And so she was, all her teeth on display, beaming through the giant LCD screen. Tanya and her mother and her brother and her uncle, all in faraway Philadelphia, partying across the globe in tandem with us, enjoying a vegetarian engagement brunch. Though it would be dinner time there, or even later. I waved at them, while Dolly continued to fuss around the gold necklace she had given me.
‘We thought, why to waste money flying her down here— unnecessary expense-shexpense,’ Dolly explained. ‘Besides, Tanya’s father he is ill, admitted in hospital in ICU theer, so she couldn’t come. But he inseested they have a celebration party.’ As usual, Dolly was pronouncing ‘there’ to rhyme with ‘here’. I tried very hard not to sneer, but Dolly’s failed pretensions, rather more gross than mine, have put me off ever since I’ve known her. And nothing has changed.
‘Here’s a shawl for you, Dolly Bhabhi,’ I said, as affectionately as I could. (Of course it’s always too warm to wear a shawl in Mumbai, but so what?) ‘And a sari for Tanya when you see her off screen.’ The sari was displayed through the camera to Tanya in Philadelphia, and I was rewarded with a flying kiss. I spent time with my niece, Neha (who looks disconcertingly like her mother) and with my favourite nephew, Prem, the youngest of them all. Successfully evading the attention of Atul’s boss, Mr Mittal of the Rani Sati Sewa Samaj Samiti, I rewarded my brother with a quick hug before I left. Then, my duty done, I fled back to the Capital city where I belong. Away from the tacky middle-class enthusiasms of my brother’s family. It’s not that I’m a snob, and it was nice of Dolly to gift me the expensive gold jewellery, but Delhi does insulate one from the rest of India.
The chaotic under-reconstruction airport in Delhi revealed Lenin, searching for his luggage and looking extremely harassed. The assistant protocol officer from the ministry had been sent to receive me. He saw me watching Lenin. He sized up this oddly helpless-looking man. And with the unerring clerical instinct of the Indian babu to recognize the ruling classes, he homed in immediately. ‘I’ll get the luggage for you, saar,’ he said deferentially to the ragged Lenin, taking charge of the baggage tags.
Lenin hugged me like a lost child. Tears were streaming down his eyes. ‘These are tears of joy, Priya,’ he explained. He searched for a handkerchief in his kurta pocket and extracted a freshly laundered napkin with an airline logo embroidered on it. Had he been travelling business class? ‘I have been trying to call you, every day,’ he said. ‘But I never seem to get across. I sent you an inland letter, from Chhattisgarh . . . have you received it yet?’
‘I’ll check with the office, Lenin,’ I said, ‘maybe it’s still in the mail.’ I hadn’t received an inland letter in years, only chit funds and pesticide advertisements and things like that are communicated through inland letters these days.
‘I wrote to tell you how happy I am about the marriage. My bitiya, my little Paromita—she is yours now! Take good care of her, Priya. I know you will.’
‘Little Paromita?!’ I joked. ‘Your daughter is a big girl now, Lenin!’
He looked confused. ‘She will always be a little girl for me . . .’ he said. ‘Although it’s really me who hasn’t managed to grow up.’
Lenin was looking visibly tired. ‘When did you break your fast?’ I asked concernedly. He had lost so much weight, he looked almost transparent, as though the slightest breeze might blow him away.
‘Yes, I did give up on my fast,’ Lenin replied indifferently. ‘I realized that the denial of nutrition to a dying body was a meaningless act of ego. Or of penitence. In any case, the powerful of this country don’t care about whether I, or anyone else, has food going down their gullets!’
‘Can I force-feed you at home, please, to celebrate the children’s engagement?’ I cajoled. I wanted him to be like the light-hearted Lenin I had known all those years ago.
‘Of course, Priya, we’ll drink and dance like we used to . . .’ He smiled the old, familiar smile that I remembered so well. We fixed up lunch for the very next day. The protocol officer had located Lenin’s moth-eaten khaki bag. We left the airport together, to go our separate ways. Through the horrors of the under-construction flyover, across dust and disorder and the chaos of traffic finding its own level, I returned to the order and beauty of Lutyens’ Delhi, to 18 Dara Shikoh Marg.
