by Farahad Zama
“You can have the whole world looking out for you, Pari, but it is not a substitute for that one special person to share your life with.”
“Why, chaacha,” said Pari, looking at her uncle in surprise. “That’s a beautiful thing to say.”
Mr Ali grinned at her, suddenly looking much younger than his sixty-odd years. “But you know all about it. You had it, not that long ago.”
Pari sighed, holding her head stiffly at an odd angle.
Mr Ali continued, “It might seem to you that the universe has come to an end. But remember, as long as there is life, the world still exists and you should not give up hope of happiness. You will not get back exactly what you enjoyed with your first husband, but there is no reason why you cannot recapture most of that love and romance if you marry again. In fact, you never know, it might be even better the second time round.”
Pari shook her head slightly.
Mr Ali said, “They say that if He-Who-Gives wishes to make you rich, He can tear open the sky to fill your house with gold. You have to believe that, Pari. You will always have a sweet spot in your mind for that short time with my nephew, but a few years down the line you could be looking upon that time as part of growing up and becoming ready for the real story of your life.”
“Why are you and chaachi so keen on this match?” asked Pari.
“There are two different things you need to sort out in your head. First, should you marry again or remain single for the rest of your life, and second, is Dilawar the right man? We can talk about the pros and cons of Dilawar, but in answer to the first question, I really think you must marry again. I came to your father’s house once when he was bedridden. Do you remember?”
Pari, puzzled at the sudden change of topic, nodded. Her father had suffered a stroke and she had been looking after him, completely housebound, with no respite. Three months into this confined existence, Mr and Mrs Ali had come to the village. Mr Ali had said that he would look after his cousin for the day to allow Mrs Ali to take Pari to Rajahmundry, the nearby town. The two women had gone round the shops there and bought saris, little accessories like hairpins and bands, slippers for her feet and, she remembered, a clock with a red dial. The salesman who had sold it to her had been smarmy, making comments about her looks. Mrs Ali and Pari had eaten out – a vegetarian thali in the Café Godavari. For those few hours, a load had lifted from her shoulders and she had really enjoyed herself.
Mr Ali said, “While you were out, your father wanted me to kill him.”
“What?” said Pari loudly.
A fat man, with plump, hairy arms poking out a short-sleeved shirt, stared at her curiously. Pari ignored him and said more softly, “What are you saying, chaacha? Anyway, he couldn’t speak. Nobody except me understood the sounds he made.”
“We knew each other since we were boys. We used to play together. It was difficult, but he managed to communicate with me. You see, even with his mind so destroyed, he knew how you were trapped in looking after him and felt very guilty.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that I couldn’t do it. Allah gives us life and He should be the one to take it away. But I could understand why my cousin was asking me for such a big favour and I told him that I would look after you. I promised him that I would make you happy again.”
“I didn’t know,” said Pari slowly.
“There was no need for you to be told,” said Mr Ali. “Anyway, that’s why I cannot keep silent if I think you are making a wrong decision. Your aunt and I have to speak out.”
“OK,” said Pari. “I will think seriously about what you said. Please let Mrs Bilqis know that I need some more time to consider her proposal.”
Mr Ali smiled at her. “Good.”
They reached the shop – set in what had once been two houses side by side. It looked well-lit and welcoming, with clean tiled flooring and neat shelves down long aisles. A watchman in brown clothes stood outside with a whistle and a notebook. A beggar woman, in rags, came up to them and asked for money. The watchman shooed her away, telling her not to disturb their customers. The guard smiled as he accompanied Mr Ali and Pari to the door, where he gave them a wire shopping basket.
They went inside. “I wonder how a big shop like this can make any money with so few customers,” said Mr Ali.
Pari shrugged lightly. “It’s still early days, isn’t it? I am sure clients will turn up. These big businesses must know what they are doing. They wouldn’t just pour money down the drain.”
“I suppose so,” said Mr Ali, though he wasn’t sure that big necessarily meant brainy.
Pari picked up a bar of soap and toothpaste. When she turned around, she found that Mr Ali had vanished. She found him in a different aisle, examining a packet of dried fruit.
“It’s funny,” she said.
“What’s funny?” asked Mr Ali.
“Chaachi and you are both asking me to marry again, but your reasons are so different. Chaachi was telling me all about security and money, while your reasons were all about love and finding a partner. It’s the exact opposite of what I would have expected. If anything, I thought you would give me all the practical reasons while chaachi would go all emotional on me.”
“That’s where you are mistaken,” he said. “I’ve always thought that men are more romantic than women.”
Pari laughed, a gay sound that filled the place and caused the woman sitting by the checkout counter to glance at them. Pari put a hand to her mouth and stopped laughing. “How can you say that, chaacha? That’s ridiculous.”
Mr Ali looked at her seriously. “It’s true,” he said. “Romance isn’t just about pink balloons and heart-shaped cards, you know. It is something much deeper.” He put a hand to his heart. “Here, where it matters, men are more caring. Ask any young woman what kind of man she wants to marry and the answer will be a prince or a millionaire. Ask the same question of a hundred men, and very few will say that they want a princess or a rich girl. They want somebody beautiful and kind.”
