“May I join you?”
It was Pranab. In a flash she took in the charcoal wool vest, dull black scarf draped around his neck, and receding hairline, noting dispassionately that his sunken eyes seemed oddly intense, his smile a trifle self-conscious. Her own lack of emotion at her observation amazed her.
“What a surprise,” she replied with a cheeriness she did not feel, and gestured to the chair opposite her. An accidental meeting? Not likely.
“I remembered our once-a-week tradition of ‘Breakfast at Glen’s’ and decided to come back once more for old times’ sake. Then, too, I want to get some postcards written.” With a glance at her artwork, he took the proffered chair. “You’re alone?”
Aloka placed her hand over the batch of postcards as she nodded. “Sujata is taking Mreenal to the tea estate this morning for the first time.”
He turned his face away, though not in time to cover up the hurt in his eyes that betrayed a longing for Sujata. Aloka glanced at the top picture on her stack, a charming view of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, and declared, “I’ve just signed my last postcard.”
She expected him to take out pen and cards from his pocket, but instead he launched into, “These days you’ll find Darjeeling ‘the beautiful queen of the hills’ in picture postcards only. Do you know how long it took me to get here from Chowrasta, fighting crowds of rude, smelly hill people and Western hippies? And vendors have taken over this narrow street. How can they allow that? The sidewalks used to be so clean, but now you step on orange peels and cigarette butts all the time. My brother spells out the three p’s of India’s problems—pollution, population, and poverty. And they can be found right here in abundance, no doubt about that!”
His voice was biting. In their early New York days, she’d taken his sharp opinions as astute observations and worldliness. Not anymore.
Her attention was drawn to the blare of a trumpet outside on the street. A wedding procession? Pranab, apparently mistaking her silence for acceptance of his presence, began recounting the details of his cousin-sister’s impending marriage. “Babli met the fellow at the racecourse. Women betting on horses, can you believe that?” he sniffed. She began to tire of the hammering of the words when, finally, with an air of exaggerated casualness, he asked, “So, what do you think of this Mreenal guy?”
Mreenal fit in so well with the family that he didn’t arouse questions or concerns in Aloka’s mind. “I’m glad that Sujata has met someone she likes.”
She said this simply, as a comment, but the change of subject hadn’t escaped her notice. She pointedly consulted her wristwatch, then checked a middle-aged couple as they entered through the door, whispering to each other in shoulder-nudging closeness. When she turned back, Pranab was gazing soulfully at her. This outpouring of emotion on his part was simply unbearable. She gathered up her postcards and stuffed them into her purse.
“Aloka.” Something in his voice made her hesitate. “I’d like to apologize.”
“What for?”
“I’ve done you a terrible wrong.”
At this belated admission of remorse, she looked out the window to the smoke rising out of a chimney and being dissipated by the wind. She’d already accepted the past and moved on to the future with a clean conscience.
“I accept your apology.” She paused to give the words their due weight, then started to rise. “It’s about to rain. I should be going.”
“Please don’t leave, Aloka. I want to talk with you.” He extended a pleading hand toward her. “The new you. You’ve changed a lot since I last saw you. It as if you’ve started a different life. You’re unpredictable and lively, almost as if you’re ready to kick up your heels and dance.”
Sitting on the edge of her chair, Aloka twisted the corner of the crisp white tablecloth. Just when she supposed she’d buried her past, he managed to reopen an aching wound. At the sound of the patter of rain, she glanced out the window. A dense curtain of water descended, striking the earth in a drumming beat. Why she was sitting here with him in such dismal weather?
She asked, “What’s your point?”
“Would you like anything, sir?” Menu in his extended hand, the neutral-faced waiter stood by the table, while keeping an eye on the door.
Pranab took the menu and began perusing it. She studied the imperfections of the face she’d once loved: age blemishes, yellowing eyes, wrinkles of regrets, moles of guilt.
The waiter was about to retreat when Pranab looked up. “Coffee and a scone for me. Would you like a refill?”
