Now that Uma is katti with the boys, she spends most of her evenings looking at advertisements in the magazines that her parents subscribe to.
Nothing shows disdain louder than when ignoring someone. Or someones. Darrel, Mo Mo, Venkat, Khalong, seem confused with her. They come a-calling every evening diligently and each time she shoos them away with her scissors. “I am busy, I have a project”, she says with a swift nod of her long neck. The poor boys are perplexed, isn’t she also of their age? What is this major academic work that she is involved in that they are not aware of? They are too scared to ask. Her body language has somehow changed. She does not elicit approval from them any longer. Now with her back to them it is slightly awkward to get her to laugh like before. None of their jokes appeal to her and she goes off to the library at the slightest pretext. Girls! they think and crack the next potty joke. Boys! she thinks and sighs. Not one among them to share her hobbies. Where was the friendship that they spoke so highly of?
Uma had over the holidays acquired a great love for glamour. ‘Style’ is the word she preferred. She wanted everything around her to be style-ish. First there came a fashion show. It was her mother’s idea that she take part since Amma loved to stitch clothes, the sewing machine was always on the run in her house, ‘Singer is singing’ as Nanna had termed it. It was more of a showcase for her mother’s talents than Uma’s interest. In fact Uma was aghast that she was to be participating in something so frivolous. Heroines in her books fell in love with impossible men and trudged great distances to have a glimpse of their loves. Nowhere did they indulge in sartorial exhibitions. She did not really have a choice since Amma was Ladies Club secretary and it would look pretty bad in the camp if she let her mother down. Dutiful Daughter to the Rescue read the headline in her busy head.
So there she was in a halter neck blouse and a chiffon sari that she was coaxed and threatened into wearing. She had agreed on the condition that her hair be parted in the middle. Amma’s idea of a child was side-parting of hair, kept in place with a plastic bow shaped clip which came in all colours. One for each day of the week. Uma was not allowed to grow her hair “Who will make plaits early in the morning with all that cooking…” nor could she make a single pony tail “A pony tail is not scholarly, it indicates defiance….” And apparently middle-parting was reserved for married women or at least older women. As per Amma a child of eleven ought not to pay attention to such trivialities such as hair and its place and position on her head. In fact she whacked Uma slightly each time she remotely looked at the mirror or her own reflection. “Enough, you look like a devil that you are..…”
Given such terrible conditions at home, Uma tried to make the most of it by bargaining her way through this torture. Fashion Shows were for women who read Women’s Era, not her. Ammmaaaaaaaaa….no ….please! Alright ONLY if you do middle-parting for me. Shock. Silence. Shame. “This chit of a girl has acquired such a contrary personality” Amma went about complaining in the neighbourhood but middle-parting she did and thus Uma walked shyly, for the first and last time on the make-do ramp of officer’s mess Kumbhigram in the Nineteen Eighties.
Now, the elders to be polite or maybe they were just being elders started complimenting Uma on how ‘stylish’ she was. That was as unexpected as her mother’s unseemly desire. Stylish was never an adjective Uma had ever associated herself with. She liked to think Obedient, Well-mannered, Disciplined but Stylish? The never before opened magazines from the library started silently making their way into her house and she would pour over them trying to understand what constituted Style. After all how was she to replicate her style if she did not know what she had done to merit the compliment in the first place. She had to hide these magazines from Nanna since he always made fun of Mrs Saxena who read Griha Shoba. “That lady has no idea what a house is, she is always outside why does she need to read anything on how to keep one…?” in fact he made fun of anything that was not political. Either you read the Illustrated Weekly or you were a nincompoop.
In the evenings when Nanna was entertaining his friends with a drink or two and Amma was making snacks in the kitchen she would bring these ‘women’s’ magazines out from her bookcase, where they were sent to languish behind the Amar Chitra Kathas and slowly turn the coloured pages. Utter fascination gripped her young heart. A different world spoke to her through these photographs. Some funny, some poignant, some confusing but above all she felt a connection. She felt she belonged. To the world out there. She understood what they were trying to convey. It was not just love-lorn heroines she could look upto but these contemporary women in bold printed georgettes looking toward her with a frankness she saw nowhere around her. All the ladies she knew had never looked her in the eye. They seemed to spend their lifetime not looking at anybody or anything but just doing.
Uma wanted to look. Stylishly, if possible.
So this is what she would be busy with each evening when the boys came by. Just to check if the old Uma could be retrieved from oblivion. In their boy-minds an evening bereft of their company was oblivion certainly! Uma on the other hand was too occupied in her quest for Style to be bothered with such chunnu-munnus who ran amock in knickers. Her research was going nowhere though, what is Style? was still as pertinent a question in her brain and this was driving her towards more and more unexplored magazines.
On one such occasion Uma happened to look at Debonair, having looked the dictionary up she was aware that the word meant stylish, therefore a magazine she must browse. Suddenly in front of her was a naked woman lying arms akimbo and legs astride on a red sofa. Uma’s heart raced all the way to her mother and came back in embarrassment. She shut the magazine in absolute bewilderment and ran out of the library with the library uncle running after her “Kya hua beta…are you okay?” he having just gotten up from his nap surprised to see this earnest child fleeing.
Henceforth Uma carried a huge guilt in her tiny heart. She had done something she should not have. She was not sure what the mistake was precisely. Wanting to explore the unknown or looking at something that somehow felt wrong or not sharing this knowledge with anyone. Was keeping a secret bad? She was a little more careful in choosing her magazines. She would ask pointedly “Uncle may I read this magazine?” poor library uncle was flummoxed, he was the last one to know anything about what these memsahibs read. Perforce he had to read these magazines so he could answer her persistent questions. She was troubling him no end. Why did she come to the library so much, my luck only! look how sweetly the other children play in the park! he grumbled to himself silently.
After the Debonair fiasco Uma avoided the library if she could. This meant her study of Style had to be done on the streets, in her house, at the neighbours'. In short from theory she had to graduate to practicals. Her detailed study led to chart making and elaborate analysis on her part. How accurate her results were could be garnered much later in life, for now suffice that she took the pains to ponder. Her head was a battleground of tradition versus style. She was trying to come to grips with what was what. How was one to identify one and recognize the other. What were the essential differences and what constituted their natures.
For example: Nanjappa aunty was stylish. Everyone said so. Was it because she wore see-through saris and low-cut blouses? On the other hand buxom Judy who hardly wore anything but the tightest of tight tee shirts especially while playing badminton was not considered stylish. Amma it must be said was never called stylish either, they did say she had a great sari collection, ‘oh teach us to wear it so well’ and all that but stylish? No. It could be the hair Uma thought, Amma had a long plait and hers was a bob. Is that why they had called her stylish? Because of her short hair! Now that she noticed, more and more women with long hair were termed traditional and those with a short bob or a Diana cut were called ‘mod’. So, being modern was being stylish? but Nanjappa aunty wore and swore by saris! Saris were traditional yet she was termed stylish!
Maybe it was to do with texture of one’s clothes? Chiffon, Georgette, Gauzy, Shiny as opposed to earthy, staid, handloom. cotton. Then there was the matter of age, seemed like there was no barrier there, anyone even a eleven year old could be stylish. What about boys, were they allowed style?
Matters of such importance weighed upon Uma these days. She had concluded that everything new and modern and short and see-through and skin showing was stylish while everything else was traditional. Slits, Halters, Mid-riffs, Minis were the order of the day as proscribed by Star and Style that she smuggled home, so that was most certainly that. The aunties in their infinite wisdom had fallen for her halter neck blouse which she had worn, combined with her bobbing bob and chiffon sari, on the ramp that day she must have exuded style.
This saddened her. Uma realized she could never be stylish in real life. In real life she wanted to string flowers in her hair, paste a big red bottu on her forehead, don lots of bangles to hide her thin wrists and wear a Pochampalli to feel the cotton breathe through her bones. She was undecided about anklets but she might opt for them someday. None of this sounded stylish to her. It screamed of tradition. It was heartbreaking to conclude after such elaborate research that style and tradition did not meet.
What if Amma cut her hair? The very thought was anathema to her. Why, what was wrong? She kept trying to imagine it but the image would elude her, escape her in fact. Somehow make-up and Amma, short hair and Amma, backless blouses and Amma did not make sense to her. Even if she resorted to this, Amma would never ever look stylish, she would look cheap.
So is style something that is legitimate on others who are not maternally related to you? A safe tag to label those whom you don’t feel affection for…no no no….thats not true either, Nanjappa aunty for all her faults was Uma’s dream woman. What then constitutes style? None of the mathematics problems took up as much time as this conundrum.
In all this humdrum, other not so benign thoughts also crept into her skull. Is nudity stylish? Can nakedness emanate style? Was a human body inherently stylish? Or was it just a woman’s body that claimed to be so? Uma could not let something so serious to remain un-examined, she must go to the library and look at that Debonair again. See if she can spot style in that cheap woman exposing herself to the world. Did she have no dignity at all? Did style mean that one need not be dignified?
Except that the library uncle had by now started to read all the magazines and since he did not deem Debonair fit for his only reader as young as her, he had hidden these magazines somewhere, God knows where! How was she to conclude her research without a proper study of that brazen bharatiya nari? While she thus waited impatiently for nature to provide some answers, in walked Girotra uncle ordering the drowsy caretaker to ‘jaldi nikalo jaldi’
Take it out he did poor librarian from its hiding quarters and handed it over to the officer who was by now salivating oblivious to the extra stern Uma who eyed him with extreme disapproval. He was not conducting research like her was he? So why was he looking at the magazine with such concentration?
Style was fleeting, style was effervescent, style was what you did with what you had, style was an inherent voice singing through your clothes.
Tradition held you down, cowed you with its history, awed you with its might.
Style sat lightly on you, grazed your skin just so and whispered its presence.
Tradition pinned you to its warp and weft, weaving you into its looms unmindful of any pain or gain.
All this till the Manipuri family showed up to destroy her neatly created dissertation.
Apparently SHE had been the first ever screen actress of Manipur.
A mother of two she was, strange names her girl and boy had, Bam Bam and Mo Mo.
Her husband’s posting had delivered her and their scraggly kids into the two-roomed temporary accommodation right across from Uma’s.
Are all actresses stylish? Was Veda aunty styish? Would she become stylish if just one person said so or is it something many people have to agree upon? How exciting for Uma! An actress opposite her house, now she could study Style with all the patience of a detective.
Despite the wonderful opportunity, Uma was quite upset with this unwarranted usurpation of what she assumed was her territory. Till yesterday, “There might be snakes in there, scorpions too” thus she had shooed away all the tiny tots so that she could climb that threshold of the forlorn peeling yellow building and while pacing to and fro recite Desdemona’s dialogues or Indira Gandhi’s speeches, which she had revised to suit her own understanding.
Now this! Where should she go to practice her public speaking, to the jungle? Exasperated, Uma had decided to dislike the family from the get go. It did not help that her mother had wanted to make the newcomers feel ‘at home’ and had invited them promptly for lunch the next day ‘you can eat with us till your boxes arrive’ (and when would THAT be?).
Amma! You are really an impediment in your daughter’s political growth. Don’t you see, they are choking on that Pachchadi of yours? While the ultra suave pilot father kept mum throughout lunch time, the kids were more than happy to express their contended smiles, their mother was relieved to be back in civilization again after a long and harrowing train journey, well all was well. All in all this was a meal that was to seal everyone's fate especially Uma’s.
Amma packed dinner for them and that was it. Aunty and she were now best friends.
A woman from Vijaywada and a Meiti screen goddess called Veda.
“Uma take this Pappu to Veda aunty”, “Uma ask Veda aunty if she wants more Pulusu”, “Uma see if Mo Mo and Bam Bam want to picnic with us”. It was disgusting how adults let glamour decide friendships. What was so spectacular about being an actress? That not only her but her whole family has to be fed. At all hours! Eessh! Not that she did not like the Manipuri mem but this fawning on her mother’s part she abhorred. Not once had there been an invitation from the other side. Not once an expression of gratitude, thanks, regret, nothing. It was grating to see her own mother being so kind while being sidelined in the general scheme of things. Once when Uma refused to rush across with another casserole for the Singhs, “I don’t want to go, why can’t they give us something too?” her mother chastised her by ignoring her and refusing to talk to her for a whole month.
A common enough tactic by mothers to make you feel guilty and learn a lesson. Uma on the other hand did not learn through common means. She felt she was right in her assessment of the family from across and for the reason behind her mother’s excessive fondness for this ‘glamour puss’. A phrase she had recently learnt from the magazines she was stealing from the mess library.
These days after school when Uma returned home she found a strange sight awaiting her. A group of women, as always Veda aunty, would huddle together in a circle with scissors, stickers, gum, felt paper, colourful threads, nails, hammer, all beating away like stone masons. They were all intently making the ‘nail and thread camel and cart’ that Amma was teaching them. It took her mother all of five minutes to look at any dress or design to de-construct it, ‘Why buy’ was her constant refrain, ‘I can make it’ was another. She would look at it with extreme concentration, turn it in, turn it out, give it special sideways glances while the shopkeeper was fooled into assuming that here was a serious customer! Which was never her intention of course. Once she had examined it with extreme care, she let it go leaving the shopkeeper perplexed at his customer reading skills, he had been so sure that she would buy not walk away so easily.
Thus Amma had learnt to stitch, to sew, to knit, to crochet, to make art and craft for the walls, for the house, for the family and now finally for the neighbourhood. Since everyone wanted to learn this magic they congregated in Uma's house, much to her consternation. Not only was the opposite house taken but also her own abode, the one place that ought to be sacrosanct. The good part was that there was some treat or the other awaiting her upon her return from the drudgery of school. One day it would be Saboodana that Mrs Sawant had made another day it would be Radha Ballabh by Mrs Patnaik, yet another day Amma herself would make Pesarattu, there was no dearth of goodies on such evenings. The laughter, the chatter, the glitter, the flutter of those late lazy afternoons was immense. In Uma’s mind they etched forever a desire to be a housewife, to be the light of the house. A house that would attract all and sundry, kids and adults, art and craft, food and frolic. Despite an inherent feministic streak, our Uma could henceforth never turn into those bra-burning types. She might be angry at how women were treated but her anger never spilled over to the institution of marriage. And housewives to her were holy. A group of beings who transformed an itsy bitsy run down two room accommodation into an abode, a haven, a throbbing thrumming territory of terrific tasks.
This had meant that the respective kids also frequented her tiny space even when she wanted to be just quiet and retreat into her world. Mo Mo and Bam Bam trailing behind him were permanent fixtures now. Constantly running about from one house to another as though this was a relay race and making her giddy with their chatter and high spirits.
With these Batik and Appliqué sessions started another trend, each time there was a mess party where children below eighteen were not allowed, Veda aunty and Amma put Tulasi the taskmaster incharge of their wellbeing and bundled all of them in Uma’s house to eat and sleep or make merry as they would deem fit.
These evenings would have been fun if only the two Meiti morons could keep their clothes on. As soon as one started yawning the other would start stripping. Apparently, in their hometown no one wore clothes to bed! Not only that they did not know how to keep still, how to keep shush, how to let the night creep in while one settles into the arms of the warm blanket. This made Uma very unhappy. She disliked nudity of all sorts and any hint at cheapness, a misdemeanour, irked her high thinking mind. True she had an assorted collection of women in short clothes adorning her walls but none of them were vulgar. Vulgarity was anathema to Uma. Right now in her mind being naked was definitely vulgar.
