The Royal Ghosts, page 4
Mildly intoxicated, we sometimes talked sentimentally about our friendship.
“I hope we’ll never be separated,” Umesh said. “I’ve never had friends like you.”
Gauri quoted lines from a ghazal:
If we break apart,
At night we won’t sleep.
Remembering each other
We will always weep.
“Wah, wah,” I applauded her, and she stood and bowed.
“Cheers to us,” Umesh said, and we clinked our glasses.
Sometimes the three of us went on picnics—to Dhulikhel, Balaju, Swayambhu, anyplace that would give us respite from the smog and crowds in the city. A chauffeur would drive us in one of Umesh’s parents’ cars. We watched the sunset from Dhulikhel, shivering in the evening cold as the sky became awash with pink and orange. In the Balaju water gardens, to our embarrassed delight, Umesh stripped to his underwear and bathed at one of the twenty-two spouts that gushed fresh water. Under Buddha’s eyes in Swayambhunath temple, we chatted with a scantily clad sadhu smeared with ashes and holding a trident. We asked him why he’d renounced the material pleasures of life, and whether he felt any stirrings when he looked at a beautiful woman like Gauri. We went to plays, comedy shows, dance programs. The more time we spent together, the more we enjoyed one another’s company. But the moments I remember most from those days were in Umesh’s garden gazebo. The rain falling on the leaves and the flowers. Its steady drumbeat on the roof still reminds me of our friendship.
Then Tikaram entered our lives. Our office boy had quit abruptly, and for three days we didn’t have anyone to fetch us tea or run errands, so we were glad when Tikaram was hired as the new peon. The day he started, he appeared at my desk, palms together in supplication. “Recognize me, hajur?”
I didn’t.
“We used to play together when we were young,” he said.
A dim memory came to me of a friend who taught me how to make a slingshot. I remembered searching for sparrows in the woods of Raniban. “Tikaram?”
He smiled, pleased that I’d remembered him without further prompting. It was little wonder that I didn’t recognize him immediately: his face had changed drastically. His skin was already beginning to wrinkle, and his lips were now black-blue. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. He looked fifteen years older than me, although he was, from what I recall, only a couple of years older.
He told me he still lived in the old neighborhood of Chhetrapati, where my parents used to live. His wife had died, leaving him with two children to raise, and he was thinking of remarrying.
“You have someone in mind?” I asked.
He appeared embarrassed. “Something like that.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Kanyakumari.”
“Don’t both ‘kanya’ and ‘kumari’ mean virgin? Is she a double virgin, then?” I couldn’t resist asking, then hoped that I hadn’t gone too far. But Tikaram merely laughed.
From then on, he frequently stopped by my desk to see if I needed anything. His job was to serve everyone in the office, but I sensed he paid more attention to me. I soon remembered that my parents, themselves not well-to-do at the time, had hired Tikaram’s mother during a period of financial difficulty in her life. Her husband had simply vanished, turning her into a single mother overnight. I remembered her sad face, and I suddenly recalled a boy on the street calling her a whore or something like that, and Tikaram next to her, his face bright red.
One day he told me that his mother had passed away a few years ago.
“She was a good woman,” I said.
“She devoted her entire life to me, hajur,” he said. “She wanted me to study and get a good job, but I was always too stupid for school. You and I were friends when we were young, but look at us now. You are way up high and I have gone nowhere.”
His talk made me uncomfortable. “Don’t speak like that, Tikaram,” I said gently. “Everyone has his own struggle in life.”
“I could have done better, hajur,” he said.
Once Tikaram saw what close friends Umesh, Gauri, and I were, he gave them the same attention he paid to me. “You’ll give us ulcers with so many cups of tea, Tikaram,” Gauri told him, and he merely smiled.
A few weeks after he arrived, things changed for Tikaram. One afternoon I heard an argument near the main door. He was talking to a woman whose face I couldn’t see, as she was in the hallway. “How can I do that right now?” Tikaram yelled. “I just started here.” The woman said something, and Tikaram shouted back, “You bitch, who do you think you are?”
Everyone in the office looked toward the door, and fearing the manager’s response, I quickly went to Tikaram. The woman turned her face away when she saw me. I didn’t recognize her. “What’s going on?” I asked Tikaram. “Why are you making such a ruckus?”
“Sorry, hajur,” he said sheepishly. “She’s an idiot to come here and argue.”
“Let’s go out and talk,” I said, and led them down the stairs and out to the pavement. I was still unable to see her face, as she kept it hidden. “Who is she?” I asked. “What’s the problem here?”
“She is the one I told you about.”
“Ah,” I said, remembering.
She finally turned toward me, and I saw that she had a strong, bony face and was at least ten years younger than Tikaram.
“Okay, tell me, why are you arguing?” I asked him.
“She’s pestering me to marry her, hajur. But I don’t have any money for a wedding. I just started working here.”
“He’ll never marry me,” she said. “He’s playing with my life, the donkey.”
“Well, you can’t settle this in the office,” I said. “He could get fired. Why don’t you discuss this at home?”
