The Pleasure Seekers (28 page)

And on and on and on till the memory of Rinky Damani, although it never entirely vanished, began to take the shape of a dream life – a kind of underwater swimming without breathing. And what he felt when he was holding his breath on those long concentrated Saturday morning swims, was how his life had always been evading him. Sometimes, it was there – right at the bottom of his throat, in the base of his lungs, threatening to explode. It was trying to remind him of what Ba had been telling him all along – to leap into the sunshine and let the world save him. Because after Rinky disappeared, leaving a one-line note that would tear into his heart for ever, Chotu was left with the realization that love was more powerful than flight – it was its own soaring, its own bird-like keening in the wind that required no glider, no motor. And now that he had loved and lost Rinky Damani, there was nothing for him to do but flounder in the dark, trying to remember what it had been like when it was light, when he could fly, when there had been a possibility to escape the world.

22  What Goes Up Must Come Down

A picture then, of the Patel-Jones family at a crucial point in their history, five years before the start of the new millennium. Mayuri and Bean are standing at the edge of the world. They’re about to change their lives and leave the house of orange and black gates for the very first time. Mayuri and Bean, aged twenty-three and twenty-two, on a balmy New Year’s day in 1995, have decided to do what Babo and Siân always knew they’d do but hoped they wouldn’t. They’ve decided to leave home and go exploring for a while.

The family has congregated on an isolated beach one hour south of the city of Madras for Mayuri’s wedding. The women are dressed in glitter and gold, sequins and silk, shimmer and shine – jhimak jhimaking like the blood-orange sunset falling across the sea. All except for Ba, who’s in her usual widow’s white, who has left Gujarat for only the third time in her life. The men are in ties and blazers, embroidered kurta pyjamas and safari suits. There are an unusual number of children. Who knows where they’ve come from – but they are here – running around in birthday-cake dresses and baba suits with flowers in their hair.

Darayus first: who’s standing towards the back of the scene, surveying everything. He’s keeping an eye on the caterers, making sure they’ve got their gloves and aprons on, making sure none of them has the look of death about them. Darayus is watching everyone, especially his estranged son Neville and his daughter-in-law, Farah. Yes, they’re here too. All the way from New York City for the first time in thirteen years. They’re standing with the other faraway guests – the Welsh contingent – Owen, Huw, Carole and the twins Gareth and Ed – all dressed like they’re going to church, except for Carole, who looks like she’s dressed for the races in an extravagant fuchsia feathered hat and a too-tight fuchsia suit. The faraway guests have formed a clique already. They’re sitting on the colourful mattresses laid out in the sand, waiting to be told what to do. Darayus will keep an eye on them, and only if there’s something very urgent, something that can’t wait for later, will he go to Cyrus so
he
can deal with it. But Darayus will not move. Darayus will stand at the back and not get paranoid, and behave and watch.

Prem Kumar and Ba next: who’ve been given places of prominence up front in two plastic chairs owing to one’s weak knees and the other’s weak eyes. Nothing is said between mother and son, nothing audible at least. Maybe Ba is complaining about Prem Kumar’s beige safari suit, which is a ditto copy of the same old safari suit he always wears for important occasions; only this one doesn’t look new, this one is hanging on him in that sad, old-man way, with one leg hitched into his socks, and some of the buttons undone. Maybe she’s wishing Ignatius had come, so he could sit beside her and entertain her while all this marriage tamasha takes place. But Ignatius had said, ‘No, thank you. God knows how those Madrasis will take to someone like me. I’ll stay here and look after things.’

Prem Kumar isn’t speaking. He’s saying nothing about the picking up and falling away that’s been going on in his life: his granddaughters growing up and not knowing him, Mayuri getting married to a boy Trishala disapproved of, and Bean planning to go away to London – that place where all the trouble began years ago. He’s saying nothing of his youngest son who he’s certain is paying for the sin of fornicating with an unworthy woman. For years all he has heard is Rinky this, Rinky that – Rinky dink dink. Prem Kumar knew right from the beginning that Rinky Damani wouldn’t have made any kind of daughter-in-law. Imagine! Walking around in those high-heeled shoes like a beauty queen. His youngest son seems to him like an electric blue kingfisher caught in mid-air: a small, precious tear against the sky. Prem Kumar is saying nothing about this; not to Ba, not when the family is gathered together in a way they’ll never be gathered again.

