The Sari Shop (25 page)

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Sachdeva, and then fell silent.

Mrs Gupta looked disconcerted for a moment, then she said, ‘But, well, she knows all the things worth knowing. She is not one of those girls who knows the capitals of all the countries in the world but doesn’t know the name of the daal they are eating.’

Mrs Bhandari immediately replied, ‘There is no reason why a girl shouldn’t know both. Now, my Rosie is an excellent
cook, apart from being a brilliant student. I miss her so much.’

Mrs Sandhu said pityingly, ‘I know, it must be terrible for you. Especially since she is your only child.’ Then, as an afterthought she added, ‘I am really glad that both my sons are so obedient. At least most of the time.’

Throughout the conversation, Gokul and Ramchand sat tired and helpless, watching and listening to the women, who held forgotten saris in their laps, waiting for them to remember what they had come here for. But this did happen sometimes. Women ran into acquaintances at the shop and carried on long conversations with each other while the shop assistants waited. There was nothing you could do about it.

Gokul was still sitting patiently, his mind far away. He was thinking whether he should buy a new stove or not – Lakshmi had been clamouring for one for the last two months.

Ramchand had been listening to the conversation carefully, completely unimpressed this time. Such a harmless life these women seemed to live, but as the
Radiant Essays
said – every coin has two sides.

In the world they conjured up, Chander’s wife featured nowhere. He stared at the four women.

He felt a void where some kind of an understanding or knowledge should have been. And then a helpless pain in his heart. Yes, he could actually feel it in the left side of his chest, where the heart was supposed to be.

Then suddenly, Mrs Bhandari caught Gokul’s eye. Then she looked at the brown sari in her lap. She gave a little laugh and said, ‘Just look at us. We have forgotten completely about our shopping.’

‘Happens rarely,’ laughed Mrs Sandhu.

All four women went back to the saris.

Mrs Sachdeva and Mrs Bhandari were the first to make up their minds. They chose one sari each, both with traditional batik prints, one in mauve and the other in sky blue.

They went back to their low mutterings as they decided. Ramchand stared impassively.

He heard Mrs Sachdeva say, almost under her breath, ‘These women… all the same… nothing in their heads except money and nonsense… why must we even talk to them?’

Then he missed something that Mrs Bhandari said. But he did hear her last sentence. ‘After all, we live in the same city… one keeps running into them… one has to be civil.’

Mrs Sachdeva nodded, then motioned to Ramchand to pack the two saris.

They smiled and waved at Mrs Gupta and Mrs Sandhu before they left.

The two waved back. But as soon as they disappeared through the glass door, Mrs Gupta turned to Mrs Sandhu and said, ‘Really, these women, I don’t know what these two have such a superiority complex about. Mrs Sachdeva has no children and her husband is also just some professor somewhere. She is a nobody. And Mrs Bhandari, even though her husband is a D.I.G. in the police, well, her Rosie is twenty-seven, I think. And unmarried. Good matches indeed! Nothing is happening, so she will go to Delhi, get some fancy degree, and then show off about it. And talking about us like that, just sour grapes, you know.’

Mrs Sandhu was her usual placid self. ‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘what is it to do with us? They are probably frustrated. We should just thank God for all he has given us.’

They left shortly after buying an expensive sari each instead of the cotton saris they had come for. Mrs Gupta’s was one of the crushed tissue saris that had been exclaimed over delightedly by the college girls a few days back, and Mrs Sandhu’s was an onion pink silk with filigree work.

As soon as they left, Gokul said, ‘These women can be real headaches. If they are not bragging about their houses, it is their husbands. And if isn’t the husbands, it is the children.
Ramchand, do you think I should buy one of those new Clix gas stoves?’

‘I really don’t know anything about gas stoves, Gokul Bhaiya. I have a kerosene stove,’ said Ramchand in a low voice.

The kerosene stove, the purple sari, the flowers… Ramchand went to the tiny toilet adjoining the storeroom at the top of the shop, locked himself in and then cried for a while. Then he wiped his face with his hanky, came out, and went back to his place in the shop.

