The wedding is a ‘No Press Event’—the tested way to ensure absolute media frenzy. Junior has stardust in his genes. His dimpled smile drives girls mad. There have been suicide attempts by grieving IPL fans because his days of philandering are officially over. It’s sweet of Bucky to invite us, considering we’ve been out of touch for years. I’ve kept up with them though, via the magazine supplements and 24-hour television. Thinking about the wedding, I’m overtaken by anxiety; it’s the forgotten feeling of inadequacy I always associate with Paro. What should I wear? What about the wedding gift?
‘What about the wedding gift?’ I ask Suresh, interrupting his further views on liberalization and the free economy.
‘That’s your department, Memsahib,’ he chides. ‘Give him a suit length. Or a silver photo frame. Or something . . .’
‘A suit length?’ I retort sharply. ‘I’ve read that Ani only wears Armani. And every nobody will be giving them silver photo frames. Suzi is brand ambassador for . . . for . . .,’ I fumble.
Suresh gives me a patient look, which only works me up the more. I’ve admired the handsome Raja of Bhandpur ever since the fateful night when we first met him with Paro. As Vice-President of the all-powerful Indian Cricket Board, Bucky has reincarnated with grace and style to the Indian Premier League buzz. A legendary sports administrator, he’s set up the Premier Sports Academy in Gurgaon—the government gave him the land as a grant, since cricket is an educational/charitable activity. (Or is it social service?) Junior’s success has cast a further backwash of glamour on Bucky. Between father and son, they endorse all sorts of products—fast cars, diet colas, health insurance. And a rebranded coconut oil.
Ani’s bride-to-be Suzi is a silver spooner graduated to platinum. Her dad Manoviraj Sethia brokered the recent Russian submarine deal. Sethia’s payoffs always manage to hit the goal; he has tackled all the right people in Russia and India, it’s as much a sport, passion and profession to him as cricket to Bucky Bhandpur. What can I give that he has not already gifted? Now, if my husband was the Minister of Defence, or Telecom, or even Power—I could give the girl a set of 24-carat gold bowls then! But I’ll stay within my aukat. A sterling silver tray, maybe, exquisitely designed, with both their names inscribed on it in italics.
We halt at the red lights at the Purana Qila crossing, where vultures used to squat on the domes of Mughal tombs until pollution and pesticides killed them off. A beggar woman is peddling the national flag to celebrate Independence Day. Her nose is pressed flat against the window, her eyes fixed on Suresh. The rings on his podgy fingers, each to appease a particular planet, flash as the man of destiny waves her away with impatient outrage. Red coral to propitiate Mars, blue sapphire to appease Saturn. A diamond for good measure, and to strengthen Venus. He’s hedged his bets, got all the planets covered.
I let him, and then the driver, glower at the woman and send her away. I’d hate to do it myself.
It’s always calming to return home: 18 Dara Shikoh Marg, in the green and quiet heart of a dusty, impatient nation. I guess it’s a government bungalow like any other, but I’m still intimidated by its size. The gates clang shut behind us, the saluting guards revert to their customary slouches. Inside, a chill double load of air- conditioning copes with the high ceiling. Suresh watches the news with such intent focus that it is almost an out-of-body experience. Gently, with a practice born of years, I transport him towards the dining room. The Garhwali cook, Ram Singh, is on leave. He takes his national holidays seriously. His Bihari helper, Ramdhan, has assembled the dal, roti and two vegetables that have sustained us through thirty years of marriage. There’s a glass of lassi, with Splenda instead of sugar, and the gajar-shalgam pickle my husband is addicted to.
We eat in silence. Through the low hum of the air conditioning I can hear the cawing of crows in the garden. Then, as usual, Suresh strokes his stomach, mildly, with an air of satisfaction. He coaxes an appreciative burp, like an amen. ‘It was a simple meal, but wholesome,’ he says, ‘thank you, Priya, for being such a caring wife.’
This is part of the ritual too. When we first met, the burping would unsettle me, I found it vulgar; now it is a routine, reassuring conclusion to our meals together. I try to catch his eye with a smile. He is busy with the remote, switching channels on the flat- screen television mounted over the mantelpiece, until the flickering pixels resolve into the familiar face of the Prime Minister, still talking about a new vision of a caring India.
