by Meera Syal
The silver anklets jangled a little louder as the woman abruptly turned a corner, disappearing out of sight. Shyama quickened her pace and rounded the corner to find herself facing a double-storey whitewashed building, festooned with a tangle of wires which stretched from the adjoining clinic to the flat roof like an umbilical cord. Clothes hung drying from the small balconies outside each window in the jewel-bright shades of the village: unapologetic oranges and brassy blues. The wide shalwar trousers, unfastened and spread out, hung limply like the underclothes of a fat, bow-legged clown, complemented by unfeasibly large brassieres festooned over the iron fretwork, gently steaming as they dried. Competing Hindi film tunes warbled from various open windows, the woman’s voice always a winsome fluting soprano, the man’s smooth and cheesy as a Lothario at a bar. Shyama wondered why the style of singing had never changed since her own childhood. For the same reason, probably, that there had never been any Indian punk-rock bands – or none that she knew of, anyway. Too angry, too disrespectful. Green hair? Safety pins in your nipples? Hai, the shame …
Standing outside this building was like seeing the female world in miniature, a living dolls’ house. Shyama could imagine swinging open the whole frontage like a door and discovering all the women inside, incubating in the heat. The songs made sense – the filmi heroines only ever sang the song of caged birds; the sound that came out of their mouths was that of the ideal woman, seductively modest, respectfully flirtatious, high and sweet as a passive girl-child waiting to be plucked.
The woman with anklets entered a side door on the shaded side of the building and was gone.
Shyama stood for a while longer, listening to the shouts of greeting and gossip rebounding within, not sure why she was here, except that it felt comforting. She was about to leave when a figure appeared at one of the balconies and watched her for a few moments, the light catching the small gem at the side of her nose. It was Mala. Shyama waved at her, a half-mast apologetic gesture, and Mala seemed to nod – she wasn’t sure, it was the smallest of movements – and then went back inside.
Shyama had almost given up waiting when Mala appeared at the side of the building, beckoning her forward into the shaded doorway. She propped open the side entrance with one leg. Behind her a stout, surly-mouthed woman in an orderly’s uniform sat at a modest desk. A whiteboard on the wall listed a dozen first names – Kamala, Firoza, Puja, with scribbled figures and acronyms besides each one. The orderly assessed Shyama in one quick glance and her expression softened slightly. Be nice to the foreigners, even if they are foreign Indians.
‘Mala says she is your surrogate, Madam?’ she said in a quiet, smiley voice that belied the bulldog in her eyes.
‘Yes …’ Shyama’s voice was husky from heat and dust. She cleared it noisily. ‘Sorry, yes. Do you need to see …?’ She fumbled in her bag.
The orderly shook her head and asked for Shyama’s name instead, taking some time to bring up her details on her computer. All the while, Mala stared at the floor, hands demurely clasped in front of her.
‘All fine, Madam, but usually our ladies do not go out on visits without permission.’
‘Visits?’
‘Mala says you want to take her out for a few hours?’
Mala still did not look at Shyama, but her hands tightened around each other, her knuckles whitening. She seemed to give off a low-level hum of energy like a tuning fork, blank and still as metal.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Shyama replied. ‘As Mala is not … she hasn’t started any procedure yet, I’m sure it will be fine. I wanted to have an opportunity to talk with her.’ She remembered her Auntie Neelum’s tone with shopkeepers, drivers, low-level officials – act high-status and that’s how you will be treated. The orderly’s expression had changed; she was looking at Shyama expectantly, waiting for something.
Shyama held her gaze, her smile tightening. ‘Why don’t you get Dr Passi on the phone then? I’m sure—’
‘Oh no, Madam, no need to trouble her.’ The orderly let the sentence hang in the air, a disappointed downturn pulling at her mouth.
Shyama felt a soft tug on her sleeve and swung round to face Mala, who raised her eyebrows slightly and nodded towards the handbag hooked over Shyama’s arm. Of course, how English of her not to realize. Shyama fumbled for her purse – she had no idea how much to offer. She turned her back on the orderly, shielding the cash, flushed with shame as if she had been caught with her dress tucked into her pants. Before she could decide, Mala expertly plucked out two notes and placed them in Shyama’s hand, closing her palm over them, then went and stood by the door. Shyama held her hand out as if offering a handshake and then stopped halfway. In the end she just dropped the money on the desk and hurried out, the orderly calling after her, ‘OK, Madam, no problem. I will arrange.’
