‘Priya, my love, how delicious to hear your voice, what a delectable surprise!’ he said. ‘And when do I have the honour and the privilege of seeing you in person? It’s been so long! Much too long.’
My stomach was feeling funny, it was quickening and contracting in pleasurable spasms. I couldn’t think of what to say. It had been more than twenty-five years.
‘How about this evening?’ BR persisted. ‘Where are you staying, Priya?’
‘In the Taj, the old Taj,’ I replied, sounding more assertive than a humble office assistant now.
‘Delightful. I shall meet you in the lobby at the very dot of seven,’ he said, and put the phone down.
I wasn’t sure I had wanted things to turn out this way. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. And now I was nervous and elated. Confused. How old was I? Age is defence against nothing, it cures you of nothing, not even youth.
The ‘awards function’ I had come to grace was scheduled for the next morning. I shook off my brother, calling him and cancelling the dreary predictable evening that stretched ahead. The past awaited me in the lobby at seven. I was there at a quarter to. BR arrived on the dot. Nothing about him had changed, except that he was leaning on an ivory cane. He stood before me, and our eyes met. Time stood very still for a while.
His smile was both knowing and tender. ‘Priya my darling,’ he murmured. ‘We meet again.’
No point recounting what we did next, the conversation and the two martinis and the bottle of wine and the dim sum feast. Or the familiar lavender notes of his cologne or how he stroked my arm in the lift as he saw me back into my room. I forgot that I was an Indian wife and mother. I did not think of Luv and when he might return to his room from Colaba or wherever he was. All I can remember is that we were in my room, in a clinch, and then I was naked and he was too, and the ivory cane leaned against the mattress as I surrendered to love and sex and re-seduction.
It was raining outside, a furious monsoon downpour, and the curtains had not been drawn. A flash of lightning illumined BR’s face; he was looking up at the ceiling, as though searching for something. I could imagine the Arabian Sea outside, the waves rising and falling as the rain beat down and the thunderous sky lit up and was dark again.
BR sighed. ‘Here we are, Priya,’ he said, ‘older but no wiser.’ There was no rapture in his voice, but a note of regret—a reformed smoker who has lit up again. Then his practised seducer’s etiquette took over. ‘Was it good for you?’ he enquired, stroking my shoulders and pumping my breasts in a distracted sort of way.
‘It was wonderful,’ I murmured. ‘I mean, really wonderful.’ I meant it. As usual, as forever, BR held the keys.
We lay entwined in each other’s arms. I could feel every cell in my body, every pore in my skin, celebrating. Another streak of lightning lit up the room—and I saw a flash of white, the ivory cane propped against the bed, his face, in shadow, and the curve of my arm as I embraced him.
‘Independence day!’ I told myself, aloud, though very softly. BR seemed not to have heard me. Perhaps I had only thought it, not said it at all.
The room bell trilled. I froze up, though BR continued to stare at the ceiling, as his fingers absently stroked my naked back. I leapt out of bed, dropping the cane, which rolled under the bed. ‘Who is it?’ I asked in panic, through the shut door. Was it, could it be, Luv?
‘Room service, Madame,’ a suave voice replied, ‘your order, Madame.’
‘It’s the wrong room, please!’ I shouted, the panic not far from the surface of my voice. ‘Wrong room . . . can you hear me? We didn’t order anything!’
BR got up and sat by the edge of the bed. Another flash of lightning, and his face again, like a photograph in an album, to be remembered and cherished. The sound of the rain knocking on the Taj roof, rat a tat tat.
‘I forgot the Do Not Disturb sign,’ BR pronounced at last. ‘I knew I had forgotten something. I’m getting forgetful in my old age . . .’
What did that mean?
‘And where is my cane, Priya? You seem somehow to have misplaced it.’ There was a querulous, petulant note in his voice, an old woman’s voice.
BR winced as I switched on the bedside lamp. I bent down to retrieve the cane. It had rolled deep under the bed. I was naked, on all fours. My once-firm bum, now raddled with orange-peel cellulite, stuck out like a vanquished emblem of desire. The soft pile carpet stroked my skin as I tried anxiously to position an arm under the bed. There were two scrunched-up plastic bags breathing gently under the bed, and a . . . condom? Two condoms and an empty can of Coke.
