The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (2 page)

Still, I know that I have to be careful not to take a wrong step. That is why I always say to Bobby, Watch your step. Watch each and every step you take. People will tell you to walk holding your head up high, but I think that you have to keep your eyes on the ground and watch where you put your foot. We hear it on the train daily, Mind the gap. When you get on to the train, Mind the gap. When you get off the train, Mind the gap.

My name is Mrs Renuka Sharma. I am thirty-seven years of age and a married lady. I am a respectable married lady who hails from a good family, and I have a child and a respectable job, and a mother-in-law and father-in-law. I am not a schoolgirl, and even when I was a schoolgirl, when I was Miss Renuka Mishra, even then I actually never did the types of things that other girls of my age did. There was no bunking school to meet a boy, or notes or love letters exchanged, or phone calls in the darkness when the grown ups were sleeping. And it was not that I could not catch the attention of the boys loitering
around me. Actually, I was quite a pretty girl, quite a clever, pretty girl, and I don't like to boast, but the truth is that I did break some hearts in the boys' school on the opposite side of the road. Still, I think that I knew at that time, just like I know now, that such foolishness is timewaste.

2

Sunday, 8 May 2011

I don't like Sundays. Actually, what I should say is that I don't like Sundays any more, not since my husband left and went to Dubai. I wake up each Sunday morning and there is no job to go to, there is nowhere to go to at all. When my husband was here we would go to meet his parents in Ghaziabad for tea. From time to time we would go to watch a film at Shakuntalam. And as long as it was not raining or too cold, we always went to India Gate in the evening. It is not actually meeting people or watching films that I miss, and there are hardly any benefits to such things anyway, but at least there was always some plan. There was always some reason to get out of the house, and I would wear a nice sari, and from the cupboard I would take out smart shirts and pants for my husband and son, which I would press again and lay out neatly on the bed, and they would wear these clothes and then we would go out. Now my husband works in a foreign country, so there are no outings, and my in-laws live with me, so there is nobody to go and meet, no
reason to dress up, and on most Sundays we just sit in the house, Bobby, my in-laws and I. It is true that this is the day when I get some time to do a little bit of stitching or darning, when I can re-arrange the cupboards or clean the fridge. Still, how long do such things take? I try my level best to convince Bobby to come with me for a walk to IIT or the Rose Garden, or to go to India Gate for ice cream or to one of the malls in Saket. Sometimes he does agree to accompany me, but I know that he would prefer to sit in front of the computer or watch some stupid cooking show on TV or lie around with his headphones on. It also seems that he likes this girl with green eyes at the bus stop and he does not know what to do, because Bobby is actually just a good, simple boy, and so sometimes he just lies on the divan with a long face doing nothing at all. But children are like this these days. At least my Bobby tries to make his mother happy from time to time.

Still, I think that the main reason that I don't like Sundays is because I can't go to work. I enjoy work. I enjoy being busy, work-busy, which is totally different from being house-busy. When you are house-busy it is not only your body that gets tired, which is fine, but your mind also gets very tired. So, I work at a famous doctor's clinic in Gurgaon, and it is a good job. Dr Raghubir Singh is a world-famous gynaecologist and obstetrician. He sees patients at his clinic in the mornings, and in the afternoons and evenings he does surgeries and his rounds at a big private hospital, which is centrally air-conditioned and has all the latest machines. Doctor Sahib has medical degrees from grand, grand institutions like AIIMS and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in England, degrees that are
framed in fancy gold-painted wood and hung all over the walls of the clinic, and even though he is a male doctor, his waiting room looks like a bus station, filled with patients who have waited for weeks and weeks to get an appointment. And these patients are not the types of women you see on the Metro or in your local market. They, or their husbands, are all rich and have many contacts. They are ladies from big business families, or wives of politicians or Class One officers or multinational executives, or are themselves politicians or Class One officers or multinational executives. They are ladies who live in Gurgaon's poshest apartment complexes, which have twenty-four-hour power and water, and swimming pools and gyms, or ladies from localities like Vasant Vihar or Golf Links, or ladies who live in one of those white bungalows near Connaught Place. I know this because I meet them daily. I am the person who keeps all their personal information in files. But I should say here that Doctor Sahib also does quite a lot of charity work. Every Saturday afternoon without fail he goes to a village near Manesar, where he sees village women for free, and every Thursday morning without fail he gives free consultations at the clinic to poor people, poor people like ayahs and washerwomen, and wives and daughters of drivers and gardeners and watchmen.