What was vulgar, she started to think. Could vulgarity be stylish?
A warm Manipuri blanket. Amma had brought this back with her after her trip to Imphal. From the women’s market, woven by women. In Manipur women wove everything, blankets, shawls, clothes, Mekhla Chador. This is what Veda aunty always wore to parties, she looked resplendent in it no doubt. Maybe that is why Amma likes her so much thought Uma. She too wore traditional handloomed clothes unlike other aunties who were always crooning about chiffon or georgette. Handloom for Amma was very important. It not only represented taste but also meant that you were supporting a skill, a craft, a community who had been weaving in this manner for centuries, to wear such high art, wasn’t that more worthwhile than draping a Japanese silk which was store bought and cost you a month’s salary?
Amma’s another desire was also to somehow convince Veda aunty to teach her daughter some Manipuri dance. Uma’s one desire was to somehow escape this torture. Dance to her meant only Kuchipudi. She was not going to be carried away by some non-classical butta bomma stuff, the female costume did look like it was made for puppet shows! The big bukram based skirt, so stiff, refusing to yield, the funny conical head gear with a gauzy netty drape falling like Ganga over her shoulders and back.....did Amma really think that this was dance? These movements that did not move, flailing hands in one spot, a standard expression plastered on one’s face, no abhinaya, no mudra, no nritta, no thillana, no tandava….no no no..this dance was not dance and this was not for her. Krishna might have done the Raas but to her, Shiva, the Lord Nataraja, was the epitome of Natyam. She was not going to be pulled into this project of her mother’s. Amma had no discrimination. She talked to anybody and asked anything of them. Uff!
Soon enough Uma was attending her first dance class with Mo Mo’s mother. There was a programme coming up in the camp and what better than to showcase a talented youngster trained by one of the wives. Thus started Uma’s career on stage. With a stiff blue petticoat. She got to put Alta on her hands and feet which she loved and also make-up which she did not love. Strange how aunties sat with lipstick all day. It was the toughest part of her performance, to eat and drink without smudging the clothes, food and glasses. The faint after taste, the vanilla fragrance, the synthetic feel made her rush to her green room right after and wipe the blotch away with vengeance. Uma never understood why make-up was necessary. For dance or otherwise. Did people want to see her or her dance? And did they want to see her, as in her real self, her dancer-ly self, her inside self or just her painted visage?
The one main difference she saw between her mother and other aunties was that Amma never was made-up. Both in her dressing as well as her speech. Her actions. Veda aunty was like Amma. Maybe that is why they liked each other so much.
Uma though doubted that the real reason for the affections lay in the rubbu rolu and not in any common shared interests.
First, ever since these Manipuris were introduced to Dosa and Idli, they seemed to have fallen in love with life itself with a renewed vigour. Either Dosas were sent across ‘hot hot’ or Idlis were consumed five at a time even by teeny Bam Bam. It was embarrassing. The joy on Aunty’s face when she saw Amma grind the dough in her traditional grinding stone, made Uma wonder if this was the Guru Dakshina that she would extract from her unsuspecting mother in exchange of the dance classes, so generously provided, brushing away suggestions of a fee etc.
Amma was generous to a fault but her rubbu rolu was a loyal chef’s assistant. How could she survive without it? Her daily breakfast plans depended on its help. It provided a much needed exercise to her hands as much as it allowed her to sit in the backyard, singing to herself in the sun, while grinding minapappu, pouring a little water now and then to make it softer, pastier, just the right consistency. What would happen to these rituals? All the red chillies that got crushed inside its stone hollows, all the spices that found their way into the Pachchadis. Thinking of all these culinary delights, her Nanna had given in to her mother’s pleas to ‘Please let me take this with me’. That was why a heavy 50 kg grinding stone was transported from the south of India to the north east and it had traveled via three trains, a boat, a three tonner and finally a truck to reach its destination.
This, Amma could not possibly parcel off to her neighbour however friendly she might be, an actress, a dancer, a teacher at that. ‘Sil Pattas are not the same, you just go up and down, flat flat, not round and round. I like round and round’. Veda aunty had taken an extreme fancy to the rubbu rolu and its mechanisms. A flat mortar and pestle that was more common in the north to crush everything from garlic and ginger to green chillies and coriander did not seem to satisfy her needs. When she saw Amma seated on a stool or high ground, feet astride the stone, flicking the dosa batter with the back of her one hand with dexterity and astute timing, while with the other she continued to roll and roll and roll the pestle in a clockwork direction, it imbued in her a sense of glamour. The act itself seemed worthy of a star. The props were essential then to fulfill this picture she had painted of herself.
Uma sympathized with her mother’s travails. I will never do all that. If my husband wants Dosas, he will have to grind the batter on his own. Maybe I will give him company by sitting with him and telling him stories but nothing more. These resolutions were a protection against any future harm. Never once occurring to her that her mother might have actually enjoyed the time she spent with the rubbu rolu. To ponder, to sing, to spend time outside in the sun legitimately without drawing excess unwarranted attention. Otherwise a luxury for a woman with children.
Much later when Amma bought her first Mixie, it was celebration time! No more hand pain, no more massages, no more ‘Oh my God! Tomorrow is Dosa day”. Nanna was vehemently opposed to the Mixie initially, as he was previously opposed to a Gas Stove and later opposed to the Fridge, the Carpet and the VCR in that order. ‘Women are getting lazier everyday, when I was young, my mother got up before everyone else at four in the morning and ….’ Nanna always complained that the Mixie ground Dosa batter was not as good as the hand ground one and so on and on it went. Thanks to Veda aunty Uma’s mother had managed to finally acquire a Mixer Grinder!!
One day Amma announced that she and Veda aunty were going to Imphal. Apparently women in Manipur held a ‘haatt’, an open air market, the biggest in these parts and they also wove their garments, the Mekhla Chador and they were as we could very well observe with Aunty, the bosses in their families. Aunty told strange stories about non-husbands, women’s choice, middle of the nite mysterious visits and male slippers outside the ladies homes...... Uma never quite understood all this, only later in adult life realizing that what was being discussed was the apparently the free sex lives, an offshoot of the matrilinear system that existed in Manipur.
No doubt Nanna did not want Amma to be corrupted by such practises. He forbade her to go. Amma threw a rare tantrum, which in her case was silence. If Gandhiji’s weapon was hunger, Amma’s was speech. She remained mute till she got her way.
• Everyone agreed that Veda aunty was stylish. The ladies who came every evening to craft up their modest bamboo structures could discuss nothing else. “ How well do you know her?” “Does she speak English?” “ Was she really an actress, with heroes and all?” “Was she a flop actress to marry so young?” No one believed Amma when she revealed Veda Aunty’s real age. “How can that be?” they snorted “Impossible. Look at her skin! Her hair! Her clothes!”
• It must be cleared up here that Veda aunty’s ascribed glamour was due to her reputation and not because she looked the least bit actress-y. No make up, no jewelry, no garish clothes, no pouts like the ones she had caught posing in Star and Style. Aunty was clean and simple like her own mother. She had shoulder length silky straight hair which was always in a pony tail and her body was draped in the prettiest of Mekhla Chadors. The Chadors especially were white that she wore, hand-loomed and woven with intricate Manipuri, Meiti patterns. She created a sensation when she arrived which was a few months ago and the ladies still did not tire of eyeing her. A novelty after all both as an actress and as a person. The first Manipuri actress in India was their neighbour. Her children played with their children, how wonderful!
Now Amma wanted Uma to learn dance from this glamorous lady! Uma of course did not consider anything other than Kuchipudi as her birthright. Again a tug of war, between tradition and modernity except here the daughter was more traditional! Amma resorted to her mauna vratam tactic again but Uma was more conniving. “Have you seen the actual dance Amma?” she asked innocently. “Do you like it better than Kuchipudi? if so I must surely learn it” she added with devilish pleasure knowing fully well that Amma could not visit Imphal nor view these foreign dances, especially since Nanna forbade it!
So Amma and Veda aunty did the unthinkable one day.
They took off leaving the four kids in Tulasi’s charge, who was not that much older than Uma but by virtue of being a maid held all the powers of the household in her pre-adolescent hands. She reigned supreme in Amma’s absence, much resented and provoked every now and then by Uma to abdicate this shaky throne.
The two adventurous ladies had boarded an army three tonner going towards Imphal with the usual sob story to the alarmed MTD, military transport driver, of how defence wives have to make do with nothing and a quick visit to the famed All Women’s Market in Imphal was something that was imperative for the well-being of their respective families. Truth be told, the said wives had not even informed their much forgiving husbands of their impending plan, lest they be coerced into the confines of the motherhood penitentiary. So off they went, leaving Tulasi a girl of twelve to do the explaining to two grown men whose word was the very command everywhere outside but not in their own domestic domains: “Memsaab has gone with Memsaab to Memsaab’s house and Memsaabs will stay there tonite and return tomorrow as soon as possible. Memsaab has told me to look after the children while Memsaabs are gone” A maid never took Memsaab’s name of course.
Traversing a rickety, unsteady, hilly terrain each with her new found friend they went to Aunty’s maternal home in Imphal, where Amma met a lot of Veda aunty's relatives, they visited the women’s market, watched the women weaving, shopped with the women, chatted with them, it seemed to her that there were women everywhere….They got delayed to return home and that had had the whole camp agog with anticipation of some bad news, there was curfew in these parts and God knows who would do what. Nagas, Khasis, Meitis, so many tribes so many aspirations, what did anyone outside of this beautiful land know what went on in its confines.
Amma on her return acted as though it was normal for Indian wives with young children to take off just like that and Nanna too never questioned her. Uma was surprised at her not usually meek father! Shouldn’t he be demanding a better explanation from his wife? There, Rama is annoyed when Ravana abducts Seeta, for no fault of hers the poor lady, banishing her to the forest, while here this is clearly gross dereliction of duty and nothing is being said!
Uma firmly believed in the duties of a ‘mother’. What she should and should not do. For example Amma should never wear those silly skirts like Sandra aunty or see through saris like Nanjappa aunty. Such attire did not become someone of Amma’s stature. Similarly, she should sacrifice her interests in the larger interests of her young children and husband. After all, Tulasi could not be expected to replace Amma!!
Upon their return the two ladies who had expected public outrage or at least a scolding from respective husbands had much more to deal with vis-a-vis their young children than with their surprised husbands. That they had gone despite knowing fully well that they could be punished evoked something primal in Uma. Freedom was such a fault then, willing to face any infamy!
Thus instead of Tayyum tha thath tha, thathai hitha hitha tha she stomped Dhin tha dhin tham dhin thang dhin thang all because Amma had attended a full moon night's Raas dance in Imphal and had decided then and there that this is what her daughter ought to do! After all it is not everyday that one gets to learn to dance from a Meiti. Meitis are apparently descended from Gandharvas, celestial dancers and musicians from Indra’s court and soon enough Uma was going to replace Rambha and Urvashi. There is no limit to a mother’s ambition!
Her fake feathers, her fake bead jewelry and her fake happiness at finally being able to perform as a dancer, a childhood dream. Uma was draped in a baby Mekhla and pushed onto stage, just like on the ramp a few moons ago. And just as predicted the whole camp could not get over how stylish she looked in the fake get up, maybe being stylish was just that an ability to being a great fake?
That was how Veda aunty acquired her heart’s desire, by taking Amma to Imphal and teaching Uma to do the Khamba Thoibi and thus on their return from that fated trip Amma boldly announced : “Veda, you can take my rubbu rolu”
Amma could also not stop talking about the Ushop Maten, the traditional Manipuri vegetarian meal served on Banana leaves just like in her own village of Undi Agrahaaram, she went gushing at the grace, beauty and traditions of this jewel like land. No wonder in a fit of generosity and as a way of saying thank you to this unlikely friend from across the road, Amma had gifted her prized possession to Veda aunty, repenting her actions immediately after and always thereafter. There were no more Dosas or Idlis being made in Uma’s house. The grinding stone was gone forever!!
It was not such a bad bargain since in return Amma got a beautiful Manipuri Mekhla which Nanna promptly dismissed with ‘that will not produce any breakfast for us will it?!’ To which Amma counter questioned “maybe now you will finally buy me the Mixie which everyone else has in their kitchen!?”
This new attire was worn at parties and ladies clubs and calling-ons which inevitably elicited excited responses of Ooos and Aaaas and Oh My Gods. You went to Imphal, in a BUS? You stayed with those Naga people? Meitis are same no? No? Accha, they are like us you say? Really? ok ok….. reminding Amma of her adventure and her spirit and thereby making her feel confident and to look more beautiful, sometimes even ‘Stylish’.
Meanwhile Uma’s forays into the world of fashion to decipher Style was acquiring a feverish pitch. She was constantly surrounded by scissors, papers, tape, cuttings from Khatau, Garden Vareli and Only Vimal saris. On one hand there were these terrene saris which were a rage, apparently one need not iron them at all and which Amma had gone to look for in the markets of Imphal but then there was Veda aunty in all her splendour. Always a fresh flower in her hair, always a draped lungi-like Mekhla and a safed Chador flowing to the easterlies, always that soft tender skin framed by that straight black hair bunched in an easy pony tail. Uma would look at the models and then at her dance teacher. Back and forth, back and forth and try to pry out the secret of Style.
Weaving together bits and pieces of what she had heard, read and seen without the distraction of the boys telling her what and how to think Uma finally concluded her research and presented it to her own highness after much deliberation.
Style is:
1. Difficult and needs ironing
2. Complicated and yet comes out looking simple
3. Colourful especially when contrasted with white
4. People friendly and not machine made
5. A Smile which comes from the heart and brightens your eyes.
As an aside after having looked into the nudes that were baring themselves from the centre pages of Debonair, she concluded with all the disbelief of a scientist who is extremely sure of his results and thus cannot comprehend any contrary outputs, that Style need not necessarily involve clothes.
And that tradition and style were like the roots and branches of a tree, one giving birth to the other. The only problem was deciphering which was which. In very few people like the Meitis, as Amma could vouch, it all came together with ease.
Rubbing some off on sidelings such as Uma and her Amma.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, November 26, 2010
Salutations to her who is Unfettered
The waiter led them to a ‘family’ table right at the back of the restaurant where they were cut off from the crowd; the empty tables they trooped past were smaller, much more intimate, designed compassionately for couples seeking privacy. Shanti sagar was festively dressed up for Diwali, the festival of lights. Golden streamers were festooned along the walls and lamps were hung from the ceiling; the low voltage bulbs splashed patterned light over the tables. Multicolored lights strung along the glassed shop front danced merrily as though provoked into a frenzied state by the wet wind.
