French Lover (5 page)

Kishan rushed her, ‘What’s wrong? Walk faster.’

‘Let’s sit beside this fountain.’

‘No, not today.’

‘That’s the Seine. Let’s walk along it a little.’

‘Another day.’ Kishan brushed her off.

In the car Kishan handed her a gift-wrapped packet. ‘Open it after we reach home.’

Nila kept it on her lap and grew restless again. ‘Let’s go to a movie.’

Kishan shrugged, ‘You won’t even understand, it’s all in French.’

‘Why, aren’t there any English ones?’

‘The French don’t know English and they don’t want to know it.’

‘Don’t they have plays here? Don’t you ever go to watch any?’

‘Where’s the time!’

‘There are so many museums in Paris—let’s go to the Louvre.’

‘We don’t have the time today. We have to shop and then go back home.’

‘Then let’s go to a café and have a cup of tea.’

‘But you just had tea at the Taj Mahal.’

Nila sighed. True, she had had tea and not one, but two cups.

Kishan blissfully ignored Nila’s eager pleas. Apparently he had been taught from the age of six that it wasn’t right to indulge such pointless pleas and whims of womenfolk. Kishan was laughing as he said that once his mother had craved for some ripe mangoes. His father went to pluck them from the tree, slipped and fell and broke his leg. That day his father had called his sons and warned them never to give in to these whims and fancies.

The car crossed the Seine swiftly and they were in the minipris at Chatal. Nila stared in amazement at the rows and rows of food: cooked rice, cooked fish and meat, vegetables in colourful packages. All you had to do was take them home and heat them and they were ready to eat.

Nila said, ‘Don’t they ever cook? Do they always eat from packets and bottles?’

Kishan replied, ‘No one really wants to waste their time cooking.’ There were peas, okra, carrots, tomatoes soaking in brine in cans. They’d stay fresh even after nine years. There were powders for chicken and fish gravies, which would last several years. There was even mashed potato granules. Nila stood in stunned surprise.

When she came to the vegetables section she asked, ‘Do they have the saag we eat at home here—I really love it.’

‘None of the greens that you got at home.’

‘Bottle gourd or pumpkin?’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘Why are the fruits and vegetables so large here?’

‘They’re all hybrid.’

Nila saw five strands of coriander leaves in a colourful packet and jumped up, ‘Coriander, lovely. I love it.’

‘I’ll buy you lots and lots of it from the Chinese stores . . . these cost twelve francs for just five strands and there it’s eleven for the whole packet.’

Nila put it back on the shelf.

‘Tea?’

‘All right, take some tea. But you know, it’s a bad addiction.’

There were five hundred kinds of cottage cheese. Nila picked
up the most expensive one and brought it up to her nose to smell it—she almost threw up. With the bile stuck in her throat, she managed to get out of that section. In the meat section she breathed again. There were pieces of meat in plastic packets: lamb, chicken, turkey, duck, rabbit, beef, pork. The beef was the most expensive and chicken the least. In Calcutta it was the other way around. Why was the meat boneless? The bones were the tasty parts. People here had the meat without the bones or the skin. Apparently that’s what people did if they had any sense. There was class division amongst the meat too—the breast was better and cost more and the thighs were lower on the scale.

There were many kinds of fish, scaled and deboned.

Nila pointed to the pink salmon and asked, ‘How is this one cooked?’

‘It’s eaten raw.’

‘And prawns?’

‘That too.’

Nila shuddered. But she still walked around the magnificent displays in the shop. So many kinds of chocolates, wines—it was a sight for sore eyes.

Nila grew more curious about the packed foods. She picked up one bright looking packet and immediately Kishan said, ‘What are you doing? That’s dog food.’

She reached for another tin and was in even more trouble. Kishan snatched it from her hands, placed it back on the shelf and said in an undertone, ‘Why are you going for the cat food? Do we have cats at home?’

Nila was dumbfounded—there was food for dogs and cats, packaged just like human foods and kept along the same aisles! She had been to the markets in Calcutta many times. Each time she would have to duck under the stench of sweaty necks and armpits, scream at the shopkeepers and bargain for the goods, aim a kick at the seedy looking stray dog that stood in the dirty drain among buzzing flies, drowning in cacophony and filth, before she could buy something.

Kishan put some greens, vegetables, flour, onions, garlic, ginger, milk, eggs and two bottles of Johnnie Walker in his cart and hurried
her along. When they went to the counter, Kishan didn’t do any bargaining. A machine read the prices off the goods and totalled it up. Kishan handed a blue card to the machine. It noted the number. The machine would get the money from Kishan’s bank account.

