House of the Sun (10 page)

‘But the building is so dirty,’ Rani and her brothers argued. ‘We are ashamed before our friends.’

‘I cannot maintain it single-handed,’ Mr Murjani reasoned. ‘Inside, our home is like a palace. Why should we worry about the outside?’ This was the
attitude
of most residents of Sadhbela, many of whom could ill afford the service rates, and so refused to pay.

Pinky lived in a fashionable apartment block, with polished beige marble and automatic lifts. All the
residents
were of the same affluence, and servants had their own quarters at the back of each flat. In Sadhbela no thought had ever been given to this population. They kept their few possessions in jute shopping bags, or a cardboard box, in the corner of a kitchen cupboard. The trustworthy slept on living-room floors, and the dubious in corridors beyond front doors. A tap, two urinals and toilets served them on the ground floor. Some servants of long standing who were valued, were allowed accommodation with their families in the garages that comprised the ground floor; few people had cars in Sadhbela. But often such liberality and roomage went to the head, and the lucrative premises
of the garages were sublet to bootleggers or furniture makers, unbeknown to the residents above.

Why could they not live in a more presentable place, Rani fumed. Her father was even planning to build a penthouse on the roof of Sadhbela, if permission was granted and the building could take the weight. Although the Murjanis had the entire front of the
seventh
floor, space was already cramped. Vinod was
married
with a child, and was already agitating for
extension
of his living space within the apartment. Sunil too would marry in a few years, and must be
accommodated
with his wife and future children in the joint family home. Only she, thought Rani, would leave to go to another house. A piece of property, passed from one family to another. She would go like a prestigious, unflawed object to the highest bidder. Except that it seemed, upon reflection, that she was both the object and the bidder; with a dowry her parents were literally buying her a husband. It was archaic. It had been banned as a system years ago and nobody took any notice. Except enlightened people like Pinky’s parents.

Below her upon the sheer perpendicular of the
building
, Mrs Hathiramani’s head protruded from a window above Mrs Bhagwandas as they chatted. Mrs
Hathiramani
and Mrs Bhagwandas had not even seen their husbands before their weddings. Mrs Bhagwandas had been betrothed to her husband even before her birth, by a pregnant mother and mother-in-law. She had been married at seven and had seen her child groom once at the ceremony, before returning to her home. At thirteen, she had gone as a woman to his house to take her place as his wife. Mrs Hathiramani had married later. Her husband had been allowed to view her from a distance upon a single occasion. At this time she had not been allowed to raise her eyes and so knew nothing of him, until her wedding night. Rani looked down at
the two heads, protruding like carbuncles upon the smooth drop beneath her, in a new degree of wonder.

She noticed Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas had angled their gaze downwards. Sham Pumnani was crossing the compound of the building. The voices of the two women floated up to Rani. She heard Sham had asked Mr Bhagwandas for a job. Thief, the women repeated. He was not that, she was sure. He was accused by illiterate, ignorant women, just as Mrs Watumal, without real knowledge, had condemned Rani for talking to boys. She was learning how easy it was to acquire a reputation.

She felt a sudden sympathy for Sham. Thank God, thought Rani, that whoever gossiped to Mrs Watumal had not recognized him. It would have made things worse for him and for her, had his name been mentioned. It was as if already something bound them together. No one knew of her secret meetings with him on the terrace. Seeing him approach the building, her heart began to race.

She opened the front door at the sound of the lift, holding back in case Gopal saw her. But he slammed the bars shut upon Sham’s back and hastened away down the shaft. Rani stepped forward, Sham looked at her in surprise. She pushed the front door open,
sunlight
from the massive windows of the apartment flooded out into the dim corridor.

‘I can’t come in,’ he said. The light enclosed him in a pool.

‘Why not?’ she asked, amazed at her own daring.

‘What would your parents say? It was your father who found me the job.’ Beyond the door he observed the brilliance of the chandeliers. ‘Meeting on the
terrace
is one thing. Meeting in your home is another,’ he said.