The cane remained just out of reach. Finally, I got a shoehorn from the old-fashioned cupboard in the dressing area and used it, successfully, to manoeuvre the cane out. Then I returned to the bed and switched the light off.
There was a patch of light from the bathroom, an irregular cube which framed the sounds of BR’s toilette. I could hear him shuffling back into his trousers, brushing his teeth in the bathroom. Was he using my brush?
I switched on the bedside lamp again, and settled myself seductively against the pillows, arraying my hair in a casual halo. He didn’t take much notice.
‘These fragments I shall shore up against my ruin,’ he declaimed. ‘That’s T.S. Eliot, my dear, in case you didn’t know. I must go now. I will call you again tomorrow, Priya my love.’
And he was gone.
We checked out of the hotel the next morning. I was coming down with a cold and feeling awful. Atul was lurking about the lobby, brows knit in an anxious frown. His thin face, disquietingly like my plumper one, mirrored extreme stress. ‘Priya didi, Mr Mittal will be waiting,’ he said, the short sentence dipping from wheedling to reproach. I was rushed towards the waiting car, security man in tow. Luv followed in another car, escorted by two men in starched white khadi kurtas and dark glasses.
The awards ceremony was in an air-conditioned hall in a distant suburb. We passed new condominiums and housing colonies with faraway names like Malibu Heights, U.S. Housing, Dallas, Buckingham, Pallas Athene. I was rushed to the stage, where the ‘8 GR8 Indian Women’, a lawyer, a social worker, a classical dancer, a fashion designer, and so on, were presented with silver- plated orbs on a cut-glass base. They posed and re-posed for photographs as a girl with a sing-song voice and an earnest ghati accent read out endlessly detailed bio-datas and citations. My job was only to graciously bend forward and hand over the inscribed orbs to each of the ‘Status Achievers’ on behalf of the RSSMS Awards Committee. I had practised a short speech which I delivered without mishap.
Atul’s boss Mr Mittal read out a marathon vote of thanks at breakneck speed. Commending the glories of our five-thousand- year-old civilization, and the greatness and dignity of Indian womanhood, and asserting that India was not Europe or America, Mr Mittal thanked the Rani Sati Samiti Memorial Society, and Respected Madame Srimati Priya Kaushal, for upholding and propagating the values of Hindu culture. The Sati word should have alerted me. I should have realized that the RSSMS was saffron in its political hue and registered my protest. But my cold was building up, and somewhere, still in a parallel reality, I was reliving of the touch of BR’s hands, remembering the flashes of lightning that had lit up the hotel room the previous night.
We set off for the airport, with a final glimpse of Juhu Beach before we left.
‘Bombay Meri Jaan,’ I murmured dreamily, struggling with the seatbelt in the aircraft.
Luv heard me, and his safety pin leapt up into an indulgent smile. ‘You look happy today, Mataji,’ he said. ‘Stay there!’
As the airhostesses fussed around us, Luv switched off his phone, looking perturbed. ‘It’s Monalisa, she’s landed up in Delhi now. I don’t need to open up that front again, I require closure.’
Perhaps there is something about being alone with one’s mother in business class, on a bumpy flight, drinking foul airline coffee, that elicits confession. Luv turned to me from his window seat and started spilling out his secrets.
‘You
know, Maa, I respect you for being a very normal sort of woman,’ he said. ‘It’s weird, but you are extraordinary because you are so ordinary.’
Was that a compliment? It didn’t sound like one, but I smiled encouragingly anyway, to keep him talking.
‘Monalisa is the opposite. She’s too hyper, much too intelligent, too well read. It’s all that Virginia Woolf stuff she was brought up on. She really is extraordinary, I suppose. Monalisa’s older than me, and better educated. And we are great in bed together, total chemistry . . .’
The opposite of too intelligent is stupid. Besides, the prude in me was getting embarrassed. Indian moms don’t talk sex with their sons, even if they have been with an old lover the night before. But I continued smiling.
‘Is she pretty, your Monalisa?’ I asked.
‘She’s a looker. Very pretty, very intense—big and small at the same time. You know what I mean? Great tubes! So what’s wrong? That’s what I ask myself, Maa! What’s wrong? Maybe she’s just too bright for me.’
