by Farahad Zama
“That’s the place,” he said.
“I thought we were going there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the road. About half a mile inland, up a mountain, was a brand new hotel. It was a pukka concrete building, several storeys high with wide glass windows overlooking the sea.
Rehman looked where Usha pointed and said, “The view from there must be great.”
Usha nodded. “It is.”
Rehman turned back. “But the food here is better, I am sure.”
Usha shook her head and followed Rehman and Vasu. A rough sign, painted on an iron sheet that was corroding round the edges, stood outside the shack.
Inn by the Sea
Cool drinks, tea, snacks, lunch
Castrol
“Is this the oil company’s canteen?” she asked. “Look at the rust – how long has this place been here?”
Rehman laughed. “Don’t be snobbish. It’s been here for years because the food is good. It’s run by a lovely couple. The wife cooks and the man serves the food. You’ll love it.”
“If you say so.”
A hole had been dug in the ground next to a standpipe. Usha and Vasu followed Rehman’s example and washed their hands at the pipe. Usha stood well back so the water would not spatter over her.
The palm-leaf roof came right down to about chest height and instead of walls there were wooden benches all around the perimeter. They walked through the narrow door and sat on one of the benches. Long black granite slabs – cuddapah stone from the south of the state – served as table tops. On the far side four college students were finishing their meals. A tall, well-built man stepped out from a smoky room and greeted them. He handed Rehman a tin sheet cut from an oil can with the menu written on it.
Rehman looked through the menu and showed it to Usha. “They do a delicious crab curry here. Do you want to try it?”
Usha pulled a face. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough of crabs for one day.”
Vasu laughed. Rehman handed the menu to Usha and turned to the boy. “Would you like to eat fish?” he asked.
Vasu nodded. Rehman turned to Usha. “I will have a van-jaram fish curry,” she said.
“Good choice. Let’s order three of that.”
The man came back with three glasses and a jug of water. He brought three square stainless-steel plates, each with a number of indentations along one side.
Rehman said, “Three meals with vanjaram curry.”
The man nodded and went back into the kitchen. He returned and filled the indentations in the plates with different vegetable curries. In the centre, he served them rice. Steam rose from the food.
They started eating. Rehman turned to Usha. “The fish they use here is really fresh. They buy it in the morning straight off the boats and cook it by midday. They don’t serve dinners here, only lunch.”
They were a quarter of the way through their lunch when the fish curry arrived. Red with Guntur chillies, chunks of fish and a mass of spring onions filled the dish. They each got two pieces of fish. Rehman said to Vasu, “Unlike the river fish you get in the village, there is only one bone in the centre of the vanjaram. You can eat it easily.”
Vasu finished eating well before Rehman and Usha. He sat there looking bored and Rehman was about to tell him that he could leave the table when the college students on the other bench got up. One of them carried a cricket bat and another a ball. One of the students stopped and asked Rehman, “You are…you were in the farmers’ protest, weren’t you, sir?”
Rehman looked up, surprised, and said, “Yes, I was. How do you know?”
The student called the others over. “We were all involved in the protest as well, sir. We marched from the university to the District Collector’s office and gave him a signed petition against the farmers’ lands being taken away.”
Rehman’s face broke into a wide smile. “Thanks, guys. It was because of all your support that the government backed down on the issue. What are you all studying?”
“Engineering, sir. I am in my third year of a chemical engineering course. My friends are in electronics.” The young man stood in silence for a moment and then said, “My friends and I are planning to play cricket outside. Our professors didn’t turn up today.”
As the students turned to go, Rehman said, “Can you take Vasu with you? He is getting bored here and would probably enjoy playing cricket. We’ll collect him in ten or fifteen minutes.”
They agreed and Vasu jumped out and joined them.
After the boys left, she said, “You are famous.”
“Thanks to you,” he said and grinned. They went back to their meal.
After a few minutes, Usha said, “You are right. The food is really good – simple but delicious. By the way, you didn’t answer me when I asked you at the beach. Why did the farmers’ plight affect you so much? The government was going to pay the farmers for their land, wasn’t it?”
Rehman thought for a moment. “The government would have paid only a fraction of the land’s true worth. Then what would the farmers do? Where will they go and buy land and from whom? And that’s if they get paid. Even the government admits that more than three quarters of the people displaced by development activities since 1951 are still awaiting rehabilitation. I asked Mr Naidu, Vasu’s father, about it some time back and do you know what he said? The land is our mother, he explained. She provides us with everything. How can we sell our mother, for any reason?”
The owner of the restaurant went back into the kitchen, leaving them alone. Rehman felt a cramp in his thigh and moved it slightly. Suddenly it was in contact with Usha’s leg from mid-thigh to knee. He was so surprised that he froze and did not immediately move it away. Usha didn’t seem to mind their legs touching at all. She casually turned to him and said, “Do you want some more fish? I can’t eat all of it.”
