The Way Things Were (50 page)

‘Kashmir, I think,’ she said, pulling her feet under her, and massaging their arches. ‘He’s accusing him of betraying the valley in the interest of cosying up to Delhi.’

‘But that’s no secret, surely! What’s to get so excited about? After the ’86 election, I would have thought everyone knew . . .’

‘I know, but he doesn’t like to hear it.’

‘Hear what?’ Gayatri said, coming up, dressed that night in a beige and gold sari, and sandals with socks.

‘Have you become a communist, sister?’

‘If you think I’m trudging up and down that hill in heels, you have another thing coming. Now tell me: hear what? What doesn’t he want to hear?’

‘What everyone knows: that he’s a puppet of Delhi. And that when Delhi sinks, which is soon, he’s sinking with it.’

‘Poor sod. The pitfalls of the provincial politician, I tell you. Seduced by that great Gandhi charm. Father might have taught him a thing or two about these people . . .’

Iqbal returned.

‘Gayatri Massi, Gayatri Massi, what do you call a pig with three eyes?’

‘Go to sleep, you cretin, why are you still awake?’

‘Tell, no?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘A piiig!’

‘Ayi, these children,’ she said and broke off, watching him vanish into the crowd.

‘“Fuck me in the mouth, Mattoo.” That’s what my old pal Harappa would have said. Swine. Coward. Bloody two-generation old Muslim. I can fucking smell the bhenchodh Brahmin in you.’

‘There’s no point insulting me for that, Issu,’ Tariq Mattoo said, ‘I’m very proud of our Brahmin origins.’ Mattoo was a large fleshy man with a hedonist’s mouth. He was dressed that night in jeans, waistcoat and karakul. Ismail’s attack on him brought a mild stoniness to his face, but it was clear it did not touch him deeply. His lips parted in a smile, to reveal a compact row of strong Vronskyish teeth. His eyes glittered. ‘Ask Uma. Haven’t I always – in my speeches – referred proudly to our Brahmin ancestry.’

Uma, lying back on the sofa, in a deep blue silk sari – one of the few things to survive Deep Fatehkotia’s assault on her trousseau – nodded and smiled. She was drunk and sentimental. She kept saying, ‘Thirty-nine. My God! Not children anymore.’ Then, aimlessly aggressive, she would add, ‘I tell you, Ismail,’ – or Tariq, or Isha, or Nixu, or whoever was listening – ‘after thirty-nine, you don’t want to put up with any more shit.’ If someone, out of genuine curiosity, asked her, ‘What shit, Uma?’ she would smile and say, ‘Bas, I’ve said it. After thirty-nine, you know who you are and you don’t want to put up with anything. No more shit. God knows, I’ve put up with a lot in my time.’ She was full of romantic ideas that night, of what it meant to be a woman, the passage of time, of suffering, real and imagined, of men she had known, of husbands, of children, of lovers, of movement and change, the impermanence of things. There was a throwaway quality in her voice, something sultry and cynical and indignant.

She was especially aggressive towards the other women present. The occasional glimpse of Kitten Singh roused her anger. Every time she would see her, dressed in her trouser suit, with a little woollen beret, her long straight hair ironed and open, her lips thin and red, she would whisper loudly across the room – to Nixu Mohapatra, say – ‘Doors to manual.’ And he might say in return, ‘You would know, darling!’

Her animosity for Kitten Singh was an extension of the rich blustery feeling she had of being thirty-nine, and of ‘no longer being willing to put up with shit’. By which she meant those people, women especially, who had inhibited her, prevented her from living as she would like to have lived. And perhaps she had already come to some sort of decision about Maniraja, because the sight of Kitten Singh, the rage it produced, seemed also to be a rage at a certain hypocritical element in the society – embodied in the person of Kitten Singh – that she felt she had unknowingly ingested and that had prevented her from acting in her own interests.

‘I have no cause to feel guilt,’ she told her sister, ‘I won’t live in corners. I’ll live large.’ No sooner had she formed the words than the room was full of her enemies, full of people who wanted to force her into corners, force her into living small. The origin of her mood – that little bit of grit that drunkenness can enlarge – was a wish for renewal. And, when she felt her sister’s hand come lightly to rest on her shoulder, she clutched it, and, looking up at her with reckless amazement, said, ‘Ish, I’m going to have a big fucking affair. And no one’s going to stop me.’

Isha, responding to the angst in her voice, said, ‘Of course you will. And why should anyone stop you?’