We hit an airpocket. I struggled with my seat belt as the airhostess delivered an unintelligible announcement in garbled Hindi and confused English.
‘Monalisa may smoke and drink and hang out with the guys, but somewhere she’s been conditioned to seek an Indian Bridegroom. Provider, protector, sex supplier. First it was all freedom, then the parents moved into the picture, and it’s the same old story, and the plot isn’t new either. “You have slept with our daughter, now you must marry her!” That’s what her father said. It’s Emotional Atyachaar, and no irony that Dad teaches a course on D.H. Lawrence.’
‘Phir what happened?’ I asked intently. This was serious.
‘Monalisa’s radical, Eng Lit father started talking about honour— he actually used the word izzat! “Why didn’t Monalisa marry any of her previous boyfriends?” I asked her parents.’
‘“But they weren’t Indian men, beta!” Honest! That’s what her feminist-sheminist mother said. And her father got really upset, he even tried phoning Pitaji. He didn’t get through—all the PAs and secretaries saw to that. And then I sort of surrendered, and agreed to marry Monalisa. Her parents got uber excited. I think they had dreams of Band Baja Ghodi and Disco Bhangra and all that! Or some Bengali fancy-dress tamasha.’
‘And it didn’t strike you to call your mother, to inform her? You didn’t think of taking your father’s permission?’ I exclaimed, outraged. A one-sided engagement is a fundamental attack on Indian Family Values. Unlike adultery, it is a declaration of war.
Luv asked the airhostess for another coffee. I had one too, with extra sugar. A petite, determined girl called Monalisa was trying to crack up my family. She would have to deal with me first.
‘I ducked,’ Luv continued resolutely. ‘I made a cowardly exit. I told her father that my family wouldn’t let me marry Monalisa. I said that I was already engaged, that you had decided when I was very young that I would marry your best friend’s daughter. American Desis exist in this confused timewarp. Her professor parents watch Hindi films all the time. That’s where they get their ideas of reality. They completely believed my childhood engagement story, it’s so out-of-Bollywood that it rang true with them.’
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘But Monalisa hasn’t given up yet. She’s in Delhi now, hot on my heels. So you have to support the script, Mataji, about my childhood sweetheart and all that.’
He wriggled off to the toilet, and was no longer in confessional mode when he returned. Dozing with his head against the window, his face framed by the fleecy clouds, he looked angelic and vulnerable.
The airplane circled around Delhi for ages, and then we were back in the proud capital of India that is Bharat. The city is bursting at the seams, spilling over with Dilliwalas squeezing into buses, crowding into auto rickshaws, searching for scraps of footpath to walk upon. Driving back from the airport, it was all dhool and dust and grime, and roads dug up everywhere for the never- ending Metro construction. Famished street children, coated in wraithlike dust, haunted this extended excavation site.
Drop eye contact—that’s the rule with beggars. Lock up your heart. Never look them in the eye. Don’t ever reach for your handbag, even if only for your lipstick—it sends the wrong signals. Never yield; if you put a coin into one outstretched hand, another hundred will swarm towards you in hope. That’s what I’ve learnt, anyway.
At the traffic crossing, by the dug-up road, under the shadow of a new flyover, I was accosted by a young girl with such wistful dreaming eyes that it was impossible to look away. There was a polished red apple in my handbag, I had slipped it in from the fruit platter in the hotel, just in case. I handed it to the beggar child, and her mouth split into a speckled smile that shook me up. I surprised myself by reaching again for my bag and handing her a hundred-rupee note.
The little girl launched into a series of perfectly executed summersaults to show her appreciation. Two young boys, both holding crutches, began a wailing sing-song beggars’ litany. A eunuch appeared on the scene as well, knocking on the car window, the hands miming seduction, anger and threat. The lights changed. The children abandoned their crutches and began playing hopscotch on the dug-up pavement. The hijra hurled an abuse as the car sped away.
‘I guess that’s how you middle classes negotiate poverty; through a rolled-up car window,’ Luv said to no one in particular. He was being infuriating again.
As we approached the wide roads and tree-lined avenues of New Delhi, Luv brought the sati subject up. ‘Don’t you think there was something inappropriate about your speaking at a Rani Sati function, Maa?’ he asked.
