A Fine Balance Part 2

"You pig!" she wept. "You want to make me look ugly like you!" Whereupon, he got a ruler and whacked her wherever he could, as she ran around trying to escape the blows.

For once, Mrs. Shroff noticed that something was wrong. "Why are you crying, my daughter?"

"That stupid Dracula! He hit me and made me bleed!"

"Tch-tch, my poor child." She hugged Dina and returned to her seat by the window.

Two days after this row, Nusswan tried to make peace by bringing Dina a collection of ribbons. "They will look lovely in your plaits," he said.

She went to her school satchel, got out her arts-and-crafts scissors, and snipped the ribbons into small pieces.

"Look, Mamma!" he said, almost in tears. "Look at your vindictive daughter! My hard-earned money I spend on her, and this is the thanks."

The ruler became Nusswan's instrument of choice in his quest for discipline. His clothes were the most frequent cause of Dina's punishment. After washing, ironing, and folding them, she had to stack four separate piles in his cupboard: white shirts, coloured shirts, white trousers, coloured trousers. Sometimes she would strategically place a pinstriped shirt with the whites, or liberate a pair of pants with a hound's-tooth check among the white trousers. Despite the beatings, she never tired of provoking him.

"The way she behaves, I feel that Sataan himself has taken refuge in her heart," he said wearily to the relatives who asked for updates. "Maybe I should just pack her off to a boarding school."

"No, no, don't take that drastic step," they pleaded. "Boarding school has been the ruination of many Parsi girls. Rest a.s.sured, G.o.d will repay you for your patience and devotion. And Dina will also thank you when she is old enough to understand it's for her own good." They went away murmuring the man was a saint every girl should be fortunate enough to have a brother like Nusswan.

His spirit restored by their encouragement, Nusswan persevered. He bought all of Dina's clothes, deciding what was appropriate for a young girl. The purchases were usually ill-fitting, for she was not allowed to be present while he shopped. "I don't want tiresome arguments in the shopkeeper's presence," he said. "You always embarra.s.s me." When she needed new uniforms, he went to school with her on the day the tailors were coming, to supervise the measurements. He quizzed the tailors about rates and fabrics, trying to work out the princ.i.p.al's kickbacks. Dina dreaded this annual event, wondering what new mortification would be visited upon her before her cla.s.smates.

All her friends were now wearing their hair short, and she begged to be allowed the same privilege. "If you let me cut my hair, I'll swab the dining room every day instead of alternate days," she tried to bargain. "Or I can polish your shoes every night."

"No," said Nusswan. "Fourteen is too young for fancy hairstyles, plaits are good for you. Besides, I cannot afford to pay for the hairdresser." But he promptly added shoe-polishing to her list of ch.o.r.es.

A week after her final appeal, with the help of Zen.o.bia in the school bathroom, Dina lopped off the plaits. Zen.o.bia's ambition was to be a hairstylist, and she was overwhelmed by the good fortune that delivered her friend's head into her hands. "Let's cut off the whole jing-bang lot," she said. "Let's bob it really short."

"Are you crazy?" said Dina. "Nusswan will jump over the moon." So they settled for a pageboy, and Zen.o.bia trimmed the hair to roughly an inch above the shoulders. It looked a bit ragged, but both girls were delighted with the results.

Dina hesitated about throwing the severed plaits in the dustbin. She put them in her satchel and raced home. Parading proudly about the house, she went repeatedly past the many mirrors to catch glimpses of her head from different angles. Then she visited her mother's room and waited for her surprise, or delight, or something. But Mrs. Shroff noticed nothing.

"Do you like my new hairstyle, Mummy?" she asked at last.

Mrs. Shroff stared blankly for a moment. "Very pretty, my daughter, very pretty."

Nusswan got home late that evening. He greeted his mother, and said there had been so much work at the office. Then he saw Dina. He took a deep breath and put a hand to his forehead. Exhausted, he wished there was some way to deal with this without another fight. But her insolence, her defiance, could not go unpunished; or how would he look himself in the mirror?

"Please come here, Dina. Explain why you have disobeyed me."

She scratched her neck where tiny hair clippings were making her skin itch. "How did I disobey you?"

He slapped her. "Don't question me when I ask you something."

"You said you couldn't afford my haircut. This was free, I did it myself."

He slapped her again. "No back talk, I'm warning you." He got the ruler and struck her with it flat across the palms, then, because he deemed the offence extremely serious, with the edge over her knuckles. "This will teach you to look like a loose woman."

