A Fine Balance Part 67

Maneck checked the ice pack, then offered to make cheese sandwiches for lunch.

"My son visits after eight years and I can't even prepare his food," lamented his mother.

"What difference is it who makes the sandwiches?"

She took the warning in his voice and retreated, then tried again. "Maneck, please don't get angry. Won't you tell me the reason you are so unhappy?"

"There is nothing to tell."

"We are both sad because of Daddy's death. But that cannot be the only reason. We were expecting it ever since his colon cancer was diagnosed. There is something different about your sadness, I can sense it."

She waited, watching him as he cut the bread, but his face remained impa.s.sive. "Is it because you did not visit while he was still alive? You shouldn't feel bad. Daddy understood that it was difficult for you to come."

He put down the bread knife and turned. "You really want to know why?"

"Yes."

He picked up the knife again, slicing the loaf carefully while keeping his voice level. "You sent me away, you and Daddy. And then I couldn't come back. You lost me, and I lost everything."

She limped to his side and took his arm. "Look at me, Maneck!" she said tearfully. "What you think is not true, you are everything to me and Daddy! Whatever we did, we did for you! Please, believe me!"

He withdrew his arm gently, and continued with the sandwiches.

"How can you say something so hurtful and then become silent? You always used to complain that Daddy was fond of dramatics. But now you are doing just that."

He refused to discuss it further. She followed him around the kitchen, hobbling, pleading with him.

"What's the point of me making the sandwiches if you are going to keep marching with that knee?" he said, exasperated.

She sat down compliantly till he finished and lunch was on the table. While they ate, she studied his face in s.n.a.t.c.hes, when she was sure he wasn't looking. The sky started to darken in earnest. He washed their plates and put them on the rack to dry. The rumble of thunder rolled over the valley.

"We were so lucky this morning," she said as the drizzle commenced. "I'm going up to rest now. Will you shut the windows if the rain comes in?"

He nodded, and helped her climb the stairs. She smiled through the pain, leaning with pleasure on her son's shoulder, taking pride in its strength and firmness.

After his mother was in bed, Maneck returned downstairs and stood at the window to watch the display of lightning, to revel in the thunderclaps. He had missed the rains in Dubai. The valley was disappearing under a blanket of fog. He strode restlessly about the house, then went into the shop.

He examined the shelves, savouring the brand names on the jars and boxes that he had not seen for years. But how small, how shabby the shop was, he thought. The shop that was once the centre of his universe. And now he had moved so far away from it. So far that it felt impossible to return. He wondered what was keeping him away. Not clean and gleaming Dubai, for sure.

He descended the steps into the cellar where the bottling machinery slept. Cobwebs had taken over, shrouding the defeated apparatus. Demand for Kohlah's Cola had almost vanished in recent times, his parents had written just half a dozen bottles a day, to loyal friends and neighbours.

He pottered around amid the empty bottles and wooden crates. In a corner of the cellar stood a stack of mouldering newspapers, partially hidden by a bundle of gunnys. He stroked the coa.r.s.e jute sacking, feeling the bite of the fibre, breathing in its extravagant green smell of wood and vegetation. The newspaper dates went back ten years, and jumped haphazardly over the decade. Strange, he thought, because Daddy used them up regularly in the store, for wrapping parcels or padding packages. These must have been overlooked.

He decided to take them upstairs and browse through them. Reading old newspapers seemed a fitting way to spend the gloomy, rain-filled afternoon.

He settled in a chair by the window and opened the yellow, dusty sheets of the first issue in the pile. It was from the period after the post-Emergency elections that the Prime Minister lost to the opposition coalition. There were articles about abuses during the Emergency, testimony of torture victims, outrage over the countless deaths in police custody. Editorials that had been silenced during her regime called for a special commission to investigate the wrongdoings and punish the guilty.

He skipped to another paper, impatient with the repet.i.tious reportage. The new government's dithering over how to deal with the ex-Prime Minister did not make stimulating reading either, except for one article which quoted a cabinet minister as saying: "She must be punished, she is a terrible woman, wicked as Cleopatra." And the only unanimous decision of the paralysed government was to expel Coca-Cola from the country, for refusing to relinquish its secret formula and its managing interest; with a little twisting and turning, the action suited all ideologies in the coalition brew.

