THE IMMIGRANT (37 page)

The driver deposits her suitcases inside, and after many goodbyes and thank yous, Alka drives off. Mother and daughter are alone in their two rooms, which memory had made less mean and cramped. When Nina opens her suitcases to quickly put the cheese and chocolate in the fridge, the lids occupy all the free floor space.

Conversation takes up the rest of the night. The living arrangements of the widowed woman that were buried under wedding minutiae two and a half years ago, are now scrutinised.

The annual visit that Mr Batra made to Lucknow was gone over in great detail. Theoretically, in-laws might suggest company and security, but in fact age had not sweetened them, nor had custom lent them consideration. They had offered the lonely woman a home, but in return it was expected she serve, slave, look after and endure. This was too heavy a price, even for the meek. She preferred to manage on her pension, in fact the money Nina sends is unnecessary.

‘God, Ma, don’t embarrass me. Fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, what’s that? One patient, two patients. When I get a job as a librarian, you see what I do for you.’

‘Till then, don’t send, beta. Ananda must pay his debts first.’

‘Everybody there has debts, they mean nothing. Why, I spent a hundred dollars on a single sweater.’

The mother looked appalled.

Nina glanced around the poky room and the tiny screened-in veranda. ‘Ma, aren’t you lonely here?’

‘Beta, since your father died, it has never been the same. You can be lonely in a room full of people, but thank God you are too young to know that. You are settled and I am happy.’ And she steered the conversation back to her daughter.

Over the next few days Nina detailed all her activities, the group, Gayatri Gulati, Library Science, part-time job, field trips, Ottawa, the friends, the
very good
friends—‘But beta, what about your husband?’ interrupted the mother finally.

‘What about him? He goes early to work, but I go even earlier.’

‘Then who sees to his breakfast?’

‘Ma, don’t be so old-fashioned. He gets his own breakfast like every person in the West.’

‘He eats alone?’

‘Only during the week. I also eat alone, by the way.’

‘He married for companionship.’

‘We have companionship,’ declared the wife, ‘we cook dinner together every night.’

Mr Batra examined her daughter. ‘Is that enough?’

‘Of course. Don’t I look happy?’

The mother was silent. Indeed, Nina looked different. Her skin glowed, her flab had gone; the result of regular gym visits and energetic sex. Two years of cold damp air, walking everywhere and studying hard made her seem younger.

‘Why haven’t you conceived?’ went on the mother, nosing around. That topic mentioned on the phone, its urgency lost in transatlantic distance, could now be resurrected in all its might.

‘We have been trying, Ma, what to do?’

‘Doesn’t Ananda mind?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nina irritably.

The mother stroked the daughter’s hair with her thin hand.

A week later Ramesh sent the driver to pick up his sister-in-law for a ten day visit. Nina drove over armed with presents: whisky, chocolate, jeans for Ishan and Ila, makeup for Alka.

She was welcomed with open arms. In being hospitable to her, they were showering Ananda with affection. It was this seamless identification that Nina had to get used to.

After she had married, she had gloried in being part of a larger whole, loving the novelty of being two in one. Now she felt oppressed by the blind acceptance accorded to a visiting daughter-in-law. She could be just anybody she told herself, then blushed at the way she sounded—so un-Indian, so tainted with Western individualism.

Did she, in this brief period, want that Alka should start getting to know the essential her? Who was this murky creature, had she herself any idea?

Marriage was a social institution, she reminded herself. A certain amount of pretence was necessary for its successful functioning.

Her in-laws were meanwhile uninterested in her heart, mind and soul. They were civil servants, intent on enjoying the good life. Nina went regularly with them to the Gymkhana Club, entered enthusiastically into the little party thrown for her and every evening responded indulgently to Ila’s attentions. In Ananda’s family, she acquired the weight of aunts, uncles and cousins, all with a flattering interest in her Library Science degree and her daily life abroad.

Politics was in every conversation. After two years Morarji Desai was finally ousted. Charan Singh was now PM, the result of deal making between the erstwhile foe, Indira Gandhi, and himself. The public had become fed up with the power mongering and self-serving incompetence of the Janata party. Inflation was on the rise, the price of onions much talked about.

