House of the Sun

by Meira Chand

  ‘Being noble and honourable and not wishing to ruin you?’ Pinky remarked, her voice small because of her fast constricting mouth. ‘If only he would kiss you. You can tell immediately they kiss you how experienced they are. It’s always so much better with an older man!’ Pinky spoke casually. She had once been kissed by one of her father’s friends and, although she had run from him in horror, she always referred to the incident as an enlightening experience.

  ‘Do you think I should tell him then, how I feel?’ Rani asked.

  ‘You mean he doesn’t know?’ Pinky screamed. The drying mask had cracked from talking, bits crumbled from her face down the front of her blouse. Rani shook her head.

  ‘There has never been the right moment to tell him,’ she explained.

  ‘You have to make the opportunity,’ Pinky said in exasperation. ‘That’s what life is like.’

  *

  There was no excuse that would allow her to hang about waiting for Sham in the small, rutted courtyard of Sadhbela, filled with parked cars, squatting servants and stray skeletal dogs. Nor could she sit aimlessly upon the low wall across the road bordering the beach, prey to beggars, lepers, or the pestering of the hutment children. Instead, she went down to Dr Subramaniam’s surgery; it was a protected-enough environment in which to wait. To her relief Sham appeared at his usual time. He worked half-day on Saturday, and returned home for a late lunch. She saw him walking up the road to Sadhbela from the bus stop, and ran from the surgery to meet him. She led him beyond Sadhbela towards the hutments, walking slightly ahead of him in an agitated way.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, catching up and walking beside her. ‘I haven’t had my lunch yet.’ There was impatience in his voice.

  ‘Let’s go down there, it’s more private,’ she said when they reached the dhobi ghat. Before he could answer she turned down a path to the rocky beach, slowing her pace to peer into the low doors of the makeshift hovels that lined the way. An old crone in a magenta sari squatted outside a hut, her earlobes hanging down in long flaps of loose skin, stretched by the weight of her silver earrings. She grinned toothlessly and touched the tattoo on her forehead. In the hut behind her a child lay sleeping; there was the cool green reflection of weeds beyond the hole of a window.

  ‘I shouldn’t mind doing social work,’ Rani said suddenly, ‘but Mummy won’t hear of it. She says you have to go to such awful places to do it. She thinks she does her share, organizing committees to raise funds for the blind or orphanages. All she does is put on her best sari, and drink orange juice at some charity party at the Taj. I hate my mother,’ Rani said.

  ‘Is this what you’ve come here to tell me?’ he asked.

  It was not easy picking their way over the uneven rocks, strewn with a mass of sheets, towels and cotton saris. Before the hutments the laundry consolidated on a slope like a mound of debris. The tide had already been out some hours, the rocks were dry and, between the washing, spotted with fresh excrement. Upon a stretch of pebbles some chickens ran about.

  She had turned down to the beach on an impulse. The sea, pounding beyond the rocks, had seemed wild and romantic and the kind of place in which to tell him what she wanted. She had not expected the profusion of washing that was suddenly revealed, nor the sickening mounds of excrement, nor the figures who still squatted amongst the rocks, relieving themselves. She held her handkerchief to her nose against the smell. At last she reached the sea, where spray dampened the rocks, free at last of laundry and filth. He came up beside her, walking carefully on the slippery stones. The air was salty and fresh. She drew a deep breath, turning towards him.

  He was standing close to her. The beach behind them was alive with activity, figures moved amongst the rocks, gathering up or laying out washing. Beyond the hutments were the pink domes of the crematorium temple and the corrugated metal roofs, painted a deeper pink, above the pyres. A backdrop of smart apartments soared up towards the sky. At this distance even Sadhbela appeared altered in appearance, luxurious in comparison to the ragged hutments clustered at its base. The sun glittered upon the windows of her own home, like a crowning flame atop Sadhbela. It crossed her mind that they were vulnerable to a thousand eyes but, turning back again to the sea, she and Sham seemed encompassed by another entity, as if they were no part of the world behind them. It seemed then the most private of places within which to reveal her feelings. But the words appeared locked deep within her, she found her hands were shaking.

  ‘What is it? I must get back,’ he said, impatient with hunger.