Not many newspapers later, the coalition had vaporized in endless squabbles, and fresh elections were to be held. The ex-Prime Minister was poised to shed her prefix and return to power. The editorials now reined in their rhetoric against her, adopting the obsequious tone reminiscent of the Emergency. One grovelling scribe had written: "Can the Prime Minister have incarnated at least some of the G.o.ds in herself? Beyond doubt, she possesses a dormant power, lying coiled at the base of her spine, the Kundalini Shakti which is now awakening and carrying her into transcendence." There was no sarcasm intended, it being part of a longer panegyric.

Fed up, Maneck looked for the sports pages. There were pictures from cricket matches, and the statement by the Australian captain about a "bunch of Third World beggars who think they can play cricket." And then the jubilation and fireworks and celebration when the bunch of beggars defeated Australia in the Test Series.

He began going more rapidly through the newspapers. After a while even the pictures looked the same. Train derailment, monsoon floods, bridge collapse; ministers being garlanded, ministers making speeches, ministers visiting areas of natural and man-made disasters. He flipped the pages between glances out the window, at the theatre of weather the las.h.i.+ng rain, windswept deodars, bolts of lightning.

Then something in the paper caught his eye. He turned back for a second look. It was a photograph of three young women. Dressed in cholis and petticoats, they were hanging from a ceiling fan. One end of each of their saris was tied to the fan hook, the other round their necks. Their heads were tilted. The arms hung limp, like the limbs of rag dolls.

He read the accompanying story, his eyes straying repeatedly to the scene that floated like a ghastly tableau. The three were sisters, aged fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen, and had hanged themselves while their parents were out of the house. They had written a note to explain their conduct. They knew that their father was unhappy at not being able to afford dowries for them. After much debate and anxiety, they had decided to take this step, to spare their mother and father the shame of three unmarried daughters. They begged their parents' forgiveness for this action which would cause them grief; they could see no alternative.

The photograph dragged Maneck's eyes back to it, to the event that was at once unsettling, pitiful, and maddening in its crystalline stillness. The three sisters looked disappointed, he thought, as though they had expected something more out of hanging, something more than death, and then discovered that death was all there was. He found himself admiring their courage. What strength it must have taken, he thought, to unwind those saris from their bodies, to tie the knots around their necks. Or perhaps it had been easy, once the act acquired the beauty of logic and the weight of sensibleness.

He tore his eyes away from the photograph to read the rest of the article. The reporter had met the parents; he wrote that they had suffered more than their fair portion of grief they had, during the Emergency, lost their eldest under circ.u.mstances that were never satisfactorily explained. The police claimed it was a railway accident, but the parents spoke of wounds they had seen on their son's body at the morgue. According to the reporter, the injuries were consistent with other confirmed incidents of torture: "Moreover, in view of the political climate during the Emergency, and the fact that their son, Avinash, was active in the Student Union, it would appear to be one more case of wrongful death in police custody."

The article proceeded to comment on the parliamentary committee's inquiry into the Emergency excesses, but Maneck had stopped reading.

Avinash.

The rain was pounding on the roof and coming in through the windows. He tried to fold the discoloured newspaper neatly along its crease, but his hands were shaking, and it flapped and crumpled untidily in his lap. The room was airless. He struggled to push himself out of the chair. The paper, with its cellar smell of mould and decay, rustled to the floor. He went to the porch, stealing deep gulps of the rich rain-laden air. The wind rushed through the open door. The fallen pages were blown around the room while the curtains whipped against the window. He closed the door, paced the damp porch a few times, then walked out into the rain, tears streaming down his face.

His clothes were soaked within seconds; wet hair plastered his forehead. He circled the house: down the slope, into the back yard, around the lower level, and up from the other side. Through the wall of falling rain he saw the steel cables tethering the foundation to the cliff. The trusty cables, that had held strong for four generations. But he could swear the house had s.h.i.+fted in the years he had been away. A house with suicidal tendencies A house with suicidal tendencies, Avinash had called it. A little bit, and then a little more and eventually it would rip out the anchors, tumble headlong down the hill. It seemed fitting. Everything was losing its moorings, slipping away, becoming irrecoverable.

