Beautiful Thing

by Sonia Faleiro

  When the take was low, Bani encouraged her three-year-old daughter Baby to stick her head out of the window and help her and Badal outsell the competition.

  ‘Baby clap your hands!

  ‘Smile!

  ‘Happy smile,

  ‘Big-big smile,

  ‘Actress Kareena Kapoor-like smile!

  ‘Now swish your dress to and fro,

  ‘And smile, Baby smile!’

  Leela brought Badal to Mira Road with the hope that he could build a life for himself outside the brothel. If he drove a rented auto-rickshaw, in a few years he might earn enough to buy his own. One day perhaps, Leela daydreamed for the boy, he could graduate to chauffeuring a car. So she set him up with a madam down the road from her flat and in exchange for running errands and keeping watch over her girls—making sure they didn’t run away, that is—the madam allowed Badal to live rent-free. To resolve the issue of a driving licence, since Badal was underage and looked it, Leela helped out with a modest loan which would serve as hafta and an introduction to the local constable’s wife, a woman who had impressed Leela with her ‘pull’.

  Not only could she get things done through her husband, Leela said, but also through his boss, a senior inspector with whom she was conducting a passionate affair.

  { 4 }

  ‘My mother is fat. And very, very simple’

  A few weeks after I walked in on Leela’s customer, I walked in on her mother Apsara lounging with Leela on the bed, scratching at her scalp with a toothpick. ‘Mummy, dekho meri friend!’ Leela jumped up. She threw her arms around me and then stepping back pinched my cheeks like I was a little girl. Ouch! I cried. Leela laughed with pleasure. ‘You delicate darling,’ she said in English. ‘You princess!’

  Apsara stuck the toothpick down her kurta and beckoned to me. ‘Come here, my daughter,’ she squeaked through a mouthful of gutka. I grinned inwardly. Her voice did sound like a tape on fast forward. ‘Let me look at you.’

  I joined Apsara on the bed and without preamble she ran her hand over my face. ‘Appearances are so important,’ she said, pulling at my skin. ‘More than the goodness of her nature,’ she jammed a thick finger into my mouth, almost making me gag, ‘it is the appearance of a woman that can decide her destiny.’

  Apsara said, ‘Smile!’ and smiled as though to show me how. The few teeth she had were grimy with gutka stains, jagged like miniature peaks. She retrieved her finger and continued trawling the landscape of my face, stroking, pinching, prodding. Any time now I expected her to say I wasn’t worth the price I was demanding.

  ‘Where do you live, beti?’ she asked.

  I started to answer.

  ‘Do you live alone?’ she interrupted. ‘And what does your pitaji do? And your mummy? You a Hindu, na? Where is your native place? You speak Hindi so well beti. And English also Leela was saying!’

  Thank you, I replied.

  ‘Where did you go to school beti, here or in bahar gaon? What is your job? How much do they pay you?’

  I told her.

  ‘So little!’ Apsara gasped. ‘Is it enough for you beti? What are your monthly expenses?’

  Leela playfully slapped Apsara’s cheek. Then she smiled at me as though to say, ‘you’re a good sport!’

  Satisfied with her quality check—‘Live well! Live long!’—Apsara spat into the palm of her hand and smoothed back my hair. ‘Now beti,’ she said, spraying gutka on my face, ‘I’m going to tell what my favourite TV shows are. You tell if I chose right or if I chose wrong.’

  The similarities between Leela and Apsara were so uncanny, I was charmed. Mother and daughter loved to talk, each exclusively about herself. In conversations with Leela if the subject somehow turned to me, Leela would tug at her hangnails in frustration. Was I there to learn about Leela or to be bore? Because if I was going to be bore . . . Leela’s time was money, there were places she could be. PS had, in fact, just called to invite her for a meal at Pure Wedge, she would have me know.

  But if I sidestepped the risk of being shown the door by conceding quickly and always, Apsara never did.

  A conversation between mother and daughter, as I would soon discover, sounded like a peak-hour fight over a bus seat. Leela would snap, ‘Saand!’ Buffalo! Poking a meaty finger into her daughter’s narrow waist Apsara would snort, ‘Huh, marial!’ Sickly!