‘Are things never to get better?’ Nina asked. Her in-laws laughed gently and told her she was lucky to be out of it all.

Nina left Ananda’s family with sadness; her interaction with them had been easy and uncomplicated. If only she could live in the same city, within the sense of community that their presence created so effortlessly. ‘Please come and visit me,’ she pleaded. ‘We are so alone.’

‘It is hard,’ agreed Alka, ‘to be without family. I know Uncle is busy, and Aunty does not understand our ways.’

‘At least send the children for higher studies. Dalhousie is a very good university. Small, but good. And the fees are more reasonable than the USA.’

Ramesh was thinking of putting both his children into dentistry. Ila of course would have to stay in India—there was the question of her marriage—but Ishan, yes, for him Dalhousie could be an option. Which led Alka to reflect that if Ananda did not have children he would be even more interested in hers.

Once back in Jangpura, Nina got heat stroke. As she lay in the darkened room with high fever and cooling liquids she thought of the country she had left with longing. Why did her heart have to be so divided? She vented on her mother.

‘Ma, living here is hell. I am going to send you money for an air conditioner.’

‘The cooler is enough, beti.’

‘It’s something, but not enough.’

‘Who will pay the electricity bills? I am all right the way I am.’

‘Come and live with me.’

‘When the children come.’

‘Why are you obsessed with children?’

‘You live in the West. Have you tried everything?’

‘Not everything. It’s expensive.’

‘He’s a doctor.’

Nina was silent. The situation was difficult to explain.

‘How expensive can it be?’

‘Very.’

‘Both of you come here. AIIMS is very good, Ramesh can help you get a bed. He is still an important man.’

‘Let me finish my degree.’

‘Only a year left.’

‘Then I have to look for a job.’

‘Job can wait, children can’t.’

‘Ma, I feel too sick to talk about all this now. You just come, you will love it in Halifax, it’s not as cosmopolitan as Brussels, but still the West. You need a holiday.’

The mother let her daughter talk on. Seeing her so beautiful, lively and graceful was like manna to her heart. Now her responsibilities were truly over. She felt tired, she didn’t want to travel all that distance. Which husband likes shouldering the burden of his wife’s mother, even a husband as nice as Ananda?

Nina became better and dragged her mother off to Mussoorie. Come on, you know you love the mountains. For one week they stayed at the Roselyn, down the Mall from the fancy Savoy, and breathed fresh, pure air. After a week in such an atmosphere Mr Batra looked positively healthy. Really, if she came to Halifax she could be in such an environment all the time, thought Nina. It did not seem right that a life of privation should never end.

‘Aren’t you going to meet your friend?’ asked the mother once they returned to Delhi.

‘Of course,’ but Nina did nothing. When she lay down at night, the thought of Zenobia pressed on her like an unfulfilled obligation. Her experiences in Canada made her feel flawed, as though she lacked integrity. When she did eventually phone it was to spin stories about jet lag, heat stroke, fever, recovery and weakness.

This was such a wonderful surprise, said Zenobia, she must come over as fast as possible. She couldn’t wait to see her.

Nina had flouted the expectations of friendship—she had postponed meeting Zenobia, she had lied, not only now, but for two years.

By her second term of Library Science, Nina Sharma, née Batra had taken for a lover a married man, a man who did not even pretend to love her, with whom she continued to have a sexual relationship. She had to somehow say all this; if she didn’t, what was the point of meeting? But would Zenobia condemn, judge, look down on her, betray the friendship that Nina had betrayed? Whatever she did, Nina would have to deal with it.

Two days later Nina took a scooter to Zenobia’s barsati in Defence Colony. The forty degree air whipped against her and coated her freshly made up face with dust. As the grime of the city settled into her pores, she thought of Ananda’s remarks about Canadian air and wondered whether she was becoming like him. If this was what it took.

She hoped that the chocolate she had taken from the freezer would not liquefy.

