Monsoon Memories

by Renita D'Silva

  Do you remember how she and Madhu deliberated for a long time on which sari I was to wear, launching into a detailed discussion on the colour that would suit me best, make me look relatively lighter skinned? Finally they decided on that orange sari with pink flowers and gold border that I absolutely loathe. Madhu altered the sari blouse so it would fit me. Ma painted my lips with that bright-red lipstick (the one you called ‘tart gear’) and plastered talcum powder on my face. I kept my head down the entire way to the studio, refusing to look at all the many people we encountered, and to all of whom Madhu proudly announced that I was going to have my picture taken in preparation for my wedding.

  Benny kept asking me to stand up straight and then when I did, he asked me to bend slightly. He was not happy with my smile, complaining that I showed too many teeth or no teeth at all. The picture that he and Ma finally agreed upon is horrendous. You know the one. Ma bought around 50 copies of it.

  Anyway, that is the picture which is going to the suitor in Bangalore along with the CV in which Ma has listed my weight five kilos lighter than I really am and my height two inches taller. She has also declared that I am ‘wheat-complexioned’. I have never understood that expression. If she said I was the colour of coconut husks at least that would be nearer the truth. She has bragged about how well I cook (does appreciating Madhu’s food count as cooking?) and how I am the best singer in the choir (I haven’t sung in the choir since I was ten). She’s said I can dance Bharatanatyam (do the few lessons I took at school with you, but dropped out because I had two left feet, qualify?) and that I can play the guitar (again, does interest but no ability count?).

  You know, Anu, even if—and it’s a big if—someone does agree to marry me (why would they when there are hundreds of more beautiful, lighter-skinned, thinner girls out there?), by the time I explain away all the many embellishments to my CV, he will run miles.

  I know what you will say: ‘Run away.’ I know that’s what you would do. But, Anu, I’m not you. Although, when Tariq catches up with me after class, his breath fogging up his glasses and offers his sweet smile and his hands to carry my books; when we sit in the library, heads bent, almost touching and I find it hard to concentrate on balancing accounts, distracted by the droplets of sweat beading the hair on his bare arms, wanting to touch them; those times I so wish I was you: impulsive, ‘devil may care’ courageous.

  I have to go. Rosary time. Yes, I can picture your gleeful grin. Reply when you can. I am counting down the days to Christmas when you, Deepak and Da will be here and the house will feel like home again.

  NOTE: This detective feels frustrated with Aunt Shirin. If she was in her shoes, she would have run away and not subjected herself to all this humiliation and this business of arranged marriages when she had a perfectly good suitor who loved her. So what if he was unsuitable? So what if her family was opposed to him?

  This detective feels she is honing in on the reason for the rift—something to do with subject’s marriage. It is an exciting feeling, being this close to the truth, and yet somehow scary as well. Perhaps all great detectives feel this way?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Good Match

  She called him as she was leaving the office. ‘No reply.’

  ‘There can be a number of reasons for that, Shonu. It’s her work ID, isn’t it? Well, she may be off sick, away on a shoot with no access to her email, on holiday...’ He didn’t pause to take a breath as he rattled off the reasons. He must have been thinking them up all day when she didn’t call.

  ‘Did you think she wouldn’t?’

  ‘No! I hoped she would.’ A pause. And then, ‘You can always call Deepak. Or we could go back, just turn up, shock them.’

  Briefly, she entertained the fantasy. Her mother’s face. Anger, regret, shame. ‘Not yet.’ I need to see the counsellor again, get closure.

  ‘Soon, then.’ And, softly, ‘Shonu, it may be something as simple as Anita not having had the time to check her emails as yet...’

  ‘Hmm...’

  His voice gentle: ‘I’m leaving work now. See you at home.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Kate came up behind her as she disconnected the call, helmet on, keys dangling from her index finger.

  ‘You came by bike?’

  ‘Yup. You want to ride pillion?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ She managed a smile.

  Kate put her arm around her. ‘She might just be busy. If she had a day like the one I just had, she may not have had a chance to check her emails.’

  ‘It’s not like they’ve been falling over themselves to get in touch these past few years. I’ll live.’

  The elevator doors pinged open.

  ‘Sure I can’t give you a lift home? Much faster than your old banger.’

  ‘Kate! How dare you? It’s my pride and joy.’

  ‘Doesn’t detract from the fact. It’s still an old banger...’

