A Fine Balance (66 page)

Ishvar nodded in a non-committal manner.

“These customers – always expecting too much from us,” Jeevan tried again, hiding poorly behind banalities.

He was plucked out of his awkward moment by the appearance of another client. The woman, scheduled for a trial fitting, was handed the preliminary framework of her silk choli. She disappeared into the booth, drawing the curtain shut.

Maneck nudged Om, and they turned to watch. The swaying curtain settled a few inches from the floor, where the woman’s sari could be seen caressing her sandalled feet. Jeevan wagged a finger at them, then leered at the booth himself.

“A thinner curtain would put spice in my life,” said Om. They could hear the gentle tinkling of her bangles.

“Shoosh!” warned Jeevan, snickering. “You will cost me a regular customer.”

The woman’s reappearance made them stumble into a guilty silence. They examined her surreptitiously, glancing sideways with heads lowered. Her sari had been left off the shoulders to permit Jeevan to review the blouse-in-progress. “Arms raised a little, please,” he said, slipping his tape measure under them. Now his tone was clinical, like a doctor asking to see the patient’s tongue.

Between the choli and the waistline her midriff was bare. She was wearing a hipster sari, in the modern fashion, showing her navel. Maneck and Om stared as Jeevan recommended two tucks at the back and a slightly deeper plunge for the neckline. She returned behind the curtain.

Om whispered to Maneck that this was the part he missed the most in working for Dinabai from paper patterns. “It gives me no chance to measure women.”

“As if you could do anything while measuring.”

“You don’t know how much is possible, yaar.” Doing a blouse, especially a tight choli like this one, he said, was heaven, because the tape went over the cups. Passing it around and reaching with the other hand to bring it to the front, you had to stand very close to her. This alone was exciting. Then your fingers held the tape in the hollow between the two breasts – so you didn’t touch her – but it was always possible to graze a little. You had to be careful, and know when to press on. If she shrank as soon as the tape touched, it was dangerous to try anything. But some of them did not mind, and you could tell from their eyes and their nipples whether it was safe to move your fingers about.

“Have you ever done it?”

“Many times. At Muzaffar Tailoring, with Ashraf Chacha.”

“Maybe I really should give up college and become a tailor.”

“You should. It’s more fun.”

Maneck smiled. “Actually, I’m thinking of continuing college after my year is up.”

“Why? I thought you hated it.”

Maneck was silent for a moment, piano-playing on his knuckles. “I got a letter from my parents. Saying how much they are waiting for this year to finish, how lonely they are without me – same old rubbish. When I was there, they said go, go, go. So I’ve decided to write that I want to stay for three more years, do the degree course instead of the one-year diploma.”

“You’re stupid, yaar. In your place, I would return to my parents as early as possible.”

“What’s the point? To argue and fight again with my father? Besides, I’m having fun here now.”

Om inspected his nails and ran a hand through his puff. “If you’re planning to stay, you should change your subject to tailoring, for sure. Because you cannot measure women for refrigerators.” He chuckled. “What are you going to say? ‘Madam, how deep are your shelves?’“

Maneck laughed. “I could ask ‘Madam, may I examine your compressors?’ Or ‘Madam, you need a new thermostat in your thermostat cavity.’“

“Madam, your temperature control knobs require adjustment.”

“Madam, your meat drawer is not opening properly.”

The customer left as they were getting uproarious, and Ishvar said, “Gome on, you two, time to go. What are you laughing so much about, hahn?”

“As if we don’t know,” grinned Jeevan, bidding them good luck and farewell. “Hope you soon find a room.”

During reading week, prior to Manek’s exams, the rent-collector paid an unscheduled afternoon call. The tailors silenced the sewing-machines at the sound of the doorbell.

“How are you, sister?” said Ibrahim, his hand rising fezwards.

“What is it now?” said Dina, barring his way. “Rent is already paid this month.”

“Rent is not the problem, sister.” Shrinking as he spoke, he blurted in one sentence that the office had sent him to deliver a final notice to vacate in thirty days because they had proof that she was using the flat for commercial purposes despite the warning months ago.

“Nonsense! What proof do they have?”

