Cobalt Blue

by Sachin Kundalkar

  ‘Don’t worry, Sabina,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

  On my way home, I began to wonder about this job. It wasn’t what I had planned. I had wanted to study zoo management and become India’s Gerald Durrell. This wasn’t quite the same thing but at least it was related.

  When I told him about my zoo dreams, we were sitting on the beach. He listened to me and said, ‘Sounds like a suitable job for you. You like pigeonholing people, classifying them and governing them accordingly. You’ll do exactly that with your animals.’

  I thought he was joking but, when I looked up at him, his face was serious. Then he got up, took off his clothes and went for a swim.

  Most of the good memories I have of him are from the time before I left home with him. What happened to our time together?

  I knew what I wanted. I wanted to live with him. I wanted him all to myself. I had my priorities clear. What were his priorities?

  When we got to Pondicherry and started living in the same room, it occurred to me that I now had my wish. He would be with me, twenty-four hours of the day. But slowly, it also occurred to me that there were many dimensions to his personality that I did not know about.

  For instance, he would listen quietly but then he would do as he pleased. Once he’d started on a painting, he could be silent for days. In the middle of the night, if the mood took him, he would go jogging. I tried to take all this in my stride; I had some weird habits too. I began to work in Madame Eveline’s restaurant and started to earn some money. No longer did I have to ask him for money each time I went out. Why didn’t that count? When I got back from work, I would tell him everything that had happened in the restaurant. He would have a hot meal ready for me and would tell me about his day. Every Saturday night, despite my protestations, he would rub warm oil into my hair and, on Sunday morning, wash it out again. He never said a word about the stains I left on his T-shirt.

  Then Mme Eveline decided I was a thief too. I left in a huff. He was at home, cleaning up. When I told him what had happened, he didn’t even lift his head from the task at hand.

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  Perhaps I had never understood him. If I think about it, those six months didn’t amount to a very long time together but we seem to have made the most of it.

  I had come a long way from home but I was not sure if I had done the right thing. In the first few days, I couldn’t tell for certain. In the remaining days, it often felt like the right thing and as often it felt like a huge mistake. I would sit on the kitchen counter as he cooked or stand with him by the sea and tell him stories about my childhood. If homesickness washed over me, I’d put my head in his lap and stay there. As for him, he might well have been born the day he arrived to stay with us, for he never talked about his past.

  His best gift: the guitar lessons. We’d draw close to each other anywhere—at home, on a hill, by the road, sitting on the beach, in a bus— and play the one and only guitar we had between us. Often we were singing in different pitches or we were out of tune, but we were together.

  Now if I am to make my own accounts, I think I came out ahead if I discount my inability to understand him. He must have suddenly found that what he was doing, how he was living, no longer suited him. That was when he left. What

  I am doing now, he must have done then: taken stock and made a decision.

  Once you start living together and you see the same person day in and day out, you begin to wonder: was it for this I struggled and toiled? Did he feel that way? If he didn’t, then why did he put his mattress on the floor?

  I see myself as an independent thinker, a free spirit. When I was leaving with him, it did not occur to me to tell my friends anything. Whether I was aware of it or not, whether it happened because of something I did or not, I must have represented a restriction on his freedom.

  Why do we judge relationships only by their age? Why is it that only a long-lasting relationship may be called successful? Now I no longer feel like weeping over him. I just want to meet him once, to ask him why. Then I look at Anubhav and I think: what explanation? From whom? What will I gain by holding him responsible? So maybe it’s all for the best if he doesn’t show up.

  Aseem’s wedding has been fixed. I had gone to a bookshop with Anubhav and, when I got home, I knew something was up. Aai had a big smile on her face when she opened the door. Baba was talking animatedly to Aseem on the phone. Why was he so well-dressed at home? Because the girl’s father had just left.