“Yes, beautiful,” said Pari, raising her eyebrows delicately.
“Boys want a girl for herself – for what she is and has within herself. Girls, on the other hand, look for things external – money, status and so on. Tell me, which is more romantic?”
Pari shook her head widely. “Chaacha, let us just agree to disagree on this one.”
She couldn’t stop smiling for hours, however.
Eight
The following day, Mr Ali and Aruna were going through the morning’s post when a middle-aged stranger walked in. Looking uncomfortable, he let his eyes wander round the verandah that had been converted into an office.
“Namaste, sir. How can we help you?” said Mr Ali finally.
The newcomer had a broad face and a bulbous nose, wore khaki trousers and a brown short-sleeved shirt with two pens clipped inside its top pocket.
“My name is Chandra. I’ve come regarding a match for my daughter,” he said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his forehead. After the showers of the previous week, the mercury was now climbing back into the mid-thirties.
“Please sit down,” said Mr Ali. “Would you like a glass of water?”
Soon, they were down to business.
“My daughter looks a bit like you,” said Mr Chandra, pointing to Aruna. “She is only a twelfth-class pass – never went to college. She was just not interested in studies. She can run a household, though. As my mother used to say, why does a woman need more education than to read the Ramayana and keep the washerman’s tally? We have properties, an oil mill and a car-hire business that’s nourishing. How was I to know…” The man spread his arms out. “Anyway, we belong to the Baliga Kapu caste. How does your marriage bureau work?”
Mr Ali frowned. Usually, they did not accept people as members unless they had a college degree. But the man’s distress was patently obvious – and he was rich. Mr Ali glanced at Aruna, who bit her lip and gave him a slight nod. Mr Ali leaned forward.
“We advertise on your behalf in newspapers and forward you any letters we get in response. You can go through them and contact anybody who you think is suitable. We give you details of all eligible boys we have on our books. At the same time, we also send your details to our members, so you can get called by other people too. The membership fee for a year is five hundred rupees.”
Aruna took out a list of Baliga Kapu grooms and handed it to Mr Chandra. “Have a look at these matches, sir,” she said.
The man smiled at her and started going through the list. Taking out one of his pens, he circled a couple of entries. “Interesting. There are some good candidates here,” he said, looking up.
Aruna took the list from him and handed him another piece of paper. “Please fill in this application form.”
Mr Chandra went through it, writing in the answers. He finally put the cap back on the pen, took out a five-hundred-rupee note and handed it along with the form to Mr Ali. Aruna extracted several papers from the wardrobe that served as their filing cabinet and put them all in a long brown envelope. Taking the filled-in form from Mr Ali, she added it to a pad with a bulldog clip holding more forms, then wrote a number on both the form and the envelope.
Aruna handed the envelope to Mr Chandra and said, “That’s your membership number, sir. Please bring this number with you when you come back so we can easily track down your details. Do you have a photograph of your daughter?”
“No, should I have brought it with me?”
“It’s not necessary,” said Mr Ali. “But if you can bring it with you the next time, we will keep it on our files. Also, we have photos of young men from your caste and in your daughter’s age bracket. Do you want to see them?”
Mr Chandra shook his head. “I don’t have time now. I’ll come back with my daughter.”
For a man who said he had no time, Mr Chandra didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He sat quietly, staring at the collage of letters and photos on the opposite wall, then gave a big sigh and turned to Mr Ali. “I didn’t think I would ever have to do this,” he said.
“Do what, sir?” asked Mr Ali.
“Start looking for a groom for my daughter all over again. My daughter’s marriage was decided years ago. We’d even got as far as gathering the trousseau and planning the wedding…” His voice trailed off.
Mr Ali said, “Life is a game of snakes and ladders, sir. You are steadily progressing across the board, rolling sixes on the dice and thinking you are going to win – and suddenly you land on a long snake and slide several rows down, far away from the destination again.”
Mr Chandra looked at Mr Ali in surprise. “You are right,” he said, trying to smile, but ending up with a grimace.
Aruna said, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about using a marriage bureau, sir. We get many clients here – doctors, engineers, even senior officials in the government for their sons and daughters.”
Mr Ali nodded. “That’s true. The world has changed. The old certainties are no more. We have to move with the times and this is just another small thing. Unless we are prepared to change our methods slightly, the traditions would break down completely. In which case we might not be able to find a suitable match for our children, which would mean they would have to go out into the world and find their own partners.”
Horrified, Mr Chandra stuck his tongue out a fraction and touched both his cheeks with his arms crossed as if to ward off evil. “Ayyo,” he said. “That would be totally shameless. Don’t talk about such things, sir. You are right, it is better for us to compromise in small things, so we can preserve the more important matters.” He stood up. “I don’t know what I was expecting from a marriage bureau, but I am happy with what I’ve seen. I’ll come back with my daughter in a day or two and we will go through those photographs then.”
♦
Vasu jumped off the motorcycle from behind Rehman.
“Bye, Vasu. See you this evening,” said Rehman.
