Ghalib at Dusk Page 8

  ‘Where you been, where you been, my dear? The girls were all asking for you,’ Kamla burst forth. Then she paused, guessing that something wasn’t quite right from the way her friend was holding onto her son. ‘You been ill? What’s the matter? I can tell from your face. This is your son Rahul, no? I haven’t seen him since Rukmini’s wedding. Studies at IIT Bombay, na? Smart chap. Come, come, sit down. Girls! Girls! Devi Aunty is here.’

  Rahul used to have a silent crush on Rukmini, Kamla Aunty’s daughter. He recalled her wedding and the feeling he’d had sitting in the midst of wedding guests that chilly winter evening: he’d never amount to anything, never be able to win the love of a beautiful woman like Rukmini. Kamla and his mother had been college mates. Perhaps then Kamla knew this Gul Nihalani, Rahul thought. Was his mother going to mention he was coming to see her this evening? No, she wouldn’t want Kamla to guess she was here to get her hair dyed despite her illness, because she was going to meet a man from her past.

  The ‘girls’ fell to his mother with enthusiasm. His mother was known to those skinny dark giggly girls. He felt unwanted in their presence, and they seemed to have dismissed him altogether. His mother was explaining in her new halting manner about her stroke, while one of the girls was applying dye with a brush to her hair. Kamla was standing near the reclining chair his mother had been settled into, vigorously shaking her head and clucking officiously to show complete sympathy with his mother’s account of the last few months. Rahul sat turning the pages of magazines. He turned to the page he could never resist, where readers asked questions about their sexual problems, which he found both fascinating and repulsive. He read about a mother who’d been masturbating her son since he was thirteen, and was now seeking advice because the son was twenty-two and still wanted her to continue pleasuring him. Did such things really happen or did people make up these stories to shock and get themselves printed in magazines?

  One of the girls brought his mother back to him. He stood up, feeling embarrassed, and quickly put down the Femina he was reading. He glanced at his mother and immediately felt irritated. Her hair was totally black, too black to appear natural, and it was combed back stiffly, like a nest. Her face looked old and weary. The perfectly done hair that didn’t seem to belong to her face made her appear pathetic, like some fool in a Shakespearean tragedy. There was something bashful about her gait as she was led slowly up to him. She didn’t meet his eye. Her old age should’ve been full of grace, a fitting end to a life spent in self-denial. Instead, she had become someone he pitied, even felt ashamed of.

  They were nearing their apartment building on C.G. Road. ‘Tell the rickshaw to stop at the market. Buy mithai from Rasranjan. There’s nothing in the house,’ she said.

  He sighed. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to buy sweets for her friend, but it didn’t pay to argue with her, so he asked the rickshawwalla to pull into the market.

  ‘Get something nice,’ she said as he was getting out of the rickshaw.

  ‘How about pistachio rolls? They’re about four hundred rupees a kilo,’ he muttered, and started to walk away.

  The shop boy behind the counter was wearing a torn greyish undershirt. His hands were sticky from the syrupy sweets he was weighing out for customers. Sweat gleamed on his upper lip and every few minutes, he turned his face and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve. The spot on his shirt had turned dark with frequent wiping. The seth sat behind the cash counter, resplendent and barrel-like in a starched white kurta with gold studs, collecting cash from the customers and handing back change. Rahul had to wait as there were three or four people before him. He glanced at the sweets. The ‘nice’ ones his mother wanted were sitting like jewels, dusted with silver foil in small stainless steel trays: delicate lime-green pistachio rolls and creamy white cashew barfis shaped like diamonds. A few satiated flies hovered sluggishly above them. One kilo of this stuff would cost half a month’s pay for that boy, he reflected.

  When his turn came, he found himself asking for half a kilo of gulab jamuns instead of the pistachio rolls. It’s foolish to spend so much money on sweets, he reasoned. Besides, what was so special about this man who was coming to see his mother?

  ‘What did you get?’ she asked the moment he reached the rickshaw.

  ‘The pistachio rolls didn’t look that fresh. I got gulab jamuns.’

