The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (3 page)

3

Thursday, 19 May 2011

I saw Vineet outside the station on Tuesday morning. He smiled and walked up to me, and then we walked down to the platform together. The train was late and so we started talking. He is an intelligent man. He reads the
Times of India
in English every morning. He says that he also always reads the Business section. I am always telling Bobby about how important it is to read the newspaper. It greatly improves one's general knowledge, which is important for MBA entrance exams, job interviews and everything else. Vineet told me that the real estate sector is going through some very serious problems and until it is granted industry status, builders, developers and consumers, basically everybody, will suffer. I like to talk about such topics. I know that one day I will talk to my son about them. And then the train came. Vineet and I got on and stood quietly side by side as we normally do.

Before we got off the train he asked me if I would agree to have lunch with him. For two or three seconds I did not say
anything. I had been a little bit troubled that night after our outing to India Gate, a little bit troubled by his behaviour on the phone. But what had he actually done? I like talking to you, that was all he said, and that was all he meant. He did not tell me that he would bring me the stars from the sky. He is not that type of man, I know it. Romance is of no interest to him because that type of love always slows you down on the road to success, and he would allow nothing, he would allow nobody, to slow him down. That is surely why he is still not married. It is the man who walks alone who walks fastest, and Vineet, I am sure, likes to walk alone.

So, I did agree and we met each other for lunch yesterday, Wednesday, after I finished work at the clinic. It was his off-day. In the hotel industry, he told me, Sundays and even gazetted holidays are never guaranteed holidays for employees except if you are very senior or you work in a department like Finance. He works in Food & Beverage or F&B. The timings are very long and you even have to work on Diwali sometimes.

Vineet came all the way to Gurgaon on his motorbike to pick me up. I told him to meet me at the IFFCO Chowk station, and he was there at exactly 12.45 pm, as I had asked him to be. We decided to go to DLF Place in Saket, even though I would have been happy to go to any mall at all. Malls bring peace to me. It is true that it is always nice to see those salespersons in the showrooms dressed in smart clothes and those beautiful displays in the showroom windows, but what I like most is the cool and clean of the building, the cool air and the clean floors. I walk into a mall not to buy things, because everything is at least thirty per cent costlier than what is in the market, and then
everything is also fixed price so you can't even bargain. I walk into a mall not to buy things, but to find peace.

We had a nice time together. We sat near the fountains outside, even though it was quite hot, and we talked about various topics. Vineet was in a talkative mood. I asked him to tell me more about his job and he told me that the hotel he works in is called a boutique hotel, which basically means that it is a small hotel, but even though it is small, it actually has only twenty-one rooms, even then it offers every type of fancy thing that big business executives want, including a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. It even has RO-filtered drinking water in the bathroom taps. He said that there are people who travel such a lot for work that they actually get bored of five-star hotels and prefer to stay in these small but very fancy hotels. His guests are basically foreigners.

Food is the most important thing for a hotel guest, he said, and I am the person who manages it all. The kitchen, the restaurant and room service, I manage it all. And as the F&B manager, the chefs, the restaurant manager, the waiters, all of them report to me.

But can you actually cook, Mr F&B? I said jokily.

I could be the next MasterChef India, he said, with a big smile on his face. If I wanted it, I could be sitting with Akshay Kumar in his car outside Chic Fish drinking beer and eating tandoori chicken.

I laughed. But do you drink beer? I said.

Obviously not, he said.

Actually, I knew that he did not. Not that it matters to me, but I know that Vineet is not that type of man. My husband
also does not drink alcohol, and he does not even smoke. He eats meat from time to time but never ever in the house.

Bobby was a little bit agitated and angry that I came back home at five o'clock because I normally come back from the clinic before two o'clock to give him his lunch. Still, my in-laws greeted me with love, as they always do. Mummyji even offered to make me a cup of tea. That is how they are, my in-laws. They treat me as a daughter. They treat me with love, with love and respect. My father used to say, It is one thing to command respect, and it is another thing to give respect where it is due. Maybe I am a respectable woman from a respectable family, but my in-laws also have big enough hearts to give me the respect that I deserve. This is a rare quality. But then my in-laws are rare people. Money, for example, means nothing to them. These days, when everybody is looking for the most profitable marriage alliances for their children, my in-laws chose me for my family background, not my father's bank balance. My father was a simple shopkeeper, he had a small, little textbook and stationery shop in Meerut, and whatever little bit he earned he spent on his daughter's education and his wife's medical bills. That is why he had nothing in the bank. Still, my in-laws did not mind. They did not want anything from him, not a microwave, not a Maruti, and I will never ever forget how when my father sent them sweets at our engagement time, they kindly accepted the sweets, but then and there they gave back the silver tray on which the sweets were sent. I will never ever forget that. How can I?

And I think I can say that in all the years that I have been married, seventeen years actually, I have also not given them any reason to complain. Even if I think very hard, I can't actually remember one word that I have said or one action that I have committed in all these years that has given them any pain. Maybe there was one time just after my husband left, when my mother-in-law walked into the bedroom one Sunday afternoon and caught me sleeping in my husband's shirt. She was disturbed by that, which I think was fully understandable, and she said that it was a little bit indecent and childish, and obviously it was, and I was ashamed of my behaviour, and I promised to myself and to her that I would never ever behave like that again. But except for this one time, I don't think that I have given any problems at all to my in-laws, and so if from time to time I do something like come back home a little bit late, as I did yesterday, they are not troubled by it.