  Shirin couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  As she got into her old banger, Kate, sweet Kate, said, ‘There’s still tomorrow. It might be waiting for you when you come in.’

  Shirin blew her a kiss.

  * * *

  ‘Shall we go away this Christmas?’ she asked.

  Vinod turned from where he lay on the sofa reading The Economist, one eye on the television: BBC News 24, the flat-faced presenter churning out one awful disaster after another.

  When he’d got home from work, he had tried to bring up Anita and the email but she had stopped him. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Her standard reaction to anything that hurt too much to contemplate. Relegate it to a corner of your mind. Don’t talk about it until it manifests itself in nightmares and even then, try and ignore it. ‘But, Shonu, you have to talk, let it out. You were getting better...’ His mouth had set in a grim line. She had opened a bottle of wine, taken a long swig. ‘Please, Vinod.’

  ‘I can’t read your mind, Shonu,’ he’d said once, in the middle of an argument when she’d shut down, blanked him out. ‘I don’t know what goes on in there.’ He’d jabbed a finger at her forehead. She had thought he was going to hit her. Afterwards he had held her, and she had sat stiffly in his arms and listened to his sobs, endured his apologies. ‘I love you,’ he had said. Love, what love? What do we have together, Vinod? Our bond—one horrific incident that still casts its shadow, maligning everything.

  And now they were sitting in the living room, watching television, eavesdropping on other people’s tragedies.

  He gave her a bemused smile. ‘Where exactly did you have in mind?’

  Shirin shrugged. She hadn’t thought that far.

  ‘We could just go home.’ He was looking at her, waiting for a reaction.

  ‘Oh, Vinod,’ Weary. And, softly, ‘Do you get homesick?’ Why had they never talked about this?

  ‘Of course I get homesick. I miss them.’

  Because it hurt too much.

  His voice harsh as he continued, ‘God, do you think it’s been easy turning my back on my whole life before you?’ And as she started to speak, ‘Don’t you dare apologise. We never talk about this. Well, we are now and I am telling you how I feel.’ He took a gasping breath, ‘That doesn’t mean I am not happy. With you. I am, but the two things need not be mutually exclusive, as you well know.’

  She apologised anyway. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Vinod clicked his tongue. ‘Not your fault. If I wanted to, I would go.’

  ‘Why don’t you go, then?’ Her voice loud, grating.

  ‘When I return home, I will do so with you. You are my wife and I am proud of you. I am not going to hide you away like a guilty secret.’

  She understood. It would be a betrayal of her if he went back on his own. It would look like he was tacitly admitting her culpability. ‘No pressure on me, then.’ Why was she be
ing like this, so sarcastic, when all he was doing was speaking his mind, finally, after years of skirting the truth? She was hurt. She had not realised this was how he felt. If she was to be completely honest, she had not been thinking about him at all; it had all been about her. Her feelings, her shame, her guilt. ‘I’m going to go see the counsellor again. And then we’ll go back. Together.’ She looked up at him.

  His voice gentle, ‘I’m happy here, Shonu. With you.’ He closed The Economist, sat up and moved closer to where she was sitting on the armchair, hugging her legs with both arms, head resting on her knees. Madhu’s favourite squatting position. Madhu sitting in the kitchen, beside the hand grinder, nursing a tumbler of tea, smiling at her… I need you, Madhu. I need you now.

  ‘But visiting the counsellor is a great idea.’ And then, ‘What about Switzerland?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You wanted to go away at Christmas?’

  The secret to their marriage: don’t talk about things that matter. Talk about something else instead. Like a holiday they both knew they wouldn’t take. She knew she should talk to him, now that they were finally airing things in the open, eleven years too late. But instead, she played along, relieved. ‘We could rent a chalet. Hibernate. Perhaps even learn to ski...’

  That made him smile and she was inordinately pleased. ‘Really?’ The twinkle in his eyes that she absolutely loved. ‘Do you remember what you said after we went ice-skating that last time?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything. It was you, complaining about the cold, complaining about falling, the pain in your knees, your back. You’re just too old for this sort of thing...’

  ‘Oh, I am, am I?’ He reached across and with one finger traced a line under her arm where she was the most ticklish.

  ‘Hey, not fair. You always resort to underhand means to win an argument.’