  She looked hurt.

  ‘They’d just made the jamuns,’ he lied. ‘The boy told me they’re really fresh.’

  She didn’t reply and sat staring at her hands until they got home.

  He gave the box of sweets to the watchman to bring up, and sliding his arm around her waist, wrapping her right arm around his own, they started up. It took them at least twenty minutes to get up. They rested at every landing. It was almost seven-thirty, and the man, Gul, was to come around eight. Rahul feared the outing had exhausted his mother, and he wanted her to lie down until her friend arrived. He led her to the bedroom and turned on the fan. It was beginning to get dusky outside. He could hear the chaotic cries of birds circling the evening sky. The dust-caked neem outside the bedroom window stood dark and motionless. It would soon fill with the cacophony of birds settling down in its branches for the night.

  ‘I won’t turn on the lights,’ he said. ‘I want you to rest.’

  ‘I am rested. I don’t want to be in the dark,’ she said in a voice that he could tell was displeased.

  ‘All right,’ he said, switching on the light before going out.

  He barely had time to wash and change out of his sweaty shirt before the doorbell rang. Rahul glanced at the wall clock. It was exactly eight, and in a moment the eight chimes sounded. He opened the door a little apprehensively, recalling the self-assured voice of Gul on the phone, and the way he had asked for his mother by her first name. He had very briskly suggested he would come at eight o’clock, and Rahul had simply agreed. Gul was most likely a businessman, Rahul had calculated.

  A tall, heavy-set man in a grey suit stood in the doorway. Rahul noticed his dark leather briefcase and the glint of a gold watch below his jacket sleeve.

  ‘Hello, son. I’m Gul. Gul Nihalani,’ the man said, wiping his forehead. Rahul nodded and stood aside to let him in. Gul strode into the living room, took off his jacket, and settled down on the sofa. He began to look around, taking stock of his new surroundings. Rahul began to feel discomfited by the man’s obvious ease. He turned on the fan and mumbled something to the effect that he was going to get his mother. He didn’t like Mr Nihalani, he decided, though he couldn’t have said exactly why.

  He stopped short as he entered the room, and his eyes fell on his mother. She was sitting up in bed, her feet dangling down. There was something about her face that made him start. Getting closer, he realized she had done it up. How had she managed to reach for things from her dresser? Without help of a mirror, she had applied lipstick, which was leaking at the corners of her mouth, and dabbed some more lipstick on her cheeks. There was a reddish shiny patch on each cheek. He would’ve laughed, had he not felt so appalled. What was that man going to think of her? She looked like a clown, with her red mouth, the red patches on her cheeks, and the stark black hair sitting like a wig on her sad wrinkled face.

  ‘Your friend,’ he said, getting her to her feet, ‘is here.’

  He sat her down on the sofa across from Mr Nihalani, the red imitation leather sofa he had seen since he was a boy, and never before really seen in all its shoddiness until today. Gul had immediately stood up on seeing her enter. If he felt shocked by her appearance, his smiling face didn’t betray it. Rahul left the room immediately. He couldn’t be there when that man was forming his impressions about his mother. He went into the kitchen and started arranging the gulab jamuns on a plate. He stayed in the kitchen a long time. He could hear that man telling her he was here on business, how much more polluted and noisier he found the city since his last visit, about his wife and sons in Bombay, his shock at finding her so weakened by the stroke. His mother sa
id very little, and in such a faint voice he couldn’t make out her words. He took the plate of jamuns and a glass of water and set it down on the small table next to Gul. This time he decided to stay in the room with his mother.

  ‘Please have the jamuns,’ his mother said. ‘I’m not well, or I wouldn’t have let you go without dinner.’

  ‘No formalities, please,’ replied Gul, picking up a jamun and placing it whole in his mouth. He took out a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his hands. He drank almost the entire glass of water. Then he cleared his throat, took out the handkerchief once more, and wiped his mouth.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Devi,’ he said, glancing quickly at Rahul. ‘Life is so unpredictable, and who knows when we might see each other again.’ The man appeared ill at ease for the first time since entering their apartment.

