Don't Let Him Know (21 page)

‘When the film opens will you come to the première with me?’ asked Subir abruptly, placing his hand on hers.

Romola almost jumped. ‘What will I do at the première?’ she said. But she didn’t pull her hand away.

‘Wear your pink patola sari and bel flowers in your hair,’ he said. Then looking more serious, he said, ‘Enough about me. What do you want to do, Romola?’

Startled, she said, ‘Me? What will I do? Finish college, I suppose.’ He looked at her quizzically and she felt that she had disappointed him somehow with the paucity of her dreams. So she started talking about how good the chicken sandwiches were.

As they walked out of the restaurant, she suddenly turned to him and said, ‘How about calling yourself Subir Kumar?’ Kumar sounded dashing – it conjured up images of debonair men who might ride horses and save lovelorn women in the nick of time.

Romola never made it to the première. When her mother found out that Subir had actually landed a film, she threw a fit. Romola was amazed. This was her mother who religiously read every film weekly there was. She kept track of what films were releasing when and which film star was married to whom. She knew who was going to divorce whom long before it actually happened.

‘That’s exactly why,’ her mother said angrily. ‘I know what kind of dirtiness goes on in that world. And no daughter of mine is getting mixed up with that.’

‘It’s not like I am going to become an actress,’ Romola protested. But this time her uncle sided with her mother. ‘Concerts are one thing but really, Romola, we have to think about your future. You can’t be seen around town with some film star.’

‘It’s a classic by Sarat Chandra,’ she said feebly. ‘We have the book as a text in college.’ But she knew that even if she won this battle, the war was lost. When Subir called, she apologized. She had exams. She had a headache. Soon he called less and less. Leela told her he had asked her why Romola was avoiding him.

When the film released in theatres she went to see it with Leela at Bharati just as she had once imagined. As she watched his name appear on screen her lips curled up into a smile. There, written in big white letters, were the words ‘Subir Kumar’. Later as the camera panned into a close-up Leela sighed, ‘He is pretty dreamy. Did you ever kiss him? Too bad your mother won’t let you go out with a film star.’

Romola didn’t really blame her mother. If she had a daughter she would have done the same. The film was nothing extraordinary. Subir looked handsome but his acting was a bit shaky. Nevertheless, Romola wished she could have gone to the première with him.

After she and Avinash were married and had moved to America she got a letter from her mother in which, buried amid the gossip about cousins and maid-servants, was the news that Subir had married his co-star after his jubilee hit
Darpan
. Then came the divorce and another marriage. A couple of years ago she was reading about him being linked to some television starlet. Her mother was long dead. But in her head Romola could hear her voice. ‘See, what did I tell you? These film stars are just gadabouts with loose morals. Handsome to look at no doubt but from a distance.’

As Romola shook her head at the memory she heard a voice calling her. It was Bhola, the cook, wanting to find out what to make for lunch. But Romola could hardly focus. The everyday decisions that seemed so important – what kind of dal to cook, whether he should make paarshey if the fishmonger didn’t have any decent tangra – all of this suddenly seemed so trivial.

‘Here, you go do the shopping today. Get some rui and some paarshey.’ Romola handed Bhola some money. ‘I have some things to do.’

Bhola was taken aback. Ever since she discovered he had been skimming a little change here and a little change there while shopping, Romola had taken to buying the groceries herself. Sensing his surprise, she said sternly, ‘And don’t think I won’t know if you keep some of that money for your cigarettes.’

As Bhola left, she called him back. ‘And would you get me a string of bel flowers? Make sure they’re fresh, not old and wilted, already turning brown.’

After Bhola had gone she stood for a while at the window tracing imaginary flowers in her palm. Would he have even remembered after all these years the bel flowers in her hair? They had only met once more after she got married. That was years later and she had no flowers in her hair then. Amit was ten years old. She had gone to pick him up from school. They had walked into the confectionery nearby to get some pastries.

