Dahanu Road: A novel (23 page)

Just then the audience in the theatre had a hearty laugh. His wife got up from her seat.

“I’m going to the toilet,” she said.

Shapur Irani got up as well. She was too pregnant to go on her own.

“No,” she said. “I want to go alone.”

Not knowing what the right thing was, he sat down again.

She walked past him, apologizing for stepping on his foot. She went down the aisle, but did not walk towards the exit. Pushing the hair off her face, she walked towards the screen. She kept on walking with her arms outstretched until she was close enough to touch it. Shapur Irani went after her, shamed by the silhouette of her waving arms in front of all those people, and even Chaplin, that timeless troublemaker, stopped for moment, a look of sadness in his eyes.

After the episode in the theatre, she stopped speaking completely.

Weeks later, when her son was born, the labour pains had a muffled quality. It was not the sound of release. In stifling her screams, she was trying to stifle her son. She did not look at him until Jeroo made her hold him.

But she could hardly care for her child.

She refused to bathe, she did not cook or clean, she just lay in bed and stared at the cracks in the wall.

And then one day she snapped out of it all, like a limp neck that suddenly finds all the correct joints and sockets.

She had a shower, she cooked beans and potatoes, and Shapur Irani was glad. She even placed Aspi between the two of them, kissed him on the forehead, and rubbed her nose against his. She smiled. He had forgotten what her smile was like, those full lips coming alive, her face relaxing once more, eyelids opening and closing as they were meant to, unlike the
cold stares of the past months that brought desolate whiteness to everything.

He ran his finger along her arm. It had been ages since he had touched her. Even she reached out to him and held his hand. He longed to make love to her again, but it was too soon.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, sliding out from under the grey blanket.

She was back soon, fanning herself with the paper fan that had a hummingbird on it. She opened the fan as wide as she could, tried to carefully flatten out the creases.

“Please don’t ever close this fan,” she said to Shapur Irani. “The bird cries when we do that.”

AT THE FARM
the workers stood in line for their daily wages. It was the men who were always first, who would spend their wages in a flash as though if they held on to their money for a while, or even thought of saving, some terrible misfortune might strike them. Once the men collected, the women stepped forward, and Zairos put a tick next to their names in a ledger.

Sukhar, Navsia, Kasia … Laxmi, Sevanti, Saku …

After collecting their money, they started to leave. Zairos noticed an oddness in their manner. They had the gait of men and women who had never known freedom. There was a permanent stutter in their walk, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and they always went in single file, as if fearful that if they moved naturally, the dream of a better life would vanish and a new set of monarchs would take charge.

But Kusum’s walk was different from theirs.

Her day had been spent fixing a wire net around the ends of long wooden sticks, so they could be used to scoop chickoos from the higher branches.

“Seth, he will come for me again,” said Kusum.

“Who?” asked Zairos.

“Laxman. He will not stay quiet.”

The minute Zairos had woken up that morning, he had questioned his attack on Laxman. It had been a bold, impulsive move, the aftermath unpredictable. But perhaps that was its appeal. There was no remorse from Zairos. That meant he had done nothing wrong. Otherwise he would have felt something in his chest, the way the first hit of nicotine tingled the brain when he smoked after a long time.

He would have to see it through to the end. To some extent, he wished there was a man other than himself to whom Kusum could turn to for protection.

“Does your father have any brothers?” he asked her.

“No,” she said.

After listening to his grandfather the night before, Zairos wondered if the protection that he offered Kusum could make any difference in the first place. Banumai had all the cover a woman could hope for, such was the ferocity of her husband’s love, and yet her descent into sadness was so rapid that love was not enough.

“Laxman won’t come,” said Zairos. “Not after a beating like that.”

“We are used to beatings,” she said.

She stood in front of him like a child. Both her parents gone, she was out in the open, with only a yellow blouse to cover her. It occurred to him that this was the same blouse
she had worn the night before. When she had left Laxman’s hut, she had to leave all her belongings behind.

