The Sari Shop (20 page)

Besides, Shilpa knew that sooner or later, the elder Mrs Gupta would grow old, and then the factory, the house, all the property – it would all be hers.

So the two settled into a fragile relationship in which the equation had to be balanced constantly, with a touch here, a gentle nudge there, a small disagreement here, and a gratified smile there. They began to understand each other, and though the wariness remained, and was indeed, to always remain, they spent their days together amiably enough. Once the husbands had been sent off to work, maids had come and left and meals had been cooked, they’d settle down to watch the reruns of the soaps on Star Plus. In the commercial breaks, they would make cups of tea and gossip.

Mrs Gupta had a competitive streak in her. She liked to be the best. In her circle of friends and relatives, she liked to have the best complexion, the cleanest house, the nicest clothes. And she passed on this competitiveness to the previously inert Shilpa, galvanizing her into a new life of self-improvement.

The duo had to outdo every other woman they knew. They tried new recipes, and then sent around food in little steel tiffin boxes to neighbours as a ‘good gesture’, accepting the compliments graciously. They tried out new combinations of homemade face packs while they watched
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi
. Mrs Sandhu had a glossy skin and they wondered what she used on it. They went for long walks together to keep their stomachs flat, eventually landing up at sales of Chinese goods, where they bought pretty Chinese lampshades to make their drawing room look exotic.

*

This morning, Shilpa had cooked pasta for breakfast. She had taken Mrs Singh’s Continental Cooking Classes for four months before her marriage. She had been anxious to impress the Gupta family with her pasta.

Everyone had loved it.

Then she had cleared up the breakfast table while her mother-in-law supervised the maid who came in to clean every day.

At the last moment, just before leaving for the factory, Mr Gupta said he felt a little ill. ‘Maybe I am coming down with something,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Maybe it is the flu that is going around. I don’t think I’ll go to the factory today.’

His wife hadn’t looked too pleased. In fact, she had looked slightly disbelieving, but he had avoided making eye contact with her.

Mrs Gupta had sighed. His presence would hamper their usual routine, she knew, but nothing could be done about it.

Then the woman who came in to cook lunch and dinner, wash the dishes and do other chores in the kitchen, arrived. Mrs Gupta accompanied her to the kitchen.

Shilpa, meanwhile, made beds and dusted the delicate crystal and china ornaments in the house that no maid was allowed to touch.

After this, and after taking some tea for her father-in-law to his bedroom, Shilpa had retired to her own bedroom. She had tidied it up and then she sat down on the bed with a pile of her husband’s clothes in front of her, and began to fold them, one by one. She loved to spend as much time in this room as she could. It was so comfortable. Her parents had spared no expense in doing it up.

*

It was while she had been sitting there sorting through Tarun’s Arrow shirts that the doctor had called her mother-in-law to tell her the result of the tests. Mrs Gupta had rushed up to her daughter-in-law to tell her, beaming all over her face.

Shilpa was surprised, even though she had been half-expecting it. She smiled back at her mother-in-law and the two women hugged each other.

‘I’ll go and tell your Papaji now,’ Mrs Gupta told her. ‘We’ll have to have a long talk about this later, Shilpa,’ she said, patting her shoulder, giving her a fond smile.

‘Yes, Mummyji,’ Shilpa said, her shy smile accompanied by a blush. She was mildly glad at having achieved the next state expected of her.

Shilpa fervently hoped it would be a boy. That would forever consolidate her position in the family.

*

When Mrs Gupta went back downstairs to tell her husband, who was now sleepily watching a show on Zee TV, Shilpa went into a reverie. How did one behave when expecting a child? What would she be expected to do? A special diet of course, and a woman to come in and massage her legs gently every day. She had enough female cousins to know that. But what else? In her parents’ family, they had the Godbharai ceremony. She wondered if they would have it here. If they did, then she’d get new clothes, a couple of jewellery sets… it had to be a boy… that would make things a lot easier for her… she didn’t want a daughter…

She kept thinking with pursed lips, her hands deftly moving over the pile of her husband’s clothes, till she heard a shout from below. It sounded as if it came from somewhere near the front gate. Shilpa got up, walked to the window, pushed away the green curtain with cream tassels at the border, and looked down.

