Miss Seetoh in the World (10 page)

She had occasion to observe this single
weakness in the awesome Meeta one evening at the Polo Club to which Meeta, a
long-time member, generously invited friends for dinner or drinks, or to watch
the monthly movies. At every public place where men walked in and out of rooms,
where friends introduced their friends in an ever expanding social circle, both
Meeta and Winnie would be completely immobilised into a state of acute
expectation as they sat rigidly in their chairs, two statues, except for their
eyes moving swiftly here and there, to pick out the presentable male, with an
intensity matching that of the predatory lioness crouching in tall grass or the
female chimp in oestrus, waiting upon a leafy branch. Completely unlike in
every way, they were perfectly united as they looked out for the eligible male
in their display of mesmerised anticipation which broke into uncontrolled
eagerness as soon as he appeared.

That evening at the Polo Club was
exceptional for Meeta’s eagerness approaching delirium. There was a
good-looking habitué of the club, always seen at the bar, somebody named Bryan
whom she called Byron in teasing tribute both to the resemblance in profile and
the aura of romance exuded by his entire person. From the moment she sat down
at their dinner table, she was oblivious to everyone else as her eyes did a
sweeping survey of the room, then fixed themselves at the entrance. Maria and
Winnie began teasing her, but the controlling Meeta Nair was now under the complete
control of that one organ of her body, which quickly took on a life of its own,
refusing to leave its station at the doorway.

An amusing picture in full technicolor
formed in Maria’s mind: a stage magician in full regalia of black-and-red cape,
top hat and gloves hypnotising Meeta in her beautiful green-and-purple sari and
commanding her to do this and that. She walked, bowed, sat, waved her arms,
swayed from side to side, lay down on the floor, every part of her body obeying
the magician’s commands, except her head which moved to a separate command,
like a puppet’s head on its own strings, jerking and bobbing, twisting and
bouncing, to keep the eyes transfixed upon the doorway.

At last Byron made his appearance, a tall,
handsome man radiating charm and goodwill as he strode towards the bar in the
adjoining room, waving a friendly hand to everybody along the way. By now
Meeta’s fingers had done their quick check of hair and hair clip, and all her
features had tightened into a single expression of hope and yearning; it broke
into a burst of smiles when Byron suddenly noticed her and strode towards the
table. From then on it was an execution of unabashed purpose that was noticed
by the surrounding diners. It embarrassed Maria and amused Winnie who never stopped
giggling. Meeta held Byron in the grip of her attention, making him sit down
with them at the table, ordering a drink for him, fixing her eyes unwaveringly
on him, plying him with a stream of questions and comments which, like a net,
held him fast to his seat even as he was looking longingly in the direction of
the bar. ‘Thanks. Sure, I’ll be free for lunch next week; I’ll give you a
call,’ said the affable man, and left hurriedly.

All the way home in her car, the
aggressively practical Meeta became the languidly fantasising schoolgirl as she
recounted the events of the evening, culminating in that promise of lunch, that
promise of a call.

‘When he calls, he’ll find I’m not one of
those easy dates,’ she said smiling, as she looked dreamily into the distance.
‘Shut up,’ she said cheerfully to a car behind, honking impatiently. ‘Well,
darling,’ she continued, still more dreamily, ‘as I say, I’m not one of your
easy pick-ups, your dime-a-dozen tarts! You’ll have to sweat a bit, my dear,
and make another call.’

Maria who was sitting beside her in the
front passenger seat felt a little poke in the back from Winnie that said,
‘Poor Meeta!’

Later that evening, when Meeta was in the
shower and out of hearing, she called Maria to say excitedly, ‘What do you think?
He won’t call! You want to take a bet? Did you see how he wasn’t even paying
her any attention?’

Timid, flustered Winnie had her moments of
shrewd observation when she took on a totally different persona, and enjoyed
taking revenge for all the humiliations constantly tolerated. Without exactly
the ferocity of the worm that turned, she had the satisfaction of the laughing
stock sometimes having a few laughs herself. ‘He paid more attention to you.
Anyone could see that.’

