The Cambridge Curry Club (15 page)

Her cousin had unexpectedly found a quiet spot on the ghat behind a little marble temple and under a magnificent banyan, and he waded into the sunlit water with the urns. He had performed the last rites,
accompanied
by her silent resistance and welling anger; this should have been a daughter’s right. There was also a distant memory of the same annoying cousin thrashing about in a Bombay swimming pool; he had caressed her teenage thighs before swiftly escaping in a noisy splash.

The tranquillity of the moment and the sweet chimes of the temple bell were replaced by the loud tones of a raunchy film song, ‘Choli ke Peeche Kya Hai’ (What’s Behind the Blouse), streaming from a transistor held by a young man in an unbuttoned shirt and tight trousers ambling down the path above. It was a cruel, noisy requiem for the disjointed lives of her parents, crushed in a pilgrims’ stampede. Durga’s Aunty
Sarojini
offered consolation. At least the bodies had been recovered: other victims would be missing for ever.

Durga plunged into legalities and paperwork. Uncle Manohar shook his head sadly as he looked at the
disarray
of his brother’s financial affairs. Still, there was a small retirement flat in Pune as Durga’s inheritance; at least she had a roof over her head, and by God’s grace it need not be his.

Mrs Kamath seized the opportunity to sway Durga’s Aunty Sarojini; the girl was vulnerable to exploitation
by unscrupulous sharks now that she was alone in the world. Besides, she added, embroidering past
conversations
without guilt, she could hear the mother’s voice pleading: ‘Only you can find me a good boy for Durga, I am counting on you.’ Sarojini was moved as Mrs Kamath, dabbing her eyes, embellished stories of her visits to Durga’s mother. There was no time to lose, said Mrs Kamath, with determination. It was in Durga’s best interests to marry the doctor. He was also a
gynaecologist
, what more could a girl want? One way or another, exulted Aunty Sarojini later to her niece, she would be going to Cambridge.

When Durga and her husband returned home together after the wedding, his mother had greeted them at the door with a ceremonial thali for the ritual washing of Durga’s feet, her silk blouse tight under armpits circled with sweat. The silver thali made a loud sharp
thak
sound as she placed it on the floor; Durga stepped into the thali, and her sister-in-law Archana reluctantly poured a few symbolic drops of water from a jug onto the bride’s feet. The mother barked, ‘Napkin, napkin, bring napkin!’ berating the servant as Archana ordered him to take the ‘dirty water’ away, and Durga’s feet left the thali cleansed for her new life. Both mother and daughter ignored the ceremonial coconut Durga was carrying, and as she entered the house the servant took it casually from her, as if she were a wordless postman expecting a Diwali tip. The family had green coconut chutney at dinner.

Atul’s relatives were in attendance on her wedding night. A noisy card game coupled with intermittent desultory singing led the uncles to chorus their
demands to Atul, who obligingly obtained whisky from his gynaecologist father, owner of Patwardhan’s Maternity Clinic. The Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles were concealed behind the woollen suits
smelling
of mothballs in his steel Godrej cupboard with the cracked mirror. Atul’s cousin, a fair, green-eyed woman with long, plaited brown hair, sent Durga a sullen, smouldering look. There was something proprietorial about the cousin, thought Durga. And his sister, his parents, the entire family. She was married to the mob.

The nuptial bed was bedecked with rajnigandha flowers and rose petals. Atul and Durga had made their way to his old bedroom accompanied by winks and jokes from the uncles. Minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was his sister Archana. With only a token apology, she removed a hairbrush from Atul’s wardrobe. Her sharp, satisfied eyes noted the couple’s awkwardness.

‘Didn’t your mother teach you to cook?’ reproached Atul’s mother a week later. ‘I have taught Archana everything. Studying is not an excuse. It is every woman’s duty to learn these things, and you will be doing the cooking in Cambridge, anyway.’ She placed the lid firmly on the pressure cooker. ‘He loves
vangebhaji
, it’s his favourite dish. You must learn everything about our style of cooking, although I must say he will still miss my special touch.’

As if on cue, Atul walked into the kitchen, placing an arm around his mother’s waist. ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘and if only I could, I would have you in Cambridge with me.’ She looked as if she would cry.

