Chapter 4
(Because South Asians seemed to have an aversion to physical proximity for reasons unexplained,) Jaya and Shagufta sat opposite each other eating a plate of potato wedges in a thickly carpeted barcumpub with too many chunky brass fixtures and sodden brown leather couches. A lunchtime smattering of pink-faced pasty-skinned suit-with-no-blazer dry-conversationalist office workers sat around, sipping tentatively on beers; a group of obviously-secretaries seemed to be getting high on lattes (and low on banter, Jaya thought, lamenting on their behalf their routine existence and labourious hours). There were snippets of unfollowed-up conversations hanging like fog in the air.. buying my boyfriend a willy warmer for his birthday!, Malaga was epic, mate, epic, I’m double shifting for that knob do you have any painkillers?, mmm the pasta was nice, very fresh.
The sea of dead fish-eyes was normal viewing for this square of Birmingham; it was Colmore Row, with its intimidating maze of narrow streets and faux-old red brick buildings and office blocks and lawyers clerks and the ongoing etc etc etc of their lives. Half-baked thoughts and coffee breath cluttered up what little space there was left in the air of bus fumes and the lingering smell of commercial bakedgoodsandpastries; discarded cigarettes were stamped in between the cracks of the cobbles, only half smoked because the chain smokers couldn’t take anymore and were bound more to the chain than the smoke.
Shagufta looked at the menu, bemused at how spectacularly the English managed to commercialise the quotidian; the cooking method of the basil actually elicited an entire line, pan-fried scallops (as opposed to fried in a baking tray?) seemed like an exotic netherwordly creature, going by the tri-paragraph description of them, ‘stick of rosemary’ as though it were a meal in itself... the lack of flavour in the food meaning then perhaps, they had to exaggerate what little they had. If an Indian restaurant listed the jungle of herbs in each of its curries with this much self-importance, oh! Shagufta delighted in her resentment of their lowly culinary capabilities. Her eyes flickered to the last few wedges left on the plate, teasing her (as the poisoned laddoo had tempted her fatbaldsweating father, because the tight-sari’d Moni was already sucking someone else’s laddoo’s and she needed to oust this fatman suitor and diarrhoea would do the job hurryhurry).
The only sign of class wars and Changing Britain and a world gripped in the thighs of TERRORISM! were on the muted flat screen TVs placed intermittently throughout the barcumpub. They were little windows of knews from the Know It Alls. Newsreader-Graphics-Talking Person-Green Pitch-Newsreader. An endless cycle of predictable pictures set to the soundtrack of muted lives and whatever the iPod was playing. Nobody actually listened to anyone anymore.
Apart from Jaya. She listened to things people spaces guts. Jaya Lubaba Chakarbatti of the torrential hot dense fairandwise bloodline spanning as far back as when space and time collided, sat on an uncomfortable couch in Birmingham. She saw the Silence and knew it was Her which spoke the most (See! How the feminine habit of chitterchatter did not transcend even Her abstract embodiments!). Jaya, the attractor of shiny elements and taker in of strays. SHE knew All Is Not As It Seems; the pervert amongst the puritans of Truth.
But, as all things had their limits, even she could not see past the layers of cracked foundation on Shagufta’s face (to the crater-littered scratchy skin beneath). Jaya’s own eyes watered just seeing the clumped up lashings of jet black mascara smothered on to Shagufta’s stumpy eyelashes; the inch thick eyeliner on her lids, gathering in the corner of eyes like the whore of Babylon. Her rolls of fat jutted stiffly and gloriously over her trousers, protruding from any holes they could find not restricted by her bra or waistband. Her fat stumpy fingers which couldn’t bend properly for the gatherings of corpulent flesh pushing against themselves, had the audacity of being adorned by rings, on every one of them; heavy, rusty, elaborate rings with crust forming in their creases, stale finger sweat, scum and lint gathering at every flick and turn of the cheap metal they were made of.
And her lipstick, slathered like scarlet tar across a slit prune, with lipliner refusing to accept God’s final word on where her lips ended, drawn on like a godforsaken blow-up doll slowly deflating under somebody’s bed.
Shagufta was, in short, an abomination to the human eye. Her cheeks squeezed in to the space that was supposed to be for her eyes, her chin was small and heading the hoops of podge that ringed down her neck, drooping until they almost overflowed on to her chest.
And still, still, she would yabber on in her nasal voice about how Eamon from work eyed her up at the water cooler, how she’d had to tell Singh the taxi driver to keep his hands to himself, how the paki boys at the local would try it on with her, and how her hip movements would mesmerize the punters on the club dancefloor.
