Funny Boy (6 page)

I waited anxiously for Radha Aunty’s return. She was to arrive in four weeks, and, as the time drew nearer, I felt the same kind of excitement I had felt when my parents returned from their trip to Europe the year before. Then, all I had thought about was the toys and chocolate and chewing-gum they would bring. Now all I thought about was the world of weddings.

Finally she arrived. I begged my parents to take me when they went to see her, but it was late in the evening and they refused. I had to wait for the next spend-the-day.

That Sunday, I woke up earlier than usual. I lay in bed, listening for the sounds of the morning to begin – the sparrows, the mynahs, the Milk Board van, Anula putting out the coffee cups, my father clearing his throat. Now that the day had finally arrived, I felt nervous. Soon I would be in the presence of a grand person, someone who was separated from everyday people, because she inhabited the realm of romance and marriage.

When we arrived outside my grandparents’ house, I was the first one out of the car. As I opened the gate, I was surprised to hear the sound of Ammachi’s piano. In all the years I had come here, I had never heard it. Someone was playing “Chopsticks.” The player hit a painfully wrong note and then the piano was silent. In that instant, I realized who it was. Amma, Diggy, Sonali, and I started to walk up the driveway. “Chopsticks” started again, haltingly now. As I listened to the music, I felt disoriented. This was not in keeping with my Radha Aunty. I
had imagined her doing a number of things, going for walks on the beach with Rajan, getting dressed to go out with him, even cooking and cleaning for him, but I had never imagined her playing “Chopsticks” on the piano. I hurried up the driveway and into the house.

When we went into the drawing room, there she was, seated at the piano. Radha Aunty. She had begun to play another tune. I stared at her in shock. She couldn’t have been more different from the way I had pictured her. The first and biggest difference between the imagined Radha Aunty and the real one was the colour of her skin. She was a karapi, as dark as a labourer. Worse, her long hair was frizzy like Ammachi’s and it seemed about to burst out of the clip that held it in place at the back of her neck. She was thin, not plump, and, as Amma would have said, “flat like a boy.” Instead of a sari, she wore a halter-top and strange trousers that were tight to the knee and then became wider. Further, the heels on her shoes were odd because they ran the length of each shoe. I had never seen shoes or trousers like these before.

It was my turn to greet Ammachi. After I had done so, Ammachi told me my chore for the day. I was to clean all the brass ornaments in the drawing room. As she spoke I nodded distractedly, for I was still looking at Radha Aunty.

She ended the tune on a wrong note, shook her head, and cried out, “Oh, God, I’m so terrible.” She laughed. Then she noticed me staring at her and wrinkled her forehead, imitating the look on my face.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Which one are you?”

“Arjie,” I said.

She held out her hand to me. “What? I don’t get a kiss or anything?”

I went to her and offered my cheek to be kissed.

Radha Aunty turned back to the piano and began to play “Somewhere My Love.”

I sat down behind her and opened the can of Brasso. I tipped some out onto a rag and glanced at Radha Aunty petulantly. I felt that in some way she had let me down, cheated me. As I began to polish a lamp, I eyed her and thought of Sakuntala and the other heroines of Janaki’s love-comics. This was not how a bride-to-be was supposed to behave. It was unthinkable that a woman who was on the brink of marriage could look like this and play the piano so badly.

Ammachi came over to me, interrupting my reverie. I began to busily polish the lamp. Then she took it from me. “Chah!” she said. “This is terrible. Do it again.”

Radha Aunty stopped playing the piano and regarded us with interest. Ammachi returned the lamp to me and I began to polish it vigorously. “Harder,” she commanded. “Rub harder.”

I rubbed as intensely as I could, feeling my palm heat up against the brass.

“More Brasso,” she said. “Put more Brasso.”

I reached for the tin.

“Quick, quick,” she cried. “Otherwise it will dry.”

“Honestly, Amma,” Radha Aunty suddenly said, “you treat him like a servant boy.”

I glanced at Ammachi, wondering how she would react to this criticism from her daughter.

“No,” she said, “I’m just trying to teach him a skill.”

Radha Aunty laughed. “What?!” she said. “Are you planning to set him up on Galle Road as a brass karaya?”

Ammachi didn’t reply. She bent down to examine my work again, but this time she said nothing. After a few moments, she left.

Radha Aunty swung around on her stool and watched me polishing the lamp. “Why aren’t you playing with the others?” she asked.

“Because …” I said, and my voice trailed off. I did not want to tell her the truth for fear that she would laugh at me in the way the other adults had done. “Because I don’t want to,” I added quickly. She looked at me keenly and smiled as if she didn’t believe me.

She turned back to the piano and began to play. I studied her again, but with a slight change of attitude. Yes, it was true that she was a disappointment, but she had come to my rescue. If she had not said anything, I would surely have received a blow across the side of my head. As I looked at her I began to realize that she was different from other adults. There was a cheerfulness about her that none of the other aunts and uncles had, not even the nice ones like Mala Aunty. Further, she had not pressed me to tell her why I was not playing with the others. She lacked that terrible curiosity other adults had which made them insist on knowing things you were uncomfortable telling, and she had not cared about my obvious fib.

That afternoon there were no chores to do, so I sat in the open corridor with a love-comic. Radha Aunty passed by on her way to the kitchen and she looked at me, curious. When
she came back out of the kitchen, she stopped and said, “What? All alone?”

I nodded and smiled slightly.

“Never mind,” Radha Aunty said. “Come to my bedroom and play.” I looked at her in surprise, feeling suddenly shy in her presence.

“Come on,” she said, and I picked up my comic and followed her as she went into the main part of the house.

