She had thought to go upstairs quietly at the hostel, but Pawar spotted her. ‘Leela Ghosh!’ she called out. She was smiling.
‘Hello ma’am,’ said Leela, forgetting to resist. Five o’clock, Sunday evening, everyone was in the hostel, either flitting in or on their way out. Pawar got up and put an arm around Leela. ‘Are you better? Patli toh ho gayi.’
‘I don’t think I’ve lost weight,’ Leela said.
‘You’ve reduced,’ Pawar said firmly.
Chitra appeared and let out a squeal. ‘You’re back!’
Leela was dazzled. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘You’ve really lost weight. How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay, I’m fine now.’
A couple of other girls that she sometimes talked to at meals stopped to smile and ask after her.
‘You probably just want to take your stuff up, no?’ Chitra said. ‘I’ll call the lift.’
The ‘Für Elise’ halted, they jolted up. Leela inhaled. ‘The hostel smell,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten it.’
‘Eau de Phenyl?’
She was lost in an evocation of the dark, cool corridors, the doors of different rooms, and hers among them, on the left towards the end: single room with sea view which, as Pawar said, made her a very lucky girl.
They came to the seventh floor. ‘Do you need a hand unpacking, babe?’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Leela said.
‘See you at dinner? Eight thirty?’ Chitra said.
‘Great.’
Leela trundled her bag along the corridor, took out her key and opened the door. The room was clean, peculiarly familiar. The window and balcony door were closed; it was too warm. She turned on the fan. The desk was neat, but otherwise, with her bedspread on the bed, the pink Ganpati on top of the bookshelf, dusty but undamaged, the room looked as though she had walked out of it a day or two earlier; as though the last month had simply not happened.
She woke early, and walked to work, enjoying the exercise and the sense of leisure. She was one of the first people in the building; the watchman didn’t recognise her at first and she had to show him her identity card. She went up to the office and began to open her mail.
Sathya found her when he arrived. ‘Hey!’ he cried joyously. ‘You’re back.’
She grinned. But he bustled about his desk. ‘She’s going crazy about something. Just let me sort these out. I need to make a call.’ Ten minutes later, he got up when Tipu Sultan came in, and said, ‘Come, let’s go for a cigarette?’
They stood outside in the stone stairwell, moving out of the way for peons carrying twenty-litre bottles of mineral water, or chairs with broken seats.
‘So you’re okay? Feeling better now?’ Sathya asked. ‘You look thinner. You look good though.’
Leela grinned and rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks.’
‘I feel it’s important to say these things,’ said Sathya, grinning back. ‘When are you going to get a boyfriend?’
Leela was mildly affronted. ‘Next week, is it on my task list?’ Joan had decided Sathya and Leela should draw up weekly task lists and prioritise their to-dos on a whiteboard.
‘It should be. You’re young and attractive. Don’t turn into me.’
‘Is it that bad?’ Leela had never arrived satisfactorily at a conclusion about whether Sathya was attracted to her. Residually perhaps – they got on very well. But with any serious intent? To her chagrin, she thought not, though when she imagined anything actually happening between them, she froze in horror.
‘Try not to look absolutely appalled.’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean that.’ She touched his arm in apology.
‘I don’t actually feel bad about it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get married, which is apparently the only relationship option in this fucking country.’
‘Hm, no? Maybe you haven’t found the right person?’
‘Every woman wants to get married. If I’m with someone, I want to see her three times a week. Maybe twice. I like my life. I’m not desperate to get married.’
Leela regarded him dubiously. She looked at the smouldering paper stick in her hand. ‘I can’t finish this. It’s making me sick. Sorry.’ She stubbed it out in the paper-filled ashtray.
Sathya raised an eyebrow. ‘You probably shouldn’t smoke anyway. What about your liver?’
‘What about my liver,’ she repeated. Just the grey curls of smoke floating in the stairwell made her queasy.
‘Let’s go for a drink one night this week,’ Sathya said.
‘Drink?’
‘You can eat peanuts and watch me drink. Which is pretty much all you ever do.’
‘I’ll drink whisky.’
‘You do that.’ He put out his cigarette.