She would regale Jaya’s dumbfounded ears of her conquests at the local gay bar, how she could turn even gay men straight, how she was so classy and turned heads when ordering a glass of rose (at which point her nasal voice climaxed) and they just stared and stared at her divine ethereal beauty, wondering who is this enigma? Who, pray tell, was this specimen of beauty? Her black-lined eyes would twinkle as she spun her tales, flashing her cigarette-yellow-stained teeth; tales of mysterious auras emanating from her glorious vast expansive body. She reckoned she drove men wild and sent women in to blazes of unspoken desire.
She would say how the women at the eyebrow parlour would get far too close, how the guy at the Cash and Curry touched her hand when he was handing over the packets of masala, how she would have to fend off the admirers buying her drinks at the Asian Ball Dinner and Dance: The Classiest Event in Birmingham, No Trainers or Hoodies.
Shagufta’s sexuality was Disc Error. While it was tempting to suggest she would simply go for the first ugly thing that came her way, Jaya sensed (with the wiseandtrue proportion of her loaded bloodline) that it was far more deliberate than that. Shagufta was, currently, in a relationship with a gay man; Saqib (beautiful muscle Mary untouchable beautiful Shah Rukh Khan-esque Saqib with his razor sharp jawline and that most covetable of gay traits: straight-acting).
Now, while it may have seemed to the naked eye that this most bizarre of liaisons may have a hidden agenda (it was common knowledge that Saqib was skint and awaiting deportation to Pakistan, and Shagufta’s paycheque-and-red passport wielding qualities attracted him), there was something less sinister and more comprehensible about their relationship.
Shagufta, whose own mother would look upon her with shame, felt that love transcended physicality. Saqib, whose jeans were as tight as his morals were loose, felt the same. While both had the same means for different endings (although the knowingandforeseeing portion of Jaya’s blood couldn’t quite yet decipher how Shagufta saw the end of their relationship), it was clear that their coming together did have more credence to it than most other peculiar relationships on the gaysian scene, despite Saqib’s open promiscuity with other men (this was explained by the fact that Shagufta did not view other men as competition, it was the women she was worried about; unless the man was Asian, or the woman was white, and various other clauses and sub-clauses which would adapt, as any good system, to the changing landscape of polysexuality). It couldn’t be ignored however, than they were both using each other for adequacy. Shagufta, who spun decadent tales of superiority and sexual potence, was tragically, a lonely woman who thought her attraction to both sexes was a mysterious ambiguity that piqued interest, and not sheer desperation for the potential of human contact. Saqib, proudly indulgent in the fashion of flamboyant bona fide homosexuality he had discovered upon arrival in England as a horny young stowaway in the back of a lorry, needed somebody to fuel his lifestyle, his poppers collection and his ego.
Still, Jaya not only listened to Shagufta, she heard her. The often wavering vocal chords, choked by fat and too many Silk Cuts, continued their flurry of Shehrazadian glory. They would charm the airs with anecdotes about obsessive suitors, the effluvia of retreating femininity seeping out of her as she took
on the appearance more and more of being a man trying to dress like a woman. Her moribund career as a receptionist (although Accountant’s Clerk was the term she used) was spoken about with such forged enthusiasm, as though the entire British economy would collapse if she didn’t do the work she did.
And all the while, she would be drinking her glass of house rose, thinking the narrowed, intensely focused eyes of Jaya Chakarbatti were not because she was trying hard to decipher the meaning behind her words, but because –of course!- she was undressing her with her eyes, unspoken desire and admiration directed towards the superiority which, naturally, every straight girl had over every gay girl.
They were the ones who would have to deal with the complexities of being a minority within a minority.
They were the ones having to deal with choosing earthly indulgence in same-sex love, or Hell.
And they were the ones who had to deal with non-conformity.
She, born in to the fortunate echelons of The Masses, socially adherent and placid, wouldn’t have to deal with the humiliation of not fitting in.
Jaya finished off the last of her gin and tonic, and said goodbye, pretending she never saw Shagufta manically shovel the last of the potato wedges in to her shriveled prune-mouth.
The house smelt of freshly fried samosas, pilao rice and bay leaf. Jaya quietly closed her front door behind her and took off her shoes in the hallway. There were three extra pairs of shoes neatly lined up underneath the radiator: a ragged pair of Bata sandles; a shiny pair of Italian loafers, and a pair of gold heeled sequined sandals. The low murmurs of men came from the lounge, and the soft laughter of women from the kitchen.
She heard the door from the lounge open and close, and Auntie Shamina emerged in the hallway, and looked her up and down.
