In the Convent of Little Flowers

by Indu Sundaresan

  I am horrified and stop on the stairs, panting a little. But the curiosity again. “What did your Bapa do?”

  “He sat me down on the drawing room sofa and drew a picture of a uterus, the ovaries, and explained how an egg was released and what a period was. Then, he went to the nearby pharmacy and came back with a newspaper-wrapped package. I read the instructions on the cover and did the rest myself. For the next few months Bapa bought me the napkins; then I started to buy them. It was horrible how the shop boys grinned at me. What a fuss about something normal.”

  “Poor thing,” I say.

  We stop on another landing, number six. Here too the walls are painted green and white, smudged at shoulder level. There is a staggering smell of old urine rising from the floor, and crushed beedi stubs are everywhere.

  The girl sniffs, wrinkling a broad nose. She wears a diamond nose stud. For all her talk, she is old-fashioned enough to wear a nose stud. “Bathroom.”

  “What?” I manage between heaves of piss-filled air.

  “This was the bathroom,” she says. “See, the chap leaned his hands on the wall here.” She points. “He urinated here. Gross. Let’s go.”

  We move on, almost running up the stairs this time. She has her face buried in the plastic bag from the Sari Emporium. “Gross,” she says again.

  The only gross I know is a measure of weight.

  “Do you remember the man who lived on the landings? Fourth landing sleeping area. Fifth the kitchen. Sixth was the bathroom. Until Munshi found him and kicked him out.”

  “He was Munshi’s brother,” I say, panting.

  “Really?” She turns kajal-rimmed eyes at me. She has a classic face. Big eyes, thick lashes, big nose but a nice big nose, lips that pout. Even her body is an Indian man’s dream. Lushly rounded with a span-with-two-hands waist, like the carved stone maidens adorning temple walls. Completely unsuited to jeans and a T-shirt. She should be clad in an almost-transparent chiffon sari with a backless blouse. “How do you know?”

  “Munshi let him stay in the landings, until the load shedding started and people started taking the stairs. The MD came home one day for lunch, unexpectedly, and found the man asleep on the landing. It was then Munshi pretended to have suddenly discovered he was living here.”

  “The bastard.” She says this casually. When I was growing up, I could not even say bloody. She must be only fifteen years younger than me, around twenty-five or so, yet she seems so wise, so confident.

  By the time we reach the fourteenth floor, I am exhausted. The plastic bags slip from my sweating hands. As I fumble with the keys, she looks out of the landing window. I drag myself into the flat and sit on the drawing room sofa. I did not leave the windows open, the cool of the air conditioner has long since evaporated, and the room is stifling. She unlatches the windows and stands there, heat blasting through the grill, borne on an undercurrent of sweet air. That betraying hint of the monsoons, mocking and not to come for many months yet.

  “Can I have some water please?”

  “Of course.” I start to rise.

  “No, no. Tell me where. I will go get it.”

  I point to the kitchen and listen as she finds two steel tumblers and fills them with ice water from a jug in the fridge.

  “Thank you for helping me with the bags.”

  She sits next to me on the sofa and fingers the parcels. “You went to buy saris?”

  “Yes, for the party.”

  “Which party?”

  “At the MD’s house. Oh, you are not invited?”

  A laugh scurries over her face. “No, not yet. Jai is too junior, you know, to be asked for dinner at the managing director’s flat. One day he will get promoted and then I will have to be stolid and sulky like the other managers’ wives.”

  I never dared to talk like this, with such disrespect. “The children will be coming from school. I have to make them something to eat.”

  She gets up and stretches. Her arms are long, reaching mid-thigh when she lets them down. “I have to go plan dinner. Jai wants a full dinner every night. Chappatis, rice, a dal, a subji, and a dessert. I tease him that he did not marry a cook but a wife. No use, you know.”

  “Was yours an arranged marriage?” The words slip out without my realizing. I flush. I was becoming a manager’s wife, asking the same prying questions I had been asked when I first came here.

  She turns, hands on her hips. “Yes. The neighbor auntie pestered my Bapa until he agreed to let Jai come to see me. She is his aunt, his mother’s cousin. The auntie thought that since I had reached womanhood it was unseemly to let me live alone with my father.” She wrinkles her nose and lines pepper her forehead. “How ugly people can get.”