Suddenly she had heard the doors open and the little shop fill with the smell of expensive cologne. She turned around and gasped. It was Subir Kumar. He’d put on weight but his hair was still as thick and glossy as ever. He seemed even fairer. Perhaps those arc lights bleach your skin, she thought.

He looked at her and stopped short. ‘Oh my goodness, isn’t it Romola?’

She nodded, unable to speak.

‘What a surprise!’ he said. ‘You look lovely. How are you?’

They exchanged pleasantries, like old acquaintances do, about their children, their lives. He asked after her mother and expressed his condolences when he heard she had passed away. He looked at Amit and said, ‘And who is this handsome young man?’ When she told him he was her son and ten years old, he feigned shock. ‘Ten? How can you have a ten-year-old?’ Then he turned to Amit. ‘I knew your mother long before you were born. Can you imagine that?’

Romola turned to her son. ‘Say hello, Amit. Do you know who this is? It’s Subir-uncle. Remember, you’ve seen him on television?’

‘Romola, honestly, you look beautiful. You haven’t aged at all.’

Amit, tongue-tied, stared at his toes and shifted from one foot to another.

Romola wondered if Amit, now in America, would remember any of this. Romola recalled the store clerks at the confectionery staring at her with newfound respect. Later, on the way home, she tried to tell Amit how she had once known the great Subir Kumar but he was much more interested in telling her about the goal he had scored in his inter-class football game at school.

In the end, Romola just fell silent. But she played and replayed Subir’s words in her head all the way home. ‘You look beautiful. You haven’t aged at all.’ She smiled, toying with the words, polishing them in her head. If her mother had been alive she would have dismissed it as typical movie-star flattery. But Romola knew she would stash them away somewhere safe in the recesses of her mind. Someday when she felt old and creased, when her sari was blotched with turmeric stains and her face flushed from the heat of the kitchen, she’d play with the memory again and again as if it were a handkerchief soaked in lavender water carrying a whiff of a long-forgotten party.

She had hoped when they got home, Amit would tell his father about their adventure with Subir Kumar. But the boy had forgotten about it by the time Avinash returned from the office, and Romola was too embarrassed to bring it up.

Sometimes, like the time she saw him receiving a best-actor award on TV, she wondered if he ever thought about her. ‘And I would like to thank the person who gave me my name. Romola, wherever you are, this one is for you,’ she imagined him saying.

Even now, just thinking about it made her smile. She flipped through the pages of her diary. The ink, once Royal Blue, was slowly changing colour over time, as if the words themselves were getting rusty. It occurred to her that she would have no more entries to add. Perhaps there was still some half-finished movie they’d quickly wrap up and cash in on as his ‘last screen appearance’. But that was it. Her Subir Kumar diary was ending its run as well.

By the time Bhola came back from the market she had showered and was ready. She had chosen a cream sari with a blue border, something elegant but not ostentatious. She took the large brown handbag that Amit had brought her from America. She carefully placed the bel flowers still wrapped in a piece of wet palm leaf inside it, the fragrance making her catch her breath for an instant.

‘Listen,’ she told Bhola. ‘I have to go do something. If anyone calls, tell them I’ll be back soon.’

‘But what about lunch?’ said Bhola. ‘How do you want me to cook the paarshey? And what vegetables should I make?’

‘Really!’ exclaimed Romola. ‘Surely you can manage to cook on your own for one day. What if I dropped dead? Would all of you stop eating?’

Bhola looked at her, stunned for a moment, and then just shrugged.

‘You’ll manage.’ Romola was a little embarrassed by her outburst. ‘I shouldn’t be that long. Just make a light curry with the paarshey. Nothing too spicy.’

‘Are you going out?’ Bhola scratched his head. ‘But the car isn’t here. Did you ask Avinash-babu to send the car?’

‘No, no I’ll take a taxi,’ she said. But the reference to Avinash made her flush. When she put on her sunglasses and stepped out of the house she felt like a middle-aged adulteress off for a noontime rendezvous while other housewives all over the city were presiding over the day’s cooking.

