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Both of them knew Nisha was talking rubbish. There was no question of such an option, exercised by the helpless, abandoned, and destitute, yet ashrams had to be mentioned. They were her state of mind.

The father was silent. Then, ‘Would you like to study further?’

Nisha fiddled with her chunni. That her father was inviting her to study shocked her. She had not expected such hopelessness about her future.

‘No,’ she replied slowly, ‘I do not want to study, what has it ever got me?’ Only Suresh, betrayal, pain to her family and herself.

‘Are you not happy in Play-Way?’

‘Papaji, I get bored looking after babies. Is this my life?’

Her father sighed again, and Nisha’s heart went out to him. She didn’t want to make her father unhappy, she wished she could be the daughter he deserved. ‘Just send me away, Papaji,’ she said again. If he could not see her, he would not grieve over her.

By now Yashpal was irritated. ‘Beti, I do not want to hear these words from you again. This is your home, why are you talking as though you are an orphan?’

She had gone too far, now he was angry with her. ‘Sorry, Papaji,’ she murmured.

‘Now come,’ he went on. ‘Without you it is not the same. They are watching a film. You also watch.’

Silently she went inside and for a few hours they could pretend she was part of a happy family, watching a film together.

That night a maniacal bout of itching overtook her.

‘Doctor Sa’ab will be thinking there is something wrong in our house, that this goes on happening to you,’ said her mother with annoyance, as she phoned the doctor for an emergency appointment the next morning.

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘No this, and no that, do I ever hear anything else from you?’ shouted Sona angrily. ‘Now get ready. I will tell Raju to take us.’ Though his soul belonged to his wife, his body had its duties to perform.

‘Eruptions such as these can be due to stress,’ the doctor said delicately after examining her.

Brusquely Raju said, ‘There is no stress in our house, doctor.’

‘Well, this has happened several times. She seems to be improving, and then she has a relapse. Injections only provide local cure. In eczema especially, mind is reflected in body.’

‘Once she is married, it will be all right, doctor,’ Sona burst out, the doctor’s words heading towards the sore places in her heart like arrows. ‘But since her sister-in-law is younger than her, she feels tense.’

Nisha looked indignant, Raju annoyed, embarrassed, and proud. His fate was markedly different from his sister’s. He was the holder of house, goods, wife, and child. All on the right track.

Continued the mother of the daughter on the wrong track, ‘Doctor, only you can help us with her skin. At home there is nothing wrong.’

It was the teachers’ break at Play-Way. The children were resting from the exertions of the concrete playground, colouring objects that matched the alphabet in their books. Ayahs squatting against the wall kept a languid eye on them.

As they sipped their tea, one of the older teachers drew out several suits wrapped in polythene packets and distributed them. ‘My sister is making,’ she explained. ‘See if you like.’

The others looked eager – shopping on school premises was a welcome variation in the routine.

‘She makes from home,’ continued Mrs Tyagi. ‘She can make on order also.’

Nisha drew her suit out curiously. It was lime-green with yellow flowers embroidered down the front; similar flowers were scattered on the chunni. ‘That one would look really nice on you,’ enthused Mrs Tyagi.

It might look nice but it also represented half her month’s salary.

‘Yes,’ chorused the others, ‘it really would.’

‘My father gets my suits from his shop,’ said Nisha shyly.

‘Arre, you can buy one on your own, now you are earning,’ declared Mrs Tyagi. ‘She is giving at a really low price. If you buy this in the shops, you will have to pay double.’

Nisha had no idea what suits cost in the open market, never having bought one. She fingered the cloth. A synthetic mix. She looked at the flowers. Only one colour.

‘Three hundred and fifty?’ she queried, looking at the tag.

‘For you, three hundred.’

Nisha absentmindedly fingered the suit, while disapproving of the single-colour embroidery. How much would it have cost to make? She started calculating, but there was too much she didn’t know. And then her thoughts slipped from their grooves, and in an instant she saw herself the maker and seller of suits. She had the background, she had the resources, it would be far more satisfying than teaching nursery children.

Mrs Tyagi broke into her visions of the future. ‘It will look very nice on you.’

