Of Marriageable Age (9 page)

Saroj and Ganesh took the stairs three steps at a time. Once in the tower they flung themselves in relief onto the bare scrubbed floorboards, gasping for breath and laughing.

'So, what’s the emergency?' Saroj said.

'I spoke to Kevin Grant on the phone this afternoon and he knows him.'

'He knows who?'

'That boy, of course, that Ghosh boy, your prospective bridegroom. Now, take a deep breath, Saroj, and hold on tight, here's my hand, grip tightly and don't faint. Ready?'

‘Let me guess…’ Saroj paused to think. ‘…he's a sixty-year-old widower with dentures and a leaky bladder. Baba's importing him from Calcutta and he's bringing a brood of seven bawling snotty-nosed infants, and . . .'

'A good guess but remember, the decisive word is
boy.
Even Baba wouldn't call anyone over forty a boy.'

'Well, then. He's that lovely ten-year-old kid who sells the Argosy at Camp Street corner and Baba found out he's really the illegitimate heir to the Purushottama millions and wants to make an honest man out of him, and . . .'

'Illegitimate? Saroj, where on earth did you learn filthy language like that? I mean for heaven's sake, do you even know what it means, and does Baba know about this ?'

'Okay Gan, that's enough. Tell me before I throw myself out of the window'

'Well . . . brace yourself.'

She gripped the railing till her knuckles turned white and her arms shook, opened her eyes wide, gritted her teeth and said through them to Ganesh, 'Okay, I'm ready. Tell me the whole truth, and then I'll dictate my epitaph.'

'Well, in one word, he's a twit, a twat. He's fifteen, and he's in 5c, a puny little drip with protuberant teeth and slicked-back greasy hair and his name is Keedernat. But he likes to be called Keith. Keet for short.'

Saroj giggled, and relaxed. 'Is that all?'

'Do you need more? Oh Ghosh! Let me see, maybe he has BO, I'll get a whiff of him on Monday and let you know. Or maybe . . .'

Saroj tuned out. All of a sudden she couldn't play the game any more. She slumped against the wall, weary of Ganesh and his eternal banter, his refusal to stop joking and jesting for just one moment. Gan had taught her to see a light side to everything. To stand back from life and laugh. To see the world as a stage, the figures on it comic characters acting out their parts, they themselves the only knowing ones, the only ones with dead-pan faces but sniggering souls. The two of them side-stepped through life mocking at its vagaries and thumbing their noses at its twists. That's the way Ganesh liked Saroj, and she played the part, for him. That is, in his company she played the part. On her own she couldn't do it. Because it wasn't real. It wasn't
her
. She was playing the part of a person playing a part, and right now she'd forgotten her lines and all Gan's prompting was in vain.

She looked at him, pleading with her eyes for him to stop, and said simply, 'What shall I do?'

She could see the word 'murder' forming on Gan's grinning lips, but then he must have caught the expression of liquid agony in her eyes because he stopped, regarded her in a moment of rare silence and said, 'I don't know, Saroj. Can't you just, well, flatly refuse?'

She gave him a look which was supposed to be withering, but it's hard to be withering when despair is nipping at your heels.

She reached into Ganesh's bag and took out the lime crush and an opener, then removed the crown with a click. But she didn't drink. The bottle still in her hand, she glanced at the window facing Waterloo Street, at the spectacular panorama of Georgetown's treetops, glittering roofs, sky, frayed clouds drifting by, and in the distance a glimpse of the Atlantic.

'As a last resort I could jump from here.'

'You never said that, Saroj, and I don't want to ever hear it again.'

'But if I don't do something, Gan, it'll all happen the way it did with Indrani. This whole Ghosh business will just keep rolling on, gathering momentum, and one fine day I'll wake up and I'll be Mrs Keedernat Ghosh.'

'Look, Saroj, just take it easy. Indrani's sixteen; you'll be sixteen too before this gets really serious. Plenty of time. What I don't understand is why Baba chose someone like that. I mean, a girl like you, good looks, respectable family, money, brains — you've got everything going for you. Why didn't he aim higher? Why didn't he nab a Luckhoo, for instance?'

The Luckhoo family was Georgetown's most prominent Indian law clan. Now they really had everything: Oxbridge educations, judgeships, knighthoods, and a couple of boys of marriageable age.