Like someone whose house had been burned down. All she had was the knowledge that she was still breathing. At the moment, she needed objects. A few blouses, a hair net or two, who knew what else.

“Come with me,” he said.

He sat in the car and started the engine. She fiddled with the doorknob before figuring it out. When he passed Aspi Villa, he waved out to his mother, who was on the swing, listening to French dialogue on her headphones. It always amused Zairos how Zoroastrians butchered the French language. His favourite skewering was of
eau de cologne,
which old ladies affectionately referred to as colon water.

“That’s my mother,” he said to Kusum.

But Kusum did not look. She stared at her ankles and at the black rubber mat that slept on the floor of the car like night.

When they reached the Big Boss Hair Salon, they turned right towards the bazaar, a mutant being where shops of every kind sprouted from thin air. A man sold old hammers, another repaired seats for two-wheelers, an old woman weighed magazines and newspapers on a scale to sell as scraps, and an “optician” displayed fake Ray-Bans. These were the mobile stores, one-man operations that found homes depending on the tiredness of their owners’ legs.

Then came the main entrance to Dahanu station with auto rickshaws buzzing, going round and round in frenzied circles, sometimes without passengers. Once they passed the station, the bazaar ended and a long street began, the most famous, populated street in Dahanu, known as Irani Road.

Irani Road got its name because the majority of land was once owned by a man named H. K. Irani. Each and every kind of Irani could be spotted here—men with handlebar moustaches walked with their chests out, old-timers with walking sticks waved out to people at random, and white-haired women in their housecoats talked to themselves because their husbands were no longer alive, women who carried an air of resignation and asked the printed flowers on their housecoats where the old days had gone.

Zairos found a parking spot outside Santosh’s wholesale shed. He got out, but Kusum remained in the car. There were too many people not of her kind. The sun was too bright. Sometimes light did a disservice, did not know when to back off.

“Why are we here, seth?” she asked.

She could not bear the zooming of scooters and motorcycles, the Hindi music blaring from the first floor of an apartment, the rubber tires piled in a heap outside the tire shop. She looked at Zairos, at how white his shirt was, and she was afraid to get out. He wanted to tell her that there were a few Warlis walking around as well, but she could see that herself, and they were working—either carrying twigs on their heads or washing cars. Here she was
in
a car …

“You’ll have to come out,” he said.

He said it firmly. Now it was an order, not a choice, something she could easily follow. She cleaned the edges of her feet on the rubber mat and stepped out, and it made Zairos smile because she was trying not to dirty the road.

She walked behind Zairos.

“Walk with me,” he said.

But she continued to follow. He noticed how she moved away from the paved road, which was too hot and would burn the soles of her feet.

“Do not follow me, Kusum.”

Once again, she nodded her head. Once again, she walked behind him with her head down.

“This is the dairy where I used to drink falooda with my father,” he said, doubting that she had ever tasted the drink, a deliciously sweet mixture of cold milk, tukhmari seeds, a generous dose of rosewater, and a chunk of vanilla ice cream. “Do you want to try some?” he asked.

Without looking up at him, she shook her head. Zairos felt he should not have told her the name of the street. It did not matter to the many Gujaratis, Marwaris, Muslims, Jains, and Hindus living here as well, but Kusum was different from them. With every step, her head was dropping lower and lower.

When they passed a clothing boutique, she looked up, darted glances to the mannequin in the window. Up she looked, and then away, as if afraid that at any moment the plastic woman in jeans would move and speak to her.

He stopped by a coconut stall and asked for two coconuts. Kusum gulped the water down, and some of it fell on her blouse just as one of Zairos’ distant relatives, a young woman named Roxanne, stood in front of them.

“On a date?” asked Roxanne. Roxanne was also known as TG, the Town Gossip.

“No,” said Zairos. “She’s my English professor.”