Accompanied by thunder and lightening, the rain meant business. Outside, the road wet with rain water, glistened in the dark, portentous of more rain. They settled down at the table semi-wet leaving an archipelago of water islands behind them, their wet clothes squelched water onto the dry sofa; their wet feet felt uncomfortable trapped in the shoes. The intrusive lights gave Vaishnavi a headache, she excused herself, treading carefully over the heavily padded floor, stepping away from the muddy footprints, glancing back every now and then till she was out of their line of sight, like a thief stealing away from the scene of crime. At the entrance, she stood listening for the patter of the obdurate rain, it was so easy to miss that sound in the shuffling of people coming in and going out of the restaurant and their idle chatter: ‘yaar, Shanti Sagar’s dosas are unbeatable!’ or ‘next time let’s try out the kashmiri pulao and methi tikkas’. But Vaishnavi listened; her heart was racing as though the rain was trying to pass on some cryptic messages to her, as though the silvery slanting arrows that fell from the sky were pointing at something, saying ‘here! Look here! Now!’ She stood there long enough to still her galloping heart, to drive out the obsessive dream, push it out into the relentless rain and say, ‘screw you! I am not weak. I am not a creature of whim. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law. Not a rider of horses.’ People stared at her flushed face as she stood at the entrance for no reason apparently, her fingers knotted up, her distracted gaze seeking some kind of sign. And then, just like a benediction from the heavens above, a loud whoop of joy rang through the crash and boom of the rain. People who were standing at the portico for the valet to get their cars and a few who were just getting in stopped in their tracks and turned. As though challenging the rain gods, a horse and its rider, blackened and obscured by the rain pelted across on the other side of the road. The rider, rendered shapeless in the dark and by the rain, appeared to be bent low over the horse like he was whispering something into its ear. The rider let out another loud whoop and the horse encouraged by these exultations thundered, its hooves merely sparking off the wet metallic road. The spectacle lasted only a minute but Vaishnavi saw each detail; she saw the sinewy flanks of the black horse ripple in the dark and saw its legs draw in and then leap- its entire beastly form in the air for just one breathless second-and land with the kind of nonchalant grace that was unique to horses; she saw its mane pushed back by the force of the wind and the rider’s wild hair thrash about as they kissed the rain and the wind together. People who too had witnessed the unusual sight smiled at one another indulgently, uncertainly as though what they had just seen had been the prank of a mischievous elf. Long after the duo of human and beast had disappeared, her heart continued to thump wildly. She stood there for a few minutes to collect herself.
When she got back her father-in-law was grumbling. ‘We should have stayed at home. I told you people. But no one listens to me.’ He wiped his face with the paper napkins stuck in a glass on the table, promptly there after removing his glasses from his shirt pocket and poring over the menu with deliberation, his eyes peering over the rim intently.
“You were gone a long while. We were waiting for you to order,’ Ravi remarked watching her closely in a manner that had always made her uncomfortable.
‘There was a long queue at the loos,’ she replied casually and widened her eyes at Kritika who was kicking Mallika under the table and making faces. The two of them although three years apart, nine and six, were dressed in identical clothes: a long brown and blue checked skirt and a blue sleeveless collared shirt. Both of them wore pigtails but of late the girls had been putting up a strenuous fight to cut their hair, with a special demand for fringes on the forehead. Ravi had been the wet blanket, resisting change. He sat next to his mother who was sitting next to Mallika.
‘It’s a special occasion nanna,' he said to his father and smiled smugly at Vaishnavi over the chrysanthemums-filled ceramic vase, 'how many times do we eat out otherwise?’
Vaishnavi smiled back tolerantly. Her severe large glasses and the pulled back plait exaggerated the intellectual air about her. The discomfort she felt in the broad bordered Gadwal was apparent in the way she kept pulling the pleats of her pallu over the bosom. She was a good looking woman if one saw the clear bright eyes caged behind the inexplicably odd glasses and the youthful body trapped in a garment that did no justice to it.
‘But nanna we wanted to have Chinese! Aparna went to Chinese Pavilion last Sunday. Their chopsuey is supposed to be the best in the city.’
‘You know tatayya doesn’t like Chinese. Learn to adjust,’ Ravi bent over the table and addressed his younger daughter.
Kritika chimed in, ‘no! Nanking is the best for Chinese. Ramya told me.’ Mallika pulled a tongue at her sister. Putting a finger to her lips, Vaishnavi motioned to her daughter to behave, widening her eyes for further effect which usually meant ‘no more of that or you are in trouble.’
‘What is the point of being old in years? One should be able to make adjustments for children. Senseless man. Pig-headed,’ Vaishnavi’s mother-in-law spoke up out of the blue, her rasping voice always drew attention. People invariably turned and stared at the slightly senile looking elderly lady with a funny voice. She resumed the harangue she had embarked upon in the house, persisted with all through the journey to the restaurant and had temporarily put aside in order to settle down.
‘Amma,’ Ravi raised his palm and that’s all he said in the masterful tone of voice that Vaishnavi had watched him cultivate in the ten years that they had been married. Exactly ten years to this day. That’s what they were celebrating. They were celebrating her large black rimmed glasses, her unseemly sari, his mother’s senility, his father’s obsession with food and his increasing, well increasing fatuousness. They were celebrating the crowding of their respective personal spaces and the resulting friction.
‘What will you have?’ he asked her pushing the menu card towards her.
‘You decide,’ she didn’t feel like going over the menu, the tedious list of mixed vegetable korma, palak paneer, navaratan korma, gobi special, baingan delight, bhindi do pyaaza, the same names, the same order. What was there to choose? It was only a meal.
An imperceptible twitch of a muscle in the right cheek told her that he was hurt. She had not been gay enough. He had wanted her to smile, touch his hand when no one was watching, brighten at the idea of eating out, and more than anything else make a fuss over his anniversary gift to her.
‘Where’s the phone?’
She pulled it out of her purse and held it up to show him. It was a swanky piece no doubt. Sony Ericsson P910i. Had cost him a fortune, so he couldn’t stop saying.
‘Do you remember the number?’
‘Not yet. It will take me time. I have written it down in my diary.’
He took it from her and looked it over admiringly, ‘I have saved my number in this. Keep the instruction manual safely.'
‘It is safe Ravi. Don’t worry.’ She called the waiter and asked him to clean the table. A few grease and curry stains remained from the previous occupants of the table.
‘But amma doesn't like cell phones!’
The waiter arrived for the order. Her father-in-law was the only one who had meticulously planned his order. Ravi placed the order for them after endless debating and pontificating with the children. He ordered a cake too. Vaishnavi wanted to protest but checked herself not wanting to dampen his spirits further. She settled back and waited for the evening to get over.
‘Amma wanted a new camera. No amma?’ Mallika turned to her mother, her pigtails grazing the empty plate.
Ravi winked at his daughter and turned to his wife, ‘amma likes her new phone. No amma?’
Amma smiled back, joylessly.
Once the food arrived, Vaishnavi's mother-in-law resumed the drone. She complained about the old man’s habits, his ‘obstinacy’, his ‘obsession’ with food, leaping back into a remote time in the past.
‘Once when Ravi was about two, he came home and threw the plate against the wall because the rice wasn’t hot enough, ’ she gulped and shook her hand at her husband across the table, ‘my sisters were so frightened of him….’ Again the rasping voice, the voice of a pained woman, drew curious stares to their table.
It wasn’t clear who she was talking to. It never was. Everyone in the house had learnt to discreetly look away when she launched on her lengthy tirades. Her husband, the villain in her life looked like a harmless food-obsessed old man, if anything. It was difficult to cast him in the role of a plate-throwing, teeth gnashing tyrant.
‘Amma,’ that cultivated masterful voice again. It worked only occasionally though. Most of the time she continued regardless, but being out in a public place intimidated her, so she sat back muffled, frowning deeply, her hands visibly shaking and the lips moving imperceptibly. She was a short woman of about sixty, who owing to her hunch back and the scanty hair looked shrunken. A severe tonsillitis problem long back had drained out the strength from her voice leaving it a mere squeal, every word uttered by her seeming to be choked out with effort, making it all the more painful therefore to listen to her never ending exhortations.
‘When is the next appointment with the neurologist?’ Her husband hissed at her over the chrysanthemums-filled vase.
‘Next week.’
‘You make sure she keeps doing those mental exercises the doctor had asked her to do.’
Vaishnavi nodded and was grateful when the children began to clamour to be taken to Chinese Pavilion on his birthday which was the next grand celebration awaiting the family. He turned his attention to them. Her own wandering glance fell on the couple sitting at a table beyond theirs. The girl was pink all over-her clothes, her cheeks, her lips-and she was sitting thigh to thigh with her husband. Vaishanvi could tell they were married by the flaming red streak above the girl’s forehead. The podgy man at the adjoining table laughed that annoying laugh again. She put her hand to her forehead where it hurt. If only she could get out of this restaurant and find a quiet corner somewhere. Where was the time rushing off to? Not the hours but the moments, ticking by, unseen, creeping away.
Ravi is talking to her and her mother-in-law is grumbling again, this time freely using invective. She can hear him say ‘amma!’ yet again. As if disembodied, she watches the family seated at the table, she sees them as the world sees them-noisy, ordinary and unremarkable. She watches the cake arrive. She cuts it along with Ravi, her lips stretched into a smile, and there is energetic clapping by the excited children and benign smiling by the father-in-law. Her mother-in-law claps looking a little perplexed as if unwillingly forced into the present happy occasion from an unpleasant time in the past. People at the nearby tables turn around, smile indulgently and clap too, caught in the motion of things. Timidly, but emboldened by all the radiance in the faces around him and the screaming lights above, Ravi gets up, she sees him coming to her, a narrowly built self-conscious man. He surprises her by forcing a piece of cake into her mouth, and then bashfully wiping away the blobs of cream from the corners of her mouth.
‘Happy wedding anniversary, Vaishu,’ he leaned over and whispered into her ear. She smelt his familiar, slightly rancid breath, and wished him back startled.
The next day she left the University early and went to Gayatri’s. While in the bus she fell asleep, her head drumming against the bars of the window. In a few moments she could sense a tug that pulled her body inwards, she tried to open her eyes but her dream sucked her in and her eyelids remained glued, she could feel something flutter away from her.
The same dream: She was riding a black horse in a green bikini. Her hair, long and wildly tousled, streamed behind her. This time she was tearing through a lush jungle. The splendorous flanks of the horse rippled. Both she and the horse were breathing hard, purposefully, straining to get somewhere, suddenly now galloping across a vast golden hued desert, an open terrain, barren and uninhabited, riding past a long caravan of camels and gypsies.
The sound of crackers going off somewhere woke her up.
She got off at Somajiguda Circle, her broad bordered sari hitched up; avoiding the soliciting autos, she walked past the Amrutha mall, past the mannequin crowded shop fronts. Soon, short of the TVS showroom, she got into a lane, turned a corner at Chang’s Beauty Salon and got into Sunshine Apartments. As she waited for Gayatri to open the door, she felt the pocket inside her handbag to check for her cellphone. There were two missed calls from Ravi. He had called her at work already to tell her that the electricity bill had to be paid and to remind her to buy his mother’s medicines.
Gayatri was in the kitchen, cooking, which was rare because she didn’t have the patience for it. But sometimes she cooked ‘for the fun of it'. Vaishnavi could hear the crackling of the curry leaves in the hot oil as she lay in her friend’s bedroom, glad to be left alone, to be away from home for once. For just a guilty second her thoughts wandered to her children, she imagined them back home from school, still in their navy blue uniform, eating lunch under the watchful but grudging supervision of her mother-in-law. Folding her arms behind her head, her head sinking into the pillow, she breathed the quiet gratefully, glad to be left alone. Lying there, her eyes traversed the room. It surprised her how much clutter her friend had accumulated over the years. Gayatri bought everything that caught her fancy. There were too many things in her house giving an impression of confusion. This room for instance, Vaishnavi thought, could do with a little room. If only Gayatri used the windows and the balcony to advantage and let in some air. The colossal Saharanpur bedstead blocked the door to the balcony and it was lost forever. Then there were those antique wooden cupboards said to belong to a rich merchant from Chettinad, devouring the windows. Wall hangings there were galore: Madhubani, Pochampalli, Kalamkari, Tanjore paintings. Terracotta figurines were randomly placed here and there. Her obsession with collecting had gotten worse after the divorce, Vaishnavi reflected. On the dressing table (another restored antique from Pondicherry) she spotted Gayatri’s wedding picture, both she and her ex-husband in pristine white, fresh from the wedding altar, eight years ago. She still kept that picture although she had disposed of all other traces of her married life. But that was typical of Gayatri: always a whiff of hurried logic in whatever she did.
When Vaishnavi joined her friend in the kitchen she was on the phone with a colleague from work. A mingled scent of hing, karpooram, sandalwood and coriander leaves pervaded the kitchen which doubled up as the puja room as well. Gayatri winked at her and continued to speak on the phone.
‘Have you approached all the hostels?’ She was saying, her voice beginning to lose its rounded politeness, ‘you know there is a hostel for every caste? Brahmin men’s hostel, Kamma hostel, Reddy hostel…Ya…there are at least twenty such hostels in the Dilsukhnagar area alone. These are the people we need to tap for the SpeakWell course.’
Gayatri was a marketing manager with GoGlobal, an overseas education consultancy that coached aspirants for tests like GRE, GMAT, TOEFL and also other sundry entrance exams. The Speakwell course had been recently introduced for fluency in English. It was a lucrative job and Gayatri had been associated with the organization for the last seven years. Vaishnavi seriously doubted the efficacy of these courses. She was quite convinced that agencies like GoGlobal hoodwinked earnest students by making lofty promises of assuring them cent per cent success rate in cracking the exams. The English speaking courses were even worse. Burqua clad women, inhibited small towners, Telugu medium educated students with native intelligence gleaming in their eyes, desperate in their need to be reckoned by the mainstream, mistakenly believed that glib speakers of the English language were a cut above, enrolled in the 25-day, 30-day courses, hoping to unleash their English tongues at the end of it. Very often they left disillusioned.
Gayatri finally hung up the phone with an explosive sigh, ‘these branch managers are so incompetent. Asking to be spoon-fed all the time,’ she put the cooker on the gas and turned to her friend, her eyebrows raised, ‘anniversary gift?’
Vaishnavi smirked as her friend took the high end Ericsson cell phone from her hand and examined it, ‘not bad. But you are violently opposed to cell phones aren’t you?’
‘My husband’s idea,’ she shrugged. The phone began to vibrate in Gayatri’s hand. Vaishnavi made a face as she took the call, moving towards the bedroom. She lowered her voice as she spoke.
‘Where are you?’
‘At the University.’
‘I called you twice.’
‘I was in class when you called.’
‘Did you buy amma’s medicines?’
‘Not yet.’
‘When?
‘I will buy them on the way back Ravi,’ she spoke patiently as if to a child.
‘When are you planning to start?’
‘I have to finish a paper for tomorrow’s seminar. Might take a while.’
There was a slight pause at the other end, she could imagine him rubbing his nose bridge, his glasses dislodged from their perch, ‘remember amma can't handle the children for too long on her own.’
Gayatri scooped out a little gongura pulusu with a ladle and dropped it into her friend’s palm.
‘It’s good. A little more jaggery though.’
‘You really need to get out of that madhouse more.’
‘Ravi just about tolerates my working at the university.’
Gayatri turned off the gas and put a lid on the simmering vessel. She shrugged, ‘Well, at least he is very fond of you.’
‘Sometimes, I feel…,’Vaishnavi paused, searching for an appropriate simile, ‘like a fly caught in a bowl of honey?’ she cocked up her eyebrow questioningly, wondering if her friend understood her.
Gayatri looked at her friend for a minute, ‘how do you handle that kind of subtle domination?’