Uma smiled. ‘You’re wonderful,’ she said, and her eye clumsily surveying the room, caught sight of her son, past the government-issue tables laden with half-drunk drinks and ashtrays. He stood with Bhaiya, plates and forks in their hands, wandering along the edge of the dining table. She suddenly felt a stab of pity. The alcohol had clouded her reasoning and she made no connection between the surge of tenderness she felt for her son and the declaration she had just made to her sister: she simply wanted to hold him close to her that minute. ‘Come here, baba,’ she yelled from across the room.

‘I’m about to eat,’ he said, exposing the face of his empty plate in explanation.

‘Eat later. First come and give your mother a hug. It’s almost,’ she said, glancing at her watch, ‘her birthday.’

Skanda looked at Bhaiya, then at his mother.

‘Bring Bhaiya,’ she said tenderly. ‘Both of you come here.’

The boys smiled, and, with their plates still in their hands, walked across the room. Just then, Ismail, whose argument with Tariq Mattoo had continued unabated during Uma’s changes in mood, continued almost as background, rose to go back to Chamunda.

‘Bugger you, Mattoo,’ he said, ‘I’ve said what I had to. The rest is your choice. You want to do chhakkabaazi with Delhi that’s your choice. But the next time you’re out electioneering try to get one of your bloody constituents to teach you the meaning of a very important Urdu word: ghairat. Just ask them, for my sake: you like referring to yourself in the third person, don’t you, you cocksucker? Well, just ask them then: “Tariq Mattoo wants to know what ghairat means.”’

He got up and, in a few short fast strides, made his way across the room to Chamunda, his progress corresponding exactly with that of the boys coming the other way. He noticed Bhaiya and it brought a smile of boyish malice to his lips. His green eyes shone cruelly. He had not walked one step past Bhaiya, when, as if forgetting something, he swung back around, ducked, and, in a single movement of great alacrity, tore down his pajama.

The room froze.

Bhaiya, his dark cheeks flushed, stood before the party with the black nozzle of his penis visible from under the hem of a Thunder Cats T-shirt, his pajama lying in a hopeless heap at his feet. ‘Behold the crown jewels, ladies and gentlemen,’ Ismail said, and continued calmly across the room.

The sequence of what happened next was impossible to determine. A rousing murmur, appalled and muffled, as if wanting, by expressing its outrage silently, to shield the boy from further embarrassment, went through the room. Somewhere the words, ‘Ismail, you swine,’ were heard, and the crowd closed fast around Bhaiya’s nakedness. An ayah, with a fast scurrying step, appeared from out of the wings to usher Bhaiya away. Skanda, his empty plate still in his hands, began to cry. And suddenly everywhere there were recognizable faces: Isha Massi and Viski. Nikhil, and the black-gummed Gayatri Mann. The Maharaja of Marukshetra with his brass spittoon. His whole childhood world swam around him. And his mother? She was sweeping across the gallery, a livid bolt of rage, and grabbing hold of Chamunda’s wrist, she dragged her from the room.

•

Behind closed doors, the two women had an argument that was audible to others in the cottage; one of those cathartic fights between two old girlfriends who are finally able to express the litany of grievances that have arisen between them. From the level of ‘Parmeshwari is telling all of Delhi you think I have flabby thighs’ to ‘I warn you, Chamunda, if you don’t put a stop to Ismail humiliating that boy, I will take him away from you and raise him with Skanda.’

The others left them alone, but Kitten, in part aware that they were fighting over trouble she had caused, in part preying on intimacies, kept interrupting.

‘ . . . Kitten? What are
you
doing here?’ Uma said.

‘I just want to say one thing.’

‘No. Please leave. This is a private conversation.’

And she did. But she soon returned.

‘Kitten, I think I already told you: I’m having a private conversation with Chamunda . . .’

‘It’s not right for friends to fight. Come on: come out and join the rest. They’re putting the cake—’

‘Fuck the cake, Kitten. We’re talking about something important. Please leave.’

Kitten looked to Chamunda who sat smoking in a corner of the room. ‘She’s right, Kitty, we need to talk. We’ll be out in a minute.’

But there was soon a third interruption.

Uma was heard saying, ‘I’ve already told you twice, Kitten, you silly cow: get out! We’re having a private conversation . . .’

‘Are you telling me to leave?’

‘Out!’

‘Throwing me out of your house?’

‘Kitty, no one’s throwing you out,’ Chamunda said.

‘Out, Kitten!’