Dolly and Meenal and the unibrows next: they are brighter than anyone else – the unibrows especially, who were married within a year of each other; who’ve got rid of their menacing unibrow and are reasonably attractive after all; who’ve vowed to battle their fatty bumbalatti genes by becoming border-line anorexic and eating like ants. They are thin. Will remain so till their first babies. Then genetics will prevail; then the curse of the pear-shaped body will rear its ugly bottom. But for now, they’re both wearing bright yellow, still in their first flush of marriage – one to a computer engineer, the other to a music producer in Bollywood – hauling the bride’s make-up kit between them like two yellow ducklings across the sand.

The aunts Meenal and Dolly are rushing about despite their heaviness, in rust and ochre Gujarati-style saris, with stucco-like make-up caked to their faces and elaborate hairstyles involving ringlets, both. They’re taking charge of the things that should have been assigned to them in the first place.
Where are the coconuts, where are the pendas, where are the silver coins that Mayuri needs to give away, where are the garlands, and where on earth is the pujari?
Periodically, they must scrunch down in their saris next to Prem Kumar to see if he needs anything, more so he feels attention is being paid to him than anything else, because his night-nurse Sonam is never very far away. Sonam, with her oversized eyes and oversized body, is talking to the secretary Jyothi – the third and final secretary of Sanbo Enterprises – a severe, bird-like woman whose loyalty to the family overrides her mediocre abilities as a typist. So, Sonam and Jyothi – an Indian female version of Laurel and Hardy – a choti and a moti, standing with the other helpers.

Selvi is the head of the helpers. She’s wearing a turquoise-blue striped polyester sari that a big-busted woman really shouldn’t wear, with her hair tied back in a scraggly bun and the gold studs in her nose flaring ferociously because she can’t get the group to pay attention to her all at once. This is the drill: first the ceremony has to finish, then the guests will eat, then all the helpers,
including
the drivers, are to come in as quickly and quietly as possible to sit at the long tables that have been laid out for dinner. There’s plenty of food for everyone – all vegetarian, of course, but at least five different kinds of sweets. For now, drivers must drink their coffee and go.
What about booze?
No booze, you cheeky son of a whore. Booze only comes later, after the ceremony, when there may be dancing of some kind. Booze and dancing strictly off limits for the drivers.
Oh really?
And I suppose you think you’re a sweet-smelling lily, you filthy pubes of a stray dog.
Not you
, she quickly turns to the young mechanics standing around – the young men who are clearly out of their depth – who work with Cyrus sir in the garage.
You are guests here
, she says, pushing them into the centre.
Go sit. Go and sit on the mattresses. It’s all going to start soon
. The young mechanics with the trim moustaches who’ve made an effort with their cleanest shirts and their best pair of jeans, but who still have their hair slicked down with coconut oil and the look of the labourer about them – they pick up glasses of Pepsi from a passing waiter and sit opposite the faraway guests.

The friends: the friends belong to Bean and Mayuri. They are college-going or just-finished college-going girls. Bean is rounding up the dance crew to go through the routine again. There are seven of them altogether, with a cameo entrance by Cyrus at the end that no one knows about, not even Mayuri.
That
will be the best.
That
will be hilarious. Cyrus has no hips to speak of and is totally uncoordinated, but he’s going to give it a shot. They’ve been practising for a whole month to last year’s hit song ‘Pehla Pehla Pyar’ every single evening on the redbrick terrace of Sylvan Lodge because it’s the only place where there’s some privacy and some space, but where they had to shush and keep it down because Chotu Kaka was right next door. There’s no keeping it down here.

There’s much tittering and wittering going on in the friends’ group. Mehnaz is here from Bombay with her fabulously rich and ugly husband Ali, who is, for the moment, standing with the faraway guests. Mehnaz has rounded out like a soft balloon: wide-hipped, ample-breasted, in a light peach antique Benares sari wrapped efficiently against her glowing skin. Bean’s lesser circle of friends – Parvathi, Immaculate and Saira – are there too, along with Mayuri’s maids of honour – Sunaina and the hybrid Rachel – all dressed in shades of green, from pale sweet pea to bright parrot. Rachel is engaged to a boy in America, and because of this she now talks with an American accent. Bean and Mehnaz talk to each other in the same affected accent when they think she can’t hear them.

