THE IMMIGRANT (16 page)

‘Don’t you have anything else?’ asked Ananda, eyeing her splendour dubiously.

‘I have my saris,’ offered his wife.

‘Oh, never mind, let’s go. We’ll have to see about some clothes for you this weekend.’

In the hallway Ananda took her hand. ‘Are you tired?’ he asked tenderly.

She laughed, ‘After sleeping the whole day? It’s you who must be tired.’

‘Naah. I’m used to coming home and shopping.’

‘Do you have a lot of patients?’

He gave a modest smile, ‘Oh, I’ve been here a long time,’ He hummed and swung her hand down the long corridor to the elevator.

‘What name did you say the car was?’ said Nina, making up for yesterday’s neglect in this area.

‘It’s a Saab.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A Swedish car. Gary thinks European cars are a waste of money, but man, Swedish design makes this one classy car.’

Her husband had a car so exclusive she had never heard of it. In a single stroke she had outpaced the status symbols of home.

Down, down the building, down into the dank, dark, neon-lit basement.

Rows of cars. She should get acquainted with them, they were more plentiful than people.

‘One of the reasons I chose this building was that it has underground parking,’ explained Ananda. ‘Otherwise in winter it’s a real hassle plugging in the car to keep it warm, scraping off the snow, takes much longer to warm the engine too. The people in older apartments are not so lucky.’

Ananda had the air of Santa Claus as he took out the keys and the central locking system clicked open. ‘I thought this was a sophisticated colour. Indians come here and buy such showy things. Red, blue, black. No taste.’

Nina could see before her a car, pale grey, long, sleek, handsome, capable of gliding, smooth and slick over bump-free spacious roads. Her admiration was warm.

They drove around the apartment blocks of Hollin Court, across the road into a shopping complex. The trip had taken thirty seconds. ‘It’s so close!’ Nina exclaimed.

‘Yes, we only drive when we need to stock up—otherwise you can walk to the market.’

Nina stepped out of the car. The morning clouds had abated to reveal patches of clear sky. The slanting mellow light seemed to prolong evening into the hours that belonged to night. Even in a parking lot there was something wondrous about it.

‘Is it always so beautiful?’ she asked.

‘When it’s not raining. This is one of the wettest places in Canada.’

‘Rain? Oh how lovely.’ Rain, always welcome, always a respite from heat, heavy, pounding, lovely, beautiful, grey and white rain.

‘Wait till it rains. It’s not like India.’

‘I know,’ said Nina, neatly jumping over the last sixteen years and landing under the leaden, drizzly skies of Brussels.

They walked into the Dominion Supermarket. The slight chill outside was replaced by warmth. The silk salwar kameez was doing nicely, thank you very much, thought Nina as she folded her pashmina shawl and tucked it inside her handbag.

The couple wheeled a cart down the aisles, past such colour and promise that Nina felt she would go mad with the bounties of infinite choice. Like the airport, only a thousand times better, because here she was not a deprived onlooker but a consumer ready to be consumed. It would take her days to digest the delights of one supermarket, a lifetime before she could be indifferent to its charms.

The adult pleasure of wallowing in a sea of material goods was entirely new to her. Eventually she would experience exhaustion at the claims made on her senses, but for now she was all ardent response and eager reaction.

Ananda was indulgent of Nina’s indiscriminate urges. No, no, not so much grape juice, or so many chips or biscuits, that’s a dip, we don’t want so much dip, only sugarless candy and gum, I am a dentist, no, put them back. Amused he led her firmly to the meat, fruit and vegetable section. Where there was no dirt on anything, and a certain quality guaranteed in the purchase.

Gratified by the success of their first grocery shopping, Ananda wheeled the laden grocery cart towards the car. On the way home he elaborated on his sagacity, ‘You run out of something, you just whip down and out—of course in winter you have to wear warm clothes, the wind is a little strong sometimes, but living so nearby, what does it matter?’

Back in the apartment building basement, Ananda took out a small trolley from the trunk. For taking groceries up, no servants.

‘We never had full time servants at home either, and I wish we had trolleys,’ said Nina.