It wasn’t until the two women were sitting on the back seat of the hire car that they finally spoke. Vichare, thought Mala, she is more nervous than I am. And that business with the rishwat, like a clumsy child caught with her hands in the butter jar. How can a woman reach this age and not know how the world works? At least she kept her mouth shut in front of that kuthee. Mala hoped fervently that she would not be made to pay for her escape later, knowing that that particular orderly had a reputation for meanness and for stealing the home-made snacks left by families for their gestating wives and daughters. For now, she just wanted to make the most of these sweet stolen hours, and she knew exactly where she wanted to go.
‘Madam?’
‘Please don’t call me that!’ Shyama exhaled, relieved the silence had been broken. ‘Shyama is fine.’
‘You don’t mind?’ Mala nodded at the car, aware that the driver had given her the filthiest of looks when Shyama had beckoned her on to the back seat. Her obvious poverty lowered the tone of his vehicle; now he, too, had slipped a few rungs down the complicated social hierarchy of those who served. Her dark face and no-class sari had demoted the seething Raju from luxury chauffeur service to a mere cabbie.
‘No, no, of course not. I … it’s good, we can get to know each other. I mean, if everything goes to plan … Where would you like to go?’
‘Ronak Mall.’
‘A mall?’ Shyama had been hoping for something a little more intimate and … yes, authentic – the iced coffee and paneer pakore of her childhood treats here. But maybe this was the new authentic. And there was no doubting the hope on Mala’s face, held in, braced for disappointment. Like ten-year-old Tara, asking for her first sleepover, all moony-eyed.
‘Raju, do you know where this mall is?’
Raju shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Haha, Madam, but it is too far.’
‘How far?’
‘Gurgaon … outside Delhi itself.’
‘A mere twenty minutes on the new NH8 highway and only fifteen kilometres from the airport.’
Even Raju forgot himself and stared open-mouthed at the junglee woman on the back seat, who at least had the decency to flush with shame under Shyama’s amused gaze.
‘Sorry, Madam, I remember this from a magazine.’
‘And so precisely. I’m impressed.’ Shyama laughed. ‘And the airport’s not far at all from here. I don’t suppose either of us have to hurry home, so … why not? And not “Madam”. Shyama.’
Raju pulled away more quickly than necessary, almost colliding with an entire family who were balancing on a small moped with a large quilt strapped to the back. Mala caught his eye in the rear-view mirror and would not look away until he gave in and dragged his gaze back to the road ahead, but not before she saw something very like grudging admiration on his face.
Ronak Mall was all Mala had expected, and more. Even before they had reached the turn-off from the eight-lane highway snaking out of the centre, when the soaring skyscapers and glittering obelisks of Gurgaon’s commercial district rose into view, she had let out a small hai of wonder which made Raju wrinkle his nose in derision. You sniff your bad smell, sala, she thought. You see this view all the ti
me. How would he know what it was like to wake up day after day in the village and be confronted by nothing but flat-flat all around, so many shades of green and all of them boring. Open fields stretching for miles, so, even far away, someone, anyone, could spot you with your water pot or your washing, and know what your business was and if it was acceptable business. Nowhere to hide yourself, to lose yourself, like here. Anthills, Mala decided – just the same as the towering stacks of red dust pitted with holes, except they were full of people and shone shamelessly.
Once they had entered the cool recycled air of the mall, no one gave them – her – a second glance, not even the shark-eyed security guards at the entrance when she passed them, pulling her sari over her head. Maybe they think that I am her ayah, that she has brought me along to carry the bags of kids’ clothes we will buy without even checking the price. She will buy. Every floor one kilometre long, plus kids’ Fun Zone, Relaxation and Meditation Spa, and ten-screen 3-D cinema with reclining leather seats. Even Shyama Madam seemed impressed.