“Bye,” said Vasu, waving hurriedly. He had a heavy rucksack of books on his back, a tiffin carrier of food in his right hand and a water bottle in his left. He greeted a friend in the milling crowd of children and soon the two boys walked away through the school gates, oblivious to the adults dropping them off.
Rehman returned home to find Pari chatting to Mrs Ali in the living room. He had been summoned back to Vizag by his mother. Although he had protested that he still had not met the village secretary regarding Mr Naidu’s land records, his mother had told him that it was more important that he come back to the city. Infuriatingly, she had not told him what was so urgent until he had returned. It turned out to be that he had to talk to Pari and convince her to marry Dilawar.
Rehman sat with the ladies for a few minutes, hearing in the background his father and Aruna talking to a client on the verandah. Eventually his mother stood up and headed for the kitchen.
“I want to discuss something with you,” he said to Pari.
“All right, what did you want to talk about?” said Pari.
“Not here,” said Rehman. “Let’s go up on the terrace. We’ll have more privacy.”
They walked through the verandah on to the front yard and took the stairs by the side of the house. The roof was one long concrete slab encircled by a waist-high parapet wall, with a water tank occupying one corner. Several short concrete pillars with iron rods sticking out of them stood a few feet inside the perimeter. If they ever needed more room, these stubs would be built upon to form the skeleton of the next storey.
The blocks of flats on either side were so much taller that the windows overlooked the Alis’ roof terrace. While they could hear voices and the sounds of radios and televisions, Rehman and Pari could not see anybody. High up as they were, there was a light wind from the east, but there was no protection from the sun on the flat roof. Pari covered her head with the ends of the dupatta.
“I’ve never been up here before,” she said, leaning over the parapet and looking down to the front of the house. The height gave her a different perspective on a scene she was used to seeing every day. Across the street, her room was visible behind the trees that lined the other side of the eighty-foot-wide road. Telephone and electrical cables criss-crossed from one side to the other as if trying to tie the two together.
“What did you want to talk about to me about?” she asked, finally turning around and facing him. She was smiling.
“It’s about Dilawar,” he said. “Ammi tells me that you don’t want to marry him. I think you should give it more thought.”
Pari’s smile faltered. When he had told her that he wanted to talk to her in private, where they could not be overheard, she had not been able to help wondering…No, that was silly. Rehman was still in love with his ex-fiancée and she shouldn’t forget that. She shook her head.
“You are as subtle as a the music of a wedding band,” she said. “At least your parents were more delicate.”
Rehman shrugged. “Blunt or not, the matter’s the same. When I talk to ammi and abba, it is clear that you are confused. Dilawar’s a great guy – I know him from my school days and you could not find a kinder boy. People don’t change that much, you know. All of us boys were envious of his body, like a bodybuilder but not with extreme muscles like the men you see on TV and all the girls in the school loved him.” Then he added quickly, “Not that he showed any interest in them or them or anything. He was a well-behaved boy.”
Pari remained silent, staring past Rehman at the coconut trees swaying between the buildings behind him.
Rehman said, “I really think you shouldn’t reject the match.”
Pari’s frustration at how dense Rehman was being about her and the situation she found herself in, unable to articulate her feelings, suddenly boiled over.
“Oh, you think I should accept the match, do you? Why don’t you just hold a gun to my head and marry me off to the first man to come walking down the road?” She turned and pointed at an old man shuffling slowly along b
elow them. “Hey, old man,” she shouted.
The man looked around, startled, but didn’t see her until she shouted again.
“Old man, do you want to marry me? I am a widow but I promise I will be a good wife.”
The man looked shocked and touched both his cheeks with his right hand. “Ram, Ram,” he muttered and scuttled away, shaking his head as if wondering what the world was coming to.
Rehman pulled her away from the edge of the roof. “What are you doing, Pari?” he said, frowning.
Pari turned on him in fury. “Is this a marriage or a tamasha, a play? Do I get any say in the matter or is it a case of, oh, the poor widow – she doesn’t know what’s good for her; let us run her life for her as if she is some puppet who will dance the way we want when we pull the strings?”
The dupatta slipped off her head and a few strands of hair waved in the breeze. Rehman was struck dumb.
Pari continued, “Well, what do you say? Do you think I am just saying no for the fun of it? I am not a shy maiden blushing away from thoughts of marriage. I have brains and I have thought this through. Do I want to move to a flat in Mumbai? Will Vasu be happy in a big city far away from all of you?”
“I can look after him – ” began Rehman.
“Vasu is not a parcel to be passed from hand to hand. He is my son and he will stay with me. As a mother, I cannot just think of myself. I have to consider what’s best for my boy too.”
Pari’s glare was so fierce that Rehman involuntarily took a step back. He remembered what Vasu’s grandfather, Mr Naidu, had told him once. Panthers sometimes hid in sugarcane fields to give birth. The animals could usually be driven off by loud noises but woe betide a farmer if he ever unwittingly came between the panther and her cubs. Forget running away, the mother would savage the interloper. He held up his hands.
“Sorry, that was a mistake,” he said. “I was only saying that because I wanted you to consider the matter without the burden of thinking about Vasu.”
“There you go again,” she said. “A child is not a burden to its mother.”