They unpacked together. ‘I’ve never bought so much junk in my life,’ joked Ananda as he flipped open a can of beer. Nina felt the delectation of a pampered child.

Then they cooked in the small kitchen, rice, dal and raita for Nina, with an additional grilled fish for Ananda.

‘Is this how you eat every day?’ asked Nina.

‘Hell, no. I just fry some hamburger patties, whole wheat bun, salad on the side, or I grill some fish with a bit of lemon and butter. On the weekends I may make a steak, sirloin or T bone, with some mashed potatoes and peas.’

‘So you never eat Indian?’

‘Too much trouble, too much time. I only cook Indian when I have guests, they seem to expect it,’ he added gloomily.

‘So, you are doing this for me?’

‘Until you get used to something different. I’ve made enough dal for a week.’

Could his care and consideration be equalled, could she have married a better man—no, thought Nina, no. The institution of the arranged marriage was alive and well so far as she was concerned. Mentally, she sent a message to Zenobia and her mother,
I am all right, don’t worry, he cooks most of the food and freezes tons of dal for me, stay well, love Nina.

That night, in bed, Nina was more prepared for the brevity of their sexual encounter. It was easier to not compare Ananda with his predecessor in a different country. ‘Welcome home, darling,’ said Ananda, putting his arm around his wife afterwards. And that was the main point, wasn’t it? Not her orgasms, but the fact that she was home.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured to a husband who was already asleep.

She put in some tossing and turning before drifting restlessly to the other room, over to the unit on which rested the TV, and quickly unearthed its single literary treasure.
The Mountain and the Valley
by Ernest Buckler, inscribed with love from Sue, was evidently unread from the stiffness of its pages. Well, might as well get to know this country. As she read on, the book gripped her. She had not realised rural Nova Scotia was so interesting. She would like to meet Sue, perhaps borrow other books.

And now she remembered, Ananda had said no point shipping, with the same money you could buy a new library. This remark drew the days ahead into some shape. To read as much as she liked with no disturbance! 612 Hollin Court began to seem like paradise.

Or so she thought at night. In the day it was sleep, sleep, sleep. ‘It’s just jet lag,’ said her husband, as he woke her up for dinner the next day. ‘Some people get it very badly.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘I can’t afford to. Not with my patients waiting. It’s all right for you, take your time.’

Did he not suffer, crossing nine different time zones? Or was Canada so deeply embedded in his body that waking, sleeping, he moved to its rhythms? One day her system too would move to a different beat.

For now, after a restless, wakeful night, sleep came upon her like the most artful lover in the day, and despite her determined efforts to resist, claimed her for his own. The tiredness of her life, the hardships, the journeys in buses, the baking summer sleeplessness on a calefacient bed, the nagging discomfort of two miniscule rooms, all melted into soft pillows, sweet smelling sheets and a springy mattress.

Two nights later she finished
The Mountain and the Valley.
She had a greater sense of Canada with this one book, than after all her husband’s conversation. At dinner she demanded more reading material.

‘I’ll ask Gary.’

‘What’ll I do in the meantime?’

‘Watch TV.’

‘TV?’

‘There is the remote. And there, the guide.’

Nina had never watched TV in her life. She required the printed word to fill the spaces in her mind, the leisured turning of pages, the slow absorption of words, the occasional re-reading. She wondered whether this suggested some rigidity of outlook.

iii

Certain Indians become immigrants slowly. They are not among those who have fled persecution, destitution, famine, slavery and death threats, nor among those for whom the doors of their country slam shut the minute they leave its borders.

These immigrants are always in two minds. Outwardly they adjust well. Educated and English speaking, they allow misleading assumptions about a heart that is divided.

In the new country they work lengthy hours to gain entrance into the system, into society, into establishing a healthy bank account. Years pass like this, ungrudged years because they can see their all sustaining dream of a better life coming true.

As far as citizenship is concerned, a divided heart means that the immigrant clings to his status, feeling that to give up his passport is the final break in the weakened chain that binds him to his motherland. That day does come however.