‘I just don’t let it affect me.’
‘What do you do when he is talking to you?’
‘I don’t listen.’
Sometimes while pretending to listen to him, her eyes would wander to the table, to the bookend, to all the books she intended to read but just couldn’t find the time to. She would continue to nod her head as he talked: ‘It’s a typical small scale enterprise syndrome; industries here have a long way to go to catch up with the changing scenario worldwide. Unless they change this shopkeeper mentality there will be no real progress. But then do they really care about those things? These are all family run businesses run without a vision aimed at short-term profits.'
Ravi railed against the company he worked for, a transformer manufacturing company owned by a friend. He was the General Manager of its operations, working out of the factory which was located at an industrial area called Bowenpally. She had by now understood the pattern of his complaints. Ravi was a man who followed his habits studiously and loathed any variance in it. She often wondered why despite complaining so much about the job he had not made a single attempt to look for another break in the last seven years that he had been with the company. She realised in time that he grew only mildly restless sometimes and would sail over those moments by riling the system, the establishment, the indifference of the rich, the obduracy of the poor and in general the ‘abysmal’ state of affairs everywhere. But the next morning he would be off to work, breathing the imperturbable contentment that she almost envied.
‘I dreamt the same dream again. In the bus, on my way over here,’ Vaishnavi revealed, embarrassed, guilty even, as one would be about a secret adulterous affair.
Gayatri was hunting for her car keys in her dressing drawer. She looked up surprised, the dream admittedly was quite uncharacteristic of her staid friend. She grinned wickedly, ‘this means you have a wild side that you haven’t explored yet.’
They drove to Nampally in Gayatri’s car, to Unique book store. A grubby looking shop that was caught helplessly between an Irani café called Golden Corner and a crowded building complex that housed all kinds of outlets- a hosiery store, a novelties store, a chemist’s, and among other such shops, a homeopathy clinic that boastfully announced:
Homeopathy for your family!
Enrol your loved ones in.
Dr. Dayal’s Family Plus Programme.
Get 10-30% off on annual registration
conditions apply
Vaishnavi shuddered every time she saw the board. Dr. Dayal’s approach to ailments was much too hearty. Gayatri drove past the stately Ravindra Bharathi and then the Legislative Assembly. As they shot past Ravindra Bharati, Vaishnavi read the board outside announcing a dance recital by a fourteen year old Kuchipudi dancer called Sneha Rao.
‘I believe they have renovated the place,’ Vaishnavi smiled, ‘the last time we came here was for Mandolin Srinivas’s recital. Remember? We got stuck in the rain and nanna came and picked us up from Lakdi-ka-pul.’
‘How long ago was that?’ Gayatri asked scratching her chin.
‘Nine years I think, before Kritika was born.’
Gayatri looked at her friend her eyes wide as if to say ‘that long’!
At the book shop, Asif bhai, the sixty odd year old proprietor of the shop greeted them familiarly. He sat on a cushioned stool behind a wooden desk, his sanguine mehendi stained hair crowned by the ultra white skullcap. He always greeted them with a wave of his hand which was a hesitant cross between a ‘hi’ and an ‘adaab’. Only a seventh standard drop out, Asif bhai was thoroughly acquainted with books and authors of all kinds ranging from the do-it-yourself variety to literature. Vaishnavi and Gayatri often wondered if he read any of these books himself, although sometimes while writing out the bill or dropping the books in a cover, he would nod at them with a hint of appreciation, ‘acche kitaab hai. Good books.’ Obscured from the teeming masses and the surrounding din outside, the seemingly small shop had a cleverly hidden spiral staircase to a mezzanine floor which housed its real treasure. Books, seconds mostly, from all over the world, every title, every author, sometimes even rare first editions were available and if one couldn’t find what one was looking for, Asif bhai sourced it for his customers.
In the hushed silence that was more a sort of shared awe, common to all bookstores, Gayatri and Vaishnavi (there were only three other people in the room) browsed through the books in companionable silence, intermittently hissing at each other excitedly when they chanced upon a good book. Gayatri focused her attentions on the coffee table books on interior designing, feng shui and cookery while Vaishnavi looked for books on Vedanta, astrology and photography. The rows and rows of closed books hinted at the unknown and even appeared to discreetly mock at the insular existence of the human race. Resting heavily on her left foot and leaning against the large table assigned for non-fiction, Vaishnavi was poring over a copy of ‘Kundalini’ when her phone began to ring. The other three browsers looked at her balefully.
He wanted to know where she was. What she was doing. If she had finished writing the paper for the seminar. What time the seminar was. Then out of the blue he asked her what she was wearing.
When she came back into the room, Gayatri smiled at her sympathetically, she had already picked out her books. Vaishnavi settled on two- one on photography and the other on Vedic mathematics.
Outside the bookstore, the two of them stood near a chaat bandi with their saris hitched up to avoid the puddles. They giggled and gossiped like teenagers, their mouths full of panipuris. The lack of hygiene would have scared the daylights off Ravi, Vaishnavi reflected, and then a dreadful thought struck her: What if Ravi passed by that way and saw her? She shrugged her shoulders slightly, mentally dismissing the thought as unlikely.
‘Sometimes I feel I should have stuck it out with him. Maybe if I had given it some more time things would have fallen into place,’ Gayatri was saying of her ex-husband, ‘especially when I see others. I mean every marriage has problems….,’ but she noticed her friend was not paying attention, her eyes were moving distractedly towards the bustling road.
‘So is it always a horse?’
Vaishnavi turned her wandering gaze back at her friend, ‘what do you mean?’
‘In your dream, are you always riding a horse?’
Vaishnavi nodded; she smiled embarrassed, turning red in the face, ‘I know it’s silly but there is no one else I can talk about it with,’ she blushed deeply and adjusted her glasses, ‘at this age, do you think it is normal?’ she looked at her friend searchingly.
‘I want to show you something,’ Gayatri said, as she drove in the direction of the Necklace Road. The latter was a bourgeois recreational place. Families, large and small, descended upon this winding stretch of road to spend their evenings on the lawns flanking it and partaking of the modest amusements it had to offer. Push cart vendors of sugarcane juice and chaat lined one side of the road, discarded newspaper cones lay strewn about everywhere. Two khaki clad constables hovered about a Police patrol jeep, randomly stopping motorcyclists and checking them for license and other relevant documentation. A few disgruntled under aged teenagers had already been caught and made to stand aside. Along the lake’s shore were a string of more sophisticated eateries and a large exhibition ground owned by the State which attracted the lion’s share of the crowds. The latter was host to a range of events from horticultural shows to popular music concerts, practically everyday, adding to the traffic woes in the area. With some uncommon foresight, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad had provided parking space across the grounds, on the other side of the road.
‘So many people!’ Gayatri remarked, ‘have you noticed how people’s spending power has grown?’
Vaishnavi nodded not really listening to her friend’s banter. She sat with her feet up, clutching her knees, watching the faces recede away in the rear view mirror. Gayatri had switched on the radio, an old Hindi number was playing; she hummed along.
‘Why have we come here?’ She asked her friend. The people looked oddly familiar; their brave smiles and distracted searching glances saddened her. A few really loud crackers went off in the thick of the crowds near the exhibition grounds resulting in a melee as the traffic cops sprung into action and rounded up willy nilly two young boys who in their jeans and tight tee shirts seemed to be the possible mischief makers.
Gayatri parked the car next to a camel, which appeared completely oblivious of its towering presence amidst the cars and milling crowds. The gangling camel stood chewing cud and calmly appraising its surroundings even as it attracted a great deal of excited attention. Its owner, incongruously, was a middle aged man with a sullen expression that suggested he resented being in close proximity of such a stinking animal. He sat on a stone away from the camel, unconcerned, relying on the camel’s star power alone to bring in all the business.
‘Have you ever sat on one?’ Vaishnavi asked her friend, pointing to the ungainly animal.
‘No, but how about riding that?’ Gayatri pointed to a horse riding down the slope from the road to the parking lot. Vaishnavi took a closer look. A painfully thin young girl of about fourteen was riding the horse. She had brown stringy hair that was tied into a ponytail; her dress was a combination of pyjamas and what looked like an oversized borrowed shirt, the color of which was difficult to determine sullied as it was with use. Vaishnavi couldn’t take her eyes off the girl or the horse.
‘Are you serious?’ Vaishnavi looked at her friend surprised. The horse was black, like the color of night itself. Its thick black mane was slick and well nourished. The girl clip-clopped to a halt near the camel and greeted the man sitting on the stone who grunted back in reply.
‘How much for a ride?’ Gayatri enquired.
The girl contracted his fingers, ‘fifty,’ she looked at her doubtfully, ‘who wants to take the ride?’
Gayatri pointed at her friend.
The girl looked at Vaishnavi, her glasses and sari, with what Vaishnavi imagined contempt. The girl appeared to be in possession of something that made her at once remote and superior, ‘you'll have to hitch the sari up,’ she stated matter-of-factly and continued to feed the horse clumps of grass.
'No,’ Vaishnavi flushed deeply, ‘my friend was just joking.’ But she edged towards the horse all the same and stuck her hand out to stroke its snout. The horse moved its head away, and a few flies took flight from near its flaring nostrils.
‘I know this is not a distant mystical land but….’
‘What about you?’ Gayatri jerked her thumb in the direction of the exhibition and the crowds on the other side, ‘I need new curtains for the living room. I’ll go and check out the stalls there.’
The girl beckoned the camel-man to help Vaishnavi climb the horse. Looking unhappy as hell, the man obliged, joining his hands so she could step on his crossed palms and haul herself up on the horse. Vaishnavi sat astride the horse, pulling her sari down her calves, blushing deeply as she did so.
‘Who taught you how to ride a horse?’ Vaishnavi asked the girl who said her name was Mimdi, and that her uncle, the camel-man and she, belonged to a village in Rajasthan, near Bikaner.
‘I learned on my own,’ she replied and relapsed into silence. Every now and then she would reach and stroke the horse, whom she called Chetak. Vaishnavi stole glances at her. She walked tamely now in step with her horse.
‘Did you name your horse after Rana Pratap’s horse?’ Vaishnavi asked out of the blue, breaking the silence, feeling compelled to draw the girl into a conversation.
That Vaishnavi recognised the illustrious significance of her horse’s name thrilled her, ‘Yes! My uncle told me the story of Rana Pratap and Chetak. And when I got this horse, I called it Chetak right away.’
As if suddenly unbridled, her story spluttered out with only a little prodding from Vaishnavi. Her mother she said, died when she was very young. Until two years ago, they had been moderately well off, with fairly large tracts of red chilly farms and bajra which were taken care of by her father and two brothers. But for the last two years, around monsoon time, swarms of locust from out West had been attacking their crops and completely decimating them.
‘They say these bloody locusts come from some where near a big ocean in the west,’ she remarked, frowning fiercely, envisaging perhaps swarms of locusts nesting on the shores of some big blue ocean, ‘they are big and fat, and ugly,’ she showed with her fingers just how fat.
‘My father wanted to marry me off but I ran away with my uncle,’ she shrugged, pushing her hair back and smiling simply as if running away with one’s uncle was a natural solution to any crisis, ‘he owned twenty camels in Bikaner, which he used to peddle drugs across the border to Pakistan,’ she had a slight jagged edge to her voice, and the veins at her neck stood out as she spoke with the relish of a raconteur, ‘you know, they rip open the stomachs of the camels and stuff them with the drugs and then stitch them back?’
Vaishnavi couldn’t decide if the girl despised this part of the tale or relished it as much as the rest, because she paused and lovingly stroked the horse’s underside pensively before resuming her tale of adventure.
‘My uncle ran away from Bikaner because the Police were after him and I joined him. I promised him that I would work very hard and give him all the money I earned.’ Vaishnavi found herself trying to recreate the face of the camel man in her mind, who now going by Mimdi’s story was a fugitive on the run.
Her phone began to ring, ‘Here, can you hold this for me?’ She offered her phone to Mimdi who took the ringing phone skeptically, ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
‘No. It’s okay. I’ll call back later. I don’t like cell phones. They are such a nuisance,’ Vaishnavi suddenly felt chatty. The phone stopped ringing. Mimdi’s face lit up, the fancy gadget excited her interest, 'are you sure you want me to hold it?’ She asked still incredulous; she wiped both sides of her grimy hand against the pocket of her shirt with care and then lapsed into reverential silence, devoting her attention to the phone. Vaishnavi watched the girl as they walked alongside, she on the horse and the girl in step, only the steady clip clopping of the horse breaking the silence of the night.
‘Sometimes late in the night, after the day’s work is over, when my uncle permits me, Chetak and I take off on our own. We ride several miles. The city is so beautiful in the nights,’ MImdi began to talk, warming up to Vaishnavi, the kindly lady in glasses who looked like she understood her, ‘don’t you think so? Once I rode all the way from Necklace road to Chaarminar. In half and hour flat, both ways.’ She looked up at Vaishnavi triumphantly, her eyes sparkling.
‘Do you ride in the rain too?’
‘Especially when it rains,’ she replied with excitement lacing her voice, ‘Chetak loves the rain. So do I.’
'So where do you live?’ Vaishnavi tried to imagine this young free spirited girl and that sinister uncle of hers living in some hovel somewhere.
She chewed her lip and ran her finger in circles in an attempt to point the direction to her house, then gave up, ‘We live near the Chintal basti, not exactly chintal basti, because it is so congested there,’ she screwed up her face in disgust, ‘we can’t live there with our animals. We live in a two room portion of a big house near the basti, it is owned by this very kind rich man who has even provided a shed for Chetak and Raja.’
‘Raja?’
‘The camel.’
‘Do you earn enough through these rides?’ Vaishnavi was now openly curious, she wondered who this ‘kind rich’ man was. Maybe he was an equally sinister ally of her no good uncle. Anyway the girl didn’t seem to mind any of it. On the contrary she seemed unconcerned, radiantly happy with her circumstances, without a trace of regret at being estranged from her father and brothers.
For a brief second Vaishnavi felt that the girl’s guards went up again, she tipped her chin away, shrugged and took her time before replying, ‘sure! I make up to four hundred everyday, even thousand on occasions, and anyway we lend Chetak for weddings too. There we make a lot of money.’ She stressed the ‘lot’ part as if to tell Vaishnavi to stop being condescending and that anyway how she fared monetarily was none of her business.
‘Aren’t you getting bored just sitting on the horse and walking like this?’ Mimdi stopped suddenly and looked up at Vaishnavi. She carefully slipped the phone into the pocket of her well worn shirt and buttoned its flap. And then as if making up her mind for the two of them, the girl lifted her leg and slipped it into the stirrup and in one swift movement heaved herself atop the horse, leaving Vaishnavi quite speechless. And before she could so much as utter a word, they were off, and all she could hear was the beating hooves of the horse and the girl making goading noises as she heeled its sides and worked the reins. It was not until the girl told her to sit back and dig her feet into the stirrups that Vaishnavi realized her back was feeling sore as a result of the bumpy ride. She did as she was told. They were like two fugitives in a Western making a desperate bid to escape. On the road, people stopped on their tracks and stared at the unusual spectacle. Vaishnavi’s sari kept riding up but she didn’t care. She could hear Mimdi’s hard breathing behind her as she held on to the bridle and felt the horse move under her.
