by Farahad Zama
“I am not being rude, naanna,” the girl said.
“See,” said the man, with the air of a mathematician who has just proved an axiom. “Would I have ever contradicted my father in front of outsiders?”
Mr Ali smiled sympathetically. “Do you want to go home and continue this discussion there?” he said.
The father, a Mr Bhaskar according to the application form, sighed and leaned back. “What is there to hide, sir? I want her to marry one man and my daughter prefers another. It’s an age-old story.”
The girl, Anu, said, “See, even you admit that it has been going on for ever. You were unnecessarily maligning my college and my generation.”
Mr Bhaskar shook his head. “Why did you go into literature? You should have been a lawyer. Your opponents would have raised their hands in surrender as soon as you walked into court.”
Pari smiled. While their differences of opinion appeared genuine and deep, it was also clear that they were both trying to convince the other and neither had brought up the ultimate option of overriding the other’s wishes. She turned to the mother. “What do you say, madam?” she asked.
The mother shook her head. “Who will listen to what I say? Their arguments began when this girl started saying no as a toddler and they will continue long past the time I go to Vaikuntham – the Lord’s abode.”
Mr Bhaskar fanned out a couple of photographs like playing cards and said, “It’s a straight choice between these two. We’ve eliminated everybody else.”
Mr Ali took the photographs and showed them to Pari. She pulled out their details and stared at them in surprise. “They are such opposites,” she said.
“That’s why we are unable to agree,” said Anu.
Both the men in the photos were good-looking, but one was a priest and the other was an officer in an American bank.
Mr Ali said, “According to this boy’s father, he doesn’t just work in a bank, he works in an investment bank. They don’t take deposits and give out loans, he said.” Mr Ali shrugged. “To be very honest with you, I don’t understand what the point of a bank is, if it doesn’t let people save and borrow.”
Mr Bhaskar grinned. “These strange banks seem to pay well, though. If we go with the banker, he earns a good salary and travels the world in luxury. The priest, on the other hand, will never become rich but will be respected by everybody in society and can live anywhere, not just in big cities.”
“Why do you want to force your daughter to marry a religious man if she is not interested?” said Mr Ali. “The life of a priest’s wife will be somewhat restricting, even dull.”
Mr Bhaskar looked confused for a moment and then laughed uproariously, slapping his thighs, tears rolling down his cheeks. His wife and daughter started smiling too. Mr Ali and Pari stared at each other in amazement. Surely Mr Ali’s comment hadn’t been funny?
“I am sorry,” said Mr Bhaskar finally, calming down, but unable to stop chuckling. “If only life was that simple. You see, I want my daughter to marry the banker. It is she who prefers the priest.”
Mr Ali’s mouth opened and closed again without a word. He was speechless, a rather rare event. The girl coloured, but met his gaze steadily.
“I don’t want to move from Mumbai to New York to London like a nomad just to earn a living. If times are good, these bankers are on a roll and when the economy turns, as it always does, they get fired. Who wants to live with such insecurity? And you are wrong if you think that just because the other man is a priest, he is old-fashioned.”
Anu must have seen the puzzlement on their faces because she continued. “You are probably wondering how I know whether he is modern or a stick-in-the-mud.”
Mr Ali scanned the priest’s details. His name was Dharam Kumar. He had written ‘Call me DK’ on his form. He thought Anu was probably right, but it seemed a small detail to hang a lot of faith upon.
Anu said, “Even though we saw the details here, we know him from before. It is a slightly complicated relationship to explain, but he is effectively a distant cousin of mine, yet in a line that allows us to get married.”
Mr Ali nodded. “I see,” he said.
Anu went on, “He wears trousers instead of tying a panchi round his waist and drives around on a motorcycle.”
Her father broke into the conversation. “He wears trousers. That explains it. He must be modern!”
“Don’t be sarcastic, naanna. You know what I mean.”