I sat with my laptop in the garden, contentedly observing the trees, the neat flowerbeds, the vistas of bougainvillea, the fragrant roses, the sturdy bushes of mogra, the champa-chameli in the hedges. There was a tea tray on the cane table, with a pot of first flush Darjeeling, and a bowl of low-fat puffed-rice muri.
Only junk and ‘forwards’ in my inbox. ‘FW: To all my lady friends . . .’ the first one read. ‘Flour and Water—when you mix the two together you get glue . . . And then you mix eggs and sugar, and you get cake . . . Where did the glue go? NEED AN ANSWER? That’s what makes the cake stick to your BUTT. Spread the message, send this to a friend you care about.’
Everything about this pointless forward infuriated me. Why did I need to spread the message? Why were women supposed to constantly obsess about their weight? And which friends could I spread the message to? How many? Why didn’t I have more friends? I remembered my lonely childhood. In my schooldays, I had been almost invisible in the classroom, in the playground. My widowed mother had never allowed me to even have a birthday party, although Atul Bhaiyya’s janamdin celebrations always deserved laddoos, once even a cake. I snapped out of my self-pity. Look where I am now! And Atul is, face it, a nobody. I was pacing around the garden, worrying about my weight, wondering whether I needed to tone up my butt, when the crows descended on me, like an inexplicable premonition.
It was still light, although the shadows were setting in. Suddenly a flapping of wings and a battalion of crows converged like a looming nucleur cloud. They cawed and squawked above my head, engrossed in some compelling crow-conversation. A grey- black underfeather floated slowly down and settled on the hand- embroidered traycloth.
The crows made a beautiful picture: the dusky texture of a Delhi evening, the calm lawn, the still trees, dark forms darting against the unhurried sky. Were they trying to say something, convey their crow-wisdom?
But I was just a blot on the grass; a blob of maroon Ikat sari against the green lawn and white cane chairs. Two circling crows swooped down in a whirr of black feathers. As they pecked at the puffed rice in the bowl, their unblinking eyes met mine. They manouvered once more around the tray, unconcerned by my presence, and flew off.
The phone rang, and of course it was Pooonam. ‘I have been trying to find you for days, dearest,’ she said plaintively. ‘I thought you were my friend.’ No mention of the circumstances in which we had last parted.
Resignedly, I opened the hatch and let her into my life once again. ‘I’m busy for the next few days. Let’s meet again after that, Pooo,’ I said. Habit is a powerful force, in friendship, marriage, or even hatred.
‘I’m sending you a photograph of myself,’ she replied. ‘Open it, and you’ll understand why I need to see you.’
‘Okay, I’ll wait,’ I said resignedly. There’s no one to beat Pooonam when it comes to getting her foot into the door. She is like the glue in the forward.
A blip on my laptop announced a new message, from
The attachment opened up to a passport-style picture of Pooonam, with a black eye the size of a fist. I didn’t know how to react. Was this hysteria or courage? I called her back, but the line was busy.
‘Disgusting!’ I spe
lled out on the keyboard. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, you animal!’ and I sent it off to Manoviraj Sethia, on his email id, and his mobile too, with my new Blackberry. We women need to show solidarity with each other.
LENIN CAME FOR LUNCH. HE ARRIVED HALF AN HOUR EARLY, LOOKING extremely tired. He was wearing broken kolhapuri chappals, with the toe straps missing, which necessitated his walking with a quick shuffle. His long grey hair was tied back with a clasp; it looked extremely odd. Hair and beard both seemed unwashed. He was not, in short, easy on the eye.
I had planned an elaborate lunch. Lenin loved aubergines, I remembered that, and got our dour Garhwali cook to prepare some baghera baingan, Hyderabadi style. The paneer and butter chicken was for Suresh, and mutton stew for Luv. Salad and dahi for Kush, who is on a diet again. Some beans and dal to round it off and later, rassogollas and rasmalai for dessert.
We sat together in affectionate silence, though I was a bit alarmed by Lenin’s appearance. ‘Who would have ever thought . . .’ he murmured, ‘whoever would have thought . . .’ then left the sentence hanging, unfinished. I got the drift of it, and nodded my head in agreement.
