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Do I really have to spell out the obvious? ‘I
didn't think you'd want to be friends with me after what
mummy did. I thought you'd never want to see me again.'

The silence drags on so long, I think this is how
it's going to end, with both of us drifting away…

When Jesse speaks her voice is raw with…pain?
anger? ‘I can't believe you hold me in such contempt,'
she says. ‘You must think so little of me if you think I'd
let your damn mother or anybody get in the way of my friendship with
you.'

Is it possible to feel two contradictory emotions
at the same precise moment? It is. I did. A sharp sting of hope
pierces my heart like a needle. A boulder of remorse at having lost
Jesse because of my own stupidity rolls down my body.

‘Jesse, please,' I say. ‘I'm
so sorry. I thought…' I am so close to tears I can't
go on. ‘You have no idea,' I start again.

She reaches out over the partition between the two
apartments and grabs my hand. ‘Don't be stupid, Thrity,'
she says.

‘You know we're surrounded by silly,
petty people. They have their own reasons for being that way. But we
don't have to get caught up in all that.'

That night, I wish I still believed in God because
I want to shout my thanks to the heavens. Instead, I stand on the
balcony and talk to the stars. One of them winks back at me.

B
ABU IS PERTURBED, I CAN tell. He paces the
balcony and stares at the end of the street to where it meets the
main road, as if looking for something on the horizon. Then, he comes
in and fidgets with the buttons of his shirt. In contrast, dad is
calm but obviously angry. ‘Pesi,' he says sternly. ‘Don't
worry so much. After all that we've been through, this is
nothing.

Just a minor embarrassment, that's all.'

But Babu is taking this personally. He is, after
all, in charge of the workshop. Dad's duties mostly take him
out of the office, canvassing for orders, submitting tenders, meeting
with customers, doing on-site inspections. The factory is Babu's
prov-ince, his responsibility, and his casual, hail-fellow-well-met
relationship with the labourers is a source of pride to him. He
swears at them, jokes with them, yells at them, steals an occasional
chappati from them, gives them extra money when they go to their
villages once a year. And they, in turn, worship him, grin when he
calls them sisterfuckers, perk up when they hear the dry cough that
precedes him into the factory each morning, beg him to share the
modest meals they prepare on their kerosene stoves each evening.

And now, these same workers are on strike. Worse,
any minute now they will show up at the house, armed with placards
and red banners and bullhorns. They will stand on the street below
our balcony and shout slogans condemning dad and Babu. It's a
strike tactic commonly used in Bombay these days, everybody knows
that, but we have never been
First Darling of the Morning / 161

picketed before and all of us are embarrassed and
afraid. But of all the family members, Babu and I are taking it the
most personally—Babu because of his almost-fraternal
relationship with the striking workers, and I, because of my
childhood bond with Jamal.

When I was little, I loved Jamal. He was a young,
tall, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with enormous white teeth and
an ever-ready, quick smile. Dad said that if only Jamal had been
educated, there was no telling how far in life he could've gone
because he was smart and learned things in a flash. Among all the
workers, he was Babu's favourite because although he didn't
talk as much as Babu did, they were alike in some ways—gregarious,
generous, quick with a laugh.

Whenever there was extra work at home—if the
apartment had to be washed and cleaned from top to bottom or if some
heavy trunks were to be brought down from the loft in the kitchen or
if ice-cream had to be hand-whipped in the wooden churn—Babu
would always ask Jamal if he wanted to earn some extra money. Always,
the answer was yes, so that Jamal was a regular presence in our home.

‘Jamal,' I would scream and rush
toward him whenever he showed up at the door and he would laugh and
pick me up and perch me on his shoulders while mummy followed him
around the house saying, ‘Careful, careful.' His body was
muscular and carried the same clean, sweet scent of sawdust that was
on my dad and uncle when they came home from the factory each
evening. Sometimes, when he was cleaning the house, he would toss me
a rag and allow me to wash the walls with him, with me scrubbing the
section closest to the floor while he stood on a ladder beside me,
occasionally looking down to throw me a quick smile, his dark black
eyes twinkling.

