The Sari Shop (14 page)

All these fragments came back to Ramchand. He expected Lakhan Singh to recount once more the atrocities that had been committed that day. But Lakhan didn’t. In a voice dangerously close to tears, he said, ‘My children, they tied back the hands of my children behind them with their own turbans, made them stand in a row with others and then shot them. Along with many others. We didn’t even find their bodies. Satwinder Singh, who got away, told us.’

Ramchand sat still as a statue. He did not ask who Satwinder Singh was.

‘It was so terrible, especially as my younger son was wearing that new turban. That navy-blue one – crisp and long. And they must have tied the poor boy’s hands behind him with it. They must have felt horrible during the last moments of their short lives, the last moments when they knew they were going to die. Oh, so handsome they were. I often told them they looked like monkeys, but they were really very good-looking. And they
had
to die? Why, oh why, didn’t they go to Company Bagh that day?’

*

That night when Ramchand took up the
Complete Letter Writer
he could not concentrate at all. He had reached the chapter ‘Clubs, Societies, etc’. He started on ‘A Letter Requesting Payment of an Overdue Subscription to a Club’. He halfheartedly looked up subscription in the dictionary.
Act of subscribing
. He looked up subscribe.
Pay (specified sum) esp. regularly for membership of organization or receipt of publication, etc
. His eyes could not focus on the words. They followed the shapes slowly and his mind tried to make sense of them. He could feel a headache building up. What was the point of knowing what subscription meant? He had left Chander’s wife
lying in a broken heap! He didn’t know what he could have done, she was, after all, Chander’s own wife. But he felt disturbed nevertheless.

And after that, he had even been inadequate in the face of Lakhan’s grief, only wanting to run away because he couldn’t face Lakhan’s traumatic memories.

He had finally interrupted Lakhan in mid-sentence because Lakhan looked like he would never stop. Then Ramchand had asked abruptly for another cup of tea. Lakhan had at first looked bewildered, then hurt, and then his face had assumed its stony mask-like quality again. He had got up quietly and glided away to order a cup of tea for Ramchand, later disappearing into a back door. Ramchand had gulped down the remaining tea, which was almost cold now, holding the glass with unsteady hands. He had thrown down rupee notes on the table to pay for his bill and had then left hastily. He had meant to eat more, perhaps have another cup of tea, he had still been hungry when he left Lakhan’s dhaba. But after walking away from Lakhan, he had not felt inclined to go to any other eating place or food stall, and had made his way back to his room quietly.

Why did he always run away? Why couldn’t he at least listen, offer consolation, try to make people feel better? Why did he always begin to feel suffocated and inadequate? He was just an uncaring, selfish coward! He had seen it written clearly on Lakhan Singh’s unhappy, waiting-for-something face.

Ramchand threw himself on his bed with the
Complete Letter Writer
still in his hands. How could Lakhan guess that he had to leave because he had to, because he had been feeling so terrible that he couldn’t breathe?

What a grubby, mean little life he had! Or maybe
he
didn’t have a grubby, mean life. Life
was
grubby. Grubby, mean, flabby and meaningless! Grovelling, limited, scared! Sick, sick,
sick! And he was the same too! Just to be alive meant to be undignified, Ramchand thought, his stomach aching with acidity. Because it wasn’t just about your own life eventually. What was the point of trying to learn, to develop the life of your mind, to whitewash your walls, when other people lay huddled and beaten in dingy rooms? Or had dark, dingy memories like rooms without doors and windows, rooms you could never leave.

Ramchand opened the
Complete Letter Writer
again, concentrated all his attention on it and tried to block out every other thought from his mind.

The other thoughts tried to squeeze their way back into his head.

Ramchand followed the words in the book desperately. He read the whole letter in one go.
The Three Turrets,
Borsfield
,
Kent
Miss R. Plunkett
Dear Madam,

I regret to note that your subscription to the Victoria Tennis Club is still outstanding.

Ramchand sighed, sat up in his bed, picked up the dictionary and looked up ‘outstanding’.
Conspicuous, esp. from excellence.

In some confusion, Ramchand read on.
Still to be dealt with; (of debt) not settled.