"Have you seen your hair in the mirror? You look like a clown," she said, refusing to be intimidated.

Nusswan's haircut, in his own opinion, was a statement of dignified elegance. He wore a centre parting, imposing order on either side of it with judicious applications of heavy pomade. Dina's taunt unleashed the fury of the disciplinarian. With lashes of the ruler across her calves and arms, he drove her to the bathroom, where he began tearing off her clothes.

"I don't want another word from you! Not a word! Today you have crossed the limit! Take a bath first, you polluted creature! Wash off those hair clippings before you spread them around the house and bring misfortune upon us!"

"Don't worry, your face will frighten away any misfortune." She was standing naked on the tiles now, but he did not leave. "I need hot water," she said.

He stepped back and flung a mugful of cold water at her from the bucket. Shivering, she stared defiantly at him, her nipples stiffening. He pinched one, hard, and she flinched. "Look at you with your little b.r.e.a.s.t.s starting to grow. You think you are a woman already. I should cut them right off, along with your wicked tongue."

He was eyeing her strangely, and she grew afraid. She understood that her sharp answers were enraging him, that it was vaguely linked to the way he was staring at the newfledged bloom of hair where her legs met. It would be safer to seem submissive, to douse his anger. She turned away and started to cry, her hands over her face.

Satisfied, he left. Her school satchel, lying on her bed, drew his attention. He opened it for a random inspection and found the plaits sitting on top. Dangling one between thumb and forefinger, he gritted his teeth before a smile slowly eased his angry features.

When Dina had finished her bath, he fetched a roll of black electrical tape and fastened the plaits to her hair. "You will wear them like this," he said. "Every day, even to school, till your hair has grown back."

She wished she had thrown the wretched things away in the school toilet. It felt like dead rats were hanging from her head.

Next morning, she secretly took the roll of tape to school. The plaits were pulled off before going to cla.s.s. It was painful, with the black tape clutching hard. When school was over, she fixed them back with Zen.o.bia's help. In this way she evaded Nusswan's punishment on weekdays.

But a few days later riots started in the city, in the wake of Part.i.tion and the British departure, and Dina was stuck at home with Nusswan. There were day-and-night curfews in every neighbourhood. Offices, businesses, colleges, schools, all stayed closed, and there was no respite from the detested plaits. He allowed her to remove them only while bathing, and supervised their reattachment immediately after.

Cooped up inside the flat, Nusswan lamented the country's calamity, grumbling endlessly. "Every day I sit at home, I lose money. These b.l.o.o.d.y uncultured savages don't deserve independence. If they must hack one another to death, I wish they would go somewhere else and do it quietly. In their villages, maybe. Without disturbing our lovely city by the sea."

When the curfew was lifted, Dina flew off to school, happy as an uncaged bird, eager for her eight hours of Nusswan-less existence. And he, too, was relieved to return to his office. On the first evening of normalcy in the city, he came home in a most cheerful mood. "The curfew is over, and your punishment is over. We can throw away your plaits now," he said, adding generously, "You know, short hair does suit you."

He opened his briefcase and took out a new hairband. "You can wear this now instead of electrical tape," he joked.

"Wear it yourself," she said, refusing to take it.

Three years after his father's death, Nusswan married. A few weeks later, his mother's withdrawal from life was complete. Where before she had responded obediently to instructions get up, drink your tea, wash your hands, swallow your medicine now there was only a wall of incomprehension.

The task of caring for her had outgrown Dina's ability. When the smell from Mrs. Shroff's room was past ignoring, Nusswan timidly broached the subject with his wife. He did not dare ask her directly to help, but hoped that her good nature might persuade her to volunteer. "Ruby, dear, Mamma is getting worse. She needs a lot of attention, all the time."

"Put her in a nursing home," said Ruby. "She'll be better off there."

He nodded placatingly, and did something less expensive and more human than shipping his mother to the old-age factory as some unkind relatives would doubtless have put it he hired a full-time nurse.

The nurse's a.s.signment was short-lived; Mrs. Shroff died later that year, and people finally understood that a doctor's wife was no more immune to grief than other mortals. She died on the same day of the Shahenshahi calendar as her husband. Their prayers were performed consecutively at the same fire-temple by Dustoor Framji. By this time, Dina had learned how to evade the trap of his overfriendly hugs. When he approached, she held out a polite hand and took a step back, and another, and another. Short of pursuing her around the prayer-hall amid the large thuribles of flaming sandalwood, he could only smile foolishly and give up the chase.