An uncouth-looking woman with dishevelled hair, obviously belonging to a lower class, stood at the front gate. She wore a cheap purple nylon sari with big, white flowers on it. She was glaring up at the windows of the house with red, baleful eyes, looking a little like a rabid dog.

‘You are responsible for all this. You are responsible for our misery,’ she shouted loudly, very loudly, her ugly face contorted with anger. ‘You think you can live in peace now?’

Shilpa felt bewildered. Who was this woman? Shilpa made sure she peered from a crack in the curtain, without letting herself be seen.

Then the woman standing below abruptly started swearing, shouting out every word that Shilpa had either never heard before, or that had been mentioned in hushed voices by the older women in her family as an example of the words that were
very
bad. Words that good girls never spoke. And here
was this woman, shouting them out for all the neighbours to hear, shouting them at her in-laws’ front gate.

Shilpa hurried downstairs anxiously to where her in-laws Mrs and Mr Gupta stood, looking agitated and uncertain. The driver was out. The servant had gone to the market to buy vegetables. The shouts outside rose even higher. The woman was even jangling their gate. Then there was a pause and a fresh stream of abuse.

‘Guptas, hunh? Big Name, hunh? Just beggars you are. You are like the jackals that feed off the carcasses of dead animals. You are worse than us.’

‘Do something,’ moaned Mrs Gupta to her husband. ‘Oh, please do something.
All
the neighbours must be listening by now. Who
is
she? What does she want? Do something.’

Her husband went outside and shouted at the woman from a safe distance. ‘Hey, who are you? Go away. Go away.’ Then, seeing that many neighbours were out, on terraces and balconies, listening for all they were worth, he retreated.

Kamla continued to shout. ‘May God burn all of you up in that big house or that big car of yours. May you die thirsting for a sip of water.’

When he came in, his wife was on the phone, frantically dialling her son’s number at the factory, her face drained of colour. She found the number engaged.

‘Your son is also a villain. Will your grandson be also the devil? Do any of you have human blood in you?’

The woman continued to shout outside, her voice very unsteady and hysterical.

Shilpa’s bewilderment turned to fear. She shifted from one foot to another, looking at her in-laws. Mrs Gupta fumbled at the phone again, almost in tears. ‘Who is this woman?’ she asked her husband. ‘Saying such inauspicious things, that too today, when we have just heard the good news. We’ll have to
get a havan conducted to counteract her evil eye. Shilpa, don’t you go near the door or the windows.’

Shilpa nodded, her face white with anxiety. Then she said to her mother-in-law, ‘If Tarun’s factory number is engaged, call him up on his mobile phone.’

‘Yes, yes, why didn’t I think of that,’ Mrs Gupta said, dialling quickly.

Mr Gupta saw his wife tearfully tell their son about everything. Then she paused and listened hard to what their son was saying at the other end, nodding all the time. Looking only slightly relieved, she put the phone down and turned to her husband. ‘Tarun says none of us are to go out,’ she said, her speech uneven and breathless. ‘He says the woman might turn violent. Maybe she is mad. He said to call the police. He knows somebody at the police station. He said he is coming home meanwhile.’

Their son’s instructions were carried out rapidly. The police were called and the family sat waiting inside quiet as mice.

Meanwhile, the woman outside ranted and raved, accusations mingled with swearing and abuse.

About ten minutes later, a police jeep drove up. Two men briskly handcuffed Kamla and hustled her into the jeep. Just as they were about to drive away with her, Tarun returned from his factory, speeding anxiously in his new white Opel Astra, looking worried though unruffled. He shook hands with the policemen, thanked them, and gave them five hundred rupees each to express his appreciation for their swift response. Finally, the jeep drove away and the family heaved a collective sigh of relief. They went inside and looked at their servant resentfully when he returned with a bag of vegetables, as if it was his fault for being away. However, they said nothing but ordered him to make tea for all of them.

‘Imagine!’ said Shilpa, looking nervous, already cradling her
baby in her imagination. ‘How could she say such terrible things about you,’ she said to her husband. ‘You are the kindest, sweetest man in the world.’

Tarun gave her a gentle smile. Only when the tea came, and they sat in peace, sipping fragrant tea from beautiful china cups, did they finally calm down.

Then Tarun was told the good news, that he was going to become a father. He smiled and looked at Shilpa, and Shilpa blushed.

Tarun decided to take the rest of the day off, and when he was alone with Shilpa, he turned to her.