‘Take off your English clothes and go put on a nice salwaar kameez; make sure it has plenty of decoration and embroidery.’ Her three chins wobbled as she spoke, her eyes magnified manically under the thick-rimmed NHS glasses, ‘he is here with his family.’ A wave of her musty floral perfume assaulted Jaya’s nostrils. ‘For the sake of Allah, go and comb your hair. Take off this devil-child eye make up, and go and put on some red lipstick.’
‘What is this, a military occupation?’ Jaya teased, and dodged the silver handbag that swung towards her.
‘Be quiet! You don’t want them to hear you. Make sure you speak quietly and keep your eyes to the ground when you emerge with the tea tray. Make sure your scarf is half-on half-off, and keep your lips together. And for the love of Muhammad, peace upon his beleagred soul, don’t sit with crossed legs!’ She looked with wide, warning eyes at Jaya, her nostrils flaring, her skin stretched tight over her plump face, thick eyebrows stiff with disapproval.
‘Stop it, I need to get in to the romantic mindset…’
‘Insolent girl!’ Auntie Shamina pinched her lightly, then ran her hands over Jaya’s hair and pulled her to her chest. The stiff sari material was a comfort. ‘We have our only chance with you. Your sister isn’t yet married; these people are good for accepting that the little one can get married before the eldest. We should accept that graciously; now go. Go put on something nice for your auntie, and help me put the Custard Creams in a nice pattern on the plate. And for the sake of Hazrat Ali and his gentle daughters, go and hide that Sitar on your bed, they’ll think we’re in to all of this Hindu-pindu nonsense,’
Jaya padded quietly up the stairs and in to her room, now smelling of mothballs and flowers.
She left The Sitar where it was; this family wouldn’t make it upstairs to see the bedrooms, she could tell by the pattern of her auntie’s sari; it wasn’t elaborate enough, not the type she’d wear for a real High Class Suitor.
Jaya Chakarbatti opened up her wardrobe; on the left were her English clothes, a darkly coloured half of a few greys, varying shades of black, the odd bit of denim….
But on the right, a veritable dissonance of eye-wateringly bright colours; blue, orange, green, shocking pink, gold and sequin and diamonte and net and cotton and silk, spilling out like a waterfall of closet dysentery, bursting in to a glorious mess of footumshootum, each piece crying for attention as it positively popped out of the neatly lined-up arrangement. The trouser suits with their impossibly wide legs, the sari’s with their painfully wise patterns containing years of heritage and stirring up a different emotion with every piece of 6 foot long magnificent material that was almost eloquent in its expression, the lehengas with their blouser tops and filmi-style wide skirts, an entity unto themselves, weighing almost twice that of their wearers, steel hooks and metal buttons and safety pins everywhere…
And then, squeezed to the back, the modernshoddern ones… quietly pushed behind the boisterous maal, were the subtly patterned, a-line skirts, figure huggers, with plunging necklines and swirls of colours that melted in to one another, evoking secret unisons and behind-the-back enmeshments… the ankle-loving skinny trousers, the seductive textiles of the virile, silks and schiffons, marble-satins and soft-whispers, almost-transparent dupattas that would be draped over chests but revealing more to the imagination than should have been allowed…
Jaya picked out one of the boisterous trouser suits, with a pattern of silver and blue clumsily arranged plastic bits on black and red net. It looked like an organised spat of vomit, that fell neatly over her body, not hugging the prescribed places and loose enough at the chest to win the nod of approval from Auntie Shamina. She combed out the deliberately placed kinks in her hair, wiped off her eyeliner and in its place drew on some kohl from the brass vial her father had purchased from Bangladesh, wincing as its roughly assembled metal wand scratched across her eye lids. Her hair was smoothed down, the rest of her face was void of make-up, and she secured the red polka-dotted scarf on her head (half-on half-off) with a discreet hair pin.
There. Simple Girl. No offensive signifiers of individuality or off-the-beaten-trackness.
She could hear the murmurs of conversation dying out downstairs. The tension seeped in to her muscles as she wondered what this boy would be like. More importantly, she wondered how Auntie Shamina and Amma and Abba would be like around him. Would Abba be overly modern, or overly religious? Would Amma be wearing her burkha, or wearing a sari? Would she be talking about family, or the values of education? Or, if she was really comfortable, talk about cooking and swapping secret recipes for bhuna and curry bases?...