‘That it will,’ added another.

They were all expecting her to buy. She was the daughter of a shopkeeper, she wasn’t working for money, it seemed her moral duty.

‘I have no money on me,’ she temporised.

‘Arre, that can always come later,’ said Mrs Tyagi genially, wrapping up the lime-green suit in its packaging. ‘My sister will be very pleased. I have told her what nice clothes you wear. If Nisha buys, I told her, then you know your suits are good.’

The other teachers relaxed. Once one suit was purchased, the pressure on them to buy was reduced.

Nisha thought of how much of her month’s salary she had spent on a suit she didn’t really like. She would give it to Pooja. Her mother would say, look what Nisha has bought for you, Pooji, and Pooja would simper and smile, used to the fact that everything in the house revolved around her and her baby.

That evening, in front of everybody, she handed the wrapped suit to Pooja: ‘I bought it just for you, I thought the colour would suit very nicely.’ Pooja took it and smiled, Sona smiled, Nisha smiled, while the men looked approving.

As she waited for an appropriate moment to speak to her father, words reiterated by her mother through childhood emerged from her subconscious. If it weren’t for your father’s contacts, I’d like to see your aunt do business; your father does so much to help her, she has no idea; where would your aunt be without your father; all these years, and still your father looks after her sales.

Well, she had her father too.

She waited till he had his tea, waited while he played with Shuchi, waited till dinner was over, and then called him out on to the balcony. ‘I want to say something to you.’

She pulled the white plastic chairs close together, drew a breath and started. ‘I want to do business, papa.’

This was not what he had expected.

‘Like Rupa Masi,’ she added, to make the picture in her mind match his.

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to make salwar suits.’ And then in a rush came the whole story of this morning, the lime-green suit, the price, the material, the single-colour embroidery. ‘I know I can do a better job, please, Papaji, please, if you could help Rupa Masi why can’t you help me?’

‘Rupa Masi does not have children,’ said the father miserably.

‘Neither do I.’

Yashpal wondered at the bends in the trajectory of his daughter’s life. She sat in front of him, hands clasped, eyes alive and begging. It was possible, of course it was possible, they commissioned suits from just the kind of set-up Nisha was describing. But for his daughter to go into business herself? He shook his head.

‘Pleeeeease, Papaji,’ breathed Nisha, ‘I’ll do anything you say, please, please. If it doesn’t succeed I will go back to teaching, I promise. Only give me a year.’

‘A year? What are you talking? You will need at least two to establish yourself. In business you do not succeed just like that, you have to work, work, all the time, all the time,’ he repeated, to convey the gravity and weightiness of business.

‘Give me a chance to show you what I can do.’

The last time he had heard that note in her voice it had been about marrying Suresh. Now it was here again, and this time circumstances were such that he could listen. If she wanted to work hard all day, instead of sitting around comfortably in the house, there must be imperatives compelling her.

‘Beti, let me think. I will discuss it with your uncle.’

‘Papaji, if you are with me, he won’t say no,’ insisted Nisha. ‘I want to do something of value. It will make it so much easier to … to …’ Here she stopped, and looked mutely at him.

‘I understand, beti, now let us go inside.’

She heard a weakening he was not yet willing to verbalise. She hugged him, and murmured in his ear, ‘Thank you, Papaji.’ He held her close for a moment, tilted her chin up. ‘No more sadness, all right?’

‘All right.’

That night thoughts pumped around Nisha’s head, keeping her awake as they had so many nights, but these were thoughts with a difference. She thought of her uncle Prem Nath’s contempt for traders, and the effort he had poured into her study. But shopkeepers thrived. Look at Pooja, she was what she was because she was the daughter of a shopkeeper. Despite her scar she had confidence. Even now her features were prettier than Pooja’s, but it was her sister-in-law who was made much of.

She would be better than Pooja. She would not only be the daughter of a prosperous man, but be responsible for wealth herself. After all, her father’s blood flowed in her, the blood of traders.

She poured her ideas into her aunt’s ears the very next day. She was going to follow in her footsteps, she needed her encouragement, her blessings, her advice.

