Their Language of Love (17 page)

‘Did Grandpa make you happy?’ asks Perin. ‘Did he pluck the words right off your lips?’

‘He was deaf when I spoke,’ says Sehra-bai with equanimity. ‘He never heard me.’

‘But Grandpa was devoted to you,’ asserts Perin protectively, as if she was around when her grandfather was alive.

‘Yes,’ says Sehra-bai. ‘In his own way he was devoted to
me.’ Although her voice is confident, her eyes, diffident, shift to Ruby.

Ruby accompanied her mother to the Central Bank ever since she could remember. Mr Jariwalla was chairman of the bank. Mr Cooper was chairman after him.

Whether she was going to the locker to change her jewellery, or with ledgers and files on some business errand assigned to her by Rustom, the trip to the bank was a formal occasion. And as befitted formal occasions, it was heralded by certain rites.

Sehra bolted the bedroom doors and, removing the massive middle drawer from her cupboard, staggering under its wooden bulk, dumped it on one of the beds. She then pushed open the little doors of the secret chambers cunningly concealed on either side of the vacated spaces in the cupboard. When Ruby grew older she helped her mother remove the drawer and fetch the precious contents of the secret chambers.

Perched sideways on the bed Sehra opened the little boxes lined with velvet to examine the diamond and emerald necklaces and earrings, the gold and ruby choker set, the delicately painted gold meena-work sets, the cloth pouches so heavy with gold guineas Ruby needed both hands to lift them, the heavy, hand-wrought twenty-two-carat gold chains, belts, bracelets and dangling earrings. Sehra would ponder over them and set aside the items she might choose to wear at forthcoming events. The gold guineas, embossed
with Queen Victoria’s profile, were always at hand to give as wedding, Navjote, and new-born baby gifts. The jewellery that Sehra decided to relinquish to the bank locker she would wrap in silk scarves and pack into a leather handbag reserved for the occasion.

Tucked beneath her arm, the bloated handbag was inadequately concealed by the ends of Sehra’s sari as, Ruby in tow, she swished solemnly across the dusty black-and-white squares of the bank floor. Her purposeful air and the preoccupied pucker of her lips indicated the enormity of the task she was about to accomplish—a transaction that was, at the very least, commensurate with the stature of her husband’s standing.

No one was fooled, not even the handsome turbaned Pathan security guard from the Khyber Pass who stood double-barrelled guard outside the entrance and militarily salaamed when mother and daughter entered the building. As they put down their pens, the bankers sighed: and the sighing bankers knew that whatever worldly airs she might put on, no matter what important reason she might assign her mission—whether she’d come to balance a discrepancy in her husband’s ledgers or to remove jewellery—Sehra-bai was there to distract them from their drudgery and to refresh their eyes.

As they ogled the goddess carting gold to the bank’s steely vault, they hoped she would exchange a few words with them on her way out. But when Sehra arrived bearing ledgers, memos and files, they knew their turn would surely come. Sooner or later, courting help, Chanel-scented, she
would spread the ponderous ledgers before them and, listing forward, follow their clever pens as they made the requisite entries, adjustments and corrections—a hair’s breadth from her charmingly packaged bottom and bosom.

But first, swishing across the black-and-white floor, Sehra would head for the chairman’s door, which the salaaming doorman opened with adroit timing. Flashing her splendid teeth in a winsome smile, Sehra breezed in just as Jal J, flushed of face and ears, dapper in his pin-stripe suit, courteously stood up behind his mahogany desk. He welcomed her with a glad and indulgent eye and, with compact movements of his arms and head, graciously indicated the two chairs opposite him.

Sehra, as was her wont, planted her globular rump on his desk instead. Ruby, her presence barely noted, primly parked herself on a cane-bottomed chair.

With practised movements of her hands and shoulders, Sehra adjusted her sari across her chest and, leaning back on the heels of her hands, placing one svelte sari-sheathed knee over the other, swung her leg with its pretty shoe.

Swinging her shoe right under his nose, she chattered away, engaging Jal J in a discourse leavened by innuendo and repartee, and an occasional exuberant laugh that penetrated the bank corridors and echoed in its lofty halls.

‘Why weren’t you and Hirabai at the Lawrence Gardens last evening? I missed you so much …’ she might ask with a flirtatious glance from the corner of her eyes, and then add, ‘I missed both of you.’

‘If I knew you were coming I’d have come too.’ Jal J’s
caressing murmur implied a double-entendre Ruby was too young to fathom, and Sehra too old not to. ‘I’d have—’

‘Hired a band?’ Sehra interrupted, and her tart tone implied a warning: there is a line he may not cross before the child.

