There was a sense of desolation, of things left behind. I sat alone in my suddenly-strange lawn, feeling both happy and unhappy. I thought of BR, without sadness, without regrets. I picked up the trampled bouquets and carried them inside, and put them in a bucket in the kitchen.
Scraps of gossip about Pooonam’s wedding. Dhruv Desai was at the reception with his Brazilian girlfriend (‘Gaurav Negi’s marriage has changed his life,’ Shriela told me later. ‘This is his fourth girlfriend in a row, and his bum is now unmarked, I’m reliably informed . . .’ The Brazilian girl was clicking cute tourist snapshots of the elephants that the wedding planners had parked before the fake-fort facade of the Blue Orchid Hotel. One of the tuskers, who didn’t like flashlights, picked up Desai’s squeeze with its trunk and swung her down again. She wasn’t hurt, miraculously. But it’s a good story, the sort that amuses Delhi.
Pooonam has the luck of the devil. Spunk too—I’ll concede that. She’s devoted to her new numerologist, Mangaul Warsee. Together, they are obsessively regrouping the multiple letters in her name. Her new fortune fixer suggested she add yet another ‘o’ to it, but even Pooonam thought that was too much: she’s considering changing it to Pomona instead. Last heard, she had changed the name of Manoviraj Sethia’s company—it’s called Universalle Hand Tools and Weapons, now.
Perhaps it’s working. The Sethias had filed a case against an Indonesian firm about infringement of copyright on its Moulded Teflon bullet-proof apparel. The arbitration went on for ages, and then it went against them. Well, Universalle has won the appeal now, and many millions of dollars in damages. What is it about luck and Pooonam?
The young people are off on their honeymoon, they left for Bali yesterday.
Monalisa Das Mann has sent me an advance copy of her novel. It’s called The Unsuitable Bride and it is about a weak hypocritical young man and his manipulative mother. Sounds familiar?
Her book is being hyped as ‘a truthful tell-all on why arranged marriages suck’. Better to read the book than have her as a daughter-in-law, I say. It has a strange cover, with a shiny reflecting mirror on it. The dedication reads, ‘To Aunty Priya: The Desi Mom-in-Law from Hell I never had, and the living inspiration for this book.’ Maybe I can sue her.
There’s a handwritten note inside, and some pressed flowers. ‘The nice Indian lady act doesn’t fool anyone. Take a long hard look in the mirror. You are not good, only lucky. Respectfully— The Unsuitable Bride.’
I did just that—went to the mirror in the verandah and took a long hard look at myself. The blonde highlights with the creeping white roots. The creases around my eyes, the gently sagging skin. ‘Ms Menopause’ Pooonam had called me. Well, one can learn to live without tampons. I turned to the mirror again, and flashed myself a determined smile. I might look worse.
Then I took Monalisa’s novel and threw it into the dustbin that Suresh had brought back from Nagaland. We all need to carry on, to defend what’s ours.
ONLY A FEW SHEETS LEFT. I’M NEARING THE END OF THIS NOTEBOOK. I’ve been neglecting these pages, now that I’m getting used to the keyboard, where my legendary secretarial skills have resurfaced. Facebook is beginning to take over too, and I’m thinking of starting a blog.
Even General Pervez Musharraf, the ex-President of Pakistan, is on Facebook. I’ve asked him to be my friend, but he hasn’t responded yet.
Luv and Paromita plan to stay at home with us, at least for a while. They will shift ‘later’ to our old house in GK, where Suresh and I lived before moving here. Jimmy Batata has commissioned twelve paintings on the colour red from Luv. It’s to be made into an art calendar, and he’s received a mind-boggling advance. I must start painting too, one of these days.
Somehow I feel closer to Kush than ever before. Luv has Paromita, and Suresh has . . . I don’t want to think about what or who Suresh has. But my son Kush, he’s vulnerable and a bit of him needs me still, I think.
After the wedding, we went together, all of us, Luv and Kush and Paromita, to an orphanage in Chandni Chowk with boxes of sweets and baskets of fruits and packs of crayons. The children smiled and thanked us, and I felt good about that. And I thought of Lenin, and how he would have scoffed at this act of easy feel- good charity. But in the end, every laddoo counts.
I stood there with my sons and daughter-in-law. The girls and boys in the orphanage were lined up before us, subdued, obedient, watchful. Behind them, a portrait of a gleeful, toothless Gandhi. A bunch of kids in the back row began giggling. A scuffle broke out, and the teacher tried ineffectually to discipline them.
Something in that moment suffused me with hope. We will all bungle through somehow, my India and Lenin’s India, and Jimmy Batata’s. And Nnutasha’s Indyaa, too. We’ll survive chaos and confusion, ideology, numerology and corruption. Today and the day after. India will carry on.
‘It all works out in the end—usually,’ I said to myself, loud enough to be heard.
‘Mom! You’ve lost the plot—as usual!’ Kush teased.
How do I explain that there is no plot? There never is. The hidden harmony of a housewive’s tale is structured, day after day, by simply carrying on. In the storyboard, the drama and heroism lie in the everyday aggravations, the small triumphs of daily life. And the happy endings—they tiptoe in so stealthily that you may already have left the multiplex by the time they show up on the screen.
Acknowledgements
As always, to Ravi Singh, tolerant friend and critical editor. Sarnath Banerjee and Bani Abidi for the wicked lines on the cover and frontispiece, Bena Sareen and Maithili Doshi for their perfect aesthetics.
Gratitude for patient and impatient readings and inputs to Meru Gokhale, Shivani Sibal, Kavita Pande, Sonia Faleiro, Shubhda Khanna, Kanishka Gupta, Bill Haseltine and Marie Brenner.
Anu Kakkar for her excellent editorial suggestions. David Godwin for his enthusiasm and sage advice. John Elliot for the idea of returning to my first novel, Paro. To all the readers who kept Paro alive in their hearts and bookshelves. And to Mrs Priya Kaushal, for hanging in there.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2011
Copyright © Namita Gokhale 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Meena Rajasekaran
ISBN: 978-0-143-44183-0
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75874-0
For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Priya Page 21