Her room consisted of a single bed, an almariah, and a dressing table. I had been in this room before, but now it was transformed by her personal effects. The greatest change was the dressing table, for the surface was covered with her make-up. I gazed at the various shades of lipstick and nail polish. A glass jar contained a selection of shiny stars and circles. I leaned over to examine them more closely. “They’re pottus,” Radha Aunty said. She picked one up and stuck it in the middle of her forehead to demonstrate what it looked like. I gazed at her forehead, enchanted by the pottu, so different from the coloured pencils Amma used. I turned and looked covetously at the jar. “You want to try it?” Radha Aunty asked, sounding both surprised and amused.

I nodded shyly.

She picked up a star, smeared a little Vaseline on it, and then stuck it on my forehead. I gazed at my reflection. Radha Aunty sat on the dressing-table stool and looked at me with a mischievous glint in her eyes. Then she picked up a tube of lipstick. “Open your mouth,” she said.

Through the corner of my eye, I watched Radha Aunty work. She painted my eyelids with blue shadow, put rouge
on my cheeks, and even darkened a birthmark above my lip. When she was done, I grinned at my reflection in the mirror.

She looked at me and laughed. “Gosh,” she said. “You would have made a beautiful girl.” Then she took me by the hand and led me out to the kitchen. “Look!” she cried to Janaki.

Janaki smiled in spite of herself. “You better not let the parents see him like that,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Radha Aunty replied. “It’s all in good fun.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Radha Aunty allowed me to play with her make-up and jewellery while she lay on her bed reading. By now I had lost my earlier shyness. I donned several of her chains and bangles and studied the effect in the mirror. Then I decided to paint my nails. I opened the bottle of nail polish and paused for a moment to breathe in its heady smell before I drew the brush out. While I coloured my nails, I watched Radha Aunty’s reflection in the dressing-table mirror. She became aware that I was looking at her and lowered her book.

“Radha Aunty,” I said, “when are you going to marry Rajan Nagendra?”

“Who?” she asked.

“You know,” I said, and smiled to show that I knew she was playing with me. I waved my hand and blew on it in the same way Amma did when she wanted her nails to dry.

“Why are you asking?”

“Because.”

“Do you think I should?”

She was still teasing me, but I decided to treat her question with seriousness. I nodded vigorously.

“Why?”

I looked at her, taken aback. I searched my mind for an answer and then, remembering what the adults had said, I replied, “Because he’s an engineer and he doesn’t have insanity in his family.” Radha Aunty looked at me in astonishment. Then she began to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” I cried, suddenly feeling shy again.

She reached out and hugged me, still laughing. “Where did you hear that?” she asked.

I told her, and this made her laugh all the more. Since she was in such good humour, I decided to go further. “You must get married, soon,” I said. “Please, please. You will be the bestest bride ever,” I added insincerely.

“The bestest bride,” she said. “You think so?”

I nodded. “And you must have a long, long veil.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “But won’t it be too heavy for my head?”

“No,” I replied. “You must have many bridesmaids to carry it.”

“How many?”

“Ten.”

Radha Aunty laughed and I laughed, too, with excitement.

“And how many flower girls should I have?”

“Seven.”

“And page boys?”

“Seven.”

“Will you be one?”

“Yes!”

I reached out and hugged her. “Can Sonali, my sister, be a flower girl?”

She nodded.

“But not Tanuja,” I added, determined to keep Her Fatness out of the fun. “She’ll spoil everything.”

“Okay,” Radha Aunty replied.

Since she was amenable to suggestion, I recommended that the bridesmaids wear pink saris with shiny sequins; the flower girls, pink maxis and flowered hair bands; and the page boys, black waistcoats with gold buttons. Radha Aunty laughed at my suggestions, but I pleaded with her until she finally lifted her hands in surrender. I was ecstatic now, all my earlier disappointment forgotten. Things were working out better than I had anticipated. I never imagined that I would actually have a hand in deciding what the bridal party would look like. The most I had expected was to be allowed to view the wedding preparations without being chased away. Radha Aunty had turned out to be different from what I had expected, but better. She was definitely my favourite aunt.

That afternoon Her Fatness came to tea dressed up as the bride. She talked loudly about what they planned to do at the bridal ceremony after tea. I glanced disdainfully at the bedsheet wrapped around her body and the curtain on her head. Except for the bedsheet, she was wearing exactly what I used to when
I was the bride. Now I marvelled to think that I had actually found this costume beautiful. How pitiful that curtain, discoloured with age, looked attached to her head, its borders sticking out awkwardly. The garland of flowers pinned to it appeared ill-made and sparse. I glanced across at Radha Aunty and imagined what she would be like in her expensive Manipuri sari and long, long veil. I pictured her entourage in the garments I had chosen for them and I felt a glow of pride as if they stood before me. As Her Fatness spoke of the girls’ plans for the rest of the afternoon, she looked at me, searching for envy in my face. I looked at her with contempt. I had better things to worry about than her silly game. I kept my fingers prominently spread out on the table so that she would notice my nails. When she saw them, her face became clouded with jealousy.

One day, not long after Radha Aunty had returned from America, Amma said to me, “How would you like to be in a play?” I looked at her in astonishment. She told me that Radha Aunty was in a play called
The King and I
and the director was looking for young people to play the children of the King of Siam. The rehearsals would be on Saturdays and Sundays and one evening during the week.

“Well, do you want to?” Amma asked.

I nodded, thrilled at the prospect of being in a play. Last year, Amma had taken us to see a production of
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
. Although the play was boring, I found myself
envying the children who were in it, because they got to wear make-up and costumes and dance around the stage.

I asked Amma if she knew
The King and I
. She said she had seen the film a long time ago. As far as she remembered, it was the story of an English governess who goes to the court of Siam to teach English and other Western subjects to the king’s children and wives.