In the evening, the President’s At Home. There’s something about those weathered old stones, and the size and the scale and grandeur of Rashtrapati Bhavan, that takes ones breath away. It was drizzling slightly, so the venue had been moved to the Ashoka Hall. ‘Due to inclement weather,’ as a gallant ADC explained.
The President looked more wizened than ever, like a kindly walnut. Madam wore an exquisite double ikat handloom sari. It was all a rush and a blur, with everybody seeming to know everyone else. Except me. I felt like a fly on the wall, observing the politicians and generals and admirals and ambassadors talk and laugh and joke with the assured ease of People Who Matter.
‘Don’t feel intimidated,’ I instructed myself. ‘These are just people, no different from anybody else.’ I took a deep breath and looked up. The elegant imperial chandeliers had cheap white-light ecobulbs screwed on them. ‘And this is just a place like anywhere else.’
I sampled the samosas and sandwiches. A fly circled vigilantly over the platter of assorted pastries, like a drone aircraft. The electronic insect-repellant machines mounted upon the venerable wood-panelled walls crackled every now and then, feasting on incarcerated insects. An important politician trod on my toe.
As we were leaving, there was a whir of wings and a plop of wet on my hair and shoulders. A pigeon had shat on me. Suresh extracted a gray-bordered handkerchief from his pocket and helped me wipe the mess away. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said consolingly. ‘It’s considered very lucky if a bird does that to somebody.’
Both the boys are away. Kush is attending a ‘Training Leaders of Tomorrow’ course sponsored by the MacDougal Foundation. His twin Luv is bumming around somewhere in New Mexico. It’s only me at home, and Suresh, spread out thin over this enormous official residence.
A lazy afternoon, and me padding barefoot through the house in a comfortable cotton petticoat and t-shirt, admiring the high ceilings, the columned drawing room, the breezy verandah. I grew up in a 1 BHK flat in Bombay—it wasn’t Mumbai then, although Andheri was of course more Bumbai than Bombay. The One Bedroom Hall Kitchen label was a genteel exaggeration—there wasn’t even a kitchen, truthfully, just a bedroom and a hall and the makeshift stove in our tiny balcony. My mother, my brother Atul and I; the flat was large enough for all of us, stretching to accommodate the occasional visiting relative.
I actually pinch myself sometimes to check that it’s real, this house and me in it. I can’t get enough of the sprawling lawns, with their neat flowerbeds and mysterious hedges. The British built the imperial city of New Delhi to rule over us Indians. There are those who want to put high-rises here. It’s practical, of course, but I’ll go along with the netas and the babus who will never let it happen. The world may need more houses, but I love this old colonial bungalow. Two and a half acres in the heart of New Delhi, with two and a half malis to tend it. One gardener for one acre, that’s the thumb rule with the NDMC.
The Delhi obsession for a private shorthand drives me mad. I’ve learnt to decrypt it, though, and the acronyms roll smoothly off my tongue now—NDMC, MCD, DDA, CPWD, CP, GK, NDSE, and the rest. I’ve grown accustomed to conversations like ‘The HM told his MoS to tell his PA to write a DO note to tell the MCD to liaise with the CPWD about the RTI.’ Think of it as the DAS—the Delhi Acronym Syndrome. In this city, you can’t survive if you don’t know the code.
With most people, it’s life’s disappointments that leave them bitter and broken. It’s different with me—the dizzying climb, the ‘appointment’, if you please, has lef
t me a little undone, like a bit of knitting where the stitches have slipped off the needle and unfurled themselves. I propped Suresh up, in the early days, I supported his ambitions as we huffed along the treadmill of Delhi society. Now I can’t believe I’m up here, near the top of the heap, my husband a neta, a rising political figure, a minister in the government. I should be brimming with confidence, not consumed by this precarious unease. You could say that I’m a victim of social vertigo, teetering on the edge of imagined rejections.
Why don’t I have more friends? My own fault, possibly, for not being able to reach out to people. I was so wrapped up in motherhood that I gave up on the rest. And then, suddenly, this large Lutyens bungalow and the shrinking space inside.
