Mrs Hathiramani squinted out of the taxi window. The road she drove along was the one Mrs Watumal had recently taken to Burmawalla, but Mrs Hathiramani ordered the taxi to turn off the main road at Dadar, some distance before Sion, where Burmawalla lived.
The road was narrow and unpaved, and ran between rows of low, barrack-like buildings. At the last of these Mrs Hathiramani ordered the taxi to stop. It was immediately surrounded by curious children and black-skinned pigs. A deep-throated order from Mrs Hathiramani soon scattered the children, but the pigs pressed closer, rooting and snuffling. They gathered about her, snouts to the ground, breathing upon her bare toes. Mrs Hathiramani kicked out at them and waved her handbag threateningly. They began to back away. She walked towards a crumbling gap in the wall and stepped into a yard. A brood of chickens advanced, clucking and pecking. Mrs Hathiramani used her handbag again, and eventually reached a splintered green door with a broken hinge. A young girl emerged, biting the end of one of her plaits.
‘Is your mother home?’ Mrs Hathiramani inquired. The girl nodded and held open the door.
Mrs Hathiramani called out as she entered, ‘O, Mataji. I am here.’ A chicken, accompanying her inside, gave an encouraging cluck. Mrs Hathiramani turned to shoo it away.
Mataji appeared from a back room and greeted her. ‘Again there is trouble?’ she inquired.
‘You know it already?’ Mrs Hathiramani exclaimed, sitting down upon the stone floor. Mataji gave a throaty laugh. Mrs Hathiramani began to explain about Saturn in the House of the Sun, and Tunda Maharaj’s pronouncement of the evil eye.
‘I am frightened,’ Mrs Hathiramani said. ‘There is only you to care for me, Mataji.’ Mrs Hathiramani dabbed her eyes with the end of her sari in sudden unhappiness.
Mataji nodded. She was a small-boned, middle-aged woman with a thin face and wide hips. Her hair was unoiled; broken wisps escaped a loose knot to stand up wildly all over her head. She gave a loud sniff and closed her eyes, pulling her sari over her head. Mrs Hathiramani settled herself to wait. Mataji’s daughter squatted down in a corner against the wall and began to bite her fingernails. A chicken crossed the threshold, stopped and looked and then departed of its own accord.
Mataji sat immobile. Mrs Hathiramani waited, holding her breath until she felt faint, as if to assist Mataji’s concentration. At last Mataji slowly began to rock; deep gasps and groans escaped her. Her sari slipped from her face and Mrs Hathiramani drew back in fear. Mataji’s eyes were open, but had rolled so far back within her head that the pupils had disappeared. Her eyes were white and blank and inhuman. Her head swung about as if her neck was broken, she trembled as she swayed. Mrs Hathiramani grew cold with terror. At times she was sure Mataji faded before her, at times the room seemed to darken. Sweat appeared upon Mrs Hathiramani’s brow, and she was not sure if minutes or hours passed, as Mataji rocked and groaned.
Suddenly, Mataji pulled her sari over her head again, the groans ceased and she was still. Her eyes rolled back into place, bloodshot now and red-rimmed. She sniffed and hawked, and spat into an empty pickle tin her daughter pushed across the floor. Mrs Hathiramani wiped her own damp brow with the end of her sari.
‘All are speaking true,’ Mataji said at last, her voice hoarse and dry.
‘But who would do this thing?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked, trembling with distress. Mataji shrugged and, holding her nostrils between her fingers, blew her nose into the pickle tin. She turned and said a word to her daughter, who vanished into the back room, and returned with three small newspaper bundles. Mataji loosened their wrappings and explained their uses. Mrs Hathiramani nodded, gathered them up, and pressed them into her handbag. She took from her purse a wad of two-rupee notes, stapled together at the spine, and gave them to Mataji.
‘Go now,’ said Mataji. ‘I am tired. All will soon be well.’
*
Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas sat side by side upon the bed. Cross-legged on the floor before them, Rekha sighed. She had gone herself to ask the women to find a match for Lakshmi, who was already eighteen. She had not expected an answer so quickly.