  “She is right, you know,” I say gently. This girl is a child, with a child’s naivete, a child’s supreme and misplaced confidence.

  “I don’t love Jai.”

  Shock tears over me at those words.

  “Well”—her mouth twists—“I like him, but I don’t love him, not like all those women in the Mills & Boon romances. I thought it would be the same as living with my Bapa. Just substitute one man for another. But it is not the same, not worse, but different.”

  I am still appalled. Again, something I will never dare to say. Prakrit is my life. He is supposed to be; he is my husband, my patidev, my husband-who-is-akin-to-God. I will not say in public, or even think in private, that I do not revere and respect him. My mother teaches me this. Now I know why this girl does not know how to talk about Jai—because she has no mother.

  She comes up and stands in front of me, one eyebrow raised. It arcs over her forehead like a perfect rainbow. I like this quizzical look in this woman-child. She slants her head over one shoulder, then another. My panting has ceased now, and an errant breeze washes over us from the grill-clad window. I am sunk into the sofa’s cushions, my stomach folded over the petticoat of my sari. I pull the pallu to hide it. She reaches to my head with a long-fingered hand, nails painted pearl silver. When I flinch she says, “Wait.”

  She pulls the rubber band from my hair and it splays over my shoulders. I feel decadent, sitting there with my hair out. It is not Sunday, the only day I wash and let my hair loose. “What lovely hair you have, so thick, do you use amla oil?”

  “Yes. And coconut, both mixed. And henna sometimes.”

  “Ah, I see the red highlights now.”

  She has switched topics with such ease, blocking out what she said a few minutes ago. I do not love Jai. Just like that. Unrepentant. Unaware of having revealed something deep and secret.

  She leaves soon after with a wave. She says something as she goes, why don’t you trim your hair of split ends. Split ends. An end that is split.

  So many years ago now. Fourteen? Fifteen? At first the news that the broker, Auntie Agha, has many many prospects. Then the excitement when she comes, heaving her body into the best chair in the room as my father looks on disapprovingly. But Agha is indifferent, isn’t she bringing the best prospect of them all and doesn’t it deserve the rattan chair at the head of the room? I hear words as I pass by. America. Good job. Makes a lot of money. How much? my mother asks suspiciously—other much-money-makers have turned out to be clerks in banks. A lot, Agha says firmly. In dollars, that too. Mother deflates at that word; her daughter, if she is lucky, will live with dollars. Did he study in America? No, no, but no matter, eh? Well … Mother is doubtful, she looks at my father, who is slightly mollified at the mention of America, but still thunderous at the loss of his chair. My mother sees me at the door and shoos me away. When we want you to know about the man you are to marry you will know, as much as we decide to tell you. This is not any of your business right now. They set a date for Prakrit to come to the house.

  The next day he surprises me at the law firm where I work.

  The law secretary, an ancient man in black-rimmed Gandhi glasses stops at my desk and snipes, distaste tingeing his words, “A man to see you. Your brother?” He knows I have no brothe
r. I glare at him. Why shatter my reputation when I don’t even know what I have done? The visitor floods our little whitewashed office with its grimy windows and floors with his aftershave.

  “Nitu?” The voice is smooth, an accent, not unpleasant, when he says Neetoo. “I’m Prakrit.”

  All at once I am spiraling into confusion, aware I don’t smell nice (no deodorant and the talcum powder has long burned off), or look presentable (sweat-matted hair glued to my neck), wear a frowning forehead (the law secretary has been yelling at me all morning), and sit hunched (trying to hide the folds of my stomach where my blouse gapes at the waist). He looks nice and pale, as though America kills color in the skin, and cool as though still under a weak American sun.

  American-fashion, he puts out his hand. I give him a weak one, fingertips only, and he waggles them. “I thought we should meet under less formal circumstances. Much easier this way, no aunties and mothers watching.” He laughs and I watch his teeth in fascination. I don’t say anything.

  “Anyhow,” he continues, “this whole arranged marriage thing is so boring, so outdated. As though you were a horse for sale.”