Durga’s moments alone with her husband were
hurried
rather than intimate; both waited for the knock on
the door. The days passed in the constant company of his relatives and friends, who saw little need for their privacy. Atul’s light-eyed cousin Shreya developed a mysterious infection that she could only discuss in
confidence
, so they disappeared to talk in hushed tones on balconies with lush overhanging bougainvillaea, in rooms darkened against the midday sun.

Durga and Atul were awakened one night by a harsh, reedy wail from his parents’ room. He hurried out, indicating that she should remain in bed, and did not return until the morning. As he explained to Durga later, his mother was suffering separation pangs again, as she had done when he had left for Cambridge for the first time. She experienced breathing difficulties, and complained of palpitations and impenetrable aches in the neck and limbs. He had stayed by her side, they had chatted late into the night, and he had finally lain across her lap in exhaustion. He would invite her to Cambridge next summer, he said; that would brighten her mood.

A professional family portrait was suggested before they left for England; there was excitement as Atul made an appointment with Patekar’s Studios at Deccan Gymkhana. It was the equivalent of a family trip to Disneyland. His mother stood in front of her grey Godrej steel cupboard, searching endlessly among the piles of neatly folded saris, as his sister hovered to advise. Atul was handsome in his black wedding suit although it pinched at the elbows; he stole an appreciative glance at Durga in a purple and red Paithani sari that had belonged to her mother.

Atul’s aunt and his cousin Shreya arrived unannounced. His mother stood in front of her
cupboard again, calling out to them to select two saris: they had accepted the invitation to accompany the
family
to the studio. Fifteen minutes later they were
waiting
, stiff and starched, for his father, who had been delayed by the slow progress of a patient at Patwardhan’s Maternity Clinic. ‘Are you giving birth to a buffalo?’ he asked in desperation, glancing at his watch. The sweating, heaving woman cast him a
pleading
look. He relented. ‘Push harder!’ he commanded.

He arrived at Patekar’s Studio along with his family to find it changed. The big cameras and black cloth and popping flashbulbs were gone, and Patekar Senior had retired; his fingers were too unsteady. The son, a smart young man, was courteous, but the Pune air in the studio was one of efficiency, of the instant one-hour passport photo service, the multiplex cinema and the Barista coffee shop. The magician’s curtained lair of mysterious dusty props and the world of quiet, leafy lanes were gone forever.

Patekar Senior would have slowly arranged the
family
members around the Patwardhan patriarch seated on a grand velvet chair, but his son Ravi was more hurried, now habituated to digital commercial
photography
. He had snappily assigned everyone their places, but there was a cousin who hovered unhappily on the periphery. With an intuition his father would have applauded, he subtly altered the arrangement; Atul now stood beaming – if a little squashed – between radiant cousin and wife.

Durga rang Vivek and her relatives from her new home in Pune; the conversations were stilted and guarded. Atul’s mother and sister were watchful,
displaying
their displeasure at her continued links with
her old life. Durga had clung to her surname fiercely, unwilling to exchange ‘Prabhu’ for ‘Patwardhan’. Atul’s anorexic aunt, who lived in Florida and
organised
classical music soirées for visiting artistes from India, intervened with the persuasive vocabulary of a Sicilian warlord to announce closure on the matter: Durga was no longer a ‘Prabhu’.

‘Do you have any idea what a well-known family we are in Pune?’ challenged Archana. ‘Or is it because you think you are too good for us that you didn’t want to change your name?’ She had waited until Atul was out strolling with his parents in the University Gardens. ‘And forget about all those fancy friends. Who is this Vivek I heard you phoning?’

‘An old friend.’

‘Oh? Does Atul know about this? What is the need to ring this friend from here?’

Durga had remained silent, unsurprised by the
hostility
, unwilling to talk about her loneliness, and
Archana
was satisfied she had found proof of Durga’s guilt.

A week before her wedding in Pune, Durga had perched on Moody Baby near the quiet, leafy Afghan Church in Colaba.

‘You will stay in touch, won’t you?’ asked Durga.

‘What do you think? Who else is going to make you laugh out there in cold Cambridge?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘
Arre
, I laid down my life on the road for you once, and I would do it again, but don’t tell anyone, it’s bad for my reputation,’ said Vivek with a tremor in his voice.

