by Kunal
her till he finally asked her to rub her palms briskly, cup her eyes, open them gently and sit up.
Noni Appa did not move, so Anand ji repeated his instructions once again. He peered at her and
thought that she had perhaps fallen asleep. He leaned over and clapped his hands sharply, right
near her face, to wake her up.
Noni Appa opened her eyes with a start, and when Anand ji asked her if she had fallen asleep, she
kept looking at him curiously. It was only a few minutes later that they both realized that Noni
Appa’s hearing aid had fallen out as she had shifted to a supine position and she had not heard a
single word after ‘Try to keep your mind blank as you lie down and close your eyes.’
‘All this time I have been lying flat on the towel thinking that this is such a torturous experience.
Hai Allah, the mind is also a strange thing, the minute someone asks you to keep the slate clean,
squiggly lines of white chalk begin to appear, one line running into another in chaotic whirls,’ she
laughed, after firmly fixing her hearing aid and adjusting the small dial to get rid of a high-pitched
drone.
They began discussing yoga and meditation as they stood up, with Anand ji explaining, ‘That’s
what yoga is meant to do, bring order to that mental chaos.’ Noni Appa walked towards the
wrought iron chairs a few steps away and sat down heavily, feeling slightly dizzy. She suffered
from low blood pressure and wanted a cup of tea. She didn’t know if it was the milk or just the
sugar but it always seemed to do the trick.
She called out to Bhondu and was surprised to see the other helper, Tito, open the French windows
and come out into the garden. ‘Arrey Tito, you are back, how are you feeling now?’ Noni Appa
asked. He had been with the family for over twenty years and had recently taken a few weeks off to
go back to his village, complaining of pain in multiple joints. Tito replied, ‘First class, Noni Appa,
now I am fine.’
‘Allah ka shukar hai!’ said Noni Appa, asking him about his treatment. ‘I went to a Baba in my
village, Appa, he muttered some prayers and hit me a few times with his broom. Bas, in five days
all sickness gone.’
Noni Appa shook her head incredulously and asked him to fetch some tea and a small snack. With
a quick gesture, motioning Anand ji to sit down on the white chair, she said, ‘I am going to tell
Binni that next time she should just mutter a few choice curses and hit Tito with her vacuum
cleaner, I am sure he will get better even quicker.’
Anand ji, a generous smile lighting up his face at Noni Appa’s quip, protested, ‘That may not
work! He got better because he believes in prayers and his Baba, all mind over matter.’
Tito got the tea on a brightly polished silver tray, with floral teacups, white embroidered napkins
and a plate filled with cucumber and tomato sandwiches. Noni Appa quickly drained her cup of tea
and while Anand ji was getting ready to leave, dusting the crumbs of the cucumber sandwich off
his kurta, she rummaged inside her cavernous grey handbag and pulled out a pack of cards.
She began laying them out on one side of the table, getting ready to play solitaire after Anand ji’s
departure. Noni Appa had decided to wait for her sister, preferring to have an early dinner with
Binni instead of returning to her empty apartment and eating with her plate precariously balanced
on her knees, as she flipped through old issues of Femina and Reader’s Digest that she scoured
from the numerous raddiwalas at Juhu market.
To her surprise, Anand ji leaned across the table and asked, ‘Do you play little spider solitaire or
the one where you reshuffle the deck?’ Noni Appa looked up in surprise and asked, ‘Do you play
solitaire as well?’ Anand ji nodded with a smile.
After retiring from his job in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s garden department he had
found it increasingly difficult to adjust to being at home for most of the day. The three classes he
taught, two in the morning and one in the evening, were the only respite from a home filled with the
high-pitched squeals of his wife and the non-stop commotion caused by her relatives who kept
walking through his door, like it was the revolving entrance of a motel. The incessant barking of
his two small Lhasa apsos, Gulab and Jamun, added to this chorus.
For Anand ji, sitting by himself in the bedroom with a game of solitaire spread over the printed
bed sheet, headphones plugged into his Walkman that invariably played Indian classical music as
he hummed along, seemed the only way he could find refuge in his own home.
‘Do you also play rummy?’ asked Noni Appa. And Anand ji, who was reluctant to return to his
noisy house as much as Noni Appa wanted to delay returning to her soundless one, nodded once
more.
Noni Appa picked up the half-spread deck from the table, shuffled the cards and dealt thirteen
cards each.
Under the slanting rays of the setting sun, they sat quietly, playing game after game on the rickety
glass table in the middle of the overgrown garden crowded with coconut trees.
‘Tu koro kaiyeti, what are you doing, Appa?’ A nasal voice pierced the air. Binni was back,
clutching two shopping bags from Kala Niketan, the sari shop next to Sahakari Bhandar.
Noni Appa shifted her glance from the cards gracefully fanned out in her right hand and said, ‘I am
reading tea leaves and predicting Anand ji’s future. What do you think, Binni, playing rummy, you
want to join in? And where were you all this time, you missed class also?’