‘There is no one here, only me,’ she said.

‘They might return,’ he argued weakly. The wish to enter the place rose unreasonably in him.

‘No one will be back before five,’ she said. He took a step forward; she laughed and walked ahead of him up the hallway.

He had been in here last when Mr Murjani had discussed the job in Japan. Then it had been night and the chandeliers were ablaze, refracting light on all the foreign-made crystal ornaments, a huge china
dalmatian
dog seated in a corner and a collection of shepherds and shepherdesses in a glass cabinet. Sham had sat upon a seat carved in the shape of a peacock’s tail. The Maharajah’s crystal chairs stood upon a raised dais and appeared reserved for regal guests. Now, he was surprised to find the room somnolent in the mid-
afternoon
, its curtains half-drawn against the sun, airless and oppressive. Without the fire of artificial light its ornamentation appeared an encumbrance. Carpets and curtains held the heat and pinned him beneath their weight. The cuckoo clock ticked upon a wall, the
dalmatian
sat bleakly beneath it. The crystal frames of the Maharajah’s chairs looked deceptively like cheap perspex. For a moment he was disconcerted.

She observed him looking about. ‘It’s an awful room. It’s just to show people how much money we have. If you have money and everyone knows it, why do you have to show it?’ she said.

He was shocked by such bluntness. ‘You should not say such things,’ he answered.

She shrugged, seating herself on one of the peacock chairs. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered. He hesitated but saw no way of escape. He noticed a light rhythmic tapping coming from a corner of the room.

‘Mummy is having her diamonds reset, she does it once a year. She told me to keep checking the men while she’s out, so that they don’t steal a stone.’ Rani
looked at him hard, judging his reaction to this information.

He thought of his mother’s diamond nose stud, sold to help pay for the wedding of one of his sisters. It had been her last piece of disposable jewellery. She was left with two thin bangles to cover her wrists and the gold chain at her neck. She was not yet a widow to do without these.

‘And she’s having diamond necklaces made for me. She wants me to get married,’ Rani pouted. He had a sudden glutted feeling, as if he had eaten too much of an unsavoury meal. He wanted to leave the room and this strange talk, so far from known reality. He felt suddenly angry with Rani.

‘You’re a lucky girl,’ he said quietly. ‘Now I must go. It’s not right that I’m here.’

‘Don’t go yet. What’s lucky? It’s horrible. I want to study. I want to do something with my life,’ she protested.

‘Well, do something then. What is the problem?’ he said, suddenly annoyed by the repetition of woes.

‘But they won’t let me,’ Rani grumbled. ‘They want to marry me off. I’m just like a piece of property to them. It’s so old-fashioned. Pinky is going to university in England and then she’ll work. I want to do the same. What’s wrong with working?’

‘My sisters all worked before they got married. Meena was a cashier in a bank. Leela taught chemistry and mathematics, Anu typed in a lawyer’s office. If they had not worked we could not have lived. Each month some of their salary was put aside for their dowry. My father had little money to marry them. Now of course he’s ill.’ He said the last words under his breath; she did not hear.

‘So you do not think it wrong to work?’ she demanded. ‘You have seen the world. You know how it is outside India.’

‘Without work there is no self-respect,’ he said,
thinking
of himself.

‘Exactly.’ She sat forward. ‘I knew you would
understand
.’ He felt suddenly nervous, he did not know what she wanted of him. How could a girl like Rani ever work?

‘I must go,’ he repeated and stood up. As soon as he was outside he relaxed. She held the door open, looking at him with the intense expression that always made him uneasy.

When he had gone she went back and sat down before the diamond setters to give the ayah a rest. She needed to think.

Mrs Hathiramani gripped Raju’s ankles as he balanced precariously, high above her, upon a tower of chairs in the corridor before her front door.

‘Memsahib, I will fall,’ moaned Raju.

