The neckline of Rekha’s
blouse plunged to a deep U in the back. It not only plunged, but fitting closely to her
body, its mixed hue of green and gold glimmered in the evening light. It shocked Arun
Chakravarthy a little, to see her skin exposed this way. He felt an urge to lift the
material hanging from her shoulder and drape it across her back. Not that he was a prude
or anything but he did not want anyone thinking his wife was too forward or something. He
was already seated and waiting in the car for her when they had left home, but even if he
had seen the blouse then, he would have been hesitant to say anything to Rekha. This was
because he was unsure of what he could say, where he stood with her. God knows what made
him talk about Erika today, but one thing it was not, it had nothing to do with scruples
about honesty or anything like that. Maybe he was just bragging, keep her a little off
balance. Whatever it was he did not now know how to deal with the rapid shifts and shapes
things were taking.
Rekha withdrew from the back seat with the
dish she had brought. It was covered with a glass lid, the edges sealed with a masking
tape, a couple of strips running across it for good measure. She held it carefully away
from her body as she walked, the gravel crunching under her feet. Smug and safe, he
thought. His skin sprouted fresh sweat.
He pulled a hand-kerchief and wiped his
face, folded it and stuffed it back in his back pocket.
"Give," he said extending his
hands.
Rekha walked past him and ahead as if he
had not spoken. Her green-gold sari rustled, the sari border lifting in little waves over
her heels. He continued to watch for a while. In the muffled August air her heels on the
pavement chirped at him. For a single small moment Arun was tempted to turn around and get
back into the car and drive away.
He fell in step. Closely parked cars lined
the street as they walked up the little hill to the Sinhas’ house. He recognized
quite a few of them at the curb and this made him uneasy, thinking how late they were. It
was not just the lateness of course but this whole business about this party for his new
bride that carved out a little hollow place in his stomach.
The front door was left open. He held the
storm-door for Rekha. As she passed him, the top of her head was level with his chin. He
caught the notes of the scent she wore, and it reminded him of something, something else
someone wore maybe.
They both stood in the air-conditioned
hall. Evening gloom hung in the corners of the dark and narrow corridor. The brightly lit
kitchen at the end of the hall was a mosaic of the brilliant fuschia, orange and yellow of
saris. The smell of fried poories, closely followed by layers of other flavors made him
hungry. A couple of women turned around to look at them from the kitchen, one of them
Asha. Her eyes took a quick swipe at Rekha’s face and then she looked at him and
smiled and nodded. What has Rekha told her already? The muscles on his cheeks and mouth
became rigid. So he waved. He stood next to Rekha not sure if he should follow her to the
kitchen where she was about to take the dish.
Someone was loudly making a point in the
living room and then there was laughter. Arun ran a hand over his brows.
"So! What excuse do you have for being
late now? Haanh?" Ravi Sinha emerged from the living room, rolling up the sleeves of
the white long cotton kurta he wore over khaki pants, exposing thick, dark arms. He
grinned and threw an arm over Arun’s shoulder, his large face comforting, like an
unmade bed on a cold morning. Someone flipped a switch and the hall lit up with bright
light. Asha had come into the hall and the two women stood under the light, the colors of
their sarees illuminated.
"My fault, Ravi. Daddy called from
Bombay, just as we were leaving," Arun heard his wife lie smoothly. "You know
how it is. And then we had to call Ajay in San Jose to give him the message" she said
and allowed Ravi to take the dish from her. Arun noticed Asha staring at Rekha’s
hair. It had curled up close around her neck now, as if the cutting had made it recoil in
shock. She had drawn the curls behind her ears, making her cheeks and chin look naked.
Ravi’s hands extended to receive
the dish, like two shovels. Arun watched his wife, walking beside his friend, her face
upturned in profile. She seemed unfamiliar in this hall. Ravi leaned slightly towards her,
inclining his head to listen, and then the two of them walked into the brightness of the
kitchen and disappeared behind the wall. He heard squeals of greetings - your hair! you
cut your hair! - and response from a place that he could not see.
"Arun, come in, can I get you
something to drink?"
Asha smiled, her eyes shining. He looked at
her and thought about how much she hated him. He knew this, that she hated him, because
several times in the past Asha had talked of men who have American girl-friends and then
go home to marry an Indian bride. She believed, she had told him this, she believed such
men should be shot.
He looked across a ruby-red Bhokari rug and
into the brightly-lit living room which contained two large sofas, a chair and an ottoman,
all covered in white. Chairs from the dining room were arranged around the periphery of
the room for extra seating. On the coffee table were little paper plates with half eaten
samosas, smeared with green chutney. The lamps on the sides of the sofa were made of brass
pots topped with black shades. He remembered the pots just like these that his grandmother
used to heat water for the bath. Splotches of color from the brocade pillows interlaced
with white and pastel sport shirts and the tan and brown mostly male faces.
