The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (8 page)
Read The Private Life of Mrs Sharma Online
Authors: Ratika Kapur
Sometimes the goddess of night can be kind. Sometimes she will sit by your bed and rub away all those big and small fears that trouble you with the lamp-black of night-time, until they cannot be seen any more, so that maybe you can wake up strong the next morning.
Yesterday was a little bit difficult, I can't lie about that, but today has been much better. Except when I had a small fight on the phone with the mechanic who has still not come to fix the washing machine, and I have been calling him up daily for two weeks now, except for those two or three minutes in the morning, I have felt peaceful. Everything will be fine. I know it. Actually, I have always known it. Yesterday I behaved a little bit oddly, but it was only because I had temporarily forgotten this important fact. I think that you can forgive me. From time to time even people who are normally quite strong can feel that they have been beaten a little bit. Still, as I just said, it will all be fine. In less than two weeks my in-laws will leave
for Canada for the birth of their grandchild, and they will only come back in October, which will give me enough time alone with Bobby to fix his life. And in only seventy-nine days' time my husband will be back in Delhi for his annual leave, and it will be just the three of us again. It will all be fine.
I have decided that I am going to buy Bobby a suit. I think that he has to have a suit, a smart two-piece suit. It will be good for him.
I have not gone mad. See, why is it that men wear suits to the office? Why is it a rule in government offices and big companies that all the employees have to dress properly? The reason is simple. The clothes that you wear every morning control how you think about yourself and how the world thinks about you. I have even seen this with myself. When I wear a smart, nicely starched sari to the clinic, I feel strong and important, I feel in control of all things and all people around me. I have even seen that the nurses, the cleaners, the lab assistants and technicians also give me a particular type of respect that I normally don't get when I am wearing a churidar kurta.
See, wearing a suit will help Bobby. Just now he is going through a difficult time, and the truth is that all teenagers go through these types of phases. But wearing a suit will give him a type of confidence that he does not have. Maybe it will also make him more disciplined. Not even ten or fifteen years ago, each and every school required boys to wear a blazer and tie as part of the school uniform. And how smart and confident the
boys used to be. I remember so clearly seeing them waiting for their school buses on winter mornings, blazers and ties, shirts always tucked in properly, hair combed with a nice side parting. But that is all changing now. In my son's school, for example, the children now just wear these sweatshirts with hoods in winter, sweatshirts that are at least two sizes too big for them, with hoods. The smart blue blazer and striped tie are all gone. It is very sad to see today's schoolboys. The hair is never combed, the shirts are hanging out and their pants are so loose that half the time you can see their underwear. And are the girls any better? They shorten the hems of their skirts and roll their socks down to their ankles, and all around all you see are legs, naked legs. Don't school principals and all those important people in the Education ministry see how this affects children? Untidy dressing makes untidy minds. But I know that when my Bobby puts on the suit that I buy him, he will come to know something about what it feels like to be an important person, to be a powerful executive in a multinational company or an international bank.
Obviously I will have to lie to Bobby and tell him that I have bought the suit for a family wedding, because last year when I bought him a tie, he became very angry with me. I had bought it just like that, and that is the truth. I was walking around in Sarojini Nagar market, trying to buy socks for him, when I saw a beautiful silk tie with red paisleys in a showroom window, and it was on sale, and I thought that Bobby would look so handsome wearing it, and so I bought it. But what can I say? What is this? he shouted. No, he did not actually shout because Bobby is a good boy who does not raise his voice,
especially not at his mother, but, What is this? he said, throwing the tie on the bed and looking at me like I had committed some big crime. Why did you buy this? What are you doing to me? What do you want from me? I was quite shocked by his reaction, but you know how boys of his age can be, and so I kept quiet. Still, my Bobby did wear it one time, in December, at my husband's cousin's wedding, and he looked even more handsome than I had imagined. Actually, he looked just like his father in the early days.
Maybe I should talk a little bit about my husband in his early days, about how handsome he was, how smart and handsome he was. It is not that my husband is not handsome now, but then, when he was younger, there was that special type of handsomeness, the boyish type of handsomeness that shines. I remember so clearly the first time I saw him. It was almost eighteen years ago, in December 1993. Still, I can see him so clearly in a light yellow shirt and navy-blue pleated pants, sitting on the divan in my father's house in Meerut, his hands fair and clean resting on his knees. He had come with his parents and sisters to meet me. And I remember how surprised I was that he was handsome. I knew that he would be a respectable boy, because my father would never ever have allowed him to put even one foot into our home if he was not a respectable boy hailing from a respectable family, but handsome? I did not expect any type of handsomeness. I had always thought that good looks and goodness don't come in the same package. I was wrong. Even our neighbour Jyoti Aunty used to tease me about how handsome my husband was. She thought that he looked like a film hero. So, when
is Rajesh Khanna going to bless us with his presence again? she used to joke all the time.
