by Farahad Zama
“Don’t be so sure, Pari,” growled Mr Ali. “The old hag who will be your landlady will be living next door and she will be a lot stricter than me.”
The young woman laughed loudly – a throaty, open-hearted sound. Madam had told her that the young woman’s husband was dead and Aruna had been expecting a serious, unhappy lady. Pari was the merriest widow that Aruna had ever seen in her life.
Soon after the two ladies left, the Hasan clan came in. This was the large family who had become members recently for their daughter. Aruna remembered the dark spot on Mr Hasan’s cheek and scalp that looked like a map of India. She had to make sure that she didn’t stare at it and be rude. Mr Hasan’s wife, his brother, sister and his son had all come as well. Aruna was sure that the last time there had been another gentleman, but instead a fair young girl stepped forward shyly.
“Sania,” said Mr Hasan proudly.
Ha, the bride, thought Aruna.
They all found places to sit and Mr Hasan said, “We’ve identified several matches and wanted to know if you have photos or know more about them than what is in the list.”
“All right,” said Mr Ali. “Show us the matches and we will try to help you.”
Mr Hasan took out the list that Aruna had given him at their last visit. It looked creased, folded and as if it was falling to bits. It must have gone through a lot of hands for it to look so bad in such a short time, thought Aruna.
“We’ve marked out the ones we are interested in,” said Mr Hasan.
More than twelve names were circled with red ink. Mr Ali read them out. “Sheikh Hussain, software engineer in Bangalore; Mohammed Rizwan, sales executive in Nestle; Mirza Beg, central government officer…Syed Nizamuddin, assistant professor.”
Aruna went to their filing cabinet to take out the files. Mr Ali looked up at the family and said, “You have a good choice here. I know that we have the photos of quite a few of them. I am sure that you will find the perfect bridegroom for your daughter from among them.”
“Inshallah, God willing,” said Mr Hasan. “We’ve been looking for a while now but nobody seems to be quite right.”
Aruna took out the photos, referring often to the battered sheet of paper in her hand. “We don’t have photos for these two…”
♦
Later that evening, after the last of the day’s clients had left, Mr Ali closed the verandah gates behind Aruna. He went into the house and found Mrs Ali and Pari having a chat.
“It’s interesting how women can talk for hours and still not exhaust their conversation,” he said.
Mrs Ali looked at him and said, “What do all you retired men do when you meet in the evenings? And we don’t stop our work to chat either. Dinner is ready if you want to eat.”
“Yes, I’m hungry. What about the two of you?” he asked, looking at the ladies.
“Hmm,” Mrs Ali said.
“I’ll wait for Rehman and Vasu,” said Pari.
Mrs Ali relented. “No, no. Let’s eat now. Rehman said that he and Vasu will have some snacks while they’re out and come back late.”
Pari and Mrs Ali set the table while Mr Ali went to wash his hands and less than five minutes later they had sat down for the meal.
“This dried shrimp fry with onion greens is different,” said Mr Ali turning to his wife. “I don’t think you’ve made this dish before.”
“Pari made it.”
Mr Ali smiled at the young woman. “It’s good.”
“Thanks chaacha. Ammi used to make this dish because we didn’t often get fresh prawns in the village.”
They finished the meal, talking about Paris parents – Mr Ali’s cousins.
“Have you got the keys to your room?” asked Mr Ali.
“Yes, chaacha. We gave the old woman the first month’s rent and she gave us the key.”
“How are you doing for money?” asked Mr Ali.
“A lot of people think that because I am a widow, I must be poor,” said Pari. “I don’t know what kind of joke Allah is playing on me, but for the first time in my life, money is not a problem. I got a settlement from your nephew’s life insurance. I also get a widow’s pension from his department. Most of abbu’s money and lands went to pay for his treatment, but not as much as you might think, because once he came back home from the hospital, it didn’t cost money to look after him – just strength and emotion.”
