Monsoon Memories (19 page)

Reena lay on the bed for a long time, staring at Shirin’s gently sloping, precise script. She lay there until the shadows in her room lengthened and her mother knocked on her door yelling, ‘Dinner’s ready!’

She gently folded the letter and kept it aside, beside the others. Then she left her room to join her family, feeling a little removed from them, like she was watching them from a distance, like she was part of another girl, one they had all shunned...

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Parcels from the Gulf

S
hirin came into work groggy. After the party, she had lain awake, her thoughts keeping time to Vinod’s rhythmic snores.
Will she reply? What if she doesn’t?

Sometime during the long night, as the black behind the curtains lightened to deep grey, Vinod woke up. ‘Shonu, there’s nothing to be gained from worrying so.’ His voice was tinged with annoyance, thick with sleep. ‘I promise you, when you go into work tomorrow—today,’ he’d said after a bleary-eyed appraisal of the bedside clock, ‘there’ll be mail from her. Sleep. Please.’ He’d put his arm around her, pulled her close and after a bit she had relaxed into his embrace. She had fallen asleep with him spooning her, startling awake to the alarm clock and golden light—dazzling like the jewellery Jyoti had worn the previous night—spilling in through the gap in the curtains and dancing on the pillows, on Vinod’s stubbly face.

Kate was right; why on earth am I subjecting myself to this?
With trembling fingers, she clicked on her office Outlook. There were plenty of emails awaiting her but not the one she wanted.
Oh, Anu, I wish… for so many things: to see you, touch you, to listen to your voice…
She immersed herself in work, finishing the test plans requiring her attention, preparing handover documents for Rob who was going to be taking over her job when she took over Jay’s. Kate walked past a couple of times, looking questioningly at her. Both times, she gave her a thumbs-down. Vinod didn’t call. Shirin had asked him not to, saying
she
would call
him
with news, if any.

Just before lunch she checked again.
For the last time
, she told herself. Nothing. The office felt claustrophobic all of a sudden. She sent Kate a message via Intranet: Going to Tesco, need anything? A reply pinged back, almost at once: No, babe. You get some fresh air.

Lovely Kate.

She picked up a basket and headed straight for aisle 11, which housed the sandwiches and crisps.
Why were you expecting her to reply? Fool.
Aisle 11 was festooned with red-and-green streamers, bursting with offers and packed with biscuit tins, boxes of chocolate, mince pies, crackers, grinning Santas with wobbly heads. The legend below aisle 11 read ‘Seasonal Goods’. ‘But it’s only October!’ She didn’t realise she had said it out loud. The Asian man stacking the top shelves peered down at her from behind thick lenses, ‘What were you looking for, ma’am?’ The ladder he was balancing on wobbled precariously.

‘Sandwiches. Don’t worry, I’ll...’

‘They’re in aisle 22,’ he smiled, squinted, ‘Are you from Sri Lanka?’

‘India.’

‘I’m from Bangladesh.’ He grinned, displaying yellow teeth, brown cavities. ‘We’re neighbours back home.’

Shirin nodded, smiling distractedly, her attention arrested by a bag of dry-roasted cashew nuts. The cashew tree in the courtyard—emerald leaves dotted with ripe buttery fruit: a tropical Christmas tree awash with golden baubles; knobbly cashew nuts sprouting off the ends of the pear-shaped fruit like inverted question marks.

‘You go back often?’

Shirin’s mind flashed to Jyoti, her Aunt Winnie lookalike at the previous night’s charity ball, who’d asked the same question. When Shirin was leaving, Jyoti had taken her hand, opened it palm up and pressed a piece of paper containing her phone number into it. ‘There is a well of sadness within you, isn’t there, Beti?’ Shirin had blinked, unable to say anything. Was it that obvious? ‘Call me. Anytime you want to talk.’
She’d hugged Shirin hard. Sweat mixed with the same overbearing flowery perfume her mother wore. Shirin had closed her eyes, breathed it in.

‘Not as often as I’d like,’ she said now.

The Bangladeshi man nodded vigorously, setting the ladder to rocking again. ‘I know. Tickets too expensive.’

He waited for Shirin to say something and when she didn’t, ‘Walk straight down. Sandwiches at the very end.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Another flash of rotting teeth and the man went back to loading his shelves.