  Her name is Supriya. Aseem liked her but their horoscopes had to be matched. Their astrologer had just delivered himself of the good news that there was nothing in their stars to prevent the marriage and so her father had come to see us. Baba had no room in his head now for me; he was so thrilled that he fed me pedas with his own hands. Tanay picked up the receiver and congratulated Aseem. Aai fed Tanay with some pedas and blessed him. ‘Now I have one daughter-in-law. If I get another one as nice, this house will fill up.’ I looked around at the furniture and wondered whether it wasn’t filled up enough. I picked up the receiver, obviously we all had to talk to Aseem, and said, ‘Come home quick.’

  Supriya is some months younger than me. She works in the accounts department of a pharmaceutical company. She earns eight thousand rupees a month. As Aai told me all this, I flashed back to one of Sabina’s folders. This was one of the companies polluting the river. Green Earth had filed a case against them. Supriya likes cooking and meeting her relatives. Every Sunday she goes to learn how to make colourful candles. She is the only child. Her father has a bungalow. He is a retired police officer. She will bring twenty-five tolas of gold. She’s a bit thin but that will be dealt with after marriage. The marriage has to happen quickly. Next week, engagement; next month, wedding. I said, ‘Think about the cost.’

  But the girl’s father had said, ‘It’s the first important function in our family. We will do it all ourselves.’ Since the marriage is to be conducted on Vedic principles, it will not take much doing. Four hundred relatives from our side and five hundred from theirs, think nothing of it. There will be a dandiya night before the wedding but no reception.

  Everyone was opposed to the idea but I said we should say on the wedding card: no gifts. We ought to move with the times. When Aai was telling Nadkarni Kaku this, Aseem returned from the office. And ooh, what a coy little boy he became! And Aai turned into a bundle of maternal love, blessing him and banishing the evil eye; and then, to top it all, Baba took out his expensive fountain pen and tucked it into his pocket! It was a nice little circus.

  Tanay? As he was, he remained: blank and uncaring. That night, Aai asked us all to have dinner together and made the polis herself. Because Aseem liked shira with raisins, she made that too. Baba said to Aseem, ‘Let everything go off well. If you need anything, just say the word. And just because you have a flat, there’s no need to shift there immediately. Tell your Supriya to bear with her in-laws for a bit.’

  ‘You have a flat of your own?’ I asked Aseem.

  ‘Not yet. But I’ve been thinking about it. Now that everything’s fixed, I think I should. The loan will also be approved quickly.’

  ‘If you want to know what happens at home, you have to stay at home, Anuja,’ Aai shouted from the kitchen where she was rolling a fresh batch of polis. I let it drop.

  Supriya came home. Her mother and father came and a boy, around twelve years old. We didn’t know who he was. ‘This is our Mukul,’ said her mother and that was all. Supriya was pretty in a coastal Maharashtrian kind of way. She was wearing a printed salwar kameez and only touches of make-up.

  ‘You travel a lot, don’t you?’ she said to me. ‘Trekking and all? Aseem was telling me.’

  She spoke exactly like our handicrafts teacher in school: with gaps between sentences, even between phrases. She would say ‘Fold your glazed paper,’ but even that utterance would be divided into two. She was a well-read person and intelligent but she simply spoke that way. I thought the coloured candle
s looked boring. When Tanay shook her hand she blushed. She made the tea. She served everyone and then came into my room to serve me. Aseem returned at five thirty and they went out together. Four proud parents and one bored Mukul went off to look at halls and book one.

  The atmosphere in the house changed radically. Aai had something new to bother about. She could no longer be bothered with my job, the interview, where I was going and when I was returning although she kept up a perfunctory level of interest. Sharayu Maushi came regularly to the house to help her with the wedding arrangements.

  Only then did I feel like staying at home. The smell of new clothes is beautiful. Yesterday, Sharayu Maushi dragged me off to go shopping. I couldn’t tell whether we were in the lobby of a hotel or in a sari shop. I wasn’t as bored as I thought I would be. Aai had brought a list with her but Sharayu Maushi chose some saris for me at the speed of light. Then we went to the jewellery shop. I wandered about looking at things. Aai called out to me, ‘Do you want something?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Aai began to talk again, until Sharayu Maushi stopped her. She began to sort through the bangles and necklaces and put aside what we wanted. Her hands were swift and sure. We had the whole wedding shopping business done in two hours flat.