‘She is. Listen to her: out, out, out! I’ve never been so insulted in my life.’

‘She means the room.’

The door slammed shut.

The women, whose fight Kitten Singh’s interruptions had robbed of its edge, were between sobs and rapprochement, when there was a fourth knock on the door.

‘
I’m going to fucking kill
. . .’ Uma said, and wrenched the door open.

It was Isha. She said with a grin, ‘You two, you threw Kitten Singh out of the house?’

‘Not out of the house . . .’

‘Well, she’s gone,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Good riddance.’

‘Was she upset?’

‘Hysterical. Threw a huge tantrum. Sanu thude maar maar ke nikala si. It was like one of those fairy tales in which the evil godmother leaves in a cloud of sulphurous smoke.’

The women began to laugh.

3 p.m. – Legend – and Kartik is asleep.

His rage ended in farce. He made a barricade of pillows, armed himself against his mother and Skanda with toy guns and plastic maces. He was still full of fight, but breaking through his belligerence, Skanda could see, was an anxious wish to be reconciled with his mother. And unable to find a way to do so without losing face, he fell asleep, leaving the barricade unmanned.

‘How soon do you have to leave?’

‘Quite soon. They should be here any minute. Do you want to come?’

She smiles, and looks out onto the day blazing whitely outside.

‘No. I better stay here with Kartik. I should be here when he wakes up.’ Then, careful not to cause offence, she says, ‘Do you know what set him off?’

‘It was my fault. I was too off-hand with him. It would have felt threatening.’

‘I suppose. He’s grown up with a complete absence of authority. There’s never been anyone in the house to discipline him.’

‘Yes, but he must also be afraid for you; he must feel the need to defend you.’

‘And the anger? Where does that come from?’

‘From his incapacity?’

‘Is that what you felt?’

‘Very much so. Anger at my mother too, for endangering herself, for exposing herself to attack. She was so audacious, you know, so excessively bold that when someone came along to teach her a lesson, I almost felt it was deserved. And Kitten Singh, you know, was certainly not laughing. She went straight home, woke that poor husband of hers and set to work haranguing him all night. And for a man like that to do what he did, it must have been quite a harangue. She must really have worn him out.’

‘Did he come back that night itself.’

‘At dawn the next day, when everyone, except me, was asleep . . .’

They go outside; the bleaching sun is high; there is a tremendous feeling of nowhereness, here, within the islanded confines of Legend, with the land around still bare and full of weeds.

‘Whose car is this?’ Gauri says, looking at the silver Fortuner that has pulled up, a uniformed driver at the wheel.

‘Maniraja’s,’ he says and smiles.

‘Skanda,’ she says as he gets into the car, ‘you didn’t mind . . . earlier?’ Then she stops herself.

‘No. Gauri, you must know: I, of all people, understand . . .’

She nods her head vigorously and he feels for a moment that she is about to cry.

‘Will I see you later?’ she says hurriedly.

‘I hope so.’

Dawn. With mists still thick over the valley, a small figure, turbaned and haggard, his beady eyes bloodshot, made his way over the wet spongy earth to CM1. He had not slept a wink all night, and his ears still rang with his wife’s abuse. He went in search of her honour, but he did not have the strength of voice or body to come for it in the day, in the presence of the waking world. He went instead to retrieve it as a thief, with everyone in CM1 – he sincerely hoped – still fast asleep. His mind fastened on a single logistical question:
How will I get in?

He climbed the stone steps of CM1 and, trying the brass knob of the gallery door, found it bolted; but then, peering past the thin panes, frosted with dew, he soon had his answer.

Skanda, though he had been up late the night before, had never been able to sleep into the morning. Moments before, he had been amusing himself with a loose strip of plywood on the headboard of the bed he was sharing with his mother, snapping it up and down, till she ushered him out with, ‘Baba, let me sleep. We were up very late last night. Why don’t you go outside? Nana and Nani should be here soon.’

His feet had barely pressed against the floorboards in the corridor when he heard a familiar, ‘Oh, Skanda, go back to sleep.’ His cousins. Who, it always seemed to him, more than sleeping late, enjoyed boasting about it.

Outside, all around him were the remains of the party: ashtrays, powdery and full; clear glasses with the flat still remains of whisky sodas, some containing a stray cigarette butt, whose black nose dipped down, while its body swelled and thickened, the tipping paper gently peeling off. The morning broke weakly over the smells of stale smoke and flowers; the light was pale and diffident.