He took the road out of the town square, almost running now. He did not notice the people who stared. He saw only that photograph. Three saris gripping those fragile necks...Avinash's three sisters...he used to enjoy feeding them when they were little, they used to bite his fingers in fun. And the poor parents ...What sense did the world make? Where was G.o.d, the b.l.o.o.d.y Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He was managing a corporation, the things He allowed to happen ...to the maidservant, and the thousands of Sikhs killed in the capital, and my poor taxi driver with a kara that wouldn't come off.

Maneck looked up at the sky. Daddy's ashes, scattered that morning. Getting wet, getting washed away. The thought was unbearable, because then there would be nothing...and Mummy, left all alone...

He raced along the path, which was fast becoming soft and slippery. Running, sliding, stumbling, hoping to find a place that was still green and pleasant, a place of happiness, serenity, where his father would be walking, st.u.r.dy and confident, his arm over his son's shoulder.

Squelching through the mud, he skidded; his arms shot out sideways to keep him from falling. Now he felt the despair his father had felt as the familiar world slipped from around him, the valleys gashed and ugly, the woods disappearing. Daddy was right, he thought, the hills were dying, and I was so stupid to believe the hills were eternal, that a father could stay forever young. If only I had talked to him. If only he had let me get close to him.

But the ashes they lay in the cold, driving rain. He ran to where he had emptied the wooden box in the morning. Panting, he stopped at each familiar spot where his mother had lingered, but could find no trace of the grey ash. His breath coming in great sobs, he brushed aside leaves, kicked over a rock, s.h.i.+fted a broken bough.

Nothing. He was too late. He stumbled and fell on his knees, his fingers in the ooze. The rain descended pitilessly. He felt unable to rise. He covered his face with his muddy hands and wept, and wept, and wept.

A dog pattered lightly in the muck towards Maneck. He couldn't hear it through the noise of rain. It came closer, sniffing. He started and uncovered his face when he felt its muzzle upon his hand. The dog licked his cheek. He patted it; was this one of the pack that Daddy used to feed on the porch? He noticed a suppurating ulcer on its haunch, and wondered if the homemade ointment with which his father treated the strays was still on the shelf below the counter.

The downpour was less heavy now. He stood up, wiping his face on his wet sleeve, and looked out across the hillside. Breaks were beginning to appear in the clouds, and fragments of the valley were emerging from the fog.

He stayed where he was till the rain had almost stopped. Now it was a very fine drizzle, so fine it felt lighter than human breath upon the skin. He returned to the place where the tree grew out of the overhang. The dog followed him for a while. The abscess was making it limp, the infection had probably penetrated the bone. Only a few weeks of life left for the poor creature, thought Maneck, no one to nurse it and heal it. Without Daddy around, who will care?

Tears returned to his eyes, and he began walking homewards. The rain had created numerous little rivulets that were coursing down the hill. They would go to swell the mountain streams and strengthen the impromptu waterfalls. Tomorrow everything would burst with green and freshness. He pictured the ashes, carried by all this s.h.i.+ning water, travelling everywhere over the mountainside. His father had got his wish he was being strewn abundantly, with more thoroughness than any human could have exercised: nature's mighty and scrupulous hand had taken charge, and he was everywhere, inseparable from the place he had loved so deeply.

Wrapped in a Kashmiri shawl, Mrs. Kohlah waited anxiously on the porch, gazing down the road. She waved frantically when Maneck came into view. He picked up his pace.

"Maneck! Where were you? I woke from my nap and you were gone! And it was raining so heavily, I got worried." She grasped his arm. "Look at you, you're soaking! And there is mud on your face and clothes! What happened?"

"It's all right," he said gently. "I'm fine, I felt like taking a walk. I slipped," he added to explain the mud.

"You're just like Daddy, doing crazy things. He also loved rain walks. But go, change your clothes, I'll make tea and toast for you." The rain had made the years fall away. He was her little boy again, drenched and helpless.

"How's your knee?"

"Much better. The ice pack helped."

He went up to his room, washed, and changed into dry clothes. The tea was ready when he returned downstairs. His mother added two spoons of sugar for him and one for herself. His had been poured in his father's cup. She stirred it before moving it towards him. "You remember how Daddy always used to drink the first cup, strolling about the kitchen?"

He nodded.

She smiled. "Getting in my way when I was busiest. But he stopped doing that in the last few years. He would just come in and sit down quietly." Leaning sideways in her chair, she touched Maneck's head lightly with her fingers. "Look at that, your hair is still dripping."