  There was a long silence in the room. Rahul decided he wasn’t leaving them alone. He didn’t want to miss anything. His mother’s chin was almost touching her breast, as if the muscles holding it at the neck had suddenly slackened.

  ‘It’s actually about that letter,’ Gul continued. ‘You know the letter I’m talking about, I suppose.’

  His mother didn’t look up. Gul was silent again as if waiting for Rahul to leave, but when he didn’t, he went on.

  ‘Well, it’s all in the past, but still. It’s best to clarify these things, I feel. It was an important letter from you that, well, but it never got to me in time.’

  There was a soft sigh from his mother, which Rahul thought could have been a stifled sob.

  ‘Mother got it somehow, and surprisingly, never gave it to me,’ Gul continued. ‘Funny, I always thought she liked you a lot. Anyway, I found it years later among her papers, after she died. Had I got it in time, well, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.’ He turned to Rahul. ‘Son, may I have another glass of water? It’s really hot, and we aren’t really even into summer.’

  Rahul got up unwillingly. He saw his mother raise the handkerchief she’d been clutching in her good hand to her eyes. He felt angry at this stranger for bringing up wounds buried in her past. What twisted satisfaction was this man here to derive from upsetting a sick old woman?

  He was re-entering the living room with the water when the doorbell rang. Gul got up to answer it.

  Gul introduced himself to Rahul’s father who seemed slightly taken aback at being welcomed into his own home by a stranger. Rahul noticed how small a man his father was beside the towering frame of Mr Nihalani. His father’s clothes, to which Rahul never paid any attention, now looked worn and grimy. His father was smiling a little uncertainly. Rahul walked up to him and took the tiffin and cloth bag he always carried for buying vegetables on the way home. He wanted these articles out of Mr Nihalani’s sight as quickly as possible.

  ‘My family and Devi’s were neighbours in Hyderabad, Sind; before Partition, you know,’ Mr Nihalani was saying when Rahul returned once again. ‘I remember Devi’s father. Uncle used to be our family physician. Very jolly man. After Partition, he decided to move his family to Gujarat. And we went and settled in Bombay.’

  ‘Yes, my father-in-law was a remarkable man. I had him as one of my teachers in medical college,’ Rahul’s father said. He took off his glasses and wiped his face and shiny balding head with a handkerchief. ‘He found me my first job. And found me a wife, too.’

  Rahul glanced at his father. He could tell he was nervous from his attempt at humour.

  Gul was smiling. ‘When Devi is better, why don’t both of you come to Bombay and stay with us? Your son studies in Bombay, anyway.’

  His father said it was very difficult to get away from his dispensary. They talked for a few minutes more and then Gul glanced at his watch and picked up his briefcase. He snapped it open with a deft practiced click and drew out his business card, which he handed to Rahul’s father. Then he took his leave, telling his mother to take care of herself.

  His mother looked up as if she had just awakened and didn’t recognize the man standing before her. She did not wish her visitor goodbye, and sat frowning while his father showed him to the door. Rahul helped her into bed and brought her a cup of warm milk. She herself asked this time that he turn out the light. He would’ve liked to ask her about the letter Gul mentioned but he could see she clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

  Rahul and his father shared the tiffin dinner, which his father picked up on his way home every day. They watched the English news on TV as they ate.

  ‘Papa,’ he began when the news was over. ‘I’ve been accepted into the Ph.D programme I applied to in the US.’

  His father nodded. ‘When did you hear from them? Good, very good. I’m happy for you, son. But when would you have to leave?’

  ‘Sometime in early August,’ he said. ‘I worry about Mamma. She’s all alone.’

  ‘I’m here,’ his father replied. ‘I can give her breakfast before I leave, and I’ll come back at lunchtime to check on her. I’m also trying to arrange for a nurse who’ll stay with her when I’m at the dispensary.’

  ‘I don’t know if I should tell her.’

  ‘What? About going to the US? No, maybe not immediately.’

  ‘I think I’ll write to her from Bombay.’