“He doesn’t want to discuss it. He keeps avoiding it, saying he can’t think about it now.”
“Shut your mouth!” Tikaram yelled. People on the street glanced our way.
“You shut your mouth, donkey. If you’re not going to marry me, I’ll find someone else to marry. You think I can’t find someone?”
“You see, hajur,” Tikaram appealed to me, “how she threatens me?”
I was embarrassed for them, so I said to the woman, “Listen, you go home now. This evening I’ll sit down with the two of you and we’ll try to work things out.” I regretted my offer as soon as I made it. I could not exactly see myself helping much in a relationship where the words “bitch” and “donkey” were common currency. But my offer seemed to have a calming effect on the woman, and she smiled at me. “That’ll be good, hajur,” she said as she turned to leave. “We should have done this a long time ago. He speaks very highly of you.”
Tikaram and I walked back upstairs. “We’ll find her after work, okay?” I said, and he nodded hesitantly.
I told Umesh and Gauri about what had happened, and they laughed. “What are you now, a lami? We’ll have to see how well you fit the role of go-between.”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’d like to see your parents’ faces when they learn of this,” Umesh said. “Their son, whose marriage they haven’t been able to fix, is now offering advice on the subject.”
Their mocking made me more apprehensive about my offer to help resolve Tikaram’s dispute. What was I thinking? I had half a mind to go to Tikaram and back out of the whole thing, but I couldn’t renege on my promise so quickly. I looked at Umesh and Gauri—Gauri with her clear, bright eyes—and an idea came to me. “Why don’t you two come along? I could use some help.”
At first they laughed away my suggestion, saying it had been my decision and I should deal with it. But I made convincing arguments: Gauri would know how to handle any “womanly” issue that might arise (I had no idea what I was talking about), and Tikaram was a stubborn fellow, and I’d need Umesh’s fortification. I don’t think they were entirely persuaded, but they took pity on me and finally agreed to come.
After work the four of us, Tikaram included (he looked slightly bewildered at the entourage that had assembled to tackle his problem), took a taxi to where Kanyakumari lived. At the door her aunt said she wasn’t home, and when I looked at Tikaram, he said, “She works until six o’clock.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I asked, annoyed, but he shook his head as if he himself didn’t understand why. Gauri and Umesh were trying to suppress their laughter.
Instead of waiting at Kanyakumari’s house for her to return from work, we agreed to go to Tikaram’s place and meet his children, and we told Kanyakumari’s aunt to send her niece over there once she got home. The woman seemed comfortable with Tikaram and her niece’s association with him. I have discovered that sometimes “lower-caste” folks (and I put this in quotes because I’ve never believed in such nonsense) are more open-minded when it comes to social tradition than those of the “upper caste.” Take my own mother, a middle-class Brahmin woman, who made a sour face when she first learned that Gauri was a Jaisi Brahmin. Why would such a thing matter to anyone? As if our forefathers hadn’t gone far enough with this ridiculous caste business, they had to divide a single caste into lower and higher. The interesting thing was that my mother’s disapproval of Jaisi Brahmins didn’t stop her from eyeing Gauri as a potential daughter-in-law. But I suspect that was more out of desperation than anything else. She might have been thinking, Better a Jaisi Brahmin than a Newar, or some other caste she considered even lower.
Tikaram’s two children, Shanker and Sita, were playing in the courtyard when we reached his house, which was a couple of neighborhoods away. Like most neighborhoods off the main street in inner Kathmandu, this one featured a courtyard surrounded by old houses. The ground was littered with plastic bottles, and a drain ran along the edge of the courtyard, giving off a foul smell. Tikaram’s children came running to him, and he gathered them in his arms. He forced them to say “namaste” to us, and we remarked on how well-mannered they were.
We went upstairs to Tikaram’s flat, which had three rooms—a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The children’s clothes were strewn on the floor, and unwashed dishes were piled in the kitchen sink. Tikaram asked his son, only nine years old, to make tea for us, but we declined. Faint noises from the evening crowd beyond the courtyard filtered into the room as we sat on the carpet on the floor, waiting for Kanyakumari.
When she arrived, the children greeted her with as much delight as they’d greeted their father, and we were glad to observe this intimacy, for it made our mission seem more worthwhile. “They already see her as their mother,” Gauri whispered to me.
Without a word, Kanyakumari picked up the clothes from the floor, opened the window to let in some air, and made tea for all of us, even though we kept saying we didn’t want any. We sat there drinking our tea and waiting for someone to talk. I was about to open my mouth to say something, anything, when Kanyakumari said, “For two years he’s been promising to marry me. The children like me, and I’ve become attached to them. But he only makes excuses. He says he doesn’t have money, but I’m not asking for a big wedding.”
We turned to Tikaram, who said, “I don’t have enough money for a wedding, big or small.”
“There’s always the court,” Kanyakumari said. Court weddings were inexpensive and required minimal planning.
“What’s the point in getting married like that?” Tikaram said, shaking his head. “What’s a wedding if you don’t invite people, don’t have a feast, don’t have a band? Without these things it’d be more like a funeral procession.”