‘Donkey, am I not holding you?’ Mrs Hathiramani scolded. ‘You have only to take one thing down and put up another in its place.’

‘I was not trained as an acrobat and beneath me the chairs are swaying. Oh, oh.’ Raju gave an elaborate sob.

‘Don’t play with me,’ Mrs Hathiramani ordered. ‘You climb those trees across the road quicker than a monkey. Take down the old lime and put up the new one, or I’ll slap your cheeks like
chapati
.’ Mrs
Hathiramani
handed up a string upon which were threaded several red and green chillies, and a small lime.

‘Memsahib, you are hurting my ankles,’ Raju said, taking the string from Mrs Hathiramani, who
immediately
let go of his legs. Raju gave the chairs another wobble, then reached up to the fanlight above the front door to detach an identical talisman from a time of previous ill fortune, now shrivelled and hard as stone. The fresh chillies and lime were hung in its place, and Raju climbed down to stand beside Mrs Hathiramani. Together they observed the spot of colour in the
corridor
. There were few doors in Sadhbela that did not have the same talismans, in varying states of
mummification
, hanging up before them. Mrs Hathiramani nodded in satisfaction.

‘Now no evil is passing through this door.’ She
lumbered
back inside, to the kitchen. With a clatter Raju
dismantled the construction of chairs, carried them in, and then ran to join Mrs Hathiramani. She had already placed a frying pan on a low flame, and emptied into it a further supply of red chillies from the second of Mataji’s newspaper parcels.

‘They must burn slowly, until they are dry,’ she instructed. ‘And then we shall see.’ Raju nodded and straightened to attention before the pan. He was small for his age and stood several inches short of Mrs
Hathiramani’s
shoulder. ‘Don’t you run off to smoke with your friends,’ she ordered.

She returned at intervals to the kitchen with a single query. ‘Anything yet?’ Each time Raju put his nose near the frying pan, sniffed, then shook his head. Upon each visit to the kitchen Mrs Hathiramani grew increasingly agitated. She too put her nose to the pan, inhaled and shook her head, looking meaningfully at Raju.

Towards evening, she instructed him to light up some coals in a small clay vessel upon the balcony. When the fire was glowing she dropped into it a lump of grey alum, from the last of Mataji’s parcels.

‘Tonight no playing downstairs with your friends,’ she ordered. ‘Tonight you sit and fan this fire. While you eat, I will take over.’

‘Memsahib …’ wailed Raju. ‘Tonight there is a
servants
’ cricket match downstairs. I am in the team.’

‘What is cricket to this work?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked. ‘You go down there, and I’ll see you don’t come up again.’ Raju stuck his tongue out at her back as she turned.

*

In the morning, as soon as she awoke, Mrs
Hathiramani
went out on to the balcony and squatted down to extract from the cold ash of the fire the lump of alum. She squinted at it in her palm; the metal had been softened and reshaped in the heat. Mrs
Hathiramani
turned it this way and that in her hand, frowning in concentration. Finally, she let out a gasp of
excitement
, and rushed back into the bedroom to shake Mr Hathiramani awake.

‘All is true,’ she hissed. Her husband looked up at her uncomprehendingly, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

‘Oh ho, only sleeping. Always sleeping,’ she
complained
, and thrust beneath his nose a cup of tea Raju had appeared with. ‘Now wake up, Husband, and listen to me.’ Mr Hathiramani pulled himself up upon his pillow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

‘Yesterday I went to Mataji,’ Mrs Hathiramani informed him. ‘I have burned chillies as she told me, and there is no smell. Who has heard of chillies that do not catch your nose like a wasp inside it, if you burn them in a pan? This proves the evil eye is upon us. But how to prove who is doing this to us? For this purpose Mataji gave a piece of alum, I cooked it in a pot of coal. Just now I have taken it from the ash. It has cooled and changed, and taken the shape of the person who is against us.’

