Of Marriageable Age (18 page)

On the other hand the pedestrians, cows, goats, cyclists, pushcarts and cycle-rickshaws all seemed in mortal danger of being smashed into by them, meandering as they were with total unconcern across the streets; more than once they touched another road user and Nat clung to his father's waist as a baby monkey clings to its mother, squeezing his eyes together and praying. But Doctor was an expert motorcyclist and brought Nat safe and unharmed to a tall but narrow pink concrete house in a quiet side street. They descended from the Triumph, Nat's knees still trembling a little, and Doctor banged loudly on a big knocker on the front door, and called out 'Henry!' just for good measure.

Almost immediately the door flew open and Doctor was in the arms of another, shorter, man, another
sahib
, each patting the other on the back and exclaiming, 'Good to see you again, old fellow!' and such things. This went on for some time, and finally the two men separated and Nat saw, when the shorter man turned to look down at him, that he was also older.

'So this is your little lad!' said the man.

And Doctor said, 'Yes, this is Nat. Nat, this is Uncle Henry!'

Yet another uncle! Nat was wary of uncles now; after all, his father's greeting with Gopal Uncle had been just as joyful and warm as this one, and look how that had ended! Nat felt a tug of fear; he wasn't really sure what an uncle was, and his first experience with this species had been fraught with untold dangers; also, uncles all seemed to be connected with Madras, and Nat knew for himself what a dangerous place Madras was. But there was nothing he could do about it. And anyway, he was dead tired after the long ride on the motorcycle, and now it was dark. Uncle Henry showed him a
sharpai
in an upstairs room he was to share with his father, and after a quick wash and cleaning his teeth Nat dropped down and curled up on it. He was too excited to sleep, so he dreamily listened to his father and Uncle Henry talking.

'I'm a bit worried, Henry,' said Doctor. 'In a way Gopal's right. I've kept Nat away from the world far too long, sheltered him and kept him out of harm's way.'

'You're only doing the best you can,' said Uncle Henry.

'I've raised him like one of those tamarind saplings the Reforestation Agency planted all over the hill, with high walls of mud bricks around them to prevent the cows and the goats from eating them and the scavenging children from cutting them down to take home for firewood. One day the saplings will be little trees, strong and resilient, and it won't matter if goats nibble at their lowest branches or if a child breaks off a twig or two. And one day those trees will be so tall and strong they can give shade and take in a family of monkeys in their branches, and bear fruit for the women to make
sambar
with. That's the future I see for Nat. But what if I'm wrong?'

'Don't be too ambitious for him. Children have a way of doing what they want, despite the best laid plans.'

'That's why I built those walls, Henry. And it will hurt to take them down; will he be strong enough?'

'You can't shield him for ever,' said Uncle Henry.

'Henry, I know,' said Doctor. 'It's time to start taking down those walls, brick by brick. It's time for Nat to meet the big wide world outside the village. That's why I brought him here. To meet you.'

The next morning Nat found out more about Uncle Henry, because his father went out soon after breakfast, leaving him alone with the man. Nat didn't want him to go. He was afraid he'd never come back; that this uncle, too, would want to keep him for ever. Hadn't his father said, last night, that Uncle Henry was to show him the world? But Doctor seemed to understand the boy's fear and said, 'I'm just going to do some boring things at some offices, Nat, and I have to buy some more medicines, do grown-up things, so stay with Uncle Henry, you'll have fun. I'll be back for lunch.'

And truly, Nat had fun with Uncle Henry. The first thing Uncle Henry did was tell him that, long ago, he had been Doctor's teacher, right here in Madras, and that he'd known Doctor way back when Doctor was as small as he, Nat, was now. This was a revelation for Nat. Somehow he believed his father had always been big and all-knowing, like God. It was strange to think of him being a little boy, and having to learn things.

'Did Daddy go to the English Medium Matriculation School?' Nat asked, and Uncle Henry chuckled.

'No, Nat, your daddy didn't go to school till much, much later. I used to come to his home and teach him there, all by himself — well, not quite. There was another little boy and two other little girls. But it wasn't really a school, like the one you go to. Come, Nat, I want to show you some things . . .'