The marriage offer had come some months before, through my husband's uncle who had a bakery next to my father's shop. Actually, my father received many offers for my hand. We never had a lot of money, but we were respectable, and I was also quite a pretty young girl, and so my father received many offers. But my father was not like most other fathers, he was not in any type of hurry to marry off his daughter. He was very particular about the type of boy that his daughter would marry. Even though he himself had a shop, he wanted me to marry a boy in service, not in business. My father was a very broadminded man and, for example, even though the boy obviously had to be Brahmin, the boy's subcaste did not matter very much to him. What was important to my father was that the boy be well educated and in a stable job, and hail from a good family. So, my father took his time to find out everything that he could about the Sharma family and their boy Dheeraj before allowing them to meet me.
I remember the scene so clearly, my husband sitting quietly on the divan between his mother and older sister, while our fathers sat on the two chairs in the corner near the TV. When I entered he looked up at me quickly, shyly, and then he looked down again at his hands. I sat down on the stool at one end of the divan, next to my mother-in-law, and spoke to her for some time about the weather, about the cost of vegetables and about my job. She said that she and her husband did not have a problem with girls working, even after marriage. I remember
thinking that they were also broadminded, like my father. I remember feeling good, I remember feeling not scared.
After some time, after everybody had tea, my father told my husband and me to go to the veranda, so that we could have some time alone to come to know each other a little bit. Actually, my father had told me before the family came that he wanted me to spend a little bit of time alone with my prospective husband. That is how modern my father was. And you should have seen how shocked Poonam, my husband's older sister, was. It was very, very funny. She almost choked on her biscuit. She is actually quite traditional, more traditional than her parents, I think. When we were going on our honeymoon, for example, she even checked my suitcase to make sure that I did not pack any indecent clothes. But at least she did not accompany us on our honeymoon, as my friend's sister-in-law did. So, we went to the veranda, my prospective husband and I, and we sat down on the two new pink plastic chairs that my father had especially bought for that meeting.
What do you think? is the first thing my husband said to me.
About what? I said, even though I knew what he was talking about.
About me, he said.
You are not as tall as I thought you would be, I said.
He was quiet for some time, and then he said, I can be as tall as you want me to be.
And when he said that I knew that this was the boy I was going to marry.
It is as clear as a photo, it seems that I am holding the photo in my hands just now, a photo of my husband and me sitting
in my father's veranda. I am wearing my mother's red and gold Benarsi silk sari, and he is sitting next to me, in his yellow shirt and blue pants, and with his knees together he is leaning just a little bit to his left, into me. It is quite a nice photo, actually. It almost looks like a poster from some romantic film.
But let me not speak any more about my handsome husband and other foolish things. So, yes, now I have to buy my Bobby a suit. This weekend I will go to buy my Bobby a smart two-piece suit, because three-piece suits are well and truly out of fashion now, and I will buy it readymade from one of the showrooms on the ground floor of Select Citywalk. I know it will be much costlier than getting it tailored here in Malviya Nagar, but it does not matter. My husband works in Dubai. From time to time things like this have to be allowed.
Vineet and I were at the mall looking at computers because I had thought that before I tell Doctor Sahib which model I want I should actually see and touch some real machines rather than just look at photos on the Internet, so we were at this huge electronics showroom, Vineet and I, when suddenly, just like that, Vineet said, How is your brother?
For five or six seconds I just stood there, staring at him. I could not understand what he was trying to ask me.
Don't worry, he said. I know that your brother was sick.
I remained quiet.
I also know that you don't want to tell me about it, he said. But I just want you to know that I know and that I can help you if you want me to help you.
I tried to steady myself, then I tried to laugh, and then I said, You did not tell me that you were also a doctor, Mr F&B.
