Of Marriageable Age (48 page)

Nat read this letter aloud to Doctor and Henry after lunch, while they all sat on the verandah sipping their coffee and eating their Milk Bikis. He folded the letter and looked up to gauge their reactions. He himself was in two minds. The thought of a sea voyage, albeit in the company of a shy and sensitive youth who would no doubt demand much of his attention, had its temptations. Nat had always loved the sea but seen little of it, too little, in his lifetime, and there was still a residue of longing for the calming, healing effects of a seaside holiday that the monsoon had snatched from him.

On the other hand, he was at last at
home.
Ever since the village had more or less restored itself to normal Nat had been helping his father again in the surgery and knew now that he was a doctor, that life had called him to task and endowed him with the gift of healing, given him a Golden Hand, and that his place was here.

Here, in the midst of catastrophe and distress, giving all he could to ease the pain of those people who looked up to him for succour, he had found inner peace. This was his place, where he belonged. He knew it now. The thought of leaving even a day earlier than planned seemed a sacrifice he could not make. The very thought of London caused a tweak of panic that sullied that peace; he feared losing again all that he had found, all that he had learned, in the chaos of city life.

With a jolt Nat realised something extraordinary: he was happy. Not just contented but truly, deeply happy with a quiet and pure joy that had settled into his bones, into his being, and seemed so natural, so real, so really, truly him, the way he should be, his very nature, he hadn’t even noticed it.

What’s more: he had not been happy in London. He had had lots of
fun,
lots of
pleasure,
but fun and pleasure do not necessarily equate to happiness; they are of a different substance, a different constitution; a short buzz, a quick thrill, again and again before the dissatisfaction settled in that needed to be removed. A constant
wanting
and
needing
, a nagging sense of emptiness that had to be relentlessly served. Never satisfied, but requiring constant feeding with ever-new stimuli.

Whereas
this
— it required no stimuli. It simply
was.
It might be a cliché, but happiness really did come from within. It was a part of him. Inherent, innate, independent of anything external to his being. A scintillating, serene sense of completion and fulfilment, free of all want and need. This was
home.

But now, the letter. The letter was an appeal, and, he had to admit it, a temptation. The Bannerjis had always been generous to him, taken him in for weekends, offered him friendship and a slice of life he could never have otherwise known, and, yes, that slice of life, though the opposite of what he knew to be his own lot in life, had been essential, for he had grown and matured and made mistakes but learned from those very mistakes. Now they were dangling another slice of that life before him, a first-class ticket on an ocean liner, luxury and pleasure and ease.

Doctor and Henry sat smiling at him, positively grinning, as if they could both witness his innermost thoughts, were privy to his private struggle. What struggle? There was, in fact, no question. He had a return air-ticket to London but in his mind he'd already cancelled the flight, so there was no reason for this letter to change anything at all. As far as Doctor and Henry knew, he would be returning in three weeks, to his job in London and his room in Notting Hill Gate.

'Well?' said Doctor. 'Will you accept?'

'I don't know, really,' hedged Nat. 'I suppose I should accept, seeing as how they've always been so kind, but, Dad, I don't want to leave you here with all the work, I mean . ..'

'Whether you go a week earlier or not won't make much difference to me,' said Doctor. 'So if that's what's bothering you . . .'

'It's not just that,' he said, hesitantly. 'But still, you see, Dad, I don't want to run away from things here, I mean, no, it won't be running away. Because how can you run away from a place you love, and a work you love? The thing is, I've decided to stay here, go on helping in the surgery. When I think of London, when I think of what's waiting for me there, my job, I'd rather say to hell with it and stay here, never leave again…'

Doctor smiled and leaned back against the whitewashed wall of the house.