By the time the taxi reached Monmohantala, after crawling through city traffic, it was past eleven. Romola’s freshly laundered blouse was sweaty and sticking to her back.

‘Turn left at the next cross light,’ she said.

‘Oh you want to go to Subir Kumar’s house?’ The driver looked at her through the mirror. Startled, Romola glanced around guiltily as if caught. ‘Well, half the city is there according to the radio,’ said the driver, shrugging.

He was right. As soon as Romola stepped out of the cab into the muggy midday heat, she could see the swarms of people. Romola suddenly wondered what she was doing here. It had taken everything she had to leave the house today. As she stepped out of the taxi she realized she had no plan. Once she had read about a mysterious woman in black who took a rose every year to the grave of Rudolph Valentino. That was romantic, but Romola wanted more.

Now she wanted to be like Sandhya in
Agnishikha
(Flame), the other woman, the prostitute with the heart of gold who had silently tossed her favourite handkerchief drenched in rosewater on her rich, married lover’s body as it passed by the dancing house before hanging up her anklets for ever. Or did she want to be Neelima in
Jeebonrekha
(Lifeline) who had walked into her lover’s ancestral home, in full wedding regalia of red and gold (colour had come to the movies by then), clutching the hand of her little boy demanding her rights as the mother of the family’s heir – after all, they had been married in the eyes of God that monsoon night when they had taken shelter in the abandoned temple while Hemanta Mukherjee’s seductive voice had throbbed in the background?

But she wasn’t Neelima or Sandhya. She was a middle-aged woman with greying hair who needed bifocals and was afraid she was going to be run over by buses careening down the street. No one said you are beautiful to her any more. They said you look well. You look so dignified, one of Amit’s old school friends had told her recently. And here she was like a half-wit starstruck teenager sneaking away from home, her head stuffed full of wisps of some screenwriter’s fantasy.

She took a deep breath, told herself to stop acting so silly, clutched her handbag tighter and plunged into the crowds. She was just going to see his body, pay her respects, and she would leave – it would be as simple as that. But that was if she could fight her way through the swelling crowds. The solid wall of people pressed on her from all sides as if trying to grind her to powder. She had heard of stampedes at holy pilgrimages like the Maha Kumbh Mela, which happened once every 144 years. All the windows were open on the houses lining the street. She could see people squished against each other at every window. Housewives draped themselves over their balconies, shouting down to people on the street. On the rooftop of one house, the maid was hanging out the day’s washing but she stood frozen, a green plastic bucket full of wet saris and T-shirts on her hip like a bowl of bedraggled multicoloured birds, her eyes transfixed by the flowing mass of humanity below.

Romola remembered once meeting Subir’s father, the venerable pipe-chewing editor of the
Daily Gazette
. Subir had told her he looked down on him for wanting to act in Bengali films. He only watched American films and European classics. Romola smiled wondering what he would say if he could now see the thousands of people lining the street to catch one last glimpse of his son.

She realized with a start that she didn’t really want to be Neelima or Sandhya or any of the other women who for a brief while had found stardom opposite him on the screen. She wanted to be Subir Kumar himself as he was in one of his biggest hits,
Madhumita
. After the heroine died, he burst into her house clutching a poem he had written on a full moon night years ago. As the distraught father exploded in anger and the mother wailed, and the servants dragged him out, Subir read out the poem with tears streaming down his face, his nostrils flaring with emotion. If I am to never see you again, what use this flood of moonlight except to drown in? What use these stars except as cold silent witnesses to my longing? It was such an emotional scene even the actress playing the dead Madhumita couldn’t help but be moved. Romola could swear she had seen her bosom heave as Subir uttered one last heart-rending cry of ‘Madhumita!’

A car was struggling to get through the street but couldn’t move. The driver stuck his head out, cursed and then pleaded. People laughed but didn’t budge. Everyone tried to peer in through the tinted windows to see if the passenger was a film star.