‘I don’t recall inviting you to stay with us.’
‘A husband doesn’t require an invitation to stay with his wife.’ He was still trying to be jaunty.
‘You’re no husband to me. You haven’t been for decades.’
The neighbour’s wife and grandchildren opened their door and greeted Jasoda and then stood waiting for the lift.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ Sangram Singh asked in a loud whisper. The lift door opened and the neighbours left.
It was strange. Jasoda had had an inkling for a long time that all her husband’s finagling would come to naught and that he would return to her one day. She knew what her answer would be. She had drilled herself to utter just two sentences: ‘Please leave. There’s no way you are coming back into my house.’ And yet when the moment arrived, thousands of years of an unspoken covenant took hold of her. It was not spelt out, which was why its voodoo was even more powerful: You will never deny your man, come what may. When you get married, the covenant binds him and you forever. For better or worse, that’s it.
‘What happened to your Palace?’
‘Oh, nothing. I returned it.’
‘You mean you got into so much debt, they took it away?’
‘What difference does it make? I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘How long do you intend to stay?’
Sangram Singh shrugged his shoulders. Jasoda wondered why she was asking such pointless questions when she knew the man would never move out once he moved in.
‘One month is the outer limit. This is my house. Mine alone. There are two bedrooms. One is mine and the other is Janhavi’s.’ Why was she arguing with this man? It would make no difference what she said, he would take over Janhavi’s room, maybe even her own. There would be no peace in her home from that day. Daughter and father would be at each other’s throats round the clock.
‘I’ll take Janhavi’s room.’
‘No, you will not.’
‘That’s okay. She will be getting married soon and I can move in then.’
‘No, you won’t. You will move out within a month.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘You will stay in the living room with Kishen.’
Two days after he had moved in, Sangram Singh threw out all of Janhavi’s things into the passage, the drawing room and Jasoda’s room. He was going through her laptop when she got home.
‘What are you doing in my room?’ She took care to keep her voice low.
‘I need a room to myself. You can move into your mother’s room or share the living room with your brother.’
‘I’m used to studying late into the night. All my books are here. I mean they were here till you threw them out.’
‘The world won’t come to an end whether you study or not.’
Janhavi picked up her laptop.
‘How dare you take away the laptop while I’m using it?’
‘You mean while you were snooping on my emails.’
‘It’s my business to know what my children, especially an out-of-control daughter, is up to.’
‘Is that why you abandoned your wife and children, not to mention the fact that you didn’t give a damn about what happened to them when they came back?’
‘I had far more important matters of state to take care of.’
‘Like pushing the Prince’s wheelchair…’ She paused for effect.
‘One more smart-arsed word out of you and…’
‘And what?’
‘And this.’ The back of Sangram Singh’s hand reached out and connected with Janhavi’s chin and she was on the floor.
‘Are you going to merely watch while that man bashes and bludgeons me?’ Janhavi turned her fury on her mother when she got back home.
‘Whatever it is that you are fighting about, it’s between you and your father. I’ve got nothing to do with it.’
‘What father are you talking about? All he did was ditch you and your children. You mark my words, he’s going to destroy this family.’
Jasoda’s home had become a war zone. Mother and daughter were no longer on talking terms even though they shared the same room now. There was not a single occasion when Sangram Singh called Kishen by his name. He was always gadha, budhhu, murakh, bey-akkal, ass, stupid, idiot, brain-damaged moron.
‘He has a name. It’s Kishen,’ Janhavi told her father. ‘It would be a good idea to remember that because one of these days he might take offence and decide to teach you a lesson or two.’
The skirmishes between father and daughter only got worse. Janhavi began to spend more and more time in the library. One evening when she returned home, Sangram Singh was waiting for her.
‘Where were you?’
‘No need to shout. My hearing is fine.’
‘Answer my question. Where were you?’
‘In the library, since you’ve taken over my room and I have no place to study.’
‘Library, my foot. I know what you are up to. Making out with some boy or the other. I suggest you give up your studies. Besides, no daughter of mine will be out after six in the evening.’
‘I can’t speak for your other daughters, if any, but this daughter won’t report at six just because you say so. I have terminals…’
‘A woman’s place is at home. About time you were married and had children.’
Sangram Singh was twisting her arm when Kishen whisked him away and flung him against the wall. He spoke slowly. ‘Don’t ever touch my sister.’
When Jasoda returned home that night, she found Kishen sitting in the basement garage in her parking spot.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘That man threw me out of the house and told me never to return or he would skin me alive.’
She put her arm around her son. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘Where else? Home.’
‘What if he throws not just me out but you too?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Your month’s over,’ Jasoda told Sangram Singh. ‘Time you left.’
‘Your children and you are more than welcome to leave if you don’t like my being here.’
Jasoda was at the Meherban Road Tamarind Mantra when the manager brought over two gentlemen in suits. They told her that they had come to inspect the place before taking charge. She was not sure what they were talking about since the municipal authorities had come by the previous week and given her restaurant a B+ for cleanliness and hygiene. The two visitors repeated that they would be taking over the place from the next day since that was an auspicious day, none other than Lord Shiva’s birthday.