The steps towards it are varied and not necessarily slow. Sometimes trips to the home country bring a disillusion and bitterness that the immigrant has forgotten how to cope with. Is this how it is here? So corrupt, merit stifled, such malfunctioning of every civic amenity, where your last ounce of energy is spent in merely keeping the wheels of daily life oiled and running. For men this logic works particularly well. Ok, let’s be loyal to the country that has done so much for us.

In fact the years it takes to qualify for citizenship are needed to adapt, bit by bit, day by day. To stop finding little things strange and confusing, laughable and inappropriate. Wear the shoe on the other foot, sister, brother. They think the same of you. Get rid of the schism, become enough like them to be comfortable, merge and mingle. From East to West, over and over.

Forget the smells, sights, sounds you were used to, forget them or you will not survive. There is new stuff around, make it your own, you have to.

When it comes to buying, yes in North America clothes are mass produced and wonderful, food is plentiful, prepackaged and cheap. For a long time the immigrant looks upon these things with joy. This is what he has come for. The price he pays for leaving the uneven artistry of home is not very high.

Work is an easy way to integrate. Work engages the mind and prevents it from brooding over the respective merits of what has been lost and gained. Colleagues are potential friends.

The immigrant who comes as a wife has a more difficult time. If work exists for her, it is in the future and after much finding of feet. At present all she is, is a wife, and a wife is alone for many, many hours. There will come a day when even books are powerless to distract. When the house and its conveniences can no longer completely charm or compensate. Then she realises she is an immigrant for life.

Nina cries, feels homesick, sometimes adventurous, often forlorn. The minute she gets up she is at a loose end. Languidly she approaches her housework: dishwashing, bed making, cleaning, stretching every task out, slow, slow. She keeps the radio on, listening to music, advertisements, the CBC and its take on Quebec separatism and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It seems a big issue here.

This done, she puts on her silk salwar kameez, fast becoming her uniform, goes out to wander around. She admires the Nova Scotian summer, so cool. She buys junk and nibbles it on the way: chips, chocolate, candy. She ruins her appetite, but she doesn’t need much of an appetite to do justice to the canned soup and toasted sandwich that will be her lunch.

Once home she takes off her shoes, which had been deceptively comfortable in the store, but now pinch like her old ones did.

Books bought from the grocery store fill her time. They are as cheap and trashy as the food she indulges in. Basically she waits for Ananda to come home, then she will talk, often the first words of the day. She writes frequently to her mother and Zenobia. Her letters are very cheerful.

Ananda knows she is lonely, but hopes she will settle down quickly. A teaching career would be ideal, but in the West the road to a teaching job is long and arduous. She has to have a PhD, she has to have published.

Nina insists that not doing anything for a while will be pleasant, however the statement lacks its earlier buoyancy. Ananda tries to come home early so they can do things together.

Women in Love
is her first film in Halifax.

How strange the halls in the West are, thought Nina, holding on to a bag of buttered popcorn and surveying the miniscule number of people that made up the audience. Did they even make a profit? At home crowds milled around film halls, the black market in tickets was brisk. Here, come here, plenty of room for all.

The film credits started, Ananda took her hand and they became a regular couple, for all to see. Nina directed these visuals towards her mother and colleagues. Ananda directed them towards his uncle, aunt, Alka, Ramesh, Gary, Sue and the students at the school of dentistry. Look, look at the clasped hands, at her head resting against my shoulder.

Nina soon became distracted from the drama on the screen by the couple sitting directly in front of them. The man had his arm around the girl’s shoulders. Every so often their faces merged, their lips locked in kisses. Why couldn’t they wait till they got home? How long had they known each other, was this a new love or an old one, clandestine or legitimate? She marvelled at such passion in a public place, while her hand lay in Ananda’s, so coy and shy compared to the fecund model in front.

Those two lived on in her imagination long after she had forgotten the details of
Women in Love.

Later as they were driving home, ‘Did you like the movie?’

‘It was lovely,’ though actually
Women in Love
had too much sex for Nina’s taste. She did not like direct evidence of how different her own experience was.