‘Do you want to try?’ Mimdi shouted hoarsely into her ear as she reined in the horse and veered it around towards the parking ground. They had by now crossed the crowds and were on a secluded stretch of the Necklace Road, where the waters of the Hussain Sagar languidly snagged onto a grassy patch of land. Here, all the muck from the lake’s abused guts resurfaced and settled morbidly, emanating a stench of heedless consumption everywhere in the city.
But before she could say no, Mimdi had dismounted, ‘hold the reins tightly, lean back and dig your heels into the stirrups.’
Vaishnavi suddenly broke out in cold panic. She had never known the power of control over anything, she couldn’t even drive, let alone ride a horse, 'I can’t!’
‘What are you afraid of?’ Mimdi laughed, ‘Falling?’ She was running lightly to keep pace with the trotting horse. At an indiscernible signal-Vaishnavi thought she heard Mimdi whistle-from Mimdi, Chetak took off on a steady canter.
‘Hold the reins, and lean back,’ Mimdi shouted her standard instruction. She was running behind the horse, ‘and enjoy the ride!’
Vaishnavi marveled at the understanding between the animal and its mistress, the unquestioning faith on which it was founded. Chetak cantered with practised caution, responding to Mimdi’s authoritative commands, its unhurried pace putting her at ease. The road was empty and it was dark but for those few moments that she was alone on the horse she felt free like she never had, relieved of the regrets of the past and anxieties of an undetermined future. The act of riding a horse had always stood for an idyll of fierce self reliance; throughout history men had ridden horses either towards a revolution or away from servitude.
At first, Mimdi stoutly refused to accept the phone as payment for the horse ride. It took Vaishnavi some time and effort to explain that she really didn’t want the phone and that the ride on the horse was worth a lot more. Gayatri didn’t say anything, surprised though she was at her friend’s strange behaviour; the sullen camel-man, Mimdi’s uncle and the fugitive on the run watched the exchange with interest, prying his molars with the nail of his little finger.
‘Remember not to answer the phone. Get a new sim card,’ then stealing a glance at the camel man Vaishnavi whispered, ‘this is for you, don’t give it to your uncle.’ Mimdi looked at her incredulously; she had vivid light brown eyes that shone in the bright halogen lights of the parking lot. It was incomprehensible to her that someone could give her a whole cell phone for a mere horse ride.
‘He may look like that, but he is not so bad. He is like a father to me,’ she replied a little defensively, darting a quick look at her uncle, ‘You can come and ride the horse anytime,’ she added with alacrity, happy to imitate Vaishnavi’s magnanimous gesture. As they were driving away, Vaishnavi caught sight of the camel-man taking the cell phone from Mimdi and studying it with interest and a little while later, she saw Mimdi mount the horse and ride away.
Gayatri couldn’t stop chuckling, ‘What will you tell Ravi?’ They were in the car now, weaving in and out of the traffic.
‘I’ll think of something.’
'The horse ride seems to have had its effect on you,’ Gayatri laughed, ‘you should do it more often. That man didn’t seem like her uncle but the girl was fascinating,’ she added thoughtfully, reminded of her green eyes and wild hair.
‘She is free spirited,’ Vaishnavi murmured, ‘that Mimdi.’
Ravi was appalled, ‘how could you leave it in the bus? It was such an expensive piece.’ ‘I am sorry,’ she said looking away from him, fingering the leaves of her new books still hidden in her bag; the crisp fresh-off-the-shelves fragrance reached her, ‘anyway I bought your mother’s medicines.’
He nodded his head vaguely taking off his shoes, ‘Were you at Necklace Road today?’ he asked her out of the blue, his brows drawn close together. His manner had lost its usual confident familiarity, replaced instead by a suggestion of middle-aged befuddlement.
‘No, I was at Gayatri’s.’ He looked at her queerly as she handed him his mother’s medicines. Vaishnavi removed his rolled up socks and threw them in the laundry bag and placed the shoes carefully in the rack. He had seen her riding the horse, she knew; but it was dark and he probably dismissed what he saw as an optical illusion, yet it was plain to see that he was struggling inwardly with stubborn doubts. She felt a little sorry for him.
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Yes,’ she turned and faced him for the first time in the day and smiled.
Accompanied by thunder and lightening, the rain meant business. Outside, the road wet with rain water, glistened in the dark, portentous of more rain. They settled down at the table semi-wet leaving an archipelago of water islands behind them, their wet clothes squelched water onto the dry sofa; their wet feet felt uncomfortable trapped in the shoes. The intrusive lights gave Vaishnavi a headache, she excused herself, treading carefully over the heavily padded floor, stepping away from the muddy footprints, glancing back every now and then till she was out of their line of sight, like a thief stealing away from the scene of crime. At the entrance, she stood listening for the patter of the obdurate rain, it was so easy to miss that sound in the shuffling of people coming in and going out of the restaurant and their idle chatter: ‘yaar, Shanti Sagar’s dosas are unbeatable!’ or ‘next time let’s try out the kashmiri pulao and methi tikkas’. But Vaishnavi listened; her heart was racing as though the rain was trying to pass on some cryptic messages to her, as though the silvery slanting arrows that fell from the sky were pointing at something, saying ‘here! Look here! Now!’ She stood there long enough to still her galloping heart, to drive out the obsessive dream, push it out into the relentless rain and say, ‘screw you! I am not weak. I am not a creature of whim. I am a wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law. Not a rider of horses.’ People stared at her flushed face as she stood at the entrance for no reason apparently, her fingers knotted up, her distracted gaze seeking some kind of sign. And then, just like a benediction from the heavens above, a loud whoop of joy rang through the crash and boom of the rain. People who were standing at the portico for the valet to get their cars and a few who were just getting in stopped in their tracks and turned. As though challenging the rain gods, a horse and its rider, blackened and obscured by the rain pelted across on the other side of the road. The rider, rendered shapeless in the dark and by the rain, appeared to be bent low over the horse like he was whispering something into its ear. The rider let out another loud whoop and the horse encouraged by these exultations thundered, its hooves merely sparking off the wet metallic road. The spectacle lasted only a minute but Vaishnavi saw each detail; she saw the sinewy flanks of the black horse ripple in the dark and saw its legs draw in and then leap- its entire beastly form in the air for just one breathless second-and land with the kind of nonchalant grace that was unique to horses; she saw its mane pushed back by the force of the wind and the rider’s wild hair thrash about as they kissed the rain and the wind together. People who too had witnessed the unusual sight smiled at one another indulgently, uncertainly as though what they had just seen had been the prank of a mischievous elf. Long after the duo of human and beast had disappeared, her heart continued to thump wildly. She stood there for a few minutes to collect herself.
When she got back her father-in-law was grumbling. ‘We should have stayed at home. I told you people. But no one listens to me.’ He wiped his face with the paper napkins stuck in a glass on the table, promptly there after removing his glasses from his shirt pocket and poring over the menu with deliberation, his eyes peering over the rim intently.
“You were gone a long while. We were waiting for you to order,’ Ravi remarked watching her closely in a manner that had always made her uncomfortable.
‘There was a long queue at the loos,’ she replied casually and widened her eyes at Kritika who was kicking Mallika under the table and making faces. The two of them although three years apart, nine and six, were dressed in identical clothes: a long brown and blue checked skirt and a blue sleeveless collared shirt. Both of them wore pigtails but of late the girls had been putting up a strenuous fight to cut their hair, with a special demand for fringes on the forehead. Ravi had been the wet blanket, resisting change. He sat next to his mother who was sitting next to Mallika.
‘It’s a special occasion nanna,' he said to his father and smiled smugly at Vaishnavi over the chrysanthemums-filled ceramic vase, 'how many times do we eat out otherwise?’
Vaishnavi smiled back tolerantly. Her severe large glasses and the pulled back plait exaggerated the intellectual air about her. The discomfort she felt in the broad bordered Gadwal was apparent in the way she kept pulling the pleats of her pallu over the bosom. She was a good looking woman if one saw the clear bright eyes caged behind the inexplicably odd glasses and the youthful body trapped in a garment that did no justice to it.
‘But nanna we wanted to have Chinese! Aparna went to Chinese Pavilion last Sunday. Their chopsuey is supposed to be the best in the city.’
‘You know tatayya doesn’t like Chinese. Learn to adjust,’ Ravi bent over the table and addressed his younger daughter.
Kritika chimed in, ‘no! Nanking is the best for Chinese. Ramya told me.’ Mallika pulled a tongue at her sister. Putting a finger to her lips, Vaishnavi motioned to her daughter to behave, widening her eyes for further effect which usually meant ‘no more of that or you are in trouble.’
‘What is the point of being old in years? One should be able to make adjustments for children. Senseless man. Pig-headed,’ Vaishnavi’s mother-in-law spoke up out of the blue, her rasping voice always drew attention. People invariably turned and stared at the slightly senile looking elderly lady with a funny voice. She resumed the harangue she had embarked upon in the house, persisted with all through the journey to the restaurant and had temporarily put aside in order to settle down.
‘Amma,’ Ravi raised his palm and that’s all he said in the masterful tone of voice that Vaishnavi had watched him cultivate in the ten years that they had been married. Exactly ten years to this day. That’s what they were celebrating. They were celebrating her large black rimmed glasses, her unseemly sari, his mother’s senility, his father’s obsession with food and his increasing, well increasing fatuousness. They were celebrating the crowding of their respective personal spaces and the resulting friction.
‘What will you have?’ he asked her pushing the menu card towards her.
‘You decide,’ she didn’t feel like going over the menu, the tedious list of mixed vegetable korma, palak paneer, navaratan korma, gobi special, baingan delight, bhindi do pyaaza, the same names, the same order. What was there to choose? It was only a meal.
An imperceptible twitch of a muscle in the right cheek told her that he was hurt. She had not been gay enough. He had wanted her to smile, touch his hand when no one was watching, brighten at the idea of eating out, and more than anything else make a fuss over his anniversary gift to her.
‘Where’s the phone?’
She pulled it out of her purse and held it up to show him. It was a swanky piece no doubt. Sony Ericsson P910i. Had cost him a fortune, so he couldn’t stop saying.
‘Do you remember the number?’
‘Not yet. It will take me time. I have written it down in my diary.’
He took it from her and looked it over admiringly, ‘I have saved my number in this. Keep the instruction manual safely.'
‘It is safe Ravi. Don’t worry.’ She called the waiter and asked him to clean the table. A few grease and curry stains remained from the previous occupants of the table.
‘But amma doesn't like cell phones!’
The waiter arrived for the order. Her father-in-law was the only one who had meticulously planned his order. Ravi placed the order for them after endless debating and pontificating with the children. He ordered a cake too. Vaishnavi wanted to protest but checked herself not wanting to dampen his spirits further. She settled back and waited for the evening to get over.
‘Amma wanted a new camera. No amma?’ Mallika turned to her mother, her pigtails grazing the empty plate.
Ravi winked at his daughter and turned to his wife, ‘amma likes her new phone. No amma?’
Amma smiled back, joylessly.
Once the food arrived, Vaishnavi's mother-in-law resumed the drone. She complained about the old man’s habits, his ‘obstinacy’, his ‘obsession’ with food, leaping back into a remote time in the past.
‘Once when Ravi was about two, he came home and threw the plate against the wall because the rice wasn’t hot enough, ’ she gulped and shook her hand at her husband across the table, ‘my sisters were so frightened of him….’ Again the rasping voice, the voice of a pained woman, drew curious stares to their table.
It wasn’t clear who she was talking to. It never was. Everyone in the house had learnt to discreetly look away when she launched on her lengthy tirades. Her husband, the villain in her life looked like a harmless food-obsessed old man, if anything. It was difficult to cast him in the role of a plate-throwing, teeth gnashing tyrant.
‘Amma,’ that cultivated masterful voice again. It worked only occasionally though. Most of the time she continued regardless, but being out in a public place intimidated her, so she sat back muffled, frowning deeply, her hands visibly shaking and the lips moving imperceptibly. She was a short woman of about sixty, who owing to her hunch back and the scanty hair looked shrunken. A severe tonsillitis problem long back had drained out the strength from her voice leaving it a mere squeal, every word uttered by her seeming to be choked out with effort, making it all the more painful therefore to listen to her never ending exhortations.
‘When is the next appointment with the neurologist?’ Her husband hissed at her over the chrysanthemums-filled vase.
‘Next week.’
‘You make sure she keeps doing those mental exercises the doctor had asked her to do.’
Vaishnavi nodded and was grateful when the children began to clamour to be taken to Chinese Pavilion on his birthday which was the next grand celebration awaiting the family. He turned his attention to them. Her own wandering glance fell on the couple sitting at a table beyond theirs. The girl was pink all over-her clothes, her cheeks, her lips-and she was sitting thigh to thigh with her husband. Vaishanvi could tell they were married by the flaming red streak above the girl’s forehead. The podgy man at the adjoining table laughed that annoying laugh again. She put her hand to her forehead where it hurt. If only she could get out of this restaurant and find a quiet corner somewhere. Where was the time rushing off to? Not the hours but the moments, ticking by, unseen, creeping away.
Ravi is talking to her and her mother-in-law is grumbling again, this time freely using invective. She can hear him say ‘amma!’ yet again. As if disembodied, she watches the family seated at the table, she sees them as the world sees them-noisy, ordinary and unremarkable. She watches the cake arrive. She cuts it along with Ravi, her lips stretched into a smile, and there is energetic clapping by the excited children and benign smiling by the father-in-law. Her mother-in-law claps looking a little perplexed as if unwillingly forced into the present happy occasion from an unpleasant time in the past. People at the nearby tables turn around, smile indulgently and clap too, caught in the motion of things. Timidly, but emboldened by all the radiance in the faces around him and the screaming lights above, Ravi gets up, she sees him coming to her, a narrowly built self-conscious man. He surprises her by forcing a piece of cake into her mouth, and then bashfully wiping away the blobs of cream from the corners of her mouth.
‘Happy wedding anniversary, Vaishu,’ he leaned over and whispered into her ear. She smelt his familiar, slightly rancid breath, and wished him back startled.
The next day she left the University early and went to Gayatri’s. While in the bus she fell asleep, her head drumming against the bars of the window. In a few moments she could sense a tug that pulled her body inwards, she tried to open her eyes but her dream sucked her in and her eyelids remained glued, she could feel something flutter away from her.
The same dream: She was riding a black horse in a green bikini. Her hair, long and wildly tousled, streamed behind her. This time she was tearing through a lush jungle. The splendorous flanks of the horse rippled. Both she and the horse were breathing hard, purposefully, straining to get somewhere, suddenly now galloping across a vast golden hued desert, an open terrain, barren and uninhabited, riding past a long caravan of camels and gypsies.
The sound of crackers going off somewhere woke her up.
She got off at Somajiguda Circle, her broad bordered sari hitched up; avoiding the soliciting autos, she walked past the Amrutha mall, past the mannequin crowded shop fronts. Soon, short of the TVS showroom, she got into a lane, turned a corner at Chang’s Beauty Salon and got into Sunshine Apartments. As she waited for Gayatri to open the door, she felt the pocket inside her handbag to check for her cellphone. There were two missed calls from Ravi. He had called her at work already to tell her that the electricity bill had to be paid and to remind her to buy his mother’s medicines.
