Elephants with Headlights, page 5
‘You’ll really go on a date with Mohan? You mean a serious date?’ Savitri knew what this meant. A serious date meant one thing – that they could start fixing a date for the wedding.
‘I’ll go to dinner with him if you learn how to meditate.’ She knew this wasn’t quite enough. ‘Maybe Mohan and I could talk about possibilities …’
Siddharth reverted, just when she thought she had him convinced. ‘But how can I believe in anybody who claims to be two hundred years old?’
And how can I date a guy who has touched me while looking at pictures of somebody else? she thought. No, Papa, I’m the one who is making the sacrifice here. I’m doing it for you. What had happened with Mohan was tame, according to her friends who were willing to talk about such things. They had to put up with their uncles and cousins doing such things to them, quietly, while pretending to be their chaperones and mentors – the same men who propitiated the goddess without knowing of her powers.
‘Okay, forget about Mohan – you obviously don’t need to learn to meditate if you’re so worried about the evil Guruji,’ Savitri snapped. ‘Mohan’s hideous, anyway.’
‘He is not. He’s very handsome and very qualified and he’ll look after you so well. Everyone has said this all along, no? And won’t it be so much better to have someone who is known?’
Of course. It was always better to have someone in your house who was known. They always said the same thing about the servants.
‘So you’ll go and learn to meditate?’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll go and see your Guruji … And the meditation will be so good for my health.’
Incredible – he almost sounded like he meant it.
‘But you’ve got to do the practice, too, yah? You can’t just learn to meditate and forget about it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Siddharth replied convincingly. ‘You fix a time and I’ll come and learn. I promise. I would love to learn!’ His old heart was a-rush with young love. Was this all it was going to take to get his daughter to fulfil one of his dearest wishes, a wish shared and cherished by Mohan’s father, his childhood best friend, Hari? For Siddharth this had all the potential of that first business deal, which allowed him to buy his digital publishing company a few seconds before the whole world (not to mention his important overseas clients) started hanging their hats on a digital future. This was the auspicious watershed moment in their family’s future. If he could have poured milk on that moment as a libation, he would have requested gallons of it from the old cow herder who passed as a neighbour at number thirty-three.
And the gods? How they must have laughed as they made their own plans to shift the earth’s axis to make way for the coming events.
STUMBLING ON THE ‘ REAL’ INDIA?
NEEL HAD SPENT the past half-hour in his parents’ bedroom discussing the wedding without Mae, so Mae, sick of waiting for him, decided to take a walk around the grounds of her fiancée’s family home, which she’d been so keen to explore since Neel first described his farmhouse.
‘A farm? You live on a farm? In the middle of the city?’ She couldn’t imagine how – even the farms in Byron Shire didn’t seem real by Aussie standards. The real farms were thousands and thousands of hectares wide, with a few lonely gums reaching out to the cockatoos for company, the odd sheep or cow snuffling around in the scrub, and a creek or dam, usually dried up for most of the year. Naturally, Neel’s farm couldn’t have been like this because it was in a major Asian metropolis, but she still couldn’t picture what kind of a farm could exist in a city until she arrived and set eyes on what passed for a farm in Delhi – Neel’s farm – without cattle or crops. ‘Of course we grow vegetables,’ he’d told her back in Sydney. ‘But mostly these are eaten by the servants.’ Only later did Mae discover that the family’s vegetables were harvested from Spencer’s, the European food store in nearby Gurgaon.
Mae put on her shorts and her runners, slipped a camera into her pocket and began her rounds of the ‘farm’, first running up the red earth on the driveway, past the perfectly pruned palms and the lush abundant Queen of the Night, the Flame of the Forest, the sunflowers and seedlings in pots that lined the driveway. She waved to a gardener who was squatting as he picked weeds off the ground and to another who was sweeping the beautifully mown lawns as if they were living carpets. The staff waved back self-consciously and looked the other way. She continued running up the pathway, past the fountain to the front gates, where she waved at the guard, who immediately leapt off his seat and saluted.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.
