The Lilac House (2 page)

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Authors: Anita Nair

Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage

BOOK: The Lilac House
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Saro was born. Saro was sent to expensive schools. Saro fell in love with her best friend’s brother and married him. Sandor died, and a year later Saro was widowed when she was thirty-nine. It was to this house she came then, seeking refuge for herself and her nineteen-year-old daughter Meera.
A window rattled, shaking Meera out of her reverie. She ran a hand through her hair and leaned back in her chair, pretending to be absorbed by the breaking news on TV.
 
Lily and Saro had settled their differences and were sipping their drinks. The bickering was customary. Like Saro’s book buying. One book of fiction preferably by someone who had just won an important prize, or was being hailed by the literary establishment that month as the voice of the century. And another of non-fiction, usually a biography or a historical account, preferably by an Englishman. Saro only bought books that had sold at least 100,000 copies or would post a major prize. And the books programme steered her towards these titles. It was completely beyond her to consider a book merely because the title excited her, a book no one had ever heard of. She couldn’t take the chance. Her reputation was at stake after all. Saro liked to be thought of as a woman of taste, whether it was in clothes, jewellery or books.
In contrast, Lily picked her reading by the book jacket. ‘Give me
a book with a man and a woman searching each other’s eyes. Or one with a knife and a red blob. Or some such thing. I assure you it will be truly unputdownable. Though she won’t agree, of course! She is such a snob.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Saro, her daughter, Meera’s mother.
They quarrelled through the day. If it wasn’t books, then it was a plant or a piece of furniture or a memory they both remembered differently, or a recipe that each swore was the authentic version. If they didn’t, one of them was ailing or troubled. So Meera gauged the well-being of the old ladies by the vitriol they hurled at each other. That night, they were well enough. They didn’t seem perturbed by Giri’s absence.
 
Nikhil worried her, though. He was quiet. Too quiet. ‘Are you all right, baby?’ she asked.
He peered at her. ‘Don’t call me baby!’
Then he asked suddenly, ‘Did you try his mobile?’
Meera nodded. ‘Unreachable.’
‘What will you tell them if he doesn’t come home by midnight?’ Nikhil whispered. They looked at the old ladies watching a programme that they both enjoyed. A talk show with a hostess who was sophisticated enough to satisfy her mother. And an ex-movie star, which made her glamorous in her grandmother’s eyes.
‘No whispering in public,’ her mother said.
‘Naughty secret, is it?’ her grandmother added, speculation lighting up her face.
Meera sucked on a melting ice cube. She hoped it would freeze the scream that threatened to erupt from her mouth any moment now.
Her phone beeped. Nikhil looked up. Meera grabbed the phone. New Message. It would be Giri texting, explaining, apologizing, saying he would be home soon.
It was an advertisement for ring tones. Meera dropped the phone and reached for another ice cube.
‘Can we order a pepperoni pizza?’ Nikhil said.
‘No,’ Meera snapped. ‘You had pizza three days ago!’
‘It’s not good for you to eat so much pizza,’ Lily chuckled. ‘All this junk food will show itself twenty years from now. You will be a very fat man.’
‘And a poor one,’ Saro added. ‘Pizza doesn’t grow on trees. It’s expensive. Do you realize your mother could buy groceries for all of us for a week for that much money?’
Nikhil slammed the book down. ‘We never have money for anything. What I can’t understand is how we can afford to live in a house like this. Look at it!’
‘Nikhil…’ Meera growled. She looked beyond him and saw the stillness that had swept into the other women. She sensed it inch into her too. The house. The lilac house. Somehow it always came to that. The house.
Meera asked herself, if it wasn’t for the house, would Giri have lingered that first day?
Had the house lost its power to enchant and keep?
 