“It is not a joke, Pari. It is Allah’s mercy. You did a great service – looking after your father with such devotion. He is balancing the scales of your life,” said Mrs Ali.
“No amount of money or comfort can outweigh the loss of a loved husband,” said Pari.
“No, of course not,” said Mrs Ali. “That’s not what I meant. I – ”
“Why do you want to work?” interrupted Mr Ali, changing the topic. “Why don’t you relax for a little while? You’ve had the most horrendous year that any woman can have. If money is not a problem, what’s the hurry in looking for a job?”
Pari didn’t reply for a moment, chewing slowly on the rice.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” said Mrs Ali, making eyes at Mr Ali. “We don’t have a right to ask you such questions. It’s your decision whether you want to work or not.”
“Don’t shame me, chaachi,” said Pari. “Of course you have the right to question me. After abbu and ammi, you are the closest relations I have.” She turned to Mr Ali and said, “You’ve raised a valid query, chaacha. I was just thinking about how to answer it. When my husband was alive, we had a very social life. He was a popular man, full of joy – the soul of any party…”
She stopped speaking and her eyes closed, her throat gulping. A tear trickled down her cheek. Mrs Ali put her hand on the young woman’s arm. After a moment, Pari opened her eyes and smiled at them.
“The pain is always there, waiting silently and ready to strike me if I let my guard down, like a brown cobra in long, dry grass. That’s one of the reasons I want to start over – get a job and be among people again. I have to keep busy. I’ve done my mourning.”
Mrs Ali said to Pari, “You’ve done the right thing – leaving the small village. As long as you stay there, people will expect you to dress in white and live an austere life with no fun or entertainment. You are still a young girl and you have much to enjoy.”
“Thank you, chaachi, chaacha.”
Even after dinner was long finished the three of them sat at the table, talking. The bell rang and they looked at each other.
“That must be Rehman,” said Mrs Ali.
“Let me check,” said Mr Ali, getting up from the table.
There was a smart-looking, short man with a trim moustache and a briefcase standing at the gate.
“Hello, sir. I am Venkatesh. Rehman sent me. He said that you were thinking of buying a PC.”
“Yes, yes, please come in.”
Mr Ali slid the bolt of the verandah gate and opened it. They both sat down on the sofa.
“What kind of PC are you looking for, sir?” Venkatesh asked.
Mr Ali shrugged his shoulders. “Do you want a glass of water?” he asked.
The computer engineer looked surprised. “Yes, sir. Water would be good.”
Mr Ali went inside, told the ladies who the guest was and came back with a glass.
Venkatesh took a sip and put the glass on the coffee table in front of him. He opened his briefcase and took out some glossy brochures. “We can make almost any configuration you specify, sir. We are much cheaper than branded PCs. Also, if anything goes wrong, just give us a call and we’ll come round on the same day and fix the problem. You won’t get that kind of service with the big companies. Let’s start with the basics. What kind of processor do you want? Intel Pentium or AMD?”
Mr Ali waved his hand.
“OK, Intel. Good choice, sir. But I forgot to ask you, do want a mini tower or a full tower?”
“What’s the difference?” asked Mr Ali.
“There’s not t
hat much difference, sir. The full tower is more expandable.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. If you have the place to put it.”
“If you have the space, of course,” said Mr Ali, nodding slowly. “Is it possible to put it away in the bedroom at night or when we go out? We have a bolt on the bedroom door to keep the servants out when necessary so it would be safe there.”
Venkatesh frowned, looking deep in thought. “That’s not really practical unless you get a laptop. But I wouldn’t recommend that. They are more expensive and not as powerful.” He looked around and continued, “You’ve got a good grille round here and PCs are big. It will be safe here.”
Mr Ali nodded. “OK,” he said.
“Do you want a seventeen-inch monitor or a nineteen-inch one?”
“What’s a monitor?”
“What a joke, sir. I mean the screen.”
“Oh, screen. Two inches can’t make that much difference, can it?”