I would scrub until my hands ached and then he
would climb down the ladder and pull the rag from my hands. ‘Enough,
baby,' he'd say. ‘You go play now.' How
impossible it was to explain to him that working by his side was more
fun for me than anything I could do on my own, that I was tired of
making up an only child's lonely games of invention and this
act of working side by side with another person felt happy and
exciting to me.

As I grew into my awkward teenage body, my
relationship with Jamal changed as we both became more guarded and
self-conscious around each other and as the invisible taboos against
physicality and horseplay took hold under my family's
protective gaze. Our relationship became more complex and we were
more reserved around each other but beneath that exterior reserve was
the knowledge of the past, of the years that I had hero-worshipped
him and he had treated me like his younger sister. Jamal's
affection for me now took different form. When I would show up at the
workshop during summer vacations, he would confidently order someone
to go get a Coke for me, in contrast to the old foreman who would go
through his litany of, ‘What will you drink, baby? Mangola?

Limca? Gold Spot? Coca-Cola? Hah, one Coca-Cola
then, icy-cold.' Jamal had now started calling me memsahib
instead of baby but there was an irony in the way he did it, as if
the two of us shared an old joke.

I, too, was less exuberant in my pleasure at
seeing him but I still acknowledged our past bond by lingering to
talk with him in front of the other workers, asking about his family
and how his father's asthma was. Often, Jamal would point to
the book I invariably clenched in my hand, asking to see it, flipping
through the pages although we both knew that he could not read. When
he returned the book, his face shone with pride.

‘You keep reading, memsahib,' he'd
say. ‘You learn everything in the world there is to learn. Then
you come and educate poor Jamal.' We'd both laugh at that
but sometimes I had to look away, to beat back the tears that would
inexplicably sting my eyes at his words.

And now here's Jamal, standing below our
balcony, leading a group of about twenty-five other workers, as they
chant their slogans and raise their fists in the air. Even from this
distance, I notice that those twinkling dark eyes are now flashing
with fury, and his open mouth is twisted with rage. Along with their
flags and placards, they have brought drums and bells and are using
these to tide over the silence in between the slogans. Our entire
family is lined up on the balcony, too stunned and embarrassed to
move until dad takes charge.

‘Okay, come on,' he says. ‘Everybody
get in the house. The longer we stand here, the worse their antics
will get.' There is real anger in his voice. But it is Babu's
face that catches my attention—he looks as stunned by Jamal's
transformation as I feel. And there is something else in his face—a
pained look of betrayal as well as a hopeless confusion, as if he is
realizing for the first time that all the jokes and back-slapping in
the world cannot alter the basic fact that people like us and people
like Jamal occupy different worlds, that the walls that separate us
are too thick to be torn down by only goodwill. Right at that moment,
the union leader—a stranger who has shown up to organize the
workers only two months earlier—leads the workers in a
particularly lewd slogan about the women in the family and hearing
this, a light goes out of Babu's eyes and his shoulders slump.
But the next second, he lets out a roar.

‘Bloody motherfuckers,' he says. ‘I'm
going downstairs right now and grabbing that bastard union leader by
his throat. They can do all their maja-masti about me but if they say
a thing about our women…' He looks around for a shirt to
throw over his sadra but dad steps toward him. ‘Pesi, calm
down. This is exactly the reaction they want from us, don't you
see? Then they'll accuse us of breaking the strike by using
physical violence. No, let's get on with our day. Sooner or
later they will get tired of acting like monkeys and go home.'

But I feel a compelling urge to go back out on the
balcony because I have an insane thought that if I can just make eye
contact with Jamal, I will be able to re-establish our old friendship
and then…then…but here my imagination fails me.

I venture out anyway, but it is of no use. Upon
spotting me, the bells and drums get louder and the chanting more
frequent.