It was always a source of mild amusement to
Maria that her girlfriends’ boyfriends, at group gatherings, invariably paid
her surreptitious attention. One of the men whom Winnie was always picking up
and laying claim to, the shamelessly sponging Benny Ee, had actually laid a sly
firm hand on her back as he stood next to her for a group photograph.

Meeta would have reported such clandestine
acts with uproarious humour to feed her large vanity, watched the look of
jealous resentment on the face of her repudiated friend and chortled, ‘Dear,
dear, don’t worry. I’m not a boyfriend stealer. I had enough in my time!’ She
counted a relative of a maharajah among them.

I don’t want all that to be part of my
world, thought the peaceful Maria, determined to keep it free of the squalor of
petty deceits, rivalries and jealousies. They simply consumed too much precious
time and energy. She knew of a group of five women, all securely married, who
lunched, played mah-jong and travelled together. They welcomed into their midst
a playboy bachelor who, since he dispensed his hugs and kisses openly and
equally, became a commonly owned, favourite mascot who could, without any
qualms, be introduced to the respective husbands. Thus did the married women
enjoy the titillating pleasure of flirting with a handsome, much younger man,
with the full knowledge of their husbands. The safety of their married status
freed them to tease him endlessly, pull his shirt, pinch his cheek, share
risqué jokes, ask him to guess their bra sizes. We know our limits, he knows
his, they said; as long as both sides understood the rules, there was all the
pleasure to be had, and no harm to be feared. One of them got bolder; when he
dropped a mah-jong tile, she picked it up, put it inside her ample cleavage and
looked at him challengingly. He made only a show of retrieval and the ensuing
merriment meant that the limits were still being observed.

Then he had a secret affair with one of
them, and all hell, of women’s fury when betrayed, humiliated, shocked and,
most of all, threatened with loss of an immeasurable pleasure in their jaded
married lives, broke loose. They turned on the traitor and expelled him from
their group. They reserved their greatest fury for the other traitor, calling
her all sorts of names. The treacherous pair endured months of acrimonious
opposition and punitive action from the woman’s husband, which gave rise to all
kinds of rumours about an approaching break-up, feeding the insatiable fury. It
received no more sustenance and sizzled to an end when the couple finally got
married and were obviously very happy together.

Miss Seetoh imagined that if her artist
student did a cartoon drawing of her girlfriends, it would be of a screaming
horde of women attacking each other in a furious blur of flying hair, fists and
high heels, while their frightened-looking prey, with suit and tie askew,
crawled away unnoticed.

Less humorous would be the cartoon of the
lonely woman parlaying a man’s smile, a greeting, a nothing, into massive hope
and longing. Maria had heard of a clerk in St Margaret’s Convent, a
forty-six-year-old unmarried woman named Celestina who told anyone who would
listen, endless stories of being courted, each story gathering more tantalising
details as it rolled along. Much of the pleasure of teasing poor Celestina was
in the seriousness of her answers to the most outrageously teasing questions.
‘Well, Celestina, did you accept your surgeon boyfriend’s invitation to join
him in New York for the conference?’ ‘Good morning, Celestina. So have you made
up your mind about whether it will be the handsome young lawyer or the rich
towkay?’ The teasing invariably ended with a request. ‘Well, Celestina, don’t
forget to invite me to your wedding,’ for the sole purpose of eliciting the
solemn response: ‘Sure. I never forget good friends.’

‘I told you it would happen!’ Winnie
excitedly gave a blow by blow account of Meeta’s torment. It had begun on the
very next day after the Polo Club dinner, and continued through the entire
week, as Meeta returned from school each day to check for voice messages on her
phone and found none from the desirable Byron. The phone, both by its silence
and its ringing, became a source of great agitation that infected the whole
house, unnerving the maid Philomena. Meeta’s ears, from whichever part of the house
she was in, strained towards it, its silence working up an immense anxiety, the
slightest hint of a ringing tone causing a feverish sprint towards it and a
crestfallen look as she put it down. The wrong caller came in for some of the
pent-up frustration, the nuisance caller for its full discharge. ‘You fool, you
idiot, you bastard! I’ll set the police on you!’

Winnie helpfully suggested a number of
face-saving reasons for the broken promise. He was too busy, he had gone
outstation for a while and would call when he returned, he had lost her
telephone number, he was ill.

