House of the Sun

by Meira Chand

  A dreary, bandaged landscape enveloped him as he stepped inside. The grubby pink of Elastoplast spotted the room in a manic way. Sunita stared sulkily from the couch where she lay, with a magazine propped up on her stomach, and a box of sweetmeats beside her. The smell of frying spices hung thickly in the air. On a narrow balcony beyond the kitchen, Mrs Watumal could be seen crouched on a stool before a kerosene stove, stirring the contents of a large pot; leakage from the Murjanis’ bathroom still corroded the walls of the Watumals’ kitchen. Seeing Sham she heaved herself up, waddled into the room and sank into the nearest chair, bringing with her a strong recharge of spicy aroma. Above a dirty housecoat, diamond studs glittered in her ears, another diamond swelled like a crystal wart on a nostril; nothing else in the room seemed as bright. She looked at him assessingly from small eyes, skin glistening from the heat of cooking.

  ‘Nowadays, children are only causing headaches to their parents,’ Mrs Watumal announced and wiped sweat from her neck with a towel; turmeric powder stained her hands. ‘What must the state of your poor mother be now? Why did you not pay full dowry for Lakshmi?’ She sat forward, her legs wide apart beneath the flowered housecoat, her face full of blunt, disapproving inquiry.

  ‘Mummy,’ Lata exclaimed in a desperate tone.

  Sham was grateful for Lata’s indignation. He explained about Japan, and the urgent need of money for his father’s medicines and treatment that had pressured him so much. He explained about the Samtanis’ deviousness in a low, emotional voice. Mrs Watumal listened, shaking her head, and at the end wiped her eyes on her sari, smearing turmeric on to her chin. Lata bit her lips in silence. Only Sunita remained unemotional, staring at them from the sofa, sweetmeat crumbs around her mouth.

  ‘Too much, too much,’ Mrs Watumal moaned softly. ‘But I understand now; you are not really a thief. One day I will take you to our Burmawalla. She will explain; these things are not normal happenings.’

  Mr Watumal appeared from an inner room. He clasped Sham to him in an embrace of damp sympathy, shaking his head sadly in commiseration. ‘Who can tell what destiny has in store for us? Still my own children are waiting to marry. Times are bad.’ Mr Watumal blew his nose emotionally into a large, checked handkerchief.

  ‘Without money we are nowhere. I hear now you have a good job; for other sisters you will provide dowries. You understand your responsibilities, unlike our Mohan,’ Mr Watumal sighed. ‘He thinks he has only to put out his hand to pluck money from thin air. He has advised me to say “hands up”, with my business. He does not think of his sisters, and the effect this shame will have upon their lives. Who will marry them when it is known we are bankrupt?’

  Mrs Watumal gave a wail of pain at her husband’s remark. ‘Are you stirring the vegetable?’ she screamed into the kitchen to the servant, to vent her agitation.

  ‘Why must you always worry about us?’ Lata soothed. ‘I am working now. I can run the factory as well as Mohan. I will never marry.’

  Mrs Watumal gave another wail. ‘What words are these from the lips of a girl? Oh God.’

  ‘Why tempt fate with such talk, daughter?’ Mr Watumal cautioned.

  ‘She wishes me also to stay unmarried.’ Sunita sat up angrily on the couch, the magazine tumbled off her stomach. ‘She thinks I should also work, I can hear it in her voice.’

  Mrs Watumal moaned again in agitation. ‘The usefulness of women is in the bearing of children, and the duties of wife. Add salt now to the dal,’ she screamed again into the kitchen.

  She observed Sunita stretched out upon the sofa, and wished she was not so fat; modern boys preferred slim girls. She stared bitterly at both daughters. That morning Mrs Bhagwandas had offered to approach, on the Watumals’ behalf, an eligible widower brought recently to her notice as a prospective husband for Sunita. Mrs Watumal had been cast into deep despair. It was the offer she had known must eventually come. The day appeared a landmark; one age had passed and another had begun.

  ‘He is a good man,’ Mrs Bhagwandas had said softly. For the first time the word ‘man’, and not ‘boy’ was used. Mrs Watumal had waited in dread.

  ‘He has his own business, own car, own house,’ Mrs Bhagwandas continued. ‘And children are not so young, only the smallest she will have to care for. He is willing to put the elder two in boarding school, she will have to see them only in holidays. He was a good husband to his first wife, he keeps her picture everywhere. He wishes to marry again because of his children.’ Mrs Watumal collapsed in tears.