She got a napkin from the linen cupboard and began to dry it. Her vigorous towelling with short, rapid strokes made his head roll back and forth. He was on the verge of protesting, but found it relaxing and let her continue. His eyes closed. He could see the ma.s.seurs in the city, eight years ago with Om at the beach, where customers sat in the sand to have their heads kneaded and rubbed and pummelled. Waves breaking in the background, and a soft twilight breeze. And the fragrance of jasmine, wafting from vendors selling chains of the milk-white flowers for women to twine in their hair.

"I think I will will visit our relatives. And also Dina Aunty." Her brisk efforts with his wet hair added a curious vibrato to his voice. visit our relatives. And also Dina Aunty." Her brisk efforts with his wet hair added a curious vibrato to his voice.

"How funny you sound. As if you were trying to talk and gargle at the same time." She laughed and put away the napkin. "They'll be so happy to see you. When will you leave?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow?" She wondered if it was a ruse to get away from her. "And when will you return here?"

"I think I'll go back to Dubai straight from there. More convenient."

She knew the hurt was showing in her face, and he did not seem aware of it. His words grew indistinct to her ears, already travelling the distance he was to put between them.

"What I want to do," he continued, "is get back to my job quickly give them notice, find out how soon they will release me."

"You mean, resign? And then?"

"I've decided to come back and settle here."

Her breath quickened. "That's a wonderful plan," she said, restraining, as best she could, the tide of emotion that swept through her. "You can start your own business by selling the shop and "

"No. The shop is why I'm coming back."

"Daddy would like that."

He left the table and went to the window. It did not always have to end badly he was going to prove it to himself. First he would meet all his friends: Om, happily married, and his wife, and at least two or three children by now; what would their names be? If there was a boy, surely Narayan. And Ishvar, the proud grand-uncle, beaming away at his sewing-machine, disciplining the little ones, cautioning them if they ventured too close to the whirring wheels and galloping needles. And Dina Aunty, supervising the export tailoring in her little flat, orchestrating the household, holding sway in that busy kitchen.

Yes, he would see all this with his own eyes. If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes as long as one knew where to look for it. Soon, he would return to take charge of Kohlah's Cola and the General Store. The foundation cables needed attention. The house would be refurbished. He would install new bottling machinery. He had more than enough money saved up.

Mrs. Kohlah went to stand beside him at the window. His hands were on the sill, clutching it tight, the knuckles white. They were strong hands, like his father's, she thought.

"It's getting cloudy again," he said. "There'll be lots more rain tonight."

"Yes," she agreed, "which means everything will be green and fresh tomorrow. It will be a beautiful day."

He put his arm around his mother and gave her the good-morning hug of his childhood although it was evening. Her contented sigh was almost inaudible. Her grip on his hand, where it rested on her shoulder, was tight and warm.

The rain followed Maneck down the country, down the hills and across the plains, for thirty-two hours on the southbound train. He had almost missed the train; the bus from the town square to the railway station had been delayed by mud slides. Yesterday's promise of sun and green and freshness remained unfulfilled, the storm still going strong. And at journey's end, when he emerged from the crowd and clamour of the station concourse, the city streets were s.h.i.+ning wet from a heavy downpour.

The taxi stand was empty. He waited at the kerb, surrounded by puddles. There was nowhere to put his suitcase, and he s.h.i.+fted the bag to the other hand.

Then he noticed the crack in the flagstones behind him. Worms were pouring out of it, slithering dark red across the rain-slick pavement. Phylum Annelida Phylum Annelida. Several had been pulped under the feet of pedestrians. Dozens more continued to emerge, gliding along on a film of water, undulating over the dead ones.

While he watched, the gears of time slid effortlessly into reverse, and the busy pavement became Dina Aunty's bathroom. It was his first morning in her flat, he could hear her calling through the door, and he froze, keeping an eye on the wiggling battalion's advance. How she had teased him afterwards. He smiled at the memory. The crack in the flagstones was now almost depleted of worms, as the last stragglers dragged themselves to the safety of the gutter.

He decided to spend the evening with his mother's relatives, get that task out of the way. Then tomorrow could be devoted entirely to Dina Aunty and Ishvar and Om.

A taxi rattled up beside him. The driver, his arm hanging out the window, looked expectant, smelling a fare.

