His hand was on the curve of her waist; the top of her right foot rested warm in his left instep. They lay there for a while.
‘Why?’ she asked.
He sighed, an exhalation she felt as well as hearing: a warm snuffle, a heave of the chest.
‘She’ll just immediately get into gear. She’ll want to know how serious it is.’
She went tense. ‘How serious is it?’
His arm tightened about her. He was always willing to be demonstrative. ‘It’s serious.’
‘I feel like it’s weird, this being shifty around her. Why?’
He sighed again. Leela looked at the white-painted corner of his bedside table with something like recognition. The furniture in his room had come to seem intimate with her.
Her days were Vikram interleaved with things that were not Vikram: work, the increasingly unreal life of the hostel, which now served as a place where she returned late, tired, and crashed out, or woke in a brief lull, disoriented, and then recalled what she had to do in the day. Which was, to rise, to meditate in a token way, though all she did now was to feel excited, almost ill with a rash of thoughts, and then to bathe, wash her clothes, pack her bag, and go to work again.
‘Where are you these days?’ asked Chitra, bumping into her in the porch.
Leela grinned.
‘Aha! I knew it. Shobha saw you going out to meet some guy. Is it the same one? Come to my room.’
They went up. Leela enjoyed the urgency that seemed to attach to her. She told her story; earlier, she’d mentioned Vikram to Chitra, but diffidently.
‘So you like him now?’
‘Of course. I really like him.’ She thought it an annoying question. She was sitting on the floor; she leaned back onto her hands.
‘I’m really pleased for you,’ Chitra said. She looked awkward.
This is what it’ll be like, Leela thought. People will be envious, they won’t know what to say. She said what Amy might have said. ‘Well, who knows if it’ll work out.’ Immediately she regretted her tone.
Chitra looked surprised. ‘I’m sure it will,’ she said quietly. Leela was aware of being consoled and felt irritated. ‘It sounds great,’ Chitra said. ‘I think he really likes you.’ She continued to look at Leela speculatively.
‘Are you going to dinner?’
‘Come.’
She waited at work to tell Sathya, who didn’t show up the next day.
‘Hey, coming for a cigarette?’ she asked as soon as she walked in and saw him.
‘Ten minutes.’
She waited. When they went outside and he lit up, she said, ‘So remember the guy I was talking about, Vikram?’
‘Your friend?’
‘We got together.’
‘Oh, really?’ Sathya was looking a bit ashen. ‘Hey, good for you.’
‘It turns out he did like me.’
‘Of course he did,’ he said absently.
Leela gave up.
She didn’t go home for a fortnight, but one Saturday Vikram had a wedding to go to.
‘Are you going to tell your mother?’ Leela asked.
‘I’ll tell her,’ he said finally.
She went home for the weekend.
On Monday Sathya wasn’t in office. She had to remind herself of the constructions she used to use, and those she’d adopted in order not to sound different: the later ones had come to have their own rightness, like in office for in the office. She tried to archive the earlier usage so she wouldn’t forget it, the purity of Standard English reinforced by school books. She was always having to learn things that would enable her to fit in, but those lessons were always being replaced.
She worked hard, finished the mailing for a trustees’ dinner, called the secretaries of each trustee to confirm dietary preferences and spent two hours waiting to get the seating plan approved before Joan trashed it and said impatiently, ‘I’ll explain tomorrow.’
It was annoying that Sathya wasn’t there. Leela wanted to talk to someone, begin to delineate her vague unease.
But Vikram, reliably, was there. She would meet him as soon as she’d been home and changed and dropped off her things. And when she was in the hostel, with its hive-like chatter in the evening, the tube lights in the reception area flickering on and thrumming, and the girls either arriving in work clothes, handbags held officiously, hair half up; or floating around, lax, in printed wrappers that may have resembled what their mothers wore at home to be comfortable, she found herself exhausted, not wanting to leave the bustle of the hive, where she could be quiet.