Aloka shook her head decisively. The waiter hurried off. For a moment neither spoke.
“I see that Sujata spends a lot of time with Mreenal,” Pranab began. “He’s too calm for her, one might even say dull and conservative. From what I hear, he has to get his mother’s approval for all major decisions.”
“Sujata’s past the age when one looks for a tempestuous love affair. She can depend on Mreenal. They’ve become good friends. They go everywhere together. How many men do you think would go sweater-hunting with a woman?”
“It’s all a ruse, don’t you understand, to win her over. A woman like Sujata needs a romantic someone who’s not afraid to reveal his true self and persist. Not someone to take her sweater-shopping.” He pinched off a piece of his scone and gobbled it down, no longer bothering to conceal his disdain for Mreenal. “I personally don’t have time for such games.”
Aha! So, this was where she came in! Pranab was desperate to stop Sujata from seeing Mreenal and this was nothing but a thinly disguised attempt to enlist her support. What a joke! Sujata was no longer the twenty-eight-year-old naif who had fallen under his spell so long ago. How smartly she conducted herself these days. And how her face shone whenever Mreenal came by.
“It’s Sujata’s life.” It shocked Aloka that her tone of voice brooked no argument. She’d never spoken with him that way before. “She’ll choose whomever she wants. As if you, of all people, have any right to complain. You had your chance when she was young and hopeful and ripe for a romantic experience, and look where it led. You sensed her vulnerability and exploited it. Never mind you already had me, I might add, the eldest daughter of the town’s most influential man. But that wasn’t enough, was it? You just had to have us both. Now I understand Father’s distress. Tell me, did he ever confront you?”
Pranab’s face flushed; his eyes flickered uneasily. “Ah, yes … as a matter of fact, we did have a little conversation shortly after the tea workers’ protest march.”
“Conversation? What could you have had to say? How could you possibly have defended yourself?”
“He called me to his office. His face was red and puffy and he didn’t mince his words, although his voice was pertectly normal. He told me he loved you and Sujata more than life itself and that he’d protect you from me, whatever the cost. I could see the veins in his temple pulsing. I tried to calm him down a bit. I told him that I loved you and intended to marry you, but he was beyond listening. He accused me of rabble-rousing, destroying his business, and sullying you and Sujata, as well as the Gupta honor. At one point he jumped up from his desk. I was sure he was on the verge of attacking me. Just at that moment an assistant manager happened to walk in through the door and that probably saved me. Oh yes, we had a conversation, and your father didn’t hold anything back.”
“He certainly concealed it well. When I saw him that evening before we left, he seemed a little distracted, but now that you mention it, he did seem out of sorts. He walked past me like I wasn’t there. How it must have broken him to see me leave with you. If only I’d known all this.”
“Would you have changed your decision to go, Aloka?”
She tore her gaze away and looked out the window. Rain, contorted by the wind, was creating bubbly dancing figures on the sidewalk. She realized she couldn’t rewrite the past; she could only hope that, with time, the memory would lose its accusing glare. She mumbled, “Let’s just say that I have a few regrets.”<
br />
She noticed how Pranab, hazy-eyed, was stirring his coffee unnecessarily around the rim of the cup, as though his thoughts were traveling in a circle. Sujata. The wretch was dreaming about Sujata.
“It’s a pity that you have learned nothing from these last eight years, Pranab. You have no pride, no shame. What have you been reduced to?”
“Are you saying all this because you’re angry at me, because I pay more attention to Sujata?”
“Quite the contrary. I have come to consider myself fortunate that you loved Sujata more. I only wish I’d figured things out sooner. All that time I held on to you, playing the dutiful Hindu wife, cost me years of my life. But now, fortunately, I’ve outgrown all that. Had we remained married, you’d have dragged me down even more.”
