Aai or Baba shouts, I simply turn off their sound. It’s as good as a ‘mute’ button.

  Sunday. Aai and Baba got all dressed up. Tanay made tea for me. When Aseem came out in a formal shirt, doing up the buttons on his sleeves, I asked, ‘What’s up? Where you off to so early?’

  He grinned and went off to put on his shoes. Aai had her pearl bangles on and held out her arms. Baba fixed the tiny screws that held them together.

  ‘Where are you lot going?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you pay no attention to what I say? I told you about it yesterday. A proposal has come from the Chitpavan Sangha. She’s a Sane. Aseem liked her photograph. When I told you about it, you were sitting there like a dummy. Aseem was bothered about having an unmarried younger sister in the house so I was asking you what you had decided to do. We thought you should get married and step out of his way. But would you answer? Would you say anything? So I said why should we let her interfere? Let’s go and see the girl tomorrow. Let’s finalize things if he likes her.’

  Baba did not even smile when he looked at me. The three of them went off. Tanay and I were left, sitting at the table. His face wasn’t sad as it usually was now, just blank. He hadn’t shaved. He was glancing through the newspaper, one foot up on a chair.

  ‘Good tea,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm.’ He didn’t raise his head from the paper.

  ‘What’s happening in your life? You haven’t talked to me properly in days.’

  ‘I have a friend in Mumbai. He’s going to translate one of Manto’s stories and turn it into a play. I’m going to assist him on it.’

  ‘You’re going to live in Mumbai?’

  ‘From next month. Amrish says I can live with him in his flat. There’s no one else. And I’m going to assist an ad film-maker on a new campaign. It sounds like something I might want to do. Let’s see.’

  Then he dropped the newspaper and went out.

  It seemed as if all three of us were on a railway station with our bags, heading in different directions. If Tanay had been pining for my return, why was he behaving so badly now?

  In the afternoon, I opened the doors to Maushi’s flat. I had come here once before, for the Vastu Shanti pooja. Who knows why they had bought such a large flat? There was a layer of dust everywhere. It had almost everything one could need in terms of furniture, as far as I could make out since all of it was swathed in dust covers. The air was foul. When I went into the bedroom, I discovered why. One of the windows had a broken pane. And a sparrow had got in and built a nest on the ceiling fan. I backed out and walked through the flat, opening all the doors. Then I threw open the French windows and walked on to the balcony.

  The green of the hills was in front of me and beneath me, the housing society’s swimming pool. I sat on the balcony and stared out, the keys in my hand, confusion in my head. I wasn’t sure I could do what I wanted to do.

  Today when I sat down to write and put the date on the page, I began to wonder: why do I insist on this date business? Why must I put time stamps on everything? I thought of his dateless diary, the book in which he trapped memory. It was a beautiful book; I think he had covered it himself with some cobalt blue khadi cloth he had bought. He would write in it, sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up to his body, as a child might do his homework. Once I sneaked up behind him to see what he was writing. It was a ‘to do’ list.

  ‘But how will you know when to do them?’ I asked. ‘You need a diary with dates.’

  ‘When I want to do something, I’ll do it. Why do I need dates?’

  I did not ask him why he needed a list then.

  When I was young, I did not have a doll’s house or any long-legged foreign dolls. I knew vaguely that my friends had dolls and that they dressed them up and played house for hours on end without getting bored. And when they had finished, they would talk about their dolls. I was a bit of a tearaway, or so Aai maintains. Nadkarni Kaku’s nephews would visit when they had holidays. One of them was Manoj. I once made a nice and drippy ball of dark brown mud and gave it to Manoj, saying it was chocolate ice cream. He even ate some. That night his stomach swelled up and there was much commotion next door as he was taken to a hospital.

  I enjoyed making forts. Aseem and I would take spades and buckets and get ourselves some good squidgy mud from an empty plot down the road. Aseem would dig it all up and I would make several trips, back and forth, with the mud. Then we would raise our walls and decorate them with stones and suchlike. By night, my fort would be ready. I would plant some seeds as crops so that by the time Diwali came, the fields inside the fort would be coming along nicely. Then on Bhau-Beej, the day after Diwali, we would blow up the fort with sutli-bombs.

  When I got to the eighth standard, Aai began to ask me to do kitchen stuff: cut those onions, fry those papads, start the veggies off. She’d wake me up and ask me to make tea. By the time I was in college, I was doing odd bits of work for her. But I found the work very boring.

  The food I cooked showed my disinterest. When she tried to force me to learn cooking, I fought with her for the first time. I didn’t win; how could I? I did learn some cooking but I also decided that, when I grew up, I wasn’t going to be the one doing the cooking.

  When those keys nudge my hand inside my purse, these things come back.

  He cooked very well. He had had a hotplate when he lived upstairs. He cooked up various dishes on it, dishes from various countries, dishes whose names I had never heard of before. When we reached Pondicherry, it was about 7 p. m. I stayed with the luggage while he went to look for a place to stay. He returned in an hour, tired, and picked up his bag and began to walk. He beckoned me to follow. The room was in the basement of a building that saw a constant stream of tourists, both Indian and international. It was just right for us. It had a kitchen and some basic utensils.

  He put down the luggage and went out again. He brought back some veggies and some rice and other necessities. While I was having a bath, he got some delicious pitla-bhaath ready. Memories of home came back and I hugged him as he stood there, dishing up. He made the next morning’s tea and lunch too. I swept and swabbed and w
ent out and got us a couple of cycles on hire. Those were my contributions to our housekeeping.

  That evening, he went out and came back after having had dinner somewhere. I had been waiting for him.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘You’re here? I thought you’d have gone out somewhere too.’

  I didn’t understand this but I didn’t say anything. I drank water and tried to go to sleep. But of course, I couldn’t sleep and I got up and looked out at the houses in the street.

  In the next few days, he got himself some paints, brushes and an easel. They materialized, it seemed, one morning. I opened the door and there they all were, scattered about the room. I thought he’d put them away himself and left them alone. But when he came back, he picked up a book of poetry and lay about, reading it. Then we played the guitar together for some time and fell asleep. For the next two days, his art materials lay around. When they got in my way, I tried to impose some order.

  I wanted to call Anubhav to bring him up to date on everything I’d been doing: the job applications, the training. I didn’t even know his telephone number had changed. When I got the right one, the domestic help picked up the phone and shouted, ‘Woo is spikking?’ When I told her, I heard several voices begin a discussion.

  She had obviously taken the cordless phone to Anubhav’s door. On the way, I could hear the news on television, the call of street vendors, Kaku saying, ‘At least take his tea and go . . .’ When I heard loud music, I knew that the phone was at his door. ‘It’s Anuja,’ I heard someone say. ‘Do you want to talk to her or should I say you’re bathing?’ He grabbed the phone and shouted, ‘Hello,’ with a wealth of joy in his voice. He was delighted that I had taken the initiative and called him after so many months.

  Today was the last day of training. Sabina was so enthusiastic that I felt the job was mine for the asking.

  ‘Now it’s just the interview,’ Sabina said to me. ‘And I think you should get past that easily. It will count that you’ve volunteered for so many years with us. Just speak confidently and clearly. I think it should be a breeze but there’s one German lady on the panel. She might be a bit of a problem.’