‘You must be talking about some other place,’ she said, ‘for neither the former stationmaster nor I have sold this place.’
They laughed and said, ‘No, there’s no mistake. The reason we have decided to invest in this Tamarind Mantra is because we love the food, especially the tamarind specialties and the location and ambience, and we have every intention of buying your other two branches soon. Once that’s done, we’re going to make Tamarind Mantra a national chain. As a matter of fact, we have already spoken to Mr Sangram Singh, requesting him to persuade his wife to be the head of the culinary section of our gourmet range of restaurants, which we would be calling the Royal Tamarind. Incidentally, you wouldn’t happen to be Mrs Sangram Singh, would you?’
Jasoda smiled demurely but wouldn’t look up.
That night, at the dinner table, Jasoda casually asked her husband if he was planning to sign the sale deed for the Tamarind Mantra on Meherban Road. The table had gone quiet. Neither Janhavi nor Kishen looked up from their thalis.
‘Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I was planning to tell you that but I’ve been so busy it escaped my mind. I was short of cash and I didn’t want to bother you and so I went to the collector’s office, told them I was your husband and would look after matters.’
‘It’s my signature that would be required on those papers,’ Jasoda said.
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‘Oh, that’s no problem,’ Sangram Singh replied. ‘After all, I remember signing for you since the time we got married. I copied the stationmaster’s signature too from the original contract. No point involving him. I want this big burden off your shoulders. No more visiting the Meherban Road Tamarind. And then whenever I decide, we can sell the other two restaurants too.’
Jasoda looked at her husband in wonderment. She had to admit that he was one in a million. She wanted to throw her thali at him, instead of which she smiled sweetly and said the sale of the Meherban Road Tamarind could not occur on a more auspicious day. Since it was going to be Maha Shivratri at midnight, they should celebrate the great god Shiva’s wondrous deeds with his favourite drink. ‘I’ll quickly grind some bhang, make some lovely thandai and we’ll go for a long drive, just you and me.’
Sangram Singh looked at her for one long moment and then broke into a smile. ‘Good idea. I’m glad you understand that some matters are best left to menfolk.’
Jasoda brought in the thandai and he drank a jubilant draught.
‘Cheers.’ It was one of the few words Jasoda had learnt from Alexa. She joined him with a glass of milk.
They took the lift down to the basement where the car was parked. Jasoda poured him another drink from the large thermos she was carrying and sat at the wheel. She drove for a few miles towards the Paschim Falls and then offered him another hefty glass. ‘Cheers’. She raised a toast to him once again. ‘Cheers to happy times. Why don’t you take over the driving? I’ve had a long day. I’ll lie down at the back and rest a bit till we come to the Falls and then we’ll sit in the moonlight. How’s that?’ She eased herself into the back seat and waved out to him in the rear-view mirror, bent low and slipped out. The door banged shut and Sangram Singh drove away happily, singing, ‘Jai, jai, Shivshankar.’
Jasoda guessed that she must have been about ten miles from home but she was happy to walk back on her own. In the morning she lodged a complaint with the police that her car was missing. By afternoon they had found the car and a man in the driver’s seat, both mangled beyond recognition.
The two would-be buyers felt that etiquette demanded they keep away from the owner of the Tamarind Mantra for a few days as a sign of respect for the dead. When they finally came over, Jasoda said that there must have been some misunderstanding, she had no intention of selling any of the Tamarind restaurants.
Himmat wasn’t surprised that Alexa had not come to pick him up at the airport after spending a fortnight in Venezuela and Brazil. She had left a message on his cellphone that she was going for a talk by one of the most respected authorities in her field. The subject was intriguing. Kindergarten: You are never too young to rebel. He dumped his suitcase in their bedroom and went to his eyrie-cum-study on the terrace to attack a rather simple-looking equation that was resisting all his attempts to solve it. Alexa had taken care to soundproof the all-glass cabin so that he could meet his students, colleagues, foreign visitors or just sit working at his laptop without being disturbed by the children from the kindergarten who sometimes invaded the house and made a racket. Himmat was surprised that Alexa had not yet come up to fetch him for dinner. What time was it? Past nine? That was strange. Dinner was always at eight p.m. sharp and then they watched the news and often some series or a movie. Was she all right?
There was an expensive telescope in the corner. Himmat adjusted the focus and took a quick look at the heavens. He switched off the lights in his study and went out to the terrace and down the unlit staircase. It was uncanny how eerie his home felt without a single light on in the house. What was going on? Himmat went from one room to the other and made sure the house was blazing with lights. He was in the kitchen now. There was only one plate on the table and his dinner in the microwave. Tucked under his plate was a handwritten note.
