Home (18 page)

Nisha blushed at her comparative lack of household demands. ‘There is my Bhabhi,’ she murmured of Asha. ‘She does a lot.’

‘Lucky you,’ commented Pratibha. ‘I have three brothers who are still unmarried.’

Nisha quickly adjusted to the rather boring atmosphere of her all-girls college. At times the only difference she felt between DBC and school was that she didn’t have to wear a uniform and she could cut classes to sit with Pratibha in the canteen.

It was during the journey to the campus that Nisha really felt grown up. For the first time she was leaving Karol Bagh alone. In the mornings she caught the University Special, the bus service that catered to all the colleges, where girls and boys were not segregated, where the travellers were young (except for a few ancient teachers, who counted for nothing).

She first noticed his dark glasses and long hair. He was tall and thin, with a sallow complexion and his face was decorated with a bluish-black stubble. He took off his glasses to make sure she knew he was looking at her. She looked away, annoyed by his familiarity.

After some days he spoke. ‘Where do you study?’

She didn’t answer him, he might think she was welcoming his attentions.

Next day he asked again.

And the day after that.

By now she was beginning to feel silly. They were in a crowded student special after all. What harm could there be in a short, civil reply?

‘DBC,’ she said briefly.

A long pause. If he thought she was going to return the interest he had a hope.

He addressed his hopes himself. ‘I am in KCE.’

The bus drew up to Kashmiri Gate. ‘Bye,’ he mumbled and jumped off.

She sought information from Pratibha. ‘What is KCE?’

Pratibha looked interested. ‘Khalsa College of Engineering. Why? Met someone?’

Nisha protested, ‘Why are you so quick to imagine things?’

‘Be careful,’ cautioned Pratibha. ‘Those boys are always trying to pick up girls. They are off campus and desperate.’

Nisha tossed her head. ‘I am not so stupid.’

When she came home she stared at the mirror hanging over the sink in the hot, deserted angan. This was what the boy had seen when he looked at her.

Next morning Nisha dressed carefully, casting a furtive glance at the mirror when nobody was looking. How pretty was she? She was fair; her eyes, like her mother’s, were light brown; her hair long and thick with copper highlights. But something was lacking. There were girls on the bus without half her looks who attracted more attention, her own included. Well, what did it matter, she thought, gathering her books and leaving the house, she was not asking anybody to look at her, she just had to go to college, do her work, come home.

In the bus every seat was taken, and working from the backs of heads, it took a while before she could locate the long hair, the slender neck, the narrow slump of shoulder.

More students got in and pushed her forwards. The bus lurched, her hand grabbed his seat to avoid falling, he looked around, reached for her heavy book-laden bag, indicating an intimacy that confused and warmed her.

She looked down, her hand still resting on the seat bar, centimetres away from his hair.

At Kashmiri Gate he got out, and with a slight gesture offered her the seat. She slid into it, and stared ahead, clutching her belongings in her lap.

The monsoon was departing, but the days continued hot: cloudy, rainless skies alternating with stifling, muggy days. When the electricity went, the classrooms became unbearable, the level of smell casting the mind back to the interior of a crowded bus, and lingering there in a way that was most detrimental to one’s studies.

Weeks passed of incessant eye contact and occasional words. There was no reason to feel shy now when the boy took her books. And no reason for Nisha to keep her body tightly away from his when they sometimes sat next to each other.

One day he mentioned that he had some work near DBC, and would get down at her stop.

They walked down the narrow pavement with its broken paving stones, their steps together, she conscious of everything about him, he looking straight ahead, a tune on his breath, the mask of dark glasses firmly in place.

They walked along, dust getting under their chappals, perspiration wetting their clothes. In this daily walk from home to bus stop to college, and back, she used an umbrella to make sure her skin didn’t darken, and she took it out now.

‘Hot, no?’

She nodded.

‘Want a cold drink?’

She was too shy to actually agree.

‘Let’s go to the Coffee House, it’s not far.’

There could be nothing wrong in having a cold drink with someone she had seen so often. She let herself be guided towards the Coffee House.