Binni walked up to the table and frowned at her sister while breezily apologizing to Anand ji, who
stood up at her approach, greeting her with a ‘Namaste, Mrs Shroff’. Binni narrated a long-winded
story about a dog and a bicycle and Shamim, none of which explained the sari-filled packets in her
hand.
Anand ji merely said, ‘Please telephone my house in the afternoons if there is any change in the
class schedule,’ and when Noni Appa bid both Binni and him to sit down so that they could finish
the ongoing round of rummy, he played one last hand and got up to leave. Before Anand ji went, he
said, ‘Shubh ratri and do not forget to practise the first series of asanas before the next class on
Monday.’
The two old ladies sat at the dinner table eating keema patties, a bowl of yellow dal without salt
for Binni, who unlike her sister suffered from high blood pressure, a bowl of the regular variety
for Noni Appa, along with rice and homemade mango pickle.
Noni Appa asked Bhondu for some sliced onions sprinkled with lime and red chilli powder and in
between bites she said, ‘You are eating mutton today, better remember to take your Kayam Churna
tonight, otherwise you won’t go to the bathroom for days on end and then you become so grumpy!’
Binni nodded and Noni Appa continued, ‘Why did you miss Anand ji’s class today? It normally
takes you five sessions to get fed up of something. Do the yoga properly, Binni. Anand ji says all
your stomach problems, blood pressure, everything will come under control.’
‘You seem mighty impressed with that young fellow! Anand ji this and Anand ji that, playing cards
with him also,’ Binni teased.
Noni Appa shook her head. ‘What nonsense comes out of your mouth, Binni! First of all, he is
sixty-three, which is
hardly young and…’
Binni interrupted, ‘But younger than you, Appa! And what you told me a few days ago about that
dentist, wait...let me remember, yes! And you, Appa, are two years older than Allah Miya himself,
so compared to you, he is a young fellow,’ and seeing her sister quiet, she laughed triumphantly.
‘Now what happened, you are not giving me any response only.’
Noni Appa looked at her sister affectionately, the right corner of her mouth twitching with a smile.
Little Binni, she had always been like this – brash, brazen, flirtatious, teasing her more reserved
elder sister, match-making her with dozens of boys who frequented the Jamatkhana when they were
young, and once even with poor Peer Saab despite his snowy white beard.
Their life together had been filled with banter, silly jibes and jests, which tragedies, deaths and
creaking bones had left unchanged. When she wrote duas in her book, she prayed for Binni’s long
life more than her own, because if not for her sister, her life would be an arid desert without any
laughter-filled oasis.
***
By the time November gave way to a surprisingly cool December with the markets selling
sweaters and shawls due to the unexpected cold wave, Noni Appa, Binni and the yoga teacher had
slowly settled into a comfortable routine. Anand ji would arrive promptly every Monday and
Thursday at four-thirty in the evening, though Binni would be missing half the time and threatened
to discontinue every alternate class.
Her sister would then convince her, ‘Get through this class first, Binni, then we will see about the
rest.’ They would finish their hour-long class and Noni Appa and Anand ji would play
innumerable rounds of rummy, sitting at the glass table outside.
Sometimes Noni Appa would raid her sister’s bar, calling out, ‘Arrey Bhondu, one small whisky
and three cubes of ice!’ and at other times like Anand ji she too would be content with a fresh lime
soda.
Binni, who found both cards and card players dreary, joined them only on the rare occasions that
Danish Bhai, the video library fellow, was late in sending her video cassettes of her favourite
Pakistani plays like Buddha Ghar Pe Hai and Bakra Qiston Pe.
Anand ji would leave around seven and Noni Appa would stay back at her sister’s for an early
dinner before getting into her dented car and slowly driving home.
***
In the first week of January, Mallika came to visit Noni Appa from London. She got her mother and
aunt a suitcase filled with imported goodies: chocolates, perfume, hair dye and of course the one
thing that every Indian woman pesters her NRI relatives for, undergarments from Marks and
Spencer.
Binni eagerly took the coveted items from Mallika and dramatically declared, ‘These British are
really third-rate people, I tell you, their only saving grace lies in their first-rate bras. Their
balcony-style Marks and Sparks gives such good support and pushes everything properly in place,
straight from basement level to perfect third-floor height!’
That Friday, Binni dragged Mallika to the Jamatkhana, hoping some nice Ismaili boy would
prostrate himself at her feet. In the car, Binni was chuckling away. ‘Malla, you know, when your
father passed away, Appa was not that old, just close to fifty. She would go to the Jamatkhana in
her tightly draped sari and her pink lipstick...’
Noni Appa interrupted, ‘Again this story, Binni! How many times!’
Binni laughed and ignoring her sister’s protests continued, ‘Arrey let me say what I want. Haan, so
all the men in the Jamatkhana would look at her and keep trying to say “Ya Ali Madad” and then
when they would go completely out of control, they would find sources to...’
