The Pleasure Seekers (37 page)

But it was uncanny how mothers
knew
things. A few days ago, Siân had called to say how she felt things weren’t right with Bean. She’d been trying to get in touch with her to have a proper conversation, but every time she got Bean on the phone, she quickly passed it to Ba or Ignatius, fobbing her off with some excuse about work in the kitchen. Since when did Bean set foot in the kitchen?

‘It’s odd,’ Siân said. ‘I feel like she’s calling out to me, for help. I know it sounds like I’m stark raving mad, but it happened with Nain – before she had her stroke. For months, I kept imagining that I heard her voice, that she was calling to me. And it’s the same now, except it’s Bean’s voice I hear. I could be walking, or just pottering about in the garden, and suddenly, I hear her calling,
Mama, Mama
. It’s unbearable. I don’t know. I just feel like she’s in some kind of trouble, and she’s not able to tell us. So Daddy and I have decided, we’re going to go to Anjar to check on her.’

That would have been the moment to tell her.
Mama, you’re right, Bean is in trouble. She’s pregnant. Can you believe?
But even then, Mayuri let the moment go, thinking of her promise to Bean.

This morning, Babo had called to inform her of their plans. ‘We’re flying to Bombay tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’re going to stay at Meenal’s for a couple of days and then we thought it might be nice to hire a car and drive to Gujarat like we did for our wedding. It’s been a long time since we made a road trip. We should get to Anjar in time for the Republic Day long weekend.’

‘Have you told Bean?’

‘No. Of course not. We’re going to surprise her.’

‘Oh.’

‘And another thing,’ Babo said, ‘Could you come to the house every other day and feed my fish?’

When she heard the gates open and the car drive in, Mayuri got up to stand at the window. Outside, the flame-of-the-forest tree was lit up like a scarlet lantern. Mayuri looked at herself in the mirror, scarcely able to recognize herself. The day after the anniversary dinner she had made an appointment at Cuts and Curls to lop off her chestnut braids, in an effort to feel light and different. Pamela Anne had hovered around her with glinting scissors for half an hour, repeatedly asking, ‘Are you sure, Madam, are you absolutely sure you want to do this, such beautiful hair, why do you want to cut it?’ And Mayuri, gritting her teeth, had ordered her to get rid of it all. Now her hair was short, below her ears, opening her face in a way it couldn’t before, and staring at her reflection, Mayuri saw how much like Bean she looked after all.

As Siân walked through the front door, Mayuri formed the beginnings of words in her mouth. She had things to say.

In the early hours of 26 January 2001, Bean and Ignatius climbed into Mansuk-bhai’s taxi service with two overnight bags and a basket of waiting-to-ripen chikoos. It was still dark when Mansuk-bhai came for them, the exhaust of his 118 NE letting off a low, continuous rattle like the sound of a rodent scuttling home after a night of hunting in the sewers. ‘Today is holiday,’ Mansuk-bhai complained, ‘Everybody gets to relax on Republic Day, but not Mansuk Kotadia. What to do? Because you are best customer I must drive you personally. But you will pay more, eh? You pay more.’

Ba, who had only just risen herself, was skulking around in her white sari. ‘Here,’ she said, sticking her head through the taxi window, ‘Don’t forget to deliver the chikoos to Chimanlal, and remember to bring back ten kilos of dates and almonds for the ghari. We need enough for Monday.’

‘You can come too, you know?’ Bean said.

‘What for? To those modern buildings of death? No, dhikri, you take Ignatius and go and see Lola’s photo. I’ll wait for you here.’

Lola’s photo was the main purpose for Bean and Ignatius’s expedition into Bhuj; Lola being Ignatius’s preferred name for Bean’s unborn child, who had been kicking like Diego Maradona for three solid weeks. In the last few days, though, Lola’s vigorous feet had fallen silent; hardly a flurry had fluttered up from the depths of Bean’s womb, and this lack of energy had worked Ignatius into an unusual state of agitation.

‘It happens at this stage,’ Ba tried telling Ignatius, ‘The head starts turning downwards. Lola is getting ready to come out.’

But Ignatius still thought it would be wiser to check. Besides, it was an excuse to go into Bhuj for the night, to pick up supplies for the New Pinch Boutique and see his best friend, Bablu – a one-time pearl-fisher from Jamnagar, now proprietor of the Aina Mahal Annexe Guest House, Bhuj’s most popular establishment.