Nila wanted to spend some more time in the supermarket. This was nothing like the market in Calcutta. But Kishan wanted to go home. At home she opened the packet and found a cookbook. It was a book on Indian cuisine by Madhur Jaffrey.

As usual, Kishan switched on the TV and opened his bottle of Scotch. Nila got the message: shopping done, cookery book bought, now it was up to her to get into the kitchen and start cooking the dinner. She tucked her sari into her waist and started doing just that. Kishan raised his voice and said, ‘It’s been a long time since I had malai kofta. Why don’t you try that today?’

‘What else?’

‘Make some naan. And a vegetable dish would go well—make palak paneer.’

‘But these are not Bengali food.’ Nila stood at the kitchen door, onions stinging her eyes and the smell of garlic on her hands.

Kishan laughed, ‘I am not a Bengali.’

‘Oh, that’s true.’ Nila brushed the stray hairs away from her eyes and laughed.

Nila cooked all evening. She laid the table and called Kishan. As he ate, Kishan said, ‘What did those boys at the restaurant want with you?’

Nila smiled, ‘Just a fellow Bengali to talk to.’

‘What was all that chatter with Mojammel?’

She put some malai kofta on to his plate and said, ‘How he came to this country, what he does, etc.’

‘What else?’

‘Just that, and he said he can’t get a good job without papers.’

‘And?’

‘And that he lives in Belle Ville.’

‘And?’

‘And that they stay seven together in one room.’

‘And?’

‘And that the people at home think he is a DC.’

‘And?’

‘And that he wouldn’t get a job if he went back home, he’s too old for that.’

‘And?’

‘And that Bachhu is a doctor.’

‘And?’

‘And he asked if I’d like more sugar in the tea. I said no. If I’d wanted it he’d have got me some. He also said that if you put salt in the tea instead of sugar, it tasted different. I said, yes it does. He asked if I’d like a pinch of salt. I said, no I don’t like anything bitter. He asked if I wanted a slice of lemon. I said no, I didn’t have my tea sour. I also said that too much lime in the tea could make it bitter.’

Kishan asked, ‘Tell me, can you make daal makhani?’

‘No.’ Nila answered.

‘But you know something, today’s dinner is a definite improvement on the other day. The book will come in handy for you.’

Nila got up without finishing her dinner, ‘You don’t have meat at all. Will you never even try it?’

‘You know very well that I don’t have it and I’ll never ever try it.’

‘I am used to eating fish and meat. I cannot have vegetarian food always.’

‘But you agreed to this match knowing full well that I am a vegetarian, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did. But I never said I will also give up eating meat.’

‘Did you think you’ll cook two kinds of food in the same house?’

‘I didn’t get the time to think so much.’

Nila picked up the dirty dishes and took them into the kitchen. Kishan burped loudly, stroked his immense tummy and said, ‘If I get such great food everyday, my pot belly is here to stay.’

Nila raised her voice over the sound of running water in the kitchen and said, ‘You do eat eggs; that’s not vegetarian. So why won’t you have fish and meat? Is it just habit or do you believe it is wrong to kill?’

Kishan didn’t reply.

Nila said, ‘Fine, I’ll go to your restaurant sometimes and eat. Mojammel also suggested that.’

Kishan didn’t reply to that as well.

At night, when Kishan began to take off her sari like every other night, Nila said irritably, ‘I’m sleepy.’

‘Go ahead and sleep. Let me do my work. You won’t know a thing.’

Nila knew that this was Kishan’s work and she had no role to play in it.

When Kishan was kneading her breasts in his palm she turned over and said, ‘Please let me sleep.’

Kishan had no objection to Nila sleeping. But she shouldn’t move her hands, legs, mouth and head so that he could get his work done easily. Nila wondered if Kishan really even needed a live female body to satisfy his hunger. She lay there still and motionless as Kishan’s heavy body did its own work upon hers. He had been right about one thing: she didn’t feel a thing.

Nila knew what would happen next. Kishan would get off her body and fall asleep, snoring. She would lie awake for many hours. In the morning Kishan would shake her awake, ‘Wake up, wake up, it’s getting late.’ She wouldn’t feel like getting up but she would. She’d make his breakfast, set the table and pour orange juice into his glass. She’d make tea for herself. When she drank the tea, Kishan would say tea makes your skin darker.