What Uncle Henry had to show him were books — but not like the ones he knew at school. Uncle Henry’s books were in boxes; they were story books that had once belonged to his own children, and they now belonged to Nat. Uncle Henry settled down on a couch, leaning on some cushions against the wall, with Nat on his lap, and read to him, and when Daddy came back they were still like that, both laughing their heads off with tears streaming out of their eyes. After that Nat no longer feared Uncle Henry would keep him.

They went places together, the three of them, in Uncle Henry's motorcar. To a wonderful big garden, with lots of flowers in all colours and an enormous tree, which Daddy said was the biggest banyan tree in the world. This place was called Adyar, and Daddy said he used to come here often when he was a boy. Nat wanted to ask him more about when he was a boy, but now he and Uncle Henry were talking about grown-up things he couldn't understand. And the next day they went to the ocean, and Nat played with the sand on the beach, and even went into the water. But it was difficult to swim because the ocean moved around a lot, rushing forward in long foaming rolls which made him shriek in delight and run away, as if it were a living thing out to get him. It was the most marvellous day in his life, except for the day his father had taken him from the place with all the children.

That afternoon Nat and his father got on the Triumph to return home, but now Nat knew he had a grown-up friend, that uncles were not necessarily bad, and that Uncle Henry would come to see them soon. In the side-bags were three storybooks. His father had promised to read them to him, and Uncle Henry would bring the rest when he came.

Uncle Henry came regularly after that visit, and after a year he built a house of his own next door to Doctor's and moved in permanently. Now Nat had his very own teacher, but so did the village children, because Uncle Henry said that any child who wanted to could come and join Nat. The problem was that the children did not speak English, so Uncle Henry had to give them extra English lessons, which he did in the evenings. And some of them almost caught up with Nat, but most of them didn't, and many had to leave again to help their parents with their work. But, Uncle Henry said, 'It's a beginning, Nat, it's a beginning. When you are big we will have a school of our own, a good school where all the children can go.'

13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SAROJ

Georgetown, 1964

M
A BEGAN
her day with sweeping. Each morning Saroj awoke to the faint slash-slash of Ma's pointer-broom in the yard as she swept away the night and the cobwebs. Ma said sweeping cleared the mind. For Ma it was much more important what you thought than what you did or what you said. ‘Everything begins with thought,’ Ma said. So when she finished sweeping she'd spend half an hour drawing a rice-flour
kolam
at the front door's threshold, every day a different one. She'd begin by letting the rice powder drop from her fingers in a gridwork of dots, and then she'd connect the dots in swirls and lines till a wondrous, complicated symbol emerged, perfectly symmetrical, fragile, a temporary work of art that, by midday, was worn away by the uncaring feet of people leaving and entering the house.

Ganesh, who spoke to Ma about these things, once told Saroj the meaning: 'When you walk across the
kolam,
' he said, 'it draws all your bad thoughts and all your sins out through your foot-soles, so you enter the house purified.'

Saroj had only sneered. Another one of Ma's superstitions.

Yet the day she brought Trixie home she stalled for just a second before leading her over the
kolam
; an eerie sense of guilt, of doing something forbidden, shameful even, overcame her. Suppose there really was some magic, some kind of spell in that
kolam
! Some kind of curse, if you crossed it with wrong intention! It was there still: superstition. So ingrained in her was culture. A diffuse fear of unknown forces seeing all; karma coming back to grab her. Nonsense, she reasoned. Superstition. And anyway, this wasn't really
wrong.
What was wrong about showing Trixie Indrani's wedding sari?

Saroj hadn't foreseen that Trixie was a diehard romantic of the prince-on-a-white-steed and lived-happily-ever-after variety. Mention the word 'wedding' and stars gathered in Trixie's eyes and she'd dream aloud about her own future prince. And though she'd giggled at the idea of Saroj's pre-arranged wedding to a puny prince with protuberant teeth bearing the name of Keedernat Ghosh, and promised to rescue her from such a dire fate, it was only in order to 'fix Saroj up' with a suitor of her own choosing. For Trixie knew lots of boys. Highly marriageable ones.

Saroj wrestled the admission from Trixie that Lucy Quentin thoroughly disapproved of her romantic dreams, and forbade her the Love Picture Library and Mills and Boon novels she thrived on and kept hidden under her mattress.