Meera kisses the brow of her sleeping child. In the morning, if Nikhil remembers, he will be embarrassed by how he clung to her. He might even deny it outright. ‘You must have dreamt it,’ he will say defiantly.
But for now he is her little boy again. A little boy who doesn’t know what to make of a father who disappeared mysteriously one Sunday afternoon, on a perfect September day.
I
t had been a perfect September dawn when he saw her first. He said he had been enchanted. He said he didn’t know if he wanted to collapse with laughter or lean against the gatepost and watch her forever. Giri said that was when he fell in love.
‘Imagine this,’ he said, leaning forward to coil a strand of her hair around his finger, ‘a girl in an ivory dress. The sun teasing glints of amber in her hair. A barefoot girl chasing a flock of geese through the grass!’
‘A gaggle. Not flock,’ she murmured.
‘Flock! Gaggle! How does it matter? All I knew was, that’s where I want to be. With that girl and her pet geese in their lilac house.’ He sighed and leaned back in the chair.
 
His eyes swept over the house and the garden, the blossom laden trellises and borders, the trees and the carp pool with its little stone frog. She saw his eyes pause on her face with the same rapt pleasure. And she knew she couldn’t tell him that the white dress was a faded nightie. Or that she had heard the geese in the front lawn and leapt out of bed and run out to chase them away before they trampled all over the newly planted aubergine plants. Or that the geese were merely biding their time as they were fed and fattened to be sold to Hamid Bhai in time for Christmas. (For every goose was worth its weight in gold or would at least help pay for changing the termite infested rafters of the back kitchen.) And that she didn’t waste tears or sentiment over the geese as they were taken away to have their long necks wrung and their down plucked. That she feasted on the goose, with as much relish as anyone else. He would have been horrified. He called her his pet goose. Goose girl of the lilac house.
She smiled. She liked being his pet goose.
 
‘All I could think of was, how am I going to get my foot into this door? I was the prince inching around the enchanted house, seeking to find a way in.’
‘You just had to say hello and I would have hello-ed you back!’ She grinned.
He frowned. ‘You don’t understand. A hello would have been way too ordinary. I had to discover you, my goose girl of the lilac house.
‘So when the model coordinator suggested that we use this house for the photo shoot of Coconut Kisses, I didn’t think twice. I said yes.’
She saw it in her mind then. The inward jerk of the elbow, the clenched fist, the explosion of a yes as it conveyed from deep within the desire to discover her. His goose girl of the lilac house. And she gleamed in reflection of that yearning.
 
The model coordinator couldn’t stop beaming. She had never had it so easy. The location and props in one place, with a stylist thrown in for free. Meera had brought out the crocheted doilies and organza napkins with their delicate scalloped edges, the silver napkin rings and the silver tea service, the tiered porcelain cake stand and the Royal Doulton teacups. She had arranged the Coconut Kisses and even found a way to position the biscuit packet in such a way that it blended in, and then set the table. Meera heard the pleasure in the art director’s voice. ‘Gracious living! It’s exactly what we had planned for!’
Meera smiled. She wondered how much she could pad her bill for the props. Gracious living doesn’t come cheap, she wanted to say. Then she met his eyes and she saw herself there. And she didn’t say anything. She would talk to the model coordinator on the side and she wasn’t going to budge from the figure she had in mind.
 
But he had found reasons to not leave her alone. Again and again he lingered at her side, chatting between the shots. Could it be that a miracle had occurred? Could it be that he was drawn to her? When he came by the next day with a small basket of flowers for her, she laid out gracious living once again, just for him. It was her only weapon. Other girls showed the tops of their breasts or batted their eyelids. Meera had just this to offer and she wasn’t going to shy away from it. And the old ladies, they played their parts.
They sat there, mother, daughter and granddaughter, each one of them wooing him, and he didn’t even realize it. Lily with her lace fan, fluttering it ever so often with an elegant little movement of the wrist. Saro in her pearls and crisp cotton sari and ‘Shall I be mother?’
Only Meera was as she always was. Uncertain, tremulous and hiding behind a façade of remote charm. She prayed her hands wouldn’t shake when she offered him the cake. She so wanted it to be right. For Meera had utterly and hopelessly fallen in love.
She crossed her ankles, laid her hands in her lap and said little.
 