Shyama spent the first ten minutes trying to absorb the scale of the place. The mall, and Gurgaon itself, made her think of those post-apocalyptic disaster films where the earth’s population end up having to resettle underground or in space, entire cities re-created, reconceived, with the chance to do things better, bigger, cleaner than before. Gurgaon had been mentioned by her parents’ friends many times over the last few years as the place to buy. Even Priya had turned up one day bearing armfuls of glossy brochures featuring luxury purpose-built apartments within grassy, gated complexes, clearly targeted at the NRI population hoping to buy their little piece of the Motherland.
‘Compared to London it’s dirt cheap, of course,’ Priya had remarked. ‘Especially if you buy off-plan. The local government is offering incredible tax incentives to build here, that’s why it’s expanding so rapidly. Loads of the Fortune 500 industries are rushing in now, though I reckon the major players will be IT and outsourcing and offshoring hubs. The nice man who answers your call to the bank, who says he’s called Geoff and loves pie and mash, despite his suspiciously Punjabi accent, he probably works in Gurgaon … Blimey, they’ve even got built-in servants’ quarters in this duplex … I mean, it would make you go more often if you had a home there, wouldn’t it? Might even force the kids to actually learn some bloody Hindi.’
Shyama had reminded Priya that her parents’ desire to go home more often had resulted in the unmitigated disaster that was their stolen apartment, but Priya had replied, ‘Well, exactly, that’s the attraction of this kind of investment. No family involved, twenty-four-hour security to stop the squatters, leisure complex, all that shopping … Come on! We could go in together. What do you say?’
Shyama had said nothing, and days later, Priya had declared it to be a terrible idea. She’d done her research and apparently half the complexes had regular power cuts because the infrastructure was so weak. (‘They even close the malls on Tuesdays to save energy. Why Tuesdays? Random …’) And there’d been loads of cases of NRIs turning up to find their apartments had been occupied or rented out during their inevitable long absences. ‘Security guards taking bribes … builders moving their families in … you can splash out for private security – lots of people have, anyway, since the Mumbai bombings – but that’s another expense which we could just blow on an amazing hotel whenever we visit, no?’
Nevertheless, at least two couples that Prem and Sita knew had bought in Gurgaon and regularly extolled the virtues of the ever-expanding satellite city.
‘Theklo, Prem, we can spend all day without going further than the mall, everything is on your doorstep – food, fun – all air-conditioned. And so many of our neighbours are from England also. We have even started our own cards group with some very nice people from Watford.’
Meeting other Brits over indoor fast food wasn’t Shyama’s idea of fun, but then she had never been a mall fan, even though Tara and her friends had indeed used them as holiday homes in their early teens, spending what seemed like entire weekends there, all their needs under one roof, their main need being not to be anywhere near their parents.
True to tradition, there were gangs of young people in Ronak Mall, but not the feral, hooded kind that Shyama remembered from her youth, who would occupy the top balconies to gob on passers-by below. The Ronak Mall posse looked like perky Disney-style teenagers, fresh-faced and fashionably dressed and often with other family members in tow. In fact, everyone looked happy and successful. Maybe they piped something into the air ducts. And whilst it felt like progress, to Shyama it didn’t feel like India.
For Mala this was exactly how India should feel: rich and fast and as good as – no, better than – all those places she’d seen on the cable channels on Seema’s now-connected super-deluxe TV: Beverly Hills, Knightsbridge, Park Avenue. She wasn’t stupid, she knew she would never be able to afford nearly everything behind each shopfront. In her head she had already spent every rupee the baby might bring them, and very little of it was for her. It was for the other children, the ones waiting to be reincarnated, her own – so they could look as fat and content as all the kids around her now. But, chalo, today let me be like one of those drunken dusk moths who are almost too heavy to fly, dusty wings heaving them up towards the one street lamp outside Pogle sahib’s house. Let me just bump my head against all these windows, just to see inside, just to remember for later.
Shyama asked her, ‘Is there anywhere special you want to go?’
