A Fine Balance Part 53

"Did you hear that? My nephew nephew is warning me." He gave up the pretence of calm; the damaged left cheek eclipsed his face. "You will do as you are told, understood? I have been too lenient with you, Omprakash hahn, too lenient. Somebody else in my place would have softened your bones over the years." is warning me." He gave up the pretence of calm; the damaged left cheek eclipsed his face. "You will do as you are told, understood? I have been too lenient with you, Omprakash hahn, too lenient. Somebody else in my place would have softened your bones over the years."

"Leave it, yaar, I'm not scared of your threats."

"Listen to him. Just a few months ago, at the work camp, you were weeping in my arms each night. Scared and sick, vomiting like a baby. Now you are all strong and defiant. And why? Because I want what's best for you?"

"n.o.body is denying that," Dina broke in, hoping Ishvar would see sense if she added her voice in opposition. "But such blind haste is unwise. If Om was longing for a wife, it would be different. What is your your rush?" rush?"

He felt they were ganging up on him. "It is my duty," he murmured with the irritating air of a sage and, in effect, declared himself the winner. Then he got back to work. Reaching absently for a length of cloth, he made the entire stack collapse.

"Wonderful!" she pounced. "Well done! Bring down the whole ceiling, go ahead. See how your urgent duty is affecting you? Mania is what it is mania, not duty." She helped him pick up the fallen clothes. "If only that rascal cat had not left her babies in my kitchen. She put this whole crazy idea in your head."

Over the next few days, Ishvar's fretting was transformed into clumsiness at the Singer. Errors kept popping up in his sewing like wrong cards in a magic trick, giving Dina occasion to point out the danger of his ways. "Your marriage mania will destroy our business. You will make the food vanish from our plates."

"I'm sorry, there is much on my mind," said Ishvar. "But don't worry, it's only a pa.s.sing phase."

"What do you mean, don't worry? How can it pa.s.s? Once there is a wife, there will be children. Then there will be even more on your mind. Where will they all stay? And all those mouths to feed. How many lives do you want to ruin?"

"It may seem like ruining to you. What I am doing is building the foundation for Om's happiness. A marriage does not happen in a month or two. It will take at least a year before we get anywhere. If the girl is too young, the parents may wish to wait longer. All I want is to find the right one and reserve her for my nephew."

"Like a train ticket," put in Maneck, and Om laughed.

"You have a very bad habit," said Ishvar. "Always making fun of things you don't understand."

What other choice was there, thought Maneck. But the risk of further upsetting Ishvar kept him silent.

Ashraf's reply came in an envelope bearing black cancellations across the postage stamp. It featured the date, postal district, and a slogan: AN ERA OF DISCIPLINE AN ERA OF DISCIPLINE, followed by a menacing exclamation mark shaped like a cudgel.

They waited impatiently for Ishvar to tear it open and share the news. His eyes travelled across the page with the uncertainty of one unused to reading, stumbling over Ashraf's shaky hand. He smiled broadly once, then looked puzzled, and frowned towards the end, all of which made Om very nervous.

"Chachaji is in good health," began Ishvar. "He has missed us. He says the devil must have held time captive, it has been so long in pa.s.sing. He is happy that Om will marry. He also agrees it should not be delayed."

"What else?"

Ishvar sighed. "He has spoken to people in our community."

"And?"

"There are four Chamaar families interested." He sighed again.

"Hurray" said Maneck, thumping Om on the back. "You're in big demand." Om pushed away his hand.

"But Ishvarbhai, the news should please you," said Dina. "Why so worried? Isn't it what you wanted?"

He shuffled the two pages as though wishing there were more. "This part pleases me. Difficulty is in the other part."

They waited. "Are you planning to tell us today or tomorrow?" asked Om.

Ishvar fingered his frozen cheek. "The four interested families are in a hurry. You see, there are other parties with marriageable sons. Luckily, Chachaji has improved our standing that Om is working for a big export company in the city, a good match for any girl. So the families want us to select and finalize in the next eight weeks."

"That's too fast," said Dina. "You'll have to refuse them."

During the year that he and his nephew had worked for Dina, Ishvar had never once raised his voice. When he did it now, it startled everyone, including himself.