She could see he was charmed. Giri offered adulation as if it was a ginger biscuit on a plate. ‘I love the colour of your house,’ he said.
Lily widened her eyes and began, ‘The painting contractor…’
But Saro cut in with, ‘It is very pretty, isn’t it? We have such trouble matching it each time we repaint.’
Meera swallowed convulsively. Lily, she realized, had intended to bring forth the story of the painting contractor who had offered them the paint for half the actual cost. He had made a mistake elsewhere and was trying to salvage some of the cost. And they didn’t have to pay as much as they would have had to if they had chosen the colour themselves.
Meera rose. ‘I need to check on something on the stove,’ she said. Her heart wouldn’t stop hammering. Would Giri be bored with them? She couldn’t bear to see it when it happened.
Lily was silent for a few minutes. Then she set about playing grand dame of the house. ‘Meera, wait. Where are you running away to? She’s such a shy thing and so conscientious.’
Virtues any prospective husband would want.
‘You must tell him about the time David Lean was almost here, when he was shooting
A Passage to India
!’ Lily began.
Meera paused. ‘Lily, it’s your story… Go on, you tell Giri!’
And Giri said, ‘Yes Lily, may I call you Lily, do tell me.’
And then Saro matched celluloid reels with stories of Meera’s daddy’s tea estates. Not once did they break the rhythm as anecdote followed anecdote.
Lily’s brief career as a movie actress in Hindi cinema. The scion of a minor royalty family who fell madly in love with her. The cluster of rubies he set in a ring and had delivered at the doorstep. ‘On a cushion held by a turbaned man who looked like a maharaja himself,’ Lily giggled.
The meeting with Sandor, the portrait painter from Hungary. Their whirlwind courtship and elopement.
‘Saro was a good girl,’ Lily said archly. ‘None of her mama’s madness. When her best friend’s brother proposed marriage, she accepted. Meera’s daddy was a very handsome man. And the bungalow they lived in at Coonoor, what a splendid house it was!’
‘There were four house boys apart from a butler and two cooks,’ Saro added. ‘The parties we threw…!’
‘Meera picked it all up then. How to lay the table and do the flowers, plan a menu and seat the guests. Meera will make an exemplary wife!’ Lily leaned forward in a stage whisper to Giri.
 
From where she stood by the garden door, Meera saw her mother talk in low tones to Giri. She could see that he was enchanted as the old ladies wove their spell around him. For a while Meera continued to worry. Any moment now, it would happen. He would see them for what they were. But Giri didn’t. Giri sipped the tea and ate his cake. And Meera slipped into the chair alongside his.
When Saro rose, he jumped to his feet. She smiled her imperious I-am-the-queen-of-this-fiefdom smile and gave him her hand to kiss or hold, but not shake as the rest of the world might be inclined to do. ‘Come again, young man. Meera is such a shy creature, it will do her good to meet more young people like you.’
Like you. Meera’s heart trilled in joy. Mummy liked him. She actually liked him. And Lily, incorrigible rascal Lily, peered at
him with a coy smile and said, ‘And so handsome. Meera, don’t let him go!’
He blushed then and looked at her. What now? Meera wondered.
 
‘Such lovely ladies,’ he murmured.
For now they were the keepers of the gracious lilac house. And protectress of Meera, his goose girl waiting to be discovered.
So when he leaned across and said, ‘Would you like to go for a drive? We could stop for an ice cream at the Corner House!’ Meera widened her eyes in pleasure, tried not to look at the remains of the tea tray, the sandwiches, patties and biscuits, cakes and crumbs. The thought of an ice cream sat heavy. But she wasn’t going to let him slip away from her.
She wanted him. Poor Meera. She never asked what he wanted. Her, the lilac house, or together what they represented.
She let her lips flower. ‘I would love to,’ she said.
Love to place herself and all she had in his hands, Giri read.
 