Bean is the only one who isn’t in a sari. She’s in a traditional Gujarati chanya choli – a long, flouncy, burgundy skirt that flares out like an umbrella when she twirls, a skimpy silver tussar silk blouse, and an embroidered odhni that keeps slipping off her shoulders. Around her neck are Trishala’s rubies – they are her only real ornamentation. But she’s overdone it with the jasmine; rather, Pamela Anne’s girls at Cuts and Curls have overdone it. They’ve given her a beehive, which she didn’t want. She merely wanted it up and away with a bit of hairspray to keep it off her face. By nightfall the pile of jasmine on her head will have sagged halfway down her back like a ball of frayed rope, and she’ll have broken most of her burgundy bangles, but for now she’s faultless, complete.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ Rahul says, coming towards her with his mousy Maharashtrian wife. A few years ago if Rahul had called her gorgeous in public, Bean would have blushed for days and noted it faithfully down in her diary:
Saw R today. Guess what? He called me gorgeous in front of everybody. He’s soooo adorable!
But ever since his disappointing marriage to the mousy Maharashtrian Bean hasn’t been so enamoured with him, because Rahul’s gone and done that thing that lots of young men do: he’s turned into an uncle before his time. Looking at him now, you’d never have thought he was once the school hurdles champion, that with his dark blond hair and sea-blue eyes, he was once Bean’s Bonnie Bobby Shaftoe. It’s funny how the tables turn, Bean thinks, as she blows him a kiss, feeling beautiful as she does so, and then dodges quickly out of sight because she can see Uncle Keshav trundling towards her like a steam engine, getting ready to tweak the hell out of her cheeks.

Babo and Siân next: who are standing together smiling hesitant half-smiles. Who should be walking around making people feel comfortable, at this, the wedding of their eldest daughter, but who are frankly at a loss. Surely they should be talking to their counterparts Neville and Farah, or over with Huw and Owen and the boys. But no, they’re with their hybrid friends instead: Keshav and Praveen, who are swilling whisky robustly from hip flasks, and sallow-faced Shyam, desperately trying to keep up with them. Jan and Darlene are dressed in saris, looking like has-been hippies – their skins have sagged, worn down with liver spots after years of exposure to the Madras sun, and they look old, unlike Siân, who as Dolly rightly points out to the girls, ‘Has really maintained, no?’

Siân and Babo, who’ve been married twenty-five years to the day. Twenty-five years! Would someone like to tell them exactly what they’ve been doing for a quarter of a century? And how they’ve come to this particular moment in their history? They are the most beautiful thing on this beach. They can’t help it. Babo, who had to go to Syed Bawkher thrice for his suit fitting, while Siân ribbed him the whole time, saying he’d better cut down on those scotch and sodas, and those nutty-boy ice creams. He’d better get his cholesterol checked, he’d better start his morning walks again, he’d better better better. Babo, who listens and smiles, but does as he pleases in his new charcoal-grey suit with a pink shirt against his walnut skin and a rose in his buttonhole. His hair’s been cut so close to the scalp there’s no evidence of his once-bounteous curls. His grey eyes are hardening, hardening because he’s determined not to become emotional. He’s got his lips on the Macallan’s because he needs it if he’s going to stay composed, if he’s going to address all these people gathered here. He’s been preparing for weeks, carrying his little speech around in his wallet, so that he could whip it out to practise whenever he had a free moment alone. He’s learned it all by heart, but he’s going to stand up and read from the paper just in case. Of course, he gets emotional; his voice cracks on the very first sentence:
Some of you have come from a long way away. Siân and I are so pleased to see you all here . . .

Siân, who decided on a sari, thinking it wouldn’t look right in the pictures if she was in something Western and the girls were in something Indian. Siân is in maroon – a rich maroon with fine zardosi worked sparingly over it. She’s wearing gold, not diamonds – not too much – again, she doesn’t want to over-shine. But Babo and she sitting together – they always over-shine – it’s unavoidable. They’re standing so close, making such a fine picture with their jhill mill gleaming teeth. They’re at the summit of something; anyone can see. It’s not youth, it’s not beauty – it’s something like adoration, an ultimate and complete adoration. A summit, which is such a fatal place to be, because what goes up must come down.