I have been working at the clinic for nine years, since Bobby was six years of age. My in-laws and husband don't mind because the clinic is open from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm and so I am already at home when Bobby comes back from school. I also get free check-ups and treatment. It is a good job.

But the truth is that it is not my dream job. See, if my mother had not become sick and my father did not have to spend all of
his income, almost all of it, on her medical bills, I would have been a schoolteacher, a respected schoolteacher in a big school here in Delhi. I had always dreamt of being a schoolteacher. My father also did. Obviously he believed that a girl has to perform all her domestic duties, but he also thought that a girl should work, and because of a schoolteacher's timings he believed that she could do both. My dream was to do a BEd degree, and my father, who was a very broadminded man, was even ready to send me to Delhi for my studies. But by the time I passed out from school we had no money, and my father actually suffered two heart attacks because of this, so I had to start earning a salary as soon as I could. I enrolled in a secretarial course, which I topped, and the truth is that even if I was studying for a BEd, I think that I could have been a topper. So, as I had planned, I got a job immediately after I completed the secretarial course. I could have worked as a secretary for one of the big lawyers or property dealers of Meerut, but I don't actually like the types of girls who work as personal secretaries. They can be quite cheap sometimes, quite foolish, flirty and cheap. And what is a secretary actually? Isn't she just a substitute wife for the boss? Like his wife, she provides tea and snacks for the man and answers the phone for him. Like his wife, she is his protector, keeping him safe from unwanted elements of the world outside. At home his wife protects him from irritating children, interfering relatives, uninvited guests. At work his secretary protects him from unscheduled patients, annoying pharma sales reps, unhappy employees. And I don't think that I need to tell anybody what else some secretaries do that actually only wives are supposed to do. I think that
everybody knows. Whatever it is, I did not want to do any of these things and that is why I decided to be a receptionist, and I think that it was the right decision.

So, I worked as a receptionist at a small private hospital for one year that time when I lived in Meerut, before I got married, and now, here in Delhi. But I won't work at Doctor Sahib's clinic forever and ever. The truth is that I am not like those other women who have no ambition, who think that work is just timepass that will give them a little bit of pocket money. No. One day, when my husband and I save enough money, I will start a training academy for Office Management, Computer Proficiency, Personality Development and Grooming, Business English, everything. My father used to say that a person's determination is his real power. I have still not told my husband, but I am determined to have my own business one day.

But just now I work at Dr Raghubir Singh's clinic and it is a good job. I have many duties. I type out all the letters, which Doctor Sahib dictates to me because I know shorthand, and I should say here that this is one of the reasons why he respects me, because how many people these days actually know shorthand? I answer calls, I sign for couriers, I do all the filing of patients' forms and cards, and I take all the payments. I have to make sure that the servants keep the whole clinic absolutely clean, that not one stain or one dot of dust should be seen, because Doctor Sahib is very, very particular about that, and that everything from the floor to the ceiling should shine. Every Thursday I even make one of the servants use sellotape to pull off any fallen hairs on the carpet in the waiting room. It is also
my duty to make sure that the office boys and lab assistants are doing their jobs properly. So, even if my designation is receptionist and even if some of the work that I do could be called secretarial, I am actually more like the office manager.