Leela thought that evening, as she lay on her bed listening to the crows and gulls outside, that it was as though she had been reborn. She walked cleanly through the city every morning, woke earlier, felt lighter. Things seemed to have fallen away.
On Thursday she and Sathya sat in Leo’s bar. A waiter sidled towards them. ‘Another beer, sir?’
‘Another beer?’ Sathya asked himself. He examined the bottle on the table. ‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘Do you want another, whatever rubbish you’re drinking?’
‘No,’ Leela said. After her third fresh lime soda (sweet) she’d realised matching Sathya drink for drink would make her feel burpy and sick.
‘Hm,’ said Sathya. ‘Well, this is exciting.’
‘Can you ask him for more saltines?’
He waved at the waiter. ‘Bring her more of those things.’
The waiter departed, nodding.
‘So, how long are you going to stay in this ridiculous job?’
‘What else should I do?’ she asked.
A large, quite drunk black man began to dance slowly on the tiny, sticky dance area under the single disco ball. He seemed to be moving to a song different from the one playing.
‘Christ,’ said Sathya. ‘Look at him.’
‘He looks like he’s having fun.’ She accepted a fresh bowl of saltines from the waiter.
‘Probably. Do you think we should be doing that? Should we take some of whatever he’s had? Isn’t this the place to get hold of all of that?’
‘Is it?’
‘Of course. Colaba. Firangs. Don’t you know these things, in your hostel?’
Leela sighed. ‘The hostel’s really not like that.’
‘I bet. Anyway, how long are you going to carry on like this?’
‘Like what?’
The man stopped dancing and leaned against the edge of the DJ booth. He called over a waiter.
‘Pointless job, living in hostel.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘What else should I be doing?’
‘How could I possibly know? You must be passionate about something.’
Leela looked at him. His eyes were slightly red; it was smoky inside, despite the fierce air conditioning.
‘Books, maybe.’
‘Journalism? Publishing?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Marriage?’
‘Oh, fuck off.’
He raised an eyebrow and grinned.
‘What about you?’ enquired Leela.
‘What about me?’
‘How can you not be married?’
‘Because I’m so rich and attractive?’
‘I was thinking of your age, actually.’
He guffawed. ‘I told you, I don’t want to. At least I don’t want to get married to the kind of woman I could probably still get married to.’
‘Matrimonials?’
‘Fuck that – tall fair high caste engineer?’
‘Homely. Divorce no bar.’
He laughed again. ‘What about indifference no bar?’
Leela looked at him dubiously.
‘I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t mind either way,’ she pointed out.
‘How sweet. No, but I’m not. I’d probably get laid more if I were. Look, there was some female, okay, if you want to know. In Bangalore, of all places. Very nice, attractive, just a bit crazy.’
‘When was this?’
‘About nine months ago.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Meenakshi.’
‘Ooh, I like the name. Doesn’t it mean fish-eyed?’ The meaning of names was a speciality of her father’s.
‘It means pain in the ass as far as I recall.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘No, no.’ Sathya put down his glass slightly too hard and spilt some beer. Leela giggled. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘the point was that she was very attractive, it was very nice, being able to have sex was great. But then she wanted to get married, and I wasn’t too sure. She wanted to live separately. I live with my parents.’
‘Couldn’t you have lived near them or something?’
He went off on his usual rant about independence.
‘I wish I felt like that,’ Leela said.
‘You’re a nice normal girl.’
‘Are you being sarcastic?’
‘No, I mean it. Everything will work out. It has to. You need to meet some people. Go out.’
‘I am out.’
‘Not with me. Let me think,’ Sathya said, ‘if I know anyone.’
‘What about him? Shall I fall in love with him?’ She indicated the man in white, who was now off the dance floor, in a booth, still alone, looking grumpy.
‘Maybe. He does look a bit like a drug dealer, but if you don’t mind that.’