Bean and Ignatius had been making regular forays into Bhuj for months to see Dr Gladys Pinto, gynaecologist and child specialist. Dr Pinto’s office was hidden away at the top of a rickety stairway somewhere in the mangled maze of the old city. On the walls above her orange neon name board was this sensible advice:
Do not spit or make urine here
. As you entered, to the left of the reception desk, was a children’s play area with a conglomeration of wooden horses and toys to distract any toddlers who might have been dragged along. In the centre of the room, under the single slow-turning fan, was a round cane table stacked with outdated newspapers and film magazines. An Onida television sat perched precariously on the wall, perpetually switched off, and all along the peach-coloured walls there were framed scenes of idyllic beaches – fishing boats, white sands, turquoise waters, palm trees – to soothe the eyes, and to serve as daily reminders, perhaps, to Gladys Pinto of her home state of Goa, which she’d abandoned a long time ago in pursuit of a medical vocation.

Gladys Pinto had no associates, but she had an army of nursing sisters – five Christian converts who walked around in white uniforms with starched white hankies pinned to the top of the left side of their chests, and spotless white Bata trainers on their feet, padding softly along the tiled floors. These sisters were in charge of all operations at the clinic, including determining who got to see the doctor first, so there was always an ingratiating rush whenever any one of them appeared in the corridor. ‘Sister, such problems, whole night vomiting,’ or ‘Sister, sister, please me next, I’m feeling faintish.’

Inevitably, the waiting room at Dr Pinto’s was full of women, most of them spherical and hormonal, whether they were pregnant or not. Mothers, daughters, sisters, a high proportion of them Muslim, covered from head to toe in black burquas, peering out at Bean and Ignatius with accusing, if not slightly bewildered eyes. ‘
As if
,’ Bean once hissed, when it got too much. ‘As if they’re all bloody Immaculate Conception cases. As if they haven’t all laid down with their legs spread for some man to get them into this condition.’

‘Arre, shush, Beena,’ Ignatius was quick to reprimand, fearful that his deferential attitude, which had so far garnered some preferential treatment with the sisters, would go to waste.

Occasionally, a man would show up, a rare appearance, to sit beside his wife and patiently trawl through a ten-day-old newspaper while she clutched grumpily at her stomach. And once, just once, Bean saw a stick-thin underage girl walk in alone, her face as blank as a morning sky, and Bean instinctively knew that Gladys Pinto was going to help her to return home with a flat, childless belly just as the nurses at the Jayalakshmi Ladies Clinic had done for her all those years ago.

The last time Bean visited Gladys Pinto she’d complained of fatigue and headaches; she was eating all the time, but never getting enough sleep, and her belly was getting in the way of everything. ‘The worst is nearly over,’ Dr Pinto assured her. ‘Just imagine, Miss Patel, your Lola can now sense light and dark in the uterus. She can hear your heartbeat, your digestive system, your voice.’

‘What about
my
voice?’ Ignatius interjected.

‘Yes, Lola can hear your voice too. But not like how I can hear it. You have to imagine you’re underwater, a muffled kind of hearing. Can you imagine it?’

‘Yes,’ Beena said, ‘I can imagine it very well.’

Then, Gladys Pinto lifted Bean’s blouse and traced the wide expanse of her stomach with gel, moved from rib to rib with the gentle undulations of a desert wind, while Ignatius, standing beside her in awed stupefaction, watched as little Lola inside stirred: eyelashes, fingers, toes, a heartbeat.

‘Do you really think it won’t be crowded today?’ Bean asked, staring out of the window as Mansuk-bhai rattled along the mud path road out of Anjar towards the highway to Bhuj.

‘Trust me, it will be just us.’

Bean watched as the beginnings of light slowly filled the day. It was a cool morning, the kind that reminded her of waking up early for swimming lessons with Chotu. Those lonely mornings in the house of orange and black gates when everyone was still asleep, except for Selvi – risen from her jute mat, hair sticking out of her bun, to thrust Bean’s school bag and tiffin carrier into her hands.

‘Arre, Mansuk-bhai,’ Igantius grumbled, ‘Are you determined to make whatever genitalia I have shrivel up and die? Close the window, old man, I’m freezing here.’