  ‘I didn’t know we were arguing.’ In one fluid motion, he had gathered her in his arms. She stiffened. ‘Eh, Shonu?’ he whispered in her ear. Slowly, she relaxed against him. ‘I know why you want to go away this Christmas...’

  ‘Stop whispering in my ear. It tickles.’ She turned to face him. ‘Why?’

  ‘So you can get out of attending Jane and Neil’s party.’

  She buried her face in his jumper. ‘How did you know?’ she laughed and it came out all muffled.

  Every year, Vinod’s boss Neil and his wife Jane hosted a posh Christmas party. And every year, when all the guests were seated at the table, Jane turned to Shirin and asked, her eyes shining in anticipation, ‘So tell us again, how did you and Vinod meet?’ like the answer was Shirin’s best party trick.

  Where did she begin? How did she tell these people who couldn’t fathom a relationship without having known the person first, been in love with them, about how things really worked in India, how you grew up watching your mother squirrel away bits and pieces of gold: ‘for your dowry’ and you knew what was coming; how the village matrons started sizing you up as soon as you turned fifteen, shaking their heads and muttering ominously, ‘This one will need a lot of prayers’?

  If she was really honest, she would say it all began with the note, the summer she turned eighteen...

  That summer, Jacinta embarked on her most important task as the mother of an Indian girl.

  Finding a good match for the eldest daughter was vital. If the eldest set a good example by marrying into a decent Mangalorean Catholic family, then chances were that proposals for the siblings would follow suit. If the eldest daughter did something foolish—like married outside the community, or fell in love, with a Hindu or, God forbid, a Muslim—the siblings would in all probability not get married at all, as no self-respecting suitor would associate with, let alone marry into, a disgraced family.

  Shirin had her first marriage ‘interview’ a few months after she switched colleges. Her hair had started to grow back and was now shoulder-length, just fitting into a neat plait. Tariq visited her regularly in her dreams, his intense eyes lighting up when he saw her, his hands caressing her face, his lips meeting hers… She always woke when she got to this part, hot and flustered, and spent the rest of the night fantasising about what would happen next, her body aching, arching, wanting… Anita had reported that Tariq had returned to college a week after Shirin left, his arm in a cast, his jaw bruised, left eye swollen, and that he kept well away from Deepak. Once, when Deepak was ill, he had approached Anita, whose school was next door to the college, and asked how Shirin was doing. Anita had walked away without replying, knowing that Deepak’s friends were watching…

  The suitor’s name, Jacinta informed Shirin, was Anil. Anil and his family arrived an hour and a half later than they were supposed to. Shirin waited, feeling the sweat trickle down her back and pool around her armpits. She was sure it would leave tell-tale marks on her sari blouse. The unfamiliar jewellery that her mother had insisted she wore itched. The many gold bangles made a sound if she so much as lifted a finger.

  Anil’s mother grilled Shirin for the best part of an hour. ‘Bit dusky, aren’t you? And on the heavy side…What is your weight? Do you dance, cook, sing? Do you wear contact lenses? What is that mark on your skin?’ Every blemish was questioned, examined and commented upon. Anil hardly spoke except to agree with his mother: ‘Yes, she is big-boned. Yes, it would be handy if she knew how to sew. Yes, it’s a shame she can’t cook North Indian food. Yes, she shouldn’t have cut her hair; it looked better long, like in the photo attached to her CV. Yes, in her CV she said she was skilled at Bharatanatyam.’ And finally, when Shirin thought she could stand the litany of her imperfections no longer, it was over and they were saying their goodbyes. As Shirin turned to go inside, Anil’s mother called out, ‘Don’t be disheartened if we don’t get back to you. Anil has five more girls lined up.’ Good luck to them, Shirin thought.

  After they had left and Shirin had changed, she went to Madhu, who was washing clothes by the well. Madhu held Shirin, her hands dripping suds all over Shirin’s face and blending with her tears: a salty, soap flavoured cocktail. She rocked Shirin back and forth like she had when she was a child, the clothes lying forgotten and forlorn on the washing stone, gently pushing Shirin’s hair which was escaping the confines of the plait away from her face with wet hands, ‘Shh, it’s okay, Shirin. They were horrible people. Not everyone is like that.’

  When she came back in the house, Jacinta, who was reading the Udayavani in her housecoat as she was wont to do in the evenings, peered up at her from above her spectacles. ‘Come here, Shirin. Sit by me.’