‘Er … good morning,’ she replied, feeling embarrassed to be a ‘sir’ rather than a ‘madam’ – although to be either felt a little uncomfortable, to be honest.
At the gate she found her way to the wall and decided that she would do a few circuits of the grounds to work up a sweat. She continued running, past a creature that looked a bit like a ferret (a mongoose, she would later find out), which triggered a reflexive urge to reach for her camera. It wouldn’t stand still so she followed it as it made its way towards the back of the property into a patch of guava trees. She couldn’t call it a guava orchard; it was more of a small gathering of trees, a few guava trees and some star fruit trees as well as some other trees that were totally unrecognisable. There was a monkey in one of the trees, so the camera came out again, and as she took a photo of the monkey baring its teeth she heard some children laughing to her left.
‘Namaste,’ she called out.
‘Hello’ came the giggling voices.
The wild-eyed little boy was beautifully dressed in a fake Nike Just Do It T-shirt and the girl wore a skirt and a shirt with puffed sleeves.
‘Can I take your photo?’ Mae asked, gesturing towards her camera.
The two children put their arms around each other and produced two perfectly painted smiles under the guava trees.
‘Thank you,’ they said in the cutest voices imaginable. Mae showed them the photos she’d taken, and the boy asked if he could take a photo. Mae put her arm around the skinny little girl and smiled for the shot.
‘Do you live there?’ she asked them, pointing to the small hut nearby.
They giggled some more and pointed to a similar hut on the periphery of the property, behind an enormous mound of earth at the edge of the large vegetable garden.
The children started walking to their quarters and Mae gesticulated, pointing to herself and then at the house, hoping she could follow them and see inside a genuine Indian home – at last she’d arrived in the real India, here on the periphery of a farm that wasn’t really a farm. But would I be welcome? The girl in the puffed sleeves smiled as she nodded towards their hut, and Mae took it as an invitation, although it was probably more of a gesture that they’d be off now. Just as she thought this, little Just Do It charged ahead, like an omen and an invitation combined. What the hell, life’s too short to sit around waiting for permission. They’re just kids – how could they mind?
The kids darted inside and hid behind the door. Mae went over to the hut, and seeing that the kids had taken off their sandals, she took off her runners, knocked on the door and heard them giggle nervously. She gently pushed the door open. The wild-eyed Just Do It boy and the puffed-sleeve girl began talking loudly and excitedly in Hindi and scrambling over the two single rope beds covered only with a thin mattress. Mae stepped inside. One step was all it took to discover their entire home and a single glance to see everything it revealed. There were two single beds (for the four of them?) plus a little area off to the side for cooking, a few plastic flowers, a cupboard, a mirror, a picture of an Indian cricket player (she had no interest in cricket) and a small shrine – a home within a home for statues of Krishna, Ganesh and Laxmi. No second bedroom, no ensuite, no bathroom.
‘What a lovely house you have,’ she said, knowing this was disingenuous flattery and knowing too that she might be uttering unintelligible syllables. And just as well. She reached for her camera but thought better of it. But when will I be in a house like this one again? She hadn’t taken a single shot of the big house, where Neel and his parents seemed to be forever locked up in bedrooms in endless dialogues, no doubt over her presence and the urgent need to matchmake for Savitri. They’d hardy left the confines of the ‘farm’. For God’s sake, it was as if they were living out the back of Bourke, not in one of the world’s largest urban centres. But it seemed there was a deadlock that would have to break first, and then the prison doors would be flung open and they could begin to explore the real India. Together. And free from his parents.
Seeing Mae was about to put away her camera, little Just Do It reached for her hand and took it with a hopeful smile. Mae helped turn the camera back on, and the little boy took a lopsided photograph of Mae, one of the single window and another of half his sister’s face. Seeing these accidental images of India, Mae decided to set up the camera for a time-delayed shot so they could all be in it together. She asked the children to sit down on either side of her and they sat for their portrait, this time with no smiles as they were too distracted looking at the three lights that flashed before the aperture opened.