‘It might as well be him. It could be anyone, you know? Have you ever thought that?’ Leela said suddenly. ‘You know, when you fall in love, the randomness of it? Like a feeling is just waiting to get attached to a person? Have you ever thought: Who’ll be the next person to come along and make me unhappy? You know how when you’re in love, you get obsessed with that person and think you see them everywhere? When it’s not them? And then when the person who isn’t them comes nearer, you realise they’re not even attractive? But you thought they were the person you’re obsessed with? What does that mean? Does it mean the person you’re in love with isn’t even as amazing as you think? Like there was this guy I liked, he had dark hair and a beard and every time I saw a man with a beard out of the corner of my eye I’d think: it’s him. But it wouldn’t be – and it’d be someone really unattractive, and then I’d feel strange. What if I was even wrong about him being attractive?’ She finished the saltines. ‘You know?’
Sathya looked at her disbelievingly, then guffawed. ‘You can be this intense on fresh lime soda? Have a drink.’
‘I can’t, I just had jaundice.’
‘You should be careful,’ he said automatically. ‘Don’t want to have a relapse.’ He drained his beer, waved at the waiter, and made a gesture of one hand writing on another. ‘I should go, catch the train. Come, I’ll drop you.’
‘It’s not on the way.’
‘It’ll take ten minutes.’
The waiter came over. Sathya examined the bill.
‘How much?’ Leela asked.
‘Shut up. You weren’t even drinking. Come on, let’s go, unless you want to talk to your friend over there.’
The man in white had his forearms on the table; his head rested on them.
She wasn’t going home this weekend, the first since her return; but her sense of anticipation had drizzled away. Joan had asked on Friday, though cautiously, since Leela had at first fiercely refused such demands, ‘There’s a meeting for Citiwatch in the evening, on Sunday, at six, can you go?’
‘Where –’
‘It’s in Colaba. Just pop in, be there for twenty minutes. Take some cards.’ Leela had recently acquired business cards.
‘Okay,’ Leela said.
‘Wonderful. I’ll give you the address. Oh, it’s in Cuffe Parade – even closer.’
On Sunday, she was pleased to have the appointment. She had spent the previous day walking around, eating dosa and reading, and had woken early, not tired. The day passed pleasantly: the usual lull of breakfast, the paper, a walk out to check her email, buy some laundry detergent and shampoo. Back in her room, she looked around her and wondered at her life. The rusty table, painted annually in the hostel store with black galvanised paint; the cupboard, the clean but chipped cement and marble-chip tiles, the wooden bed and formica desk. All surfaces in the hostel were wipe-clean where possible; it wasn’t always. Just before Leela had become ill, one Monday morning the dining room had been hushed at breakfast. When she wondered why, Chitra told her that an older woman some of them knew had died in her room that weekend. She was in her late thirties and turned out to have been epileptic; she had had a fit and died without anyone realising till the next day.
Leela had recalled the perfunctory medical exam she’d had to undergo before being admitted to the hostel.
‘I guess they didn’t know,’ Chitra said. ‘Can you imagine, dying like that? The bai said there was blood all over the walls.’
‘No one heard?’ Leela felt her mouth become salty.
‘Saturday afternoon, I guess everyone was out.’
Now Leela imagined a man, perhaps the kitchen manager or someone else, supervised by the punctilious hostel accountant, collecting the furniture from that room and having it repainted, and the bai who must have gone in to clean away death from the walls. Still, she couldn’t feel it was a failure of the hostel and its uniform, provisional way of life, whose temporariness she enjoyed. But would you be happy, she argued with herself, as she watched a football game below in the lane, if you lived like this for ever, if you could? With the same job, the same life? Without possessions, an apartment of your own, children – but the children were indistinct. It was the fear of not having the things others had, rather than the desire for those things.
Sitting in the door with her mug of orange tea, she lost track of time. The sky paled, and a smoke-like darkness began to smudge it. No time to think about what to wear. She changed quickly and left the hostel as dusk fell.
The meeting was in a building near the Colaba Woods, a long tree-lined park around which some elderly men and a woman were walking. It had an Arthurian name she couldn’t remember. Guinevere? Lancelot? Camelot, that was it; a Deco building with a low, wrought-iron gate and trees behind the wall. Who calls a building Camelot, she thought, but remembered having a friend, when very young, who lived in a dusty Deco building in Colaba called Hampton Court.
‘Agarwal,’ she said to the watchman who stopped her near the gate.