‘The boy is educated. B. A. Commerce passed, M. A. twice failed. He is an only son,’ Mrs Bhagwandas explained.
‘Education is not important,’ Mrs Hathiramani said in the tone of experience. ‘Only what he is earning is important. The family has a shop in Mahim. They want to expand the premises after their son is married. They are selling suitcases.’
Rekha’s stomach tightened with responsibility. ‘If he is an only son, then it will be very difficult for Lakshmi. She will have to do everything for the parents.’ Beside her Chachi chewed toothless gums, eyes bright with the morning’s unexpected stimulation.
‘What is his colour?’ she demanded, adjusting the chiffon scarf about her shoulders. Mrs Bhagwandas and Mrs Hathiramani exchanged a look.
‘Colour is dark,’ Mrs Bhagwandas admitted. ‘But he is originally an Amil Sindhi, although now of course Bhaibund.’
‘What is his colour when family is good?’ Mrs Hathiramani argued, and explained his lineage in some detail.
‘Our girl is beautiful, her colour is fair. Why should we give her to a dark boy?’ Chachi demanded, pulling her stool closer to the women. She could see Rekha was too worried about Lakshmi’s security to argue these finer points that would add up to bargaining power when it came to a question of dowry. It was her duty, as an elder, to take note of these things.
‘Our girl is also educated, she completed twelfth standard in school. She knows cooking and sewing and how to give respect to elders. And full of love for everyone. Such a girl is not easy to find. They want only money nowadays, and to be taken to the cinema and to eat in restaurants.’ Chachi spoke authoritatively. Mrs Hathiramani sat forward at once.
‘Also, it is not easy to find good boys. Nowadays, they have studied in Foreign. They know only about drinking, beef-eating and bad women. This boy is not like that,’ Mrs Hathiramani pointed out.
‘The parents have their own house in Mahim. The boy will inherit when his father dies,’ Mrs Bhagwandas added.
‘I have heard the boy’s mother is very strong-willed. She quarrels with everyone; that is her reputation. How will my Lakshmi please such a mother-in-law? And if she cannot, you know what her life will be?’ Rekha said.
‘Where have you heard these things?’ Mrs Hathiramani demanded.
‘I’m afraid for my Lakshmi with such a mother-in-law,’ Rekha repeated in a low voice. ‘I wish her to be happy.’
‘Everything is there to make her happy; a good boy, good family, own house, own business. And the mother-in-law she will learn to please; that is the job of a daughter-in-law. She has only to give enough respect. It will not be easy to find such a boy for her again,’ Mrs Hathiramani said, in her most persuasive tone.
‘Any defects in body?’ Chachi interrupted. Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas exchanged another look.
‘In one eye he is not seeing clearly,’ Mrs Bhagwandas admitted at last.
‘He is dark and defective?’ Chachi screamed and threw up her hands. ‘And such a boy you are offering us? How can we give our girl to such a boy?’
‘The defect is not so noticeable. It is from an accident in his childhood. He was not born with the defect; he will not pass it on to his children,’ Mrs Bhagwandas hurriedly explained.
‘We are not interested in such a boy.’ Chachi shook her head and pursed her lips.
‘Without this defect, he could get any rich girl,’ Mrs Hathiramani intervened in a soft tone.
‘You mean, without his defect we are not good enough for him?’ Chachi shouted.
‘We are only doing this for Lakshmi. She is like our own daughter,’ Mrs Bhagwandas pacified.
‘Without this defect such a boy, from such a family, would expect a good offer of dowry,’ Mrs Hathiramani persisted. ‘Because of his defect they will be satisfied with less.’
‘Black and blind and still must offer?’ Chachi screamed. ‘What people are these?’ Rekha put a hand upon her knee to calm her.
‘What can we offer? You know how it is with us,’ she said.
‘If you do not offer, Lakshmi will lose this chance. Tell Sham to borrow from somewhere. This much he can do for his sister. It is his duty as her brother,’ Mrs Bhagwandas suggested.