Mala shook her head, so they just walked past shop after shop – Shyama pulled towards the few brand names she didn’t recognize, Indian designers, homeware, music; Mala more interested in Marks and Spencer and Next – until they passed a place called Miracles in Beauty. Shyama perused the treatments on offer, surprised that the prices here were not so very different from hers, impressed by the subtly lit interior and the range of organic ayurvedic products.
‘Do you mind if we go in here quickly?’
Mala stood to one side for a while as Shyama started chit-chatting with the girl at the desk. She wished she could sit for a moment; she felt nauseous. She had got used to the daily injections but the accompanying cocktail of drugs she was taking made her feel light-headed, remote from her own body. Still, she was already making extra money for the suffering. Doctor sahib had asked her if she wanted to give away some of her eggs before she was made ready to host Shyama Madam’s baby. Not give away, she then corrected herself – give and get paid for them. This sounded like a better idea. Mala did not understand all of the medical terms, but as far as she could remember, she must have one type of medicine to let her eggs be taken, and then another to stop her making eggs so the made-up baby could be planted inside her. So many eggs. No wonder she felt as fat and confined as a chicken. It meant she would spend an extra month at the clinic, but who would be waiting for her to come home anyway?
Another manager-type lady came to greet Shyama, with surprised high eyebrows and hair almost as long as Mala’s, but so shiny, like it had been poured out of a tube. Only then did Mala dare to sit down on the soft sofa with the piles of magazines, many titles she had never heard of, all of them in English. But she could easily translate most of the titles and headlines; all those stolen hours poring over Pogle sahib’s discarded newspapers had not been a waste. But she only pretended to read, her ears trained on the two women talking. Shyama Madam was some kind of businesswoman – a good one, judging by the way she talked, confident and in control, asking lots of questions about products and supply and overheads and export duty. Mala watched how she talked, how she occupied her space, filling it, pushing it out with her earthy voice and expressive hand gestures so that it expanded with her energy. When she smiled it filled her eyes, when she laughed it came from her belly, not the polite hand-over-teeth titter that some of the high-class women affected in imitation of their favourite movie heroines. Now she began to see what the handsome blond man saw in Shyama; she herself saw it in the older women in the villag
e, whose children were grown and husbands slowing down. They didn’t have to pretend and they didn’t care what people thought of them, because an old woman is almost invisible anyway, hena?
Then Shyama Madam was calling her over excitedly, saying something about a treatment she wanted to try out and wouldn’t it be fun for both of them, and before Mala knew it, she was lying on a long squeaky chair having her face scrubbed and rubbed with something that smelt like summer roses, and then something else which didn’t smell as good and dried on her skin like the top of boiled milk and then was peeled off in one whole piece, as if they had removed her face and replaced it with a similar one but softer, shinier, newborn.
‘Wow,’ breathed the girl as she wiped Mala’s cheeks clean with a warm scented flannel. ‘Her skin is totally flawless. I mean totally, nah? Like there’s not one open pore anywhere.’
‘I use dehi. Gram flour. Haldi sometimes,’ Mala said without thinking.
The three women swivelled their heads to stare at her.
‘Yoghurt? And turmeric? Yes, we know all about traditional village remedies.’ The tube-hair lady smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Most of our treatments are done in consultation with—’
‘Lime juice and sugar for leg hair. Chaaval and channa for face.’
‘Chickpeas and rice? For massage … like a scrub?’ Tube lady was looking very interested now.
Mala nodded, rubbed her fingers together as if she was making crumbs. ‘But small-small … also with coconut oil.’
‘Don’t give away all your secrets!’ Shyama said, half-jokingly.
Mala prickled at the sideways look she gave her, the look she sometimes got at the riverbank from some of the other women when she laughed too loud or made fun of one of their husbands. But then Shyama Madam started coo-cooing over the jars and bottles that were brought out for her to smell and rub their contents between her fingers. They obviously made some deal, tapping details on to their matching cell phones before Shyama was given a bag of samples to take away. Before they left, Shyama asked if she could use the computer at the reception, and she and the tube-hair woman spent some time looking at the screen, deep in serious talk. Then Shyama beckoned Mala over, pointing at an image of a room not unlike the one they stood in, with leather chairs, walls of mirrors, pretty Indian women in white coats.