  ‘I have to go to the temple. You go on ahead,’ said Aai.

  Maushi and I took a rickshaw, but she didn’t direct him homewards. Instead, we went down a road past the Gymkhana to a leather goods shop in an old bungalow.

  ‘I’m going to get you something for the wedding.’

  There was a really lovely bag with a price that made me dizzy. That was what Green Earth was going to pay me as a starting salary. But I could see myself going to the interview, the bag over my shoulder. I’m wearing jeans and a jacket, sunglasses on my head. When I got home, I took the bag straight into my room because I didn’t want any discussions about it.

  The saris were all over the house, as they had to have their pallus done and falls put on them. That wonderful dry smell filled the house. I picked one up and inhaled deeply. Aai misunderstood immediately. ‘I said, didn’t I? I said, get yourself a sari. Did you listen? No, you didn’t. Don’t you dare turn up for the wedding dressed like a tramp. The least you can do is wear a Punjabi suit.’ But then Nadkarni Kaku arrived and she was given her invitation and thankfully Aai stopped talking about me.

  I got onto the bike, and Anubhav and I whipped through the city. When we were near home, I said, ‘I don’t feel like going home.’

  ‘Come and have lunch at mine,’ he said.

  His parents were at home. I began to feel a little ill at ease. So I left and had noodles from a cart and went to sit by the river. There was a bitter smell coming off the water. I thought Anubhav would follow but he didn’t. I think he had really wanted me to eat at his place; he kept insisting but I couldn’t stay. I wandered around the city for half an hour but when the petrol began to run out I went home.

  Aai opened the door. I shut off my hearing but she said nothing. She had a pen and a list in her hand. Baba was sitting on the sofa in his torn banian, punching figures into a calculator.

  I went into my room and lay down. Tears began to fall but silently, so silently that when Aai came into the room to cover me she did so without even seeing that I was crying.

  On the actual day of the interview I felt no apprehension. I filled up the new bag with my stuff: a pen, my resumé, the files that I had accumulated during training, a calculator, a small bottle of water and some paper. I left without telling anyone anything.

  I pushed past the glass doors, climbed the stairs. Sabina saw me and came to wish me well. When I got there, the first young man was going in. I sat down on the sofa and began to play with the bag’s zip.

  The interview seemed easy; it lasted half an hour. I went to a coffee shop afterwards. Had I said what I wanted to? What interpretation would they put on my somewhat awkward sentences?

  At home, Tanay’s bags were packed. Baba was nowhere to be seen but Aai looked unhappy. Tanay appeared with a book in his hand. He stuffed it into the bag and, putting on his slippers, went to the upstairs room.

  Baba came out of the inside room. He put some sachets of sacred ash into Tanay’s bag. From Aai’s lamentations, I discerned that Tanay was on his way to Mumbai. He didn’t seem to have told them anything about his friend, the Manto play or the ad film-maker. In the morning, he had received a phone call and then he had told them that he was going to Mumbai and he had begun to pack. Aai couldn’t believe it; with the engagement in two days! He had assured her he would return for it; he’d come in the evening and return in the night. Aai was full of questions and doubts: how would he live? What would he eat? He didn’t know much about the city, hadn’t visited it much. Would he manage in those crowded local trains? Baba seemed unfazed. Perhaps I had made him immune to this sort of behaviour from his children.

  Tanay came down the stairs and entered the house. I thought he had forgotten something upstairs but he had nothing in his hands. His face was, as usual, blank but, now that I was looking at him, I could see dark rings under his eyes. I hadn’t looked at him for so long, hadn’t really looked. I felt bad about it. I tried to reach out, put my hand on his shoulder: ‘You have the address, no? As soon as you’ve reached, call.’

  He nodded.

  ‘When will you be back?’

  He said nothing.

  Aai gave him a bottle of water. His haversack over his shoulder, another bag in his hands, he went to the door.

  ‘I’ll wait for your call,’ Aai said, not moving.