He sighed. The meaning brought him no satisfaction.

By the club’s rules (no. 7), all subscriptions are due on 1 Jan, of each year and no member is allowed to play on the courts after 1 August, if her subscription is still unpaid.

(What if his hands were tied behind him, and he knew that he, Ramchand, was going to be shot? How would it feel?)

In the circumstances, I should be glad if you could forward to me your subscription (twenty pounds) by return.
Yours faithfully,
M. Jessop

God alone knows what pounds are now, Ramchand thought in despair, and slammed the book down on his table.

The rage that had been building up inside him just would not quieten down. He finally laid his books, pen and notebook aside, and, for the first time in the past several weeks, spent the evening just lying on his bed staring vacantly at the ceiling.

The next Sunday, Ramchand had opened the back window and was sitting on his trunk, with the essay book open in his lap, looking blankly out of the window. He couldn’t let himself fall into depression again, he told himself sternly. The world was what it was, and that was no reason to stop learning how to read and write. He, Ramchand, would solve nothing by lying about in an idle stupor. He told himself all this, but his mind kept wandering from the essay book.

It was late afternoon. The shadows were getting longer, the evening chill was already announcing itself in the afternoon air.

In the courtyard below the landlord slept on a charpai, his face covered from the light with one of Sudha’s blue chunnis. Ramchand knew this chunni well and loved it. It was a length of soft cotton fabric with tiny yellow flowers on it. She wore it often.

Sudha sat in a corner, her day’s chores done, the dinner cooked, ready to be warmed again and eaten in the evening, flipping through the latest issue of
Sarita
.

Vishnu and Alka were laboriously working away at homework, stopping occasionally to fight over an eraser or a pencil.

Manoj sat just below Ramchand’s window, with a box of crayons lying open by his side. He had drawn a picture and was colouring it in now, completely oblivious to the rest of the world. He loved getting top marks in everything, so he never let the colour run out of the lines. Ramchand peered down at the drawing sheet that Manoj held in his lap. It was the same drawing he always drew, the same drawing he was taught at school. Manoj never drew anything new. His hands
created the same scene over and over again – the safe one, the old one, the one that had been taught to him, the one that got him top marks.

A straight horizontal line halfway across the sheet for the horizon, mountains in the upper half – neat triangles that he drew with a ruler, like upside-down ice-cream cones. Then a hut – a box-like structure with one window, a slanting roof and a brick chimney, a long spindly tree and then a blue strip for a river.

In the end he’d draw a sun in the sky, a simple circle with alternating long and short rays emanating from it.

The only human touch in the drawing was that since Manoj often forgot to draw the sun in the beginning, he had to draw it over the sky, when the rest of the drawing was already finished and coloured in. When he filled the sun in with a yellow crayon, the yellow of the sun would mingle with the blue of the sky beneath.

It resulted in a sun with an uneven texture and a greenish tinge, a sun that looked slightly sick, as if it was going to ythrow up at any moment all over the bright, crayoned world below.

*

Ramchand had decided by now that the letters were completely useless. However, one portion of the book had struck him as lucid and potentially useful. There was a page that listed opening sentences to use to begin a letter with. There was a wide range:

I am very much obliged to you –

It was very good of you to –

I am sorry to say that –

In accordance with your request –

Enclosed please find –

It is with considerable pleasure (regret) that I –

I have to point out that –

The last two he especially loved. He imagined walking up to Mahajan, combining both, and telling him, ‘It is with considerable pleasure (regret) that I have to point out that you are a horrible, fat-faced, money-minded, selfish pig whose wife must be the most miserable and unlucky woman on this earth,’ or following it with some other suitably worded insult.

The more ridiculously elaborate and formal the sentences, the better Ramchand liked them. He would try to memorize them, and failing that, he’d try to read them out aloud without halting.

But apart from this, he decided, the letter-writing book wasn’t much good. It wouldn’t do to be impressed by things just because they were in English, he thought wisely. Most of the letters seemed to be written to and by frivolous, idle people – people much like some of the customers who came to the shop.