I try to catch Jamal's eye but the distance
is too great and he is no longer in the forefront. I stand there,
wanting to do something, make some grand gesture that expresses equal
parts solidarity and disappointment, but nothing comes to mind. Just
then, Roshan spots me. ‘Come in, you idiot,' she yells
from the living room. ‘Why do you always want to make a fool of
yourself?'

The strike is settled four days later. The outside
union leader had approached dad and Babu the day after the
demonstration and asked them how much they were willing to pay him to
simply declare the strike over and skip town. ‘Of course,
bhaisahibs, you'll have to give the workers a small wage
increase, just so I can save face,' he added with a sly smile.

‘Otherwise, they'll come after my
throat.'

Dad did not try to hide the contempt on his face.
‘So all this hero-giri was just for show? Disrupting my
business, coming to my house and embarrassing me…'

The union leader looked sheepish. ‘That was
just theatre, sir. Something to make the workers feel good.'

‘And if we do not pay your…bribe?'

The man remained unperturbed. ‘Not a bribe,
sir. Baksheesh.

A little reward for calling off the strike.'

And so the strike has ended. But the easy, chatty
relation between Babu and Jamal is gone, with Babu being wary and
Jamal being uneasy and awkward. Sometimes, Babu cannot hide his
bitterness at what he considers to have been Jamal's
disloyalty. Jamal, in turn, is increasingly sullen and quiet. When he
greets me at the factory now, his face is blank and although he still
automatically orders a Coke for me whenever I visit, it is a
conditioned response, with none of the old knowingness or authority.
The exuberant man with the ready grin seems to have fled along with
the vanishing union leader.

Occasionally, I try to engage him in conversation
but the answers are brief and perfunctory.

I am at the factory on a day when, four months
after the strike has been settled, Babu's lingering bitterness
spills over. Jamal has screwed up on an order, has cut the logs of
timber half a centimetre too short and Babu is furious at the waste.
In his usual manner he cusses at Jamal but this time, the old
teasing, the wink that used to take the sting out of Babu's
words, is missing. Jamal says nothing, which only seems to infuriate
Babu more. ‘So where is the Lion of the Punjab these days?'

Babu cries, berating the man in the presence of
the other workers. ‘What has happened to his roar? Did he sell
it for a fifteen-paise an hour pay raise?' All heads turn to
Jamal, expecting a fiery comeback. Instead, he smiles a self-effacing
smile, lowers his head and walks away.

But three days later, he shows up at our home in
the evening.

It is the first time he has been to the house
since the demonstration and so when a startled Freny opens the door,
she hesitates for a second before letting him in. ‘How are you,
memsahib,' he says to her and then spotting me behind Freny, he
flashes me a quick but subdued smile. ‘Are both seths at home?'

Freny leads him to the living room and then leaves
to go get dad and Babu, so that Jamal and I are alone for a brief
moment.

‘Ae, Jamal,' I say brightly,
desperately trying to reprise the easiness of our earlier encounters.
‘You want something to drink? Chai? Soft drink?'

He smiles again but shakes his head no. We are
quiet for a moment and then suddenly he says, ‘Pesi seth is
very angry with me, baby.' I open my mouth to say something, to
contradict him, to reassure him but the sadness in his face takes my
breath away. Before I can say anything, he continues,

‘I made a bad, bad mistake.'

And now I am seized with contradictory feelings,
so that one part of me agrees with him but another part also wants to
lecture him on his right to strike and how he has nothing to
apologize for. Again, he speaks before I can: ‘This family has
been very good to me, baby.' I look away from him, and when I
can trust myself to look at his face again, I notice that his eyes
are red and teary.

Babu and dad enter the room, their faces guarded.
‘Salaam wa'alaykum,' Jamal says and they
automatically reply,

‘Wa'alaykum salaam.'

‘Everything at the factory okay?' Babu
asks and visibly relaxes when Jamal assures him that everything is
fine. I realize that they have no idea about the reason for this
visit.