Gayatri was in the kitchen, cooking, which was rare because she didn’t have the patience for it. But sometimes she cooked ‘for the fun of it'. Vaishnavi could hear the crackling of the curry leaves in the hot oil as she lay in her friend’s bedroom, glad to be left alone, to be away from home for once. For just a guilty second her thoughts wandered to her children, she imagined them back home from school, still in their navy blue uniform, eating lunch under the watchful but grudging supervision of her mother-in-law. Folding her arms behind her head, her head sinking into the pillow, she breathed the quiet gratefully, glad to be left alone. Lying there, her eyes traversed the room. It surprised her how much clutter her friend had accumulated over the years. Gayatri bought everything that caught her fancy. There were too many things in her house giving an impression of confusion. This room for instance, Vaishnavi thought, could do with a little room. If only Gayatri used the windows and the balcony to advantage and let in some air. The colossal Saharanpur bedstead blocked the door to the balcony and it was lost forever. Then there were those antique wooden cupboards said to belong to a rich merchant from Chettinad, devouring the windows. Wall hangings there were galore: Madhubani, Pochampalli, Kalamkari, Tanjore paintings. Terracotta figurines were randomly placed here and there. Her obsession with collecting had gotten worse after the divorce, Vaishnavi reflected. On the dressing table (another restored antique from Pondicherry) she spotted Gayatri’s wedding picture, both she and her ex-husband in pristine white, fresh from the wedding altar, eight years ago. She still kept that picture although she had disposed of all other traces of her married life. But that was typical of Gayatri: always a whiff of hurried logic in whatever she did.
When Vaishnavi joined her friend in the kitchen she was on the phone with a colleague from work. A mingled scent of hing, karpooram, sandalwood and coriander leaves pervaded the kitchen which doubled up as the puja room as well. Gayatri winked at her and continued to speak on the phone.
‘Have you approached all the hostels?’ She was saying, her voice beginning to lose its rounded politeness, ‘you know there is a hostel for every caste? Brahmin men’s hostel, Kamma hostel, Reddy hostel…Ya…there are at least twenty such hostels in the Dilsukhnagar area alone. These are the people we need to tap for the SpeakWell course.’
Gayatri was a marketing manager with GoGlobal, an overseas education consultancy that coached aspirants for tests like GRE, GMAT, TOEFL and also other sundry entrance exams. The Speakwell course had been recently introduced for fluency in English. It was a lucrative job and Gayatri had been associated with the organization for the last seven years. Vaishnavi seriously doubted the efficacy of these courses. She was quite convinced that agencies like GoGlobal hoodwinked earnest students by making lofty promises of assuring them cent per cent success rate in cracking the exams. The English speaking courses were even worse. Burqua clad women, inhibited small towners, Telugu medium educated students with native intelligence gleaming in their eyes, desperate in their need to be reckoned by the mainstream, mistakenly believed that glib speakers of the English language were a cut above, enrolled in the 25-day, 30-day courses, hoping to unleash their English tongues at the end of it. Very often they left disillusioned.
Gayatri finally hung up the phone with an explosive sigh, ‘these branch managers are so incompetent. Asking to be spoon-fed all the time,’ she put the cooker on the gas and turned to her friend, her eyebrows raised, ‘anniversary gift?’
Vaishnavi smirked as her friend took the high end Ericsson cell phone from her hand and examined it, ‘not bad. But you are violently opposed to cell phones aren’t you?’
‘My husband’s idea,’ she shrugged. The phone began to vibrate in Gayatri’s hand. Vaishnavi made a face as she took the call, moving towards the bedroom. She lowered her voice as she spoke.
‘Where are you?’
‘At the University.’
‘I called you twice.’
‘I was in class when you called.’
‘Did you buy amma’s medicines?’
‘Not yet.’
‘When?
‘I will buy them on the way back Ravi,’ she spoke patiently as if to a child.
‘When are you planning to start?’
‘I have to finish a paper for tomorrow’s seminar. Might take a while.’
There was a slight pause at the other end, she could imagine him rubbing his nose bridge, his glasses dislodged from their perch, ‘remember amma can't handle the children for too long on her own.’
Gayatri scooped out a little gongura pulusu with a ladle and dropped it into her friend’s palm.
‘It’s good. A little more jaggery though.’
‘You really need to get out of that madhouse more.’
‘Ravi just about tolerates my working at the university.’
Gayatri turned off the gas and put a lid on the simmering vessel. She shrugged, ‘Well, at least he is very fond of you.’
‘Sometimes, I feel…,’Vaishnavi paused, searching for an appropriate simile, ‘like a fly caught in a bowl of honey?’ she cocked up her eyebrow questioningly, wondering if her friend understood her.
Gayatri looked at her friend for a minute, ‘how do you handle that kind of subtle domination?’
‘I just don’t let it affect me.’
‘What do you do when he is talking to you?’
‘I don’t listen.’
Sometimes while pretending to listen to him, her eyes would wander to the table, to the bookend, to all the books she intended to read but just couldn’t find the time to. She would continue to nod her head as he talked: ‘It’s a typical small scale enterprise syndrome; industries here have a long way to go to catch up with the changing scenario worldwide. Unless they change this shopkeeper mentality there will be no real progress. But then do they really care about those things? These are all family run businesses run without a vision aimed at short-term profits.'
Ravi railed against the company he worked for, a transformer manufacturing company owned by a friend. He was the General Manager of its operations, working out of the factory which was located at an industrial area called Bowenpally. She had by now understood the pattern of his complaints. Ravi was a man who followed his habits studiously and loathed any variance in it. She often wondered why despite complaining so much about the job he had not made a single attempt to look for another break in the last seven years that he had been with the company. She realised in time that he grew only mildly restless sometimes and would sail over those moments by riling the system, the establishment, the indifference of the rich, the obduracy of the poor and in general the ‘abysmal’ state of affairs everywhere. But the next morning he would be off to work, breathing the imperturbable contentment that she almost envied.
‘I dreamt the same dream again. In the bus, on my way over here,’ Vaishnavi revealed, embarrassed, guilty even, as one would be about a secret adulterous affair.
Gayatri was hunting for her car keys in her dressing drawer. She looked up surprised, the dream admittedly was quite uncharacteristic of her staid friend. She grinned wickedly, ‘this means you have a wild side that you haven’t explored yet.’
They drove to Nampally in Gayatri’s car, to Unique book store. A grubby looking shop that was caught helplessly between an Irani café called Golden Corner and a crowded building complex that housed all kinds of outlets- a hosiery store, a novelties store, a chemist’s, and among other such shops, a homeopathy clinic that boastfully announced:
Homeopathy for your family!
Enrol your loved ones in.
Dr. Dayal’s Family Plus Programme.
Get 10-30% off on annual registration
conditions apply
Vaishnavi shuddered every time she saw the board. Dr. Dayal’s approach to ailments was much too hearty. Gayatri drove past the stately Ravindra Bharathi and then the Legislative Assembly. As they shot past Ravindra Bharati, Vaishnavi read the board outside announcing a dance recital by a fourteen year old Kuchipudi dancer called Sneha Rao.
‘I believe they have renovated the place,’ Vaishnavi smiled, ‘the last time we came here was for Mandolin Srinivas’s recital. Remember? We got stuck in the rain and nanna came and picked us up from Lakdi-ka-pul.’
‘How long ago was that?’ Gayatri asked scratching her chin.
‘Nine years I think, before Kritika was born.’
Gayatri looked at her friend her eyes wide as if to say ‘that long’!
At the book shop, Asif bhai, the sixty odd year old proprietor of the shop greeted them familiarly. He sat on a cushioned stool behind a wooden desk, his sanguine mehendi stained hair crowned by the ultra white skullcap. He always greeted them with a wave of his hand which was a hesitant cross between a ‘hi’ and an ‘adaab’. Only a seventh standard drop out, Asif bhai was thoroughly acquainted with books and authors of all kinds ranging from the do-it-yourself variety to literature. Vaishnavi and Gayatri often wondered if he read any of these books himself, although sometimes while writing out the bill or dropping the books in a cover, he would nod at them with a hint of appreciation, ‘acche kitaab hai. Good books.’ Obscured from the teeming masses and the surrounding din outside, the seemingly small shop had a cleverly hidden spiral staircase to a mezzanine floor which housed its real treasure. Books, seconds mostly, from all over the world, every title, every author, sometimes even rare first editions were available and if one couldn’t find what one was looking for, Asif bhai sourced it for his customers.
In the hushed silence that was more a sort of shared awe, common to all bookstores, Gayatri and Vaishnavi (there were only three other people in the room) browsed through the books in companionable silence, intermittently hissing at each other excitedly when they chanced upon a good book. Gayatri focused her attentions on the coffee table books on interior designing, feng shui and cookery while Vaishnavi looked for books on Vedanta, astrology and photography. The rows and rows of closed books hinted at the unknown and even appeared to discreetly mock at the insular existence of the human race. Resting heavily on her left foot and leaning against the large table assigned for non-fiction, Vaishnavi was poring over a copy of ‘Kundalini’ when her phone began to ring. The other three browsers looked at her balefully.
He wanted to know where she was. What she was doing. If she had finished writing the paper for the seminar. What time the seminar was. Then out of the blue he asked her what she was wearing.
When she came back into the room, Gayatri smiled at her sympathetically, she had already picked out her books. Vaishnavi settled on two- one on photography and the other on Vedic mathematics.
Outside the bookstore, the two of them stood near a chaat bandi with their saris hitched up to avoid the puddles. They giggled and gossiped like teenagers, their mouths full of panipuris. The lack of hygiene would have scared the daylights off Ravi, Vaishnavi reflected, and then a dreadful thought struck her: What if Ravi passed by that way and saw her? She shrugged her shoulders slightly, mentally dismissing the thought as unlikely.
‘Sometimes I feel I should have stuck it out with him. Maybe if I had given it some more time things would have fallen into place,’ Gayatri was saying of her ex-husband, ‘especially when I see others. I mean every marriage has problems….,’ but she noticed her friend was not paying attention, her eyes were moving distractedly towards the bustling road.
‘So is it always a horse?’
Vaishnavi turned her wandering gaze back at her friend, ‘what do you mean?’
‘In your dream, are you always riding a horse?’
Vaishnavi nodded; she smiled embarrassed, turning red in the face, ‘I know it’s silly but there is no one else I can talk about it with,’ she blushed deeply and adjusted her glasses, ‘at this age, do you think it is normal?’ she looked at her friend searchingly.
‘I want to show you something,’ Gayatri said, as she drove in the direction of the Necklace Road. The latter was a bourgeois recreational place. Families, large and small, descended upon this winding stretch of road to spend their evenings on the lawns flanking it and partaking of the modest amusements it had to offer. Push cart vendors of sugarcane juice and chaat lined one side of the road, discarded newspaper cones lay strewn about everywhere. Two khaki clad constables hovered about a Police patrol jeep, randomly stopping motorcyclists and checking them for license and other relevant documentation. A few disgruntled under aged teenagers had already been caught and made to stand aside. Along the lake’s shore were a string of more sophisticated eateries and a large exhibition ground owned by the State which attracted the lion’s share of the crowds. The latter was host to a range of events from horticultural shows to popular music concerts, practically everyday, adding to the traffic woes in the area. With some uncommon foresight, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad had provided parking space across the grounds, on the other side of the road.
‘So many people!’ Gayatri remarked, ‘have you noticed how people’s spending power has grown?’
Vaishnavi nodded not really listening to her friend’s banter. She sat with her feet up, clutching her knees, watching the faces recede away in the rear view mirror. Gayatri had switched on the radio, an old Hindi number was playing; she hummed along.
‘Why have we come here?’ She asked her friend. The people looked oddly familiar; their brave smiles and distracted searching glances saddened her. A few really loud crackers went off in the thick of the crowds near the exhibition grounds resulting in a melee as the traffic cops sprung into action and rounded up willy nilly two young boys who in their jeans and tight tee shirts seemed to be the possible mischief makers.
Gayatri parked the car next to a camel, which appeared completely oblivious of its towering presence amidst the cars and milling crowds. The gangling camel stood chewing cud and calmly appraising its surroundings even as it attracted a great deal of excited attention. Its owner, incongruously, was a middle aged man with a sullen expression that suggested he resented being in close proximity of such a stinking animal. He sat on a stone away from the camel, unconcerned, relying on the camel’s star power alone to bring in all the business.
‘Have you ever sat on one?’ Vaishnavi asked her friend, pointing to the ungainly animal.
‘No, but how about riding that?’ Gayatri pointed to a horse riding down the slope from the road to the parking lot. Vaishnavi took a closer look. A painfully thin young girl of about fourteen was riding the horse. She had brown stringy hair that was tied into a ponytail; her dress was a combination of pyjamas and what looked like an oversized borrowed shirt, the color of which was difficult to determine sullied as it was with use. Vaishnavi couldn’t take her eyes off the girl or the horse.
‘Are you serious?’ Vaishnavi looked at her friend surprised. The horse was black, like the color of night itself. Its thick black mane was slick and well nourished. The girl clip-clopped to a halt near the camel and greeted the man sitting on the stone who grunted back in reply.
‘How much for a ride?’ Gayatri enquired.
The girl contracted his fingers, ‘fifty,’ she looked at her doubtfully, ‘who wants to take the ride?’
Gayatri pointed at her friend.
The girl looked at Vaishnavi, her glasses and sari, with what Vaishnavi imagined contempt. The girl appeared to be in possession of something that made her at once remote and superior, ‘you'll have to hitch the sari up,’ she stated matter-of-factly and continued to feed the horse clumps of grass.
'No,’ Vaishnavi flushed deeply, ‘my friend was just joking.’ But she edged towards the horse all the same and stuck her hand out to stroke its snout. The horse moved its head away, and a few flies took flight from near its flaring nostrils.
‘I know this is not a distant mystical land but….’
‘What about you?’ Gayatri jerked her thumb in the direction of the exhibition and the crowds on the other side, ‘I need new curtains for the living room. I’ll go and check out the stalls there.’
The girl beckoned the camel-man to help Vaishnavi climb the horse. Looking unhappy as hell, the man obliged, joining his hands so she could step on his crossed palms and haul herself up on the horse. Vaishnavi sat astride the horse, pulling her sari down her calves, blushing deeply as she did so.
‘Who taught you how to ride a horse?’ Vaishnavi asked the girl who said her name was Mimdi, and that her uncle, the camel-man and she, belonged to a village in Rajasthan, near Bikaner.
‘I learned on my own,’ she replied and relapsed into silence. Every now and then she would reach and stroke the horse, whom she called Chetak. Vaishnavi stole glances at her. She walked tamely now in step with her horse.
‘Did you name your horse after Rana Pratap’s horse?’ Vaishnavi asked out of the blue, breaking the silence, feeling compelled to draw the girl into a conversation.
That Vaishnavi recognised the illustrious significance of her horse’s name thrilled her, ‘Yes! My uncle told me the story of Rana Pratap and Chetak. And when I got this horse, I called it Chetak right away.’
As if suddenly unbridled, her story spluttered out with only a little prodding from Vaishnavi. Her mother she said, died when she was very young. Until two years ago, they had been moderately well off, with fairly large tracts of red chilly farms and bajra which were taken care of by her father and two brothers. But for the last two years, around monsoon time, swarms of locust from out West had been attacking their crops and completely decimating them.