Dear Himmat,
Sometimes I have wondered whether I have been living in a fairy tale. It was inconceivable for me to imagine that any marriage, even one between birds, animals, fish or reptiles, let alone human beings, was possible without overt or subterranean disagreements, resentments and major adjustments. Which is why every single day of our married life has been laced with a feeling of unreality. I have occasionally actually tried to pick a fight with you on some pretext, just to convince myself that I am not married to some delusion or fantasy man. But the project was doomed from the word go. You had the gall to laugh, take me in your arms and ask me whether I was trying to start WWIII with you.
What does one do with you, Himmat? How can you be so consistently amiable, so devoid of malice or jealousy? How come you hardly ever lose your temper or throw a tantrum when one of your colleagues steals the solution you have found to an equation that has been waiting for three hundred years to be resolved and all you tell him is that he’s missed out step number three and he can now copy it from the internet since you have put it in the public domain? Are you a fraudster? I know in my heart of hearts that you are not. In truth, you are just a good man.
You were supposed to have come back tomorrow but a massive cyclone had been forecast out there and hence you took an earlier flight today. So, all my well-laid plans have come to naught.
I love children. You know that. Which is the reason I trained for years, worked in the best kindergarten schools and then started one of my own. My secret wish was always that the children in my school should never grow up, so they would stay forever with me. But there’s never been any doubt in my mind that I also wanted children of my own, at least four to six of them. When I got married to you I thought I was being a little too ambitious and greedy and was willing to settle for three.
It has taken me years to understand and come to terms with the fact that I was wrong about you never having a chink in your armour. You were damaged goods and incapable of taking a chance with a child. You were burnt so badly you were in deadly earnest about never having children. The irony is that you too love children. That’s what got us together, remember? And that’s what gave me hope. I was sure that I would be able to change your mind and tell the whole world that I was pregnant. Yes, I would go to India and give your mother the gift she yearns for.
One day last year you came home and told me you had had a vasectomy. I still didn’t lose hope. After all, it’s a reversible procedure. I tried to make you understand that parting with you was never an option but I was just as certain that I wanted to be the mother of my own children. Now I know that I can’t wait forever. Besides, you have made it clear, though never in a defiant or bellicose fashion, that your position too is inflexible.
I’ve tried to clear any vestiges of my presence in this house. Over the last few months I have managed to close down my school here. And I will be moving to a place unknown to you. I will do my best not to run into you for if I do, I know I will never be able to leave you.
I love you, Himmat. Please forgive me for this unforgivably shabby parting but I have just a small window to have my own children.
I think I have an idea about how miserably alone you are going to be. You will never show it but I know you will be dreadfully lonely.
You are still my best everything.
Alexa
Himmat went down into the basement and switched off the main electric supply. He lay down on the carpet and let the darkness envelop him. What was he going to do with his life? He had at least half a lifetime left to find out.
Jasoda watched her daughter packing. How was it that this little girl who was born yesterday was already flying the coop? To think, to think that she had almost done away … No, no, no, she mustn’t go there. Oddly enough, the only one who would stay with her was her Kishen. Oh yes, as soon as Janhavi left she must get her will done. More than her other children, she must secure Kishen’s future. She was sure Himmat would take care of him. Who knows, he might even take him to Umrika with him. But it was best not to leave anything to chance.
She had the strangest premonition of late that Pawan would come back one of thes
e days. Not whole but either crippled or worse … No, she mustn’t ever allow herself to think such awful thoughts. Oh, please God, keep him well.
And what about Sameer? What could she leave the one who had not left her but whom she had never found? Why was she thinking such awful thoughts? She must talk about the will with Himmat. He certainly would be the executor, along with Janhavi.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said to Janhavi.
‘Thinking of what, Maa?’ Janhavi looked up from packing the saris for special occasions.
‘Maybe, just maybe, I will come over to Himmat and his wife’s place with Kishen one of these days. He’s never been on a holiday.’
‘Neither have you.’
‘Maybe, maybe Himmat, Aleksha and you can show us around.’
‘You recall, don’t you, that Alexa was so keen for you to visit them from the time she was here. Himmat said he would have to come down himself to escort you while you crossed so many continents and oceans to stay with your daughter-in-law. Now I can tell Alexa that Queen Jasoda will be arriving any day now with her Kishen. Maa, a second’s digression. When I get to America, they are bound to ask me what is the meaning of my name.’
‘Just passed your master’s with flying colours and you don’t know what your name stands for?’
‘Mea culpa. Unforgivable, isn’t it, to enter the twenty-third year of my life not knowing who I am.’
‘Wait a minute. Am I to understand that I didn’t tell you?’ Jasoda looked aghast.
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Shame on me. You are the holy Ganga, the purest river in the world. You can wipe out any, but any sin. You flow out from the spiralled plait atop Shiva’s head and now you will flow in Umrika.’
‘Purify America?’ Janhavi laughed. ‘That will take some doing.’
Jasoda was uncomfortable saying goodbyes. So, it was Cawas Uncle who saw Janhavi off at the airport in Mumbai. She promised to send him an email as soon she arrived in San Francisco.