by Farahad Zama
“I know, madam,” said Aruna. “But I couldn’t help worrying though.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs Ali. “We women can no more stop getting distressed than we can close our ears and stop hearing.”
They sat in companionable silence for a bit before the washerwoman came with ironed clothes. Mrs Ali counted them and took them inside. Aruna worked on.
Less than an hour later, she heard the door open and looked up to see three young men dressed in dark trousers, pale shirts and thin, stringy ties walking onto the verandah, each carrying one or more cardboard boxes. Aruna hurriedly cleared all the papers from the table and Mr Ali lifted the typewriter and put it on the sofa. Aruna noticed that, while she was away, Mr Ali had put in extra sockets on the wall behind the table.
The young men opened the boxes and lifted out the computer, keyboard and mouse, monitor and printer. They then opened smaller boxes and took out masses of cables that were all an identical grey colour but seemed to have slightly different ends on them. The men started connecting the various units together and plugging them in. She wondered how the boys (as she was now thinking of them, even though she was not much older than them) knew which cable went where.
Mrs Ali called to Aruna from the door and handed her a tray with three glasses of water. She asked the boys whether they wanted to drink. One of them took a glass with shy thanks but the other two declined.
“It’s ready, sir,” said Venkatesh, the oldest of the three, soon after. “If you come and sit here, we can take you through the system and show you all the packages.”
“Aruna, you do it,” said Mr Ali.
Aruna sat on the chair behind the table and pulled the keyboard closer to her. She had learned basic computer operations one summer a few years back. Last year, when she had seriously decided to learn new skills so she could take up a job, she had had to say no to computer lessons because they were too expensive. She had taken up typing instead. It was strange how such a simple but difficult-at-the-time decision had led to her being noticed by Mrs Ali, being offered a job at the marriage bureau and then Ram, her dear Ram, stepping into her life. She remembered the first time she had seen him as he walked in through that very front door, looking so handsome and rich and unattainable. She wondered if his irritability would fade now that he was well again and back at work.
Venkatesh coughed and Aruna almost jumped, startled. She looked around at all the men staring at her and said, “Sorry I was miles away. I’ve used a computer before but you’d better start again from the basics.”
“You switch the computer on by pressing this big button here,” said Venkatesh.
“Oh! Is that the computer? I thought that was the computer,” said Mr Ali, pointing to the screen.
“No, sir. That’s just the monitor. It shows you what is going on in the computer but this big box down here is where the real action is.”
“Why does it make so much noise?” asked Mr Ali.
“Those are the fans, sir. Most of that box is actually just air. Computing is hard work and generates a lot of heat. Did you know that we lose almost a third of our body heat through the head?”
Mr Ali raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
Venkatesh pointed to the tiny pictures on the screen and said, “Those are icons. Each one of those is a program. You move the mouse until the arrow is on the icon you want and double-click to start it.”
Aruna nodded but Mr Ali said, “Double-click?”
“Click twice, very quickly.”
Venkatesh took them through how to use a word processor, explaining about cut and paste, search and replace, fonts and styles, files, folders and forty-five other things.
“If you need help at any time, please call me, sir.” He handed Mr Ali a business card. Mr Ali gave him a cheque and the three men left.
“Did you understand all that?” asked Mr Ali.
Aruna nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I am glad that one of us has understood it. I only got every other word.”
“It’s not that difficult, sir,” laughed Aruna. “You will be an expert after a few days.”
“I hope so. Otherwise it will be an expensive paperweight. Let me type a letter,” he said.
Aruna got up from the chair and he sat down in front of the keyboard. He placed his fingers on the middle row. Suddenly a string of ‘A’s interspersed with strings of ‘F’s ran across the screen like little ants towards a bowl of sugar. Mr Ali hurriedly lifted his hands off the keyboard and said, “Oh dear! The keys are so much lighter than on the typewriter.” He looked for the backspace key.
Aruna quickly reached out from behind him and hit a couple of keys. The row of letters vanished. He looked up at her in surprise and said, “How did you do that?”
“I just typed the undo key,” she said. “It reverses what you’ve just done as if you’ve never done it.”
“Wow!” said Mr Ali. “Imagine if we had an undo key in real life. So many problems in this world could be solved.”
Aruna smiled at him, thinking what she would undo in her life if she had a mantra to do it. Would she have taken back her words to Sanjay about playing in trees? She didn’t think so – the boy had woken up with no ill effects from the evening’s adventures, his wrist was fine. What was wrong with kids climbing trees, anyway? She understood Mani’s reaction; she was a mother and a heavily pregnant woman. It was her husband’s response that hurt her. He should have been supporting her and not telling her off.
♦
About ten-thirty the next morning there was a knock and the door to Usha’s room opened. Her mother was wearing a stiff silk sari; her father had been to the barber and was wearing a formal shirt and dhoti. Usha had already had her bath and changed. Her mother looked at her critically and said, “Not bad, it will do, I suppose.”
“Do for what?” said Usha.
