A Fine Balance (33 page)

Weeks earlier, when Dina had first heard that the boarder found for her by Zenobia was the son of a girl who had gone to school with them, her memory could not leap back across the years to pluck out the face in question.

“She had a beauty spot on her chin,” reminded Zenobia, “and her nose was slightly crooked. Though I think it made her look quite cute.”

Dina shook her head, still unable to remember.

“Do you have the class photo for… let’s see,” and Zenobia counted on her fingers, “1946, ‘47, ‘48, ‘49 – that’s it, 1949.”

“Nusswan would not give me the money to buy it. Have you forgotten how my brother was, after Daddy died?”

“Yes, I know. Such a wretch. Making you wear those ridiculous long uniforms and those heavy, ugly shoes. You poor thing. Makes me mad even after all these years.”

“And because of him I lost touch with everyone. Except you.”

“Yes, I know. He didn’t allow you to stay for choir or dramatics or ballet or anything.”

All that evening they enjoyed the pleasures of reminiscing, laughing at the follies and tragedies of their pasts. Very often there was a little sadness in their laughter, for these memories were of their youth. They remembered their favourite teachers, and Miss Lamb, the principal, who was called Lambretta because she was always scooting up and down the halls. They calculated how old they would have been in the sixth standard, when they had started French, and the French teacher, who they had nicknamed Mademoiselle Bouledogue, began terrorizing their lives three times a week. Everyone assumed the name was an example of the cruelty of schoolgirls, but it had been bestowed as much for her heavy jowls as for her pugnacious approach to irregular verbs and conjugations.

After Zenobia left, Dina measured out half a cup of rice, picked out the pebbles from the grain, and boiled the water. The last drop of daylight was used up, and the kitchen light had to be switched on. Through the open window she heard a mother calling her children in from play. Then the smell of frying onions swooped in. Everywhere the cooking hour had begun.

As the rice cooked, she thought how pleasant it had been to remember her school-days – better than the brooding and daydreaming she had been doing lately about Nusswan and Ruby; her father’s house; her nephews, Xerxes and Zarir, grown men now at twenty-two and nineteen, whom she seldom met more than once a year.

After dinner, she sat at the window, watching the balloonman across the road tempt the passing children. Somewhere, a radio began blaring the signature tune for “Choice of the People.” Eight o’clock, thought Dina, as Vijay Correas voice introduced the first song. She worked on her quilt for an hour or so. Before going to bed she soaped her clothes and left them in the bucket, ready for the morning wash.

Zenobia stopped by again the next evening on her way home from the Venus Beauty Salon and took a large envelope out of her purse. “Go on, open it,” she said.

“Oh, it’s the class photograph,” Dina exclaimed with delight.

“Look at us all,” said Zenobia wistfully. “We must have been about fifteen.” She pointed out the girl in the second row.

“Yes, I remember her now. Aban Sodawalla. Though you can’t see her beauty spot in this picture.”

“How the girls teased her about it. And that mean poem someone made up, remember? Aban Sodawalla has no grace, needs a soda to clean her face.”

“See the spot upon her chin, pick it out with a pointy pin,” completed Dina. “How stupid we were then, chanting such nonsense.”

“I know. And by sixteen, the whole jing-bang lot of us was trying to copy the beauty spot. Weren’t we silly, trying to paint it on.”

Dina studied the photograph again for a moment. “I remember her most clearly in the fourth standard. Eight or nine years old. The three of us were always together then. She was the one very good at skipping rope, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, exactly.” Zenobia was pleased that at last a firm connection was made. “Trouble with a capital t, the teacher called us, remember?”

They picked up the trail of nostalgia where they had left it the day before: the games they had played during the short and long recess, and the fun of plaiting one another’s hair, comparing ribbons, exchanging hairclips. And when their breasts began to grow, how they would stoop their shoulders to try to reduce the embarrassing protuberances, or wear cardigans to disguise them, even in sweltering heat, and discuss their first periods, walking oddly while they got used to sanitary pads. And then the teasing about imagined boyfriends and kisses, and fantasies of moonlight walks in romantic gardens.

Most of all, Dina and Zenobia marvelled at how, during those years of their terrible innocence, all the girls had known practically everything about one another’s lives. “Then your father passed away,” said Zenobia. “And that brother of yours wouldn’t allow you to have any friends. But you know, you didn’t miss that much – after the final year most of us lost contact with the gang anyway.”

With high school completed, some of their companions had had to go to work because their families were poor; others went on to college, and some were not allowed to, because college could be harmful to the lives of soon-to-be wives and mothers – they were kept home to help in the kitchen. If there were no younger sisters to wear the blouse and pinafore of the school uniform, it was cut into kitchen cloths, to wipe the stoves or carry hot pots and pans. Then the ex-schoolgirls were vague, even secretive, when they chanced to meet. There was an air of embarrassment about how they were spending their days, as though they had colluded in a collective betrayal of their youth and childhood. Most of them knew practically nothing about one another’s lives.

“You were the only one I kept in touch with – you and Aban Sodawalla, of course,” said Zenobia.

