Diamond Dust (21 page)

He did not quite give her a wink but, as he polished the mugs with a filthy rag, he began to hum the latest hit tune from the Bombay cinema which was the great love of his life and the bane of the two women's.

'The next time Bose Sahib comes, we'll really have to have a serious discussion,' Tara said. The truth was that her son Bunty had received such a bad report from school that it was clear he would need tutoring in maths as well as Hindi, and that would mean paying two private tutors on top of the school fees which were by no means negligible—and the matter of Ritwick's promotion had still not been brought up for consideration. She lit another cigarette nervously.

Bose only came to visit them when parliament opened for its summer session. He, too, had much on his mind—in his case, of a political nature—and
Books
was not a priority for him. But when he was met on the appointed day at the door by two such anxious young women, and saw the coffee and the Gluco biscuits spread out on Tara's desk in preparation for his announced visit, he realised this was not to be a casual visit but a business conference. He cleared his throat and sat down to listen to their problems with all the air of an MP faced with his constituents.

'So, we have to have a sales drive, eh?' he said after listening to Tara spell out the present precarious state of the journal.

'Yes, but before we have that, we have to have an overhaul,' Tara told him authoritatively. 'For instance, Bose Sahib, the name
Books
just has to go. I told you straightaway it is the most boring, unattractive name you could think up—'

'What do you mean? What do you mean?' he spluttered, tobacco flakes spilling from his fingers as he tamped them into his pipe. 'What can be more
attractive
than
Books
? What can be less
boring
than
Books
?' He seemed appalled by her philistinism.

'Oh, that's just for
you.'
Tara was not in the least put out by the accusation in his mild face or his eyes blinking béhind the thick glasses in their black frames. 'What about people browsing in a shop, seeing all these magazines with pin-ups and headlines? Are they going to
glance
at a journal with a plain yellow cover like a school note book, with just thé word
Books
on it?'

'Why not? Why not?' he spluttered, still agitated.

'Perhaps we could choose a new tide?' Moyna suggested, rubbing her fingers along the scratches on the desk, nervously.

The two women had already discussed the matter between them, and now spilled out their suggestions:
The Book Bag, The Book Shelf
... well, perhaps those weren't so much more exciting than plain
Books
but what about, what about—
Pen and Ink? The Pen Nib? Pen and Paper? Press and Paper?

It seemed to make Bose Sahib think that new blood was required on the staff because his reaction to their session was to send them, a month later, a new employee he had taken on, a young man newly graduated from the University of Hoshiarpur who would aid Tara and Moyna in all their office chores. He would deal with the press, see the paper through the press, supervise its distribution, visit bookshops and persuade them to display the journal more prominently, and allow Tara and Moyna to take on extra work such as hunting for new subscribers and advertisers.

Tara and Moyna were not at all sure if they liked the new arrangement or if they really wanted anyone else on the staff. As for Raj Kumar, he was absolutely sure he did not. No warm reception had been planned for the graduate from Hoshiarpur University (in the opinion of Tara and Moyna, there could be no instituition of learning on a lower rung of the ladder) but when young Mohan appeared, they had been disarmed. By his woebegone looks and low voice they learned he no more wanted to be there than they wanted to have him there, that he had merely been talked into it by his professor, an old friend of Bose Sahib's. He himself was very sad to leave Hoshiarpur where his mother and four sisters provided him with a life of comfort. The very thought of those comforts made his eyes dewy when he told Tara and Moyna of the food he ate at home, the grilled chops, the egg curries, the biryanis and home-made pickles. Moreover, if it was necessary to begin a life of labour so young—he had only graduated three months ago and hardly felt prepared for the working life—then he had hoped for something else.

"What
would
you have liked to do, Mohan?' Moyna asked him sympathetically (she was not at all certain if she was cut out for a career at
Books
either).

'Travel and Tourism,' he announced without hesitation. 'One friend of mine, he is in Travel and Tourism and he is having a fine time—going to airport, receiving foreign tourists, taking them to five-star hotels in rented cars, with chauffeurs—and receiving tips. Fine time he is having, and much money also, in tips.'