'Well, that's quite obvious. D'you think any of those Luckhoo boys would even
dream
of having their brides chosen for them? I mean, for goodness' sake, where are we living, in some Bengali village or what? And as for you . . . you wouldn't be so flippant about the whole thing if you didn't have some trump up your sleeve about this Narain girl. What're you going to do about it? Seriously, now?'

'It's easier for me. I'm going to go to university in England and that'll solve a few problems. All I have to do is never come back. They'll get over it. One good thing about these long-term engagements is that they give you long-term time for evading them. I'll just disappear from the scene — poof!'

'Maybe this Keedernat boy will go away to study too, and never come back!'

But Ganesh shook his head. He leaned against one of the windows and stretched out his long, lean, jeans-enclosed legs.

'No such luck, Saroj. Baba'd have chosen an older fellow for you in that case, someone who's already in England and coming back in a couple of years. Like he did for Indrani. This Ghosh boy'll sit a few O-Levels next year, pass two or three, and then go straight into his daddy's business selling dry goods and saris. They'll let him work a couple of years, and then he'll marry you when he's eighteen and you're sixteen.'

He dipped his hand into his bag and took out two samosas, threw one to her, and crunched his teeth into the other one. An expression of pure delight slipped over his face. 'Mmm . . . How Ma gets them to taste this way I'll never find out. I've tried and tried but mine just aren't the same.'

Saroj felt a tweak of irritation at Ganesh. He was so
shallow!
How could he speak of Saroj marrying the Ghosh boy in one sentence, and in the next of Ma's samosas?

Ganesh adored cooking, and there was nothing Ma could cook that he couldn't, but he still hadn't figured out that certain something, the magic ingredient which made Ma's dishes exquisite works of art, and his, by its lack, just tasty food. Ma knew all the secrets of cooking. She knew which foods were
sattvic
, raising your mind to great heights, which foods were
rajasic,
exciting the mind and heating it to seething point, and which were
tamasic,
dragging it into heavy, murky depths. Cooking was a matter of control: when to add what and exactly how much, not even a grain more. Control of heat and moisture, keeping temperatures right, regulating the flame, for fire could create as well as destroy. Regulating water, which could give life as well as it could drown, and could enter the dish uninvited as drops on a callalloo leaf. But that was mere technique. Ma added mystery — touching each ingredient as if it were to be cooked for God himself. The first spoonful of each dish was an offering, not to touch human lips. Ma spoke to food and sang to it. Ganesh knew the techniques but not the mysteries of cooking.

Saroj refused to be drawn into a discussion on Ma's samosas.

'I mean, what a drip!' she exclaimed. 'The very fact of him letting himself be chosen just proves he's a drip. Any self-respecting boy would refuse.'

'Well, how d'you know he hasn't, or he won't? For all you know he's right this minute raising hell and threatening to slit your throat if they force you on him. Of course, he hasn't
seen
you yet. That'll change matters.'

'But what'll I do, Gan? I can't marry him. Apart from him being a drip, I won't ever marry anyone Baba chooses. I wouldn't even marry Paul McCartney if Baba chose him. I won't marry, ever!' It was an agonized wail, a cry of desperation.

Ganesh chuckled, his good humour rising up through the film of gloom she'd spread across its surface, like a bubble of air reaching for the sky. 'You're too much of a prize not to marry ever, Saroj, it'd be a waste. If Baba had any sense he'd let you look for a husband yourself. You'd have the choice of the pack! If Baba wasn't keeping you like a precious jewel locked away in a safe you'd have half the boys in Georgetown on their knees, licking their lips.'

'Don't be disgusting. Just tell me what to
do.'

'Well, actually, maybe you should talk to Ma.'

'Talk to Ma? Are you crazy? Ma
approves
of arranged marriages, you know that. She helped choose Indrani's. And anyway, Ma doesn't talk. I mean, not really.'

'She does, you know. She talks to me.'

'Well, to
you,
maybe. But you and Ma are different, I mean, you're the same. The two of you live as though in a private world and you speak a private language.'

'You've never even tried to get to know her.'

'Ma's a book with seven seals. And if you looked behind them all you'd find is superstition. She's too . . . she's too
Indian.
It's as if she never left India, she just brought India here into Baba's house and continued to live there. She has no idea what the world's really about, with her Purushottama Temple and
sruti
box and stuff. She doesn't know a thing about modern life or about me and what I want to be. I don't think she's even heard of Pat Boone, not to mention the Beatles. How can I talk to someone like that?'