“You will be surprised, sir. Those two inches can make a lot of difference.”
“Right. What else?”
“We haven’t even started yet. We still have to finalise the hard disk, memory, graphics card, motherboard.”
“I want a printer,” said Mr Ali. “That’s very important.”
“No problem. Inkjet or bubble jet?”
Mr Ali felt just as he did when he had opened an Arabic novel a long time ago. The alphabets were the same as in his native Urdu, but the words did not make sense. Here he understood almost every word the man was saying, but no sentence was meaningful.
“Look, Venkatesh,” he said. “I don’t understand all this high-technology stuff. I run a marriage bureau. There are lots of members and I want to put all their details into the computer and be able to search for them when a client calls. What is the cheapest computer that can do that?”
The computer builder nodded. “Even our cheapest computer can do that, sir. But I think you should pay a little bit more and go for a slightly better model.”
“Why is that?”
“You will get more memory, the hard disk will be bigger, the whole computer will be faster.”
“I thought computers were very fast. I saw a programme once on TV and they were saying how computers can carry out millions of operations a second,” said Mr Ali.
Venkatesh laughed. “They all do, sir. But to do anything meaningful, computers have to do several million instructions.”
“I also want to store photographs on the computer.”
“You need a scanner.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, sir. You do.”
Mr Ali sighed. He shouldn’t have listened to Aruna and Rehman. There was no way he was going to make sense of computers or anything complicated like that at his age. It was well known that old dogs could not learn new tricks.
“I don’t think – ” he began.
Just then, Vasu pushed open the door and skipped in, straight through the verandah and into the house. Rehman came in after him, walking more slowly. He saw Venkatesh and stopped to greet his friend.
Mr Ali turned to Rehman. “I don’t understand all this computer, shumputer nonsense. I am happy with my files and my typewriter. Why do I need all these complicated things?”
“Nonsense, abba. You should move with the times – look at Vasu’s grandfather. He is the same age as you and he is trying out new seeds and practices. If an illiterate farmer like him can do it, you can too.”
“All right. Then you talk to your friend and sort it out. I don’t want to spend too much. Just make sure that whatever we get is not a waste of money.”
He left the two young men together and went back into the house.
Seven
“The house feels empty without the boy,” said Mrs Ali. She was in the living room with Rehman and Pari. Mr Ali had gone for a walk with his friends, leaving Aruna to look after the office. The sun had been hot during the day and the cool of the winter evening was welcome.
Rehman nodded. He had dropped Vasu off at his uncle’s house at lunchtime and he was missing the boy too. Vasu had hugged Rehman and cried for several minutes until Rehman promised him that he would come and visit the village soon.
Vasu’s aunt, the twelve-fingered young housewife, had said, “If you come to the village for Sivaratri, the villagers are planning a big function. I am not allowed to tell you what it is, but it promises to be a lot of fun. We are also planning to be there at that time.”
Rehman finished his tea and set his cup aside. He said to his mother, “I am going to the village in about four weeks, so I will see him then.” He turned to Pari and said, “What time tomorrow did you say your interview was?”
“Three o’clock,” she said. “But they asked me to come about fifteen minutes early to fill out some forms.”
“No problem. We’ll leave by two-thirty.”
“Don’t be too complacent. Give yourselves enough time. You can always go to a teashop if you are early,” said Mrs Ali.
The youngsters nodded in agreement.
“By the way, the planning permission has come through. The housing project can start now,” said Rehman.
Mrs Ali’s face lit up. “You’ve been unemployed long enough – when will you start the job, then?”
“Anybody would think you didn’t like having me around the house,” laughed Rehman.
Mrs Ali waved her hand. “Of course it’s good to have you around. But a man without a job is only half a man.”
Rehman said, “The contractor is waiting for an auspicious day. He said he’ll have the pooja on Saturday and start the work on Monday.”
“What’s the job?” asked Pari.