After the first month's prayer ceremonies for Mrs. Shroff were completed, Nusswan decided there was no point in Dina's matriculating. Her last report card was quite wretched. She would have been kept back were it not for the princ.i.p.al who, loyal to the memory of Dr. Shroff, preferred to see the marks as a temporary aberration.

"Very decent of Miss Lamb to promote you," said Nusswan. "But the fact remains that your results are hopeless. I'm not going to waste money on school fees for another year."

"You make me clean and scrub all the time, I cannot study for even one hour a day! What do you expect?"

"Don't make excuses. A strong young girl, doing a little housework what's that got to do with studying? Do you know how fortunate you are? There are thousands of poor children in the city, doing boot-polishing at railway stations, or collecting papers, bottles, plastic plus going to school at night. And you are complaining? What's lacking in you is the desire for education. This is it, enough schooling for you."

Dina was not willing to concede without a struggle. She also hoped that Nusswan's wife would intervene on her behalf. But Ruby preferred to stay out of the quarrel, so next morning when she was sent to market with a shopping list, Dina ran to her grandfather's flat.

Grandfather lived with one of her uncles, in a room that smelled of stale balm. She held her breath and hugged him, then poured out her troubles in a torrent of words. "Please, Grandpa! Please tell him to stop treating me like this!"

Already started on the road to senility, he took a while to realize who Dina was exactly, and longer to understand what she wanted. His dentures were not in, making it difficult to decipher his speech. "Shall I get your teeth, Grandpa?" she offered.

"No, no, no!" He raised his hands and shook them vehemently. "No teeth. All crooked, and paining in the mouth. b.a.s.t.a.r.d stupid dentist, useless fellow. My carpenter could make better teeth."

She repeated everything slowly, and at last he grasped the issue. "Matric? Who, you? Of course you must do your matric. Of course. Of course. You must matriculate. And then college. Yes, of course I will tell that shameless rascal to send you, I will order that Nauzer. No, Nevil that Nusswan, yes, I will force him."

He dispatched a servant with a message for Nusswan to visit him as soon as possible. Nusswan could not refuse. He cared deeply about the family's opinion of him. After delaying for several days, citing too much work at the office, he went, taking Ruby along to have an ally by his side. She was instructed to ingratiate herself with the old man in any way possible.

Grandfather had misplaced more of his memory since Dina's visit. He remembered nothing of their conversation. He was wearing his teeth this time but had very little to say. With much prompting and reminiscing he appeared to recognize them. Then, ignoring Ruby altogether, he abruptly decided that Nusswan and Dina were man and wife. He refused to relinquish this belief, however much Dina coaxed and cajoled.

Ruby sat on the sofa holding the old man's hand. She asked if he would like her to ma.s.sage his feet. Without waiting for an answer she grabbed the left one and began kneading it. The toenails were yellow, long overdue for a clipping.

Enraged, he tore his foot from her grasp. "Kya karta hai? Chalo, jao!"

Too startled at being addressed in Hindi, Ruby sat there gaping. Grandfather turned to Nusswan, "Doesn't she understand? What language does your ayah speak? Tell her to get off my sofa, wait in the kitchen."

Ruby rose in a huff and stood by the door. "Rude old man!" she hissed. "Just because my skin is a little dark!"

Nusswan said a gruff goodbye and followed his wife, stopping to turn and look triumphantly at Dina, who was trying to sort out the confusion. She stayed behind, hoping Grandpa would summon some hidden resource and come to her rescue. An hour later she too gave up, kissed his forehead, and left.

It was the last time she saw him alive. He died in his sleep the following month. At the funeral, Dina wondered how much longer Grandpa's toenails had grown under the white sheet that hid everything from view but his face.

For four years, Nusswan had been faithfully putting money aside for Dina's wedding expenses. A considerable sum had collected, and he planned to get her married in the near future. He was certain he would have no trouble finding a good husband as he proudly said to himself, Dina had grown into a beautiful young woman, she deserved nothing less than the best. It would be a lavish celebration, befitting the sister of a successful businessman, and people would talk about it for a long time to come.

When she turned eighteen, he started inviting eligible bachelors to their home. She invariably found them repugnant; they were her brother's friends, and reminded her of Nusswan in all they said and did.