Mr Bhaskar said, “It’s true that priests don’t starve, but they lead an austere existence. I grew up in an agraharam – land granted to Brahmins by ancient kings – and I know how priests live. Lots of cleanliness, education and culture, but a very threadbare life ruled by customs and traditions. You’ve never seen it because I moved away from our forefathers’ vocation. I came to town after high school to your maternal grandfather’s house. I had only two things in my pocket – an introductory letter from my headmaster and twenty-five rupees that my mother had got by pawning her silver anklets. I don’t know what your grandfather saw in me, but he took me under his wing and started me off as a messenger in his printing business. He gave me more and more responsibilities and eventually his daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Anu’s mother nodded vigorously and blushed when everybody’s gaze turned to her.
Anu’s father continued, “Poverty is like a deep hole in the ground: the horizons of a person stuck inside it are limited and he can see only a little bit of the sky. When a man tries to climb out of it, the sides keep giving way and dumping him back at the bottom.”
“Well said,” replied Mr Ali. “I couldn’t have come up with a better analogy.”
Mr Bhaskar nodded and smiled. “I did not leap Hanuman-like out of that hole just to see my daughter slide down its sides again.” He was referring to the monkey-god who had leapt across the ocean in the epic Ramayana.
Anu said, “You never told me all this, naanna.”
Mr Bhaskar shrugged and spread his hands. “You never asked me. But in this place, it just feels so comfortable. It is not like an office – it feels more like visiting family friends that you’ve known all your life and somehow your tongue just loosens up.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Ali. “You could be describing a wine bar where the alcohol gets rid of your inhibitions.”
Mr Bhaskar laughed.
“So I am told,” added Mr Ali. “Not that I personally know anything about wine and bars.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Mr Bhaskar and laughed some more, before becoming serious again. “Sir, please tell this silly girl that being poor is not a joke. It will affect not only her but also any children that she will have.”
Before Mr Ali could say anything, Anu answered. “I know that poverty is not fun, naanna. But there is a big difference between being poor and not being rich. Things have moved on since you were a boy. As the country has become wealthier, so have priests. They are not limited to a small temple and the few houses they can walk to. They ride on bikes extending their catchment area to the whole town. They use computers to build horoscopes. We will never be hugely affluent, but I reckon that we can have a comfortable life. I’ll be happier here with all my family and friends around me than I will in Mumbai with more money and bigger expenses.”
Mr Bhaskar looked at Mr Ali. “She just won’t listen, sir. She has a ready reply for anything I say. What can I do?”
Mr Ali smiled. “Your daughter has a very sound head on her shoulders,” he said. “There is nothing that you or I need say to her. You should be proud of Anu. I think that the man who marries her is lucky indeed. Why do you think that only the man determines a couple’s fortunes? Your girl has a bright future and her husband will be a part of it. If I were you, I would concentrate my attentions on your other daughter and let Anu make her own choice.”
Mr Bhaskar looked silently at everybody on the verandah and then gave a big sigh. “My younger daughter, Ankita, is eighteen, going on thirty-five. She is ten times more
intelligent than Anu and a hundred times more stubborn. What am I going to do?”
Mr Ali shook his head and said softly, “You have my sympathies, sir.”
After the family left, Pari helped Mr Ali put the files away. The girl, Anu, is right, thought Pari. To avoid being poor, you don’t have to become rich. I have enough money and can earn some more, even if not as much as in the call centre. Vasu and I can manage perfectly well here. I just need to move into a bigger flat and life will become more comfortable. There is no need to marry Mrs Bilqis’s son just for the sake of security.
♦
Later that afternoon, Rehman and Pari got off the auto-rickshaw in front of the hotel gates and walked through to the air-conditioned lobby of the five-star hotel. A handsome young man was the only occupant of a sofa. His long legs were crossed at the ankle and he was reading a business magazine. Rehman took the lead and went up to him. Pari fell behind, suddenly nervous. The man glanced up and broke into a smile when he saw Rehman. He stood and the two friends hugged each other while the woman, for whose sake the meeting had been arranged, looked on, bemused.