After they had gone Rekha sat for a long time, huddled against the bed upon which her husband lay sleeping. Her mind was full of Lakshmi and all she wished for her. They had scraped and borrowed for the other girls, to provide them with small dowries. They were pretty girls and that had helped; they had married, and for that Rekha was thankful. None had had the shame of repeated rejection and spinsterhood, like the Watumal girls. But now Kishin was dying and Sham was called a thief, and besides Lakshmi there were still Padma and Veena yet to be married. Without dowries who would take them but old widowers, or those even poorer than themselves?
Kishin groaned restlessly on the bed. Rekha stood up and adjusted the sheet, wiping a trickle of saliva from the corner of his mouth. She must tell the women they could go ahead. Somehow Sham would have to find a way. The women were right, Lakshmi might not have such an opportunity again.
Eventually, a first viewing was arranged. They formally met the Samtani family for tea one Sunday afternoon, in the home of Mr and Mrs Hathiramani. The real reason for the occasion was not explained to Lakshmi, for fear of unnerving her. But there was such detailed discussion between her mother and Mrs Bhagwandas on how she should dress, and so many pessimistic remarks by Chachi, that she soon guessed. She wore her hair loose, with a smudge of lipstick, and kohl about her eyes. At the last minute Mrs Bhagwandas hurried in with a blue chiffon sari for her to wear, instead of her worn cottons. They had ushered her proudly into the Hathiramanis’ sitting room.
Mr Hathiramani had agreed to shut the front door and leave his look-out post upon his bed, to sit with them. On the orders of his wife he directed no sarcastic remarks at Sham, nor divulged the reason for his return from Japan. Mr and Mrs Bhagwandas were also present. Padma and Veena handed about the plates of savoury fritters, sweetmeats, biscuits and fruit Mrs Hathiramani had prepared; Lakshmi poured the tea.
Mrs Samtani stopped in mid-bite to judge Lakshmi’s dexterity in the matter. Lakshmi did not slop liquid into the saucer, nor let it dribble down the teapot spout. She tested the temperature of the milk and asked Raju to reheat it. She poured it last into the tea, and was careful no skin escaped the strainer. Mrs Samtani found no fault and even smiled when Lakshmi served her cup, placing it delicately on the table beside her. It was obvious Lakshmi was no modern young woman with red finger-nails, who could only instruct the servants. She was pretty, too, and graceful. Mrs Samtani looked on with restrained approval. She was a tall woman with a hard, square face and uncompromising eyes. Her greying hair was worn in a tight, high chignon. Lakshmi felt a pang of fear each time she looked at her.
Mrs Samtani was taller by several inches than her husband, a thin, mild man with a balding head and soft loose lips. He spoke little, but nodded frequently in agreement at his wife’s remarks about their home in Mahim, their relatives in Bangalore, and a film star who had once, before he became famous, been their immediate neighbour. Lakshmi allowed herself surreptitious glances at Hari. She found him agreeable. He had the mild manner of his father and the same loose soft lips, but in the square face of his mother. He seemed neither too fat nor too thin and smiled often, showing wide, white teeth. The one eye that was blind was slightly opaque, and reminded Lakshmi of watered-down milk, but she did not find it offensive. There seemed suddenly more to him than this one eye that had worried her so much.
Chachi had gone straight to sleep when they returned from the Hathiramanis’, winding her scarf like a bandage over her eyes. ‘Black and defective and still we must offer,’ she muttered beneath her breath, as she settled upon her string bed. ‘Father cannot speak before the mother. The woman will be like a devil for our Lakshmi.’
But Rekha and Padma and Veena had been bright with excitement, and a glow suffused Lakshmi, who blushed and giggled at any pretext, although nothing had been openly said.
Lakshmi pulled Sham into a conspiratorial huddle, sitting cross-legged on one end of the bed. ‘That was him, wasn’t it? I know you are arranging for me. Why should I not know? What is the harm?’ she whispered. Sham nodded confirmation and Lakshmi sighed.
She looked nervously at Chachi, dozing on the string bed. ‘I overheard them talking when I came home one day last week. The front door was not quite shut and their voices carried, especially Mrs Hathiramani’s. I only listened for a little while,’ she assured Sham when he frowned. Her eyes were full of questions he could not answer, she looked a child to him still. It upset him to think she must soon marry.