The Purushottama Temple was the centre of Ma's life outside the house — that, and the Stabroek Market. Mr Purushottama, the owner of the temple, was a genuine expatriate Indian who had come with a fortune to Georgetown from Kanpur to 'set the ball rolling', as he called it. He was a big, jovial man, who never wore anything but kurta pyjamas, and he opened the New Baratha Bank on High Street and encouraged, no, ordered, all Indians to deposit their savings there, which they did. As a thank-you he bought a Dutch colonial-style, wooden green-and-white mansion in Brickdam, all louvred windows and stained glass and an open balustraded gallery with ornate columns, gingerbread fretwork and arches all around the first storey. The bottom-house, the area between the pillars on which the house rested, was shielded from public view by a ground-to-ceiling lattice work, open towards the garden and yard at the back, and this is where all the ceremonies and functions took place — Diwali, and Phagwah, Krishna's birthday and whatever else the Hindus cared to celebrate. (Mr Purushottama also bought a mosque for the Muslims, but Saroj didn't know a thing about that.)

The Purushottama Temple was open to Hindus of every variety. Upstairs, in the house, was a puja room for Shiva worshippers, and one for Krishna worshippers; Rama, Kali, Hanuman, Ganesh, Parvati and Lakshmi each had a shrine where worshippers could gather at any time of day or night. Each room was a snug little refuge, complete with carpets and wall hangings from India and pictures of the various deities and decorated with brass ornaments polished and shining. The rooms were usually darkened, the louvres shut, the air thick with the heavy perfume of roses, jasmine, burned ghee and incense. Little oil lamps burned on every shrine, their flames unflickering in the half-light and surrounded with blue-and-golden haloes. At religious functions the entire temple swarmed with Indians. The lattice work was hung with garlands of marigolds; hibiscus blossoms were stuck between the wooden laths and the very air tingled with festivity.

Sometimes Ma took them all for puja to the Shiva shrine. On the weekends Baba liked the whole family — relatives near and far — to put in an appearance, all spick and span: men and boys in immaculate white and crisply ironed kurta pyjamas, women and girls in their brightest shiniest saris and skirts.

As a small child Saroj had actually liked the Purushottama Temple. It seemed a place of secrets and stories, full of deep mysteries, an exciting, exotic world aeons apart from reality. She had loved the colours and smells, the veiled idols behind thick curtains, the chanting and the singing and the atmosphere of otherworldy, ethereal ecstasy. All that changed abruptly when she reached the age of reason. Now she found the temple a reservoir of superstition. She still had to go, on Baba's command, but it was with an armoured heart and a cynical mind. Idolatry! Humbug! With turned up nose and slightly curled-up lips she sat through hours of
pujas
and
kirtans
; her hands might meet in assumed reverence, her lips might utter the prescribed responses. But inside she knew it was all a lie. It was a world of make-believe for adults.

And Ma was a part of this world that defied all reason.

A
T THIRTEEN
, Saroj could hardly remember the time when Ma and she had been almost one entity — a time before thought, when being alive was knowing Ma's presence as a warm, downy nest. Ma, all luminous eyes and a smile that embraced you. A time when she had worshipped Ma, as all children worship their mothers. Doesn't every mother seem like God to her child, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-forgiving? Ma, to whom the butterflies came, who spoke to the roses and brought them to bloom. All powerful. Ma could summon the sunshine and dispel clouds. The four-armed Goddess Parvati on her celestial throne.

But little girls grow up. They learn to think and reason, their horizon expands, their vision changes focus. They go to school, they read books, and newspapers. Their minds bounce free, Mother's halo fades, two of her arms drop off and she shrinks to her true, human and fallible size.

Saroj now saw Ma as what she always had been: an excellent cook, a conscientious housekeeper, a devoted mother, a dutiful wife, a fervent Hindu. A typical Indian housewife, docile, subservient. Loving, good and strong; strong in the sense that all mothers are strong for their children, but nevertheless an impotent spirit in the background, coyed and cringing under Baba's foot. Baba's rule was despotic, his rule was law, and no-one dared disobey, least of all Ma.