Her aunt listened and gave no indication of the tears in her heart. Her poor, poor Nisha, forced to hew her own path in life. What kind of karma had the girl come with?

‘So, Masi, what do you think?’

Rupa dried her metaphorical tears and examined her niece, looking more alive than since the Suresh days. Doesn’t matter if the girl’s idea had been thought of by every other housewife over the past seven or eight years. If her pickle making could do well, then smart, intelligent, well-connected Nisha would be even more successful. She would no longer be the poor unmarried sister, not allowed to touch the baby. Indeed, she would have no time to touch this baby or any others that might come.

‘What does your mother say?’ she asked.

Nisha tossed her head. ‘These things I decide with Papaji.’

In which case it took Rupa only a second (berating herself for being a fool) to know exactly what approach to take, and the rest of the visit was filled with making plans and suggesting ways around practical difficulties.

Yashpal too had spent much time thinking. Nisha would need a place to work from, and the only place he could think of was the basement, owned by the builder and leased to Goodlass Nerolac for storage purposes. He would have to persuade the builder to rent it to them; he would have to talk to Pyare Lal and put him in the know, otherwise objections might come from upstairs. In house matters, touchiness was the order of the day.

Pyare Lal was moved enough by the whole Nisha issue to be all reassurance. ‘Bhai, where it is a question of our daughter, why do you worry? It will all be all right. I will talk to the builder, he will understand.’

To his brother’s relief, he became so emotional about this matter that, against his lifelong practice of never paying a single penny more than was necessary, he persuaded the builder relative to find the Goodlass Nerolac people another basement, and to arrange for them to leave before the lease was out. He even paid for the removal of the paint drums. ‘She is our daughter,’ he told Yashpal, when the latter remonstrated, ‘this much I can do.’ Thus the men settled it between themselves; for the women, more discussion was in order.

XXIII

Businesswoman

Sona was not pleased at this new development in Nisha’s life. ‘She is going to get married, why waste time and money in all this?’ A business was not like teaching, resignable when the bridegroom reached the door.

Nisha could not forgive her mother for this statement. Pooja, busy with the baby, her kingdom unthreatened, said, ‘Mummyji, it is a good thing Nisha has something substantial to do. I always said she was wasted in Play-Way.’

Sushila Chachi upstairs was censorious. Why was Nisha being allowed to do business? If tomorrow her daughters-in-law upped and said they wanted to do the same, what face would she have to refuse? And what about the money? Would what she earned be her own, or go back to the family, as in the case of the sons? Had these things been thought about? Years ago, when Asha wanted to hire tailors for just such an enterprise, she had not been allowed. Was the family forgetting its values?

This criticism was conveyed indirectly, leaving Sona seething with rage, and forcing her to change her stand. She got so angry that Pooja had the pleasure of mediating, imploring Rekha to make her mother-in-law more understanding towards the plight of an unmarried daughter.

Nisha didn’t care what people said or thought. She watched Goodlass Nerolac take tempo loads of their paint drums away, as her uncle supervised. He was doing this for her, and in a rush of gratitude she vowed never again to be a burden on her family.

The last tempo gone, she descended into the depths of the house with her uncle, father, brother, mother, aunt, Pooja, Rekha, Ajay, and Vijay to inspect the place.

It was dark, with just the light from the ventilators to see by. There were holes in the ceiling where Goodlass had taken away their light fixtures, holes in the wall where they had removed their switches. ‘So cheap, taking advantage of our goodness,’ cursed Pyare Lal. ‘I paid for their tempos, which I didn’t have to, and in return they remove every light and switch they put in. This is how people prosper in business, beti, you see?’

‘I see, Chacha,’ said Nisha, trembling a little. Would she have had the foresight to remove light fixtures and switches from walls and ceilings? She doubted it. She said a prayer: I have to succeed, please let me succeed.

In her bag were lists of things she needed, ranging from large to small. Tailors, cutters, embroiderers, sewing machines, tables, cloth, threads, buttons, laces. Where would she get the money for all this?

That evening after dinner, Yashpal called her.