Rehman nodded silently. She delicately broke a small chunk of fish with her fingers and picked it up between her forefinger and thumb. Instead of dropping it in his plate, she raised her hand to his mouth and offered the morsel to him. He bent forward slightly towards her and opened his lips. Her fingers felt soft as he trapped them with his teeth, biting ever so softly. With his clean left hand, he brushed back a lock of her hair that had fallen forward, the pads of his fingers rubbing along her smooth cheeks. He tucked the strand behind her ear and dropped his hand slowly, setting her earring in motion on the way. Her moist lips were slightly parted and they drank in the sight of one another; the dog barked outside and Rehman heard a bat striking a ball; one of the boys shouted and a couple of sparrows chattered, but they all seemed far away. Usha’s eyes were smoky and unreadable, but the increased pressure of her leg against his was clear.
Six
The railway station was busy as usual. The passenger train from Khurda Road had just left and people were streaming out, laden with overstuffed bags, bulging suitcases and bamboo baskets filled with fruit and vegetables, held together precariously with rope. Rehman stood aside as a man, his wife and their seven children, all looking identical and asexual with their cleanshaven heads shining like light bulbs, walked through the gate, probably coming back from the Jagannath temple in Puri.
The East Coast Express was expected on platform two in five minutes, the tannoy announced in three languages. It was on time, for once. Rehman climbed the steps to the overhead bridge and made his way to platform two. Railways fascinated him – the crowds, the shops, the trains themselves, though the steam engines of his childhood were no more. The solid yellow sign, proclaiming the name of the station in English, Hindi and Telugu along with the height of the station above sea level (he’d never figured out why they included that), the rich and poor people mingling together, all united India and made it one country despite all the differences of religion, caste and language.
He bought an India Today news magazine from the Higginbothams’ stall on the platform and waited for the train. A porter in a red shirt with a big official badge stopped and asked whether he ne
eded help when the train came, but he shook his head. He had been told that Pari wouldn’t be carrying much luggage. After another announcement in Hindi, Telugu and English that the East Coast Express was about to arrive on platform two, the train came in, pulled by a diesel engine.
If it was busy before, the platform now burst into activity. Porters ran down the platform, ready to jump into the brick-red, dusty compartments as soon as they slowed down enough, so they could get a head start on touting for business.
The engine gave a long hoot. A drink-seller standing next to Rehman ran a metal bottle opener musically along the bottles.
“Chai, chai,” shouted a boy, carrying glass tumblers and a kettle.
“Indian Express, Hindu, Business Times, Chandamama,” shouted a wiry newsvendor in baggy khaki shorts.
“Marie, Britannia biscuits; milk bread, fruit bread,” shouted another.
Passengers with luggage waiting to embark clutched their tickets and anxiously checked their compartment numbers, edged a little closer to the moving train.
Pari had written a postcard to Rehman’s mother to say that she would be in the front half, so he stood about two-thirds of the way down the platform. As the train slowed down and the more athletic porters jumped through the open doors up into the carriages, Rehman tried to make out Paris face among the passengers looking out of the windows. It was several minutes after the train stopped that Rehman finally found Pari, almost at the front.
“No, no, I don’t need any help,” she was saying to a porter who tried to grab her suitcase in the narrow aisle between the long sleeper berths and the two seats on the side.
“Are you sure madam doesn’t need any help?” Rehman drawled from the door.
Paris hair was tied back in a tight braid but some strands were windblown in the front. Her face was stark and bare of any jewellery. She had lost weight since he had last seen her and her beaked nose looked too long for her now-angular face. She was wearing a black sari that was supposed to look mournful but was actually very elegant on her fair, slim frame. She looked up at him and a slow smile suffused her face.
“My favourite devar,” she said to her brother-in-law. “Come to rescue me from grasping coolies.”
Rehman laughed. He had wondered how he would react, seeing her for the first time since that harrowing night of her husband’s death, but her smile and words put him at ease.
“Sorry, my shiny armour was a bit rusty and I had to send it off to the dhobi ghat for cleaning,” he said, moving forward. He took her battered suitcase, its grey plastic hidden under a brown cotton cover. She picked up a bulging cloth bag, decorated with lace and an embroidered pink rose, and followed him out of the train.
“I was very proud when I saw you on TV,” she said. “I wish I could have joined your protest.”
“Really?” he asked, surprised.
He had only ever met her in the presence of her husband, his cousin, and she had always come across as a quiet, demure woman with a shy smile. The intervening year had changed her and not in the way he expected. She had been married young, as her father had not wanted to refuse the match because the bridegroom held a good job in the irrigation department, and was very handsome and athletic too. Even now, after the double tragedy of her husband’s sudden death and her father’s prolonged illness, she was only twenty-two years old.
They crossed the overbridge, gave her train ticket and his platform ticket to the ticket collector, and made their way into the long queue outside the station for a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw. The line moved slowly.
“Do you know where the bank’s call centre is?” she asked.
“Yes, it is in Siripuram junction near the university.”
“I’ve got an interview there the day after tomorrow at three in the afternoon.”