Giri rose six inches high. What man wouldn’t? He thought of the riches laid out before him. A bride with social graces and a beautiful old home. A grandmother who referred to Sir Richard Attenborough and Satyajit Ray in the same breath. A mother who breathed finesse. She even had a fork to extract meat ever so daintily from a crab claw.
Giri had never known such people before. He thought of his father in his yellowing banian and dhoti in Palakkad. He thought of the old decrepit house and relatives as stringy and penurious as his father. He had been fortunate in his brains and a Maths teacher, Sivaraman Iyer, who had shepherded him away from home. First the Regional Engineering College, where his eyes widened at a world he never knew existed. Then the IIM in Ahmedabad. Campus recruitment ensured that he found a foothold in the corporate world.
Giri had made careful plans about where he would be by the time he was thirty, forty, forty-five… thereafter would be the playing fields of his life. To accomplish this, he needed to round off the edges that still clung to him from the small-town, lower middle class boy he was. Meera would make this possible, he knew with certainty. Meera, who exuded upperclass-dom like the L’air du temps she wore. Discreet, elegant, and old money.
 
Giri, on his jaunts abroad, spent many hours in the duty-free area, filing away in his mind accessories to gracious living as epitomized by designer merchandise in international airports. Mont Blanc pens and Burberry coats, Louis Vuitton bags and the crystal world of fragrances. It was here that he almost gave up. The eye could remember patterns and shapes but the nose almost defeated him. The nose was easily tricked. In the end, he got around that too. Each time, he chose a couple of perfumes that he liked the most and persuaded shop assistants to spray them for him on white slivers of cardboard. He would sniff at them diligently, keeping at it until the top note was committed to memory. Giri knew he had to acquire that veneer of polish Meera seemed to be born with.
Giri exhaled. With Meera, he would be able to move on. Finally, he would be free of the yellowing past and the stench of making do. Meera. His. Like the lilac house. L’air du temps.
 
Meera was to know an occasional qualm. Was Giri in love with her for all the wrong reasons? She thought of the young women who were part of his professional world. Tall young women who wore their suitability like their hair. Shining, groomed and never out of place. Why does he prefer me to them? she asked herself. They are smart, competent, and have careers. Whereas all I have is a postgraduate degree in English and stewardship of this house.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he murmured against her cheek. ‘I don’t want a journalist, a teacher, a brand manager – it’s you I want as my wife.
Let me assure you, it takes a really smart woman to be a corporate wife.’
Meera rested her cheek against his. She would be that. A corporate wife. The woman behind his success. It was what she wanted. To be there for him. They would build their lives together.
 
A few days before the wedding, Saro asked her, ‘What now, Meera? Will you move out or will you live here? What does Giri want? Do you know? Have you two even discussed it?’
 
Giri wanted them there. ‘In the lilac house,’ he said. ‘Why would we want to live elsewhere? It is your home. Our home. Besides, after this, how can I ask you to live in a poky flat?’
Meera felt another qualm. ‘Giri, you mustn’t get the wrong idea. I…we… don’t have much. This house…’ she began.
‘Ssh. I know what you are going to say. This house is all there is. It is enough, goose girl! Just you in this house is all I ask for.’
Meera wrapped her arms around his neck. She knew what she would do with her doubts and suspicions. Pat them into balls like the tamarind they dried every year in the sun and put away with rock salt in a terracotta jar. Out of sight. Out of mind.
 
Meera stands at the window and looks out into the darkness. There is a streetlight by the gate. A blue beacon that would show up anyone who stood at the gate.
She is hopeful as she waits. Any minute now, the headlamps of a car will pale the blue light. Any minute now, a rattling, noisy autorickshaw will pull up.
Meera continues to stand there. Suddenly, the streetlamp near the gate splutters and crackles. She watches it for a long while, timing the intervals between each splutter and crackle. Maybe Giri went for a drive to clear his head. His car had a breakdown; she knows how hopelessly incompetent he is when it comes to cars. He doesn’t even know how to change a flat tyre. Maybe his phone ran
out of charge or there was no signal. The outskirts of Bangalore have many such pockets. This is the only explanation, Meera tells herself repeatedly. What else could it be? She grasps as desperate women do at any straw to prevent her thoughts from going down one particular, obvious alley. A narrow, dark, fetid lane called the other woman.

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