‘They say these bloody locusts come from some where near a big ocean in the west,’ she remarked, frowning fiercely, envisaging perhaps swarms of locusts nesting on the shores of some big blue ocean, ‘they are big and fat, and ugly,’ she showed with her fingers just how fat.
‘My father wanted to marry me off but I ran away with my uncle,’ she shrugged, pushing her hair back and smiling simply as if running away with one’s uncle was a natural solution to any crisis, ‘he owned twenty camels in Bikaner, which he used to peddle drugs across the border to Pakistan,’ she had a slight jagged edge to her voice, and the veins at her neck stood out as she spoke with the relish of a raconteur, ‘you know, they rip open the stomachs of the camels and stuff them with the drugs and then stitch them back?’
Vaishnavi couldn’t decide if the girl despised this part of the tale or relished it as much as the rest, because she paused and lovingly stroked the horse’s underside pensively before resuming her tale of adventure.
‘My uncle ran away from Bikaner because the Police were after him and I joined him. I promised him that I would work very hard and give him all the money I earned.’ Vaishnavi found herself trying to recreate the face of the camel man in her mind, who now going by Mimdi’s story was a fugitive on the run.
Her phone began to ring, ‘Here, can you hold this for me?’ She offered her phone to Mimdi who took the ringing phone skeptically, ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
‘No. It’s okay. I’ll call back later. I don’t like cell phones. They are such a nuisance,’ Vaishnavi suddenly felt chatty. The phone stopped ringing. Mimdi’s face lit up, the fancy gadget excited her interest, 'are you sure you want me to hold it?’ She asked still incredulous; she wiped both sides of her grimy hand against the pocket of her shirt with care and then lapsed into reverential silence, devoting her attention to the phone. Vaishnavi watched the girl as they walked alongside, she on the horse and the girl in step, only the steady clip clopping of the horse breaking the silence of the night.
‘Sometimes late in the night, after the day’s work is over, when my uncle permits me, Chetak and I take off on our own. We ride several miles. The city is so beautiful in the nights,’ MImdi began to talk, warming up to Vaishnavi, the kindly lady in glasses who looked like she understood her, ‘don’t you think so? Once I rode all the way from Necklace road to Chaarminar. In half and hour flat, both ways.’ She looked up at Vaishnavi triumphantly, her eyes sparkling.
‘Do you ride in the rain too?’
‘Especially when it rains,’ she replied with excitement lacing her voice, ‘Chetak loves the rain. So do I.’
'So where do you live?’ Vaishnavi tried to imagine this young free spirited girl and that sinister uncle of hers living in some hovel somewhere.
She chewed her lip and ran her finger in circles in an attempt to point the direction to her house, then gave up, ‘We live near the Chintal basti, not exactly chintal basti, because it is so congested there,’ she screwed up her face in disgust, ‘we can’t live there with our animals. We live in a two room portion of a big house near the basti, it is owned by this very kind rich man who has even provided a shed for Chetak and Raja.’
‘Raja?’
‘The camel.’
‘Do you earn enough through these rides?’ Vaishnavi was now openly curious, she wondered who this ‘kind rich’ man was. Maybe he was an equally sinister ally of her no good uncle. Anyway the girl didn’t seem to mind any of it. On the contrary she seemed unconcerned, radiantly happy with her circumstances, without a trace of regret at being estranged from her father and brothers.
For a brief second Vaishnavi felt that the girl’s guards went up again, she tipped her chin away, shrugged and took her time before replying, ‘sure! I make up to four hundred everyday, even thousand on occasions, and anyway we lend Chetak for weddings too. There we make a lot of money.’ She stressed the ‘lot’ part as if to tell Vaishnavi to stop being condescending and that anyway how she fared monetarily was none of her business.
‘Aren’t you getting bored just sitting on the horse and walking like this?’ Mimdi stopped suddenly and looked up at Vaishnavi. She carefully slipped the phone into the pocket of her well worn shirt and buttoned its flap. And then as if making up her mind for the two of them, the girl lifted her leg and slipped it into the stirrup and in one swift movement heaved herself atop the horse, leaving Vaishnavi quite speechless. And before she could so much as utter a word, they were off, and all she could hear was the beating hooves of the horse and the girl making goading noises as she heeled its sides and worked the reins. It was not until the girl told her to sit back and dig her feet into the stirrups that Vaishnavi realized her back was feeling sore as a result of the bumpy ride. She did as she was told. They were like two fugitives in a Western making a desperate bid to escape. On the road, people stopped on their tracks and stared at the unusual spectacle. Vaishnavi’s sari kept riding up but she didn’t care. She could hear Mimdi’s hard breathing behind her as she held on to the bridle and felt the horse move under her.
‘Do you want to try?’ Mimdi shouted hoarsely into her ear as she reined in the horse and veered it around towards the parking ground. They had by now crossed the crowds and were on a secluded stretch of the Necklace Road, where the waters of the Hussain Sagar languidly snagged onto a grassy patch of land. Here, all the muck from the lake’s abused guts resurfaced and settled morbidly, emanating a stench of heedless consumption everywhere in the city.
But before she could say no, Mimdi had dismounted, ‘hold the reins tightly, lean back and dig your heels into the stirrups.’
Vaishnavi suddenly broke out in cold panic. She had never known the power of control over anything, she couldn’t even drive, let alone ride a horse, 'I can’t!’
‘What are you afraid of?’ Mimdi laughed, ‘Falling?’ She was running lightly to keep pace with the trotting horse. At an indiscernible signal-Vaishnavi thought she heard Mimdi whistle-from Mimdi, Chetak took off on a steady canter.
‘Hold the reins, and lean back,’ Mimdi shouted her standard instruction. She was running behind the horse, ‘and enjoy the ride!’
Vaishnavi marveled at the understanding between the animal and its mistress, the unquestioning faith on which it was founded. Chetak cantered with practised caution, responding to Mimdi’s authoritative commands, its unhurried pace putting her at ease. The road was empty and it was dark but for those few moments that she was alone on the horse she felt free like she never had, relieved of the regrets of the past and anxieties of an undetermined future. The act of riding a horse had always stood for an idyll of fierce self reliance; throughout history men had ridden horses either towards a revolution or away from servitude.
At first, Mimdi stoutly refused to accept the phone as payment for the horse ride. It took Vaishnavi some time and effort to explain that she really didn’t want the phone and that the ride on the horse was worth a lot more. Gayatri didn’t say anything, surprised though she was at her friend’s strange behaviour; the sullen camel-man, Mimdi’s uncle and the fugitive on the run watched the exchange with interest, prying his molars with the nail of his little finger.
‘Remember not to answer the phone. Get a new sim card,’ then stealing a glance at the camel man Vaishnavi whispered, ‘this is for you, don’t give it to your uncle.’ Mimdi looked at her incredulously; she had vivid light brown eyes that shone in the bright halogen lights of the parking lot. It was incomprehensible to her that someone could give her a whole cell phone for a mere horse ride.
‘He may look like that, but he is not so bad. He is like a father to me,’ she replied a little defensively, darting a quick look at her uncle, ‘You can come and ride the horse anytime,’ she added with alacrity, happy to imitate Vaishnavi’s magnanimous gesture. As they were driving away, Vaishnavi caught sight of the camel-man taking the cell phone from Mimdi and studying it with interest and a little while later, she saw Mimdi mount the horse and ride away.
Gayatri couldn’t stop chuckling, ‘What will you tell Ravi?’ They were in the car now, weaving in and out of the traffic.
‘I’ll think of something.’
'The horse ride seems to have had its effect on you,’ Gayatri laughed, ‘you should do it more often. That man didn’t seem like her uncle but the girl was fascinating,’ she added thoughtfully, reminded of her green eyes and wild hair.
‘She is free spirited,’ Vaishnavi murmured, ‘that Mimdi.’
Ravi was appalled, ‘how could you leave it in the bus? It was such an expensive piece.’ ‘I am sorry,’ she said looking away from him, fingering the leaves of her new books still hidden in her bag; the crisp fresh-off-the-shelves fragrance reached her, ‘anyway I bought your mother’s medicines.’
He nodded his head vaguely taking off his shoes, ‘Were you at Necklace Road today?’ he asked her out of the blue, his brows drawn close together. His manner had lost its usual confident familiarity, replaced instead by a suggestion of middle-aged befuddlement.
‘No, I was at Gayatri’s.’ He looked at her queerly as she handed him his mother’s medicines. Vaishnavi removed his rolled up socks and threw them in the laundry bag and placed the shoes carefully in the rack. He had seen her riding the horse, she knew; but it was dark and he probably dismissed what he saw as an optical illusion, yet it was plain to see that he was struggling inwardly with stubborn doubts. She felt a little sorry for him.
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Yes,’ she turned and faced him for the first time in the day and smiled.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
a piece of paper....
call it a page...
from a diary...
would say a lot to you...
stories it has witnessed...
and stories it has missed...
reflecting whatever it faces...
like a mirror...
a page is a poem sometimes...
a story, a talk with self...
or sometimes just a contract...
a page, itself is an epic of love...
it just knows how to love what it has...
and hence stays forever with the page next to it...
Monday, November 15, 2010
Uma - meets her conscience in the Bathtub
Uma stared at the bathtub for a few minutes unsure and apprehensive. In all her nine years she had never encountered a contraption such as this. A bucket and mug mostly and when it rained, directly under the blessed showers, which she preferred. This, graying, cracking, threatening pit of rectangle had never crossed her naïve path. If it had she might have walked regally past. Who would want to ‘soak’ in water when one could gambol, romp, stomp, frolic with each drop and its trailing siblings. Soak is what Mrs Nanjappa had said, pointing to the aforementioned fancy of the Tea Gardens. The other words she had carefully collected from hither and thither, jotting down into her notebook whatever sounded good, tasted nice.
Words come in various tastes, didn’t you know? Eat a word and see for yourself! A romp is a gulp while a gambol is a gallop, the running away of the tongue with the taste. Uma was mouthing these in the mirror of her mind when Aunty, as Mrs Nanjappa was respectfully addressed despite being a divorcee, lovingly directed her towards the bathroom with a single word : SOAK. Soak - she commanded. That a command was couched in this sweet lipsticked pout was clear to even a nine year old. Ladies such as this, draped in chiffon and puffing away, borrowing a friend’s daughter for a Sunday while one’s own languishes in a boarding school can only know of a command. Of gentleness and motherliness they are bereft.
Not that Uma’s own mother was gentle! Not by any motherly standard! Oh no! she was a terror. It was all rules and regulations for Uma. What she could do when and how with whom for how long were precisely laid out. In all this Uma never sensed any command, any assumption of power in her mother. Her mother was a duty-bound humble woman of normal means and this came through in all dealings. Money and its encumbrances speak loudly despite the silence of its victims. This then was Aunty’s despair. Try as she might she could never make her daughter ‘like Uma’. And poor lady did not realize that the fault lay not in Munmun but in herself. A mother-in-absentia does not know how to raise children.
No doubt all the elders in the camp liked Uma since she was always polite, wished everyone, studied well and all that, which was very important for the adults but that was not it. ‘There is something more that I am unable to see’ and this is the mystery that detective Uma wanted to crack. Entering people’s minds and reading signs by examining conversations and analyzing responses was her new hobby and it was yielding good results. Except that there was no Watson to applaud and no fee that came her way. Also what surety did she have that her deductions were spot on?
Angushtamaatraha, the size of a thumb. Enough to glow in the dark, provide light in the tunnel and show her the way. This antaryaami proved to be a boon for the reticent Uma. Although she had never indulged in a direct one-to-one conversation with her formless twin she was happy to have discovered her soul mate so early in life. Henceforth it became difficult for Uma to make true friends. Everyone she met glazed over the surface, flitting on the waves of life as though a dolphin on show. Her style was more deep sea diving. With a flick of her eye she could capture the truth that lay in another’s heart without ever exchanging a word. ‘SOAK’ then was more than enough, four letters said with great emotion dripping with heavy meaning. Aunty had in fact meant that a middle class child like Uma ought to be pleased at this opportunity to immerse herself in the clean bath waters surrounded by fragrant bottles and white lace curtains shielding the harsh summer heat and that such a generous gesture ought to be thanked and indulged in appropriately. Aunty probably did not realize how transparent her needs were. She had expected Uma to squeal with delight, which Uma, despite her excessive politeness couldn’t force herself to.
Uma had grown up being bathed by her pinnis and baabais, they had all doted on her. In fact they gave her an oil massage every Sunday, whole body, mind. They would even pour the oil down her nose and ears ‘for lubrication’. Then one of them would apply a paste of turmeric mixed with Kasturi on her skin and let it dry. Then another would scrub it off for her, telling her stories set in Kishkinda or Dandakaranya. Some would be busy breaking kunkuDikaayas, soap nuts, for shampooing her hair. These would soak in water while she soaked the sun. Others would be plucking the mandara leaves and would be grinding them in the stone mortar and pestle, so her hair could shine. Then they left her to day dream, naked except for her oily towel, which she would wrap about self consciously. In an hour or so the women returned remembering their ward and spent the whole afternoon washing her hair, her body, singing to her, making her laugh, hugging her and pampering her. A heavenly experience which came weekly in the name of tallanTi. Uma’s quiet assuredness had stemmed from such spontaneous love and it was not going to be intimidated by a patronizing ‘SOAK’!
How was poor Aunty to know that Uma did not think that the cast iron construction that demanded that you lay in it, in your own yuck, was very hygienic. In fact for a girl who thought swimming pools were dirty, this was a step better that is all. You did not splash about in other people’s muck. How was poor Aunty to also know that Uma in fact pitied her loneliness, her lack of friends and her inability to stick to a marriage however difficult that might have been. Aunty was the first divorcee she had met and Uma was filled with scorn. She had seen her mother and her resilience and then she saw this! Did one go about as one pleased or did one fulfill one’s duty despite all odds? An adult at that! Did one’s duty consist of happiness of oneself or of the others too? Pondering day in and day out about this Uma had reached a sure shot conclusion that was much applauded by her twin. One ought to give, oneself of oneself and more. Thus decided smug Uma’s body language conveyed scornful vibes.
Mrs Nanjappa frequented her house whenever she had a breakdown. Amma was a perfect antidote to any trouble. She never gossiped, she did not intimidate, she listened and she cooked. She fed and she calmed. No one who came to her went away sad. She was simplicity personified. Sincerity oozed from her. Who could withstand such transparency without being transformed somehow for the good? Uma had Aunty’s story in bits and pieces: overheard her actually, she loved to eavesdrop, fancied herself a detective, didn’t she?
Born to a Punjabi General, married to a rich Coorgi planter, becoming a mother despite not wanting to, divorcing him after falling in love with another, that another who has a daughter of his own, having a second daughter Mahima who is sent away to a Boarding school because ‘how can we let her study in these small town schools’ and so on it went, confusing the very stable and simple world of Uma’s with unwarranted husbands and excessive children.