“Really,” said Roxanne, adjusting her cream T-shirt and taking off her sunglasses to take a better look, her pink skin flushed by the sun. “She’s got a hot body.”

“You could learn something from her then.”

It was not the politest thing to say, especially considering that Roxanne was plump and at one point wanted to marry Zairos. But the woman could not be encouraged. No matter what he told her, by the end of the day she would have her own version anyway, more complete than any Encyclopedia Britannica.

Away they walked from TG’s teeth and her pink cheeks, to a roadside stall that sold all the knick-knacks that the Warlis needed. All the goods had been placed on the ground on a white sheet.

“Pick what you need,” Zairos said.

Kusum just stood, next to a tall man in a brown shirt and shorts. She hid behind the man, but he bent down to have a look at a bracelet, and that was the end of her cover.

Zairos knew he would have to start.

The first item he picked was a pink mirror with a large frame. He held it towards Kusum, encouraging her to look at herself. Next, he chose two black combs, one with the teeth far apart and one with the teeth very fine.

Seeing that his hands were full with a pink mirror and two combs, Kusum bent down slowly and took three cloths, all dull grey, to cover her below the waist. She glanced towards Zairos to see if that was okay, and it was, so he took a red basket that was for sale and placed the mirror and combs in it, and she put the grey cloths in as well. She added hair bands, kajal, and some bindis, and the woman who owned the stall sat cross-legged and waited, the bored expression on her face suggesting that she would rather be on the high seas battling waves and snaring fish than selling makeup and blouses on Irani Road.

When they got back to the car, Zairos put the red basket in the hutch. Once they passed the showroom that sold Mitsubishi tractors, the air became much cleaner. Zairos noticed that as the car picked up speed, Kusum held on to the seat with both hands, and when he took a sharp bend, she swerved away from the door.

“Don’t be scared,” he told her.

“I’m not scared.”

“You were fine the last time. Why are you afraid now?”

“I like to walk, seth. I am used to walking.”

“We are travelling a great distance. If we were to walk from the farm to Irani Road, it would take too long.”

“Maybe we are not meant to go that far,” she said.

Zairos went off the main road, over the roots of an old tree, the trunk of which had yellow paste on it, which signified that it was holy or that some ceremony had taken place. A bullock cart wobbled towards them, the wizened man at the helm looking just as tired and whipped as his bullocks.

It was time to stop the car. It was time to face her.

He would have to show her his face without wearing a master’s sheen, let her know that she was free to do or say as she pleased.

Maybe Zairos did not need to speak. He needed to touch.

With one hand still on the steering wheel, he slowly took his other hand towards her, towards her cheek, and she closed her eyes, she was clearly nervous, and so was he, but he let his hand remain there, and his fingertips touched her ear, and he could feel her breath from her nose on his forearm, or maybe it was from her mouth.

“I knew it,” he heard a voice say.

It was TG, penguin plump on her scooter, the round sunglasses on her nose ready to slide off in disgust.

“Don’t you have any shame?” she said to Kusum in Marathi.

“I think you should be asking me that question,” said Zairos. “And the answer is no.”

He wondered if there was a Marathi word for “penguin.”

It should have been expected. TG derived pleasure from this sort of thing. She loved scandal. And if it did not exist, she manufactured it.

Zairos looked at Kusum, hoping that she was not cowering.

But she was. She had tightened up and her hands were clasped together in unconscious prayer.

He thought of driving off, but that would only give TG pleasure.

Then he realized that this was not about TG or himself.

Kusum needed to know that he was with her. That would give her the strength to become visible again.

“Her name is Kusum,” he said to TG.

His voice did not have the tone of a rebuttal. It was tender; he was introducing someone he knew. This woman is tougher than all of you, he seemed to be saying. And more beautiful.

“It’s okay, Kusum,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Now there was no need for him to leave.

He turned the car engine off. With only the stutter of her scooter remaining, TG had no choice but to waddle away.