“Why get upset with me, sister,” he pleaded, tapping the notebook in his pocket. “It’s all here – dates, times, coming-going, taxi, dresses. And more proof is sitting in the back room.”

“Back room? You want to show me?” She stood aside and gestured him in.

The outright challenge startled him. He had no choice but to accept. Entering with his head bowed, he made for the sewing room. The tailors, frozen at the Singers, waited nervously, while Maneck watched from his room.

“This is the problem, sister. You cannot hire tailors and run a business here.” He moved his anguished hands to include the other bedroom. “And a paying guest, on top of that. Such insanity, sister. The office will throw you out for sure.”

“You are talking rubbish!” She started the counterattack. “This man,” she said, pointing to Ishvar, “he is my husband. The two boys are our sons. And the dresses are all mine. Part of my new 1975 wardrobe. Go, tell your landlord he has no case.”

It was difficult to say who she shocked more with the apocryphal revelation: Ishvar, blushing and playing with his scissors, or Ibrahim, wringing his hands and sighing.

Pressing home her advantage, she demanded, “You have anything else to say?”

Ibrahim hunched his shoulders till they looked sufficiently supplicatory. “Marriage licence, please? Birth certificates? Can I see, please?”

“My slipper across your mouth is what you will see! How dare you insult me! Tell your landlord, if he does not stop harassing my family, I’ll take him straight to court!”

He retreated, muttering that he would have to make a full report to the office, why abuse him for doing his job, he did not enjoy it any more than the tenants did.

“If you don’t enjoy it, leave it. At your age you shouldn’t have to work anyway. Your children can look after you.”

“I have to work, I am all alone,” he said as the door shut.

The sweetness of her victory faded. She waited, hearing him panting outside, catching his breath before he could set off. In the moment of his brief words, her own life’s lonely, troubled years came rushing back, reminding her how recent and unreliable was the happiness discovered in these last few months.

In the back room Ishvar had recovered from the matrimonial surprise. The boys were chortling away, teasing him about the look on his face. “You keep talking about a wife for me,” said Om. “Instead you got one for yourself.”

“That was an amazing idea, Aunty. Did you plan it in advance?”

“Never mind that, you better plan for your exams.”

College closed for the three-week Divali vacation, and Dina encouraged Maneck to be a tourist. “All this time it’s been home to class and class to home. But there is so much sightseeing in this city. The museum and aquarium and the sculpted caves will fascinate you. Victoria Garden and the Hanging Gardens are also worth visiting, believe me.”

“But I’ve seen them before.”

“When? Years ago, with your mummy? You were just a little baba then, you cannot remember anything. You must go again. And you must also visit your Sodawalla relatives – they are your mummy’s family.”

“Okay,” he said indifferently, and did not stir from the flat.

That week, the first fireworks of Divali were heard. “Hai Ram,” said Ishvar. “What a bombardment.”

“This is nothing,” said Dina. “Wait till the actual date gets closer.”

The noise delayed bedtime by roughly two hours each night, making Maneck’s empty vacation days longer and emptier. To compensate he tried rising late, but the clamorous dawn, filled with clanging milkmen and argumentative crows, was always victorious.

Dina wrote down bus numbers and directions for him. “It’s very easy to find these tourist attractions, you won’t get lost,” she said, thinking that perhaps that was what scared him. But Maneck did not budge.

Fed up with his moping about the house, she began scolding him. “All the time indoors, like a glum grandpa. It’s not natural for a young man. And you’re driving us crazy with your pacing up and down the whole day.”

His idle presence now began to distract Om, who was once again taking extended tea breaks with him at the Vishram, or playing cards on the verandah, showing a general disinclination to work. Ishvar reproached his nephew, and Dina reprimanded him as well, to no avail.

At the end of the week they took a different approach; they decided it would be best to let Om have a vacation too. Expecting him to slog at the Singer while his friend waited around was unrealistic. After all, it was bad enough having to earn his living at an age when he should have been going to college like Maneck.

So Om was told he could reduce his hours and sew from eight to eleven in the morning. “You have worked very hard these last few months,” said Dina. “You deserve a holiday.”