  Admiration fills me. I am still dumb, wondering now if I have rubbed the kajal from my eyes onto my cheeks in black streaks, powerless to wipe with a furtive finger and find out. Prakrit is my number seven. The previous six alliances all rejected me as I paraded in front of them and they checked my weight, and height, and skin color, and teeth, and my other less visible assets. They would say things like, “My dearest dream is to see my daughter-in-law on the mandap, clad in an auspicious red sari, glittering with jewels—how many tolas of gold will you be putting on her, by the way?” Or “My son takes the bus to work every day and comes home so, so tired he can barely talk, all that pushing and shoving to get inside, those servants and tradesmen with their baskets—a scooter, or better yet a car would be nice for him.” Or “We want a daughter who will work; one income is so little nowadays. But I plan to put my feet up and let her take charge of the house and the servants. I will give her the keys to the storeroom and she can cook and make sure the vessels are washed and the clothes are folded—tell me, how much income does your daughter make?”

  My response to all of these questions is always None of your business and they take off offended. One “boy” even grabs a pakora on his way out, stuffing his mouth with it and saying, “No one will want to marry such a modern girl, teach her better manners, or else.” And that “or else” hangs over my parents’ heads as they optimistically groom me and brush my hair and teeth and teach me to neigh at the right places. How does Prakrit know all this?

  “So do you have a voice? If so, I would like to heere it.”

  I fall in love with the way he says hear.

  “I think so too,” I say, answering his comment on arranged marriages being boring and old-fashioned. I have never been anything but bored. Until now.

  His eyebrows are thick and they rise into even thicker hair on his head. “You are fifth on my list.”

  He has gone through four already? There is no way I will pass the test. “What was wrong with them?” My voice squeaks. I stand abruptly and knock a few law books off the table. He bends to pick them up.

  “Shall I sit?”

  “Please …” I rush around the side and force him into my chair, and pull another one up. The ceiling fan clanks alarmingly, it does this every few hours and I always watch to see if it is going to fall. “Chai, er, do you want some tea? Pakoras?”

  My hands are damp and trembling. I yell at the peon. “Shekar, go get some tea and biscuits from the chai shop, and don’t put your fingers in the cup.”

  “Please, allow me.” Prakrit stands up, reaches for his wallet, and pulls out two crisp ten-rupee notes. He hands them to a gawking Shekar. “Keep the change.”

  I translate that unique order to Shekar and he salaams four times as he backs out of the room, still agawk.

  “It’s too much. The chai is only three rupees.”

  Prakrit waves grandly, bringing a rush of some manly perfume, all dulled edges and no scent of flowers, into the air around me. “Sit. Let me talk to you, Neetoo.”

  My heart thumps wildly; all of a sudden I want this man who with such flourish throws money at peons. How does one dollar translate into rupees? Forty rupees to a dollar? Something like that, but still such élan. Does he do this in America too? Cast away twenty rupees worth without so much as a thought? Like a film star.

  “So are you a law secretary?” he asks, taking out a red-and-white pack of Marlboros. “Cigarette?”

  I shake my head. Is he joking? Is this a test? What good Indian girl smokes—well, in public anyway?

  He lights it with a silver lighter and blows smoke at the ceiling fan. It shudders in response.

  “Just a secretary,” I manage, still watching the smoke swirl around the small office. “Didn’t Auntie Agha tell you that?”

  “Ah, the inimitable Agha, with her reams of girls all waiting to marry me. She says to me the day after I arrive in India, What do you want, Prakrit? A doctor? A lawyer? An IIM graduate? An IIT graduate? Should she sing? Dance Odissi or Bharatanatyam? How many brothers and sisters should she have? Too many, too little?”

  My head sinks as I hear him. So much choice. And among all these girls surely there is one who will fit perfectly. Skin creamy as milk, eyelashes shadowing a seductive glance, a brain trained at the best engineering college, hands that will cook dishes worthy of a five-star hotel’s kitchen, and a uterus capable of bearing many sons. Why me? Is he here just to mock this plain secretary, six times dumped already?

  “But,” he continues, “I say I want a girl who I can talk with. Just that. Someone who is not so full of herself. A companion, who will fill my hours in the United States with fun.”

  My head snaps up. “Tell me about yourself, Prakrit.”