But I have my diaries. These lined notebooks, the secret thoughts and confidences that I entrust them, keep me going. The words laid out in my neat, spiky handwriting are my anchor, locked in my steel Godrej almirah, piled over the years under a heap of discarded silk saris where no one can find them.
I retain a middle-class passion for steel cupboards. Home is where the steel cupboard is—that’s my philosophy. They stand guard in the spare bathroom, with built-in extra-security digital safes. That’s where I stash away money saved from the housekeeping, and the wads of spare cash that Suresh sometimes entrusts to my care. All the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ gifts, fruit bowls, shawls, silver plates, silver-plated plates, things like that, are loaded into my steel cupboards.
I searched for a wedding present for Junior Bhandpur. Silver statuettes of Krishna the charioteer discussing the nature of duty with Arjun are a stock gift to politicians. There were two in filigree work and one in solid silver. Expensive enough; and cultural heritage is usually a safe bet. I bundled the larger filigree piece in bubble wrap and then silver paper, secured with a gold ribbon. And, finally, my husband’s official gold-embossed ministerial visiting card, with all our names on it: ‘Love From Uncle Suresh, Aunty Priya, Luv and Kush.’
Got a missed call from Luv, and a message. ‘BK SN’ it said. ‘FLT DTLS FLW.’ My son’s cryptic textese infuriates me—why can’t people simply spell things out?
‘GR8’ I replied. Luv hadn’t phoned or mailed for some days now. His phone had been switched off too. I’d been worrying about Luv, I guess mothers never stop.
Twins are meant to be alike, peas in a pod, but my sons Luv and Kush are the exceptions to prove the rule. It puzzles me, this difference in the way they are, and it troubles me too. Luv is the older by a few minutes, and he is taller and fairer and—let’s face it—kinder. They do look similar, but Kush is shorter and stockier, and for some reason had begun to go bald just into his twenties. He shaved his head so it wouldn’t be so noticeable. Or so he believed.
Kush quit his investment banker career in NY some months back and returned home. ‘I want to scope out the political scene,’ he announced to his father. ‘I think my country needs me.’ He commandeered the guestroom annexe in the front lawn and turned it into a studio apartment. The spare key is always with Ramdhan. I am discouraged from violating his space.
‘It’s about boundaries,’ he told me, his brown eyes turning opaque as he spoke. ‘I can’t handle a spillover of maternal feelings any more. Please take this in the right spirit.’
And I did. I do. It’s Luv who is my unabashed favourite. Why should I pretend otherwise? Kush is the apple of Suresh’s eye, so it’s fine, in balance. Kush has been shadowing his father, getting into position to ‘enter politics’. Some people may call it dynasty, but Kush calls it ‘family succession’.
‘Face it,’ he said to me after he returned from NY, ‘if Papa were still a lawyer, chances are I would inherit his practice. If he was a doctor or a dentist, I might have considered a career in medicine. If he was a famous film star—’ (at which point I raised my eyebrows and tried not to smile at this absurd idea) ‘—if Papa was a famous film star I would possibly be a Bollywood hero. So if he is destined to rule the country, it’s only logical to think that I am too.’
His elder twin, Luv, had told me only days before this that he was destined to be an artist. There are no artists in our family, so that was a new gene acting itself out. He believed in challenging his creativity, he said, which was another excuse for pretty much doing as he pleased. He was still untraceable, but would doubtless turn up soon, to disarrange our lives.
Bano, the ‘beauty lady’, comes home on call to wax and wash and blow dry. Her inspired gossip updates me on the goings-on in Delhi, as it did while she shone me up for Junior Bhandpur’s wedding. Bano had layered my face with a crushed rose pack. My eyes were blinkered with sliced potatoes, to take care of the dark shadows. I sensed her fussing around, buffing my nails, massaging my feet, while she fed me a steady drip of information on the activities of the great Delhi Durbar. I felt inadequate, even apologetic, for having so little to trade in terms of interest and scandal in my personal life.
‘Do you know, Priya didi, that Rita Ray madam is wearing wig? Bechari! Big black hair all over her body, everywhere except on her baldy head! So sad, no?’