Jaya accepted that the Suitor Visits were a spectator sport for the family. She embraced meeting with every one of the (42) boys she was presented with over the last year. In her heavy blooded intersectional wisdom, she also knew it was a cruel carrot-and-stick policy to see boys like this, fending off the Question of Marriage and appeasing The Family with her acceptance of this part of the process. Although, she didn’t seem to understand why other girls didn’t see this. Why oh why, she would bewail, did they not perceive that it was actually funny to see the slickly side-parted hair of the ostentatiously named boy from The Respectable Township? Why did they not appreciate the tales of ownership of four rice mills and steel factories in Sylhet? Why did they not see the forced confidence of The Mother, agreeing vehemently to Mr Chakarbatti’s insistence that the true decision was down to the Youngsters? And why did they not see that the boys were enthralled at the idea of being entertained by a British Asian girl who wouldn’t look twice at them in a normal social context? Did they not embrace the discreet looks between The Mother and The Father; or the nervous twitch as The Brother attempted to hide texts from his girlfriend?
Jaya’s own phone vibrated; it was a message from Eleven O Clock from last night.
‘Hey sister-ji. Great fuck last night. Potato chaat same time tomorrow? Kiss kiss.’
Jaya grinned, and slid the phone under the Sitar.
‘Your father is greatly educated, no?’
‘By the grace of Allah, he has worked hard.’
‘And your sister?’
‘We’re proud of her, she takes pleasure in helping
others.’
Jaya bit hard on her tongue to stop herself from scoffing at her own self-righteous, sterile responses.
The Mother nodded, thoughtfully.
Jaya absentmindedly slid one thigh on top of other. Auntie Shamima fiercely but silently signalled her to put it down (which she did, biting harder).
Nobody, but nobody, could fill the dense silence which filled the room. The clinking of tea cups prevailed.
Her eyes were downcast, she didn’t dare make eye contact with the boy, who sat nervously next to his mother, hiding behind her meek frame. The elders talked about shared relatives, and Jaya was (not played) the Dutiful Daughter. It wasn’t unpleasant, per se, but she did hope they couldn’t see the stubble rash around her mouth from last night.
Mr Chakarbatti ushered The Father back in to the front room, and Mrs Chakkarbati invited the women in to the garden to see her new collection of cabbages.
They were left alone in the living.
The Boy coughed.
A few minutes passed.
Jaya knew she could have made conversation, but wanted to make him squirm a little. She’d seen better. Boy 24, she remembered, had a raucous laugh and had the audacity to address her directly in front of the elders. Boy 36 was shy and beautiful, with green eyes and aeons of sadness nestled in his eyebrows. Boy 31, albeit clearly a homosexual, was chatty and didn’t realise there was still cum on his tie. Boy 8, a muscly type who looked like he bathed in steroids, asked her what kind of cars she liked and approved of the fact that she’d never heard of a Mitsubishi Evolution like all other Birmingham Sluts, as he so articulately put it.
And Boy 14, Abdul Malika Mausoom Rahmat Choudhury -whose entire family referred to him by his full name- spoke about himself in the third person, in narrative allegories… ‘he who would respect and humble himself for his wife’… ‘his manners are very good’… ‘he can understand the true meaning of marriage’…
And o! Boy 41, who had stumbled freshly off the plane from Bangladesh and was mesmerised by Jaya’s unmarked skin and straight posture, and assumed that she must have been one of those mythical Foreign Birds they had only dreamed of in London College (very much in the heart of Sylhet)… and assumed therefore that she, undoubtedly, was one of ‘those loose types you only get in Eng-laaaynd’… and so was shocked when he sent her a sex message later on that night which was forever destined to be unreplied.
She remembered Boy 17, who was mentally rejected by Mr Chakkarbatti as soon as he sat down, because he crossed his legs (insolence!) and spoke to him like they were old friends.
And of course, there was Boy 2, who was an egotistical maniac and positively shook with humiliation when he found out Jaya’s big sister earned more than him, was more educated than him, and the rest of the evening was spent in a one-sided contest of one-upmanship, leaving everybody stunned with the sheer amount of superfluous cash figures splattered all about the living room.
And still, it seemed to Jaya now, that although the oddballs of society had had their platform to perform in the Chakkarbatti living room, this Boy, number 43, that most insignificant of numbers, inconsequential to anything meaningful, just missing out on The Meaning of Life, sucked in to the vacuum left in its aftermath; this odd number, seemed to unfortunately seep in to the gentleman sat before her, staring at his feet.
She attempted to ask a few questions since he looked as though he was about to burst in to a ball of sweat, but after his monosyllabic answers, she got bored of hearing even her own voice.
Later that night… ‘Daughter, they have proposed to bring over the gold ring tomorrow.’