"Go to hell, " Rekha had said. Go
to hell. Go to hell? Indian women talk this way?
"Hey Arun! So Rekha’s visa came
through! Congratulations! The Mehtas' son-in-law is still waiting. Six months and
he’s still waiting."
He grinned and nodded and murmured
something. He did not want to put on a new face, not just yet and so he acted like he was
heading towards someone.
He found a spot on a single sofa next to a
window. Across the darkness the houses had come alive. Globes of lights bloomed on the
yards. He looked down at the clear cubes floating in amber liquid in the glass someone had
thrust in his hands. He did not remember asking for it but he must have. He took a sip. It
felt good going down a thirsty tongue, the tiny bubbles exploding in the back of the
mouth, wetting it. A long thin line, a scratch, ran from the base of his thumb, to the
wrist. It was not fresh, the slim welt had subsided now and the skin was flat like nothing
had happened. It was now covered with a hairline scab. If he peeled it would bleed in tiny
beads. He ran a finger over it feeling the bumpy scratchy texture and when he slightly
pressed it, there was a blunt pain from somewhere under the layers of skin. She had held
his hands away when she pushed him out of the bathroom. Her hair, what was left of it, was
wet and clung to her head in ringlets. The rest of it was on the white tiled floor, the
orange handles of the scissors on top. There was something obscene about the way they laid
on the floor, in long black swatches, like rags. In the bright lights from the bathroom
ceiling, her face was swollen and red. It had frightened him, he had not expected this
kind of a reaction, although he was not sure what he had expected.
He got up and moved to the table thinking
he’d fill his glass. The table was actually laden with a buffet. Everything he loved.
"Here Arun, come on." Asha handed
him a plate, flashed him a smile, her lips drawn thin across her mouth. He clutched it,
the Styrofoam plate squeaking in his hand. He looked at the potatoes, glistening in
turmeric oil, green methi leaves clinging to it. Next to it was a tray of whole-wheat
puris ready to fold the potatoes in.
"Aloo-Methi?"
He felt Asha’s eyes on his cheeks. He
rubbed his cheek. He never understood, well may be did and did not, what exactly bothered
Asha about Erika, but she drove her disapproval directly at him like a missile. What was
it, the white skin? That she was alien to the culture? He guessed, somewhat by instinct,
that it was not any of that but something else and maybe all of it too, all rolled into a
maddening accusation of selling out. What the heck, who was she to judge?. He had then
stopped coming.
He looked at her now. She had a pleasant
face even if shapeless, her long dark hair tied in some sort of a knot at the nape. Her
eyes under sleepy looking lids and perched above a long prominent nose always watched, as
if she knew. Just knew what has been left out: the real price of the remodeled kitchen,
the reason why the Pandya kid did not come home for Thanksgiving break. Why Arun’s
looking like a jackass right now. Arun tasted loathing like grit in the back of his mouth.
"A little later Asha, I‘ll wait a
little bit."
"Ohh really, not hungry? I know. I
can’t eat either when it’s so hot like this," Asha gurgled. Her forehead
and nose were shiny. "Rekha looks cute with her hair that way, well, anything will
look good on her."
He nodded.
"Did you cut it?"
Blood pumped in his ears and he was blinded
for an instant, as if caught in a sudden glare. He kept his eyes on the dish of potatoes,
glistening in turmeric oil under the brilliant light from above, the flecks of mustard
seeds here and there.
"What?".
Asha looked at him without the smile.
"I said do you like it?"
He turned and walked into the kitchen. He
walked into men and women, laughing and teasing, walked in to greetings with that touch of
familiarity that would be out of place in another crowd, in another place. He didn’t
know if he had missed it and maybe it was not that that he missed it but had forgotten
something about it. Often he had tried to put a distance between himself and this unbidden
stepping into his personal space. It had to do with being with Erika, of course he knew
that, but was it her, or him, or them? Is this what she sensed and why she said he was too
needy?
Stainless steel stockpots sat on
counter tops, on top of burners, their sides smeared with greasy fingerprints. Spilled
curry had dried to a bright yellow. And then he saw Rekha at the counter, arranging
poories on a platter.
Her back was turned to him, her hair
stopping at her neckline. Two half-moon shaped scars were visible right below that, traces
of childhood chicken pox, possibly. Thinking of her as a little girl with chicken pox made
him feel he did not know her at all although it seemed before that he always had.
He placed his plate on the counter and
Rekha turned and watched him over someone’s silk covered shoulder.