When she arrived to meet Vikram, some minutes late, as she’d begun to be, he was radiant. He gave her a hug. ‘I missed you, baby.’
‘I missed you too. What happened?’
He grinned hugely. ‘You’re coming over for dinner on Saturday. Mummy wants to meet you.’
On Saturday morning she had a dream about Roger. They were hugging tenderly. He smelled the same: vaguely alkaline, vaguely lemony, but underneath of musk. His shirt was soft at her cheekbone. He wanted to persist in the hug, and the dreaming Leela was aware of how comforting it was: she wanted to remain in it too. The Leela in the dream, though, broke away. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why? Why?’ She was inconsolable and in this moment Leela awoke. She felt terrible sadness, the conviction she’d done the wrong thing, and the usual despair at her own weak will, the lack of control or decisiveness in her subconscious. What a stupid dream, she thought, and lay still and sorrowful, regretting that it was over.
‘Lovely to see you, Leela,’ Vikram’s mother said.
‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ Leela said. She began to step out of her chappals, and Shalini raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t need to take off your shoes, dear.’
‘It’s just that I walk everywhere,’ Leela said.
‘Keep them on, we all do.’ Did Vikram’s mother look down at her feet briefly? Leela followed her into the drawing room. Even when she had spent time in the flat, in the afternoon or early evening when Shalini had been out, she and Vikram hadn’t been in here. Now, she felt she was transgressing. Vikram’s mother must have realised they had been in the flat; the servant had probably told her.
Shalini turned and smiled at Leela, who saw incisors. She bumped into the corner of a sideboard and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’
‘What would you like to drink?’
‘I –’ She looked around for Vikram.
Shalini, elegant, collected, watched her. ‘There’s gin, whisky, vodka. Rum, I think. Or a glass of wine?’
‘Sure.’
‘Which one, dear?’
‘Is there any wine open?’
‘Would you like red or white?’
‘White, please.’ Leela went red. Was this a test?
‘I’ll get a bottle opened. Gopal?’
The servant, clad in white, appeared. He was thin and in manner elliptical, at least when Leela had seen him; often, when she had been in the flat at quieter times, he had been out or in his tiny room at the end of the kitchen, the radio distantly audible. He said, ‘Madam?’
‘White wine laana. Naya bottle. Jo fridge mein hai.’
He nodded and went away.
‘Let’s sit,’ Shalini said.
They sat on perpendicular sides of a corner sofa. Leela realised that she hated this room, and why; it had been ordered for display, to convey massiveness and money. She could not imagine anyone sinking onto the sofa to read delightedly, or stare at a wall and think.
Gopal came back with a tray, a chilled bottle of wine, and two glasses.
‘Madam ko dena,’ Shalini said. Leela got a glass of wine.
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I don’t really drink,’ Shalini said. She smiled. Ah, thought Leela. I drink copiously, she imagined saying. Don’t you find it smoothes out every social occasion? She took a sip of the wine. It was medium-dry, pleasant.
‘How is the wine?’
‘Lovely, thank you.’ When would Vikram emerge?
‘Good. We got some new bottles. It’s French, I think. I haven’t tasted it.’
‘It’s very nice.’ Leela took another sip. She imagined saying something in the manner of the blonde, bobbed woman from a wine programme on TV in her youth. ‘Acidic, fresh, just a whiff of cat’s pee.’
Shalini smiled. ‘So you live in the hostel, Vikram tells me? The one near Sassoon Dock?’
‘Near the Post Office, yes.’
‘How do you find that? Do you have a lot of friends there?
‘A few. It takes time, of course. But I have some really nice friends here now.’
‘Ah yes, you used to be in England, is that right?’
‘I grew up there, mostly, but I’m from Bombay.’
‘But your parents don’t live in Bombay?’
‘No, they’re in Pune.’