‘When I heard he was blind,’ Lakshmi continued in a whisper, ‘I wanted to cry. But after seeing him I do not feel so bad. He had a nice smile; he looks kind. That is the most important thing; a kind husband,’ Lakshmi decided. ‘I think I liked him.’
Sham nodded, but did not add that he thought Hari Samtani’s smile was weak, and might at times be a way of escaping responsibility. Yet, in spite of reservations, he was anxious for Lakshmi to secure Hari as a husband. They might not find such a match for her again. It depended upon him, Sham thought in despair.
As if she read his thoughts, Lakshmi whispered, ‘Mrs Bhagwandas told Ama we must offer. How can we do that, it is not possible?’
‘These things are not for you to worry about. Leave it to me,’ he assured her. But even as he spoke the hopelessness of it all welled up again within him.
Soon Rekha called Lakshmi to the kitchen. When she had gone, he took Akbar Ali’s card from his pocket. Several times he had almost thrown it away.
*
‘So,’ smiled Akbar Ali, looking Sham up and down. ‘Very quickly Smart Boy is coming for a job. What about your work in Foreign?’ Akbar sat behind a huge desk and chewed the end of a pencil. The room was large and bare about him. It was painted a bright oily green; the beams and the floor were warped and uneven.
A servant appeared with two glasses of tea on a metal tray. ‘Drink,’ Akbar urged Sham and sipped noisily at his own refreshment. On the desk, the tea in the glass before Sham tipped dangerously to one side. The desk sloped over a sinking floor, the ceiling tilted symmetrically above. Outside, the building was propped up by wooden supports and appeared dangerously near its demise. It had surprised Sham to find the great Akbar Ali in this decrepit old building near Crawford Market. Climbing the dark, winding staircase he had almost turned and fled.
‘I cannot go back to Japan. My father has suddenly become very ill. I’m the only son, my duty is here,’ Sham explained. ‘He will need an operation,’ he lied as an afterthought. His curriculum vitae lay unread on the other side of the desk. ‘I will do anything,’ he said suddenly in a low voice. ‘Anything.’
Akbar Ali nodded, handing the curriculum vitae back to Sham. ‘This is nothing to me. I am a good judge of character. You are a smart boy.’ He leaned forward, folding massive arms upon the desk, and looked at Sham. Beneath the rough, unshaven exterior his expression was benign. Sham did not feel as dismissive of him as he had in the Taj. ‘You know my reputation? You know of my money and how I have made it? I am not called Akbar the Great for nothing,’ he said. Sham nodded.
‘Of this kind of money I have now enough,’ Akbar continued, sitting back and lighting a cigarette with a gold lighter. He offered one to Sham, who shook his head. ‘I am getting older. I am looking now for a different life. Now I want to make le-git-i-mate money.’ Akbar spoke the word slowly and with difficulty, and then sighed. ‘Always I must worry about hiding this and hiding that, and customs men, and looking so clean they cannot catch me. Of this life now I am tired. It is a life for young men.’ Akbar put down his glass of tea. Behind him in a far corner a thin, dark man worked at a smaller desk.
‘That is Malik. Many years, since the beginning, he has been with me,’ Akbar explained. Malik looked up; he was dressed like Akbar in loose white garments, but his narrow eyes were sad and sly. ‘Everything he takes care of for me. He is my secretary,’ Akbar explained. ‘But for new business I need a smart boy who is educated. New business is le-git-i-mate. I am not a smart boy. I left school to work at nine years old.’ He gave a great laugh as he said this, Sham smiled politely. Akbar’s face became serious again. ‘You will give me your smart-boy education,’ he said.
‘What is the new business?’ Sham inquired, summoning up courage.
‘I have recently bought a factory in Marve, a spinning mill. I will be a suiting manufacturer. You will run the mill for me with the present manager and handle all business. Just like Malik is running the old business,’ Akbar said. Sham stared at him incredulously.
‘But I have no experience,’ he answered, his mouth had suddenly gone dry.