  In desperation, and for want of those words that refused to appear, she threw her arms suddenly about him, pressing her mouth upon his. He staggered against her weight, his lips closing before her in an uncommunicative way. It was not what she had thought a kiss would be. She kept her eyes tightly closed. She was aware of him suddenly loosening her hold about his neck. She opened her eyes in surprise, unable to interpret the emotions in his face.

  ‘I think we had better go back,’ he said.

  ‘Not yet, please. We must talk.’ Tears of disappointment rushed up in her.

  ‘There is nothing to talk about. This is crazy,’ he answered, already turning away. ‘It is easier to get to the road from over there.’ He pointed to a natural path of pebbles a distance away, that would bring them near Walkeshwar Tank. He began to make his way towards it, scrambling from rock to rock. Rani followed, tears streaming down her cheeks. The spume hit the rocks below her, curdling in tributaries, running in towards the land.

  ‘I love you,’ she shouted at last. He did not seem to hear. The words left her lips, were torn by the wind and thrown away behind her.

  *

  There were times when Mrs Murjani journeyed the few hundred yards up the road, to one or another of the temples about Walkeshwar Tank, and viewed the hutments and the dhobi ghat from the bunker-like safety of her car. Now the spindly heels of her sandals tottered over the uneven road, and the stench from the moat of mud before the hovels near Sadhbela’s gates hit her bluntly. The sight of her in a green georgette sari embroidered with pearly beads, gold chains swinging about her neck, ears and wrists ablaze with diamonds, quietened the unruly, thin-limbed children pushing the rusty frames of wheel-less tricycles through the mud. They turned to stare, and made no attempt to waylay Mrs Murjani with their outstretched palms.

  Binoculars tumbling to the floor, she had run from her home, and urged Gopal to speed in his lift, babbling incoherently about Rani and the dhobi ghat. Gopal’s lethargy left him before such prospective excitement. He would have rushed along with her had he been able to leave his lift. Instead, he shouted to the watchman, and clanked his cage as fast as he could, back up the shaft to Mr Hathiramani.

  As she hurried along the road, the tiny picture in the binoculars came before Mrs Murjani again. She was sure now she had been mistaken, and that it had been Sham who reached out to grab hold of Rani, pressing her unwillingly against him. How had Rani gone with him on to those rocks, so far from the shore? Was it the first time or had she accompanied him before, and if so what might he already not have done to her? Mrs Murjani drew a sharp breath at these thoughts. If anything had happened, if any suspicion leaked out, who then would marry such a girl? Mrs Murjani, panting hard, quickened her pace. She judged she must be along the right part of the beach. A gate was suddenly beside her, a path led downwards.

  Sweat poured off her and her sari straggled untidily. She kept her eyes low so as not to stumble on the steep slope. There was a strange, sickly-sweet smell and the odour of smoke. A sudden roar jerked her gaze up to meet the dark, wide-boned face of a small angry man in khaki shorts, hopping about upon bandy legs before her. Behind him, smouldering still in a high metal cradle, were the half-burned remains of a funeral pyre. Mrs Murjani looked wildly about, and saw she had turned in by mistake at the gates of the crematorium. She backed away, her heart pounding.

  She hurried on again. A colony of squalid houses lined the road. She passed a bald man in a dhoti sit
ting beneath a tree. In the branches above him hung a bicycle. Two dogs copulated in the middle of the road with high-pitched barks of excitement. A barber shaved a client seated on a stone. Small, booth-like shops painted bright blue revealed dark recesses, filled with provisions and flies. Soon she reached the dhobi ghat, and a path to the rocks she recognized as being the beach of her destination.

  The path was stony and lined with hovels. Behind lay the dhobi ghat itself, great wooden vats of bleach and starch grouped about a well. Half-naked men scrubbed mounds of laundry, swinging soapy bundles over their shoulders, slapping them down on the stone. The rhythmic swat of beaten washing filled Mrs Murjani’s head. Old rickety houses, propped up with poles, surrounded the well and appeared in imminent danger of disintegration, but women still gossiped on balconies, old men squatted in the shade. Before the houses a number of white enamel bathtubs stood about at odd angles, as if beached by the tide. Washing lines strung the area with the spiritless bodies of shirts. Mrs Murjani hurried on only to face further laundry, spread over the rocks on the beach.

