French Lover (6 page)

Chaitali laid the table with a variety of dishes and Nila’s mouth watered as the smell wafted towards her. As she ate the daaler bara, shukto, posto, begun bhaja, kopi bhaja, chhoto machher chochhori, rui machher paturi, shorshey ilish, chingri malaikari, chicken curry and lamb curry, Nila felt she’d been on a starvation diet for many days. She ate to her heart’s content and reclined on the sofa. Nila knew that if she asked, Chaitali would give her detailed directions of where she had found which fish and she also knew that it was of no use to her. None of these were allowed in Kishan’s house.

After the meal, Chaitali sat down in front of Sunil with betel leaves in her hand, like the grandmothers at home. ‘Are you inviting Paban Das Baul for Durga Puja this year?’

Nila put a betel leaf into her mouth and asked, ‘You have Puja here in Paris?’

‘Why not? And a big one at that.’

Sunil scratched his head. He was the president of the Puja Committee for that year and the pressures were just too much for him. He wanted to hand over some of the duties to Jayanta.

‘Why Jayanta—he’s from Bangladesh.’

‘Still, he is a Hindu.’

‘No, you’d better try Ashim Roy. Don’t you remember, last year the Bangladeshis took money to decorate the dais and then just disappeared?’ Chaitali complained.

Sunil remembered.

Nila sensed the mighty wall dividing the Bengalis. Those from Bangladesh were mostly illegal immigrants. All those unlawful, low-class people! The Bengalis from West Bengal were more Indian than they were Bengali. They’d embrace a Punjabi, Maharashtrian or Gujarati as their brothers and speak in broken French, Hindi or English. But they’d keep the Bengali in them suppressed like holding back nature’s call. Bengali was for the bedroom—secret and surreptitious.

Amongst the three Bengalis Kishanlal stood out like a sore thumb. Nila prayed fervently that the sore thumb would go back home alone, drink alone and fall asleep alone and when he woke up alone in the morning he’d find that there was no one there to make his breakfast, to tie his shoelaces; at night too he’d come back home alone and find no one there to take his shoes off, to cook, lay the table and serve him dinner. Let him talk to himself and cry in solitude.

But of course Kishan wouldn’t go home alone. Even if such a question had arisen, Sunil would never have allowed it. Nila looked at Sunil’s longish, bespectacled face and remembered this was the man who had studied with Nikhil in Presidency College. He had been to their home in Ballygunge many a times and Molina had cooked and served her son’s friend with great care. ‘Aunty really knows how to cook!’ this man had burped loudly and exclaimed many times. When Nila came home from school, swinging her braids, he had said, ‘You crazy girl, what’s the use of all this studying? Eventually you’ll have to handle the kitchen in your husband’s house.’ Nila often stuck her tongue out at him and went into the other room. That same girl, who didn’t have a care in the world, did successfully finish her college and university, without turning into an uneducated housewife. She didn’t have to enter the kitchen. She had dreams of teaching in Lady Brabourne College or in Calcutta University. But finally, this man, Nikhil’s friend Sunil, sent an ugly businessman to trample over her dreams, to bring her here and push her into the kitchen. She felt a little surprised to realize that her future had lain in this man’s hands who had always believed that Nila would have to slog in the kitchen, however hard she studied. And that was so true. She could no longer stick her tongue out at him. Her tongue lay so heavy and stiff that even if she wanted to, she couldn’t do it.

On their way back home, as she looked upon the dazzle of Paris by night, Nila went back to her childhood and smelt again that perfume called Evening in Paris. The streets bustled with people, women walked nonchalantly. There wasn’t a trace of terror and their steps didn’t falter.

Nila asked, ‘Women are out in the streets even at this late hour—
aren’t they scared?’

Kishan replied, ‘Scared of what?’

That’s true, Nila thought, scared of what? This wasn’t Calcutta that five lusty men or a bunch of robbers would pounce upon a girl and snatch away her money, jewellery, honour or even life.

Nila pointed to a girl and asked, ‘Take for example this girl, she’s about sixteen or seventeen and she just came out of that house over there. Where do you think she’s going at this hour of the night?’

Kishan answered, ‘Perhaps to a bar, or a disco. She’ll talk through the night, dance and have fun.’