‘That too,’ murmured the chastened banker, his pale skin lightly flushed. ‘But I would have certainly brought you chocolate cake.’

His proprieties once again intact, smiling neatly beneath his goatish gaze, the impeccably behaved and soft-spoken banker matched his client’s wit, and continued to flirt back with commendable cool.

‘And what about now? What will you get me now?’ Sehra leaned forward to accommodate her cleavage to Jal J’s stealthy gaze.

‘Anything … anything you want.’

‘
Anything
I want? What will Hirabai have to say to that?’

‘She will say: Give her the stars and the moon … Give her chicken sandwiches …’

‘And mango juice.’

Just as Ruby began to wonder about the curious puffiness around the snug fit of Jal J’s trousers, Mr Jariwalla buttoned up his coat and primly sat down. Ringing for the chaprasi he asked him to bring chicken sandwiches from Shezan and two bottles of mango juice for Sehra and Ruby, adding: ‘Use your bicycle and be quick about it.’

Is there an impropriety in viewing one’s mother as a sex
object, even if she is an ex-sex object? But that is the only way Ruby knows to view her. The mould of her mother’s body and the voluptuous wallop it packed could no more be ignored than the sudden puffiness that formed behind Jal J’s fly whenever they were alone in his office … or the clear split in her mother’s dual nature that could express an exuberance so contrary to the reserve she displayed to her children.

Sehra had an enormous gift for friendship, and although she produced three children, little talent for motherhood.

It is a balmy afternoon on New Year’s Day. Decked out in a lemony house-gown, cocooned in shawls, supported by Ruby, Sehra-bai is brought out to the veranda to greet visitors. Level with the lawn, the veranda is lined with stunted palms and curling chrysanthemums in clay pots. A green thicket of nasturtium leaves swells from Sehra-bai’s feet to flow over a rising rockery. The garden is fragrant with flowers, and the scent from neighbouring gardens. The bad mood Sehra-bai has been in all morning has morphed into sudden bouts of hostility, but Ruby doesn’t allow this to affect her own mood.

Mr and Mrs Cooper call. Colonel Manzoor and the Phailbuses from across the street call, and four committee members of the Parsee Anjuman bring Sehra-bai a pineapple cake with ‘Happy 1995 to our President’ written on it. More chairs are brought out and the circle spills over on to the lawn.

By the time Aunty Tamy drops by laden with Indian sweets and curried chicken, and raucously announces her
presence with her customary ‘Where is my Sehra-bai? How is my Sehroo-veroo?’ it is late afternoon and they have moved indoors.

Exhausted and peevish, Sehra-bai barely countenances her friend’s hearty New Year’s greetings and cheerful chatter. Aunty Tamy is not related to them, in fact she is not even a Parsee, but she is one of Sehra-bai’s closest surviving friends. She is also the favourite and most faithful visitor. No one has ever seen her lose her temper. She is a few years younger than Sehra-bai and still a handsome woman with lazy-lidded hazel eyes, softly curving cheekbones and lips the shape of lipstick advertisements. Brown hair, streaked with grey, frames her oval face in becoming sweeps before it is coiled in a large bun at the back.

Aunty Tamy accompanies Sehra-bai, who, too tired to walk, is wheeled to her room and prepared for bed.

‘Arrey wah! Look at the gorgeous gown madam’s wearing,’ she exclaims, when the shawls are removed and the splendour of the crewel-stitch embroidery on Sehra-bai’s housecoat is revealed. She tells Perin: ‘Why is your grandma sitting at home? Take her to the Burt Institute’s ball!’

Still frequented by Anglo-Indians and the more Westernized among the Indian Christians, the Club is no longer the posh hangout it was during the Raj. Aunty Tamy turns to Sehra-bai: ‘If you go dancing in that dress you’ll be the belle of the ball.’

The cords on Sehra-bai’s neck thicken and grow rigid. She turns away her angry face.

‘What’s the matter with my friend?’ Aunty Tamy inquires
affectionately and at the same time casts a concerned glance at the others.

‘We’ve had visitors all day,’ explains Ruby. ‘She’s exhausted, I guess.’

‘I don’t like you,’ says Sehra-bai sternly to Aunty Tamy. ‘You say one thing but you mean another. You were making fun of me. You are cruel.’

‘Arrey Sehroo, you know I’d never tease you if I thought it angered you,’ says Aunty Tamy, matching her friend’s solemn demeanour.

‘You think I can go dancing? You think anyone will look at me?’ Sehra-bai’s tone is scathing.

‘My poor, poor baby,’ coos Aunty Tamy and leans over to embrace her friend. ‘I’ve hurt my Sehro-veroo’s feelings … I’m velly velly sorry.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ says Sehra-bai, glaring at her friend. ‘Don’t talk to me as if I’m a baby.’