'You know, Nat, sending you over to the West was a big, big risk. I could have lost you, and I almost did, and I let you go knowing the world would stretch out its tentacles to you and try its best to suck you in. But I took the risk. Because the work we do here is not for weaklings, not for escapists. You've got to be proven by fire before you can take it up, you've got to know your weaknesses before you can know your strengths, and that's why I let you go. I wanted you to be proven, I wanted you to know all there is to know, and see what the world can offer you, and then make your choice, of your own free will, and not because you never had a choice.'

'It all seems so far away, Dad, unreal. Like another person, in disguise, a clown or some ridiculous parody of myself, tripping around in circles and not even aware he's playing the fool. And now, I've grown so much. I can't go back to that. Dad, let me stay!'

'No. I told you, the first day you came back. We need you, but we need you
qualified.
When I first sent you away it was for just that: to get qualified. All right, so you had other ideas and went your own way for a time. But Nat, if you're serious there's no other way. No Indian doctor in his right mind will want to come and work here for practically nothing, much less a European one. And I can't do all the work alone. I've managed so far and if I have to I'll go on managing. Go back to university and finish what you began. Go back, Nat. Go back and become a doctor. Take the Bannerji offer.'

42

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

SAROJ

Georgetown, 1969

M
A
. Dead.
The two words just didn't fit together. They nullified each other. If there was Ma there could not be death because Ma was life.

How could someone who was alive, just be
dead?
Just not
exist
any more? Just not
be?
How can anyone just stop existing?

But Ma was dead. Gone.

Saroj turned into stone. She registered the outside world. She saw Trixie, desperately trying to get the stone to react. Trixie crying, and begging Saroj to cry, but she couldn't because stones don't cry. She saw Lucy Quentin, sensible and kind and trying to make life go on as before and saying all the sensible, kind things one says at a time like this.

Baba came. Distraught and dishevelled, trying to comfort a daughter beyond comfort. Saroj heard him quarrel with Lucy Quentin.

She even knew what they were quarrelling about. She heard every word. Baba wanted her to go with him to Indrani's; Lucy Quentin wanted her to stay put. Lucy Quentin won. Baba couldn't very well carry Saroj in his arms from the house.

She was a pretty heavy stone.

So she stayed where she was. She didn't even go to the wake. She felt nothing. Stones have no feeling. Stones are impervious to grief.

And yet, the human spirit has an extraordinary power of recuperation: even a human spirit disguised as stone. At the end of the week Saroj felt the first vague stirring inside the stone of her heart, like the very light touch of a feather, like Ma stroking a healing balm into the dense clod of nothingness, and from that balm came healing, and life, and movement. And after that the awakening was swift.

Saroj cried. She cried in great heaving sobs. She wailed with grief; she pummelled her pillow in anguish, and raised her arms to the sky.
Why? Why? Oh Why?

And then she stopped crying and started thinking again. For the first time she took in the details of what had happened. By that time the cause of the fire was clear: arson.

A witness had seen a bunch of drunk black hooligans on Waterloo Street that night, shortly before the fire, one of them carrying what looked like a bottle of kerosene, but it could just as easily have been a bottle of rum. The Persauds next door had heard rowdy singing coming from the house at around midnight; Mr Persaud had looked out the window and seen people on the bridge and shouted at them to leave, and they had gone. But the gate had not yet been locked for Ganesh and Baba were not yet home, and the hooligans must have returned, entered the property, and thrown a Molotov cocktail into the kitchen, because that's where the fire started. It spread to the living room, and fire was first seen leaping from the downstairs windows at the back of the house. By the time the fire engines arrived the house was an inferno.

Ma's charred remains were found near the door to the tower. Her sword was still in her hands. She had tried to prise open the door, even as Saroj had done the day of her suicide attempt, but the smoke had overcome her, smoke billowing up the internal staircase from the bottom to the top storey and over the walls into the bedrooms. The one blessing is that she had died of smoke poisoning, and not in the agony of being burnt alive.