To Maria, she said at the first opportunity,
‘We saw him! Meeta and I were at Robinson’s yesterday afternoon, and saw him in
a café drinking coffee with a woman, a very young and pretty woman. It was
definitely him. I think Meeta saw but pretended not to.’

Both Maria and Winnie tried to help salvage
the badly battered vanity. As soon as she realised all hope was gone, Meeta
acted quickly. The reclamation of pride was a systematic affair, beginning with
a dismissal of all sympathy from her two friends and a resumption of the old
stance of brimming confidence and loud humour. It was followed by vigorous
denial of any intention of having lunch with that man in the first place, which
in turn was followed by sharp attacks on that individual’s character.

Within a week of the episode, Meeta
reported, with much gusto, an unsavoury detail of his past: he had left a job,
years back, under the suspicion of embezzlement of company funds. He fell woefully
short of her high standards, both morally and aesthetically.

‘Did you notice,’ she said to Maria and
Winnie, ‘that he has an ugly mole on his right cheek that sprouts bristles,
like a wild boar? He has bad breath and speaks with a lisp that makes him so
effeminate!’ She imitated the lisp and joined in the laughter.

The more she derided him, the easier was the
restoration of the lost pride, and exactly a month later she was able to
report, with gleeful triumph, that he had waved to her one afternoon, and she
had completely ignored him. She went to the Polo Club a few times for the sole
purpose of snubbing him, reporting her victory each time.

Winnie whispered to Maria, tittering, ‘All
bluff, let me tell you! He doesn’t remember anything. Yesterday he happened to
be at a table near us. She said loudly to me that she had no time to waste on
worthless men, and all the time, he wasn’t even aware of her presence!’

Buoyed by a new boldness, Winnie shared her
discovery regarding the alleged royal conquest. ‘Maharajah, my foot! He was
some pretentious bum, and they met just once!’ She shared another discovery,
speaking eagerly behind a cupped hand, ‘You know what? Meeta’s a virgin, for
all her boasting about spending a secret holiday with the maharajah in a desert
palace!’

‘How do you know?’ asked Maria. Winnie,
removing the cupped hand, laughed hysterically. ‘She said so herself. But not
to me. To the great Sai Baba. In a prayer loud enough for me to hear. She said,
‘To your Holiness, I offer you the most precious gift of all, my virginity.’ ’

Maria, in the privacy of her room, laughed
so much she had to cover her mouth with her pillow in case her mother heard. If
she wrote comedy, she had the perfect raw material: three modern women coping
with their virginity, Winnie offering hers on a platter; Meeta variously
claiming she had joyously lost it to a mortal and solemnly offered it to a
god-man; herself wondering about whether, should her time come, the experience
would live up to the breathtaking expectations of romantic novels, or even of
Victorian ones, where its loss was signified by a row of coy asterisks. An
asset and a prize in the days of their mothers and grandmothers, it had become
an ambiguous symbol in a society that was still traditional while claiming
modernity. Among the expectations of the men who took part in the
government-initiated matchmaking exercise, virginity could still rank high.

Meeta had discovered, quite by accident,
that a student at Palm Secondary had the same unusual surname as Byron, and
found out that she was his niece. ‘You mark my words,’ said Winnie, secretly
gratified that the intimidating Meeta was in the same sad boat of rejection as
herself, ‘she’ll try to befriend the student to find out more about him.’

Maria thought, no, I couldn’t handle the
complexities of this man-woman thing. They brought out the worst in her
girlfriends and would wreak havoc in her peaceful life. Meeta and Winnie with
their obsessions about love were quarrelsome and unreasonable; divested of
them, they could be such delightful company. The social grapevine was full of
tales of rich society women who were so lonely they could not see through the
machinations of their young escorts, not even after they were cleaned out of
their money. Men and women, whether gawky teenagers or matured adults, whether
in their first experience of life or on its last lap, hankered after love and
fed on an endless stream of encouragement from the entertainment media,
listening to the soulful songs of men who cried out that they couldn’t bear to
sleep alone, of women who said they waited for the phone call that never came.