  And yet, there was a grace inherent in their behaviour. Their hand gestures were as elegant as mudras—classical dance movements that amplify a point or emotion. It was a trait I had assumed Leela had picked up in the dance bar; but seeing her next to Apsara, their fingers in ballet, I realized that genes had something to do with it. Leela had Apsara’s nose, she had her mother’s laugh. It was as inviting as the open doors of Night Lovers on New Year’s Eve.

  Apsara had moved in with Leela just the day before. She had, without warning her daughter, whom she hadn’t seen in almost a year, taken a fast train from Meerut and walked in on Leela while Leela was asleep.

  ‘Mera to heart attack ho gaya!’ said Leela. I had a heart attack!

  Apsara had brought with her several cartons of Meerut specialities including gajak and rewri. She had hoped these gifts, humble though they were and unworthy of her glamorous daughter, would distract Leela’s attention from the two sizeable, rope-tied suitcases they had been crammed into, alongside clothes, utensils, photos in their frames and her favourite vase with its clutch of red plastic roses.

  But Leela missed nothing. ‘Such big-big suitcases!’ she exclaimed. ‘Only for two weeks?’ That was the length of time Apsara usually visited for.

  ‘Only if my daughter throws me out,’ said Apsara. ‘But if she doesn’t,’ she continued quick as can be, ‘mummy will stay on to pamper her. To cook for her and wash her clothes; to do massage for her head and press her legs. To comb her hair one hundred times every night.’

  Leela attempted to demur, ‘You shouldn’t leave your husband alone, mummy. You know that, you know why.’

  ‘It’s been so many months, Leela!’

  ‘But you know what he’s like, mummy!’

  ‘Give me a chance, beti.’

  And so Leela did, if only, as Apsara soon revealed, because Manohar had proved himself to be a Rakshas No. 1. He had broken one of her fingers, imagine it!

  But he had done that before, Leela reasoned impassively. Battered her so many times, their neighbours in the cantonment could only respond with a weary silence when Apsara insisted she was unable to judge distances and had, since she was a child, tripped down stairs as a matter of course.

  So why leave now?

  ‘I can’t knit any more!’ cried Apsara, throwing her large, fat hands in the air. Tears rolled down her face.

  Pathetic, Leela mused. Manohar had pimped Leela, and Apsara had protected his shameful secrets as though they were her own. But God forbid someone mess with her knitting!

  ‘I went to doctor sahib,’ Apsara sobbed. ‘But he said, “It’s too late, Mrs Singh, you are too old. Nothing can be done to straighten this finger. Just manage best you can.”’

  ‘Why did he do it, Leela?’ wailed Apsara. ‘Knitting is my all! Didn’t he know it? The years I spent by his side! And he couldn’t see it?’

  Now Apsara, caring little that we had only just met and if anyone’s presence in her daughter’s flat needed explanation it was mine, launched into her personal history. She put aside her knitting, which she clearly hadn’t given up on despite the difficulties the task presented, and to ensure my full attention, hijacked my wrist. She moved this way and that, edging so close I could smell her gutka breath. I appreciated its minty freshness for it seemed she also enjoyed deep fried snacks.

  ‘Every time my mister gets drunk,’ Apsara said, breathing heavily, ‘he behaves like a buffalo rampaging through a sugarcane field. With God’s grace if I manage to run away all he can do is throw something in my direction—a chair, a stool, the knife he insists on keeping in his back pocket like he’s some hunter-wala! But if he catches me
—Hai Ram!—God says bye-bye and the devil says “Apsaraji, kya haal chaal?” One limb at least goes ka-ra-ck!’

  Leela rolled her eyes. ‘Apsara is fat! And she’s very, very simple.’

  By ‘simple’ Leela meant ‘stupid’, but in a kindly way.

  ‘My mother is simple,’ she would shrug, when I asked why her mother hadn’t taken her away from Manohar. ‘My mother is simple!’ she would comfort herself, when she heard from her brothers that Apsara had spent her money orders on custom-fitted motorcycles and satellite radios for them. Leela’s brothers were unemployed, and hoping to remain so, reminded her in STD calls she paid for that they were praying for her health.