‘What? What?’ Mr Hathiramani frowned and took a gulp of tea. He peered, still bleary-eyed, at the dirty stone in his wife’s sooty palm. ‘What further nonsense is this now? Where will your ignorance lead you?’

Mrs Hathiramani snorted in glee. ‘You see nothing? You do not understand how much Mataji is helping.’ She thrust her palm up near his face.

‘All you do is disappoint me more and more with the extent of your ignorance.’ Mr Hathiramani shook his head, and drank down the rest of his tea.

‘You are blind from too much education,’ Mrs
Hathiramani
retorted. ‘See, here is a nose, and here is an eye.’ She traced the bulges on the stone with her index finger.

‘I could see a rabbit if I wished, or a pomegranate,’ Mr Hathiramani shrugged.

‘This is no time for your stupid jokes,’ ordered Mrs Hathiramani. ‘This is a face, I tell you. And look here at this lump. Do you know who is having on her face one such lump as this?’ Mr Hathiramani shook his head and yawned.

‘Mrs Watumal,’ Mrs Hathiramani disclosed.

‘That is a benign cyst,’ Mr Hathiramani reasoned, remembering the tiny protrusion above Mrs Watumal’s left eyebrow.

‘It is a lump,’ screamed Mrs Hathiramani. ‘It proves she is against us.’

‘And why should that be?’ her husband inquired, taking the newspaper Raju handed him, and looking with interest at the headlines.

Mrs Hathiramani stamped her foot. ‘All this is only because of you.’ Mr Hathiramani looked at her over the top of the paper. ‘It is because you were saying bad things about Mohan Watumal to my cousins, whose daughter they were going to get him engaged to. The engagement is now broken off,’ Mrs Hathiramani shouted.

Mr Hathiramani put down the newspaper and looked coldly at his wife. ‘All you say is superstitious nonsense. It is foolish village women’s talk. Nothing can harm us.’ He picked up the newspaper again.

‘Soon you will see how strong a thing this magic is. And then only I will be here to save you,’ Mrs Hathiramani muttered as she left the room.

*

The managing committee of Sadhbela’s Co-operative Society met once a month in Mr Hathiramani’s garage, at eight o’clock in the evening. At the society’s expense a metal table, chairs and two electric lights had been installed; Mr Hathiramani’s garage had neither cars nor tenants. During meetings the doors of the garage were opened wide for ventilation. Outside a row of servants squatted to listen to proceedings. The distant
sound of traffic along Napean Sea Road, and the crash of waves were carried on the night air. Bats glided in and out of trees in a neighbouring garden. Mr Murjani was not at the meeting, but dining with associates in The Rendezvous at the Taj. Knowing this, Lokumal Devnani had come down, to express his opposition to the proposal forwarded by Mr Murjani, to build a penthouse for himself upon the terrace.

‘Sadhbela will not take the weight, nor the extra evacuation of water and waste,’ Lokumal protested.

‘He says he has checked these details with the
contractor
, and it can be done,’ Mr Bhagwandas informed them. ‘Here is the report.’

‘It will sit upon our heads like a concrete hat,’ Mr Hathiramani predicted.

‘I will not have it,’ Lokumal announced. He was possessive about the building, unable to forget it was by his initiative that it stood at all. ‘I do not care what lies he has paid a contractor to tell us, it cannot be done.’

‘The building will collapse about us, killing us in our beds,’ Mr Hathiramani agreed.

‘At the time of his previous internal renovations,’ Mr Watumal said, ‘his contractor’s reports showed there would be no adverse effect from his changing a kitchen into a bathroom. You remember how much we objected then? It repulsed me even to think of a latrine above our heads, during preparation of our food. It has made us all unclean.’ Mr Watumal lived on the floor below Mr Murjani, all the other kitchens and bathrooms of Sadhbela were vertically aligned.

‘That is correct.’ Mr Bhagwandas nodded.