"Aren’t you eating?"
Her voice floated towards him over the
noisy kitchen. It soothed him in a strange way. Perhaps it was the husky quality of its
tone, which had surprised him when he had first met her, or perhaps the sheer blandness in
the question. It made him want to say things to her. He was certain if he opened his mouth
there would be no sound.
"Ravi was looking for you," she
said.
"Yeah. I’ll see him."
She looked at his face and then looked away
as someone started talking to her.
He cleared his throat.
"Rekha! Are you getting it, the
poories are going fast!" Asha rushed in.
Rekha picked up the tray of poories and
followed Asha into the dining room. He stood for a few moments unable to move, looking at
the spot where she had stood. The space vanished quickly as someone else moved in to his
vision. He walked around the kitchen counter toward the back door. He held on to the tone,
for just a little while longer, that tone he thought he had heard in her voice.
The hot air trapped in the porch hit him
like a body blow. He quickly opened the screen door to the deck and stepped out into the
night. The door creaked and snapped shut behind him.
The baked timber of the deck was warm. He
took a deep breath but the warm air did not fill his lungs. The night had settled into
dark shapes, lightly around the bushes and densely packed around the conical shapes of the
tall evergreens, fragrant with summer smells. He walked, the grass compressing with no
resistance under his feet, into the humid darkness, grateful for the mindless din of the
night insects.
Sounds of laughter rose from inside. The
windows hung like pictures suspended in the blackness. Luminescent, revealing many
familiar face and many he did not know, their lips moving, smiling, without sound. The
light from the windows fell at angles on the grass and he stood outside of the lighted
area. The walls were washed ochre by the lamp light. Even as a boy, sitting in the
alternating shadow and light of the passing lampposts as the car whizzed by, he liked
watching those windows that revealed lighted rooms, a chair at an angle, books on shelves,
someone’s face. The windows of his childhood did not have glass panes. They were
covered by a grill, often simple vertical ones, sometimes in fancy curls and whorls. The
doors were never shut. Warm air flowed in carrying the smells from the ocean and the
streets below, laden with mist in the monsoon. And through those windows, the house’s
sounds and smells, voices and radio music flowed out. Often he was lulled to sleep in the
dark corner of the car, watching the windows pass by.
The porch door creaked and then the door to
the terrace. Ravi’s shirt gleamed white in the night light. He hooded his eyes with
his hand and peered into the dark, holding the door open..
"Hey Arun! Arun?"
"Hi."
"Arun, what’s the matter,
are you OK?"
No, he wanted to tell his friend, nothing
is OK yaar.
"Fine. I’m fine. Just needed some
air, that’s all. Go on in Ravi, I’ll be in soon"
Ravi stood where he was, holding on
to the door. Then he let go and the door snapped shut. Picking up two plastic chairs from
the deck he walked over to where Arun stood. He plunked them down, separated them, threw
himself on one, filling the chair. He pointed Arun to the other .
"It is hot as hell here. What’re
you doing, eating air?" he asked running his sleeve over his forehead. "Or is it
eating you?"
He was grateful for Ravi’s company but
did not want him to know that. He stopped, dropped his head back on his shoulder and
rolled, left to right. The moon broke clear of the clouds for a moment and then was
engulfed again.
"I ran into Erika in Seattle, last
month. She called."
Ravi sat still.
"I miss her Ravi. When she left, I
thought I’ll never see her again, I wanted to never see her again." When he
showed up in the middle of the afternoon at their house, Asha had let him in and then
immediately called Ravi to come home from work. They waited in her kitchen sipping the tea
she made and which he could not taste, nor could he understand any of the words she spoke.
Ravi clasped his hands over his head, and
leaned back on the chair. His gold watch glinted.
Arun wished he would say something, but
knew he would not want to hear it.
"Rekha is a very nice girl. Smart,
pretty. This is the time to think? Now? Don’t try so hard to fuck up what you
have."
"Thanks. I needed that."
"What do you want from me? You got
dumped Arun, but good. Forget about it."
Forget it. Forget it. Marriage heals
everything, his mother had said. Just pick a nice girl, any girl. When she handed him the
manila folder containing photographs and letters he felt so ashamed, insulted and angry.
"What, you put it on the billboard in Parry’s Corner?" he had asked,
"my son needs a wife?".
It works, she had answered, one way to find
a wife when you have only three weeks of vacation.
"What’s with the hair,
anyhow?" Ravi’s voice sounded loud.
The hair. He now remembered, standing
on the grass, looking at his friend who was waiting for a response, trying to collect the
words to answer him, that her hair that night had reminded him of sandalwood oil and the
roses she had worn in her hair on their wedding reception. His body shivered slightly.