And Ramchand didn’t want to learn any more about them. In any language.

He knew enough!

*

One day Shyam and Rajesh came in together, as usual, beaming all over their faces. They had just been to a temple or at least to a puja – there were long tilaks on their foreheads. Shyam also held in his hands three identical cardboard mithai boxes with Bansal Sweet Shop written on them.

Bansal Sweet Shop was very far away, on Lawrence Road, and was one of the most expensive sweet shops in Amritsar. They went straight up to Mahajan and handed him two boxes
with explanations that no one could hear and smiles that everyone could see. Mahajan smiled too, his rare, out-of-practice smile. Hari was agog with curiosity. ‘Look, Mahajan is smiling,’ he blurted out in surprise.

‘Shh…’ said Gokul and Ramchand to him in unison.

‘I think they are celebrating something,’ Ramchand said.

‘How brilliant you are, Ramchand,’ Gokul said sarcastically. ‘I would never have guessed.’

Hari giggled. ‘Maybe last night, Lord Brahma came down to the earth from the heavens and finally gave Mahajan a real, human heart,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why they are celebrating.’

Ramchand couldn’t help smiling at this. Chander, who was also sitting with them, didn’t say anything all this while, looking out of the window moodily.

Then Shyam and Rajesh came to where all the other shop assistants were sitting. Shyam undid the thread that was tied around the remaining box. He opened it and offered the box to all of them. It was full of delicious looking pieces of barfi. ‘Please, please have a sweet.’

Gokul said, ‘Tell us the good news first. Then we’ll have one.’

‘My daughter, you know, eighteen years old, by God’s grace, she is going to be Rajesh’s daughter-in-law soon,’ Shyam said.

‘What slyness!’ Gokul remarked in mock-anger, taking a piece of barfi. ‘You have done everything and now you are telling us. You do not consider us close enough…’

Rajesh laughed and draped an arm around Gokul’s shoulders, ‘Arre bhai, we have done nothing. No function. Just a puja. We are not like all these big people after all, who will keep having functions the whole week before the wedding. Arre, we have just formally agreed to it. The wedding will take place next year. The pundit says the stars are not right and it won’t be auspicious till next year. On the wedding day of course all of you will be invited. Now will you have the barfi?’

Hari asked, ‘Why did you give Mahajan
two
boxes of sweets?’

Gokul frowned at Hari, but Shyam answered, unfazed, ‘One for him and one to be sent for Bhimsen Seth.’

Hari nodded, satisfied. Ramchand took a piece of barfi too. It melted in his mouth.

Rajesh jumped up. ‘It is not complete without samosas and tea. I’ll arrange for that.’ The whole group cheered up at this. They’d have a nice little snack and, this time, even Mahajan would have to refrain from commenting. After all, marriages were sacred business.

Soon they were all tucking in merrily. Mahajan left them with a benign smile. If a customer came, however, they knew one of them would have to get up and attend to her.

They all laughed and congratulated Shyam and Rajesh. Only Chander remained a little silent and aloof.

Later, when the crumbs had been cleared up, the empty tea glasses had been fetched by the boy from the tea shop, and the excitement had subsided a little, Hari asked Gokul, ‘Why does Chander always look so miserable?’

They were now back in their places. Shyam, Rajesh and Chander on one side of the shop; Ramchand, Hari and Gokul on the opposite side.

‘I mean, at least when you are having barfi and samosas with good, hot tea on a cold winter day, I think you should look happy,’ Hari said with conviction.

‘Everyone is not a pig like you. Your happiness depends on nothing but food,’ Gokul told Hari.

‘And what is wrong with that?’ Hari retorted. ‘I say, it is a short life, and you never know what happens when. So just eat, sleep, watch films and have fun. While you can. And what more does Chander want? He has a job, no? Enough money for meals, no? Then?’

‘You are still young, Hari,’ Gokul said wisely. ‘You know
nothing of life. Chander has many problems at home. If a man does not have a good family life, what is the use of a job or anything like that?’

Hari considered this. Then he said, ‘Even I don’t have a good family life, Gokul Bhaiya. My father always scolding me, my mother always after my life…’