  ‘Buy yourself a box of Shimla apples,’ they would instruct, as though it was on them.

  ‘Eat almonds soaked overnight for breakfast.’

  ‘Drink a quarter litre of cow’s milk every morning.’

  Leela saw through their solicitousness. ‘What will happen to them if I fall ill and cannot dance?’ She stuck her palm out. ‘Madam, paisa do na, do na paisa madam.’ Beggary.

  All of this, Leela wanted me to know—Apsara’s attitude towards her sons, her sons’ stupidity and sloth, who knew, perhaps even Manohar’s antagonism—was a product of Apsara’s weight and girth and the fact that she was unforgivably simple.

  Leela looked at her mother thoughtfully. ‘Since I could see, I saw my father beating my mother. I didn’t know A-B-C, but I knew what it meant when Manohar threw aside his plate. That’s why I ran away. Because he abused her. Once he hit her so hard she fainted. And because she didn’t say No, he abused me; and I knew that if I stayed on, if I didn’t say No, one day he would do the same to my children. Now I see her sons have inherited this quality from their father—they think women were created by God to serve men like them. And that’s what makes me so angry; that she can see what they think of her, she can see it because I can see it and neither of us is blind. And yet she supports them. She loves them. She loves them more than she loves me. But why? Why when I’m the successful one, the one who works, who feeds her, who clothes her, who asks if she has taken her medicine? Why when I’m the one who had the courage to leave for the city? When I’m the one who became a success and made money, makes money!

  Money like a man! No, no, more than a man! I’ll tell you why. Because they’re boys. And I’m a girl. Nothing but a girl. The value of a boy is twice that of a girl—isn’t it so mummy, even if the boy is useless?’

  Apsara’s eyes welled. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘It’s not true, Leela.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m not strong like you.’

  ‘You’re not strong—that’s true! But remember mummy, your sons have wives now. You keep pampering them with my money and so they like you. But what will happen to you if I stop dancing? Will they hold you as close? What will happen, mummy, when I decide that like them I don’t want to work, I want to be taken care of? One day mummy, I will want to be loved. What will happen to you then?’

  ‘Your brothers are good boys, Leela.’

  ‘Don’t empty your thali mummy, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘You’re giving Soniaji the wrong impression about us,’ cried Apsara, throwing down her knitting needles in distress. ‘What will she think? Soniaji, Soniaji ours is a good family. From my side at least we are of a good caste. All our women have either been housewives or in service—cooking, cleaning handi bartan, vagera vagera. No bar background. Not like some bar dancers Leela knows whose grandmothers—grandmothers!—spent their life in Lucknow’s mujra salons. Chee, chee, chee!’

  And still Leela entered this line, I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Leela turned to Apsara wide-eyed. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘What can I say?’ Apsara reddened, looking down at her hands. They were thick with gold rings; presents from Leela.

  ‘Leela was headstrong. She would make her own friends and she had big-big “Haathi Mere Saathi” ears. She heard stories about Bombay, of its dance bars, of how much money you could earn. Imagine it! Money for naach-gana! Leela loved dancing, did you know that? She won every dance competition ever held in school. She was known as “Chhoti Madhuri” after Madhuri Dixit. Accha, remember Ek, do, teen?’

  ‘Ek, do, teen,’ Apsara sang throatily, ‘char, paanch, chhe, saat, aath, nau . . .’

  ‘Mummy!’ Leela screamed, theatrically sticking her fingers into her ears. ‘CHUP!’ Shut up!

  ‘Uff! Okay, fine, I won’t sing. Where was I? Hahn, so one day without telling anybody this girl here ran away!’

  ‘Just like that?’ said Leela, sounding intrigued. ‘Just like that I ran away?’

  Apsara ignored her.

  ‘I ran away because I like to dance, is it?’