“But you kept wanting me back—”
“Yes, as I said, it took me a while to figure things out. I had to overcome my upbringing and that’s not easy. And, I must say, you were a very attractive man, even as recently as that time in Brooklyn when I saw you dancing. I saw then how powerful you still could be, and I told myself it wasn’t that you lacked talent, energy, or intellect. It was just your self-pitying attitude, and if that could be corrected, I was sure you could make a go of it in New York. Then you’d hold no bitterness toward me or feel threatened by my strength and adaptability. I told myself we still had a chance. I was wrong.”
Pranab sat frozen in his chair, one arm dangling by his side, the other clasping the sugar bowl, a pathetic figure etched in sadness. Finally her message had gotten through.
“Look, Pranab, there’s still time. Think back to when you were young. Ask yourself what you really wanted to do in life. You can get yourself together again, 1 truly believe you can, if you are willing to make the effort. You have many full years ahead of you.”
In the cry that was pushing against her throat, she grasped her own situation clearly. She was finally ready to relinquish Pranab to her sister. This despite the fact that she still had a few unresolved issues with Sujata. Over the years, loving Pranab had become deeply embedded in her psyche, but now she had at last freed herself of that incapacitating habit. Henceforth she would not let him prowl her dreams or put any obstacles in her path to a new way of being. And at that moment, a decade’s worth of conflicting feelings melted away, replaced by a feeling of inner serenity. An image from childhood, floating candles and lotus blossoms on a pond’s tranquil surface, rose in her mind’s eye.
Picking up her purse and the artwork, she rose from her chair. She planted her feet firmly, resolutely, on the floor. She let her gaze take in this oasis of a bakery, with its paneled walls, picture windows, and cozy atmosphere. She would remember it always as the site of her last meeting with Pranab, and her own rebirth.
As she slid past the table, she looked down at him sadly. “Sorry, Pranab, it looks like we won’t have that dance together, after all.”
forty-four
Suzy turned on her laptop, checked her e-mail, and opened a note from Eva.
Dear Suze,
It’s late, but I had to reply to you right away.
What are you thinking, girl? Get yourself back here.
How would you be able to adjust to the social life there, now that you’re used to going about your own way? Does Darjeeling have half as much to offer as Victoria? You fit in so well here. Also, won’t you have to spend most of your time managing the tea estate? Will it be worth it?
My eyes are closing, so I’ll stop now.
Eva
Grandma’s birthday was only three days away. After weeks of elaborate preparation, there was an undercurrent of excitement now that the long-awaited gala was finally going to take place. Though Suzy still had many items to check off on her task list, she had put them aside and hurried out the door when she received Mreenal’s cryptic phone message saying, “Meet me at Chowrasta at four P.M.” He must have just returned from Calcutta.
Now it was just past four and she was standing at the railing that marked Chowrasta’s periphery. Literally named “The Crossroads,” the lively pedestrian plaza was perched just below Observatory Hill, the highest point in the city, and commanded a sweeping vista of the Himalayas. Mellow sunlight tinted the area in shades of soft yellow. A haze of charcoal smoke wafted from one of the nearby hotel restaurants. Suzy looked off to the east, beyond the bluish green wavy outline of the foothills to where the eastern flank of the Himalayas rose from the Bhutanese lowlands. A mantle of clouds cloaked the mountains’ silver wings. Serenity was always within easy reach in Darjeeling, except in her current state of mind.
Ever since Grandma had offered her control of the tea estate, she had been agonizing over what to do about it. During her past few years in Canada she’d been known as quick and decisive in business matters, but now she was stumped. She stood at what she realized would be a defining crossroad in her life, with the map of the two paths whirling dizzily in her mind: personal vs. the family. Which to choose?
On top of that, a feeling of unease had crept into her consciousness ever since she’d received Mreenal’s message. Why had Mreenal chosen this most public of places instead of just coming over to her house? Could it be that his mother had intervened in their relationship? Had rumors of her affair with Pranab finally reached Calcutta? Or was Suzy merely not pretty enough? Last Sunday, browsing through the matrimonial ads in the newspaper, she had confronted the fact that many parents were still asking for a prakrita sundari bride, a truly beautiful daughter-in-law. Whatever the reason, Suzy told herself, she would convince Mreenal that though one’s own mother is a formidable force, together they could win her over.