“How – ” began Rehman and fell silent. He was embarrassed. He didn’t think she knew any English and was fairly certain that a job in the call centre of a multinational bank would involve speaking English. She had been brought up in a small village by a childless couple who had bought her as a baby from a poor family, who already had six children and hadn’t wanted to feed yet another girl, and adopted her. She had been educated in Urdu Medium and, as far as he knew, she hadn’t studied past high school.
“The quality of mercy is not strained. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Rehman’s jaw dropped and Pari laughed. He hurriedly closed his mouth and felt his ears turn pink and hot.
“Double, double toil and trouble, Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,” she continued, with mischief in her eyes and looking as unlike an old witch as possible. “Make my devar believe in his sister-in-law.”
Rehman was dumbstruck. Her knowledge of the Bard of Avon went far beyond his. He racked his brains until he remembered a line that had stuck in his mind a little deeper than others. “Exceedingly well read…And as wondrous affable and as bountiful as mines of India,” he said finally.
“Henry IV Part I”, she said immediately.
“Subhan-Allah! Good God! What did you do? Devour the works of Shakespeare wholesale?”
The people in front of them had moved forward, opening up a gap, so they shuffled ahead dragging the suitcase and bag. Pari turned to him. “Your cousin encouraged me to study for a degree by correspondence course soon after we got married. I chose English Literature as my major subject.”
“I can throw a stone here and hit ten English Lit. graduates and I bet you that not one of them can quote Shakespeare like you.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t see any point in doing something halfheartedly. But how come an engineer like you knows so much about Shakespeare?”
Rehman laughed. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Pari-o, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Touche.”
“You’ve also got a very good accent – almost like an English mem. You didn’t get the enunciation of a proper lady from a correspondence course.”
“BBC World Service. I couldn’t leave the house for almost a year while abbu was ill, so I listened to the radio regularly. I knew that once abbu was no more, I didn’t want to stay in the village. I decided to work in the city so I finished my degree and practised my English every day.”
♦
Aruna inserted the point of the (new) letter opener into the corner of an envelope and slit it open. She took out the folded sheet from inside and smoothed it flat. A Christian client from Nellore had written thanking them because his daughter had found a match through their efforts. The bridegroom was an accountant from Nuzvid currently working in Kuwait on a good salary.
She gave the letter to Mr Ali, who read it and smiled. “I remember the girl – she came over with her father a few months ago. They have been looking for a match for years but something or the other was always going wrong. I’m glad we were able to help.”
“I’ll stick the letter on the wall there along with the photographs.”
“Aruna, I think we now have enough new Reddy-caste girl members to make a list.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll type it up tomorrow. By the way, have you thought some more about buying a computer?”
Mr Ali put down his pen and looked at her. “I just can’t decide. It’s a lot of money and I am not sure how useful it will be. I’m afraid that, after a few weeks, it will sit under a plastic cover, unused, like a bridegroom’s turban once the wedding is over.”
“But, sir – ”
“We bought a washing machine some years back. Madam used it for a month or so and then she gave it up. It was less work to get a washerwoman to do the clothes than to sort them, fill the machine, take the clothes out and hang them out on the line. So, it just occupied a corner under an old bedsheet, used as a shelf for clothes and books. It lay there for years until we got rid of it. I don’t trust all this new technology. It always resul
ts in more work and is never quite as good as it promises.”
Aruna sighed. It was going to be difficult to convince Mr Ali. She admired him enormously but he could be such a fuddy-duddy sometimes. She noticed that most men became conservative and set in their ways as they got older. Her father, Mr Ali and her father-in-law were all similar – they didn’t like change very much. They liked following a routine, meeting the same people, eating the same foods. Of them all, she had to admit that Mr Ali was the most open – probably because of the marriage bureau. Or maybe he had started the marriage bureau because he was the least set in his ways. It was difficult to say.
Just then, Rehman came out with the orphan boy, Vasu.
“Abba, we are going to the supermarket. Do you want anything from there?”
“Nothing,” said Mr Ali. “Actually, yes. Get some dried fruit. Sanyasi was telling me about the dried figs that he had bought recently.”
“OK, abba,” said Rehman.
Mr Ali then surprised Aruna by saying, “Rehman, what do you think about us getting a computer here? Aruna wants it but I am not sure.”
Rehman scratched his head. His eyes met hers and she smiled at him. After a moment he said, “I think that’s a brilliant idea. A PC would help you enormously – you can filter on various conditions and typing the lists will be easier than on that manual clickety-clack.”
“Do you think so?” said Mr Ali.
“Absolutely! I know a man who builds PCs. I will swing by, on the way from the shop, and ask him to come and meet you.”
Rehman nodded to both of them and left with the boy. Aruna went back to her post, but she couldn’t stop smiling. That was a lot easier than she had expected.
A few minutes later, Mrs Ali and a young woman came out. “We are just going to the house opposite,” said Mrs Ali to her husband. “We’ll be about half an hour.”
“And after that, you won’t have me under your foot, chaacha,” the young woman said. “I can then play music loudly.”