Christmas stuff out already, Shirin mused, putting the cashew nuts into her basket, imagining biting into a ripe cashew, the juice running down her chin. She wasn’t ready for Christmas. She was never ready for Christmas. The holidays stretched endlessly with no work to occupy Vinod and her, to take their mind off what was missing from their lives. The cold kept them housebound; gloomy dark days spent lounging round the house eavesdropping on other people’s merrymaking made them crabby. Even Vinod, who was normally so calm, so even-tempered, lapsed into a dark moodiness that Shirin knew not to cross.

It had got better with time. Now, when people asked, ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ she could manage a smile and say, ‘Oh, having a quiet one, just me and Vinod.’ And, ‘Lucky you,’ they’d say, face contorting in a grimace. ‘We’re having the entire family, the whole shebang. Mum will get drunk; Dad will have an argument with Uncle Peter. What wouldn’t I give for a quiet one!’ And Shirin would think:
Be careful what you wish for
.

The first winter in the UK was the hardest.

Shirin, who almost all her life had walked to morning mass in the watery light of dawn and for whom the sun rose after communion when the crows began their daily chorus, amber rays slanting in through the windows of the ancient church and creating wonderfully distracting patterns on the pulpit; for whom twilight was bath time, and dusk rosary time; this, night eating into day and the sun never really shining all winter, was a new phenomenon.

Winter brought Christmas and, with it, memories of holidays: of long days spent playing in the fields and splashing in the stream when it got too hot; of rows of red chillies drying in the sun; of Rex the Third snoozing on the mat, his nose twitching; of once-a-year visiting relatives laughing lazily on the stoop, sharing paan and gossip; of Jacinta’s rare open-mouthed laughter; of Kuswar wars between Taipur’s leading cooks—Madhu, Mrs. Fernandes and Lenny Bai: ‘She made only nine varieties this year.’ ‘Her nevris don’t have cardamom in them.’ ‘Not enough sugar in her kokkisam.’ ‘Green burfis! Who would want to eat such a thing?’; of crib competitions—the cribs fashioned from mud and silt, the bed for baby Jesus made from mango leaves, the guava standing in for a Christmas evergreen—judged by Father Sequiera and his loyal band of altar boys; of best hens fattened, pork cooking, mutlis steaming and the promise of a feast.

That first Christmas, Vinod bought a tree, baubles and a Santa suit. He went over the top with the decorations and their rented flat, which had looked empty before and too big for the two of them, was now so packed with wreaths and holly and mistletoe that they kept tripping over the stuff. He arrived from work one day with a copy of
Delia’s Christmas
and spent many evenings trying out different recipes. He bought board games and videos, books and Christmas CDs. He filled their silent flat with so much chatter that Shirin felt herself drowning in it; it crowded out her thoughts, which was no bad thing. They spent the holidays faking smiles at each other, trying not to guess at each other’s thoughts while avoiding their own. They tried to go out as much as possible, dressed like snowmen in myriad different layers, neophytes as they were to the freezing cold. They attempted to ice-skate. They spoke of safe things, of nothing at all, while what they were missing, what they had left behind, sat between them: a yawning abyss.

On Christmas day, Vinod asked her if she wanted to go to church. She shook her head
no
, not looking at him, afraid of what he would see in her eyes. He cooked Christmas dinner, setting off the smoke alarm and almost burning the flat down, staining Delia’s pristine white cookbook an irrevocable charred brown. He served Christmas dinner in the Santa suit and the sight of his brown skin peeking out from beneath the cheery white wig made Shirin cry, the tears that kept coming making the turkey seem salty, so that afterwards she could never eat turkey without remembering the time she had seasoned it with tears.

Shirin walked to the park. It was warm for October and she didn’t fancy eating at her desk, waiting for the ping to indicate a new email had arrived. She found a nice patch of grass devoid of dog mess, emptied out her lunch, spread the Tesco carrier bag on the grass and sat down. She opened the bag of nuts, popped one in her mouth. An explosion of honey sweetness. They weren’t dry-roasted, they were candied. The nutty syrupiness reminded her of Nevris and her attempt to make them, their second Christmas in the UK...

She had started her software course that September and they had finished for the holidays. It was a particularly miserable day, windy with the icy rain that chills to the bone. For want of anything better to do, she decided to try out the new Asian grocery store that had opened in Kingsbury. She was debating between the Balti Mix (Hot and Spicy) and the Bombay mix (Mild and Fruity) when she spotted the jaggery sitting next to the pack of cardamom seeds and, on an impulse, made up her mind. She bought cashew nuts, maida, ghee and freshly grated coconut from the freezer section. Then she went home and cooked.