“How long has it been?” asked Rehman.
Dilawar counted on his fingers and said, “Nine, no, ten…years.”
“That’s right,” said Rehman.
He turned to Pari and introduced them to each other. They moved to the restaurant whose large glass windows overlooked lawns on all sides. Rehman remembered his tryst here with his ex-fiancée. He and Usha had been so much in love with each other. It was a shock to realise that this was the first time he’d thought of Usha today. The sense of loss, which had been devastating at first, had attenuated to a dull throb.
Pari studied the two men. Both were good-looking in different ways. Dilawar was slightly taller, with broad shoulders and perfect hair, and he was clean-shaven. His lips were sensuous, thought Pari suddenly, watching him enunciate his words. His clothes were well pressed and he wore cufflinks in his shirt sleeves. Her eyes were fixed on him as he unfolded the white linen napkin with a snap and laid it on his lap, as if he totally belonged in this posh place. He looks like a fruit, thought Pari. A ripe, perfectly formed apple, juicy and crunchy, with no blemishes – like the kind you get in those new-fangled grocery stores with trolleys and open shelves.
Rehman’s shirt was clean, but the crease on the sleeves was muddled as if it had been ironed sometimes one way and sometimes another. Pari knew that it was his ‘best’ shirt that Mrs Ali had made him change into, from a rough cotton kurta. There was a cut on his cheek where he had nicked himself shaving. His hair was just on the borderline of being unkempt, his barber’s visit probably overdue by a week. She doubted that Dilawar patronised a mere barber. He probably went to one of those air-conditioned hairdressing salons. Her husband had visited a salon like that once – and had come back scandalised.
“They charged me three hundred rupees!” he had said. “I was very lucky to have the money on me. Otherwise they might have set me sweeping the floor or something.”
How she had laughed then. His usual haircut used to cost about thirty rupees. Why was she thinking of her husband now?
Pari doubted whether Rehman even visited one of those humble hairdressing shops that her husband had gone to. There was a barber on the street behind their house. He had a medium-sized, slightly tarnished mirror propped against a tree and was usually found sitting on a wooden stool, sharpening his knife against a leather strop. She had seen him once with a client. The customer sat on the stool facing the mirror and, in the absence of a revolving chair, the barber walked backwards and forwards around the man with a pair of scissors and a comb. That was more Rehman’s style.
Rehman is like a mango that you buy from a street-side hawker, she thought. The golden-yellow skin was just a bit wrinkled, with a long smear down the side where the acidic sap had trickled out, causing a few pieces of straw to stick to it, while the bottom tip is still a little green, which might mean that the fruit was not yet as sweet as it could be.
She made an effort to listen to their conversation but they were talking about some old classmates of theirs, so she tuned them out again and fell back to studying the two men. It was a couple of minutes before it occurred to her that she preferred homely mangoes to exotic apples. Her expression became stern and she silently told herself that mangoes were not on the menu.
“We are boring the good lady,” said Dilawar finally.
“No, no,” said Pari, unconvincingly.
“Of course we are,” said Dilawar. “I can tell by the look on your face. My colleagues have exactly the same expression when I am making a presentation about the effect of the latest ad campaign on the quarterly sales. But not as beautiful, obviously.”
Pari blushed.
Dilawar continued, “I would be fed up too if the two of you ignored me and started talking about people I didn’t know.” He smiled at her, showing his even teeth.
She couldn’t help smiling back at him.
Rehman said to Dilawar, “I didn’t come here to be an unwanted bone in a kebab. Ammi asked me to – ”
“Say no more,” said Dilawar, holding up his manicured hands. “I haven’t been away from Vizag so long that I have forgotten how things are done here. You make a lovely chaperone. Sooo strong…” They all laughed at the camp tone of his last sentence. Dilawar turned to Pari. “Thank you for meeting me away from the house.”