The moment was recorded in the silence of anticipation.
And as the kids stared and Mae sat motionless holding unknown children under her arms, the door opened, a woman in a nightie and a head cloth entered, and there was an almighty scream that everyone heard coming from the servants’ quarters.
Rani (the children’s mother) hadn’t expected to scream, but then she hadn’t expected to see a foreigner sitting down in her hut holding her two children like she was their mother, and she hadn’t expected to have this woman with anaemic hair arrive as her guest, as a god, and have nothing to give her to eat for such a blessing. So without even saying hello, she pushed the door shut and rushed to the back door of the farmhouse and into the kitchen, where she beseeched her husband, Ram Lal the cook, for something to eat.
‘The firangi memsahib is in our house!’ That was enough information for the half-lame cook to jump up from the chair where he sat cutting bhindi and bitter gourd. She continued, breathless, ‘I have nothing to offer her.’
‘Hai Ram Bhagwan!’ The cook gave her some Parle-G biscuits from his own collection. He couldn’t give the cake, because Tota counted the pieces left after every meal, and he couldn’t give the fancy sugar-free biscuits from Spencer’s or the chocolates, because they’d been locked up in an almari after the sweeper had started absconding with them a couple at a time for his children.
‘What in Bhagwan’s name is she doing in our home?’ Never in the modern history of the farm had anybody from the big house come over to any of the servants’ quarters for tea and snacks. Even when a new servant arrived, another servant would be assigned to take them to their quarters. Whenever electricity, water, anything in the servants’ quarters needed to be fixed, a workman would be sent. Once, and once only, the architect who designed the farm-house had walked down to the edge of the property where four of the huts were located, but that was not in the living memory of any of the servants working there on that particular day.
‘Bhagwan knows what she is doing there, not me.’
Rani ran back to her house with her Parle-G biscuits just as Mae was leaving, and was so rushed trying to extricate one from the top of the wrapper that she broke it and ended up handing over half a biscuit to her guest, without thinking.
Mae was more touched to be offered half a digestive than she ever was by any banquet at the farmhouse. ‘Thank you.’ She bowed in a kind of Japanese gesture of gratitude, not knowing exactly what she was meant to do, and ate the biscuit with Rani, Just Do It and the puffed-sleeve girl watching eagerly.
‘Thank you,’ she said once more, wiping the crumbs from the side of her mouth like an inexperienced geisha. She put her hands together for Rani and patted little Just Do It and his pigtailed sister goodbye. She walked back to the farmhouse, not knowing the speed at which the news had spread, from kitchen to bedroom, from mobile to mobile. The only one who didn’t know the ‘news’ was Neel, who was currently in his room, depressed after speaking to his parents, lying on the single bed staring up at the fan. But Mae was still free of guilt about her innocent excursion, still without knowledge of the invisible boundaries she’d just transgressed or the furies that would now be unleashed.
Tota was the first to see her, and she told the cook to bring some tea as she took Mae into the living room and shut the door.
‘Mae, where the hell have you been?’
‘I’ve been in one of the little huts at the back of the property.’
‘I know. You’ve been to the servants’ quarters. Everyone knows. Don’t make a fool of me.’
‘Then why did you ask?’ She hadn’t meant it to come across so rude, but Tota wasn’t speaking too politely either.
‘You cannot just walk into these people’s homes.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ She decided to stretch the truth, just a little. ‘I was invited by the cute little girl who lives in the house.’
‘That girl had no business inviting you in.’
Mae still couldn’t work out the severity of her crime. Certainly, she couldn’t fathom a reason why Tota would say what she said next.
‘Mae, if you’re going to walk around the place like you own it, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘But … but I was only going for a walk.’
‘If you want to go for a walk, then go outside. Walk all you want up the road and go into the village, but don’t go walking around the property into every home you can find. These are simple people. You’ll make them feel so ashamed and so uncomfortable.’