Defence Colony. Hurriedly she paid the scooter wallah the fare he demanded, not bothering to check his metre card for accuracy. It all came to a few piddly cents anyway. The surprised scooter wallah roared off and Nina stood at the entrance to Zenobia’s house. The gate was heavy, and as she pushed it open, she observed the contrast her arms and bangles made against it, the metal, the flesh, the translucent red glass, the peeling black paint on the iron. She walked towards the back of the house, towards the narrow staircase that led to the barsati. Round and round, in slow motion, the steps carried her into the past, towards a Nina less experienced, more naive and straightforward than this one.

She reached the top and banged the bolt loudly against the rickety door. Zenobia had no bell. Footsteps, the sound of a latch being opened. Zenobia. After two years, Zenobia. She threw her arms around her neck and said with an intensity that embarrassed them both: I missed you, I missed you, I was here earlier, I didn’t call you, I didn’t know what to say, Zen, I’m having an affair. He’s a married man. Nobody knows. That’s why I didn’t call.

There. Problem of what to say to Zenobia solved.

‘My goodness. But come in, come in—tell me everything. How lovely you are looking, Nina! Whoever he is, obviously suits.’

Nina looked around the terrace, marking each change: the champa tree in an enormous clay tub, the madhumati creeper that trailed across the bedroom window, the bougainvilleas that bloomed in rows against the balcony wall. In the last two years her friend had become a gardener.

Inside she avidly studied the books that marked Zenobia as an English teacher, the ikat spreads on the takht in the corner, the cane two-seater and single chair next to a low marble coffee table, its sameness so familiar it hurt her chest. Meanwhile Zenobia made lemonade in the tiny kitchen, not forgetting Nina’s preference for a pinch of black salt.

Holding their glasses they settled on the bed where the AC made life bearable, and there half reclining against the soft cushions, head propped by further pillows, Nina began the story of her life in the last two years.

It took till evening.

It must be because she didn’t have any real friends in Halifax that her sense of friendship had atrophied, thought Nina on her way back. Why hadn’t she run to Zenobia the minute she landed? Really, marriage made you do strange things.

Why had she wasted ten precious days in Alka’s house, actually rejoicing in a new-found family before whom she had to lie all the time? Though she had felt she belonged, essentially she was Ananda’s wife. The minute that ceased, all doors closed.

‘You look happy,’ commented her mother as she walked in.

‘What’s for dinner? I smell good things,’ said Nina, sniffing the air violently.

‘Lauki kofta.’

‘Oh, Ma, you shouldn’t have. I would have helped you.’

‘It’s all right. You can’t stand for so long in a hot kitchen.’

As Nina mashed the delicious, melting lauki kofta into the fragrant basmati rice along with some cold dahi, she thought life had no greater bliss. She was unburdened of a secret she had carried for a year, and she was eating one of her favourite foods. There were so many little things to enjoy that if one was able to live in the moment, one could actually survive without too much grief.

That night Nina sat in bed, rubbing immense amounts of cream into her dry feet, going over every detail of her conversation with Zenobia. If she could memorise it she could carry its sympathy with her when she returned to Halifax. Nina’s marriage, for the rest of the trip, was their favourite topic of conversation. Sometimes Nina felt she wasn’t paying enough attention to her friend—what had she been doing these past two years, how was college, her love life—but in essence all Zenobia said was ‘Same old shit’, and in the pause that followed, Ananda, Nina, Anton, Ottawa, Halifax, Library School, were the topics that surfaced.

Nina’s situation was such that Zenobia’s sympathy eventually came to be marked with a certain amount of criticism. ‘It sounds totally schizophrenic—the life you are leading. You will have to do something about it, leave Ananda or confront Anton. That man is getting the best of both worlds. He sounds a bit like Rahul.’

Nina gazed out at Lodhi Gardens from the upstairs windows of the IIC dining room. She could see the white flowers of the champa, sitting squatly against broad, long leaves, the remaining red blossoms of a coral tree, the pale purple clusters of the jacaranda. Down below was the club pond with its scummy green water, bordered by the overhanging bottle brush. Why did she have to think about her life, when the summer looked so pretty from air conditioned rooms?

‘I can’t do anything till I have finished my degree,’ she said petulantly. A friend so close had its drawbacks. She saw the nasty things in your life and did not hesitate to point them out, all out of love.

‘You were wise enough not to get pregnant, that is one saving grace.’