Yes, Ramchand had decided. He was going to do it. And he felt it was the most important decision of his life. He couldn’t bear his own falseness any more. He, who felt nervous even when showing customers beautiful saris, was going to gather all the moral courage he had, dig it up from all corners of his mind and soul. And he
was
going to do it. The very next time Mrs Sachdeva came to the shop with Mrs Bhandari. After all, Mrs Sachdeva was a learned woman and Mrs Bhandari’s husband was the D.I.G. of police. Besides, more importantly, they were women. Surely they would understand the urgency.

Ramchand went around looking drawn and ill. He was thinner than ever and now his eyes looked sunken, his shoulders had begun to look bony through the thin cotton shirts he wore these days.

After the decision, came the waiting. For the next few days, every time the glass door of the first floor opened, Ramchand looked up with a start, his heart beating a shade faster, and subsided when he saw it wasn’t Mrs Sachdeva with Mrs Bhandari. But many days passed, and neither of the two women appeared. Ramchand expected them every day, for both of them were frequent shoppers. As he had heard Mrs Sachdeva tell Mrs Bhandari many times, when you went to a good college to teach every day, you couldn’t keep repeating saris.

Then, one day, when he was looking out of the window, anxiously watching the fruit-juice seller fix the wheel of his cart – Ramchand was afraid the pile of oranges might topple over as the cart shook and heaved – he heard the sound of the
door open and turned his head sharply. And there she was. Mrs Sachdeva. But Mrs Bhandari wasn’t accompanying her as usual.

Ramchand was a little disconcerted. He had wanted to talk to both of them together. But he collected himself quickly. He saw her move to the empty space opposite Chander and hurried forward, ‘Please come and sit, Madam. What would you like to see?’

So she came and sat opposite him, producing a small velvet pouch from her bag. She opened it reverently to reveal an exquisite jewellery set – a thin gold necklace set with tiny green stones and matching earrings. She showed it to Ramchand, pointing out the green stones to him.

‘See, it is like this. I want the same green as this, exactly the same, in pure chiffon. Plain or printed doesn’t matter, I just don’t want any borders with very loud colours.’

Ramchand nodded absently. He took out some green chiffon saris. Then he said to her, ‘Would you like to come near the window? You’ll make no mistake about matching the exact colour then. Here, under the tube lights, you might make a mistake. Things look different in the daylight.’

She looked pleased at the considerate suggestion.

She went to sit near the window and Ramchand followed her with an armful of saris in varying shades of green.

They sat down. Now, nobody would be able to hear what he had to say to her. Mrs Sachdeva pursed her lips, a small crease of concentration in the middle of her forehead, and started examining the saris one by one, her eyes darting from jewellery to sari again and again.

This was the moment. Ramchand’s pulse quickened, his breath became shallow, but
this
time, he wasn’t going to run away. He was going to do something.

‘Madam, I want to talk to you about something.’ His voice sounded unnatural and strained even to his own ears.

She looked startled.

‘About something very serious,’ Ramchand said.

‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Can you see that man at the opposite end,’ he said, pointing towards Chander.

‘I see no man there,’ she said.

‘The shop assistant, madam, the tall one.’

‘Oh,
him
,’ she said, nodding. ‘Yes, what about him?’

‘His name is Chander. I want to talk to you about his wife,’ said Ramchand.

Mrs Sachdeva looked at him as if he were mad.

Then, faltering a little sometimes, stumbling here and there, but keeping his head clear, Ramchand, with his ears redder than ever, but also with more courage in his heart than ever, told Mrs Sachdeva the whole ugly, sordid story, putting together the pieces as well as he could, completing it like a jigsaw puzzle.

Mrs Sachdeva stared at him speechless.

Then, as his words sank in, the lines on her face were disturbed. They seemed to move a little, the way ripples move in still water after a stone has been thrown in. She tried to interrupt him, but he held up his hand, trying to be firm and strong, and said, ‘Please, let me finish.’

And he did, while Mrs Sachdeva got more and more agitated. Ramchand could see unshed tears in her eyes.

In the end, Ramchand felt drained. He wasn’t surprised to see Mrs Sachdeva look agitated. He would have been too, if such a story had been sprung on him.

But Ramchand was completely unprepared for the fury that now burst forth from each pore of Mrs Sachdeva’s red face.