‘Don’t worry about anything,’ he said, feeling terrible at the look on her shocked face. She was so soft hearted, he thought tenderly. Why did that terrible woman, whoever she was, have to come here
today
? Tarun touched Shilpa’s face with one hand and lifted her chin up with the other. ‘I will never let anybody hurt you. You are safe with me. Any sort of stress is bad for you and the baby,’ he said with a smile. ‘Forget what happened today, okay?’

Shilpa nodded with a tearful smile. All her apprehension vanished and she smiled up at him tenderly. ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better husband,’ she said.

That night, he took her out to dinner to a new Chinese restaurant, whose Head Cook was a man from a village 50 kilometres away from Amritsar. She wore her blue sari with the intricate embroidered border, the first sari that her mother-in-law had given her.

Over dinner, Tarun assured himself that his wife wasn’t overworked as a housewife and daughter-in-law. By now they had forgotten all about the unpleasant incident that afternoon.

While they were having dinner, Kamla was being raped by the two policemen who had brought her in. Then, one of the policemen, a married man, went home to his wife, while the other stayed back, drinking cheap rum and listening to film
songs on the radio, hoping to have another go at Kamla in the morning before letting her leave.

Next morning, Kamla tottered out and went back home. Chander was waiting for her.

‘So, now you will do this too,’ he said angrily, hitting her hard across the face with tears swimming in his own bloodshot eyes. ‘Staying away all night, drunk, God knows where. You should just kill yourself, Kamla, if you have any shame left.’

He left after saying this. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his eyes looked weak and angry and resigned at the same time. There were dark circles under Kamla’s eyes too, but the eyes themselves were empty and hollow.

That morning the temperature in Amritsar rose higher than it had so far in the month of May. Ramchand went to the shop feeling drained of energy by the oppressive heat. He had grown his moustache back again. He had decided that he looked too jaunty without it. It lent a nice, humble air to his face.

The heat had taken his appetite away and he had grown even thinner since winter.

He began the day’s work feeling listless. At noon, Mahajan came up fuming. Chander still hadn’t turned up for work. Again! What was happening in this shop? Was this how a business was run? Anybody else would have sacked Chander a long time back! Ramchand was to immediately go to Chander’s house and drag him to the shop, whatever state he was in.

Ramchand stood listening to Mahajan’s tirade in a respectful silence, but he groaned inwardly at the idea of walking all the way to Chander’s house in the heat. He wondered if he could make some excuse, but seeing Mahajan’s present mood, he did not dare to. He shuffled down the stairs sulkily. When he stepped out, the sun hit him with full force.

He remembered the last time when he had gone to Chander’s house. He hoped he wouldn’t find Chander drunk again. Ramchand felt furious. Mahajan was such a fool! How could he expect Ramchand to drag a drunk Chander to the shop? But he couldn’t refuse Mahajan. Ramchand reluctantly dragged his feet towards the direction of Chander’s house.

The sun beat down on him, perspiration covered his face, his shirt got wet and stuck to his back and chest. Flies crawled
on the floor outside the halwai’s shop. The little tea stalls he passed sent out fresh waves of heat at him from their little stoves.

He dragged his feet in the dust, his throat parched. He had started out the day tired to begin with. The landlord had bought a new washing machine a few weeks back, and Sudha washed clothes in it enthusiastically at all sorts of odd hours. The washing machine was noisy; it wasn’t one of the latest, sleekest, almost silent models. On many days it woke Ramchand up at six in the morning. Today had been such a morning.

As the areas he passed got poorer and filthier, the shops began to get smaller and less swanky than the ones in the main bazaar. However all the shops had signboards, and Ramchand began to read all of them out aloud, softly enunciating the words to himself, as he passed each one of them. ‘Pappu Automobile Works, Deepak Medical Store, Durga Electricals, Jhilmil Orchestra for Weddings…’ Ramchand read quite fluently now, without pausing and hesitating over each letter. In the past five months he had kept at his spelling and reading diligently. In his room his books, notebook and dictionary still lay on the table, looking even more battered than they had in the winter. The bottle of Camlin Royal Blue had broken and had been replaced with Chelpark Permanent Black. True, after the initial enthusiasm, the pace had slackened, but he hadn’t abandoned his project. Little by little, he had pieced together the mysteries of words. Even now, he did not know the meanings of many difficult words, but he kept hoping.