Arun slowly lowered himself into the chair,
placed his hands on the armrest, and when his back rested on the chair, allowed his
muscles to relax. He sat quietly. He observed the heaviness in his chest that comes from
the two most awful feelings - guilt and regret.
"Ravi, do you know if Asha loves
you?"
Ravi did not answer. Arun felt a little
foolish, afraid he might have overstepped a boundary.
Ravi dug into the pocket of his kurta and
took out a cigarette pack. "I was, what twenty-five, yeah twenty-five when we were
married. I had to leave her behind in Agra for six months after that, when I came here.
And then she joined me. Does she love me? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I
don’t even know if what I feel for her is what you call as love."
"You know."
"I don’t know. I
don’t," he waved his cigarette around. "I just feel married, it feels like
. . .well like married, like life."
"With Erika, I.... I thought...."
"Like in the movies."
"Not like the movies.
C’mon."
Ravi laughed a little awkwardly and then
became still. Arun took a cigarette from him.
"It has never occurred to me to ask,
you know? Is this love, is this not love? If this is love, then I don’t know when it
happened," Ravi said.
They smoked quietly.
"But I can tell you one thing,"
Ravi leaned forward, "I know if she wanted to leave me tomorrow, for whatever reason,
whatever reason, no amount of my loving her is going to stop her, I don’t think. And
you know what? I don’t know the name for what makes her stay either."
This is how his parents lived; his
sisters, in marriages to men chosen for them. Love seemed, not just irrelevant, but
something trivial, even vulgar. It should not be so hard, Erika had said, in the gray
light of a wintry afternoon, running a pink nail along his cheek, her blues eyes like fine
marbles, it should not be so hard to love, Arun. Thinking of that filled him with despair.
"Yeah," he said. "Yes, I
know."
"You don’t know, you
don’t," Ravi said, laughing at him. "You think you do, but you don’t.
I don’t. I don’t know what this is all about. Oh leave it yaar, just get on with
it. After ten, fifteen years it hardly matters, one gets used to things. All this
love-shove, other things take over, and you don’t even think about it. "
"Hmmm." When you have never been
in love, when you have never felt that tightness in your gut, how would you know what you
have not missed? And one look at Asha, who can think of love after that, you poor bastard.
"Well it’s not forever like
chasing girls in college you know. Then of course you whistle at them, follow them around
and all that and even think this special girl means something to you, even get all
heartachey about this love and all that, but in the back of your mind, you know, you
always know, this marriage thing is something different. And that’s just the way it
is."
His voice softened when he asked,
"What’s going on between you two?"
Arun leaned back and drew long on his
cigarette. He cleared his throat. "Rekha has asked that I leave for a little
while."
When Rekha had emerged from the bathroom,
she had combed and pulled her hair into a rubber band, and it laid smooth and glossy from
the dampness. Now it had lost that obscenity that he saw in the chopped off hair earlier.
Tame. The forehead beneath the hairline shone. She had lined her eyes with fresh kohl. She
kept the kohl in a small silver box on a shelf in the bathroom and many times he had seen
her lean into the mirror and apply the dark stain to the rims of her eyes, the little
finger crooked. It transformed her, all of her, when she rimmed her eyes that way.
"Leave," she had said, her expression offering no clues except for the eyes,
which were brilliant . "Go. Go to her, if that’s what you want. Just... just go.
Go. I can take care of myself."
He had looked at her dumbly. And then she
had started cooking the dish to take for the party.
"What do you mean, leave?" Ravi
asked.
"I told her about Erika. She asked."
"Erika? What does Erika got to do with
...You’ve been seeing Erika? Your brain’s on a holiday?" Ravi said in
rapid-fire Hindi.
"I’m not seeing her, of course
not! But I told her I’m not over it yet... I’m not. . .I don’t know. I
don’t know. I asked for time to sort this out."
"You asked for time?" Ravi
laughed, with no mirth, exploding the quiet night. "And then what?"
And then what? He held his arms tighter
across his chest as though holding something in. The tied-back drapery revealed the
insides of the windows in reversed hourglass shapes. Ravi’s words flowed around him.
Dinner was over and people were moving away into the living room, the room becoming bare
but for the furniture. There were no more faces, just the corner of the table and a chair
at an angle. A part of a painting was visible above the buffet. Someone moved around
inside. And then he saw a patch of her green sari, and then her elbow. She turned and
moved closer toward the window, facing him now, peering into the dark. He looked at her,
the round face against the glass pane, the short hair forming a new profile. He believed
that he could feel the barest hint of tenderness, fragile and fluid, inside of him.
Although he knew she could not see him, he believed, also, that she was looking for him.