‘You know I’m joking,’ says Aunty Tamy. ‘If I can’t joke with my friend, who can I joke with?’

Sehra-bai’s eyes become sly slits. She makes a sudden grab at the pashmina shawl wrapped round Aunty Tamy’s shoulders and tries to snatch it away. In doing so she has gotten hold also of the silk sari beneath it. As Aunty Tamy almost topples on her friend, her arms shoot out and she grabs the wheelchair just in time to prevent an injury to herself or Sehra-bai.

Seizing her unexpected advantage as her friend teeters inches from her face, Sehra-bai hisses: ‘Give it back to me … you slimy conniver!’

Ruby and Perin rush to intervene, but regaining her balance Aunty Tamy tidies her sari with slightly trembling fingers and at the same time assists her friend to unwrap the shawl. Clutched triumphantly by Sehra-bai, the shawl lies in a heap on her lap.

‘It is your shawl,’ says Aunty Tamy. ‘You gave it to me in Murree Hills years ago, remember?’

‘I know I gave it to you,’ says Sehra-bai. ‘Do you think I’ve forgotten? I want it back.’

‘Keep it,’ says Aunt Tamy.

‘Mum, you can’t take it back,’ says Ruby trying to pry the shawl loose from her mother’s talon-like grip. ‘You gave it to her.’

‘I can,’ says Sehra-bai, hanging on to the shawl as if her life depended on it.

‘Let Grannums keep it,’ intercedes Perin protectively, and winks at Aunty Tamy behind Sehra-bai’s back.

‘Yes,’ agrees Sehra-bai promptly. ‘Your daughter has more sense than you … If you mind so much, give the
Currenty
one of yours,’ she adds, using the unpardonable and obnoxious pejorative applied to Indian-Christians and Anglo-Indians.

‘Mumma! How can you say that,’ cries Ruby, almost ill with embarrassment. ‘I’ll bring you another shawl, Aunty Tamy,’ she says apologetically. ‘You’ll freeze.’

‘Let the whore freeze,’ says Sehra-bai.

Aunty Tamy leaves. Ruby and Perin see her to her car. It is dark outside and the mercury has dropped below freezing.
Aunty Tamy has covered her head with Ruby’s Kashmiri shawl and wrapped it round her throat and overcoat. ‘I’m sorry this happened,’ says Ruby. ‘It’s these Halcyon tablets the doctor’s given her. Instead of tranquillizing her they make her abusive.’

‘Don’t worry. I don’t mind,’ says Aunty Tamy. ‘My poor friend, I know how she feels; she’s trapped by her sickness.’

A few months after her stroke, when she was still herself and her personality had not changed so much, Sehra-bai had said: ‘I’m in a cage … caged like a canary.’ Another time she’d fretted: ‘My body has become my jail … I want to be free.’ Ruby had assured her the daily physiotherapy would soon restore her control over her body.

‘You’re so right,’ says Ruby gratefully. ‘She’s trapped in her body. You understand her so well.’

‘We’ve been through a lot together,’ says Aunty Tamy, getting into her little Suzuki, for once serious. ‘Shared a lot of good-times bad-times. She knows everything about me … and I know everything about her.’

Ruby shuts the car door and as Perin moves to one side, the light from the porch ignites the wetness on Aunty Tamy’s cheeks. ‘My God, you’re crying,’ says Ruby, wiping the tears with icy fingers. ‘I’m so sorry … She can be horrid but she doesn’t mean it … She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t bother me,’ says Aunty Tamy. ‘My friend can say anything she wants, to me. But I can’t bear to see her like this … God should have spared my friend this … she’s so beautiful.’

Aunty Tamy reverses down the drive. She does not require
glasses even at night. Perin, standing hunched in the cold, scoots inside the moment the Suzuki’s out of the gate. Ruby walks slowly back. Aunty Tamy’s husband died about eight months back. Uncle Ahmed was a Muslim and Aunty Tamy, although distantly related to him, was Christian. They had sidestepped the hurdles of their marriage—raised by both sets of relatives—by eloping. Uncle Ahmed belonged to an old land-owning family with deep tentacles in politics. They had not been very kind to Aunty Tamy, who belonged to a distinguished Brahmin Christian family that had stocked Lahore’s colleges with a sturdy brood of professors. Many in her family had moved to England and some to Canada. Uncle Ahmed had insisted on visiting Sehra-bai even while he was recovering from his heart attack and his doctor had advised him to stay home and rest. Aunt Tamy must miss him, thought Ruby. She doesn’t show it, so they think she’s over it and we don’t consider her feelings.