"Who are you to say! Who are you to tell me what is best for my nephew in this, the most important decision of his life! What do you know about us, about his upbringing, about my duty, that you think you can advise on such matters!"

Ishvar the peacemaker, gentle and soft-spoken, raged and waved his hands. "You think you own my nephew and me? We are not your slaves, we only work for you! Or would you like to tell us how to live, and when to die?"

And then, because he had no practice with the emotion of anger, and did not know how a tantrum should conclude, he burst into tears, fleeing to the verandah.

"Fine!" she called after him, finding her voice. "Do what you like! But don't expect me to provide shelter for wife and children and grandchildren!"

"I don't expect anything from you!" he shouted back, his voice cracking.

Dina escaped to the front room to be alone; she did not trust herself or her tongue. Shaking, she sat on the sofa beside Maneck.

"Calm down, Aunty, he doesn't really mean it."

"I don't care what he means," her voice trembled. "But you see this? You heard with your own ears. After all I've done taken them into my home, treated them like family he shouts at me like a dog. I should throw them out right now."

"Throw, throw!" shouted Ishvar from the verandah. "What do I care!" He snorted to clear his runny nose, and tasted salt.

With a finger to his lips, Maneck-signalled to her to ignore him. "He is completely illogical about this marriage business," he whispered. "Why argue with him?"

"Only because I feel sorry for Om. But you're right, it's between him and his uncle. They can do what they like. This thing has become trouble with a capital t."

Om heard them in the back room, and buried his face in his hands.

The hours dredged the stagnant afternoon in vain, revealing nothing. Ashraf's abandoned letter lay on the dining table. The clock's big hand fell from mark to mark like a stone. No one made tea, no one went out for tea. Ishvar on the verandah, Om in the back, Maneck and Dina in the front room: the household was frozen.

The sun dropped towards the horizon, and the light started to change. A breeze visited each window, rustling the letter on the table. Soon it would be dinnertime time to make chapatis. Om was hungry.

He walked around with his chappals flopping purposefully. He drank water, letting his gla.s.s clatter against the pot. He wanted his noises to touch the others; friendly noises could melt hostility. He sat down, drummed on the Singer's bench, rattled the scissors, filled six bobbins. Then he went to the front room.

They were relieved he had come. Maneck winked. "That was something else, yaar. He exploded like a Divali Atom Bomb."

Om forced a short laugh. "I just don't know what to do with my uncle," he confided, his voice hushed. "I'm worried about him."

His words amused Dina, for they echoed the ones that Ishvar the conciliator would use in the old days when Om was rude, sewed badly, or misbehaved in general. "Be patient," she said.

"What is it about marriages and weddings that turns people crazy. On this one topic he becomes a madman."

"Yes, he does, doesn't he," grimaced Dina. "Reminds me of my brother."

"Just wait, I'll straighten out my uncle." He went to the verandah, where Ishvar sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bedding roll.

"Are you crazy, speaking like that to someone who has been so good to us?" Om began scolding, arms folded across his chest.

Ishvar looked up, smiling weakly. He heard the same echo in his nephew's words that Dina had detected. After his freak outburst of anger, he felt confused, foolish, ready to make amends.

"You go at once and tell Dinabai you are sorry. Tell her you lost your head, you didn't mean the nasty things. Go right now. Say that you respect her opinions, you realize what she says is out of concern for us. Now get up, go."

His uncle held out a hand; Om grabbed it, leaned back, hoisted him up. Ishvar shuffled into the front room and stood sheepishly before the sofa to apologize. For Dina it was a reprise: the sermon on the verandah had been audible inside. But she remained stiff, scrutinizing the wall to her right.

Having almost run out of words, Ishvar sighed. "Dinabai, to thank you for your kindness and beg forgiveness for my rudeness, I fall at your feet." He started to bend, and the threat worked.

"Don't you dare," she broke her silence. "You know how I feel about that. We will speak no more about all this."

"Okayji. It's my problem, I agree to work it out in my head."

"Fine. He is your nephew, and the fatherly duties are yours."

The agreement was broken by Ishvar the following evening. The correspondence he had initiated was yet to be dealt with, and the ordeal was putting him through bouts of excruciating doubt. Sighs of "Hai Ram" steamed from his lips at intervals. The real cause of yesterday's explosion was now clear to everyone.