‘And just see, already we are poisoned with the filthy leakage of his latrine into our kitchen,’ Mr Watumal continued. ‘My daughters are forced to cook at times upon the balcony to avoid his dirt. It runs down our
walls and drips from the ceiling. Our kitchen is
rendered
useless, and he does nothing.’

‘This is too much,’ said Lokumal.

It was soon agreed the penthouse could not be risked, and that Mr Murjani must repair once more the pipes that troubled Mr Watumal in his kitchen.

‘So, that is settled,’ said Lokumal in relief. ‘And now what is this before us,
Bhau
Hathiramani?’ They looked down at the sheets of paper headed
The
Hathiramani
Newsletter.

‘It is self-explanatory,’ said Mr Hathiramani in a modest tone of voice. ‘But I shall be glad to read it for you.’ He cleared his throat.

‘
Bhau
Hathiramani, we also do not know these things,’ Mr Bhagwandas interrupted, trying not to yawn.

‘Therefore, I am putting together this newsletter, so that we all may remember our past. Let us not forget.’ Mr Hathiramani’s voice rose in emphasis.

‘It is a good thing you are doing,’ Lokumal remarked. ‘Indeed it is a wonderful thing to my mind. You must re-educate our communities here in India, and also abroad.’

‘I am presently engaged in writing a short history of Sind, and also in translating into English from our Sindhi language, Shah Abdul Latif’s
Rasalo
,’ Mr
Hathiramani
revealed. ‘I have made a start with “The Song of the Necklace” and will go on to all the other songs that form the
Rasalo
.’

‘This is indeed a great thing,’ said Lokumal in delight; he too loved his country’s past, as he loved his religion. ‘You have our gratitude for undertaking this task. Future generations will remember you.’

Mr Hathiramani smiled modestly. ‘I am only doing my duty in this matter,’ he replied.

*

Mr Hathiramani looked up from his diary at the sound of the lift clanking up the shaft. He transferred his attention from his work in
Miscellaneous
Past
to the
Arrivals
column. He glanced at his watch and recorded the time, keeping his pen poised above the page for a statement of identification. The lift stopped before his own front door, the grille was drawn back and his wife appeared, clutching a watermelon. She was followed closely by Raju, half hidden behind a basket of fruit. Gopal dragged out another basket piled with further purchases. Mr Hathiramani sighed, wrote, ‘Wife and servant Raju’ in the
Arrivals
column, and under
Com
ments
recorded, ‘Return from Crawford Market’. He withdrew again into
Miscellaneous
Past.

Once each week, Mrs Hathiramani accompanied Mrs Bhagwandas to Crawford Market. For the rest of the week she shopped from the vendors who circulated in the building. Soon she appeared by Mr
Hathiramani’s
bed, a guava in hand.

‘See these,’ she demanded. ‘For the same price last week I was forced to buy those shrivelled things from our building vegetable man. He is only taking money and giving nothing. Tomorrow I will show him. Next time he must give me a discount.’

‘Do as you wish,’ Mr Hathiramani replied, not lifting his eyes from his diary, trying to think of an alternative translation for the word oven, to describe a clay baking pot that was now before him in his work.

‘O, Raju. Bring that fish. Show Sahib,’ Mrs.
Hathiramani
called. Raju appeared, holding the fish by the tail. Mrs Hathiramani pounced angrily upon him.

‘Donkey. Is that the way? When will you learn? Can you not bring it on a plate?’ She shook him by the shoulder. Raju gave a howl, and dropped the fish upon the bed beside Mr Hathiramani.

‘Rascal,’ yelled Mrs Hathiramani. ‘On purpose you have done this.’

‘Get it out of here. And both of you too,’ Mr
Hathiramani
shouted, his face creased in anger. ‘All you do is disturb my work.’

Mrs Hathiramani shrugged sulkily. ‘I will fry the fish with spices. Also I will fry some aubergine, and make some
dal
,’ she said to soothe herself; thought of food was always calming. ‘Afterwards I will cut up the guava.’