Diamond Dust (24 page)

Simona, not having seen Moyna in the milk queue for days, came to visit. She brought with her a gift that touched Moyna deeply—fish tails and heads wrapped in newspaper for Mao's dinner. Simona explained, 'I saw you are not getting milk so I know that cat is not getting fish,' She sat crosslegged on Moyna's bed, tucking her cotton sari around her shoulders, and told Moyna that she herself had been sick—'for many, many days. Months, perhaps. Hep-a-ti-tis. You have hep-a-titis?' 'Oh no,' Moyna denied it vigorously, 'only flu,' and was afraid to think now that she might lie alone in the barsati for so long, sick, away from home. 'And you are so far from home,' she said to Simona with sudden sympathy, and wondered what could keep the young woman here, ageing before her eyes into a pale, drawn invalid. But Simona put on her rapt expression, one that often overtook her even in the most inconvenient places—passing the garbage heap behind the marketplace, for instance, or seeing a beggar approach—and told Moyna joyfully, 'This is my home. It is where my guru lives, you see.' Moyna cowered under her quilt: she did not feel strong enough for such revelations. 'Please make yourself tea,' she croaked, and broke into a paroxysm of coughs.

Having received a letter in which Moyna mentioned that she had flu, Moyna's mother arrived. Moyna was actually on her way to recovery by then and many of the remedies her mother brought with her, the special teas and balms and syrups, were no longer needed, but evidently much else was. Putting her hand into the containers on Moyna's kitchen shelf, her mother was shocked to find less than a handful of rice, of lentils. 'You are starving!' she exclaimed, as horrified at herself as her daughter, 'and we did not know!' 'Do I look as if I'm starving?' Moyna asked, but she could not stop her mother from shopping and cooking and storing food in a storm of energy and activity in the barsati, which was now bathed in mild sunlight and at its most livable in Delhi's pleasant winter.

Mrs Bhalla downstairs roused herself too, and began to cook and send treats upstairs, either with the servant boy or with Pinky or Sweetie, little jars of pickles she had put up, or metal trays with sweets she had made, dissolving in pools of oil and reeking of rose water, or covered pots containing specialities known only to Mrs Bhalla and the village that was once her home.

'How kind she is,' Moyna's mother exclaimed, accepting these gifts. 'How lucky you are to have found such a landlady, Moyna.'

Nothing Moyna told her could completely alter her mother's impression. 'She's just trying to fool you,' she cried. 'She
wants
you to think she's a nice person.'

She glowered at Mrs Bhalla whenever she passed her on the veranda, but Mrs Bhalla now called out to her with great sweetness, 'How is your mother, Moyna? Please ask her to come and visit me.'

'I don't know why you both like each other so much,' Moyna said darkly, on conveying this message.

'We are both mothers, that is why,' her mother replied with what Moyna now found an indigestible sweetness. It was this motherliness she had missed and longed for but now she found it superfluous. Her barsati no longer looked as it had in the days of penury, austerity and minimalism. Her mother had bought curtains, cushions, filled every available space with kitchen gadgets, foods, whatever comfort she could think of. Now Moyna found she was no longer used to comfort, that it annoyed and irritated her. Picking up Mao and a book, she would retreat to the rooftop while her mother bustled about in the crowded room, clattering and humming and enjoying herself. She leaned over the ledge and stared moodily into the quaking leaves of the pipal tree and the hazy winter light that filtered through. Downstairs, in the Bhallas' brightly lit kitchen, she could see the Bhallas' servant boy, rolling out chapatis for their dinner. He had music on to entertain him while he worked, and Moyna listened too. She was enjoying its somewhat melancholy and dirge-like tone when she started in recognition: was that not Joan Baez singing? And was it not one of her own tapes? She stiffened and bent over the ledge, trying to look past the pipal leaves to get a clearer picture of what was on the kitchen counter below. But she did not really need to look, she could hear clearly enough, and it made her roll her hands into fists and pound on the ledge with frustration.

While her instinct was to run and tell her mother, then run down and inform Mrs Bhalla and demand her belongings back, she found herself silent. Letting, her mother pile a spinach curry and lentils on her plate at dinner, she kept quiet: she knew it would be unwise to tell her mother that she lived amongst thieves. How then could she declare to her that she intended to remain here with them, not return to family and home, comfort and care?

'What are you thinking, Moyna?' her mother asked impatiently. 'Why don't you eat?'

Fortunately, her mother could not stay long. Unfortunately, when Moyna returned with relief to her own routine, she found Tara at the office consumed by the same housemaking fervour. This was not at all customary where Tara was concerned. Tara had taken the job at
Books
to escape from housewifeliness, as her mother-in-law so cannily suspected—and now she confounded Moyna by talking incessantly of real estate, bank loans, co-ops ... true, not housekeeping matters exactly, but just as boring to Moyna who had plunged into the next issue which had yet another blistering attack by Karan on the Hindi author's newest offering. Tara was hardly around to see to it; she was either on the telephone, earnestly discussing finances with Ritwick, or, with her handbag slung over her shoulder and her dark glasses on, was off to visit yet another co-op.

'Why are you doing this?' Moyna protested. 'You
have
a nice house to live in. I mean,' she added hastily, seeing Tara's expression, 'I know it's the Dragon Lady's, but still, it
is
nice and you don't pay for it—' She refrained from mentioning the free babysitting service it provided.