Mallika giggled. ‘What does out of control mean, Binni Masi? What would they do, explode in
their pants?’ And Noni Appa, horrified, almost banged into the autorickshaw that had suddenly
halted in front of her.
‘Chee, not dirty like that. They would send proposals, that’s all, and after that your mother, always
such a prude, with her constant “No Binni, I don’t want to get a bad reputation” would never even
greet them back,’ said a giggling Binni. ‘But I think things have changed, if you really want to know
what out of control is, Malla, then you have to look at your mother. These days she is panting all
over that yoga teacher, her boyfriend Anand ji!’
And imitating her sister with a wobbly falsetto voice, Binni continued, ‘“Anand ji, have a whisky
today, the weather is perfect for it!” Turning that poor vegetarian Gujju bhai to an alcoholic, that
also on my whisky.’
Mallika exclaimed, ‘Mom, you didn’t tell me all this!’ Noni Appa, wanting to strangle her sister,
said, ‘Ya Allah! It is nothing like that. Yes, I offered him a drink and so sometimes he has one now
when we play. Your masi hates cards so what should I do, just keep playing by myself?’
But the good-natured ribbing in the car didn’t stop and, since Noni Appa could not turn her hearing
aid off while driving, she just had to bear with her family, her eyebrows raised in exasperation,
shaking her head at their sly digs.
That evening when the mother and daughter sat together in their balcony, Mallika asked, ‘Mom, is
this Anand ji thing really true? You can tell me, I won’t get upset. Honestly, it will reassure me. As
it is I worry about you being lonely here, how many times have I told you to come with me to
London, but you never listen!’
Noni Appa shook her head. ‘It is nothing like that, Binni talks nonsense! Is this any age to have
boyfriends, you tell me? He is just a friend and it is nice to have some company rather than sitting
by myself all the time. He likes playing cards. Sometimes he sings, he likes classical music, or he
tells me about his days in the garden department and we talk about trees and plants, mealybug
infestations and borer worms that attack trees, quite interesting really.’
Mallika leaped straight to what had caught her attention. ‘He sings for you? That sounds very
romantic!’ Noni Appa laughed, ‘To tell you the truth, Malla, he is actually a terrible singer.’
That night, long after Mallika had gone to sleep, Noni Appa lay tossing and turning in bed. She was
filled with an uneasy feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She felt a strange heaviness,
as if something was lodged in her stomach.
She closed her eyes, deciding to try a meditative practice that Anand ji always claimed was an
excellent remedy for insomnia. Noni Appa could hear his familiar voice in her head, telling her to
relax every part of her body while visualizing a lotus at each chakra. But this time the soothing
effects of the meditation eluded her, her mind playing tricks, replacing all the lotuses with images
of Anand ji sitting cross-legged in the lotus pose instead.
Was the gentle, ever-smiling yoga teacher the cause of her discomfort? Had all her family’s ribbing
stirred up emotions that she had perhaps kept trapped inside her mind somewhere?
Noni Appa got out of bed, refusing to poke inside her head further. She felt her bloated stomach
and decided that the only thing trapped inside her was probably wind. She boiled some water,
adding ajwain to it, an old remedy for indigestion that she had learned from her mother. She sat on
t
he sofa slowly sipping on her hot decoction, writing lines of duas meticulously in her book,
waiting for the oblivion of sleep.
***
Mallika returned to her life in London, leaving Noni Appa feeling a little more desolate, the house
a little more empty than it had been before her visit. She started spending more and more time with
Anand ji. They would sit for hours around the glass table, the dark sky leaching away light, the
cards in their hands growing dim, till they turned them face down on the table and started looking
at the stars instead, exchanging stories in the dimly lit garden.
Innocuous stories at first. Anand ji telling her about his days at a hostel in Rishikesh: ‘Soon I
realized that a senior student, Swami Yogeshwar who was my immediate guru, was more
interested in trying to teach me certain unnatural positions than the ones in the textbook. I took a
train and came straight back to Bombay. Finished my teacher training course in Nashik.’
And Noni Appa telling him about the mischief that she and Binni would be up to during their days
in a boarding school in Pune: ‘We climbed over every bathroom stall and locked it from inside.
When the rest of the girls arrived, they were convinced that there was a ghost in the bathroom who
did not like them using the toilet.’
As the days passed, and they stayed longer and longer under the night sky, darker stories were told
too.
Noni Appa telling him about the night she had gone with Farhan to a friend’s party and had
overheard a cutting remark by the host about them and Muslims in general. She had been horrified
and had tried to get Farhan to leave the party. But he had insisted on staying, nonchalantly walking
towards another couple and striking up a conversation.
‘I called the waiter, Anand ji, and I gulped two drinks down in less than a minute. Then I went out,
found our driver and went home without Farhan. He came after an hour, always had a bit of a
temper, you know, and he started yelling, “What do you think of yourself, leaving just like that!”
And for the first time I yelled back, “What do you think of yourself, who are you to talk to me like
this?”
‘He was stunned for a moment and then he said gruffly, “What is wrong with you, Noni?” And I