Still, Bobby was a little bit angry that I came back home at five o'clock, even though I had told him in the morning that Doctor Sahib had given me some extra filing work to do and that I would be late. When I entered the house he was lying on Papaji's cot in front of the TV and refused to look up at me. And obviously he had not eaten his lunch. That boy is almost sixteen years of age, but one thing he won't do is eat without me. Bobby won't even eat with his grandparents. He likes to loiter around in the kitchen while I prepare his food, and my mother-in-law does not allow him to do that, and then he wants me to sit by his side while he eats, as I do almost daily, at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner. And why not? A child has to have action and fun, but he also has to have some
type of steadiness in his life. He gets a lot of peace from it. If he cannot expect this steadiness from his mother, then who can he expect it from? And it is a privilege for a mother, for somebody who has, by God's grace, been blessed with a boy, to fulfil those expectations.

These days my in-laws are worried that Bobby has become too quiet, that he spends too much time just lying around the house with a long face. I have heard them talk about this on the phone with their daughter when they think that I can't hear them, and from time to time they even tell me directly. They think that he has become this way since his father went to Dubai. A boy has to have his father there with him, they say, especially at this age. I just keep quiet. In many ways my husband is a good father. He is not like other men, and he always did a lot for his son. In the mornings, for example, when he was still here in Delhi, he gave Bobby his breakfast while I prepared our tiffins. He also helped him with his homework and took him on outings. Still, a father is a father. A father is a man. Can he well and truly know just by the way Bobby holds his spoon at lunchtime that the girl with the green eyes at the bus stop has ignored him? Can he know just from how Bobby's toes will sometimes twist and bend in a very odd way that the boy has had a difficult time at school? Can he know just by looking at Bobby's eyes that the boy is sick? Can a father know everything that there is to know about his son, even without the use of his sight?

I agree with my in-laws that something is a little bit wrong with Bobby, but the problem is actually not as serious as they think that it is. It is not these one and a half years without his
father that troubles the boy. What troubles him, I am sure, apart from the bus-stop girl and some problems at school, is that the three of us, Bobby, my husband and I, were supposed to be on holiday just now. Before Bobby's father left for Dubai in November 2009, he promised to come back to India this summer and take Bobby for a holiday to Manali. We were supposed to be in the mountains just now, we were supposed to be rolling around in the snow. But see, my husband's boss is a difficult man, he is an Arab, who, like all Arabs, my husband says, hates Indians, and even though my husband is due his annual leave, actually, it is overdue by more than seven months, this Arab won't approve his leave just now. Even though my husband gave him six months' notice as per the rules, the Arab told my husband that if he wanted to go to India now, then he should just buy a one-way ticket to Delhi and forget about coming back. Obviously my husband was very angry about this, he even threatened to leave his job and come back to Delhi, but I told him to be calm and to not worry about it. I have also explained to Bobby that his father is having a difficult time just now, but that things will be fine soon. Bobby is a little bit sensitive, but he is a good boy and he will understand.

Still, the day ended very nicely. It was Doctor Sahib's sixtieth birthday party and apart from all his family and friends, he invited all the clinic staff to a huge lavish dinner at a banquet hall at the Taj Palace Hotel. I asked Bobby if he wanted to accompany me and he agreed. I had to tempt him to come by telling him that there would be a huge buffet. Food, eating food, talking about it, always makes my son happy. Sometimes he tries to tease me by telling me how he wants to be a chef,
but I don't encourage this type of jokiness and I tell him in my strict voice that cooking is fine as timepass, that it would make his future wife a happy woman, but that it is still only timepass and nothing else.

I wore my mother's pink and gold chanderi sari, and Bobby said that I looked pretty. That is the type of sweet boy that he is. And just for me Bobby shaved, and he wet his hair and combed it with a neat side parting, and even though he refused to wear a suit, he agreed to wear a smart shirt and pants. He looked handsome, very handsome. The truth is, and I don't like to boast, but the truth is that he looked more handsome than Doctor Sahib's son.

I have lived in Delhi for a long time, I have lived in Delhi for seventeen years, actually, but I don't think that I have ever been to a party like this before. It is still a little difficult to believe, but there must have been fifty different dishes at least, from fifteen different countries. And there were these chefs actually cooking in front of guests, cooking prawns and pasta and dosas and what not. Rosie said that they are called live stations. She said that this type of banquet would have cost Doctor Sahib four thousand rupees per person at least because it was a five-star hotel and also because they were serving alcohol. There were about three hundred people there. We don't need a maths teacher to tell us how much money Doctor Sahib has to waste.

And it is not only plenty of money that he has to waste, as my own son said to me after I took him up to meet Doctor Sahib and his wife. We had been talking to them for some time. They asked me about my husband, they asked Bobby about his studies and his career plans and what not. They were being
very kind to us, I thought. Then, as we walked away from them, Bobby turned to me and said, Ma, have you noticed how these types of people blabber on and on?

So? I said.

They don't just waste money, he said. They also waste words.

I was a little bit shocked, not by what he had said, and he did say such a lot in less than ten words, but I was shocked by the idea that a child who still has so many years of growing up in front of him would think and speak like such a grown up. How is it that my young son was thinking with the tired, angry mind of somebody old? How was he speaking in those particular sharp, serious tones that only grown ups speak in? But my Bobby spoke the truth. A young crow actually is wiser than its mother.