  Baba took the bag from him and went with him to the rickshaw. I watched them as they walked away: Baba moving slowly; Tanay clipping along, his head cocked. Then they turned a corner and vanished from my sight.

  ‘At least he could have waited for the engagement to get over,’ Aai said through sobs. ‘Where will he stay? What kind of plays will he do?’ I went and looked at the notepad that was kept by the phone. On it, there was an address: Amrish Dubash, 5, Summer Queen, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba. Aai read it over my shoulder.

  ‘Dubash?’ she asked.

  ‘Parsi,’ I said.

  ‘Now when did he start having Parsi friends? That’s all you lot are good for: to dump some more tensions on my poor head.’

  At seven that evening, Tanay called from Mumbai. I answered the phone. He had arrived safely. He was at the address he had scribbled on the notepad. He said, ‘Because it’s you, I’m saying this. I won’t be coming for any engagement shit. Rehearsals start tomorrow. And I have to find a job.’

  As he was speaking, it seemed like he had received a jolt and he began to talk to someone in English. I told him about the interview at Green Earth. He wished me and hung up. As I was going into my room, Aseem said, ‘When Supriya and her folks are around, could you please wear salwar kameez? For my sake. Until the wedding is over.’

  The engagement happened. I have no idea what happened exactly. Aai and Baba kept waiting for Tanay. The house was flooded with relatives. Everyone came up to me, to stroke my face solicitously, in the hope of extracting some juicy details. All of them approved of Supriya, except for Durga Aji. She said, ‘Whatever you say, Aseem is a little better than she is.’ That night, Ram Kaka, Prakash Kaka, Baba, Supriya’s father and her uncle sat down to a bottle of whisky. Supriya’s uncle got drunk and began to act up. The girls from the Nadkarni Hostel came into the balcony to watch. He was brought into my room and put to sleep on my bed.

  The day before the engagement, two workers were talking to Baba in the courtyard. All three went upstairs. Durga Aji had ordered the upstairs room cleared for the influx of guests. I watched from the window. ‘Don’t stand there. Go somewhere else,’ I ordered my feet but they remained stubbornly rooted to the spot.

  Rolls of canvas, an easel, the two paintings on the wall, a tattered lampshade, a mat, a bucket, a bundle of clothes, a hotplate, a broken strainer, two glass plates, spoons . . . thick with dust, they were brought
down by the workers. The glass jar broke on the way down; shards flew everywhere. Carrying an Irani restaurant-style chair, one of the workers came to the door. ‘This is in good shape. Do you want to keep it?’ he asked. Before I could say anything, Aai said, ‘Throw it all in the rubbish. Burn the rest. I don’t want even a thread from that room in my house.’ And so they swept the room clean. Then they hosed it down, and a stream of blue water erupted from the door of the upstairs room and flowed down the stairs.

  The day after the engagement, the phone rang. Sabina’s voice came ringing down the line. I had got the job. I felt like I was floating. The other women were asleep in the room upstairs. I called to Sharayu Maushi. She came out with a cup of tea in her hand. I called her down and told her my news. She was delighted.

  I got my appointment letter and sat the parents down. Baba said, ‘What about your MSc?’ I replied, ‘Next year. This is work I like and I’m going to do it. And since we’re sitting here and talking like this, I should tell you that I have decided to live apart. In Sharayu Maushi’s flat. I think I’ll feel better there. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with staying here, with you. But I think this is what I should do.’ I knew what their arguments were going to be already so I tuned them out.

  I haven’t brought much stuff with me. My clothes, of course. My certificates, photographs, music. I left the bike behind. Since Aai was angry, I didn’t think she’d help me. Sharayu Maushi brought in enough cooking vessels. She cleaned up the fridge and went to the supermarket. She helped a great deal. Anubhav worked for two days, cleaning up, giving the curtains for sewing, getting a plumber to repair two leaky taps, arranging the delivery of a cooking gas cylinder . . . that kind of thing.

  The flat was too large for me to use so it was decided that two bedrooms would be locked up.