‘Of course not!’ I replied. ‘No one told me that RSSMS stands for Rani Sati Samiti Memorial Society. And anyway, Indian women don’t burn themselves on their husband’s funeral pyres anymore. The British legally abolished Sati in 1829.’
‘Please Mom, don’t throw dates at me,’ Luv snapped. ‘We are talking real life, not Wikipedia!’
I HAD ALREADY SUCCUMBED TO A COLD WHEN I FOUND MONALISA DAS Mann, Luv’s ex-fiancee, waiting for us at 18 Dara Shikoh Marg. She was perched on a sofa in the living room, a small girl with creamy skin and implacable eyes, dressed all in black, a maroon silk scarf draped like a dupatta around her neck. There were three stubbed-out cigarettes in the brass bowl that wasn’t an ashtray. Should I phone Ramadoss, I wondered!
‘Hi Mrs Kaushal—I’m Monalisa,’ she announced, as she stood on tiptoe to give me a peck on my cheek. ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you.’ A dewy brush of soft skin. Somehow it felt as though she were sniffing me.
Luv looked shaken up. All the cockiness had drained out of him. He was staring at me in panic, his eyes pleading for help. ‘MOM PLEASE!’ he mouthed silently, before turning to Monalisa with exaggerated delight.
Somebody had to do something. I rushed to Suresh for advice. A TV crew was recording an interview in his office. My husband was in conversation with a strikingly pretty girl. He was replying rather glumly, unmoved by her charm. They seemed to be winding up as I entered. I waited till the interview was over and Suresh began struggling to get the lapel mike off his starched white kurta.
The girl turned to me. She had the most liquid, trusting eyes I have ever seen. News anchors are trained to look mean and sceptical. What was she doing on television with eyes like that?
‘I have to wash my hands,’ the girl said to me. ‘Please could you show me where to go?’
An idea was formulating in my mind. ‘Come with me, dear,’ I replied. Draping my arms around her in a conspicuous, proprietary sort of way, I led her to the washroom, past Luv and Monalisa. Then I escorted her back to the rest of the TV crew. She must have found my behaviour puzzling, but said nothing.
‘What a charming young lady you are!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s your name, beta?’
‘I’m Paromita,’ she replied, handing me a visiting card while she turned those soft eyes on me full force.
The day had already yielded enough surprises.
‘Paromita . . .’ I responded thoughtfully. ‘Paromita’.
I returned to the living room, maternal resolution resounding in every footstep. ‘That was Luv’s childhood fiancée,’ I declared. ‘My future daughter-in-law. Sorry I couldn’t introduce you, Miss Das Mann, but I didn’t want to upset her. You see, Luv has already told me all about your friendship with him.’
Her eyes challenged mine. ‘Luv and I love each other,’ she said slowly, forcefully as though spelling things out for a deaf mute. ‘Luv loves me. In the real world, the modern world, young people decide whom to marry. For themselves! At least that’s how we are, back in the US—we don’t let our parents make the decisions.’
‘I’m sure Luv will respect his parent’s wishes. He respects our ancient Indian culture,’ I replied sternly. ‘Of course you must visit us again, but do telephone before coming. The security guards may not let you in, otherwise.’ I bent down to give her a peck on the cheek, which felt strange, as most people I know are taller than me. It was me smelling her now.
Luv looked at her and at me and shrugged his shoulders in a helpless way that seemed to exonerate him on all fronts.
Monalisa looked me straight in the eyes. Very pretty eyes, I noticed, black with green flecks in them.
‘What you are doing is not right, Mrs Kaushal,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m putting it so bluntly, but I’m a truthful person. Like it or leave it.’
Leave it, I decided.
‘Goodbye, Mrs Kaushal’ she said. ‘We shall meet again’
My son led her out. He returned looking troubled. Then he cheered up. ‘You are a star, Mom,’ he exclaimed. ‘Straight out of Bollywood! A veteran actor—or should I say liar? And who’s that delectable daughter-in-law babe you brought in? She’s utterly gorgeous! I may have fallen in love with her already.’
A lie in the interest of one’s family is not an untruth, but one’s dharma. As an Indian mother, I am aware which side of the truth my duties fall. I didn’t tell Luv that, and it was all too complicated to explain to Suresh. There was no need for him to know, he had troubles enough already.
Priya Page 6