Suresh was busy with some important visitors, and took his time to join us. Paromita and Luv were reluctantly persuaded to exit from his bedroom, and we made our way to the dining table. Kush made a late entrance too. Lenin had launched into a rather pointless tirade.
‘Urban excess’ was the phrase he used. ‘Priya, my dear respected Priya, I sincerely hope that I have not been the provocation for this urban excess. I simply need dal and two rotis, that’s enough for me and for all of you too.’
I was offended by his tone and stupidly took issue with him. ‘Really Lenin,’ I chided, ‘we are here to celebrate our children’s engagement, and all you can do is take off at a tangent. I thought the farmers that you go on and on about might get more money if I bought more vegetables! And a dead goat means less grass being eaten up, less carbon emissions! So what are you grumbling about?’ I looked to my husband, the Minister of State for Food Processing, for support.
Paromita was sitting very still, wearing an inscrutable expression. She adored Lenin, and I was worried that I had hurt her feelings. Luv changed the subject with lightning tact. He told us of the exhibition his friend was putting up. ‘This new show is all about the food chain,’ Luv explained. ‘Very witty, very graphic, radical figurative work. After all, there’s always somebody eating something, or something eating somebody! Isn’t there?’
Kush was muttering something about the market economy. This might have been the cue for further provocation, but it was Suresh who bailed us out now, embarking on a long explication on processed foods and NGOs and rural women’s co-operatives and pickles and mango-crops and social capital. This dull and boring monologue managed to soothe everyone, allowed us to eat and digest lunch in peace.
Lenin didn’t eat much, he stuck to dal and two rotis, and a small helping of aubergines. After we were through with the khana, Lenin looked at the rossogolla and mithai with mild disappointment. ‘Don’t you have any strawberry ice-cream?’ he asked plaintively. ‘I like strawberry ice-cream!’
‘Not today,’ I said, ‘but the next time you are here. And I promise to serve gallons of it at Paromita’s wedding!’
Suresh had to rush back to work, as usual, but I sat with Lenin and the children over a cup of coffee. My samdhi-to-be extracted two betel nuts from his pocket. They were wrapped in tiny scraps of newspaper.
‘This is an engagement gift for you,’ he declared. ‘It was sent by a starving family near Chhattisgarh.’ With that, he ceremoniously presented the betel nuts to Paromita and to Luv. The young people accepted the gifts with very good grace, going on about what a wonderful idea it was. Lenin retrieved the scraps of newspaper and put them back into his pocket.
Kush was staring at Lenin in wonderment, as though he were from another planet. He shook his head in disbelief, then left the room.
What an odd set of bipolar parents poor Paromita is burdened with. No wonder she had chosen to approach me herself with her innocent wedding proposal. Well, she would have a normal family now.
Then Lenin began on Dr Binayak Sen. ‘Dr Sen is a humanitarian revolutionary. The Sulwa Judum militia movement against Maoists is simply and totally inhuman!’ he said, in a soft voice that was almost a whisper. ‘A bullet cannot always be tackled by a bullet. The detention of Dr Sen is the grossest and most blatant injustice this country has ever witnessed.’ His voice rose, ‘We will all pay for it. You’—(pointing at me)—‘and you’—(pointing at the children)—‘and all of us. Sooner than later, I suspect!’
I wondered what his wife thought of all this. Geeta was after all a minister in the same state government that was arming the Sulwa Judum. But of course I refrained from being provocative. After all, civilized society is about accepting each other’s hypocrisies, isn’t it?
Lenin wasn’t finished with his harangue. He started off again, rather incoherently, about ‘class enemies’, wagging his finger at us as he spoke. Then he sat up, determinedly; his head wasn’t lolling to one side any more. His voice returned to normal, and he seemed more focussed, suddenly. ‘The seizure of power by force, and the settlement of the issue by war, is the highest form of revolution,’ he declared, quite collectedly. Naturally, none of us knew quite how to react to that.
Paromita stepped in to take charge of her father and wind up what had become an awkward afternoon. She persuaded Lenin to get back to the guest-house where he was staying, to get some rest.
‘I want to go for a walk after that,’ Lenin insisted, in a feeble, strangely childish voice. ‘I want to go for a walk. I must go for a walk today.’