I was silent from under the fragrant but itchy face pack. ‘I charge her fifteen hundred rupees only for waxing her stomach,’ Bano continued in her sing-song English. ‘Double-charge, more than other clients, but it grow back also double fast. Four times faster than my French lady. Not like your smooth malai-type body, didi!’
I smiled under the mask. I could feel it cracking up. ‘Other day, my lady client’s son wants full-body waxing. Metro-sexual look, he say. I say, no baba, no hetro-metro, I am old-fashioned beauty lady, for ladies only.’
A note of righteousness entered her voice. ‘In Delhi, we all have to fill our belly. It is survival city, we have to put up with all kind of peoples!’
Bano peeled off the mask and exclaimed at how my skin was glowing. She left, as always, amidst a flurry of insincere compliments, surreptitiously counting my habitually ungenerous tip. I wondered what she has to say about me!
The wedding was at the Amrana fort, on the Jaipur highway. The card specified the dress code. ‘Boy’s Side: Batting in White. Girl’s Side: Men and Memsahibs in Blue.’ I decided on an expensive white Upada silk, which the boutique owner had described as ‘subtle’. Young girls these days seem to have given up on the sari. There’s a comfort in wearing six yards of unstitched fabric that’s difficult to explain. The trick lies in the pleats. When you get the first fold right, the rest follow. Draping the pallav a little off- shoulder, I checked my reflection in the looking glass. It looked much too understated, so I slapped on some bronzer on my cheeks, coated my eyelids with glittery green shadow and smiled at the mirror. Maybe I’m looking better as I grow older, I thought. Or just more used to the way I look.
WE LEFT TOGETHER FOR AMRANA, SURESH AND I, IN OUR WHITE Ambassador car, with a light flashing on top and our power statement, the PSO—Personal Security Officer—perched importantly on the front seat. The gift-wrapped chariot was in the boot, with our overnight bags. Traffic choked the unfinished highway through Gurgaon. Everywhere, new cars and new money, old potholes and tall skeletons of steel and glass. Delhi is changing so much every day, growing and cannibalizing its outskirts. A crowd of carefully-ragged teenagers spilled out of a multiplex and moved to the adjacent Barista with the outrageous confidence of the very young and the very affluent. They made me nervous. I remembered a distant aunt who lived in Gurgaon. I had visited her as a child, a lifetime ago. A buffalo was tethered in her backyard and we were gifted a handi of fresh ghee when we left. Perhaps she’s still alive. She’d be a multi-crorepati now, if she’s had the good sense to sell off her land to some BPO or shopping mall. Perhaps she’s had a face lift and is driven around in a BMW.
In the shadow of a bent-over hoarding, a sunburnt family was cooking a meal on the broken kerb. The couple were arguing bitterly as the children watched and a brass pot bubbled over a smoky three-brick street hearth. The man raised his hand to hit the woman, then took her plaited hair and pul
led at it violently. She spat in his face. The children turned to stare at the traffic. The signal changed and we edged on.
Even the VIP red light couldn’t push us through the chaos any faster. It kept the beggars away, though; they understand not to pursue cars with flashing lights on them and save their entreaties for lesser folk.
Suresh was more relaxed than he had been for a long time. He put his arm around me, quite cautiously, as though I might rebuff him. I saw the driver watching in the mirror—might it give him ideas? The road got better soon, and a mild drizzle made the lights outside look mellow and gentle. I told the driver to put on some music, a nice ghazal, if he could find one. We were going so slowly he didn’t need to stop the car while he fumbled with the stack of CDs in the dashboard.
‘Ae Mohabbat, Tere Anjam Pe Rona Ayaa . . .’ Begum Akhtar’s scratchy molten voice enveloped us in romance and regret.
‘Can’t we listen to something more catchy?’ Suresh asked. I shook my head, and pressed closer to him, against his arm, lost to the world outside. I was drowning in the music and it took me some time to register that the car had stopped. The PSO opened the door, leaned out, then quickly pulled it shut again. The driver stepped out very cautiously and then he was back inside, too. ‘Lock your door, Priya,’ Suresh said urgently, ‘we seem to have run over somebody.’
Priya Page 2