“It’s a social housing project for poor people being built by an NGO charity. We’ll be building simple houses for about one hundred families. The families have to pay a small amount of money and contribute some labour towards building the houses.”
The curtains parted and a man in his mid-fifties, sporting a neatly trimmed beard, walked in briskly. Rehman and Pari stood up and a chorus of salaam wa’laikums followed.
“Sit down, Azhar. Do you want tea?” said Mrs Ali to her brother.
“No, I’m fine. I wouldn’t mind water, though.”
Pari jumped up and went into the kitchen. She came back with a silver glass of water. “Here it is, maama. Old people like you need to take it easy,” she said, smiling to take the sting out of her words.
“Let it be known, young lady, that I took VRS – voluntary retirement from service because the department offered such a good deal. I am not old.”
“Oooh!” said Pari, stepping back. “Did I touch a sensitive spot?”
Rehman laughed and Mrs Ali shushed them both. “Show some respect for a man with silver hair,” she said, then clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oops, sorry.”
“Did I come here to be insulted?” said Azhar, trying to look angry. He made as if to stand up.
Pari rushed over to him and pushed him gently back into the chair. She went behind him, massaged his shoulders and said, “I was just joking, maama, and you became serious. Don’t I even have the right to make fun of you any more?”
Azhar reached back to pat Paris hand. “OK, OK,” he said gruffly. “Go and sit down. You cannot drive me away from my own sister’s house.”
Pari went back to sit next to Mrs Ali and Azhar finished drinking the water. He put the glass down on the floor next to his chair and said, “We are planning to go on Sunday to bring Nafisa home.”
“Finally!” said Mrs Ali. “What time?”
“We’ll leave straight after lunch so we can be back by four or so.”
“Is Nafisa all right now? What do the doctors say?”
Nafisa, Azhar’s daughter, was just over five months pregnant. She had been married for almost six years and suffered two previous miscarriages. There had been panic when she had reported some bleeding a few weeks ago.
Azhar pointed a finger toward
s the sky and said, “By the mercy of Allah, everything is fine. The doctor recommended bed rest for a week but she’s given the all-clear now.”
“Alhamdulillah, thanks be to God,” said Mrs Ali.
“What’s the plan? Will you come and pick us up or do you want us to come to your house?” asked Mrs Ali.
Azhar squirmed in his chair and looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry but the invitation is only for you, aapa,” he said to his sister, mumbling a little.
“That’s OK. This kind of function is just for ladies anyway,” replied Mrs Ali.
Rehman noticed that Pari’s face fell. Her fingers twisted the knotted fringes on the edge of her sari as if to tear them out. He realised with a rush what his uncle was saying and he looked up. “You mean that Pari is not invited.”
His uncle took a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders slightly. His mother’s face went stiff and stony.
Rehman stood up, his eyes glaring and pointing his right index finger accusingly at his uncle. “Why is that, maama? Are you saying that Pari is not welcome because she is a widow?” he shouted.
Azhar did not say anything, but Mrs Ali jumped up. “Rehman, how dare you stare angrily at your uncle and point a finger towards him? Have you no manners? Is that what you’ve learned from me – to disrespect your elders?”
Rehman looked at her furiously, but lowered his finger. “Respect burn to ash,” he said.
“This function is only for married women,” said Azhar. “It will be considered unlucky for a widow to be present.”
“Maama, what kind of ignorant talk is that? We are in the twenty-first century now. Surely you cannot believe something so ridiculous.”
Mrs Ali said, “Rehman, I won’t have you talk like that to your uncle. Go out of the room now before somebody says something they cannot take back.”
“But ammi,” said Rehman, gnashing his teeth in frustration.
Mrs Ali was still standing and she poked him in the chest. “Now, Rehman.”
Pari stood up and touched Rehman slightly on the shoulder. He turned his head to look at the young widow. Her face was a mask. “You heard your mother, Rehman. I don’t want to go to the function anyway. I don’t know Nafisa’s in-laws.”