Hearing Aunty’s story and knowing where her own mother came from, to Uma it was as clear as the water in that chipped porcelain bathtub that these gestures that Mrs Nanjappa meted out were to fulfill her own needs. Hadn’t she often stepped out of their tiny bathroom with a wrinkled nose. She must have noticed the cracked walls and dying commode. The spluttering flush. The old plastic bucket next to the distorted mug. The lack of accoutrements in a room that was overcrowded with unwashed clothes. Aunty had even wondered aloud at Amma’s ability to live happily in two rooms - the only accommodation that was provided to them for these two years of their lives. Mrs Chiffon Nanjappa with her Happy Valley Tea Gardens’ Manager’s bungalow, servant’s quarters, cook house, outhouse, driveway, birdbaths, orchards, gardens, a pond, a badminton court and a swimming pool was confounded by Amma and her well behaved, well read children, who did not complain nor cry.
She wants to study me thought Uma. Wants to get to the bottom of the mystery of my being. How can I turn out this way while her own daughter….well how was her daughter? Uma had not yet gotten a chance to meet her. Each time she was coerced by Aunty to ‘come spend the night with me, Uncle is away and I am all alone in such a big house’, Ma would take pity and send Uma packing with hurriedly packed clothes and the homework that was to be completed. No one seemed to want to know what Uma thought of this arrangement. Children were not consulted on such trivial matters when Uma was nine. They got along with life the best they could. The next day Uma would arrive in a chauffer driven car at her school to the astonishment of all her classmates who had seen Uma jumping up into an Army vehicle, an hour after school, jostling among the potato and onion gunny sacks in an open three-tonner to be taken home, another hour away. She also got a few comics as presents and an ‘English’ lunch in her tiffin box (which she exchanged for being so bland) and Trifle Pudding as extra treat.
Nanjappa Aunty made sure that she had bribed Uma enough for next time. Little did she know that Uma was not asked about her stay either by her mother or her father and that such events did not ruffle the routine of her chaotic household. They pitied Aunty as much as Uma did or maybe Uma caught the scent from them…or else how was a young girl to know that divorce was bad or that making a choice as an adult woman was considered immoral. That her mother was so friendly towards Mrs Nanjappa in itself was shocking considering how pious and conservative she was but that Aunty N should like her Amma, this was the strangest thing. A sophisticated lady like her, rich and glamorous and vocal while Amma a simple housewife, unpretentious and almost unformed. But for the need. There is always the need.
Uma was a symbol. She projected all that was right with the future generation, a beacon, a shining example, look, they all said, be like her, children! And that made sure that she never had any more friends after that. Hence our nine year old lil miss perfect spent many a lonely night reading books belonging to another, sleeping in another’s bed and waiting to bathe in another’s bathtub. Nay, Soak. Aunty’s pet but did she have any one her age to play with? To saunter about? To stroll along the stream?
The first time Uma went to the Bungalow, so many men came out to assist with her puny night-bag that she was ashamed of how little she possessed. She felt she needed to be worthy of this treatment, of being their guest, not Aunty’s mind. Aunty knew. Uma wanted to be thought of as someone important by the servants. So the rest of her stay was spent not in free abandon but in constant watching of herself. Did she sit right? Was her dress too high? Had she crossed her legs at dinner? Had she thanked them adequately for the second helpings? Was the toilet seat wet? Had she wiped it? Did she fold her clothes, put away her books, rinse her glass and so it went for two days. This constant burden weighed on our poor girl so much that the visits were turning into a test instead of providing respite.
She wanted to ask so many questions. How was one to use that bath-tub. This was the first time she was seeing one. It was only now that she had sort of gotten used to a commode. That she could manage. Could she ask for pickle because the food was so inedible or was Aunty testing her? Was that a bird-bath she had read about in books! How wonderful, what types of birds came to drink from this fountain….and that surely is an Orchid! Weren’t orchids rarest of rare…..
Unfortunately Uma did not put her curiosity to tongue. She was told not to pester Aunty and she knew how irritating some children got. So very impolite, asking this and demanding that. She disliked such childish behaviour. She would indulge in none of that. The Answers would present themselves to her in their own time and meanwhile she will make do by gliding past them, the queen of these surroundings who deigns to walk amongst such common happenings. There was not a child’s bone in her frail and ungainly body. If you mistook her for a princess she would have reprimanded you for slighting a queen.
Though, unfortunately for her, no one thought Uma was royalty. To start with, Baby Chiffon who had just landed from a boarding in Bokaro was upset that her mother would choose to invite a strange unglamorous girl home the very day that her own friend whom she desperately wanted to impress was finally coming to visit her. Not to speak of whose daughter she was. Tina’s father was Manager of the Barak Valley Tea Gardens AND the Polo Club. It was so mortifying to find a silly South Indian who looked like a lizard in an overgrown gown sitting at the dining table with a glum face while she had wanted to project a Happy picture, after all they were the Managers of the Happy Valley Tea Gardens, no? Baby Chiffon aka Munmun aka Mahima did not let you forget that she by virtue of being her father’s daughter was in some way a Manager too. The least you could do was to treat her right. Since Uma has not yet behaved like a sycophant or at least like a normal girl, which meant a few giggles and a headshake to show off your curls, Uma has been relegated to the doghouse.
Thus mornings, afternoons and evenings were spent in Uma being chased by Mrs Chiffon to “go find the girls Uma, it’ll do them good to play with you” forcing Uma to leave the Famous Five in the middle of their adventure to chase the case of the disappearing girls! Tina and Munmun, names that Uma instantly abhorred, were like two Bulbuls set free on a Jamun tree, black in heart and black in tongue. Never a moment that did not include high pitched prattle, their discussing the misdeed of another, a misdemeanor that they chose to analyze in excruciating detail, never a time when Tina by word, deed and gesture let Munmun forget whose Daddy was bigger and never an instance when they looked back at the trailing Uma. Uma who was by now thirsty and tired but too proud to say so could only guffaw in her silent heart at the scene playing out before her not having the wherewithal to confront such ridiculous behaviour. If only her mother could see her now! Uma suddenly understood her own worth all too well in the company of these girls.
This was what was bothering Aunty then, how was it that Uma should be so sophisticated, at nine mind, given where she came from while her own daughter, all that money spent on that Catholic boarding had come to a naught. How was it that one kid knew what to do and how, what to say and when, without ever being taught while her own flesh and blood, her child born of love and choice, should come across so ill-mannered and uncouth.
It was easy to see that Munmun missed her mother, she had no one to guide her and boarding schools don’t give a child the love an extended family can. It was also clear to Uma that had Mrs Nanjappa not flitted from one man to another, her disgusting daughter might have learnt by example on how to put up with people who are different, difficult and dull. Right now all that Munmun craved was for drama. High Drama. After all she was her mother’s daughter. If one did not like a situation, move on was the clear message. While in her own house what Uma saw was the exact opposite. Stick to your word, your promise, your commitment, come what may. This is what she saw day in and day out. It makes for mettle of steel, maybe that is why Amma always shone. And she Uma had reflected her mother’s shine? Never to have talked for the heck of it, never to have let a vow be broken. What power such speech had. What power such people had. How was she to convey all this to a lady who dressed so perfectly, who spoke so effectively and carried herself with such care?
Tina wants to play Badminton but Munmun does not. Even so Munmun will play Badminton because Tina wants it. Tina also wants to win but Munmun’s competitive spirit is bigger than her social skill so she unfortunately defeats Tina which cannot be the way Universe functions in this part of the world, so Replay after temper tantrums and a few “My Daddy is better than your Daddy” dialogues! Tina wins Munmun loses, all is well. Munmun learns an important lesson. Barak Valley Manager is bigger than Happy Valley Manager whatever your talent levels with racquet and shuttlecock.
What was she to tell Aunty after she got back to the house? That her lack of love and caring had made her daughter a spiteful little girl who would grow up to be a disgrace to society, that Munmun should be brought home to study with the tea pickers’ children to learn some compassion and humility, that she ought to be spanked out of her arrogance. Despite Amma telling her many times to always speak the Truth and behave Dutifully with dignity: Satyam Vada Dharmam Chara, Uma was not really convinced about the greatness invested in Truth per se. Who knew what that was? Everyone had their own truth. As for telling IT! Ha! Only fools told the Truth, the wise told Stories.
Her aunts, uncles, grand-parents everyone around her told her stories. Those stories conveyed more truth than anyone expected them to. Over time she learnt to distinguish between a true voice and an insincere one. It was not too tough to do. Listening to mythologies of yore with their tangled and twisted flow, disparate characters all coming together in the end, reading about them in books, letting one’s imagination accompany her favourite characters, all this had helped her define her own Truth.
What she had inferred from this disastrous visit was that her Truth was radically different from Tinmun’s (her petname for the twin devils) but they had entertained her all the same. They were enacting scene after scene for her, she had learnt about inter-tea-garden rivalries, about boarding school politics and about this fascinating city called Bokaro where everything was better than this silly Silchar, so they said. She had learnt that South Indians were dark and ugly and also that they had never heard of her hometown Hyderabad. “You are from where Hy, Hi, Hai der BAD?” and they had laughed and laughed, orange marmalade sticking to their teeth while they opened and closed their mouths with each H.
Uma could have taken great offence but all she felt was pity.
She remembered her own encounter with the soul in the Bathtub.
After Aunty had commanded her to “Soak!” Uma , who could not disobey the one woman who was a source for all her Enid Blytons, went in with trepidation. This bathroom was ten times bigger than the two room accommodation that was her house for the past year.
It had to happen one day so it happened today, now. Uma finally came face to face with her conscience. For the first time she sensed that there was someone else besides herself who existed in her, resided in her. This happened on the very day that she stood facing the porcelain pot. Having gotten away without asking questions for the most part, here she was confounded with her nemesis! Where did the water come from, where did it go? Should the tub be left wet or was there some knob to dry it? Was she supposed to lie down or sit or stand? Uma found in front of her five different taps, gilded. To prevent anyone from spying on her foolishness, she first made sure that the white lace curtains opening into the garden were drawn close. Then she locked herself inside despite warnings from Aunty ‘don’t lock yourself in now! That bolt is rusty’. Though Aunty had provided her with a wonderful white Turkish towel and a fresh Lavender soap,making her feel very rich, in that instant standing naked in the streaming morning sunlight Amma’s warning about misusing hospitality pricked her conscience. In her not-so-big overnite bag was a thin white and green striped cotton Bapatla made tunDuguDa , she took it out hurriedly and placed it quietly on the hook, behind the door. Afraid that someone would laugh at her belongings she hid everything from public view by carrying her bag with her. Even into the bathroom. Her soap was a moth-eaten blob of pink, streaked with dirt lines and mishapen. This her mother had wrapped carefully in newspaper since there was only one soap box in her house and that was definitely not assigned for overnite visits. She then placed the soap carefully on the washbasin, reaching out with the her hand and measuring the distance from the bath tub to the basin, to ensure that she could soap herself and wash herself without wetting and dirtying the whole bathroom floor. It was practically impossible to achieve this simple act of washing. Mainly because the bathroom was a house in itself! On the tub or around it she found no place where she could place the soap without fear of it slipping or her slipping or….this bathroom was proving very inconvenient for Uma. More like a drawing room, she thought. With all its paraphernalia. It was not functional just aesthetically appealing that’s all. Already she could hear Aunty whispering “everything okay in there dear?” and she responded before further investigation in a hurried YES! Much too loud a response, if only Aunty could sense nuance! Minutes ticked by, Uma was feeling dirty. She could not eat or drink before she bathed, a habit that her traditional relatives had imbibed in her, what to do now?
Soon enough using her thin ragtag of a towel she was wiping the tub just enough with water to make it seem that she had bathed, wetting her soap, her face, just right. A swob here, a splash there. Quickly but dexterously she recreates a scene for those who might come in to check on the post-bath state of the bathroom. If that is how things are done in such houses, else what did all these numerous servants actually do?
Afraid to flood the bathroom, Uma had taken an alternate way out, to prevent embarrassment, to prevent revealing her ignorance, what pride for one so young! This then was her meeting with her conscience. She saw how vain she was, how incapable of taking advice or help. How full of her own importance and wanting desperately to be treated right. Her show of strength was all a façade, her regal bearing just a mask to hide her weak desperation. A young girl with delusions too grand for her age. For any age. This struck her in bits and pieces. In a language she understood. That she was no better than Munmun or Aunty or anyone else, that everyone was just acting out what they thought was their true self. It was only when we removed all the layers, these garments of vanity, these clothes and garbs of wordly honours that one can truly see. Now she could, shivering with the wet towel in her hand trying to prove to an unseen audience that she knew what a bathtub was and how one bathed in it.
The Uma that came out that day was not the Uma that went in. She saw everyone in a different light. She superimposed her deficiencies on them and realized how human everyone was. These were no longer people to be despised but people to be accepted, as they were. No wonder Amma always treated Aunty with such respect and love. Or anyone else. What else can one do? When one sees oneself in others?
When Aunty saw that Uma could not be provoked into a confession against the giggly girls, she ordered all three of them to ‘go clean your rooms for the evening party’.
Parties at this plantation were sought after by everyone in the Cachar District. She was a wonderful hostess Aunty was. She knew the art of keeping everyone entertained and well fed. She could make anyone feel wanted even for that one evening. Men of every age hung on to her gentle orders, fulfilling her instructions with a chivalry that was rare to see even in her father's Air Force camp. Women vied to chat with her, to tell her their sob stories or to impress her with their garments, hairstyles, handbags. Children never cried in her presence, they dare not! They gaped at her in wonder, mesmerized. What magic she wove on those nights, she seemed to be everywhere, talking to everyone, dancing away the hidden pain in her heart, while the stars shone on a clear Summer sky in far away Assam, where no ill, evil or sin intruded this grand spectacle. Uma waited breathlessly for such evenings. She was sure that when she grew up, she would be like Aunty. The centre of it all.
Her distaste for divorced women was decreasing day by day and she slowly came to see no harm in it. She saw how good Aunty was despite her man-hopping. If a woman could carry off a party with three hundred hard-to-please hard-nosed planters, bureaucrats and defence officers successfully, she must possess some inherent merit after all. It was now Uma’s turn to look at Mrs Chiffon intently, without her sari. It was now Uma’s turn to look at Mrs Chiffon intently. Without her trademark sari, always Chiffon and see through, which was never in place and kept dropping into her cigaretted elbow, Aunty became just another normal woman. In fact she took the form of a human with human wants and emotions. Human failings and successes. Human like you me and Amma thought Uma. After all it was Aunty who saw to it that all the children got to eat what they liked while the parents were busy drinking and hobnobbing, too distracted to bother about such trivialities. Aunty seemed to be always hovering around them. ‘Beta this Beta that’ she would perpetually cluck like Mother Goose.
Before you knew it you could hear her discussing politics animatedly and heatedly with some young ‘un who was recently posted in these badlands and was too drunk to know when to stop arguing with his gracious hostess. This part always got the maximum claps, there was no one yet including her father who had defeated her in debate. She knew, Mrs Nanjappa did. Then suddenly her lilting voice could be heard crooning to the piano or to the strum of a guitar. Soon she would sway to a melodious rhythm and all the children would race to the top floor balcony to hide and watch the adults living it up through the wrought iron balustrades. Mrs Nanjappa was like Krishna. Dancing with the Gopis in the moonlight. Each Gopi thought she was his favourite! How does one achieve that? To make people feel so treasured.
Oh! how I wish to be like her when I grow up thought Uma wistfully letting admiration replace disdain. Even though she is a divorcee. Even though she does not know her own daughter.......
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