  ‘It is better now to consider such a marriage,’ Mrs Bhagwandas comforted. ‘Only these kind of offers will come now for Sunita; already she is thirty-one.’

  ‘What age is he?’ Mrs Watumal sobbed.

  ‘He is still young, forty-five,’ Mrs Bhagwandas replied. Mrs Watumal gave a loud cry.

  ‘There have been other offers,’ Mrs Bhagwandas continued in a firm tone of voice. ‘I have not brought them to your notice for they were unsuitable, one was even seventy-five years old. There is still Lata to think of. You must be practical now. There is no other way,’ Mrs Bhagwandas advised. ‘Of course no dowry is needed in such a match,’ she added, averting her eyes.

  This conversation revolved again now in Mrs Watumal’s head. ‘Put the tamarind to soak,’ she screamed to the servant, and then turned upon Lata. ‘Who has put these strange thoughts of work into your head?’ she demanded.

  ‘They are my own thoughts,’ Lata replied, pushing up her chin.

  ‘She thinks she will be a career woman,’ Sunita smirked, biting into a pistachio sweetmeat. ‘She dreams of being Prime Minister one day.’

  ‘You are doing well, daughter,’ Mr Watumal assured Lata in an effort to calm the atmosphere. ‘But the full responsibilities of work are only for men. A woman is not fit for such a job.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lata argued.

  ‘If she can do it, why not?’ Sham agreed, speaking up suddenly, surprised at himself. Lata turned her clear smile upon him. ‘She has done more than Mohan,’ he ventured. The leg of the chair was loose, and wobbled dangerously beneath him.

  Mr Watumal nodded in sad agreement. ‘Mohan is without interest in the business, I cannot force him to it. But Lata cannot run it alone. Soon our condition will be known in the market.’ Mr Watumal’s face folded mournfully, his wife groaned.

  ‘It is about the business that I want to talk,’ Sham announced.

  Mr Watumal listened in silence as Sham spread out Akbar’s plan. Sunita yawned, and settled to her magazine. Mrs Watumal twisted her sari round her fingers and returned to anxious thoughts: a man with three children might want no more; motherhood would be denied Sunita, grandchildren would be denied Mrs Watumal. Only Lata sat forward beside her father, in a concentrated manner. Above her the fronds of the devil’s-tongue plant stretched in a net over walls and ceiling, pinioned by snippets of Mohan’s Elastoplast. Meeting her eyes as he talked, Sham saw their intensity, and realized that the success of the project was as important to Lata as to him. A common desperation seemed to bind them together.

  ‘Why should a man like Akbar Ali be interested in our business?’ Lata asked.

  ‘I know of his past reputation,’ Mr Watumal said. ‘Why should we trust such a man?’

  ‘Now he is in legitimate business. You know what he has done with Rebotco Mills,’ Sham persuaded. Mr Watumal nodded. ‘Soon Rebotco will show a profit,’ Sham added.

  ‘Profit,’ Mr Watumal sighed. ‘That is a word I had forgotten.’ He looked up at a loud ring on the doorbell. ‘Ah, here at last is Mohan. Let us talk with him.’

  Mohan entered, and scowled at the sight of Sham. ‘I told you I was not interested,’ he said angrily to Sham, when Akbar’s offer was explained to him. ‘If you want to help, think about those villas.’

  ‘His idea is good. The terms of the partnership sound fair,’ Lata insisted. She could see the possibilities, a growth she would be part of.

  Mohan sat down and gritted his teeth. ‘So you won’t help with
my project?’ he asked. Sham shook his head.

  ‘Even Homi and Ranjit want to shelve it,’ Mohan burst out. ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Meet with Akbar. We have nothing to lose,’ Lata replied. Her father nodded. Mohan looked up and scowled again, but Sham felt the strength of Lata’s decision and noticed the brightness of her eyes.

  Mrs Watumal gave a deep sigh, immersed in her thoughts, deaf to the talk of business about her, wrestling with decisions of her own. There seemed no choice. She must tell Mrs Bhagwandas she would consider the widower, and ask her to find another for Lata. She would consult Burmawallah on the appropriateness of the matter, and ask for some help in breaking the news to Mr Watumal. It would not be easy to persuade him to what point their daughters’ fortunes had sunk.