“Sankar, the young man the marriage broker introduced, is coming here at any moment now,” said her father.
“So you are going ahead with this charade,” said Usha. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I am not going to play the simpering bride-to-be. By the time we are finished here, you will be wishing that you hadn’t started down this path.”
Her father just moved his hand desultorily as if he was brushing away a fly. Why was he so confident?
“Does it mean I can go into the living room now?” asked Usha.
“No,” said her father. “We’ll do the bride-viewing right here.”
Usha was outraged. “This is my bedroom. How dare you bring strangers into it?”
“You’ve brought this on yourself,” said her father.
“There won’t be anybody else,” said her mother. “He said he was coming here on his own.”
Usha rolled her eyes. They waited stiffly like three mannequins in a shop window until the bell rang. Usha’s father went out, locking Usha and her mother in the room. He soon came back with a young man. Despite herself, Usha looked at him curiously. He was of medium height, a couple of inches taller than her. As her mother had already mentioned, he had dark skin. He had fat lips, a thick moustache, a wide nose and his face was broad. He wore a horrible stripy shirt that looked like polyester, with damp rings of sweat under his armpits. His hair was slicked back with litres of coconut oil. His shirt pocket was overflowing with papers and a pen.
He bowed to the two women with joined hands and said, “Good morning, ladies.”
Usha ignored him while her mother smiled and greeted him back.
He took out a business card and handed it to Usha’s father. “I got these cards specially made for this visit,” he said. “The printer owes me a favour and he printed them for me as a special rush job.”
Her father nodded and took the card from him. He read it with raised eyebrows and pushed it in front of Usha. Usha folded her hands in front of her, ignoring it.
“My name Sankar,” he said. “I – ”
His mobile phone rang with an extremely loud, popular song as th
e ringtone and he fished through his large trouser pockets, taking out coins, scraps of paper and two sets of keys. The merry song went on and on in an irritating, tinny tune. He finally found the phone.
“Sorry, everybody,” he said to all three of them and answered the call. “Hello.”
He listened for several seconds while a voice squawked at the other end.
Usha sneaked a glance at the visiting card – Mr Jhampala Sankar, MA, BF, IAS. Usha raised her eyebrows in surprise. The man in front of her was a postgraduate? And a member of the Indian Administrative Service? The central government ran an extremely competitive annual exam for recruiting civil servants. The test was tough and the very top rankers were chosen for the administrative service – the steel frame of the Indian civil service. These senior bureaucrats were well educated and generally quite smart. Usha looked at Sankar through narrowed eyes. He didn’t fit her image of a high-ranking government officer.
“Shut up and listen to me,” said Sankar into the phone. The other person said something. “I said, shut up and listen, you fool.” Sankar’s voice rose and he seemed to have forgotten Usha and her family. He waved his hand in a chopping motion. The other man fell silent. “Good,” continued Sankar. “Just pay that son of a whore some money and get the consignment released. Is your head full of dung that I have to tell you simple things? And don’t call me for the next hour. I am in the middle of an important transaction.”
He put the phone back in his pocket and turned to them. He was smiling again, his manner oily in some way that Usha could not describe.
“Drivers and government officials – they are like leeches that will suck your body dry if you just give them a chance.”
Usha’s father bared his teeth in a smile that quickly disappeared. “I am really impressed that you are an MA,” he said.
“And IAS too, of course. But what does BF mean?”
“Of course it is true,” Sankar said. “But it’s not what you think. The letters stand for Matriculation Appeared, But Failed, In All Subjects.” He laughed, clapping his hands on his thighs. Matriculation was the exam taken at the end of school, after ten years of study.
“If you are so open about it, why do you put those letters on your business cards?” said Usha’s father.
“It’s the first impression, you see,” Sankar said. “You might find out about it later that I have not passed high school but because you first thought I could be an important official, you will continue to treat me with more deference than you would do otherwise. It is called psychology.” He pronounced the word with a hard ‘P’ at the beginning.
Usha and her mother exchanged glances. Her mother quickly turned away and looked out of the window as if she could not meet Usha’s eyes. “I am not – ” began Usha.
Sankar raised his hand. “In my family, women don’t talk when their menfolk are discussing matters.” He turned to Usha’s father. “I understand that in cities men have become weak and let their women become disrespectful. I am still old-fashioned in these matters. If I marry your daughter, I will impose strict discipline.”
Before her father could say anything, Usha jumped up. “Hey, mister,” she said. “I am not marrying you. Now get out and stop wasting everybody’s time.”
Sankar said, “Jump up while you still can. Once we are married I will know how to make you understand my authority.”
Usha turned to her parents. “What are you people still sitting there for? Throw this uncouth man out.”
Sankar spoke before her father. “Just because I come from a village and did not go to college, don’t think I am a fool. With one look I can tell when a driver is short-changing me. I started my trucking business before I was twenty and in ten years I now run more than twenty-five trucks. Big, big leaders, politicians, come to me when they need help during elections. When your father first called, I thought that you might be fat or squint-eyed or both. Looking at you, I can see that you are pretty so you must obviously be having an affair. But I am a broad-minded man. I don’t care what you have done so far. But remember, once we are married, all this ends. Khallas – finish.” His right hand chopped down into his left palm with a loud snap. He turned to Usha’s father. “Let’s talk business. You have a big problem – your daughter is obviously out of control. What are you offering me to take her off your hands?”
