Family Matters (50 page)
“I don’t want the new, I like the old.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Jehangla. It’s like saying you don’t want to end the fifth standard. How would you get to the sixth? You want to spend your whole life with Miss Alvarez?”
Jehangir smiled through his tears – it seemed a very pleasant prospect, but he couldn’t say this aloud to his father. He kept staring at the road.
Yezad waited, feeling dishonest, not believing any of the sensible words he’d uttered. The same dilemma tormented him. He wanted his sons to become men, but he loved the little boys he could carry on his shoulders; he, too, wanted to conquer time.
He took Jehangir’s hand. “Come on, let’s look together, one last time.”
They went to the back room, their footsteps echoing sharply in the vacant space. Jehangir was wide-eyed, as though trying to imprint permanent images. In the kitchen he caressed the brass taps. He visited the bathroom and the toilet.
“If I want to see it again, will Mr. Hiralal let me?”
“He seems like a nice man,” said Yezad. “I’m sure he will.”
They returned to the balcony, and Jehangir whistled to the parrot across the road. “Bye bye, parrot sweetie.”
The bird, locked in its frenzy of side-to-side hopping, did not answer. Jehangir tried again, and Yezad added his whistle to entice a response. The parrot ignored them both.
Villie Cardmaster was waiting at her door when they emerged from the empty flat. She hugged the boys, then offered her hand to Yezad. He gave it a quick reluctant shake and started down the stairs as she put her arms around Roxana.
From the landing below, he could hear them thanking each other for being such good neighbours, and Villie saying she would miss them dearly, it would be very quiet now on the third floor.
“Hurry up, Roxana!” he called between the banisters. “The lorry is waiting there for us.”
They took a taxi, and Murad insisted on sitting next to the driver. The latter leaned towards him to reach the meter outside, and Murad offered to do it.
“Hanh, baba, you do it,” the driver said good-humouredly.
Murad tilted the lever and pushed down the flag to start it ticking. “Very good, baba,” said the driver.
They turned to look at the building. Roxana said, a little wistfully, that it was a nice flat even though it was tiny, and they had always been happy in it.
“Except for this last year,” said Yezad.
“Yes.” She thought for a moment. “Never mind, from now on life will be wonderful, in our big new house.”
“Not new for you, Mummy,” said Murad. “You’re going back to your old house.”
“But I have my whole family with me this time. That makes it new. And this time it will be a very happy place.”
“Will I have to sleep in my own room tonight?” asked Jehangir.
“No,” she reassured him, reading his thoughts. “You and Murad have to share, till all the repairs are finished.”
He smiled and reached to the front seat to give his brother a poke.
“Are you happy, Jehangoo?” she asked.
He gave a tiny nod.
While the taxi waited at the kerb for a break in the traffic, they heard violin music. Roxana gazed at Pleasant Villa, at the wrought-iron balconies, the entrance arch, the old stone steps she had climbed countless times. A bird, perched on the ground-floor window, was chirping diligently.
Good omens, she thought.
The taxi began to move, and Jehangir turned for one last look. Then a moth floated lazily out from the darkened interior of the stairwell. He watched it fly straight towards the bird’s open beak.
EPILOGUE
FIVE YEARS LATER
D
ADDY AND MURAD
had another fight today. They quarrel almost every day now. This one started when Murad returned from the barber shop in the afternoon, his hair styled
en brosse.
“Does it have to be so short?” said Daddy. “Makes you look like a skinhead thug.”
Mummy tried to avert an argument, laughing nervously, that wasn’t it funny, a generation ago parents got upset because boys were keeping their hair too long. “How times change. Remember your college
ID
photo, Yezdaa? Hair to your shoulders!”
“Don’t exaggerate, it was just a bit overgrown. Anyway, all the holy prophets had long hair – Zarathustra, Moses, Jesus. Why can’t your son learn to resemble a normal human being?”