  Lata returned with Sham to the seventh floor, sent in concern by Mrs Watumal with a bowl of thick, nourishing lentils and spinach made by her that morning. The Pumnanis’ rooms were dim, and full of the lingering odours of pickle, incense and antiseptic. Lata embraced Rekha, took Padma’s hand, and put her arm about Veena. The two girls clung to her as she sat upon the bed between them. From the far end of the room, behind the screen, old Kishin Pumnani moaned.

  ‘He has understood, although we have told him nothing,’ whispered Rekha, looking towards her husband. ‘All day he calls Lakshmi’s name.’

  There was, in these sad circumstances, no need to refresh a guest, but Veena got up on an order from Rekha and went to make some tea. Lata followed her to the kitchen with Padma, ignoring all protests, and carried in the tray herself. She knelt before Rekha who crouched on a stool, swollen with tears at new sympathy, and pressed a cup into her hands.

  ‘Drink,’ she encouraged. ‘Your strength is needed for them all.’

  Rekha’s lips trembled, but she took the tea. Lata placed a cup beside Chachi, drawing up a small table beside the string bed. Chachi raised herself with a sigh and wiped her eyes on her veil, squinting up at Lata. Before she handed Sham his cup, Lata stirred it carefully.

  He noticed the deftness of her movements, and the gentleness of her touch. She helped Chachi to a sitting position on the string bed, and tipped the tea into the saucer for the old woman to slurp as she wished. The room seemed to gather about her. Her solidness was a comfort, its effect visible upon them all.

  He was aware of these same qualities when he saw her again in the factory; the quiet issue of orders, the quick appraisals and decisions. Her hands moved, as he had imagined, with sureness amongst the sheaves of paper. This efficiency seemed incongruous in the sluggish factory.

  He had brought Akbar to see the place, to make a first assessment, but suddenly Sham was unsure of his own judgement. Dust and heat stifled, workers were few and machines stiff with disuse. Rusting metal, stacked parts and drums of chemicals stood desolate. Looking down from the window of a small office at the top of a flight of stairs, the factory shed seemed a wasteland, spread out below, filthy and obsolete. Sham wondered if he had been right to present it as a proposition to Akbar. The state of the place was nothing like Rebotco Mills, which had been in functioning order even at its lowest ebb, and easy to resuscitate.

  But behind him in the small office where Lata had established herself, there was arrangement and briskness and the cool of air-conditioning. Mohan sat glumly sprawled in a chair; it was Lata who explained things to Akbar. Mr Watumal, like his son, seemed almost unaware of what was happening. Lata opened books and pointed to lists, explained the complexities of entries, and a past of bitter mistakes. Her father looked down at his feet at this frankness.

  Akbar joined Sham at the window, and stared for a moment at the desolation below, before turning again to the room. ‘This is a very great mess,’ he reported to Mr Watumal. ‘This is not what I expected,’ he announced to Sham.

  ‘It is not as bad as it seems,’ Lata argued, stepping forward. Akbar took no notice of her. Mr Watumal and Mohan said nothing.

  ‘In Rebotco only management was needed to make money. Here, much money must be put in to start up again. These machines are very old,’ Akbar replied, addressing Mohan, who looked away in embarrassment.

  ‘I have it all worked out,’ answered Lata. She held out diagrams and papers to Akbar. ‘It will not take so much to get the place working again. And the same machines, with small adaptations, could also be turned to other uses, to produce a greater variety of things.’

  Akbar took the sheets of paper from Lata, turning again to Mohan and Mr Watumal. ‘I will study these. Give me also your account books. I need to see everything, otherwise I cannot evaluate.’

  Mohan roused himself from the chair, but Lata stepped forward immediately with a pile of ledgers. Akbar took them with a nod.

  ‘You have understood the terms of partnership? You will be working with Sham, under my direction,’ Akbar told Mohan, who nodded without enthusiasm.

  ‘There is also Lata,’ Sham reminded him. Lata looked at him gratefully.

  ‘Yes, a secretary is needed,’ Akbar nodded.

  ‘She is not a secretary, she has been the manager,’ Sham clarified. ‘I think she should continue.’

  ‘She is a woman,’ Akbar announced, looking hard at Lata for the first time. ‘I have never had a woman in my business.’