Nila looked at Kishan with round eyes, ‘And her parents wouldn’t mind?’

‘If on a Friday night girls of this age sit at home, if they don’t have a boyfriend or sleep with a boy, it’s then that parents would be worried. They’d wonder if something was wrong with her, physically or mentally. If the girl goes out, the parents sleep in peace and if she stays at home they’d have a sleepless night. Besides, most of them leave home at this age. They stay alone or with a boyfriend.’

‘Without marrying them?’ Nila asked again.

‘Sure. These days no one marries and even if they do it’s not until much later—after living together for five or even ten years or after children come along.’

‘Education?’ Nila’s curiosity was aroused.

‘In this country you don’t need money to study, the government pays for it. The girls study and work part time—they get by.’

Nila said, ‘It’s a free life.’

‘Yes. Over here they believe in enjoying life, in whatever way.’ Kishan twisted his lips and crinkled his nose. ‘Bullshit! Do you know when these girls lose their virginity? At age five or six when they play doctors and nurses. Even before they’re twenty they must have bedded a hundred boys. There are no principles, really. If they love someone today, tomorrow they leave him—there are no enduring ties. They don’t know how to settle down, when and with whom. They don’t know it and they can’t do it.’

Nila heard the splish-splash of water somewhere in her heart, ‘Kishan, let’s go to that bridge, let’s walk on that Ponf a while. Why
don’t we bend down and take a look at the Seine, see how the waves are breaking and how the lights from the distant towers of the Notre-Dame are crowning the waves.’

Kishan didn’t stop the car. He held the steering wheel. Nila realized that he who held the steering held all the power. But Kishan had to stop when thousands of roller skaters came charging from the Republic crossing, flying like thousands of butterflies. Nila looked with wonderstruck eyes at these young people flying on their wheeled shoes. She had never heard such a vibrant call of youthful life, such display of young energy.

‘Why are they doing this?’

‘
Just
for fun.’

‘For what?’

‘Fun, fun,’ Kishan had to scream.

‘Just for fun?’

‘Just.’

Nila got out of the car and feasted her eyes on the speeding people. They left her behind and rushed ahead, in the flash of an eye, at the speed of light, with the energy of life, and immobile Nila, stationary Nila looked on, her eyes full of surprise and awe.

When Kishan called her, she had to get into the dark car again although she felt like walking or running on the streets; she wanted the speed of a cascade on her body and she wanted to exult in the feeling of youth all night long.

‘So wonderful! There was no darkness; everything was light, bright and alive,’ Nila said again and again.

Once they reached home, Kishan had to look for a parking spot from this end of the road to the other, from this alley to that and finally he found one after an hour.

Nila got down and said, ‘Why are you keeping the car on the street and not in the garage?’

‘Does anyone have a garage? Everyone parks on the street.’

Nila had never seen cars lying about on the streets of Calcutta. Anirban’s ambassador had a dent on the bumper and the doors were
rusty and yet it was kept in a garage which had huge padlocks on the door.

‘All these cars parked on both sides of the road—will they stay here all night?’

Kishan nodded, yes they will, they always have.

‘No one steals them?’

‘Why would they?’

Nila thought, indeed why would they. This was not a land of thieves and robbers.

When life was so monotonous, the chances of an unfortunate event were less but it did happen in Nila’s uneventful life. She slipped in the bathroom and hit her forehead on the corner of the bathtub. There was a steady stream of blood. Fortunately, she had the strength to call Kishan. He rushed home and quickly took Nila to the Lariboisière Hôpital, near the Gare du Nord. Nila was used to the hospitals in Calcutta with their swarming patients. Here, there were hardly five or six people in the waiting room dressed in immaculate clothes. They looked nothing like patients and more like guests at a banquet. Nila’s sari was soaked in blood and a thin towel was wrapped around her wound—she was the living image of the outpatients room at Nilratan Hospital.