The day ahead of them was going to be long. Ignatius had already enumerated all that needed to be accomplished. There were ultrasounds to be taken and chikoos to be delivered, there was a three-course Chinese meal at Chopsticks to be devoured and the many crenulated gateways and gullies of Bhuj to be explored for beads and Patola silk, wood blocks and dyes. In between all this, they had to go to Dee Pee’s around Harmisar Lake to buy the dried fruits for Ba. And finally, there would be the ice-cool glass of illicit Kingfisher beer with Bablu on the terrace of the Aina Mahal Annexe.

Bean’s final thought, that Republic Day morning when the world changed, was how ladylike Ignatius looked when the muscles in his neck relaxed. Sitting in the front seat with his arms spread out and head stretched back, he almost looked like a swan in flight. Just as Bean felt herself drift into a similar oblivion, the taxi suddenly shook and swerved into a roadside tree. Ignatius instantly lifted that long neck of his and reached backwards protectively. Mansuk-bhai shrieked like a woman as the windshield glass scattered across his face. Bean, lurching forward in her seat, felt as though she were falling under the feet of the world. Wham bam, wham bam, until there was nothing.

30  Looking for Footprints of Birds in the Sky

It began with a shiver that moved beneath the surface of the earth, gathering force like a flame grows in the dark, ravaging the land like a forest fire. It was a falling like never before. The town of Anjar was turned on its head, torn asunder, as though an army of iron-armed marauders had ripped through, razing all the buildings to the ground, tossing the good men and women of Ganga Bazaar about like they were rag dolls, their houses, mere playthings.

Look – Zam Zam Lodge, where Babo spent six months writing epic letters to Siân: collapsed. The Amba Mata Temple, where the entire Patel family was birthed into existence, the New Pinch Boutique, Hira Lal’s jewellery store: all fallen to the ground. Every single crepuscular lane of Ganga Bazaar, shattered like one of those new-fangled glass Diwali decorations, into a million pieces. The earth was spinning, swaying those hips of hers – dhamak dhimak, dhamak dhimak. And even though it was still the beginning of the day, everything was plunged into darkness.

Men ran out of their broken homes, coated with dust and blood. Children sat on heaps of stone, crying. In the streets, peacocks opened their feathers – jhat jhatta, jhat jhatta – fluttering like sheaves of silk paper, spinning blue light out of their crowns. And the jackals, who usually hid from dusk to dawn, stood boldly in the gutters with their supine faces, baying for the end of the world to end, and the beginning to begin.

Two days after the Republic Day earthquake registered 7.9 on the Richter scale at its epicentre in Bhuj, Gujarat, there was still no news from Ganga Bazaar. No phone lines going in, no phone lines going out. In Meenal and her shipbroker husband’s Andheri flat, Babo and Siân sat with an assortment of newspapers spread around them. Babo spent hours going through every column inch of them, scouring them for bits of information that the BBC or NDTV wouldn’t or couldn’t give him. Siân sat transfixed on the sofa, while the TV spewed out one image after another; listening to the newsreaders repeat, in their grave but moderate tones, the stories that were saddest.

By now, everyone knew about the 350 school children from Anjar who had been crushed to death during their Republic Day Parade, whose families would receive Rs 100,000 as compensation because their children had died doing ‘patriotic duty’. Their parents and grandparents had been interviewed, their baby pictures beamed into living rooms all over the country. The teachers who’d survived had been shown gushing like water hydrants, saying what good children they’d been, every single one of them – angels in human forms.

And the diamond workers from Bapunagar – what a story that was! They’d been interviewed too – telling the world how their employers had locked them in, actually locked them in, to make sure they wouldn’t run off with their diamonds. The ones who were lucky to be alive, who hadn’t panicked and jumped out of the windows – they were standing in front of the camera thanking the gods above, the firm ground beneath their feet and their female colleagues who’d had the good sense to use their saris as ropes so they could all slide down to safety.

Meenal’s telephone rang non-stop. Mayuri and Cyrus from their beach house in Madras asking what news of Bean, what news of Ba. Sonam, the night nurse from Sylvan Lodge, saying, ‘I don’t know how he knows because the TV hasn’t been on for days, but sir, he keeps asking for his mother. You better talk to him, I don’t know what to tell him.’ Prem Kumar, whose memory was hinging from one night to the next, asking for his wife, who’d been dead nearly twenty years, and then smiling quickly afterwards saying, ‘No, no, of course, she isn’t here. But where is Mayuri? Where is Beena? Someone tell me, where is my mother?’