She looked at him, choked by a new realisation. ‘Why didn’t you say …’

‘Not good enough. Not for you. Do great things with your life, Durga, as you were always meant to. Now enough! Moody Baby will cry in a minute, and you know how she hates ruining her mascara and leaving those black streaks on the road.’

Prior to her departure for Cambridge, Durga visited her parents’ retirement flat for the last time. Standing in the hallway as the sun filtered through the rooms, her eyes lingered over the contents carefully
transported
from Mumbai. Her mother’s books were piled high on a table, the reading spectacles neatly folded, the chair at a beckoning angle. Her father’s liquor
cabinet
caught the afternoon light swirling in the wine, sherry, cognac and whisky glasses shipped with pride from England, the pub souvenirs, a model of a London bus, Durga’s pop cassettes and teenage fiction spilling over the shelves, the broken tanpura and the Time-Life book so eagerly perused by Joshiji. She walked to the wardrobes, opening them in turn, burying her face in the soft folds of her mother’s saris, as neat and fragrant as when last worn, running her fingers over her father’s shirts from Marks & Spencer, labelled with lingering cologne. Durga wept.

Atul’s mother wept until her son was no longer a speck in the private Pune luxury taxi bound for the airport. She leaned heavily on her husband for support, a cracked stalk in the wind. Rivulets snaked down her face, as her husband bravely blinked back his own tears. ‘What do I have to look forward to, except my Atul’s next visit?’ she cried plaintively, prompting several female relatives to pull out tiny handkerchief squares in haste. Dab, dab, dab. Their sons and daughters, too, had
left Pune for the winking lights of the West, never to return. The green-eyed cousin Shreya wept pitifully in glandular gasps, but Archana remained dry-eyed. ‘That is enough,
Aai
– you will make yourself ill. Do you want Atul to drop everything he is doing there and come back just for you?’ she rebuked her mother,
planting
a seed for slow germination.

The rotund man sitting next to Atul in the aisle seat on the flight to Heathrow confided his diabetic condition within minutes of being airborne. ‘So which fruit is the highest in sugar content, Doctor? Which vegetables do you recommend I should avoid? Doctor, any suggestion on exercise?’ he asked humbly, whipping out a large notepad and pen. A gynaecologist was still a doctor, and the advice was free.

Durga looked at her husband’s profile. The days in Pune had passed in crumbling suffocation, and black, hate-filled mosquitoes had bitten through her limbs despite the window mesh. She wondered at Atul’s desire to have an arranged marriage; his cousin and sister clearly felt he and Durga were ill-matched, and slyly influenced his mother to concur. Atul’s father was a mild-mannered man who spoke little. Surrounded by female nurses and patients all day, over the past twenty years his vocabulary had dwindled to the injunction ‘Push harder!’ at the Maternity Clinic. He was an unlikely ally, despite the apparent feminist sentiment behind the two words.

Faced with baseless suspicion from strangers, Durga was initially optimistic; she would turn the other cheek, douse fire with love. A smuggled surfeit of Mills & Boon romances had led to her muddled view of love
and marriage, and she was horrified to find a rewritten script; she was playing the role of Cinderella
after
she had married the prince. Was he a prince who had turned into a frog, or a princely frog? Durga had taken a bite of the apple, but instead of a gentle awakening from slumber in a glass casket, she was learning to iron the creaseless shirt.

She glanced frequently at Atul during the flight. He was a handsome man, and perhaps it was too soon for disillusionment; they had left India and his family behind, the future awaited. It would be different once they were on their own and in Cambridge, city of spires.

Durga waited at the luggage carousel at Heathrow as Atul struggled to heave a second heavy suitcase onto the trolley. He looked down in dismay at the spreading oil stains on his beige chinos, leaned forward and sniffed. ‘It must be mango pickle – oh God, it has leaked!’ he exclaimed. He looked crushed, as a red stain formed a symmetrically large triangle on his crotch, coupled with two vertical red streaks on his thighs; his mother’s blessings had safely accompanied him to
England
. Had Durga laughed, the echo would have sneaked into the terminal, into the waiting coffee cups and steaming ears of the passengers and out onto the tarmac with the planes, steering upward into the open skies.