The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (29 page)

She had also been surprised by how pleased she had been to see her mother. Maybe it was a reaction to the loneliness and disappointment of her trip (yes, she could admit it now). She had just wanted to hug her.

Two days had passed, however, and the goodwill was evaporating. The trouble with visiting people so far away was that once you arrived, you had to stay for such a long time—two weeks, in her case. How maddening her mother was! It was odd, feeling the old irritations rise to the surface in these foreign surroundings, like hearing a nursery rhyme in the middle of a raga. Of course Theresa knew that wherever people went, they carried their baggage with them, but it was still an unwelcome sensation. And the hotel was getting on her nerves. At first glance it looked charming, but really what a ludicrous place it was, a time warp for grannies,
is there honey still for tea?
A place that reinforced every stereotype and confirmed every prejudice. They called the head bearer Jimmy, for God’s sake; didn’t they see how degrading that was? None of them seemed to have learned a single word of Hindi or the local language, Kannada, and Theresa’s efforts to interest them in the simplest tenets of Hinduism had been met with blank incomprehension. That awful old Norman Purse, the one with the purple nose, had even sniggered at the word
lingam
. It was extraordinary how the British could live in their own bubble. Of course, they had had centuries of practice.

It all stemmed from denial. Denial was the British default setting—denial of sexuality, denial of one’s feelings. Theresa herself had had to work on that; it had taken her years of therapy to realize that she hated her brother. Denial, of course, produced fear. Theresa could see it in the faces of the old people, so damaged by the Western culture in which they had been brought up. No wonder they knocked back the gin-and-tonics.

Funnily enough, the only person who seemed to be on Theresa’s wavelength was a working-class woman, Muriel Donnelly. They had sat in Muriel’s delightfully kitsch room and discussed reincarnation. Muriel was not an intellectual, by any stretch of the imagination, but Theresa had discovered that this could be an advantage for those who followed a spiritual path.

“They think I’m barmy,” said Muriel, “but you should see that Stella Englefield, she’s a sandwich short of a picnic. And that Dorothy Miller thinks she’s so hoity-toity but I’ve heard her singing ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ when she thinks nobody’s listening.”

She had told Theresa about a holy man she had visited in the Old City. Theresa had decided to go there and had obtained directions from the manager’s wife. After two days in The Marigold, she felt the need of a spiritual hit.

For Bangalore was far from exotic: a sprawling, featureless city filled with office blocks. On her first day Theresa had hired a car and taken her mother around; the driver had insisted on giving them a tour of the various IT buildings, including a glass edifice soon to be occupied by News Corp.

“This is our Silicon Valley,” he said proudly. “Mr. Rupert Murdoch, you have heard of him? He is setting up a digital software facility for his global networks.”

“It’s just like Milton Keynes,” said Theresa.

“Sssh, dear,” said her mother.

“I’ve come halfway round the world to get away from this.”

Theresa could hardly visit a holy man wearing bedroom slippers. Her wound had nearly healed; she took off the bandage and slipped on her flip-flops. The manager had found her a storage room, crammed with two beds, on the top floor of the hotel; there were no other spare rooms, apparently.

Theresa wrapped a
dupatta
around her shoulders and went downstairs. The old dears were just shuffling in to lunch.

“Do stay and eat,” said her mother.

“No, I’ll see you later. Bye, Mum.” “Mum” sounded babyish—after all, Theresa was a middle-aged woman—but what did one call one’s mother? Could she change it to “Mother” at this late stage?

Theresa was pondering this when the door burst open and Norman Purse arrived. His face was brick red.

“Guess who I’ve just seen!” he barked at the queue. “Your precious Dr. Rama!”

“What do you mean, dear?” asked Evelyn.

“The fellow’s a bloody clap doctor!” Norman gave a snort. “Always knew there was something fishy about him. Smarming around with that hair.”

There was a silence.

“The man’s a charlatan!” said Norman. “He runs a clap clinic in Elphinstone Street!”

“What were you doing in a clap clinic, sweetie?” said Madge.

“I was walking past on my way to the bank.” Norman’s small, fierce eyes challenged her. “Saw the fellow coming out.”