  Shirin sat on the cool cement floor beside Jacinta’s cane chair. ‘You did well,’ Jacinta whispered. Shirin wondered if she’d heard right. The heaviness in her heart eased the slightest bit. The tube light flickered, died. ‘Low voltage, again,’ grumbled Jacinta as she always did when this happened, ‘How are we supposed to do anything after dusk, if there is either low voltage or no power?’

  Outside, crickets kept up their nightly song, frogs croaked and rain drummed on the tiles. Dogs howled and old Ananthanna walked home drunk, teetering precariously on the little mud lane between the fields and managing to maintain his balance—just—unaware that he was getting completely soaked. He shouted insults to his wife, who had been dead ten years, loud enough for the whole neighbourhood to hear. His voice carried over the rain, strident and vitriolic. He would stand there, shouting in the rain until his harassed daughter-in-law ventured out into the muddy fields with an umbrella and coaxed him home.

  In the dark, Jacinta’s hand found Shirin’s, squeezed, and settled there. Shirin accepted it like a gift, and they sat like that until Madhu came in from the kitchen carrying lit candles and grumbling about the government and how there was never any power in the villages and if there was no electricity how was she supposed to grind the rice and lentils for dosas now that ma’am had insisted she use the mixer and had given the hand grinder to Muth
akka.

  The whole cumbersome process of arranging her marriage, more gruelling than the worst job interview: the hunt for eligible bachelors, the visit from the suitor and his parents, the interrogation, the wait for the results, to find out if she’d passed scrutiny, won their approval—did get better after that, perhaps because Shirin learnt not to take the rejections, the hurtful comments, the emphasis on her many imperfections, too much to heart. What hurt was to see Jacinta waiting on tenterhooks after a prospective groom had been to see Shirin, hope mingling with worry on her usually unreadable face and then, after each rejection, the hope draining out to be replaced by a drawn, haggard expression—until the next proposal. What hurt was to overhear the village gossips say, within Jacinta’s earshot, ‘If only Anita had been the eldest, she would have been snapped up by now,’ or, ‘How old is Shirin now? Oh... In danger of becoming an old maid...’ And, ‘Soon, Anita will be of marriageable age. She will have a long line of suitors no doubt, and poor Jacinta will still have Shirin on her hands. If only Shirin had a lighter complexion, if only she were thinner...’

  What hurt was the unavoidable fact that she was not the daughter her proud, beautiful mother deserved.

  Gradually, the proposals dwindled and the lines on her mother’s face multiplied. Shirin waited for her Knight in Shining Armour, knowing that it was fantasy—who would want her anyway? Tariq.

  Tariq. His beautiful tawny-gold eyes. Those full lips that she so wanted to kiss. She had given up hope of ever seeing him again—and he had turned up at her university. Every morning, she said goodbye to her mother’s displeasure and dumpy Shirin who couldn’t snag a suitor and climbed aboard the ‘Sugama’ bus that would take her to college. As the bus turned the corner, she pushed and elbowed her way through the heaving, sweaty crowd, her face in people’s armpits as they struggled to hold on when the bus juddered over potholes, catching a glimpse of the bespectacled face waiting patiently for her in the shade of the banyan tree by the bus stop. She would stagger off the steps and see his face light up at the sight of her, and she was transformed; she was Shirin, delicate swan, beautiful princess. They would walk up to the main building together, he carrying her books for her, and part at the entrance to go to their respective classes. They met up at break and shared a tea in the canteen, and her lips touching the tumbler after he’d sipped from it felt as intimate as a kiss. They would skip the canteen altogether at lunch, and walk to the sea. They would sit, side by side, not quite touching, and sketch their initials in the sand, boldly entwined, and it always felt like the worst kind of betrayal to hunt for them the next day and find fresh white sand, unsullied, to realise the waves had erased this evidence of their love. He held her hand sometimes, as they walked back to college from the beach, letting go just as they left the cover of trees and came onto the road, and she was left wanting more, so much more. She desired him. She had certainly wanted him to kiss her that evening when they’d sheltered from the rain by the electronics lab, darkness caused by the power cut a cover, their breath punctuating the silence. She had seen his face illuminated by a flash of lightning, very close. Kiss me, please, she had thought, inching her face closer, shocked by her brazenness. Crush me against you. I want to be held, touched all over. I want to know what it feels like.