Moyna felt so sorry for the sad contrast provided by
Books
that she asked Raj Kumar to fetch some samosas for them to have with their tea. Mohan slurped his up from a saucer, and when Raj Kumar returned with the samosas in an oily newspaper packet, he snapped up two without hesitation. Moyna wondered if he was living in a barsati: she thought she saw signs that he did. Wiping his fingers on Raj Kumar's all-purpose duster, Mohan remarked, 'Not so good as my sister makes.'

Tara thought Moyna could go out in search of advertisements, but when Moyna looked terror-struck and helpless, and cried, 'Oh, but I don't even know Delhi, Tara," she got up, saying resignedly, 'All right, we'll do the rounds together, just this once,' and gave Raj Kumar and Mohan a string of instructions before leaving the office. Putting on her dark glasses, slinging her handbag over her shoulder, and hailing an autorickshaw that was idling outside the coffee shop, Tara looked distinctly cheerful at the prospect.

Moyna could not see what there was to be cheerful about: the publishing houses they visited were all in the back lanes of Darya Ganj and Kashmere Gate, far from salubrious to her way of thinking, particularly on a steaming afternoon in late summer, and the publishers they met all seemed oppressed by the weather, slumped in their offices listlessly, under slowly revolving fans—if the electricity had not broken down altogether, in which case they would be plunged in gloom, in dim candlelight—and they seemed far from interested in increasing sales of their wares by advertising in
Books.
'We have been advertising,' one reminded them brusquely, 'for more than two years, and we are seeing no increase in sales. Who is reading
Books
? Nobody is reading.' Tara looked extremely offended and swept out with great dignity after reminding him that he had yet to pay for the advertisements he had placed. Moyna followed her, quietly impressed if uncertain as to whether she could bring off a confrontation so satisfactorily.

They had a little better luck with the bookshops in Connaught Place and Khan Market which were not nearly so depressing and were often run by pleasant proprietors who sent out for Campa Cola and Fanta for them, and at times even agreed to place a few advertisements of their best-selling thrillers. The bookshop for the publications of the USSR—mostly cheerful and cheap translations of Russian folk tales and fables in bright colours for children—proved particularly supportive. A charming Russian gentleman gave them a free calendar and a brochure listing the film, dance and music programmes at Tolstoy Bhavan. Encouraged, Tara suggested they visit the British Council next. 'But do they publish books?' Moyna asked. She was dusty, hot and very tired by now. Tara thought that irrelevant—they could advertise their library, couldn't they?

Actually, they could not, and did not, but the young man they spoke to, who had been summoned out of his office to deal with them, was so apologetic about the refusal that they gave him a copy of the latest edition of
Books
gratis. He looked overcome, pushing back a lock of his fair hair from his forehead and gazing at the magazine as if it were a work of art. 'Oh,' he said, several times, 'how perfectly splendid. Perfectly splendid, really.' Tara straightened her shoulders and gave Moyna a significant look before rising to her feet and making her departure. Moyna followed her reluctantly: the lobby of the British Council library had the best air-conditioning they had run into all day. After that—and the discreet lighting, the carpeting, the soft rustle of newspapers, the attractive look of detective novels and romantic fiction on the shelves—' they returned to their office in Bengali Market with a sense of resignation. They did not really expect any results.

But there was Tara at the top of the stairs to the rooftop, pounding on the door and shouting, 'Moyna! Moyna, open up, Moyna!'

Moyna had just been preparing for a bath. It was not entirely uncommon for Tara and Ritwick to drop in on her unannounced if they had managed to persuade Ritwick's mother to mind their little son for a bit, and since she had still not managed to get a telephone installed, there was no way they could warn her. 'Wait a minute,' she called, and slipped back into her clothes before going barefoot across the roof to open the door to them.

Tara was standing there, laughing and in great spirits, not with Ritwick at all but, to Moyna's unconcealed astonishment, with the fair young man from the British Council, who stood a few steps lower down, looking more embarrassed even than before, and clutching in his hands a bottle filled with some dark liquid. Moyna stared.

'Oh, open the door, Moyna, and let us in. I know you don't have a phone so how could I warn you? Adrian rang me up about an advertisement and I asked him to come over, but you know how the Dragon Lady is in such a temper with me these days, so I brought him here instead.'

'Oh,' said Moyna doubtfully, thinking of her own Dragon Lady downstairs.

'Wont
you let us in?'