"The opportunity is perfect," he brooded. "Only, it comes before we are ready for it."

"Om is a handsome fellow," said Maneck. "Look at his chikna hairstyle. He does not need a marriage reservation. Top-notch girls will line up for him by the dozen."

Ishvar whirled around and pointed, his finger an inch from Maneck's face. "You stop mocking such a serious matter."

For a moment it seemed he might strike Maneck; then he dropped his hand. "Like a son I look on you like a brother to Om. And this is how you treat me? Jeering and making fun of what is so important to me?"

Maneck was nonplussed; he thought he saw tears starting in Ishvar's eyes. But before he could come up with something to rea.s.sure him, Om intervened, "You've gone crazy for sure, you can't even take a joke anymore. All you do is drama and naatak every chance you get."

His uncle nodded meekly. "What to do, I am so worried about this. Bas, I'll keep my mouth shut from now on and think quietly."

But he badly wanted their opinions, wanted a proper discussion, a favourable consensus to cloak his obsession. And within minutes he started again. "Who can tell when a golden chance like this will reappear? Four good families to choose from. Some people go through life without finding even one suitable match."

"It's too soon for me to get married," Om repeated wearily.

"Better too soon than too late."

"What if our tailoring goes phuss because of a strike or something?" said Dina. "These are bad times, you cannot take anything for granted."

"All the more reason to marry. A new wife's kismat will change all our lives for the better."

"Even if that's true, where is the s.p.a.ce for her in this tiny flat?"

"I would not dream of asking for more s.p.a.ce. The verandah is enough."

"For you and Om, and and his wife? All three on the verandah?" The idea sounded preposterous. "Are you ridiculing me?" his wife? All three on the verandah?" The idea sounded preposterous. "Are you ridiculing me?"

"No, Dinabai, I am not. Next time I go searching for accommodation, you should come with me, see how families live. Eight, nine, or ten people in a small room. Sleeping one over the other on big shelves, from floor to ceiling, like third-cla.s.s railway berths. Or in cupboards, or in the bathroom. Surviving like goods in a warehouse."

"I know all that. You don't have to lecture me, I have lived my whole life in this city."

"Compared to such misery, three people on the verandah is a deluxe lodging," he said fervently. "But I am not insisting on it. If it's not your wish, we'll just go back to our village. The important thing is Om's marriage. Once that is done, my duty is done. The rest does not matter."

A week after Ashraf Chacha's letter, Ishvar found the courage to proceed with the viewing of the four brides-to-be. He wrote back, laboriously forming the words, that Om and he would arrive in a month. "Which will give us time to complete the dresses you brought yesterday," he told Dina. With his response in the mail, the old calm returned to him, slipping like a shirt upon his person.

Dina found it baffling: a sensible man like Ishvar, suddenly turned irrational. Could he be conducting a form of blackmail? Could he be hoping that her need for their skills would force her to take in Om's wife?

Her suspicion waxed and waned. It was stronger at times when he kept emphasizing how Dina's fortune would change if the bride resided in this flat. "You will see the difference the minute she crosses your threshold, Dinabai. Daughters-in-law have been known to transform the destiny of entire households."

"She will be neither my daughter-in-law nor yours," Dina pointed out.

But he was not to be put off by a trifling technicality. "Daughter-in-law is just a word. Call her anything you like. The hand of good fortune is not fussy about words."

She shook her head in frustration and amus.e.m.e.nt. Ishvar and deceit the two just did not go together. His inability to dissemble was well known. If his mind was in turmoil, his fingers were never far behind in manifesting the confusion; when he was pleased about something, his half-smile radiated uncontrollably, his arms ready to embrace the world. Cunning strategies did not proceed from such an open nature.

She dismissed her suspicion about blackmail. It would have made more sense in dealing with someone like Nusswan. Now he he was capable of every devious twist and turn. A person could go crazy trying to predict his actions. She wondered how it would be when the time came for the children to get married. Not children anymore Xerxes and Zarir were grown men. And Nusswan trying to select wives for them, putting to use all the practice he got when he was set on finding her a husband.

She remembered the years when her nephews were small. What a time of fun it had been, but so brief. And how miserable they were when Nusswan and Ruby and she argued, and there was screaming and shouting. Not knowing whose side to take, whether to run to Daddy or to Aunty to plead for peace. In the end, she had missed out on so much. Their school years, report cards, prize distribution days, cricket matches, their first long trousers. Independence came at a high price: a debt with a payment schedule of hurt and regret. But the other option under Nusswan's thumb was inconceivable.