  ‘Rani,’ she called. ‘Rani.’ There was no sign of her daughter or of Sham Pumnani.

  She could not proceed in her shoes and so took them off, and gathering up her sari began to step from rock to rock. A terrible smell assailed her and, looking down, she saw fresh excrement about her feet. In horror she stepped back upon her sari, too long without her shoes, and pulled out several pleats. It dragged about her, trailing over the filth and through the malodorous pools of water, left in places by the tide.

  ‘Rani. Rani.’ The breeze lifted her voice in plea.

  On the far rocks a man waved, pointing down the beach. Mrs Murjani, concentrating on her balance, picked her way towards him. The man was naked to the waist and his green checked lungi, wet as if he had stepped from a bath, clung revealingly about him. Mrs Murjani stepped back in shock at the quality of his smile; he looked fixedly at her breasts. She saw her sari had fallen away, to reveal the full, thrusting shape of her body beneath her blouse. A hot flush of shame passed through her, she pulled the garment up tightly about her. He pointed again down the beach and turned back to the shore; Mrs Murjani was left alone.

  The sea, spitting in anger as it hit the rocks, reared up suddenly in a great swell of spume. It would thrash her to bits as easily as the washermen slapped their laundry down on the stones. A shiver passed through her. Looking down at the churning surf made her dizzy, as did the stench from shore, and the wind and sun beating upon her. She stumbled, and a sharp corner of rock cut her knee. She discovered she carried only one shoe, and that her sari was pulled almost free of her waist. She bunched it back into the drawstring of her petticoat.

  At last Mrs Murjani reached a break in the rocks, and a path of pebbles. The rocks curved suddenly landwards, halting further progress. She began to walk towards a far row of houses, the pebbles uncomfortable beneath her bare feet, her sari trailing behind her. Turning her head she caught sight of Sadhbela, far away in a backdrop of tall buildings. She felt a sudden stab of fear, looking at the wild sea and the poverty surrounding her, at the precariousness of existence. Even the sun, alive on the windows of her home, seemed at this distance a tenuous light against the malodorous density of the town, easily extinguished. What if fate suddenly cast her permanently adrift like this, bereft of every privilege? Already once, without warning, destiny had made her a refugee, and imposed upon her deprivations she had almost forgotten. Mrs Murjani began to shiver from the remembered horrors of the past, and the clear depth of this new vision. Fate might only be waiting to push her over the edge of its dark abyss, where she would fall without an end. She drew a determined breath; such a thing could never happen to someone of her status. For a moment trauma had unhinged her mind. Mrs Murjani stepped forward with new firmness. At last she reached a flight of steps between a row of grimy houses, and came out on the road before Walkeshwar Tank.

  13

  Sham and Rani had stood at the same junction some minutes before. The great tank of water stretched out below them, cool and deep, overhung with peepal and banyan trees, dilapidated temples and the homes of priests. A seller of betel nut squatted on the narrow ledge of his booth, a picture of Shiva pinned to a wall, fresh betel leaves in a bowl of water. Sham turned in the direction of Sadhbela, but Rani pulled at his sleeve, her face tearstained.

  He hesitated, resolution failing. ‘Let’s sit down there.’ He pointed to the steps that ran about the tank. She seated herself on a plinth, rolling up her jeans and swinging her feet over the edge to paddle them in the water. He sat down cross-legged beside her.

  ‘I can’t help how I feel about you,’ she said. ‘Are you angry with me for telling you?’ She concentrated on her feet. He shook his head.

  ‘Don’t you like me even a little bit?’ she persisted. He watched the ripples, stirred by the movement of her feet, widen and spread out before them.

  He had no wish to hurt her, and he could not deny she attracted him. On the rocks, when she had thrown herself so suddenly against him, he had stepped back to save himself from falling. The distraction of the water, lashing dangerously below him, took precedence in that moment over the closeness of Rani; it allowed a second of cold thought. He saw the publicness of their surroundings, and the extravagance of her action. His thought was of the need to save her from herself, but it was not easy to resist her. He had made his way ahead over the rocks, needing to distance himself, the taste of her mouth and the pressure of her body, to which at the moment he had been numb, spreading fiercely through him. Yet, part of himself stayed temperate and observant; he was not in love with her. Her feelings for him were no more than a childish conflagration.