He nodded.
Leela waited for the lift, with a middle-aged woman and a young man. The woman was talking. The man, Leela thought, must be her son, though she was so much smaller, and elegantly dressed where he was tall, bearded, not unhandsome, but with a linen or khadi shirt not quite tucked in, and slightly crumpled chinos.
‘Probably darling, but that isn’t the point,’ the older woman was saying. ‘You’ve been back for a couple of months now, you should get involved with something, at least reconnect with people.’
Her voice remained soft even as it insisted, in a way that impressed Leela. But when the other woman turned a quizzical face towards her, she looked down at her worn chappals and was embarrassed. This would have been a good moment to introduce herself, and say something in a loud, confident voice. The presence of the young man, and the woman’s elegance – she wore a short, dusty pink silk kurta, white pyjamas, and dull gold ear studs that Leela liked against her silver hair – made her remain silent.
The lift came, and the young man opened the door. He waited first for his mother, then for Leela, and the thought came to her and made her smile with its unexpectedness, that he would often be opening doors for his mother and her, and that at some time she might tire of it.
‘Which floor?’ the older woman asked. She looked at Leela.
‘Two please.’
She pressed only the second button; they all got out together.
‘Are you going to the Agarwal house?’
‘Yes. Are you going to the Citiwatch meeting?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The other woman laughed; she seemed to be amused by the question.
‘Er, I’m Leela Ghosh, I work at the Sohrab Trust.’
‘Oh? With whom?’
‘Joan Mascarenhas.’
‘I know Joan. I didn’t know there was someone else there now. Has Radha left?’
‘She went to London, she works in an auction house.’
The young man was ringing the doorbell. As footsteps came towards it, Leela was saying, ‘I’ve only been there a year – not quite.’
A woman opened the door and pounced on them. ‘Welcome, welcome, come in! Shalini, Vikram, how are you? My God, you’re looking so handsome and grown up!’
Leela smiled behind them, wondered whether to remove her sandals, didn’t see any at the door, regretted briefly having worn the kolhapuris in which she walked everywhere, and drifted uncertainly past the hall, the open doorway to the kitchen – a bearer looked out – and into the drawing room.
Knots of people, mostly women of a certain age and income, had gathered and were talking with enthusiasm around different focal points: a marble planter that might have come off the set of a Pirandello play; a side table that held a large bronze Natraj; and a walnut sideboard on which stood a silver tray and bottles of liquor. Next to it, a small, reproving looking man in white uniform of short-sleeved bush shirt and trousers, his hair neatly oiled, his spectacles of wire. Leela looked on as a taller, baggier man, his beard silver, came up to say something to the bearer, then watch him administer a drink, whisky with several ice cubes.
‘May I help you?’ A large lady in a loud, printed silk blouse and slacks came up. Bits of her blinged: earrings, buttons, shiny discs on her sandals. Leela liked her on principle, but felt tired and exasperated at always being the person who, by dint of scruffiness, or youth, or not being known, must be addressed in this slightly hectoring way. She smiled.
‘I’m Leela Ghosh, from the Sohrab Trust. Joan Mascarenhas asked me to come along and say hello.’
‘Ah, you’re Leeeeeela!’ Leela felt sure this lady had not before been aware of her existence. ‘I’m Shilpa Agarwal.’
‘Hello,’ simpered Leela.
‘So lovely to meet you Leela. Now, I hear a bit of an accent. Where are you from?’
‘I’ve spent some time in England,’ Leela said.
‘Oh really? Where did you do your college?’
‘Cambridge.’
‘How wonderful!’ Mrs Agarwal was steering Leela through the crowd. ‘Tea?’ They stopped at a table with a tea and perhaps a coffee pot on it.
‘Is there any coffee?’
‘Of course. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just sugar please.’
When Leela had a cup of coffee, Shilpa Agarwal got a plate and put two bhajias and a canapé on it despite Leela’s demurrals. ‘Veg? Really? That’s interesting.’ She steered Leela further into a corner. ‘Now, what do you know about Citiwatch?’
‘Well, of course, I know about your campaign for safer road crossings,’ Leela said, dredging this from a memory of a newspaper article some months earlier.