Murad kept smiling, pretending it was only a joke. At times, this tactic works; Daddy criticizes, then returns to the book he is reading or to his prayers. But it can also make him fly into a rage, that he is not a barking dog to be ignored, he will be heard and heeded.
In the case of the haircut, though, the long and the short of it was forgotten, and the fight took a different turn. Murad ventured much too near the drawing-room corner that Daddy has lately claimed as his prayer area.
Here, set up on a cabinet, are framed pictures of Zarathustra and the Udvada fire-temple, along with a silver model of the Asho Farohvar, photographs of the ancient remnants of the Persian Empire, the ruins at Persepolis, palaces, fire altars, and royal tombs of the Achaemenian and Sassanian dynasties. The arrangement of items is in a rough semicircle that keeps growing. His latest acquisition is a miniature afargaan, plastic, with a tiny electric fire. Its filament flickers day and night at the centre of the semicircle.
This is the same glass-fronted cabinet that used to be filled with toys and knick-knacks. And the two clockwork monkeys, the drummer and the boozer, which were the cause of the fight when we had come for Grandpa’s birthday party, years ago – at least six or seven, I think.
After Coomy Aunty died, Jal Uncle donated the toy collection to the Bandra orphanage. The cabinet stood empty for many months till Daddy took it over. Now his prayer books are inside, as well as his collection of additional holy items for which there is no room in the semicircle.
“Stop!” he shouted, as Murad wandered absently towards the cabinet.
There was real panic in his voice, and Murad froze. “What’s wrong?”
Jal Uncle came out of his room, looking worried. He has a new high-tech hearing aid. You can hardly see it in his ear. Sometimes, he tries to make peace between Daddy and Murad, but he’s been accused by Daddy of interfering in private family matters, and rarely opens his mouth these days.
Mummy complains to Daddy that it’s not fair, first it was Coomy who used to shut poor Jal up, now he is doing the same. He replies that Jal is free to talk about anything except this one topic.
So Jal Uncle stood outside the drawing-room, quite miserable. The old habit of fiddling with his antique hearing aid made him touch his ear even though the new one needs no adjustment. Then he returned to his room while the argument continued.
“How many times must I explain to you?” said Daddy through gritted teeth.
“Explain what?” Murad was genuinely mystified.
“You are in the prayer space in your impure state. After a haircut, you are unclean till you shower and wash your head.”
“That’s idiotic. I’m not even touching your holy cabinet.”
“Fifteen feet away, I told you! The minimum distance!”
“Calm down, Yezdaa,” pleaded Mummy. “He’ll remember next time.”
“This is the twenty-first century,” said Murad, “and you still believe such nonsense. It’s sad.”
“Fine, be sad,” said Daddy.
“No, please don’t say that, Yezad,” implored Mummy. “I don’t want anyone to be sad.”
When Daddy reaches a certain stage of excitement, Murad enjoys baiting him. He no longer fears Daddy’s temper, the way we used to as children.
“How did you get the exact figure? Did Zoroaster whisper it in your ear?”
“Your son is a wit-and-a-half, isn’t he? Don’t use Zoroaster, that’s a Greek perversion of our prophet’s name, say Zarathustra. And before you mock me, read the scriptures: Vendidaad, fargard XVII, explains the distance.”
“Sorry, Daddy, I don’t have the leisure to read all this interesting stuff. It’s hard enough to finish my college work.”
For the last few years, ever since we left Pleasant Villa, Daddy has been reading nothing but religious books, as though making up for lost time. In addition to the holy cabinet, my parents’ bedroom has filled up with volumes about Parsi history and Zoroastrianism, various translations of the Zend-Avesta, interpretations of the Gathas, commentaries, books by Zaehner, Spiegel, Darukhanawala, Dabu, Boyce, Dhalla, Hinnells, Karaka, and many, many more. Some of them used to be in a bookcase that belonged to Grandpa’s father. His name is inscribed in them on bookplates:
Marazban Vakeel.