Usha expected her father to blow the rude young man away but she was surprised when he answered Sankar politely. She was more and more astounded as the discussion went on. She started calculating the odds of making a run for it.
“One kilo gold…”
“Land?”
“Farmhouse…forty cents of land on the national highway…daughter’s car…”
“Don’t need a car! I always ride next to the drivers on my trucks and she won’t be driving anywhere.”
“Cash…”
Half an hour later, Sankar and her parents stood up. Usha saw the opportunity, sidled towards the door and broke into a run. She reached the end of the corridor outside her room before Sankar grabbed her arm. “Oww…Let me go…”
He dragged her back towards her room. Just before they reached it, he spoke quietly to her out of the corner of his mouth. “I like a bit of fire in a girl myself, it’s more fun, but it needs to be in its place. Once we are married, these kinds of games won’t work with me. I will break your legs if you try to run away from me, wench.”
Once in the room, he pushed her heavily towards the bed and she went sprawling on the mattress. He turned to her father and bowed slightly a smile on his face. With a mild voice and bobbing head, he said, “The girl is feeling shy, as a proper bride should. Once she gets to know me, she won’t run away at all. Keep her safe until the wedding and after that she will be my responsibility.”
Usha looked back towards her parents and shouted, “You don’t know what this fiend said – ” But before she could complete the sentence or get up from the bed, the door was locked behind her.
The third day of Usha’s captivity dawned and soon she was at the window, looking out. Sankar’s visit on the previous day had unnerved her. She hoped that Rehman was trying to find her. But her father had been quite thorough. Going to her employers was the obvious way to find her but now they wouldn’t reveal where she lived. She had a sickening thought: could Rehman get into difficulty by trying to locate her? After all, her father had let everybody know that a troublemaker was trying to break off her engagement. After a few second’s reflection, she felt sure that Rehman could look after himself.
She was the one who needed help right now and she wished that he would somehow find her and rescue her. She continued to look out of the window. She had spent hours on both the previous days in the same spot, searching for her young messenger. He had completely disappeared and she wondered whether he had been a figment of her imagination.
Usha remembered the Sanskrit classic she had studied at university – Meghdoot, or The Cloud Messenger, written by the great Kalidasa about two thousand years ago. In that lyrical poem, a prisoner on a mountain in central India sees the monsoon clouds gathering in the sky above him and asks one of them to take a message to his beloved wife in a city in the Himalayas. The prisoner describes all the landmarks of India that the cloud will see on its journey along the length of the country, so that it knows when it reaches his home. The prisoner extols his wife’s beauty so she can be recognised and finally he tells the cloud his message of love and longing.
Usha shook her head – she had to keep her spirits up. Her position wasn’t as bad as that. She had sent a message out that was more concrete than words shouted out to a passing cloud.
Usha’s mood swung like a bipolar pendulum. Her mind was in turmoil. She had been willing to play a game of chicken with her father, waiting for him to blink and release her, but the stakes had gone up. It looked as if Sankar didn’t care what she said or did – he was willing to take the bribes her father offered and marry her, regardless. She shuddered when she thought of what wo
uld happen to her after – if, if, she told herself – she got married to that monster.
Had her letter reached its destination? She couldn’t just wait for that now. She went to her desk and wrote another letter – to the police. She informed them that she was an adult, held against her will by her parents and being forced to marry somebody she did not like. She gave her address and asked them to come and rescue her right away. This time she did not bother putting it in an envelope. She looked around on her table and found a heavy paperweight with a colourful red pattern inside clear glass. She wrapped the letter round it and held it in place with a couple of rubber bands. She hoped that when she found somebody willing to deliver the letter to the local police station, she would not hit them on the head with the paperweight. She couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong now. Her parents would get into trouble when the letter reached the police, but she didn’t have a choice. It will serve naanna right if he gets into difficulties, she thought.
She looked outside. For a few minutes there was nobody around and then Balu, the boy she had talked to on the first day, came skipping down. He came to a stop opposite her window and waved his arms.
“Did you post my letter?” asked Usha.
“Yes, madam. I sent it off that very day.” He took a small cloth bag from his packet and shook it. She heard a tinkling noise. “With the rest of the money, I got marbles and a rattle for the baby.”
“Why didn’t you come here the last two days? I’ve been looking for you,” said Usha.
“Amma was very angry with me when she found out that I had some money and I used it to buy marbles. She hit me and I had to help her with the chores all day. She did not let me leave her side even for a moment. She said she could have used the money to buy medicine to make the baby burp after drinking milk. Luckily, the baby liked the rattle I got for her and she stopped crying so amma’s anger did not last long.”
“Oh!” said Usha, a bit subdued. “I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”