"Grand Hotel," said Maneck, opening the door.

He washed, changed his s.h.i.+rt, and set off to suffer the fond attentions of the Sodawalla family. During the course of the evening he patiently allowed himself to be called Mac, flinching while they hugged and patted and fawned over him. It was a bit like being the prize dog at a kennel show.

"What a terrible shock it was when we heard that your daddy pa.s.sed away," they said. "And you people live so far away, we couldn't even go to the funeral. So sorry."

"It's all right, I understand." He remembered what Daddy used to say about the Sodawalla relatives no fizz, dull as a flat soda, in danger of boring themselves to death. And in the end, Daddy had lost his own effervescence.

Maneck felt suddenly oppressed in the house, exhausted by the visit. He thought he would collapse if he spent any more time with his relatives. He rose and held out his hand. "It was very good seeing you again."

"Stay a little longer, spend the night with us," they insisted. "It will be so nice. In the morning we will eat omelette, and make some fresh prawn patia."

He refused firmly. "I have a business appointment for dinner. Also some early breakfast meetings. I must get back to the hotel."

They were understanding about this, suitably awed by the idea of breakfast meetings. They saw him off with blessings and good wishes, and instructions to come soon for another visit. "Don't make us starve again so many years," they said.

On his way back to the hotel, he stopped at the airline office and checked his reservation. The agent confirmed the booking: "It's for day after tomorrow, sir. And your flight departure time is eleven-thirty-five p.m. Please be at the airport before nine p.m."

"Thank you," said Maneck.

At the Grand Hotel, he ate a plate of mutton biryani in the dining room. Afterwards, he read the newspaper in the lobby for a few minutes, then collected his key and went to bed. He fell asleep thinking about Dina Aunty, and the time they had sat up late into the night, completing the dresses for Au Revoir when Ishvar and Om had gone missing. The time of trouble with a capital t.

Renovations had transformed the place beyond recognition, and for a moment Maneck thought he was at the wrong address. Marble stairways, a security guard, the foyer walls faced with gleaming granite, air-conditioning in every flat, a roof garden the low-rent tenement had been converted into luxury apartments.

He checked the nameplates listed in the entrance. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d landlord had finally done it, got rid of Dina Aunty it had had ended badly for her. And what about the tailors, where were they working now? ended badly for her. And what about the tailors, where were they working now?

Outside, he felt the returning grip of despair, the sun pounding his head. Perhaps Dina Aunty would know where Ishvar and Om were. There was only one place she could have gone: to her brother, Nusswan. But he didn't have the address. And why bother would she really be pleased to see him? He could look it up in the telephone directory. Under what surname?

He rattled his memory for Dina Aunty's maiden name. She had mentioned it once. One night, all those years ago, when Ishvar and Om and he had sat listening to her tell them about her life. It was after dinner, and she had the quilt in her lap, connecting a new patch. Never look back at the past with regret Never look back at the past with regret, Dina Aunty had said. And something about her bright future lost...no, clouded...back when she was still a schoolgirl, and her name was Dina Shroff.

He stopped at the chemist's to consult the telephone directory. There were several Shroffs but only one Nusswan Shroff, and he noted the address. The clerk said it wasn't far. He decided to walk.

After leaving behind the old neighbourhood, the road became unfamiliar. He asked directions of a carpenter sitting by the kerb with his tools in a sack. The carpenter's thumb was heavily bandaged. He told Maneck to turn right at the next intersection, past the cricket maidaan.

There was a marquee set up at the edge of the field, although no cricket match was in progress. Inquiring crowds were milling around it, peering inside. Over the entrance a sign proclaimed: WELCOME TO ONE & ALL FROM HIS HOLINESS, BAL BABA DARSHAN AVAILABLE FROM 10.00 A.M. TO 4.00 P.M. EVERY DAY INCLUDING SUNDAY & BANK HOLIDAY WELCOME TO ONE & ALL FROM HIS HOLINESS, BAL BABA DARSHAN AVAILABLE FROM 10.00 A.M. TO 4.00 P.M. EVERY DAY INCLUDING SUNDAY & BANK HOLIDAY.

A hardworking G.o.dman for sure, thought Maneck, wondering what his specialty was producing gold watches out of thin air, tears from the eyes of statues, rose petals from women's cleavages?