‘That must be very pleasant. I believe the weather there is very good? I haven’t been for years. Since it was Poona.’ Shalini spoke so calmly, in such a measured way, and Leela admired her poise. Everything was where it ought to be, her short silver hair blow-dried, her earrings impeccable, her silk shirt beautifully pressed; there wasn’t the sense of a frenetic attempt to keep things under control that was there in Leela’s mother. But, she thought, none of the fire either.
Shalini’s fine eyes examined her. ‘And how do you like being an independent woman in Bombay?’
Leela tried to discern whether there was sarcasm in the question; she didn’t think so. ‘I like it. I love the city, I always have.’
‘Bombay can be a difficult place for a woman on her own.’
‘I like it,’ Leela persisted. She looked at her feet. Her worn kolhapuris were in a white plush rug.
‘You have a very simple look, very nice,’ Shalini said. ‘Where do you go for your services, which parlour?’
Leela blinked.
‘Your pedicure, waxing, things like that?’ The other woman’s eyes lingered on Leela’s arms, which weren’t waxed.
‘Oh, I don’t. I’ve never really –’
Again, the fine kohl-lined eyes considered her. ‘Touch of Joy,’ said Shalini gently, ‘at BEST Marg, it’s really very good. If you’re in a hurry, they have two girls waxing at the same time.’
Leela was baffled.
‘You know, so you save time.’
She nodded.
‘And of course, you must come here for a meal any time. Consider it your home,’ Shalini added much more warmly, and Leela was confused. She must be misjudging this; she both admired and disliked this woman and couldn’t understand why. The conversation had moved away from the form she had anticipated, but it had now again become recognisable; perhaps she had simply, through stupidity, failed to give the proper responses and that was why it had departed from its theme before returning, like a song, to the melody.
Vikram was in the room, he bent and kissed his mother. Then Leela. ‘Hi,’ he said. He smelled fresh, had evidently just bathed.
‘Hi,’ she said, understanding now.
She didn’t get a chance to discuss it with Vikram, for she didn’t see him for two days. Chitra was out of town. She wondered, she rehearsed conversations in her head. I like her, she began, but she makes me feel unsure. There’s something; I can’t tell what she really feels about anything. People are weird about their sons. Mothers.
‘It went really well, didn’t it?’ Vikram said with joy on Tuesday.
‘Yes, of course,’ Leela said. She wondered that he couldn’t tell.
‘Mummy said you seem like a lovely person.’
‘She did?’
‘Of course. What did you think she’d say?’
Smart woman, thought Leela glumly.
‘I like your mother,’ she said later. ‘I just think she has more interest in whether or not I get a pedicure than whether I speak French or have a degree.’ When she named these accomplishments, they sounded equally irrelevant to her.
‘She knows you care about me, and that’s what matters,’ Vikram said. He looked surprised, and when it dawned on him, hurt. ‘Do you think you’re giving her credit? It can’t be easy to feel relaxed when you meet your son’s girlfriend. It’s not a concept she’s had a lot of experience of in real life.’
‘What did she say?’ Leela asked. Her vanity was curious, but more than that she burned to understand the unnamed, not-quite-personal hostility under the flawless manners.
‘She asked me if we’re going to get married,’ he said.
‘Oh. What did you say?’
‘I said I hope so.’ His hug was quick.
‘Oh!’ There was nowhere for her affront, so ready to appear, to go.
‘I feel,’ said Chitra, folding a pile of clean but unironed clothes, ‘that you talk more about Vikram’s mother than about Vikram.’
Leela was annoyed, and laughed. ‘Maybe she’s a worthier adversary.’
They both laughed.
‘No, it’s not that,’ she said, ashamed of herself. ‘I can’t tell what she’s thinking. I nearly said, I can’t tell what she’s up to.’
On the balcony outside, pigeons made soft, iterative noises: Oooo-oo, ooo-oo.