Nila would ask, ‘When will you come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

Then Nila would stand by the window and watch the people in the street below.

On a Friday Kishan took Nila to Sunil’s house for dinner. Sunil lived on Rue de Rivoli, which was named after the village in Italy where Napoleon defeated the Austrians in 1797. There was a station, a street and a bridge in this city, which were named after Austerlitz in Czechoslovakia because there too Napoleon had defeated the Russian
and Austrian armies in 1805. There was also a street named Friedland because that was the Russian town where Napoleon had defeated the Russians in 1807. The war fields where Napoleon was victorious were the only ones that were honoured in Paris. Nila hadn’t found anything named after Waterloo when she’d searched the map of Paris. The Hôtel de Ville was on the left and the Louvre on the right. Its roof was clearly visible from the window. Nila stood at the window and gazed at this vision of loveliness as she said, ‘Kishan, can’t you live in such a pretty place?’

There was a crude smile on his crude lips, ‘If I got a big fat dowry from your father, I could have done that right now.’

Nila turned around, ‘Why, has Sunil bought this house with money from his dowry?’

‘Don’t compare Sunil with me—he’s a doctor and he mints money. I am just a hardworking businessman and my business is almost bankrupt.’

Nila didn’t feel like a visitor in Sunil’s house. It felt more like her own house or at least a close friend’s. She noticed that she was more at home here than at Kishan’s. There were pictures of Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Vivekananda on the walls: the three famous Bengalis. Nila was a little sceptical about Vivekananda—he was in favour of child-marriage for girls and had opposed widow remarriage, hadn’t he? When Nila asked, Sunil said he didn’t know. Chaitali knew and she was busy cooking. She wouldn’t be interested in discussing the moral fibre of Vivekananda. The bookshelves were full of Bengali books and a Bengali song was playing on tape. Nila bent down to look at the books as she hummed the song that played; the smell of hilsa fish cooked in mustard sauce wafted from the kitchen. She picked up three Bengali novels and a book on the French artistic sensibilities in the nineteenth century. As she glanced at Sunil for permission to borrow them, she found him already nodding and waving away the question of permission. And two cassettes of Rabindrasangeet by Kanika? That too.

Delighted, Nila crossed her legs and tapped her feet, a book by George Pereq in her hands. Her tapping feet went up on the sofa as she slowly reclined on the sofa and her legs stretched out to one
corner of the seat. In her home in Calcutta Nila used to forget about the world thus, lost in her books, stretched out on the sofa, the bed, on the porch or the floor.

‘What’s the matter—did you come here to read?’ Kishan’s comment brought her upright. There were two men conversing in the drawing room and it didn’t look proper for Nila to stretch out thus on the sofa, reading. She should go to the kitchen and try to help Chaitali.

But she didn’t go to the kitchen and instead asked Sunil to form a sentence without an a or an i.

For a while Sunil stared at the ceiling and muttered but he couldn’t do it.

George Pereq had written that massive book without a single ‘i’ in it. Amazing! Nila was still lost in her book. ‘What a talent.’

Sunil showed some interest momentarily and then went back to discussing the restaurant business with Kishan. Nila put the book on top of the pile she was borrowing and slowly crept across the wooden floor towards Tumpa. ‘Tumpa-rani, can I play with you?’ The child was lost in her own world and didn’t respond.

‘Tumpa-rani, will you give me that talking doll?’

Tumpa didn’t speak. Sunil said, ‘She doesn’t know Bengali.’ Nila was surprised—a Bengali child who didn’t know Bengali but only French? She spoke French at home and in school. Although Sunil and Chaitali conversed in Bengali, they spoke French with the child.

‘Why don’t you teach her Bengali?’

‘She won’t be able to take the pressure of two languages.’ Both Sunil and Chaitali were of the same opinion. What was the use of teaching her Bengali—she wouldn’t need it.

Nila had seen this in Calcutta too: Bengali children were sent to English medium schools and spoke English at home, as if Bengali was a low-class language. The same logic applied there too: English helped in getting jobs, while knowing Bengali added no value. In spite of this factor, Nila had studied Bengali literature. Anirban had said this degree had no value. But she had argued that twenty-one crore people spoke this language and so it couldn’t be that worthless.
It was the sixth most spoken language in the world and the written literature of this language alone went back to a thousand years. The deeper she had plunged into the language, she had surfaced with ever more valuable treasures, like coming upon a secret gold mine.