Nusswan was convinced that sooner or later there would be one she liked. He could no longer place restrictions on her comings and goings she had outgrown those adolescent controls. So long as she did the housework and daily shopping according to Ruby's lists, relative calm prevailed in the house. Nowadays the quarrelling, if there was any, was between Ruby and Dina, as though Nusswan had delegated this function to his wife.

At the market Dina sometimes used her initiative and subst.i.tuted cauliflower for cabbage; or she felt a sudden yearning for chickoos and bought them instead of oranges. Then Ruby promptly accused her of sabotaging the carefully planned meals: "Wicked, malicious woman, ruining my husband's dinner." She delivered the charge and the verdict in a matter-of-fact, mechanical manner, all part of her role as the dutiful wife.

But it was not always squabbles and bickering between them. More and more, the two women worked together amicably. Among the items that Ruby had brought to the house following her marriage was a small sewing-machine with a hand crank. She showed Dina how to use it, teaching her to make simple items like pillowcases, bed-sheets, curtains.

When Ruby's first child was born, a son who was named Xerxes, Dina helped to look after him. She sewed baby clothes and knitted little caps and pullovers. For her nephew's first birthday she produced a pair of bootees. On that happy morning they garlanded Xerxes with roses and lilies, and made a large red teelo on his forehead.

"What a sweetie pie he is," said Dina, laughing with delight.

"And those bootees you made just too cute!" said Ruby, giving her a huge hug.

But it was the rare day that pa.s.sed entirely without argument. Once the ch.o.r.es were done, Dina preferred to spend as much time out of the house as possible. Her resources for her outings were limited to what she could squeeze from the shopping money. Her conscience was clear; she regarded it as part-payment for her drudgery, barely a fraction of what was owed her.

Ruby demanded an account down to the last paisa. "I want to see the bills and receipts. For every single item," she pounded her fist on the kitchen table, rattling the saucepan's lid.

"Since when do fishmongers and vegetable-women on the footpath give receipts?" fired back Dina, throwing at her the bills for shop purchases, along with the change kept ready after juggling undoc.u.mented prices. She left the kitchen while her sister-in-law searched the floor to retrieve and count the coins.

The savings were sufficient to pay for bus fares. Dina went to parks, wandered in museums and markets, visited cinemas (just from the outside, to look at posters), and ventured timidly into public libraries. The heads bent over books made her feel out of place; everyone in there seemed so learned, and she hadn't even matriculated.

This impression was dispelled when she realized that the reading material in the hands of these grave individuals could range from something unp.r.o.nounceable like Areopagitica Areopagitica by John Milton to by John Milton to The Ill.u.s.trated Weekly of India The Ill.u.s.trated Weekly of India. Eventually, the enormous old reading rooms, with their high ceilings, creaky floorboards and dark panelling, became her favourite sanctuary. The stately ceiling fans that hung from long poles swept the air with a comforting whoosh whoosh, and the deep leather chairs, musty smells, and rustle of turning pages were soothing. Best of all, people spoke in whispers. The only time Dina heard a shout was when the doorman scolded a beggar trying to sneak inside. Hours pa.s.sed as she flipped through encyclopaedias, gazed into art books, and curiously opened dusty medical tomes, rounding off the visit by sitting for a few minutes with eyes closed in a dark corner of the old building, where time could stand still if one wanted it to.

The more modern libraries were equipped with music rooms. They also had fluorescent lights, Formica tables, air-conditioning, and brightly painted walls, and were always crowded. She found them cold and inhospitable, going there only if she wanted to listen to records. She knew very little about music a few names like Brahms, Mozart, Schumann, and Bach, which her ears had picked up in childhood when her father would turn on the radio or put something on the gramophone, take her in his lap and say, "It makes you forget the troubles of this world, doesn't it?" and Dina would nod her head seriously.

In the library she selected records at random, trying to memorize the names of the ones she enjoyed so she could play them again another day. It was tricky, because the symphonies and concertos and sonatas were distinguished only by numbers that were preceded by letters like Op. and K. and BWV, and she did not know what any of it meant. If she was lucky she found something with a name that resonated richly in her memory; and when the familiar music filled her head, the past was conquered for a brief while, and she felt herself ache with the ecstasy of completion, as though a missing limb had been recovered.

She both desired and dreaded these intense musical experiences. The perfect felicity of the music room was always replaced by an unfocused anger when she returned to life with Nusswan and Ruby. The bitterest fights took place on days when she had visited the record collection.