  ‘You’re the only person who understands me. I want to be with you, always. I’m not going to be pushed by my parents into anything I don’t want to do,’ she threatened.

  ‘If we were together always, I don’t think we would like each other long,’ he said.

  ‘How can you say that? You don’t understand. I love you.’ It was easier to say the words a second time, they flooded her with recklessness. She wanted to hear him say them too. ‘Why won’t you be honest with me? Why don’t you stop fighting your feelings, and tell me you love me too?’ she encouraged.

  ‘We come from different worlds,’ he said firmly. Even that first fleeting temptation to manipulate her infatuation, to enter her world by deceit, no longer occurred to him. He saw his own direction now. It was as his father had said; a decent life from honestly earned money was the real importance. He had no wish now to be part of the Murjanis’ glutted world. He preferred his own horizon.

  ‘What does that matter?’ she pouted, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘You just won’t admit things.’

  ‘Rani …’ he sighed, exasperated.

  *

  The problem of her lack of shoes became immediately apparent for Mrs Murjani, once she left the beach. The road about Walkeshwar Tank was crowded and stony. She bent to put on her one shoe, and found the foul odour she thought emanated from the surroundings was in fact from her sari, smeared with the filth of the beach. She gave a cry, hobbling forward on one spindly heel. It was as if the dhobis, in conspiracy, had deliberately daubed her with their humiliating dirt.

  Below her the water was green and still, reflective of ancient peepal trees. Mrs Murjani’s only thought was to be cleansed of the filth polluting her. She began to descend the steep steps about the tank on her one thin heel; the water had the legendary power to cleanse more than the droppings of humanity. This was not the best hour for prayer and ablution; only a few women and children bathed on the steps. Pigeons and chickens strutted about, a man slept beneath a large, black umbrella. Bits of paper, flower petals and banana skins floated on the water, crowding up to border the steps like soft, sucking lips. Mrs Murjani stepped forward to submerge her feet and her sari. The sun was in her eyes but, squinting across the tank, she suddenly saw Rani in her yellow shirt. Beside her sat Sham Pumnani.


  ‘Rani.’ Mrs Murjani raised her voice. Rani looked up and, recognizing her mother, her face filled quickly with a mixture of emotions, all without welcome for Mrs Murjani.

  ‘Rani. I am here.’ Mrs Murjani waved to reassure her daughter. She threw Sham Pumnani a look which channelled all her venom. He smiled politely and did not retreat in guilt. His insolence left her speechless. She returned her attention to Rani, holding out her arms for recovery of her daughter. She prayed she was not too late, that Rani had suffered no disgrace.

  ‘It’s all right, daughter. He won’t harm you now,’ Mrs Murjani called. Rage twisted Rani’s face, passing through her like a shudder.

  ‘Oh God, how I hate you. Why can’t you leave me alone?’ The words carried across the tank. Mrs Murjani dropped her arms to her sides in shock, and tottered back. She could not take in the implication of the dreadful words, shouted at her in a public place, from the mouth of her own daughter. Once more the scene in the binoculars appeared, showing her an image now of Rani, throwing herself upon Sham Pumnani, who steadied himself against the onslaught. Mrs Murjani shook her head as if to wake herself from a dream. She heard a shout and saw, high above her, peering anxiously over the steps, the familiar faces of Mr Hathiramani and Sadhbela’s watchman. There was the slamming of a car door, and then the face of the driver behind them. At once Mrs Murjani felt new strength and flung her arm forward authoritatively, pointing at Sham.

  ‘He has misled her,’ Mrs Murjani screamed.

  ‘It’s not true,’ Rani yelled, clenching her fists. She bent to say something to Sham, taking his arm she tried to drag him to his feet. He shook his head. She turned to look furiously at her mother before running off along the steps, to the far end of the tank.

  ‘Rani,’ Mrs Murjani cried. She forgot the single heel upon which she balanced and took an ungainly step, tumbling suddenly forwards. She saw the rough pitted flagstones rush up to meet her, and the sharp cutting edge of one step, then another, rolling towards her. There was a sudden pain in her head and the sight of the filthy debris on the water, opening to receive her, before the darkness came.