What else could I say? While standing there in the middle of a showroom in the mall I could not have burst into tears
and said, Sorry, Vineetji, for lying to you for such a long time, but that boy, that boy you saw is not my brother, he is my son. I could not have said, Vineetji, I have a son and he was not just sick, but he was poisoned, poisoned by some cheap country liquor, and now that you know that I have a son, you now also know that I have a husband, and while my husband works like a donkey in Dubai, I loiter around at a mall with you. You, some man I met on the Metro. I could not have said this, and why should I have said this anyway? Vineet is nobody to me, and I am nobody to him. We are two people who met each other on the Metro by chance, and from time to time we talk on the train or go out together, and that is all. He knows nothing about me, he has never ever bothered to ask, and so I don't have to tell him anything.
But I did ask him how he knew that I had a brother, and when I did he turned his head away, to his left shoulder, then he muttered something.
I can't hear you, I said.
I saw you at the station, he said quietly.
What? I said
I had just got off the train, he said. This was around two weeks ago, in the evening, and I was walking to the escalator when I saw you and your brother get off the other train.
So? I said. So what? I was so angry that I was almost shouting.
You were carrying a big envelope, which had Safdarjang Hospital printed in big letters, and you were holding your brother's hand. You did not see me.
Congratulations, Inspector Sahib, I said.
Your brother looked so weak, he said.
How does it matter to you? I said.
I wanted to come up to you, he said. You looked so tired and I wanted to help you, but I did not want to embarrass you.
When he said this something inside me melted. In some place between my chest and my stomach some hard thing inside me melted. And I think that if anybody at all had seen his eyes, small and so kind, I swear on God that they were very much like the eyes of Shirdi Sai Baba, if anybody at all had seen his eyes as he talked to me, something inside that person would also have surely melted. So then I told Vineet to forget about all this and I suggested to him that we look for a suit for my brother. It will cheer him up, I said. I said, After all that my brother has suffered, I think that a nice two-piece suit will cheer him up.
There were one or two minutes at the showroom, while Vineet and I were talking about my so-called brother, when I had, I don't know how, stepped out of this small, little drama between us and I was standing on one side, just watching two people, a young man in a red collared t-shirt and blue jeans, a good looking man, I can't lie, and hardly one foot in front of him an older woman, a thirty-seven-year-old woman in an orange chanderi sari, her long hair in a loose bun, quite pretty but a little bit plump, but then what type of man wants a woman who has bones sticking out from every place? From outside this small, little drama it was a nice photo of a handsome couple, and I think that anybody who saw us would have thought the same.
Still, that is not how it is from inside. Maybe we are handsome together, Vineet and I, but we are not a couple. I am very clear about that and I thought that he was also clear about it, until this afternoon. Now I wonder. If he thinks that I have a teenage brother, then how old does he actually think that I am? Twenty? And if he thinks that I am so young, then how does he actually see me? Does he actually think that the two of us together make a pair? How does he feel?
I have never lied to him. I have never ever tried to make him see me as anybody other than the person that I am, and if there are some things that he does not know about me, it is only because he has never bothered to ask me or he has shut my mouth up if I have tried to tell him. What did he tell me that day at his stupid hotel? I don't want to know anything. Isn't that what he said? I don't need to know anything about you, a person is not supposed to ask for more than what is given to him, and what not. Has he forgotten all that? Whatever it is, whatever it is that he thinks and wants, Vineet better understand fast, he better understand once and for all, that I am a good woman, a respectable woman, and my mind is clear, and also my heart, and they are in the right places, with my family and my home, and I am not interested in anything but friendship, the type of friendship shared between two women. The truth is that he could have just been a Vineeta to me. Man or woman, it would not make any difference, and that is the truth.
So, let Vineet think what he wants to think, let him want what he wants. But I am not going to waste any more time on such foolish things. I know myself, I am clear about what I feel, and just now I have more important things to do. My
in-laws are leaving on Friday. There is a lot of shopping to be done and I also have to help them pack, and then after they are gone, I have to do the most important thing of all. I have to fix Bobby. My in-laws are good people, they are good people and try their level best to be as helpful as they can, but from time to time they interfere. It is already so difficult trying to discipline a fifteen-year-old boy, and, actually, he will be sixteen years of age in less than four months, but with grandparents around, it makes it much, much more difficult. Oh ho, you are so strict with Bobby, they say to me. Or, Poor Bobby, he is only a child. And what not. But they will be gone in less than one week, and they will be gone for more than three months, and Vineetji, I can't keep wasting my time loitering around with you at malls. I am a mother. I have much more important things to do. I have to use this time to bring up my son properly, as a mother has to do, as a mother only can.