Magazines and newspapers were far less complicated. Through reading the dailies, she discovered there were several cultural groups that sponsored concerts and recitals in the city. Many of these performances usually the ones by local amateurs or obscure foreigners were free. She started using her bus fares to go to these concerts, and found them a welcome variation on the library. The performers, too, were no doubt grateful for her presence at these meagrely attended evenings.

She lingered at the periphery of the crowd in the foyer, feeling like an imposten Everyone else seemed to know so much about music, about the evening's performers, judging from the sophisticated way they held their programmes and pointed to items inside. She longed for the doors to open, for the dim lights within to disguise her shortcomings.

In the recital hall the music did not have the power to touch her the way it did during her solitary hours in the library. Here, the human comedy shared equal time with the music. And after a few recitals she began to recognize the regulars in the audience.

There was an old man who, at every concert, fell asleep at precisely four minutes into the first piece; latecomers skirted his row out of consideration, to avoid b.u.mping his knees. At seven minutes, his spectacles began sliding down his nose. And at eleven minutes (if the piece was that long and he hadn't yet been wakened by applause), his dentures were protruding. He reminded Dina of Grandpa.

Two sisters, in their fifties, tall and lean with pointed chins, always sat in the first row and often clapped at the wrong moment, unnecessarily disturbing the old man's nap. Dina herself did not understand about sonatas and movements, but realized that a performance was not over just because there was a pause in the music. She took the lead from a goateed individual in round wire-rimmed gla.s.ses who wore a beret, looked like an expert, and always knew when to clap.

Then there was an amusing middle-aged fellow who wore the same brown suit at every concert, and was everyone's friend. He dashed around madly in the foyer, greeting people, his head bobbing wildly, a.s.suring them what a splendid evening it was going to be. His ties were the subject of constant speculation. On some evenings they hung long, dominating his front, flapping over his crotch. At other times they barely reached his diaphragm. The knots ranged in size from microscopic to a bulky samosa. And he did not walk from one person to the next so much as prance, keeping his comments brief because, as he liked to explain, there were just a few minutes before the curtain went up, and still so many he had to greet.

Dina noticed in the lobby a young man who, like her, was engaged in observing from the edges the merry mingling of their fellow con-certgoers. Since she usually arrived early, anxious to get away from home, she was there to see him sail up to the entrance on his bicycle, dismount cleanly, and wheel it in through the gates. The gateman allowed him this liberty in exchange for a tip. At the side of the building, he padlocked the bicycle, making sure to remove the briefcase from the rear carrier. He snapped the clips off his trousers and slipped them into the briefcase. Then he retired to his favourite corner of the lobby to study the programme and the public.

Sometimes their eyes met, and there was a recognition of their tacit conspiracy. The funny man in the brown suit left Dina alone but included him in his round of greetings. "h.e.l.lo, Rustom! How are you?" he bellowed, and thus Dina learned the young man's name.

"Very well, thank you," said Rustom, looking over the shoulder of the brown suit at Dina watching amusedly.

"Tell me, what do you think of the pianist today? Is he capable of the depth required in the slow movement? Do you think that the largo oh, excuse me, excuse me, I'll be back in a moment, soon as I say h.e.l.lo to Mr. Medhora over there," and he was off. Rustom smiled at Dina and shook his head in mock despair.

The bell rang and the auditorium doors opened. The two tall sisters hastened to the first row with synchronized hopping steps, unfolded the maroon-upholstered seats, and flopped down triumphantly, beaming at each other for once again winning their secret game of musical chairs. Dina took her usual centre aisle seat, roughly midway down the hall.

As the place began to fill, Rustom came up beside her. "Is this one free?"

She nodded.

He sat down. "That Mr. Toddywalla is a real character, isn't he?"

"Oh, is that his name? Yes, he is very funny."

"Even if the recital is so-so, you can always rely on him for entertainment."

The lights dimmed, and the two performers appeared on stage to scattered applause. "By the way, I'm Rustom Dalai," he said, leaning closer and holding out his hand while the flute received the piano's silver A and offered its own golden one in return.

She whispered "Dina Shroff" without taking his hand, for in the dark she did not immediately notice it being held out. When she did, it was too late; he had begun to withdraw it.

During the interval Rustom asked if she would like coffee or a cold drink.

"No, thank you."

They watched the audience in the aisles, bound for the bathrooms and refreshments. He crossed his legs and said, "You know, I see you regularly at these concerts."

"Yes, I enjoy them very much."