She defrosted the coconut and fried it gently in ghee adding a cup of sugar at the last minute. She crushed the cardamom seeds and pounded the jaggery. She fried the cashew nuts, chopped them finely and added them to the mixture. She mixed the maida with ghee and salt and made the dough. She rolled it out into circles like she was making very thin puris and put some of the mixture in the middle. Then she folded the ends into a half-moon crescent and sealed them with milk. She did not think as she worked. And even though she followed by rote everything she had seen Madhu do countless times, she did not allow Madhu’s voice to seep into her thoughts, to dictate the recipe out loud to her in her head. Not even when she realised she did not have the special Nevri shaper to make the distinctive twirls while sealing and had to make do with a fork did she dwell on what Madhu would have said—though the thought hovered.

When she started deep frying the Nevris—far too many for the two of them—the sun-soaked, honey-sweet scent of countless lazy Christmases filled their newly purchased central-heated sterile house. And even before she took a bite of a Nevri and tasted regret, she knew that this had been a mistake. ‘What’s cooking?’ Vinod had asked eagerly that evening, sniffing as he entered. ‘Oh, an experiment gone wrong,’ she’d replied, shivering inside her coat, fleece, turtleneck jumper and vest. Despite running the extractor fan full blast and opening all the windows, the scent of home lingered. It had permeated the house, seeping into everything, reaching out from the past, refusing to let go. ‘Smells heavenly. It might not be to your exacting standards but I’m sure I’ll like it,
Madame
,’ Vinod had grinned, executing a mock bow. An aftertaste of regret lurked in her throat. She’d swallowed it down. ‘You won’t like it. Trust me. Shall we go out to dinner? I fancy—’
anything that doesn’t remind me of home
‘—Italian,’ knowing it was Vinod’s favourite. ‘Your wish is my pleasure,
Madame
. Let’s go.’
And that was the end of her spell of Kuswar cooking...

‘What are you doing?’

Shirin pushed her book away from her eyes, shaded them with her hands and squinted up at the owner of the little voice that she was sure had just addressed her. She found herself staring at a vision in a red-and-yellow-striped dress, with wavy white-blond hair that shone like a halo in the sun.

‘Let me guess,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Your name is Angel?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ the little girl giggled. ‘You’re funny.’

‘Well, you looked just like an angel standing above me in your pretty dress and matching sandals.’

‘They don’t match! Look, the sandals have green flowers on them. And no stripes.’ The little girl put her hands on her hips and looked critically at Shirin, ‘You
are
funny,’ she reiterated with more conviction. ‘What were you doing when I saw you?’

In all her thirty four years, Shirin had not had to explain her actions to a six-year-old before. ‘It’s a lovely day, so I decided to have my lunch at the park.’

‘But you weren’t having lunch.’

‘No,’ Shirin conceded. ‘After I finished, I had some time left before going back to work, so I decided to have a nap.’

‘With a book on your face?’ the little girl giggled.

‘Well, I agree that that must have looked weird.’

‘It did.’

‘Where’s your mum?’

The angel flopped down on the grass beside Shirin, a sigh escaping from between puckered lips in a whistle of exasperation. ‘She’s so slow, not fast like me. She’s coming.’

Shirin nodded. ‘She knows you’re here?’

The angel plucked a dandelion, closed her eyes and blew hard. ‘Uh-huh...’

‘Did you make a wish?’

‘What?’

‘You’re supposed to make a wish when you blow.’

A laugh as precious as sunshine on a winter’s day burst through the little girl’s mouth. ‘You
are
funny. I’m off school today. It’s an insect day.’

‘Insect day?’

‘Yes, when teachers have to go to school and children don’t.’ A giggle. Like the gurgling sound of a stream that had burst its banks in the monsoons.

‘You must enjoy school, I’m sure.’ Shirin smiled. ‘School is fun.’

‘No it isn’t.’

‘Abigail...’ The angel turned. A tall woman came running up, panting, and scooped her up in her arms.

A familiar yearning spread through Shirin.

The woman buried her face in her daughter’s hair. ‘I thought I’d lost you. How many times have I told you not to wander off and talk to strangers? I was worried sick.’ The woman tore her gaze away from her daughter and turned to Shirin. ‘I’m sorry if she bothered you.’