There was another silence. One by one they turned to Minoo.

“Is this true?” somebody asked.

“T
hat’s got their knickers in a twist,” chuckled Muriel. “No wonder he gave ’em all antibiotics.”

Lunch was over. The news of Dr. Rama’s treachery had had a powerful effect on many of the residents, who had now retired to their rooms for a brood and a nap. Muriel sat on the veranda with Douglas Ainslie, who as a man had been less susceptible to the doctor’s charms and who therefore felt less keenly a sense of betrayal.

Douglas, however, seemed miles away. Over the past weeks the man had changed. The breezy, suntanned extrovert, with his thick white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, seemed somehow diminished. He sat for long periods gazing into space, and the expeditions with his wife had all but ceased. Nobody knew the reason. Maybe he was sickening from something. Better call the doctor, thought Muriel, stifling a giggle.

The news hadn’t shocked her, of course. Muriel had never had much faith in foreign doctors anyway. What was disappointing, however, was the collapse of her newfound enthusiasm for the more spiritual side of Indian life. She had to admit it: this particular medicine hadn’t worked either. Her recent visit to the palm-leaf reader had told her nothing about her son, only the date of her own death.

Not surprisingly, this had knocked her for six. The leaf thing was called
nadi
. An old man, sitting in an incense-filled room, had asked her when she was born and had taken a print from her left thumb. He had then flicked through a bunch of palm leaves, tied with string. Finally he had pulled one out. It was covered in tiny writing, as if an insect had been let loose on it. He started reading out the contents.

Some of it was familiar enough: ups and downs, loss of a loved one. She had heard that before, often enough. Then he told her the other thing.

Muriel had to admit it; after hearing the date of her death she had hurried from the room.
“Peacefully,”
he had said,
“after a short illness.”
And then the time and the place.

It gave Muriel the collywobbles just to think about it. She had told nobody, not even her confidante, Mrs. Cowasjee.

Douglas had finished his coffee and left. Muriel was alone on the veranda. Gazing at the empty chairs, she thought of the people who had occupied them. For each of them there was a palm leaf. Far off at the gate, a bell tinkled; a man stood there with something to sell, trying to attract her attention.

Some of the chairs were pushed back from the table, where a person had got up. Soon Jimmy would emerge from the dining room and straighten them. A gecko was stuck like a brooch to the wall; it sat there for hours, without moving.

Plenty of time left, Ma
. Keith’s arm was around her shoulders.
Hey, don’t cry
. He kissed her cheek.
I’ll miss you something rotten but just think, at least you know you’re not going to be knocked over by a bus tomorrow
.

Muriel heard footsteps. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. It was Dorothy. She emerged from the front door and walked down the drive. Despite the cane there was a purposeful air about her, as if there was no time to waste.

Muriel got up and grabbed her handbag. The woman was off again on one of her expeditions. This time, thought Muriel, I’ll find out where the old lunatic’s going.

Muriel hurried down the drive. The city held no fears for her now; no accidents could happen, she had been told they wouldn’t. Just for a moment she was glad she knew her fate.

Out in the street, Dorothy crossed the road and approached the rickshaw stand.

“Memsahib!” The drivers stirred themselves. “This side, memsahib!” She climbed into a rickshaw and it drove off down Brigade Road.

Muriel climbed into another rickshaw. She pointed to Dorothy’s vehicle, disappearing among the traffic.

“Follow!” She flapped her hand as if shooing away a fly. “Follow it! Quick!”

“I
’m at my wits’ end, Sonny
baba
!” Minoo was on the phone. “The residents are very upset, and who can blame them? Now they’re thinking we’re diddling them, oh why did we start on this foolish venture—”

“Calm down, man!” said Sonny.

“The situation is driving me out of my mind, you have no idea—”

“Listen—” began Sonny.

“—they’ll tell the authorities and I’ll lose my license; what am I going to do?”