I can talk in English quite nicely. I went to an English-medium school, my father was very particular that I attend an English-medium school, and for four years I even studied at a convent that was run by proper Irish nuns, not those Malayali sisters from Kerala. My husband taught me Word and Excel, and I learnt a little bit of PowerPoint on my own, so I am also quite proficient with computers, and I am excited because last month Doctor Sahib said that he is going to buy a computer that will only be for me to use.

Bobby and I Skyped with my husband this morning. We have a computer in the house, a Dell-brand computer that my husband's friend bought on our behalf from an auction at the American Embassy, because he has some contacts there, so it is an imported one and not one of those cheap assembled computers from Nehru Place. Bobby spends most of his time on it, but I also use it sometimes. It has a webcam, and we use it to Skype with my husband every Friday and Sunday. We talk every Friday because my husband works in Dubai and, being a very Muslim type of place, that is the off-day over there, and Sundays, obviously, because that is when Bobby and I are at home. And from time to time, my in-laws also use Skype to talk to their daughter and son-in-law in Canada.

So, we talked to my husband today. First Bobby gave him some long story about why his marks in the last unit tests were so-so, and then I took the headphones to talk. My husband looked tired and I told him this. He said that he had had a very busy day at the hospital yesterday. Still, he tried to look happy as he has always tried to do, and he asked me about Papaji and Mummyji, and why Bobby's studies were suffering. He told me that he had gone for a long walk on the beach on Friday evening and that he kept thinking about me. I forgot to ask him if it was Jumeirah Beach, which is where he sometimes goes on Friday evenings and where, he says, the world's most beautiful hotels have been built. We did not speak for too long because he had to go to the hospital. He was wearing a light blue shirt and red tie. Even though he was tired, he still looked handsome.

My husband's name is Dheeraj Sharma. He is a physiotherapist at a government hospital in Dubai. He has been there for one and a half years, and earns a good salary that is totally tax-free. He saves most of his money because he shares a small, little flat with four other men and lives like a sadhu, and every three months without fail he wire-transfers money to my bank account.

Except for Rosie from the clinic, whose husband also works in Dubai, people are always saying to me, Oh ho, you poor woman, your husband is so far away! Oh ho, you poor woman, you must be missing him such a lot! Oh ho, you poor woman! and what not. It is true that he is far away, even though from Delhi it is faster to reach Dubai by air than to reach Chennai. And it is true that I miss him. But what can I say? We have
duties. As parents, as children, we have duties. I could keep my husband sitting in my lap all day, but when my in-laws grow older and get sick, who will pay for the hospital bills? The government? It took my father-in-law four years of begging and bribing the CGHS and maybe ten years of his life to get the reimbursement for his prostate operation.

And what about my son's education? Bobby is a good boy and most of the time he gets around ninety per cent in his final exams, but what is ninety per cent today? Ninety per cent does not guarantee anything today. What these people who keeping poking their noses in my life don't understand is that today the cut-offs at all the good colleges are ninety-five per cent or more, and so maybe we will be forced to put him in one of the new private universities, and these places have very high fees that we would never be able to afford if my husband remained in India, even if you include my salary and the little bit of extra money I make, which is only from small, little cuts from one or two of the suppliers that we use at the clinic, normally from the man who sells us ink cartridges and printer paper, and sometimes from the man who provides cleaning and sanitation supplies, and I only make this little extra money when the price of onions goes up and, I swear on God and I swear on my husband, never ever at any other time because then that would be greedy and wrong. So we need to save up money for Bobby's BCom, because BAs and BScs are actually timewaste, and then we also need money for Bobby's MBA. Bobby has to do his MBA because he is going to work in a multinational company or an international bank. But admissions for MBAs are so competitive that he will have
to take costly coaching classes for the entrance test. How would we pay for all this? Sometimes I want to ask these people, these people who go on and on with their pity, who make me seem like I am some stone-hearted witch, sometimes I want to ask them one question, just one simple question. When my in-laws' medical bills grow into lakhs of rupees, when my son has to do his further studies, who will save us? Will love and romance save us?