Questions upon questions, and answers that in retrospect made a farce of Ma's death, a senseless, avoidable tragedy of errors. Why didn't this wooden house have a fire escape? Why, a fire escape had been ordered only recently, but unfortunately… and anyway, the tower under normal circumstances was a perfectly adequate fire escape, as long as it did not burn first. In fact, the tower was the only part of the house left standing. Then why hadn't Mrs Roy escaped down the tower staircase? Why, because the door to the tower was bolted from
inside
the stairwell.

And why was the door bolted? Because the daughter of the family had bolted it a few days earlier in a fit of pique. And why hadn't the trapped woman circled the upstairs bedrooms to reach the tower from the other direction? Why, because the father of the house had, two years earlier, bolted the bathroom from the connecting door to the next room, that of the elder brother, in an effort to imprison the aforementioned daughter, and no-one had ever thought to unbolt that never-needed door.

And why wasn't the son of the house at home, who could have opened the door to the bathroom from his side? Why, because he was busy courting an African girl, the daughter of that black big-mouthed Minister of Health. And why was the father of the house not at home, who might have been of some use in breaking down the doors, or tying sheets together, or in some other way? Why, because he was at a political meeting ranting about African violence. The circle was complete.

The
Chronicle
tore the Roys' story apart, laid bare all the lurid details, gloated over their mistakes, dispensed guilt in all directions. The only one who escaped their wrath was Ma, the victim of all their petty bickerings and selfish shenanigans.

'
T
ELEPHONE
, Saroj.'

'Mmmh?' Saroj looked up from the
Chronicle,
from the middle-page spread dissecting the fire. Even the editorial was about the Roy family. Deodat Roy had a big mouth, the editor said; he had been cultivating racial hatred for years and this was the predictable and tragic result.

'It's for you,' Lucy Quentin called. Saroj hadn't even heard it ringing but got up now and walked over to take the receiver.

'Hi.' It was Ganesh's voice, but a different Ganesh. A stricken Ganesh, the ruins of the brother Saroj had known. Just as she was the ruins of his sister. They were all guilty, Baba, Ganesh and Saroj. Everyone said so. It was public. All three of them, working in unconscious collaboration, had killed Ma. They would live the rest of their lives burdened with this terrible knowledge. But this was the first time Ganesh had spoken to Saroj since the fire.

'How are you, Gan?'

'Holding up, I suppose. Look, Saroj, I can't stay in this country a day longer. I just wanted to tell you. I've booked a flight to London for next week. Maybe we could meet before then?'

'Oh, Gan!' Now this — shock, grief, guilt, and now Ganesh leaving so suddenly.

'We've got to move on, Saroj, it's what Ma would have wanted. That's what I wanted to tell you. That's why I'm leaving, just a bit sooner than planned. But Baba told me you're not talking or anything. You're better now?'

'Yes, but, Gan…'

And then it came: all the grief, all the guilt, all the darkness, poured out to Ganesh in a one a passionate, pleading, soul-wrenching gush.

‘Gan, I can’t stay here without you! Don’t go! Don’t leave me!’

Finally, Ganesh put an end to it.

'Saroj, calm down. It's over and we have to get on with our lives. You've got your O Levels in less than four weeks and you've missed two weeks of school already. I want you to go back to school on Monday and work as hard as you can and get brilliant results the way you would have if all this hadn't happened.'

'Gan! I couldn't! I can't even
think
of school at a time like this, O Levels or not!'

'You
must,
Saroj. You really must; that’s what I wanted to tell you. Listen, Baba's planning again to marry you off. I heard him talking to Mr Narain. The Ghosh people won't have you any more but he's looking for a new husband. He's saying now Ma's gone you need someone to take care of you, and…'

'I don't believe it! Not after all this!'

'It's true! And once he's got you married off he's emigrating to England, having fulfilled all his duties here. So just get those exams, d'you hear?'

‘That… that…’ Saroj spluttered in her wrath, unable to find the words.

‘Save your energy, Saroj. You’ll need it for those exams.’

43

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

NAT

Bangalore, 1969