Sonny switched off his mobile. Shit! This was all he needed, on top of his other troubles. That bastard P.K., the snake-eyed
maderchod
, having swindled him out of lakhs of rupees, was still nowhere to be found. He must have paid off the police, for even Sonny’s closest confidant in the force, a fellow Rotary Club member too, had stopped answering his calls. No doubt P.K.’s thugs were also responsible for the beating-up of the foreman at the depot, who was now in the hospital and refusing to identify his attackers. Sonny’s troubles had taken on a life of their own. He had had to borrow heavily to cover his losses and now the bank was threatening to call in his loan. Another of his projects was in trouble, planning permission having mysteriously been withdrawn. Back at his residence things were at breaking point, his wife having sacked the old servant who had been in the family for twenty years. And on top of all this, his cousin Ravi was pestering him with emails demanding to know about plans for the worldwide expansion of Ravison Retirement Homes. Didn’t the fellow understand that Sonny was at breaking point?

Sonny sat at his desk, turning the Biro round and round in his fingers. Outside, the traffic was gridlocked on Brigade Road. His office was two blocks from The Marigold, a place that only a few months earlier had seemed the answer to his dreams. The business world was based on shaky foundations—only too shaky, in the case of his Defense Colony project. The stock market was plummeting, the economy tottering, one by one the great corporations—Enron, WorldCom—imploding. The only thing a chap could be sure of, in this life, was that he would grow old and need someone to look after him. In his own small way Sonny was enabling that to happen. How well he remembered his eureka moment at the Royal Thistle Hotel, Bayswater! Now the whole project was threatened by that interfering old bugger, Norman Purse.

How could he have snitched on them, he whose own daughter had a stake in the business? How dare he stir up trouble in the one operation that was going smoothly?

Sonny sat there, seething. He would get even with the old
chootiya
. He just had to think of a way to do it.

“I
magine that you have an appointment with a stranger.”
Later, Theresa remembered the page from her book of meditations.
“When you meet, the radiant presence of this person astounds you.”
She was standing in an alley filled with rusting car parts. On either side, stalls were heaped with exhaust pipes. Men sat drinking tea. They gazed at her. She was somewhere deep in the Old City, clutching the piece of paper with Mrs. Cowasjee’s directions written on it.
“How can you describe this person? What makes him or her so special? You ask the stranger’s name and are told that you are looking at a part of yourself. Thank the stranger and say goodbye. Acknowledge your own inner beauty.”

Theresa stepped over an open drain. Something was going to happen. It hadn’t happened with the Hugging Mother, an experience in which she had invested so much hope. Hundreds of devotees had waited but Theresa, being a European to whom time was more precious, had been ushered to the head of the queue. Ammachi was a smiling, middle-aged woman who had hugged her and given her a boiled sweet. Maybe Theresa had been distracted by her throbbing foot. For then it was over and she had felt no different at all. Nothing.

There was nobody to whom she could confess it, least of all her own mother.
Why would you want to be hugged by somebody else, dear? The woman doesn’t even know you
.

T
URN
R
IGHT
T
HROUGH
C
LOTH
M
ARKET
. Theresa looked at the alley. It was narrow, just a slit between the buildings, and crammed with people. No sunlight penetrated here. The smell of sewage filled her nostrils. This is the real India, she told herself, this is where I feel at home.

Theresa was lost. Now she was squeezing her way through a spice bazaar that wasn’t mentioned in the directions at all. Mounds of colored powder—russet, ochre, crimson—were heaped in sacks. People jostled past. “Baksheesh, memsahib!” Somebody waved his stump in front of her.

T
URN
L
EFT
A
T
G
ANDHI
M
ARKET
. Was this Gandhi Market? A banging drum drew nearer; somebody was playing a trumpet. A group of
hijras
pushed their way through the crowd, ogling the people as they passed. The eunuchs in India unnerved Theresa, with their plastered makeup and men’s faces. One of them waggled his tongue at her. They wriggled past in their saris, off to some wedding or other, off to bless or curse, or lift up their skirts.

Theresa didn’t panic.
If I find him, I find him
. She had been lost in these crumbling mazes often enough before. There was no sense in battling against it.

Suddenly she was gripped by loneliness. She longed for the Marmite toast. If only she could be tucked up again in bed, everything would be all right. She knew, of course, that she could never again slip between the sheets. The room had long since been dismantled, along with her childhood. That bliss was as lost as nirvana—a state she knew, now, she would never attain.