  ‘I remember that morning very well even though it was how many years ago, four, five, hahn Leela?’ Apsara picked up her knitting. She was gamely working on a pair of pink booties. ‘Her father had left the house without making a show for the neighbours. What relief! What a change! You know, in those days I would serve him his morning cup of tea trembling. Trembling! Anything could go wrong. The sugar was too little or it was too much, the milk should have come from a cow not a goat, why is the plate white not blue, oh I can’t tell you what a mad rakshas he was. Much worse than now! But that day he was quiet as a mouse. I looked up, “Devi, have you answered my prayers?” But, of course, no luck, and only the day after that he was as he’d always been, shoving me back to front, front to back like I was one of the cows papaji had given him in dowry. In any case that morning he behaved properly and so I went to Leela’s room to tell her the good news. “Who knows,” I was going to say, “maybe our luck has changed?” And I wanted to see her smile. Poor girl, the evening before Manohar did something too dirty. He had insisted on hand-feeding Leela and Leela never liked that sort of bijniss, she’s a very headstrong thing. She spat out the food! Manohar gave her one tight jhap and shoved the food back into her mouth. What did Leela do? She vomited—right into her plate! And then, oh well, you know what happened next for the love of God why are you making me repeat this story? This is not Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana! No need for repeat broadcast!’

  Apsara gnawed through a grumpy pause. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘this girl here vomited and my mister shoved her face into her vomit and wouldn’t let go until she ate everything, until she ate every bit of her own vomit. What was it now let me think? Bread-omelette, hahn Leela? Now I can’t remember, but just you imagine it! Imagine eating that! How I suffered watching her, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I said to myself, “God, wouldn’t it be best to fling your humble servant under a truck? That would be kinder, no?” But Leela’s room was empty. Where was Leela? First I thought maybe she’d gone out to play. After all, remember beti, she was only a child then, in small-small chaddis, not even a woman.’

  ‘My mother is very simple,’ said Leela grimly. ‘Play?’ she glared at Apsara. ‘Play? After Manohar started sending me to those maderchods who would play with me? Who would talk to me? “Dirty girl! Dirty girl! Dirty girl!” That’s all I heard in Meerut mummy and you know it as well as I do—play, it seems! Someone has played a trick on you! Someone has snatched your brains!’

  Apsara’s bottom lip trembled. ‘What do I know? I’m an illiterate village woman. Did I even see your father’s face before I married him?’

  ‘I told you one hundred times not to call him my father. He’s a rakshas!’

  ‘When his parents came to my parents’ home,’ Apsara turned to me, ‘the first thing they asked for, even before they asked for tea, was to see my father’s tractor. To check if it was good enough for their field. They even went into the kitchen to inspect our utensils, the cooking oil. My grandmother was cutting “wedgetables”. They showed her no respect. They looked above her, at the spices. They looked behind her, at our kerosene stove. They looked top to bottom, at the big-big pots in which we had stored our rice and dal and a
tta. But they didn’t look at her. Later my mother-in-law, God bless her soul, she took me aside, to counsel me, I thought. What did she say? “After marriage if we discover you aren’t a kunwari ladki, a virgin, jaan ki kasam,” she said to me, “I will cut your breasts off with the same knife I use to cut the stems of the potato flowers and I will feed them, piece by meat piece to the crows.”’

  Leela exhaled with frustration, ‘Good story mummy.’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ snapped Apsara. ‘If I drop one stitch I’ll have to start all over again.’

  ‘Accha, you know Sheila?’ she turned to me.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Our neighbour, that one who lives there?’ she pointed abstractedly. ‘Short little thing. Wears too big-big gold earrings. Face like a little boy’s. No, wait, face like a rat! She’s a rat face! Have you met her? Have you met rat face?’ Apsara giggled gnomishly.

  She had managed to move on to an entirely new topic. This too, I would learn, was a standard Apsara dodge.

  ‘You don’t know her?’ she said, sounding frustrated. ‘Ajeeb si ladki hai tu. What an odd girl you are. Anyway, Sheila’s third daughter—what did she eat to have three daughters?—she just had a baby. Another girl, imagine it! I said, “Okay, okay, don’t take tension, I’ll make clothes for her.” That way at least they won’t have to buy any. Everything is so expensive these days and babies don’t stay small-small na? Now look at Leela, how big she is! When she was small do you think one banana would have satisfied her? Or one cheeku? Never! Everything had to be two-two, three-three. Banana two-two, cheeku two-two, even egg-fry two-two! What a healthy eater she was by God’s grace!’