One by one they were summoned inside. When Nila was called in, the nurse said she’d have to take off her clothes, wear a front-open tunic and lie down on the examination table. Nila couldn’t understand why she’d have to take off her clothes for a head X-ray. That was another hassle—she’d have to lie on the X-ray table, stark naked. Nila asked why would she have to be naked for an X-ray of her head. They said it had to be done—they’ll take X-rays of her chest as well. But why would she have to be naked for that? They said she had to, for an X-ray of chest, stomach, legs or even toenails, she’d have to strip—that was the rule. Nila’s father, Anirban, was a doctor and Nila had gone to the hospital many times. She had seen all the departments and once she even had to have an X-ray of her chest, but she didn’t have to take her clothes off. This rule of stripping over here made her writhe in shame. It wasn’t possible for her to strip and walk around
before the nurse and the doctor with all her private parts showing. She was told that in that case they would not be able to treat her. The nurse and the doctor failed to understand why Nila was refusing treatment. Ashamed, she finally had to utter the word ‘shame’. But they still couldn’t understand the simple fact that she was feeling shy. When she repeated herself, the nurse and the doctor looked amazed.

‘Shy of whom?’

‘You. Him.’

‘Why?’

Nila didn’t answer that one. Instead she wore her clothes and walked out of the place and informed Kishan that she was unable to accept the obscene proposal of the hospital.

Kishan grinned with his buckteeth and pushed her towards the X-ray room; he advised her to strip.

‘You wouldn’t mind?’ Nila asked.

Kishan was at his magnanimous best when he said it wasn’t wrong to take her clothes off in front of the doctor.

Nila swallowed her shame and X-rayed her head. Her head received two stitches. She didn’t have to strip for that.

There was a mark from a long-ago cut on Kishan’s chin. Nila had never said that it detracted from his looks in any way. But Kishan often soulfully commented on the tiny mark on her forehead, which was usually covered by the fall of her hair, and said that her fiery beauty of old had gone.

Once the wound healed, it took her a while to take the medicines and recover fully. She spent the spare time after cooking and cleaning by reading books. The days were passing in their own fashion, lying on the ground, face down. One day, after his business picked up with the new name of Gandhi, Kishan wanted to take Nila to Gallerie Lafayette.

As they entered the place Nila was duly startled.

‘We-ll, I thought it was a gallery and there’d be pictures in it.’ It was a store, a hundred under the same roof. Her eyes lifted to the colourful ceiling high up and she didn’t want to look away from that amazing beauty. Kishan’s nudge made her walk straight again. It
was more like a golden palace. Nila had never seen such a beautiful store or even a palace for that matter.

Kishan went on and on, ‘Buy this, buy that, buy some shoes, some clothes.’ In spite of the mark on her forehead, Nila was still beautiful and her cooking was improving every day. Since Nila was his wife, his property, his wealth, since her life was in his hands and if she looked beautiful people would praise him, since Nila’s recovery brought him the praises of how he’d looked after his wife, since everything of Nila’s was actually his, Kishan’s generosity knew no bounds.

In the shoe store the attendant asked for Nila’s shoe size. But she didn’t know it. How could she? In Calcutta she was used to picking up the shoes or sandals that fitted her. If a size eight fit her one month, the next month she’d find the size seven too large for her. Were her feet shrinking? Oh no, it was the shoe size that wasn’t constant. The shoemakers just put whatever numbers that came to mind. When someone wanted to buy shoes, they’d just come to the shop, try out a few and take the one that fitted them—that was how it went.

Kishan picked up a pair of boots from the shelf and told her to try them on.

‘But these are for men,’ Nila pointed out.

‘These are women’s,’ Kishan said and the attendant confirmed it. Once the shoes were bought, Nila came to the clothes shop and there again she was in trouble. She reached for the trousers and Kishan said, ‘Those are men’s.’

‘These shirts?’ Those were also men’s.

Nila was curious, ‘What’s the difference between men’s and women’s clothes?’

In Calcutta the differences between men’s and women’s clothes and shoes were many. Saris, salwars and slippers were for women and dhotis, shirts, T-shirts, trousers, ties, socks and shoes were for men. The difference was apparent. In this country men and women wore the same kind of clothes and it was hard to tell the difference. The buttons would be on different sides, the chest a bit narrower—one had to look very hard to be able to tell them apart. Kishan felt they were hugely different, at the waist, hips, length and breadth.
The gold jewellery shops were the least crowded and Nila was drawn to one.

‘Why is the gold reddish in colour?’

‘That’s what 18K gold looks like.’

‘Only 18K? But why? We wear 22K.’

‘People here don’t wear much gold and neither do they like it much. They prefer precious stones.’