She looked at her dad, and in a rare moment of unity, they both burst out laughing (a stunted, quick-to-finish laugh whipped in to submission over lifetimes of quiet poetic solitude started by Mikhaeel Chakarbatti in the 1600’s).
‘Wife, tell the middleman that we have found a relative mutual to both sides, who is too closely related for the marriage to be Decent.’
Mrs Chakarbatti nodded and pulled out the small phonebook from the waist of her sari. She was glad.
The Mother stated she put coconut milk in her curries. That was far too outlandish for her liking.
Jaya survived, as she suspected everyone did, on melancholy. Partially because she had lost the ability to believe in the Impossible, which was quite the opposite in her youth, but since she had obtained her hoosh, the burning ambition had simmered in to a dense ocean of Adult Rationale, and an almost insurmountable sense of Counting Down the Days prevailed as soon as she hit her twenty-first birthday (only she and her immediate family knew her birth date; she would eye-growl if anybody else dared ask her for it). The thing was, Jaya Chuck-Your-Batty couldn’t remember the last time she had burst the Keatsian grape against the roof of her mouth. Slowly but surely, she had stopped the suspension of belief; belief had come crashing down around her ears.
After she had momentarily stared at it, open mouthed, she lit a cigarette and attempted to forget about it (it, as metaphorical demons habitually did, would often return to taunt her). The abyss which she could once fill -with the imagination of someone who was an intersection- was interrupted, had its Infinity cut off and the end was twisted shut. It soon started filling up.
The eyebrows of her mind would furrow; where to keep the new thoughts?
…And in time, she stopped looking to fill the void. In moments, an Impossible would cheekily come out from the crevices of creation in her mind (from behind a Bangladesh palm tree, a slum, a family eating on the floor, a beautiful girl, the jawline of Gavin from her English seminars, the chocolate-smooth sexyandwise accent of her sari’d Calcuttan lecturer), but in a perilous move of self-denial, Rationale would shoot out til it scurried back From Whence It Came.
It was consequential, then, that death wasn’t a taboo for her. She often sat in her room and ran her fingers over the strings of her sitar, and thought about her afterlife. Jaya Chakarbatti did not want to go to hell. Not because of the images her mother would paint –of eternal damnation and hooks through cheeks and being skinned alive, of being force-fed bacon rashers bathing in alcohol, of drinking cups of blood and puss, or having the first layer of skin burnt off, only for it to grow again and have it burnt again and again and again… No, Jaya was not afraid of that. Jaya, her blood thick with the lineage of the Great and Wise, was afraid of feeling helpless. It was, she had realized after growing out of the times of no-hoosh, the biggest tragedy of them all. Of course, loneliness, she thought she could entertain. There was too much beauty on earth that would make her heart ache, and that was enough to fill a thousand lifetimes of loneliness. But helplessness…
A tremor went through her body. She had heard once that when a person shivered, it was their soul being scared at the passing of the Angel of Death. Her eyelids slowly dropped and Jaya hung her head; if it was indeed the Angel of Death simply passing by because it was not her Time yet, she did, in her darkest moments, wish he’d stop by for longer. She wished, shamefully and helplessly, to the dismay of her Don Giovanni, he would redeem her of the burden of her life, which she could not do herself because, alas, the right had been taken away from her by Allah. Anybody committing suicide would go to Hell. And where was the romance in that?
No, it would not have done. Besides, the difficult business of writing a suicide note, she assumed, would jar far too much with her emotional constipation. Fearful of the demons she could sense creeping closer around her, Jaya stood up and turned to stare in to the corner of her room. At the furthermost corner stood her Quran. It Bore Witness that she, Jaya Chakarbatti, was sticking by her flight path. There would be no diversions, no out-of-ordinary communication. If it recorded the messages of her heart, it would see, she thought defiantly, see see SEE that Jaya Lubaba Chakarbatti standing in her jeans and with her heavied historical blood running through her veins, that she, of wars and estates and moving rocks and saris and turmeric, was, to all intents and purposes, the leader of her own life, the Unmoving pilot of
her plane -perhaps with a few dodgy bits of cargo and some unruly passengers-, the Defier of the Inner Self and the Evil Whisperings of Man; the pusher-downer of the ultimate sin, Getting Carried Away.
Her blood ran warm through her veins as she stared unblinkingly at the Quran. This was, Jaya Chuck-Your-Batty realized, a mental outburst designed to snap all those little daily Sins in to place. She felt satisfaction at them withdrawing, reluctantly but surely, to the small corners of her mind, whimpering.
She sat by the sitar and closed her eyes to make sure they were put in check.
She didn’t notice her own fist clutching the bedsheet til her knuckles were almost bursting out of her skin.