As always, on looking back, Dina was convinced she was better off on her own. She tried to imagine Om a married man, tried to imagine a wife beside him, a woman with a small delicate figure like his. A wedding photo. Om in stiff new starched clothes and an extravagant wedding turban. Wife in a red sari. A modest necklace, nose-ring, earrings, bangles and the moneylender waiting in the wings, happy to put the noose around their necks. And what would she be like? And what would it be like to finally have another woman living in this flat?

A picture began to form, and Dina let it develop for two days, adding depth and detail, colour and texture. Om's wife, standing in the front door. Her head demurely lowered. Her eyes sparkling when she looks up, her mouth smiling shyly, lips covered with her fingers. The days pa.s.s. Sometimes the young woman sits alone at the window, and remembers forsaken places. Dina sits beside her and encourages her to talk, to tell her things about the life left behind. And Om's wife begins at last to speak. More pictures, more stories...

On the third day Dina said to Ishvar, "If you seriously think the verandah is big enough for three people, we can try it out."

He heard her through the Singer's hammer and hum, and braked the flywheel, slamming his palm upon it.

"Good thing you drive a sewing-machine and not a motorcar," she said. "Your pa.s.sengers would be chauffeured straight into the next world."

Laughing, he leapt from the stool. "Om! Om, listen!" he called to the verandah. "Dinabai says yes! Come here come and thank her!" Then he realized he himself still hadn't done that. "Thank you, Dinabai!" He joined his hands. "Once again you are helping us in ways beyond repayment!"

"It's only a trial. Thank me later, if it works out."

"It will, I promise! I was right about the cat...the kittens coming back...and I will be right about this, too, believe me," he said, breathless in his joy. "The main thing is, you are willing to help. That's like receiving your good wishes and blessings. It's the most important thing the most important."

The mood in the flat changed, and Ishvar couldn't stop beaming at the seams he was running off. "It will be perfect, Dinabai, believe me. For all of us. She will be useful to you also. She can clean the house, go to the bazaar, cook for "

"Are you getting a wife for Om, or a servant?" she inquired, her tone caustic.

"No no, not servant," he said reproachfully. "Why does it make her a servant if she does her duties as a wife? How else do people find happiness except in fulfilling their duty?"

"There can be no happiness without fairness," she said. "Remember that, Om don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

"Exactly," said Maneck, concealing the inexplicable sadness that came over him. "And if you misbehave, Umbrella Bachchan and his paG.o.da parasol will straighten you out."

Dina felt that granting consent for the verandah had legitimized a role for herself in Om's marriage, and given her certain rights. He had come along quite nicely in these past few months, she thought. The scalp itch was gone and his hair was healthy, no longer dripping with smelly coconut oil. For this last, the credit went to Maneck and his distaste of greasy stuff in the hair.

Slowly but surely, Om had reinvented himself in Maneck's image, from hairstyle to spa.r.s.e moustache to clothes. Most recently, he had made flared trousers for himself, borrowing Maneck's to trace the pattern. He even smelled like Maneck, thanks to Cinthol Soap and Lakme Talc.u.m Powder. And Maneck had learned from Om as well instead of always wearing shoes and socks in the heat, which made his feet smell by the end of the day, he now wore chappals.

But imitation only underscored the difference between the two: Maneck st.u.r.dy and big-boned, Om with his delicate birdlike frame. If anyone was to become a husband, she thought, Maneck seemed more ready, not Om, the skinny boy of eighteen.

Once more, she was acutely aware of the painful thinness flitting and darting about the flat, especially in the kitchen, in the evenings, when it charmed her to watch his flour-coated fingers fly, kneading the dough and rolling out the chapatis. The rolling pin moved like magic under his hands. His skill, and the delight he took in it, had a mesmerizing effect. It made her want to cease her own ch.o.r.es, just stand and stare.

She reflected on the time Om had been living with her. She had observed him devouring hearty meals, quant.i.ties that were anything but birdlike. Which removed one possibility he was not underweight because he ate poorly. And her original suspicion of a year ago wriggled out again.