‘Ah yes. Well! We are an organisation formed by several friends, concerned citizens you might say, in 1997, in order to really do something about the city. We love Mumbai, Leela.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Leela agreed. She let herself go glazed and limp under the speech that followed, in which she also made mental notes for future reference: parks, open spaces, citizens’ action.
Before Shilpa seemed to have drawn to a conclusion, she became bored. ‘Leela, just one minute, someone I must speak to over there.’ Leela agreed and was left standing next to a corner table. She was out of the flow of the room, to her relief, and stood near a sofa with claw-ball feet; she looked sideways out of the window and wondered how soon she could leave.
‘Hi,’ said a voice. Lurking not far away was the tall, bearded young man of the lift.
‘Oh, hi.’
He leaned a bit towards her, apparently less a gesture than a habitual, courtly tropism. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Leela. What’s yours?’
‘Vikram. Vikram Sahni.’
She smiled aggressively at him.
He grinned back. ‘So you’re here for work.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you enjoy these occasions very much?’
She grinned. His voice was soft, its inflections more neutral than most people’s. ‘Yes, they’re my favourite thing.’
He smiled, apparently quite guilelessly. ‘I thought they must be.’
‘What about you, why are you here?’
He nodded towards the colourful figure of Shilpa Agarwal some yards away. ‘Family friend. My mother’s also involved.’
‘In Citiwatch?’
‘Mm.’ He nodded. ‘They do some good things, civic work.’
‘Of course,’ said Leela, a bit embarrassed.
‘But these occasions are slightly deadly.’
She gave a cautious smile.
‘They’re the sort of thing,’ he went on, ‘that makes me wish I’d stayed in my bedroom and disappeared.’
She looked at him a bit irritably and waited.
‘A headstand. I call it my disappearing act.’
‘A yoga headstand?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve only been doing it for a year or so.’
‘Unsupported?’ asked Leela.
‘Haan.’
She was envious. ‘Why disappearing act?’
He grinned again. His teeth were large, whitish. ‘Your mind goes blank. Like in meditation, but it’s more of a physical effect in the sirsasana.’
‘No thoughts?’
‘Some. Not many though. It’s quiet, in a different way from just, you know, being quiet. Reading or something. It’s not like that.’
She nodded, and watched his face for clues about this interesting subject. He had a confiding manner; she already felt less estranged from him than from most people. He was tall, well made, in the French expression, and not from going to a gym but probably from a childhood of regular sport. Some nostalgia arose in her for the time of order that his body represented.
He was looking at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. ‘I go to this meditation group sometimes. You could come if you wanted, it’s open to everyone.’
‘Is it a specific method?’
‘Not really. It has a link with the Pondicherry ashram. But it’s just a place where people go to meditate together. It’s nice.’
‘Where does it happen?’
‘Near Churchgate. Monday afternoon, usually, but late. When do you – I suppose you’d be at work?’
‘Oh, I can probably get out of the office. I finish at five thirty-six but I can get out earlier once in a while.’
‘They do it on Saturday afternoons too. Do you work on Saturday?’
‘No.’ She shook her head quickly and smiled in mock shame.
‘I could put you on the mailing list. What’s your email address?’
His mother appeared. ‘Darling, we need to leave now if we’re going to get home in time to change before we go out.’
Leela started, as though caught out. She smiled a social smile at Mrs Sahni, who looked back at her, then smiled quickly and charmingly.
‘Ah, oh, okay,’ said Vikram. ‘Mummy, do you have pen-paper?’
‘Just a minute.’ She had glasses on, and began to rummage in her small, elegant bag.
‘No, it’s okay,’ said Leela. ‘I have a card.’
Mrs Sahni stopped and stared.
‘Ah, sorry. I mean –’
‘Leela is interested in our meditation group,’ Vikram said without embarrassment. ‘Give me a card,’ he told Leela.
She gave him a card. Mrs Sahni was still examining her.
‘All right, darling?’ she asked her son, and smiled at Leela.
‘Bye,’ he said to Leela. He put out a hand, and its largeness and warmth enclosed hers for a moment, then he loped off with his small mother without looking back.