Now there was no keeping them at home. The minute Om finished his short shift, the two were not seen again till dinnertime. Then it was non-stop talk through the meal and until bedtime, for they were full of the things they had done.

“The sea was so rough, the launch was jumping like a wild horse,” said Om. “It was scary, yaar.”

“I’m telling you, Aunty, your paying guest and half your tailoring factory almost drowned at the jetty.”

“Dont say inauspicious things,” said Ishvar.

“After that launch ride, even the aquarium made me dizzy – all that water around us.”

“But the fish were beautiful, yaar. And such stylish ways they have of swimming. As if they were out for a walk, or shopping in the bazaar, squeezing the tomatoes, or like police running after a thief.”

“Some of them were so colourful, like the cloth from Au Revoir,” said Maneck. “And the nose of the sawfish looked exactly like a real saw, I swear.”

“Tomorrow, I want to get a massage at the beach,” said Om. “We saw them today, with their oils and lotions and towels.”

“Be very careful,” warned Dina. “Those massagewallas are crooks. They give you beautiful chumpee till you are so relaxed, you fall asleep. Then they pick your pocket.”

The next three days, however, were spent at the museum. Om came home and said that the builders must have modelled the domed roof after his uncle’s stomach. “If only I could honestly claim such prosperity,” said Ishvar. For three evenings he and Dina heard all about the Chinese gallery, Tibetan gallery, Nepalese gallery, samovars, tea urns, ivory carvings, jade snuff boxes, tapestries.

Particularly transfixing had been the armour collection – the suits of mail, jade-handled daggers, scimitars, swords with serrated edges (“like the coconut grater on the kitchen shelf,” said Om), bejewelled ceremonial swords, bows and arrows, cudgels, pikes, lances, and spiked maces.

“They looked like the weapons in that old film,
Mughal-e-Azam,”
said Maneck, and Om added they would be useful to arm all the Chamaars in the villages, conduct a massacre of the landlords and upper castes, which made Ishvar frown disapprovingly till the boys’ laughter reassured him.

And so they devoured their holidays with youthful appetites. The wonders of the city tumbled from their tongues for Ishvar, who enjoyed their sightseeing vicariously, and for Dina, who, in the tide of their enthusiasm, rediscovered something of her own school-days.

Halfway through the vacation a late monsoon surge darkened the skies. Heavy rain kept the boys indoors. Bored and restless, Maneck remembered the chessmen. Om had never seen a set, and the plastic figures captivated his imagination. He demanded to learn the game.

Maneck began naming the pieces for him: “King, queen, bishop, knight, rook, pawn.” The sculpted words fell with a familiar caress upon his own ears. He took pleasure in feeling the pieces between his fingers again after so long, resurrecting them from their maroon plywood coffin in their customary squares, ready for battle.

Then, abruptly, the sound of his voice became the faraway echo of another – a voice that had once named the chessmen thus, for him, in the college hostel. He stopped, unable to proceed with explaining the game. The voice began disinterring the bones of his recent past, the ones he was trying to forget, had half-forgotten, had never wanted to see again. Now they were suddenly surfacing with grotesque alacrity.

He stared at the chessboard, where every piece harboured a ghost within its square. Thirty-two ghosts began their own moves, a dancing, colliding, taunting army of memories willing to do battle with his will to forget. Then the dancing chessmen changed partners, and it was the face of Avinash smiling at him from all sixty-four squares.

With an effort, Maneck abandoned the board and went to the window. Rain was pounding the street. Someone’s motorcycle lay covered under a loudly thrumming tarpaulin. The puddles around it were muddy and uninviting. There were no children playing or splashing, the street joyless in this rain that had stayed too long and was too torrential. He wished he had never opened the box of chessmen.

“What’s wrong?” asked Om.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, then. Stop wasting time, show me how to play.”

“It’s a stupid game. Forget it.”

“Why do you have it, if it’s stupid?”

“Someone lent it to me. I have to return it soon.” He watched the sewer’s whirlpool swallow empty cigarette packs and soft-drink bottlecaps. Kohlah’s Cola would not be among them. Not while Daddy continued in his stubborn ways. What a success the business could have been. And he would never have had to come to this bloody college. Must have made a wrong move somewhere in life, he thought, to walk into this check.