Paromita soothed him some more. ‘Of course you will, Papa,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure the driver and car Mummy has organized will stay on till later. And I’ll get you some strawberry ice-cream as well. Mummy rang up this morning to check up on your health. She is really very worried about you.’
Lenin looked at his daughter with something resembling a smile. ‘Your mother, Paromita, is a unique person. She is a Stalinist without being a communist.’ And with that, he loped out, leaving behind some of the hurt and pain of that other India in my well-appointed drawing room.
I had forgotten to return his jhola, with the photographs and that rambling notebook. I thought again of Banwari, and his double life. Lenin wasn’t looking at all well. I was worried about him.
Resting comfortably in Suresh’s bedroom after dinner (mostly left-overs from the disastrous lunch), I felt an unusual sense of contentment. This, ultimately, was the joy of marriage—watching over each other, watching over our children.
‘I feel very sorry for Geeta ji,’ Suresh observed, in his most serious lawyer’s voice. ‘I feel your Lenin has seriously lost his balance and his bearings.’
‘He’s not my Lenin,’ I protested, then stopped myself. He was my Lenin, and I would stand by him. ‘And perhaps he’s right. There is something to what he’s saying.’
Suresh was diligently checking through his phone messages. ‘Have you seen this forward from poor Pooonam?’ he exclaimed, genuine horror and consternation in his voice. ‘I don’t respect men who beat up women. It’s the lowest form of aggression! I’m inclined to go give that Manoviraj a punch in the eye!’
Men. Men are like that. I remembered, suddenly, that night when Suresh had hit me. He had punched out at my face, at my breasts, he had shown his male strength. ‘I have never hit a woman in my life,’ Suresh continued. I said nothing. It had been a long time ago. Suresh and I, we have marked and measured the distance between us. And now, after all these years, I’m discovering that I do care. Belated lovaria. It’s nothing new, I told myself philosophically. That’s the way things are in arranged marriages.
It was six in the morning when I was awakened by a sharp knock on my bedroom door. I opened the door sleepily, rubbing my eyes. There was Luv, in a pink candy-striped nightsuit. ‘Paromita’s father has died
,’ he said. ‘They found him in the park this morning. Some early morning joggers called the police. My father-in-law. He’s dead.’
That was that. I’m practical when it comes to death. Not that I’ve seen much of it; but we all have to die, I know that, I’m aware of it. You could say that there was a stone in my heart, or that an iron gate clanked shut, closing up my feelings and emotions. I took charge, as though it were a military operation.
Luv left for the guesthouse. The police had arrived there already, they had been alerted by the joggers. Paromita’s number had been in Lenin’s pocket. With the scraps of newspaper that had held the betel nuts, maybe.
The police were suggesting a post-mortem, so Suresh was put in charge of handling that. We didn’t want Lenin’s body taken to a mortuary and people messing around with it.
Geeta Devi hadn’t been informed. Paromita didn’t want to be the one to tell her. She answered the phone on the first ring when I called. ‘This is Priya Kaushal, from Delhi. Your husband Lenin, Avinendra, is dead. He died sometime last night.’ It was a bad line, but across the static I could hear the sound of her life shattering, like glass breaking. ‘I’m sorry to be the person to tell you this. Paromita is all right, don’t worry about her.’ I handed the phone over to Suresh, who spoke to Geeta in hushed whispers for a very long time.
Then Suresh and I got dressed and went to the guesthouse. Lenin was lying in bed, as though asleep. His face was peaceful, the lines and wrinkles all seemed to have disappeared. He looked once more like the young, carefree Lenin, who had loved Paro, who had declared himself my rakhi brother.
The staff in the guesthouse, two young Assamese bearers, were in a state of nervous shock. ‘But he was okay in the afternoon,’ they kept repeating. I got them into the kitchen to make some tea for all of us.
Then it hit me, all of a sudden: Lenin is dead, life has defeated him and dragged him away. It’s all been a blur after that. I can’t control my tears, but these are on the surface, splashing on this notebook. The real grief is deeper inside, and it’s for so many things, not only Lenin’s departure.
Priya Page 16