Trixie in turn wrestled from Saroj the story of Indrani's impending wedding, and a reluctant description of that most exquisite of wedding saris hidden in Ma's sandalwood trunk in the
puja
room, and, with the bull-headed but charming persuasiveness so typical of her, the promise to show it to her, one of these days, when the house was empty.

Today was that day.

'Sshh!' Saroj pressed a finger to her lips and warned Trixie with her eyes. She showed her how to edge along the wall, like thieves, because the middle floorboards were loose and creaked, and they still had a long way to the master bedroom at the far end of the upstairs gallery. In fact, there wasn't all that much danger because Baba was at work and wouldn't be back till late, and Ma had taken Indrani to talk marriage business with the Ramcharans, Indrani's future in-laws, and Ganesh was at a cricket match and wouldn't come home till dark.

But Baba's threatening spirit, dour and disapproving, loomed everywhere, hiding in the very breath of this house, and made you scared even if there was nothing to be scared of. He'd be livid if he knew she'd taken Trixie into the private quarters, and the very idea of Trixie's impure African eyes on Indrani's consecrated wedding sari — well, that didn't bear imagining. But Trixie had pleaded and begged, and self-importance swelled up inside Saroj now as she turned the knob, opened the door, and beckoned her inside, exchanging a smile of conspiracy with her. It gave her a rush of excitement to think of defying Baba so blatantly, bringing an African into his sacred home, into the most sacred room. She felt daring, heroic. A pity that Babu would never find out!

There were two staircases to the upper storey of the Roy house: the hardly-used tower stairs and the main stairs leading from the drawing room to the upstairs inner gallery, a square surrounded by bedrooms and bathrooms. All the rooms had a door into the gallery and another into the next room, so it was possible to circle the house by walking through them.

Saroj's parents' room was the biggest of all, a corner room overlooking the magnificent back garden, huge and light and airy because of the sash windows lining two of the walls, all pushed up to let in the Atlantic breeze. Ma kept the room meticulously neat, which wasn't hard to do because it was so sparsely furnished, just the big bed in the middle with the mosquito net twisted up and slung into the hoop which held it, a polished wardrobe and matching vanity table on top of which was a doily, a hairbrush and comb side by side, the red pencil with which she carefully drew the round red tika between her eyebrows, and the little white jar of Pond's Vanishing Cream which held the entire repertoire of Ma's beauty secrets, a metaphor for Ma herself. Vanishing Ma.

The vanity table had a full-length mirror with side wings and as the two girls tiptoed across the room Saroj saw herself and Trixie in stark contrast: Trixie in a tie-dyed T-shirt and shorts, she herself in the grey-and-black chequered dress Baba made her wear because it was modest, the hemline six inches below the knee, a high neck that emphasised the flatness of her chest. She looked away quickly, cringing, disgusted. She couldn't bear to see herself in a mirror.

When Ma brushed and plaited her hair every morning and evening it was at this mirror, Saroj sitting on the little vanity stool, Ma standing behind, slashing away at the hair with a vigour that seemed to curl out of her little body and whirl all around Saroj.

Her hair would bristle and crackle with static; it seemed Ma was charging her with silent strength at these hair-brushing sessions, the way her right hand with the brush swept briskly to and fro, up and down, back and forth, and Ma's slight torso remained as still as a statue, her left hand firm on Saroj's shoulder to keep her from rocking in time to the sweeping curves of the brush, the gold bangles on her right wrist jangling in rhythm, her little heart-shaped face a centre of calm in the midst of all the crackling movement. And when she'd finished Saroj's hair would fall down her back in an unbroken black glossy sheet, reaching down, down below the vanity stool. Ma would plunge her hands into the mass and hold it up, inspect it for split ends, bend over to open the little door of the vanity and take out the bottle of coconut oil, carefully pour four or five drops onto the palm of her right hand, rub her palms together and then into Saroj's scalp, and finally with deftly flicking fingers plait the hair into one thick bulky rope which when Saroj stood up would dangle way past her bottom. By the time Saroj was of marriageable age, Ma said, it would reach her knees.