But Daddy has been purchasing as well, in great quantities. Mummy suggested once there was no need to buy every single book, there were libraries to borrow from. She gave in because he kept complaining his spirit was being denied basic bread and water.
But the jibe, about leisure to read, hurt Daddy. He has not worked since Bombay Sporting shut down. It did reopen later with a new name: Shivaji Sports Equipment, and the owner’s wife never asked him to come back. The investments from the sale of Pleasant Villa used to provide just enough money to run the household and to meet Grandpas expenses. Mummy had made up a new budget, with new envelopes. But after Grandpa died, she got rid of all the envelopes, she said we could be more relaxed now about spending. She doesn’t mind that Daddy isn’t working.
By and large, his fervent embrace of religion makes her happy. She agrees with him that the entire chain of events, starting with Grandpa’s accident and ending with Mr. Kapur’s murder, was God’s way of bringing him to prayer.
Wounded by Murad’s taunt, however, Daddy turned to her, his expression a child’s who has been slapped without warning. And when Mummy sees him like this she behaves like a protective mother. She tried to shoo Murad away to the shower.
But he was not yet ready to end the argument. “I’m confused – I don’t know how far exactly the fifteen feet extend.”
“I’ve told you, this sofa is the boundary.”
“That’s a rough estimate, Daddy. You’ll only achieve approximate purity. I think we should take a measurement and draw a line on the floor, so we all know how far to go.”
Daddy appealed again to Mummy: “Our faith is a subject of ridicule for your son.”
“What if an impure fly or mosquito or cockroach violates the sofa boundary? Do you check if they’ve showered? Maybe you should enclose your cabinet in a bubble.”
“Enough!” Daddy dragged him by the arm to the other end of the room. “You approach that side again in your unclean condition and I’ll break your legs!”
Murad laughed, “You’re getting hysterical now,” and I wished he would stop.
“Go for your shower,” said Mummy quietly, and he left the room. He still listens to her when she uses the tone that would warn us, when we were small, if we were about to cross the limit of what was acceptable.
Meanwhile, Daddy said his chest pains were back, and asked for the angina medicine. He bewailed the fact that in his anger he had grabbed that saitaan’s arm, the contact had made him unclean in the bargain. Now he too would need a full shower.
My father has emerged from the bathroom, and is doing his kusti by the cabinet. His expression is always very intense when he prays. He finishes tying the knots and sits with his prayer book before the electric afargaan, in the wooden chair no one else is allowed to use. He sits as though he is carrying a secret burden, whose weight is crushing him. He frowns a lot, his face contorting in pain. He doesn’t just close his eyes, he clenches the eyelids shut, the cheeks rising, the brows pressing downwards to squeeze out whatever it is that haunts him. His Avesta recitations – the various Yashts, Gehs, Nyaishes, depending on the hour – are like a rebuttal, a protest. He is locked in a struggle.
Seeing my father like this, I think of him as he used to be, so jovial. Nowadays he hardly smiles, let alone laughs. And he never whistles, never joins in with songs on the radio. The last time I heard him sing was for Grandpa, the night before he died. And the radio is seldom played – only while Daddy is out of the house. When he is home, he’s either praying or reading, and says the music disturbs him.
Mummy watches from the passageway, smiling contentedly, for things are back to normal after the haircut argument. She is pleased to see him at prayer, happy to arrange her routine around his requirements. The housework, the servant’s comings and goings all revolve around Daddy’s prayer schedule.
But there are times I’ve noticed her wringing her hands, looking worried when he prays on and on. Those must be her moments of doubt. I’m sure she wishes he wouldn’t go to such extremes, and occasionally she voices her anguish in my presence: “If only Dada Ormuzd could help me understand! Why must prayer and religion lead to so many fights between father and son? Is that His will?”
When my father sits by himself, gazing out the window or pretending to read, I have seen her go to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. I have heard her ask him tenderly, “What is it, Yezdaa, is something worrying you?”
His answer is always the same: “Nothing, Roxie, I’m fine.” Then he pats the hand on his shoulder, kisses it.