  He smiles. I think the room lights up, suddenly not so dingy anymore. I push one of the law books under the growing ash on his cigarette and admire the way he taps the end and a long worm of gray reposes on the dull pages. Later, after he leaves, I tip the ashes carefully into an envelope emblazoned with the name of the firm. The law secretary complains about the loss of stationery when I leave my job; he keeps close tabs on every sheet of paper in the office.

  That evening when Prakrit comes home I tell him about Jai’s wife. She did not tell me her name, and I forgot to ask.

  “Ah, Jai from the eighth floor. Mr. Up-and-Coming. The bright, blue-eyed boy of the company.”

  “He has blue eyes?” I ask, ignoring the rest of Prakrit’s statement.

  “Figure of speech, Nitu. Don’t act too smart, you’re not.”

  He throws down his executive briefcase that the latest promotion allows him to carry. Picking up a samosa, he bites into it. I watch him anxiously; does he notice how perfect it has turned out, taste the new garam masala I ground myself? I bring him chai. It has been many years since he has said, honey, I’m home, when he comes through the door with his still-left-over-from-America twang. His face is shuttered as he sits at the table, unyielding. Sunny and Dinesh are in their bedrooms. Homework time. Only when they are finished can they come to say hello to Daddy.

  Prakrit eats two more samosas and drinks his chai without a word. I sit across from him at the table, with an expectant understanding expression. The same one my mother wears every day when my father comes home from work. Early on, Prakrit used to find this hilarious. Come off it, Neetoo, you don’t have to wait on me hand and foot, like some godforsaken ancient woman of old. I’m not that kind of a husband.

  My mother scolds me when I agree with him. Your husband is a devta, Nitu, a god. Your god. Do you press his feet every night? Do you touch his feet with reverence in the morning? Touch your forehead to his feet?

  I try this for the first few mornings as Prakrit still sleeps (I am to wake earlier than him, that is the rule), but one morning he moves suddenly and slams me against the side of the cot. Blood everywhere from a
cut above my eye, blinding me, and Prakrit yells. Something about weird traditions. For pity’s sake, Neetoo.

  That was fifteen years ago.

  I wait for him to talk. He burps loudly and rubs his cheek. The impending shadow of a beard lies heavy on his face; he has to shave at least twice a day. Now he wears a mustache like the other men in the company. I hate it, it’s like kissing a broom, but then I have not kissed him in many years.

  “What happened?”

  “Mehta from accounting got promoted to manager today,” he says.

  “Double-chin Mehta? Why? He’s just started working at the company.”

  “His wife made Diwali sweets for the MD. Laddus and jalebis, kaju barfis and petas. He says she made them. But he got them from Shantiram’s, as I did.”

  I am consoling. “Next Diwali I will make the sweets myself for the MD.”

  He laughs, the beard shadow spreading black across his face. “How, Nitu? You can’t even cook.”

  “I made the samosas and the chai.”

  “Any idiot can make samosas.”

  Any idiot can’t. Knead the maida just right, roll it out, cut into semicircles, stuff with potatoes and peas, fashion into three-dimensional, mountain-shaped pieces. Fry in Dalda until golden brown and crisp. Drain. It is true though that I do not cook the dinner or the lunch, the bai does. Among the other maidenly things my mother teaches me, cooking is not one I grasp with flourish. I have tried, since we first married I have tried. But Prakrit, his palate refined in American restaurants, cannot stomach my efforts. Sunny and Dinesh can—thank God they have dull tongues.

  “Did Sunny pass her Maths test?”

  I am dreading this question. “No. But just two marks less than pass. It is all right, she will do better next time, Prakrit.”

  He turns to the bedrooms. “Sunny, come here!”

  “Prakrit.” I grab his sleeve. “Let her be. She is upset. She—”

  “Sunny!”

  She comes and stands at the edge of the corridor, her new jeans already cut off at pedal-pusher length, frayed and slaughtered. She’s falling headlong into womanhood, this child of mine. Her breasts are beginning to show against her T-shirt at just eleven. We have been fighting about the bra I will not buy her. Why not, all my friends wear one. Not until, I say. Until what, I get my chums, is that it? I turn away horrified, talking about … well, about … that thing even before she has it. When I became a woman, my mother in a very businesslike fashion gave me a strip of cloth until the servant brought sanitary napkins from the store. The rest I learned from my friends amid giggles and complaints of cramps and stories of eight days of bleeding.