Akbar answered with a laugh. ‘Smart boys learn quickly and with responsibility even quicker. Akbar is not wrong in these things. I will guide you,’ he reassured.
He pulled thoughtfully at his moustache before he spoke again, to suggest a salary. Sham nodded, trembling suddenly. The figure Akbar named was far more than he had hoped for. He wondered if he would wake to find he had been dreaming; none of this seemed possible.
‘Many people will say I am a foolish man, to give so much,’ Akbar continued. ‘But in the worth of a man, I do not bargain.’ He gave Sham a shrewd look.
Sham cleared his throat, then hesitated. Akbar raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘My father … he is ill …’ Sham explained in a low voice. ‘Is it possible … some money in advance …’
‘If Father is sick that is indeed trouble,’ Akbar agreed. ‘Without trouble, you see, no smart boy is applying to work for someone like me.’ He laughed and hawked into a brass spittoon.
‘Listen.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Now I will show you how big is the heart of Akbar. Many think Akbar is only an old fool and do not understand the bigness of his heart. They run away and start their own business. They think they are cleverer than Akbar. They begin dealing in drugs; they think Akbar is very big fool not to enter this market. They are bringing in guns, and gold bars. They make big money, but not for long; soon they are caught. But I am still doing my business: French chiffon saris, television, video, toasters, whisky, these kind of things. I am an old-fashioned smuggler. I am a man of honour, even if business is illegal. That is my reputation, even with the police. They respect Akbar; when they look for drugs or guns, they never think of Akbar. So you see, I am not so foolish.’ Sham wished for an end to these confessions. He was beginning to feel he might grow to like Akbar. These were uncomfortable feelings, he only wished to make some money.
‘I will give you something in advance for your father’s illness. You will repay me from your salary. I will take no interest. See the extent of Akbar’s heart.’ He smiled and slapped the desk top, naming a sum that took Sham’s breath away. With something extra from moneylenders, he might soon have enough for a small dowry. Enough to please the Samtanis.
‘Thank you,’ said Sham, his voice uneven with emotion. Akbar waved an arm dismissively.
‘You thank me by showing your worth. We start work tomorrow. All right? I take you to see this factory. Ten o’clock,’ he ordered.
Sham stumbled down the crooked, splintering stairs in a daze. Outside, he looked up at the façade of the filthy, disintegrating building, dangerously askew upon precarious supports, and shook his head in disbelief. He thought of the suave worldliness of his last employer, of Mr Murjani’s dapper form and then of the notorious, illiterate Akbar who appeared so much the better man. The world seemed to have turned upside down.
When he reached Sadhbela he went up to the terrace. Within a few minutes Rani was beside him. There was a breeze off the sea, the sky bloomed with the setting sun. On the roof of the next building children were flying kites. At the far end of the terrace three servants flexed their muscles beneath dumbbells, grunting loudly with the effort. He knew the servants had seen them; he had tried to discourage Rani from appearing so regularly beside him on the terrace.
‘But you don’t understand,’ she leaned forward to say in a low voice, ‘There is just nobody I can talk to like this. Nobody I want to talk to.’ She looked at him intensely. ‘I know you understand.’ It was he who dropped his eyes first.
‘Understand what?’ he asked.
‘You know, how I feel about things,’ she replied. It was not clear to him in what way she suffered, but he did not press the matter. He did not like the effect he found she had upon him now; the heightening of his blood pressure, the urge to touch her hair. As many times as he told her not to come, he knew he waited for her.
Since the day she had met him in the Taj, she had sought him out. Often, returning to Sadhbela, he looked up to see her face, high above in a corner of a window and, as he stepped out of the lift, she would appear. When he came up to the terrace in the evening, needing the space of the sky and the view, he would find her there beside him. Often they stood in silence, staring together at the sea.
‘You don’t know how it is at home. I’m bound hand and foot. I can’t do anything. I have no freedom,’ she dramatized.
‘What do you mean?’ he argued benignly. ‘You seem to have more freedom than you need.’ He remembered her the first day at the Taj, mistress of her surroundings and an imported car, blasé inhabitant of that other Bombay he would only ever observe.