I will leave here at some point, if Vikram and I do marry, this phase of my life will have ended, Leela thought, looking at the white formica-topped desk and the steel cupboard. I will not be stuck here, or like those girls you see at dinner who talk about looking for a place to live because their term is nearly over: paying-guest accommodation in Colaba or Warden Road, or a shared flat in Bandra or further out: Andheri, Borivali, Navi Mumbai.
She caught Chitra looking at her.
‘I feel like there’s an unspoken thing going on between me and her that she thinks I understand. But I don’t. I can tell there’s some sort of battle taking place though.’
‘What d’you expect? She’s a widow, only son, obviously she’s paranoid. You could marry him and then treat her really badly.’
‘Like an aunt of my father’s,’ Leela remembered. ‘Her daughter-in-law even kept the sugar locked up and didn’t give her a key. When my father went to see her she couldn’t make him a cup of tea. I’d never do anything like that.’
Chitra wrapped her unironed clothes in an old sheet and tied the ends in a knot.
‘Let’s go down,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry and I want to catch the dhobi.’
‘Why does everyone call him the dhobi when most people just give him their clothes for istri?’ enquired Leela as they got into the lift.
Chitra laughed, as people tended to when Leela asked linguistic questions. ‘Because he will also wash clothes, I suppose. I don’t know.’
I am right only about useless things, Leela thought.
‘I thought of bringing a friend to lunch on Saturday,’ she told her father on the telephone, knowing he wouldn’t say no.
‘A friend?’
‘My friend Vikram, er, actually my boyfriend.’
There was a pause. ‘Lovely, yes. What does he eat or not eat?’ Mr Ghosh enquired. Leela cringed, imagining his expression at the other end of the line, the look of warning or having something to elaborate on that he might have given her mother.
‘Everything, he eats everything. Don’t worry too much about the food,’ she said.
So it happened that Vikram was sitting in her parents’ drawing room, on the sofa, where a jittery Leela also sat. He reached for her hand; she tried hard not to see her parents not rolling their eyes at each other. Every time Vikram spoke she was aware of unbelievably convoluted pathways and tables of rules in the air which only she – and perhaps Neeti, had she cared – could perceive. She found it impossible not to notice them.
‘So what do you do, Vikram?’ her mother was asking. Vikram had a cold beer next to him.
‘Well, I’m still looking around, auntie,’ he said. ‘But I have a master’s in international relations, so I’m interested in working in policy development.’
‘What does that mean, concretely?’
Without wanting to, Leela found herself, while the interrogation was taking place, seeing it all through her parents’ eyes, and detaching herself inwardly from Vikram. Or was it that her own thoughts, which she’d suppressed in her pleasure at being loved, were now arising again?
‘Working for a policy shaping organisation, for example. Attending meetings, local government.’
Leela’s father chuckled. ‘You’d find that pretty tedious, I think.’
‘Baba,’ said Leela.
‘No, you’re right. But some of us have to get involved. Otherwise all the resources of this country seep away into low-level corruption, and we wonder at dinner parties why nothing works and so many people are still poor.’
Leela was afresh impressed by, and mildly irritated with, Vikram.
When her father was driving her to the station on Sunday he said, ‘Nice fellow. Seems very nice. Seems quite young.’
‘He’s a year older than me.’
‘Ah? Maybe he just needs to find out what he wants to do in life. Business family, you said?’
‘He knows what he wants to do.’
They had rounded the station road, and were waiting to turn into the chaotic parking lot.
‘You’re pretty serious?’ Her father sounded mildly regretful, but that was a habit.
‘Yes,’ Leela said firmly.
She spent the journey staring, melancholic, out of the yellow-tinted windows of the chair car. When Bombay and its filth approached – miles of slums and rubbish on the tracks, people harvesting greens grown near them, and industrial chimneys pumping clouds of smoke into a pearly, polluted sky – her heart didn’t flip, as usual, with happiness. She sighed, ready to re-enter her world, and at VT hurried into the dark station, where shadows moved like former people along the night-time platform.