  His father nodded and started stacking the dishes to carry them into the kitchen. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he repeated quietly. ‘You would’ve wasted your time in India.’

  ‘What did you think of Mr Nihalani?’ Rahul tried to sound casual.

  His father shrugged, which was about the reaction Rahul had expected.

  ‘I didn’t like him much,’ Rahul tried again. ‘A bit pompous, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s a big name in the community,’ his father said. ‘It’s not surprising.’

  Then he carried out the dishes as if ending the conversation. Rahul went into his room. Lying in bed, he felt certain that his father knew of his mother’s feelings for that man. He could see his mother agonizing over that letter to Gul once her parents announced that she was to marry his father, and finally sending it off. He thought how her hopes must have been tinged with hopelessness. Perhaps she had a suspicion Gul wouldn’t have come to her rescue, so she never sent another letter after her first. Could minor incidents like an undelivered letter have such an impact on people’s lives today? You could simply pick up the phone and make a call these days. He thought of his father. It was he who had insisted on sending Rahul to Bombay against his mother’s protests. Rahul was not close to his father but whenever he felt smothered by his mother, it was his father who came to his rescue. It was his father who had encouraged him to apply to graduate programmes in the US, and it was he whose support Rahul was relying on to soften the blow for his mother. There was something touching in his father’s uncomplaining calm acceptance of life as if all that could be changed had been laid to waste a long time ago. But for Rahul, he wanted things to be different. He’d said he was happy that Rahul didn’t have to waste his mind in India. Rahul felt increasingly sad for knowing so little of this man who had led an unfulfilled life but striven to make fulfilment possible for his son.

  The next morning his mother seemed herself, her new quieter self that she had become since the stroke. He put his arms around her. ‘Mamma, how old was I when this picture of us was taken?’ He went to her dresser and brought the framed black and white photograph. Giving it to her, he sat down beside her on the bed. He knew how old he was when the picture was taken. He wanted a story from her so that the harshness of what was to come could be softened.

  She gazed at the picture a long time.

  Growing up, Rahul too, had gazed at the photograph many times. The young woman in it stood holding the hand of the little boy who was sheepishly squinting at the camera. The woman was his mother. He always felt proud to think that. Her graceful figure clad in a sari, the poise of her fine face, the love and complete serenity emanating from the union of mother and child. That was them.

&nb
sp; But she wasn’t going to give him the story today.

  ‘Mamma, I love you,’ he said, stroking her hair, forgiving her her little failures. ‘Do you know that?’

  She had moisture in her right eye. Her left eye couldn’t tear. She raised the photograph with her shaking hand and clasped it to her bosom.

  ‘I was six then, wasn’t I?’ Rahul started, something in his throat choking his speech. ‘It was my sixth birthday. And we lived in the government bungalow with the big garden, right?’

  Images he didn’t want to remember floated up in memory. Sounds of her in the locked bathroom, at first soft, stifled, then building to tearing sobs that terrified him, and made him beat the bathroom door, begging her to come out. His father’s car parked down the lane at that other’s house she hated. Her angry pacing of the balcony to see when he’d finally come home. Their controlled soft-spoken arguments that always ended with his father storming out of the house and she locking herself in the bathroom. He didn’t know then there were things she had given up, was continually giving up. For the sake of what? For this, to keep their family, their respectability intact? It was her greatest fear, he knew, that he too, might go the way of his father and destroy all she had tried to preserve.

  ‘Mamma, maybe I should get back to Bombay. I’ve missed a lot of classes already,’ he said, taking her lifeless left hand into his and raising it to his lips.

  ‘Yes, you should go back,’ she said after a long wait.

  Wasn’t she going to try to stop him? Rahul let go of the choking in his throat. Her restraint freed something in him, exaggerating the need for a reaction from her. They sat a while like that, Rahul’s tears flowing silently. He buried his face within her lap and she stroked his hair.

  A couple of days later, he left for Bombay. He wrote her a carefully worded letter about his plans for graduate studies in the US. He ended by asking if he could have that photograph of them to take with him.