She glared at him. ‘How dare you?’ she said in a low, angry hiss, her voice trembling. ‘How dare you, a mere shop assistant, bring me here to this corner and tell me filthy stories about the kind of women you seem to know.’

He was about to speak but she didn’t let him. ‘The Guptas are respectable people. They happen to be friends of the Kapoors. Do you know what you are saying? And do you have any proof of all this? And why are you telling
me
? What have
I
got to do with all this dirty business?’

Her indignation was making her stutter. Her voice sounded tearful even through the anger.

‘Memsahib, please listen. Maybe the Guptas didn’t know this would happen, but they did get her arrested. And the policemen did…’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she said, speaking through clenched teeth in a low voice. She was anxious that no one in the shop should overhear this conversation. ‘I don’t want to listen to all that vulgar rubbish again, that too in Hindi. Why are you bothering
me
about all this? It is no concern of mine.’

Ramchand answered with despair in his voice. ‘Because you are a respected woman, and your friend Mrs Bhandari’s husband is the…’

‘Oh, so that is it. There have been some horrible, filthy things going on, and now respectable people are to be dragged into it? Let me just tell you one thing, you try this once more, and I’ll speak to the shop manager about this. This just might cost you your job, do you understand?’

With this, she gathered her jewellery carefully into the little velvet pouch, pushed away the green saris on her lap and walked out of the shop on trembling legs.

*

Two more months went by. July came but Amritsar remained dry and dusty. The monsoons were late. One hot, dizzy day, when Ramchand climbed up the familiar wooden stairs of the shop for the umpteenth time, pushed the big glass door open and went in, he saw everyone sombrely standing in small
groups, talking in low voices. Shyam was looking pensive, Rajesh was nodding to something that Mahajan had just said to him, Gokul was silent, Hari was whispering something urgently into Gokul’s ears. Nobody had opened the windows yet, and the shop was stiflingly hot and still.

The next thing Ramchand noticed was that Chander was absent, and panic surged through him. Chander hasn’t turned up again and they would send him to his house again to fetch him, Ramchand thought. He would refuse, he thought in blind terror. No matter what happened, he
wouldn’t
go there again. He would feign a headache… he would say he felt ill… he wanted to go home…

But nobody said anything to him. They continued to stand around, talking in hushed voices.

Gokul caught Ramchand’s eye and beckoned to him. Ramchand went up to him slowly, a feeling of dread in his heart.

‘What happened?’ he asked Gokul. ‘Why is Mahajan looking so solemn? Where is Chander? Has he been sacked? Why are…?

‘Sssh,’ said Gokul, his dark eyes solemn. ‘Nothing is wrong with Chander. But Chander’s wife, you know, Kamla? I told you about her.’

Ramchand waited.

‘Well… she has been killed,’ Mahajan said. ‘It happened last evening. So Chander won’t be coming to work today.’

‘What?’ Ramchand whispered.

His world spun around him.

‘Killed? But who…?’

Gokul turned to Hari again, who was asking him something, still in a whisper.

Ramchand couldn’t make sense of anything. He tugged at Gokul’s shirt sleeve.

‘Yes?’ Gokul asked him.

‘Did Chander… I mean… who killed her?’ It sounded
absurd to his ears, talking about something like this logically, sanely, in broad daylight, standing in the middle of the shop, in view of everyone.

‘No, Chander didn’t kill her. You wait. I’ll tell you everything later,’ Gokul said mysteriously, his hair looking even thinner and greyer today.

At that moment, a plump woman came in with her plump daughter-in-law asking to see printed cotton saris. Each shop assistant moved back effortlessly to his place. Gokul dealt with the woman even more politely and efficiently that he usually did. Mahajan caught his eye, gave him an approving nod and went downstairs.

It wasn’t until later in the morning, when there was a brief lull in the stream of customers, that Gokul told Ramchand everything.

According to Gokul, Kamla had tried her tricks once too often. She had got disgracefully drunk. Then she had gone to
the Kapoor House
, no less.

And there she had stood outside the gate, shouting at the top of her voice. When the Kapoors sent out their chauffeur, gardener and servants to restrain her, she let out a stream of abuse at them, and then went on to abuse the whole of the Kapoor family. Passers-by stopped to listen. Finally, seeing no other way out of this embarrassment, Ravinder Kapoor himself came out.