She returned to college feeling adventurous, daring, and modern. For the first time she had interacted socially with an unrelated male. She couldn’t wait to get Pratibha to the canteen. Though when Pratibha pressed her for details it turned out nothing exciting had taken place.

Suresh had been forced to make most of the conversation. His questions, her monosyllabic replies, had been the gist of the encounter: Are you in first year? I haven’t seen you before in the bus? Do you like your college? Where do you live? What do you study? What does your father do?

She had been less curious. Irritated at the lost opportunity, Pratibha opined that a new-born baby would have done better. Ah, but a new-born baby could not look, and what they had communicated through their glances was not something to convey. Quickly Nisha changed the topic. Had Pratibha got the notes she had promised her?

But Pratibha was not so easily put off. She insisted Nisha bunk the next period, a history subsidiary. More talk was needed, gaps had to be filled, silences meditated upon.

‘So you like him?’ demanded Pratibha sternly.

Nisha nodded, nervously swishing her chow mein around on the cracked, green-flowered plastic plate that Mr Lamba saw fit to serve his stuff on.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Suresh.’

Pratibha toched impatiently.

‘Suresh what? You can’t identify a person from his first name.’

‘Kumar.’

‘Kumar? He is hiding his caste?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t believe in caste – after all, there are lots of Kumar is in class.’

That was true. Pratibha backed down a bit. ‘All right. Where is he from then? What is his family background?’

‘How should I know? Am I going to marry him that I should start doing question-answer?’

‘If you are going to be a modern girl you have to be thorough.’

‘It’s not so easy, you know.’

‘Then it is better not to get into these things,’ claimed Pratibha virtuously.

‘O-ho, what am I getting into?’ demanded Nisha. ‘You think girl and boy can’t be friends?’

‘Don’t get so hot,’ said Pratibha in her turn. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Sanjay Dutt.’

Pratibha tittered. ‘You like him so much, you think he looks like a film hero.’

Nisha giggled in turn. ‘Arre, I am just telling you what I see. I am not asking you to believe me.’

Two weeks later Pratibha was dragged to the coffee house. The meeting was a huge success. Pratibha wore a pink satin salwar suit with a sequinned net chunni. Nisha could tell the cloth was like the lower-priced ones her father sold in his shop, and suddenly she hoped Suresh would be very nice to her friend.

He was. He found out she wanted to be an IPS officer. He teased her about how ferocious she was going to be, riding in a police van on campus putting down demonstrations. Pratibha cackled and told Nisha later he was not at all proudy like other boys she knew.

The meetings continued, but still under the guise of I have work near your college, would you like a coffee? And then came the time when she asked what work and he smiled and said you, and they both felt a milestone had been reached, enough for him to briefly touch her arm, enough for her to not pull away.

He paid her compliments that beguiled her into believing she was someone special. If Suresh thought her pretty, it was not an appearance that reflected a mother’s greater beauty; if he thought her clothes nice, it was not a comment on Banwari Lal merchandising; if he thought her conversation witty, it was not the result of a relative’s input into her studies. It was a heady feeling.

At the coffee house one day he looked long and hard at her.

‘What?’ asked the girl.

‘Have you ever thought of cutting your hair?’ he responded.

‘My hair?’ she repeated. This thing not her own, but family treasure, the essence of traditional beauty, oiled all her life by loving hands, first vigorously to establish growth, then lightly to keep it tidy.

‘You’ll look really pretty. Like Suriya. You have eyes like her.’

‘I don’t know,’ she faltered.

‘If you could, you’d look like Suriya, I’m telling you,’ he insisted.

Suriya was the most popular film star of the day, and it was not easy to look like her. Nisha felt too shy to go on contradicting him, and looked on in silence while he stirred his coffee, clattering the spoon loudly against the sides of the thick, white, chipped cup. His hair wasn’t oily, it fell naturally in waves against his neck, even her inexperienced eyes could see the skilful layers in it.

‘Think about it.’

‘My family will get very upset,’ she said, falling back on a certainty. ‘They will say college has spoilt you.’

Suresh understood at once what that could be like.