She continued with the rest of their schoolmate’s story: soon after matriculation, Aban had been introduced by family friends to a certain Farokh Kohlah, who was visiting the city, and who had a business in the north, far away, in a hill-station. The Sodawalla family immediately approved of him. How tall and straight stood the young Parsi gentleman, Mr. Sodawalla had said, such a fine bearing, thanks to the healthy life in the mountains. Mrs. Sodawalla was most impressed by the young gentleman’s light pigmentation. Not white like a European ghost, she told her friends, but fair and golden.

In view of the possibilities, the Sodawalla family took a tactical vacation the following year at the hill-station. And, in time, the strategy produced the desired results. Aban fell in love with Farokh Kohlah and the natural beauty of the place. Then she married and settled there.

“She still writes to me once a year, without fail,” said Zenobia. “That’s how I knew she was looking for a room for her son.”

“Which was very lucky for me,” said Dina. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it. But God only knows how Aban has managed to live all these years in some tiny hill town. Especially after being born and brought up in our lovely city. To be honest, I would go crazy.”

“If they have their own business, they must be rich people,” said Dina.

Zenobia was doubtful. “How wealthy can you get these days, with a small shop in some little hill place?”

Once, though, Maneck’s family had been extremely wealthy. Fields of grain, orchards of apple and peach, a lucrative contract to supply provisions to cantonments along the frontier – all this was among the inheritance of Farokh Kohlah, and he tended it well, making it increase and multiply for the wife he was to marry and the son who would be born.

But long before that eagerly awaited birth, there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror’s wand.

Ten years later, when Maneck was born, Farokh Kohlah, trapped by history, was still travelling regularly to courthouses in the capital, snared in the coils of the government’s compensation scheme, while files were shuffled and diplomats shuttled from this country to the other. Between journeys he helped his wife to run their old-fashioned general store in town. The shop was all that remained from his vast fortune, having escaped the cartographic changes by being located on the right side of that magic line.

For years the shop had languished, more a hobby or a social club than a business. The real income had come from those other, lost, sources. Now it needed to be nurtured for all it was worth.

Aban Kohlah turned out to be a natural manager in the General Store. “I can easily handle all this,” she said to her husband. “You have more important things to do.”

A cradle was set up behind the counter to ensure that she was not separated from her child. She ordered the goods, kept accounts, stocked shelves, served customers, and, in her free moments, revelled in the magnificent view of the valley from the back of the shop. Life in the hills suited her perfectly.

Farokh Kohlah had worried at first that his wife would miss the city and her relatives. He feared that once the novelty of the exotic locale had worn off, the complaining would begin. His worries turned out to be needless; her love for the place only increased with the passage of time.

The cradle was soon outgrown, and Maneck was crawling round and about the counter, then toddling among the shelves. Mrs. Kohlah’s vigilance was now strained to the limit. She was afraid that the boy might bring things crashing down on his head. But whenever her back had to be turned, the customers took over, helping to keep him safely busy, playing with him, amusing him with coins and keyrings, or the brilliant hues of their handmade scarves and shawls. “Hello, baba! Ting-ting! Baba, ak-koo!”

By the time he was five, Maneck was proudly assisting his parents in the shop. He stood behind the counter, his black hair barely visible over the edge, waiting to hear the customer’s request. “I know where it is! I’ll get it!” he would say, and run to fetch the item under the fond glances of Mrs. Kohlah and the customer.

After starting school the following year, he continued to help out in the evening. He devised his own system for the regulars, keeping their everyday purchases – three eggs, loaf of bread, small butter packet, biscuits – ready and waiting on the counter at their expected time.

“Look at that son of mine,” said Mr. Kohlah proudly. “Just six, and what initiative, what organizational skill.” He savoured the pleasure of watching Maneck greet the shoppers and chat with them, describe the aggressive pack of langurs he had seen from the schoolbus that morning, or join in the discussion about a dried-up waterfall. The easygoing manner of the townspeople came naturally to Maneck, having been born and brought up here, and it delighted his father that he mixed so well with everyone.

Sometimes, at dusk, in the bustle of the shop, Mr. Kohlah, surrounded by his wife and son and the customers, who were also friends and neighbours, almost forgot the losses he had suffered. Yes, he would think then, yes, life was still good.

The Kohlahs sold newspapers, several varieties of tea, sugar, bread and butter; also candles and pickles, torches and lightbulbs, biscuits and blankets, brooms and chocolates, scarves and umbrellas; then there were toys, walking-sticks, soap, rope, and more. There was no grand system of inventory selection – just basic groceries, household necessities, and a few luxuries.

The shop’s casual approach to commerce made it the favourite with locals as well as with the neighbouring settlements. If someone could not afford a full packet of, say, biscuits, Mrs. Kohlah would think nothing of tearing it open and selling half; she had faith that someone else would come along for the other half. If an item was not in stock, Mr. Kohlah would gladly order it as long as the customer was not particular about the delivery date. Even if the delivery date was crucial, there was not much to be done because deliveries depended on the roads, and roads depended on the weather, and everyone knew weather depended on the One Up Above. The morning newspaper usually arrived by early evening, when the regulars gathered on the porch to smoke or sip tea and discuss the news as they read it, calling out the headlines to Mr. Kohlah if he was pottering around inside the shop.