'You don't understand. You're too young. At our age, we need our own place,' Tara explained loftily.

In her concern for this nest for the future, Tara seemed strangely unaffected by the letter they received from Bose Sahib, announcing his decision to close the magazine. He was planning to start another, he added, this time about development projects in rural areas—were Tara and Moyna interested in working for it? Tara would not even consider it: she was settling into this nest she had found, she was not going to go touring the hinterland, she would turn down the offer. Moyna was pale with dismay and disbelief; she begged Tara not to speak so loudly, to come down to the sweet shop below where they could discuss it over a cup of tea without Mohan and Raj Kumar overhearing. 'It will be such a shock to them,' she explained to Tara. But Tara did not see any cause for shock: 'Mohan is looking for a job in hotels anyway, or a travel agency,' she said. 'What?' asked Moyna. Why had she not been told the world of
Books
was coming unravelled around her? Had she been so immersed in the wretched business of barsati living to ignore far more important matters? What about all the book reviewers and their supply of foreign books being cut short? She sat at the small tin-topped table with Tara, not able to swallow her tea, and pleaded with her to reconsider. 'But why?' Tara asked, her eyes looking into the distance where her dream house waited for her like a mirage in the desert outside Delhi. 'I'm not married to
Books
, or to Bose Sahib. Let them go to hell. I'm not going to go around looking at weaving centres and dairy farms for Bose Sahib!'

Moyna bit her lip. It was certainly not what she had come to Delhi for, nor was it what she had expected to do with her life. But she had grown used to the two-roomed office with its bamboo shutters, Raj Kumar sitting in a corner and tying up book parcels, Mohan enjoying his bun omelette and samosas at his desk. She had even grown used, if that was what resignation could be called, to the barsati, although when the year's lease was up, she would be free to rent another: there were almost as many barsatis in Delhi as there were top-floor flats. She turned the teaspoon over and over in her hands, considering all the possibilities, weighing the pros and cons, till Tara snatched it out of her hand. 'Stop fidgeting, Moyna. Just
decide
,' she snapped, tossing back her hair with all the authority of someone who had done just that.

It was too difficult, too weighty a decision to be made in a moment, over a cup of tea. Moyna went back and forth between the office and the barsati, sick with anxiety. Only occasionally and momentarily could she forget the problem: when Gurmail Singh told her with pride that his daughter had passed the entrance test to the Loreto Convent, ensuring a fine future for her and leaving him only to worry about his less promising son; or when she received an invitation to a film show at the British Council to be followed by a reception, placing her on a rung above those who went there only for the air conditioning and the newspapers. Then she would fall to brooding again and sit crosslegged on her bed, stroking Mao and turning the matter over in her mind.

It was when she was in such a state that a letter arrived from her mother. She opened it listlessly, knowing in advance what it would contain—advice on how to run her household, how to cook a specially strengthening stew, an offer of monetary help, pleas to return home, her father's message that she should consider studying for a higher degree before embarking on a career—and she glanced at it cursorily: her mother did not understand even now the attraction of living, alone, in Delhi, and could think of it only as a poor substitute for living at home.

But at the bottom of this letter, her mother had added, craftily:

Our neighbours have invited us to a welcome party next week; their son Arun is returning from the United States. He has taken a degree in geology and is expected to find a suitable job in the field. I am sure he would be pleased to meet you again. If you are planning a visit soon, we shall ask him over for a meal. I know his family is very keen...

Mao gave a leap off the bed as Moyna flung herself backwards, at the same time throwing the letter into the air with a shout of laughter. She rolled her head about on the pillow, spluttering, 'Oh, Mama—re-a-ll-y, Mama!' Mao had not seen such behaviour in a long time. He sat by the door and watched her, his paws primly together, his tail wrapped around him, disapproving. It was clear he thought she had gone crazy. Even he, with his fine senses, could not know that the letter made up Moyna's mind for her. She was free, she was determined, she had made her decision, and she sat up, laughing.

In the kitchen below, the Bhallas' servant boy turned up the music and sang along with it.

Fasting, Feasting

"
Poignant, penetrating ... a splendid novel.
"

—WALL STREET JOURNAL

***

A Booker Prize finalist,
Fasting, Feasting
tells the story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every demand, while across the world in Massachusetts, her younger brother, Arun, struggles to adjust to college life. From the overpowering warmth of Indian culture to the cool center of the American family, this exquisite novel captures the physical—and emotional—fasting and feasting that define two distinct cultures.

ISBN
0-618-06582-2

Baumgartner's Bombay

"
Exhilaratingly alive ... Desai not only
evokes an atmosphere, she plunges into it...
Astonishing.
"

—>
NEWSDAY

***

Baumgartner's Bombay
is Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of the profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany—and his Jewish heritage—for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. This is the tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy ... seems to elude his destiny" (
New Leader).

ISBN
0-618-05680-7

Clear Light
of
Day

"
A wonderful novel about silence and music,
about the partition of a family as well as
a nation.
"

—NEW YORK TIMES

***

Also a Booker Prize finalist,
Clear Light of Day
charts the ebb and flow of sisterly love against the backdrop of some of India's most significant historical events. It does "what only the very best novels do: it totally submerges us [and] takes us so deeply into another world that we almost fear we won't be able to climb out again" (Anne Tyler).

forthcoming Fall 2000,
ISBN
0-618-07451-1

AVAILABLE FROM MARINER BOOKS