Right then it was Mae who was feeling more ashamed and uncomfortable than anybody else within the farmhouse walls. But even more than the shame and discomfort was a loathing of Neel’s mother that could hardly contain itself. Can you even hear yourself? Or are you too much of a bitch to give a shit?
‘I’m sorry. I won’t go wandering around on my own again.’ There was a hint of the tip of a sharp instrument in her words, but she thought better of having it out with Tota like she did with her own mother back home. Instead, she walked carefully on the eggshells of cultural difference. I’ll tell Neel and he’ll tell her that if someone invites you over in Australia it’s rude not to accept. I’ll get him to tell the bitch and stand up for me. She had a sense of her own power as she felt her heart quicken. You know, if he comes home with me you won’t have any control over either of us. I can take him away from you, don’t you understand? I deserve some respect.
Of course, none of these words left her mouth.
‘Let’s forget about everything we’ve discussed now,’ Tota continued, and Mae felt momentarily ashamed of her internal fury, which bubbled up like a poisonously intoxicating moonshine. ‘You like exercising, so let me take you out and we can get to know each other a little better. How about I take you to the ladies’ hour at my swimming club? I think you’ll really like it.’
Mae started crying with gratitude at the unexpected invitation, and Tota took her dupatta and dried the girl’s eyes.
‘It’s no use crying now,’ she said. ‘It’s done. You weren’t to know. This isn’t your culture.’ And Mae couldn’t help feeling that it would never be her culture as long as Neel’s mother kept treating her as if she’d have to change where she came from in order to belong.
The folded wheelchair leaning against the door halfway down the corridor was not a sign that Dadi had given up on the world. No, it was a sign that she was still prepared to go out and fight the good fight if she had to, even if it meant giving up her place on God’s waiting list.
In the bedroom behind that door, Dadi and Savitri heard the tamasha. Dadi took it lying down and Savitri took the news bolt upright when Buddhi Ayah was summoned to elucidate on the quarrel between the bride-to-be and her soon-to-be mother-in-law. It was through gossip that Dadi still had her ear to the world, and it was through her most well established and most reliable chain of rumours that this news of Mae’s indiscretion was conveyed.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell her not to go to the servants’ quarters?’ Dadi asked, but if truth be told, nobody would have thought to tell Mae, because nobody would have realised that the borders that existed like concrete structures in their lives, bolstered in language, cemented in etiquette, were in fact totally and utterly invisible to those who didn’t make the cement.
‘Invite her to come and talk with me,’ Dadi continued. ‘Maybe we can explain.’ She felt for the new bride-to-be, coming into a strange home with her heart too open and her eyes still covered by the eye mask she’d worn on the aeroplane. How could she warn the future darling wife, in the most tactful way, of the mother-in-law she was all but marrying? A woman she herself had silently, well … disliked … and disliked over many years without anyone having any suspicion of the fact.
When things like this happened, Dadi always lamented the fact that Arunji hadn’t been an astrologer at the time of Tota and Siddharth’s marriage, otherwise he would have alerted his patron to the potential nuptial mismatch about to take place. Surely?
Back when Tota and Siddharth were still young and hadn’t yet learned the compromises that a marriage entailed, let alone the concessions required in an arranged marriage, they would continually throw insults at each other over family meals. Tota announced over her aloo methi and paneer one day that she could no longer tolerate having to sleep next to a ‘dud’ and could her in-laws please provide her with another bedroom so that she could awake without seeing his ugly face. Dadi, who was never one to pull on anyone’s moustache, simply agreed that she would give her daughter-in-law her own bedroom, and the in-laws would move into a smaller room. She said all this as if she were simply a hotel concierge, compliantly booking another room for a disgruntled guest. She didn’t once betray her concerns until she arrived at Arunji’s Delhi Development Authority flat and asked him to construct the horoscope she had failed to order when they were looking for a girl for their beloved son.