He must not have arrived yet, for he surely would have stood out in this particular crowd of people: merchants, laborers, tourists. From her elevated location, she looked out over the jumbled maze that was the town of Darjeeling, sprawling down the steep hillside below: a taxi stand, tiny terraced gardens sprouting green rice stalks, streets that wound up and down in a series of irregular switchbacks, even a flight of stairs carved into the hillside for those hardy souls whose legs had the requisite stamina. On the rooftop of a four-story building under construction, a young boy rinsed his face in a puddle of rainwater that had collected in a blue plastic tarpaulin stretched over a hole.
At the sound of a pair of stout Tibetan ponies clattering across the plaza, Suzy looked around and saw a woman and a child riding up to the Observatory Hill, surely to visit the Kali temple. She smiled at the memory of that same bouncy ride taken so many times as a child. If she stayed, the ride would again become a part of her life.
She turned her head in time to spot Mreenal in the distance. Cradling a package, he cut diagonally across the plaza, his compact form striding toward her. With joy and a frost of disquiet, she realized that she had become accustomed to seeing him on a regular basis. She strained forward as he approached. His head and shoulders were lined briefly by a beam of golden light streaming through a gap between buildings. As he drew closer, she could see that his face wore a tense expression. The trip must have been exhausting, what with a full agenda of family visits and the rough journey to and from Calcutta by plane and long taxi rides.
He greeted her briskly and gestured to the left. “There’s an empty bench over there. Shall we grab it?”
As they settled down, she reassured herself that now they would be able to talk things through. Curiously enough, this busy spot offered a measure of privacy. But before she knew it, an old woman and a little girl claimed a part of her end of the bench. In one ungenerous moment she wished they would go away; in the next she chided herself and edged closer to Mreenal. When she inquired about his trip, he replied that his time in Calcutta had gone by quickly, but there were still some loose ends to be tidied up. He had had a few enjoyable breaks, too, such as the celebration of a lesser-known deity, Vishwakarma. Only Calcuttans turned that day into a holiday. Did she know who Vishwakarma was? He added, “He’s the god of all craftsmen—potters, weavers, carpenters.”
He finally smiled and gazed up at her with a soft, adoring look. “I came back as soon as I could. I told my mother to cancel the marriage. That resulted in a big argument. At one point she broke into tears. ‘How could I have held such a son in my belly for nine months?’ She just couldn’t understand what a rare person you are and how much I want to be with you.”
“Oh, Mreenal, did you manage to convince her before you left?”
He seemed to need a few’ moments to gather his thoughts. She noticed out of the corner of her eye that the little girl had moved around to the right of the old woman. Might even a child’s psyche pick up on the gravity of the topic?
“Unfortunately, no,” Mreenal came back. “Toward the end of our very last conversation, Mother said I’d failed her. I’d failed her in the situation that tested my loyalty to her the most. I drifted out of the room at that point. Accusations of failure are very tough to swallow, especially when they come from your own mother. It was difficult for me to remain there after that. I was so completely drained. I started packing. But then some important news came.”
“What news?”
“Sujata, we have a chance to live in Bangalore! My company has offered me a good post there. They’re going to make it their Asian headquarters.”
“Bangalore!”
“They call it an ‘air-conditioned city,’ the most urban place in South India, our Silicon Valley, and its just a few hours by air from here. We could come here just about anytime you want. You wouldn’t mind moving there, would you?”
Suzy’s hopes sank, a kite dipping in a pool, then slowly disappearing from view, as she realized the import of his words. “I’d love to, Mreenal, but it’ll be very difficult. You see, some important things have happened to me as well. Thakurma has made her will known. She’s leaving me the tea plantation.”
Darjeeling Page 28