Meanwhile Nisha’s thoughts about the way she looked intensified. It was no longer enough to have fair skin and good features. She needed to stand out. Could she cut her hair, face the storm this would create, and emerge beautiful and shining after the commotion died down?

To encourage her rebellion she thought of the girls in her class, girls with swishing, open hair, wavy, curly, blow-dried, or hanging straight, framing faces with fringes, flicks, or stray tendrils. She thought of her own, in the thick, rubber-banded plait, never falling free, ugly and unimaginative.

Strand by minuscule strand she attacked the lengths of her plait. This was her beauty she was mutilating and her hand was unsteady. The advantage of minute snips was that though she appeared the same, in her mind her hair had begun to flap attractively around the nape of her neck.

Her meetings with Suresh became regular.

‘Did you find out about his background?’ demanded Pratibha.

‘He is doing engineering so he can go into the family business,’ said Nisha firmly, describing Suresh’s prospects with a confidence that could have matched a marriage advertisement. ‘They own an auto parts shop in Kashmiri Gate.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘How can I ask? It will seem I do not trust.’

That was true. Since she could not ask, Pratibha decided she was being unduly suspicious and lapsed into the romantic. ‘Oh Nisha,’ she sighed, ‘same background as you. Nobody can object to your marriage. What is his caste name?’

Nisha glared at her.

‘Before he took to calling himself Kumar, I mean,’ added Pratibha quickly.

‘If he calls himself Kumar I do not want to ask. He is from a business family, same as me.’

‘Oh Nisha,’ sighed Pratibha again, unable to do anything else in the face of growing similarities of background, ‘so lucky you are. My parents would kill me if they knew I was doing such a thing.’

Nisha tossed her head. ‘I am not a fool,’ she announced as she thought of the love that had driven her own parents to marry, of all the films she had seen, with myriad combinations of unequal background between boy and girl: rich-poor, Hindu-Muslim, Hindu-Christian, high class-low class, educated-uneducated. Love was the bridge over the great divide. Personal worth was all. The pure mind and the feelings of the heart.

Winter came. Nisha and Suresh could be found roaming the University lawns. One intimate afternoon he touched the little lock hanging by her ear and said, ‘Come, let us go to the beauty parlour. There is one in Kamla Nagar.’

‘Why?’ she asked flirtatiously, ‘I don’t look nice?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to look even nicer?’ he coaxed tenderly.

Now, this minute, he was forcing her to choose between an outsider and her family, modernity and custom, independence and community. Paralysis was her solution: she sat on the lawns, and refused to get up. ‘Arre, you can always grow it back if there is too much trouble,’ reasoned Suresh. ‘Now come.’ He held out his hand.

As they rode towards metamorphosis in Kamla Nagar, she felt she was entering a phase from which there was no turning back.

‘Such pretty hair, so thick and wavy,’ enthused the hairdresser, running her comb briskly through the dripping wet mass. ‘How do you want it cut?’

‘Not too short,’ whispered Nisha, clearing her throat in alarm. She was on her own. Suresh, not allowed within this strictly ladies’ parlour, was hanging around outside. ‘Like Suriya,’ she finally dared.

‘Suriya has steps. How long?’

Nisha jabbed tentatively halfway down her back.

When she emerged from the beauty parlour Suresh stared and stared. Then he let out a whistle. Nisha blushed, while blow-dried waves fell around her. Before she could delight in her changed appearance, she needed to face her family.

This was not going to be easy. On the bus home she replayed their anger in all its variation, stopping short of being thrown out of the house.

It greeted her as she walked through the front door. Who gave you permission to cut your hair, suddenly you have become so independent, you decide things on your own, where did you find the money, the time, the beauty parlour, where did you find all these things?

Her hair was opened, pulled, tugged, stared at, and wept over. But at the end of it all, Sona silently consoled herself by thinking that her daughter’s resemblance to Suriya might counterbalance her bad stars in the marriage market.

The academic session was coming to a close. Nisha had had a difficult year and now she felt nervous. English was so different from the undemanding course she had imagined that she had found it easier to abandon its pursuit than struggle with alien texts. By the time the teachers had done with them, even the novels were incomprehensible.