  ‘She knows her job. If it were not for her even this much would not be working,’ Sham asserted. ‘Mohan has been involved in other business until now,’ he added hastily.

  Akbar continued to scrutinize Lata, and then turned to Sham. ‘Do as you wish. I have put the project in your hands, but first let me evaluate.’ He gestured to the books.

  Mr Watumal gave a sudden emotional sniff, and took out his handkerchief. ‘Times are bad. Once we were proud of this place.’ He blew his nose loudly.

  ‘Now you are retiring,’ Akbar comforted. ‘Now is the time to give young people a chance. But you see about a husband for her,’ Akbar advised with a look at Lata. She turned away to hide her fury.

  *

  ‘Don’t take any notice of Akbar’s comments,’ Sham told Lata later, when she exploded in anger to him. ‘You are needed in the factory; you know everything. You are valuable.’ She looked at him in surprise; nobody had called her valuable before.

  Mohan was already coming to terms with the idea. ‘If Akbar really will put in the money, it might work. What we need is foreign collaboration. This is the thing nowadays, it gives you an edge in the market to have a foreign name attached to you. We should think of that,’ Mohan added, already in flight once Akbar had gone.

  ‘Akbar has not yet even agreed,’ Sham cautioned.

  ‘He lives in the clouds,’ Lata retorted.

  ‘And what about you? All these ideas about being a career woman. You know a husband will be found for you, sooner or later,’ Mohan replied.

  ‘No,’ Lata shouted. ‘How many times have I told you? I’m not going to marry now. Do you know what it’s like to be shown around to family after family, year after year, only to be always rejected? You can’t imagine the humiliation.’

  ‘What other way is there?’ Mohan shrugged.

  *

  Sham dreaded the silence now in his home. It was not the tranquillity of dusk or early morning, or the somnolence of the sun-filled afternoon. This silence was of something sucked empty. The wordlessness swelled and ebbed about him, in the moaning of his father, knowing nothing yet knowing everything, and in the shapeless ache of his mother. On her string bed old Chachi sat rooted in squashed, wet grief. Padma and Veena moved like sleepwalkers, lips pursed to suppress the inexpressible. He was deadened beneath their weight, sitting cross-legged on his bed behind a shield of reports and accounts, shuffling them aimlessly, seeing nothing, battling with his own despair. Lata had not come again, but he still saw her in the room. There was nothing to remember in the plain, solid shape of her. He did not understand how she remained, and came persistently before him. Behind the screen his father moaned. Rekha heaved herself up, slow and heavy, all motivation gone. He put aside his
papers and followed her.

  ‘He needs to be turned,’ she said. He lifted his father at her instruction, easing him on to his side, holding up the crumpled shirt while she rubbed his back with alcohol. The fumes smarted in his nostrils. The old man was without weight, light as a dry, hollow moth. He looked up and caught Sham’s fingers in a feeble grip. His neck was like a stringy plucked chicken, the sounds formed deep in his throat.

  ‘Lakshmi. Why?’ he asked. Sham shook his head. He pressed his father’s hand and stroked the thin, white hair, rubbed bald in patches by the pillow.

  ‘Why?’ his father managed again.

  ‘Money,’ he whispered, turning away. The old man moaned once more, familiar with the lifelong pain of that word.

  Sitting down with his papers again, Sham was filled with an uncomfortable revelation. His thoughts until now, when not with Lakshmi, were all of Padma and Veena. Before long money must be found once more for a dowry; Padma was only a year younger than Lakshmi. But suddenly, standing over his father, he had realized with a shock that his mother was old. In these last days, age had settled indelibly upon her; he knew it would now never lift. He had not thought of his home as a house of old people but, with his mother’s collapse, he saw its sudden transformation. He himself needed a wife, to care for his parents. Where was this suitable woman to be found? Without money and with only the stench of a bad reputation, who would offer their daughters to him?

  Rani flashed through his mind. He saw her sitting upon his bed, staring at the peeling walls, tearful, refusing food, demanding cajoling and attention, another child for Rekha to care for. He pushed away the impossible dream; he did not even want her. It was Lata, gentle and sensible, that he now saw, who had already fitted herself into the room. She was several years older than him – such a difference in ages could not be considered – and she had been vehement about even the thought of marriage. She would not thank him for a houseful of ailing old people, and a life of incomprehensible thrift.