“If it’s a funeral, then you must be the corpse, not me.”
“You witch!” Tikaram said angrily.
“Will there be a band?” Sita, Tikaram’s daughter, asked excitedly. She was sitting on Kanyakumari’s lap. Since Tikaram’s and Kanyakumari’s language didn’t faze the children, I assumed they were used to this type of argument.
In a sugary voice, Tikaram asked the children to go outside and play, which they did, reluctantly. It was beginning to get dark, but he didn’t turn on the light.
I asked him, “You have no money?”
“None,” he said. “I was out of work for a long time.”
“Okay,” Umesh said, clearing his throat. “Have you calculated how much you’d need for a wedding if you hire a cheap band and serve a simple feast?”
Tikaram and Kanyakumari shook their heads. In the growing darkness of the room, their faces were becoming dimmer. Umesh stood up, turned on the light, and asked for paper and a pen. Tikaram found them on his bedside table, handed them to him, and Umesh began to calculate the cost of the wedding. He seemed suddenly energized, and he pursed his lips as he wrote. “Bhoj with mutton, pulau, and ice cream,” he mumbled. “Fifteen thousand rupees. Might be hard, but we can shop around for that price. Band, ten thousand rupees.” The final tally came to about sixty thousand rupees. All of us, including Tikaram and Kanyakumari, were relieved he had taken over.
Kanyakumari snatched the piece of paper from Umesh and shoved it in Tikaram’s face. “See how easy it is? You needed someone like Umesh dai to make the sun shine on your thick skull.”
Umesh sat with a smug smile, hands folded in his lap.
“Shut your mouth,” Tikaram told Kanyakumari. “That’s all fine and dandy, but I don’t have that kind of money.”
I began to wonder if they ever had an intimate moment, if they ever whispered sweet nothings to each other.
Umesh said, “Okay, how much do you have, Tikaram? No money, no money, you keep saying. But you must have something.”
“I could maybe come up with fifteen thousand, that’s all.”
We watched Umesh. Something was happening inside him, something ticking, something churning. You could see it on his face. His lips were pressed together, his eyes had narrowed. We stared at the paper with all the calculations, then looked at him.
Finally Umesh opened his mouth, and in the split second before he spoke, I think we all knew what he was going to say. “Tikaram, this is important,” Umesh said, enunciating his words carefully. “We have to find a solution to this. You can’t keep saying you have no money. You do want to marry her, right?”
Tikaram nodded.
“And you,” he asked Kanyakumari, “want to marry him?”
She too gave her yes.
Umesh took a moment to relish the anticipation on our faces. “Then let’s fix a date.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, afraid of what was coming. “He just said he couldn’t afford more than fifteen thousand.”
“I’ll take care of the rest,” Umesh said. “He’ll just pay me back when he can.”
Tikaram insisted that no, no, he couldn’t possibly take a loan from Umesh. How and when would he be able to pay it back? Both Gauri and I tried to gently dissuade Umesh from what he’d just offered. But he didn’t listen. “Look,” he said. “It’s a loan, not a gift. What’s the big deal? Can you come up with a better solution?”
We were stumped. I was about to say, “If they don’t have the money, they shouldn’t get married,” but I didn’t want to offend anyone. I was annoyed with Umesh, and I saw Gauri was too. What was he trying to be, some kind of hero?
“I want you two to get married,” Umesh said with authority. “It would be great for the children.”
Tikaram had stopped objecting and was watching Kanyakumari for her reaction. After a long silence she said, “If we don’t get married now, I worry that he’ll never marry me.”
“That settles it,” Umesh said, clapping his hands. Then the three of them—Umesh, Kanyakumari, and Tikaram—started discussing possible dates. Tikaram flipped through a religious calendar for favorable days while Gauri and I looked on in disbelief. They jotted down some dates; a priest would have to choose the one most in accord with godly forces. They discussed money, and Tikaram brought out a stash of cash from somewhere in the kitchen. “Seven thousand,” he said, handing it to Umesh, who quickly counted and pocketed it. The remaining eight thousand he’d get from a relative. Umesh held up his palm as if to say, No problem.
As soon as we walked out to the courtyard, Gauri and I gave Umesh a sound tongue-lashing. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing?” I exploded. “Have you lost your mind? You just committed yourself to paying for someone’s wedding. Sixty thousand rupees! And if it’s like any other wedding I know, add another thirty or forty to your original estimate.”
As we merged into the crowd on the street, Gauri asked, “What came over you, Umesh? I never knew you wanted to be such a hero.” It was as if she had stolen words from my mouth.
Umesh stopped, looking hurt and confused. “What are you saying? I only want to help.”
“Helping is fine,” I said, “but you’re basically wedding them with your money. Why have you suddenly turned into such a philanthropist?”
“Well, I have the money. Why not?”
Gauri and I thought hard for a response. Gauri was quicker in coming up with one. “Then why don’t you pay for our wedding too?” She meant, of course, to say our separate weddings, hers and mine, but she pointed her thumb at herself, then me, confusing the matter.
Umesh seized the opportunity. “You two are getting married? Why was I kept in the dark?”