“That’s not a problem,” said Pari. “I requested the meeting, after all.”
“But you were probably expecting to have this conversation with all our relatives in the next room, if not actually sitting beside you. Don’t worry – your chaperone will protect you if I turn out to be an axe murderer.”
Pari nodded, smiling. She wondered whether people living in big cities like Mumbai automatically developed this skill of making others feel comfortable. Would Vasu grow up to be an extrovert if they moved to Mumbai?
The conversation went into a lull for a moment before Dilawar started speaking again.
“Shall I kick off by telling you a bit about myself?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve been living in Mumbai for the last seven years. I stay in Worli, do you know the city?”
Pari shook her head.
“It’s a nice area,” Dilawar said. “I won’t go into all the details of my job and salary; I am sure my mother has already told you all that. I love jazz and movies. My favourite film is Casablanca. ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine.’ Humphrey Bogart is just masterly in it.”
Pari looked blank and Rehman said, “She hasn’t seen that film.”
Dilawar appeared shocked for a moment, then recovered. “Haven’t seen Casablanca? I really envy you. To see it for the first time when you are old enough to appreciate all the nuances…What else do I like? Oh yes, I love Bade Mia’s in Colaba. You have to sit on a bench on the footpath outside crumbling buildings, but the food is simply outstanding. The baida roti is to die for.”
Pari was tongue-tied. This was going too fast for her. It had taken her more than a week after her wedding to discover half as much about her husband as she had found out about Dilawar in a few minutes. Also, what did she know about strange music and foreign movies? Dilawar’s world was so different from hers. Would he think that she was a rustic simpleton?
Rehman said, “Pari is a great cook too. You should try her prawn curry sometime. And she may not know much about Hollywood movies, but she is an expert on Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare?” said Dilawar.
“The bard himself. Go on, ask her about any of his plays.”
“To be or not to be…” he began. Rehman slowly shook his head and Dilawar stopped. “You guys are putting me on the spot,” said Dilawar and thought for a moment. “A plague on both your houses…”
“Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet,” said Pari.
Rehman said, “Come on; that was easy. Even I knew that. Something harder.”
“The course of tru
e love never did run smooth.”
“Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Rehman smiled proudly as if he had personally coached her in English literature. Pari gazed back at him gratefully. She didn’t feel so much out of her depth now. “Why did you choose that quote?” she asked. “Is there some reason for it?”
Dilawar was struck dumb for a moment as he remembered Shaan. “Oh, it just popped into my head. I don’t have any girlfriends in Mumbai, honest.”
Rehman and Pari laughed. “Of course you don’t,” said Rehman.
“What does that mean?” said Dilawar loudly. A passing waiter glanced at them and Dilawar said more softly, “Sorry.”
Rehman said, “I was just saying that, of course, you don’t have any girlfriends. You wouldn’t be here with me and Pari if you loved somebody else in Mumbai.”
Dilawar nodded. “Enough about me,” he said. He turned to Pari. “Let’s talk about someone more interesting – you.”
Pari looked at both of them for a moment and bit her lower lip.
Rehman said, “Do you want me to leave you both alone for some time?”
“Just for ten minutes?” she said.
Rehman nodded. “I’ll take a walk along the beach. Give me a call on my mobile when you are done.”
As soon as Rehman left, Dilawar said, “That’s a great technique to leave without paying the bill. I should try that next time.”
Pari smiled, some of her nervousness dissipating. “Did you know that I am a widow?” she said.
Dilawar nodded. “Ammi-jaan told me. I have no problem with that.”
Pari gazed into his eyes briefly and looked away. “Do you know that I was an orphan?”
“Yes, I heard that your father died recently. I am sorry.”
Pari shook her head. “I am not just an orphan now. I always was an orphan.”
Dilawar regarded her quizzically, his neatly groomed eyebrows coming together in perfect unison.