Moyna stood aside and then led them towards her barsati. She really could not have company in there—Tara ought to know that. Feeling both vexed and embarrassed, she stood in front of the door now, frowning, and finally said, 'I'll bring out some chairs,' and left them waiting again. To her annoyance, Adrian followed her in to help pull out some chairs, first placing the bottle on the table and saying, 'I brought you some—um—wine. I thought—um—we could have a drink together. Um.'

'And I told him you would at least have peanuts—' Tara shouted from outside.

What could she mean—peanuts? What peanuts? Moyna frowned. After the chairs, there was the bother with glasses. What made Tara think she might have wine glasses? All she could find were two tumblers and a mug—and certainly there were no peanuts. In fact, she had just finished the last bit of bread with her dinner, there was not so much as a piece of toast to offer. But once they were seated on the rooftop, with the wine poured out, and had had a sip of that, Moyna looked up to see that the sky still had a pink flush to it, that it was not entirely dark, that the first stars were beginning to emerge from the day's dust and grime and glare, that the pipal tree was beginning to rustle like a shower of rain in the first breath of air that evening, and suddenly she felt her spirits break free and lift. Here she was, entertaining friends on 'her terrace' on a starry evening, just as she had imagined an adult working woman in the metropolis might do, just as she had imagined
she
would do—and now it was happening. She looked at Adrian, his six narrow feet of height somehow folded onto a small upright chair, and said with incredulity, 'This is nice!' He thought she meant the wine and hurried to refill her glass, blinking happily behind his spectacles.

It was not only she who thought it was nice. Tara seemed liberated by coming away from her mother-in-law's house where she had to live because of Ritwick's stalled promotion at the university. Adrian seemed enchanted by everything his eye encountered on the rooftop—the parrots streaking in to settle in the branches of the pipal tree for the night, the neighbourliness of the other roof dwellers, several of whom had lined up along their ledges to watch (discreetly or not so discreetly) Moyna's first social gathering. Mao the cat jumped upon Adrian's knee and sat there as if on a tall perch with his eyes narrowed to slits, and by the time the bottle of wine was emptied, they had begun to talk much more loudly and laugh more than they were aware. Tara had an endless fund of mother-in-law stories, as Moyna already knew, but Adrian was gratifyingly astounded by them. When Tara told them of the first time Ritwick had brought her to meet his mother and how the first thing she said to Tara was, 'Are, why are you wearing this pale colour? It does not suit you at all, it makes your complexion muddy,' or of how she would insist Tara wear her wedding jewellery to work 'otherwise people will think you are a widow', Adrian became wide-eyed and gulped, 'She
said
that? You mean she has licence to say what she
likes
to you?' Tara, greatly encouraged, began to exaggerate—as Moyna could tell—and her stories grew wilder and funnier, reducing even Adrian to laughter. The neighbours spied on them, scandalised, hidden now by night's darkness, but they were unaware how their voices carried downstairs as well, and what a degree of grim disapproval was mounting there. When they descended the stairs, Moyna accompanying them with the key to unlock the front gate for them, they found Mr and Mrs Bhalla pacing up and down the small driveway, grey-faced with censure. They had let Candy out from under their bed and now she flew at them, yipping with small snaps of her teeth, till she was curtly called back by Mr Bhalla.

Their looks made Moyna wonder if it was really so late, had they been kept awake? She put on an apologetic look but Tara, on the contrary, threw back her head and said loudly, 'OK, Moyna, good night—see you tomorrow!' and swept out of the gate. Adrian followed her hastily, carefully keeping out of range of Candy's snapping jaws.

Moyna was certain she would have to face the Bhallas' wrath as she turned around, but they drew back and stared at her in silence as she walked up the stairs and vanished.

Although they did not bring it up directly, after that whenever Moyna encountered them, on her way to work or back, they never failed to refer obliquely to that evening. 'You are having more guests tonight?' they would ask when they saw her returning with the shopping she had done along the way. 'No? You seem to be having many friends,' they went on, prodding her to say more. She shook her head, hurrying. 'No? Then why not come and watch TV tonight?
Ramayana
is showing at seven p.m. Very fine film,
Ramayana.
You should join us,' they commanded, as if testing her true colours. She shook her head, making her excuses. 'Oh, then you are going out? With your friends?' they deliberately misunderstood, taunting her. The children, Sweetie and Pinky, giggled behind their fingers.