She pouted, then laughed. ‘Soon you’ll sound like Mummy. Do you know, the driver didn’t turn up on time this morning. I was going to be late for a lecture, so I said I’d walk down the road and catch a bus to college. Mummy nearly went mad. She said, “How can you walk on the road? What will people say when they see you? They’ll think we don’t have enough cars and drivers to go around. Girls of good family don’t walk on the road. And a bus? Do you want to travel with servants, and thugs?” Oh, you should have heard her.’ Rani giggled, mimicking her mother’s voice.
‘Well, that’s the way she thinks,’ Sham shrugged, anger stirring in him as he listened, lost for a reply. People like Mrs Murjani did not truly walk. When she shopped, going from establishment to establishment along a block or two of road, a car would trail her. On her morning stroll, a car would trail her. If one of the Murjanis’ several chauffeured vehicles was not available at the required time, Mrs Murjani would cancel an appointment rather than be seen to take a taxi. Traversing Bombay in her imported car, she did not see the dusty, packed buses spewing fumes, or the endless queues of weary people waiting in the sun.
‘Pinky walks wherever she wants. She often travels by bus too – her parents don’t mind. I don’t understand Mummy. I didn’t tell her, but just for kicks, I made Pinky ride with me all the way back here from Colaba by bus the other day.’ Rani pulled a triumphant face. Sham felt irritated.
‘You’re playing at life,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ she retorted. ‘Don’t your sisters walk where they want, go by bus, work? They’re much freer than me. You don’t know how much I envy them.’
‘You have nothing to envy them for,’ he said in a low voice, trying to control his anger.
‘I know you say I’m lucky, but I live in an artificial world,’ she replied.
He saw that, strange as it seemed, she spoke sincerely, the circumspection of her life was suffocating her. He was forced, when he was with her, to deal with a conflict of emotions. There was the strong, unspoken feeling she filled him with, the desire to reach out and touch her, as he knew she too wished. And there was equally a hot impatience with her. She moved her head defiantly, the long plait swinging about. Above them the kites hovered in the sky like silent, watchful birds, long colourful tails rippling in the breeze. He supposed, as much as he wished to step beyond his own restrictions, she too wished for a broadening of horizon. The apprenticeship he had served so painfully upon the pink sofas of the Taj, she might follow to some extent in an opposite way, upon dirty buses and the third-class compartments of trains.
‘You should be grateful you don’t have to really know how hard life can be,’ he told her.
‘Tell me,’ she demanded, then said more softly, ‘You know so much. You’re different from everyone else.’
‘You shouldn’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘And I’ve told you before, it’s not right for you to come up here. The servants have already seen you. They’ll talk.’
‘I don’t care,’ she replied. ‘When I’m with you I feel different, I feel part of the real world.’
‘If you knew it, you wouldn’t like my real world,’ he laughed harshly. ‘No money for food, no money for dowries. No money for anything.’ She drew back guiltily, silent before these unsavoury facts.
‘You should get things straight in your mind,’ he continued. ‘I can’t even arrange for my sister to marry well. You don’t know how bad I feel.’
‘And they’ll marry me so well I’ll be no better off than your sister in the end, in a different way,’ she answered. ‘The boys I know don’t want intelligent wives; they want decoration pieces, that’s what Pinky says. I don’t want to be a decoration in somebody’s home. You would encourage your wife to do something with her life, wouldn’t you? I can imagine the kind of husband Mummy will find for me. Why don’t I marry you?’ she said in a rush. ‘It would help you too, and all your family.’
‘Don’t be crazy.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in alarm. ‘It’s time we went in.’ He pushed her gently by the elbow before him. But the vision of how it might really feel to be part of her world rose up strongly before him. And also, as it always did upon the terrace, with the sea before him and the town spreading away below, that other vision of the city, dark and fetid and inescapable as a bottomless vat, was before him again. On its rim Rani stood secure, in no danger of a fall. How easy it might be for him to find a way to join her there, to manipulate her infatuation for him. He made an effort to put the thought aside. Turning his head he saw that Gopal had come up to the terrace unseen and squatted with the weight-lifters, his eyes upon them both.