A Fine Balance (10 page)

This last bit of advice was uppermost in Dina’s mind when she was taken to meet Fredoon, a bachelor who lived alone. Shirin Aunty warned her not to go alone to his flat. “Although he is a perfect gentleman, people’s tongues are mischievous. They will talk that some funny business is going on. Your name will be spoilt.”

Dina did not care about people’s tongues and felt no danger from Fredoon, though she was prepared to bolt if he ever asked her to take his inseam. To reassure Shirin Aunty, she said a friend was always with her. What she did not say was that the friend was Fredoon. For that was what he soon became. His commissions consisted mainly of little frocks and short pants and pinafores; to help Dina, he presented clothing on birthdays to the children of friends and relatives instead of envelopes stuffed with rupees.

Their friendship grew. Dina often accompanied him to textile stores to help him select material for the gifts. After the shopping, they would stop for tea and cakes at Bastani’s. Sometimes Fredoon invited her back to his flat for dinner, picking up fried mutton chops or vindaloo on the way. He was always encouraging her to try new frock patterns, assert herself forcefully before her clients, demand higher rates.

Over the next several months, Dina became more confident about her abilities. The sewing was easy, thanks to her sister-in-law’s training. And when there was something tricky, she consulted Shirin Aunty. Her visits brought the two old people such pleasure, she went regularly, pretending to be confused by something or other: ruched collars, raglan sleeves, accordion pleats.

The sewing produced snippets of fabric every day, and Shirin Aunty suggested collecting them. “Waste nothing – remember, there is a purpose for everything. These scraps can be very useful.” She quickly demonstrated by making a lumpy sanitary pad.

“What a good idea,” said Dina. Her budget needed all the help it could get. The textile stuffing was not as absorbent as the pads she used to buy, but the homemade ones could be changed more frequently since they cost nothing. As an added precaution, though, she wore a very dark skirt for the duration.

Work made the hours pass quickly in the little flat. While her eyes and fingers were immersed in the sewing, she acquired a heightened awareness of noises from the flats around her. She collected the sounds, sorted them, replayed them, and created a picture of the lives being lived by her neighbours, the way she transformed measurements into clothes.

Rustom’s policy regarding neighbours had been to avoid them as much as possible. A little sahibji-salaam was enough, he said, or it led to gossiping and kaana-sori that got out of hand. But the washing of pots and pans, ringing of doorbells, bargaining with vendors, laundry noises, the flop and slap of clothes thrashed in soapy water, family quarrels, arguments with servants – all this seemed like gossip too. And she realized that the noises from her own flat would narrate her life for the neighbours’ ears, if they bothered to listen. There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

Sometimes, the old pastime of attending free concerts tempted her, but she was reluctant to resume it. Anything which seemed like a clutching at bygone days made her wary. The road towards self-reliance could not lie through the past.

By and by, when the tailoring had settled into a comfortable routine for Dina, Shirin Aunty taught her to knit pullovers. “There is not much demand for woollen things,” she said, “but some people order them for style, or if they are going to hill-stations for a holiday.” As they progressed towards complicated patterns, Shirin Aunty presented her with her entire collection of design books and knitting needles.

Lastly, she instructed Dina in embroidery, with a warning: “Needlework on table napkins and tea-cloths is very popular, and pays well. But it’s a great strain on the eyes. Don’t do too much, or it will catch up with you after forty.”

And so, three years later, when Shirin Aunty passed away, followed by Darab Uncle a few months later, Dina felt confident of managing on her own. She also felt very alone, as though she had lost a second set of parents.

C
ontrary to Nusswan’s conviction that no one would blame him for Dina’s leaving, the relatives quickly grouped into two camps. While a few, professing neutrality, felt comfortable on both sides of the line, at least half were staunchly in support of Dina. To show their approval of her independent spirit, they came out with numerous ideas for money-making ventures.

“Butter biscuits. That’s where all the cash is.”

“Why don’t you start a crèche? Any mother would prefer you to look after her children, instead of an ayah.”

“Make a good rose sherbet and you won’t have to look back. People will buy it by the gallon.”

Dina listened with gratitude to everything, inclining her head interestedly as they formulated their schemes. She became an expert at non-committal nodding. When the tailoring was slow, she filled their orders for cakes, bhakras, vasanu, and coomas.

Then her friend Zenobia had a brainwave about in-home haircuts for children. Zenobia had fulfilled her schoolgirl ambition: she was now chief hairstylist at the Venus Beauty Salon. After the shop closed at night, she instructed Dina on a wig glued to a plaster-of-Paris cranium. The comb kept getting caught in the cheap mop’s knotted strands.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured Dina. “It’s much easier with real hair.” From the surplus in the shop she put together a kit of scissors, hair clippers, brush, comb, talcum powder and powder puff. Then they made a list of friends and relatives with children who could be used as guinea pigs. Xerxes and Zarir’s names were left out; though Nusswan would have welcomed the opportunity to save on haircuts, Dina felt uncomfortable now in his house.

“Just go after the brats, one by one, till you have cropped the whole jing-bang lot,” said Zenobia. “It’s only a question of practice.” She monitored the results, and soon declared Dina trained and ready. Now Dina began going door to door.

After a few days, however, the enterprise folded without a single haircut. Neither she nor Zenobia had remembered that most people regarded hair clippings within their dwellings as extreme bad luck. Dina related the misadventures to her friend, how the thought of hair hitting the floor made the prospective clients hit the ceiling. “Madam, you have no consideration? What have we done to you that you want to bring misfortune within our four walls?”

Some people did offer her their children’s heads. “But only if you do it outside,” they said. Dina refused. There were limits to what she would do. She was an in-home children’s stylist, not an open-air pavement barber.

Afterwards, she did not hang up her clippers for good. Her friends’ children continued to benefit from her skills. Some of the little boys and girls, remembering the practice haircuts, hid when Dina Aunty arrived. As she got better, they were less afraid.

Through all this, there were lean times when it was difficult to meet the rent or pay the electricity bill. Shirin Aunty and Darab Uncle, while they were still alive, had often tided her over with a loan of forty or fifty rupees. Now the only alternative was Nusswan.

“Of course, it’s my duty,” he said piously. “Are you sure sixty will be enough?”

“Yes, thank you. I will pay it back next month.”

“No rush. So tell me, have you found a sweetheart?”

“No,” she replied, wondering if he suspected something about Fredoon. Could someone have seen them together and reported back to Nusswan?

During the two years since Shirin Aunty’s death, the bachelor had progressed from friend to lover. Though the idea of marriage was still difficult for Dina to entertain, she enjoyed Fredoon’s company because he was perfectly content to spend time in her presence without feeling compelled to make clever conversation or to participate in the usual social activities of couples. The two were equally happy sitting in his flat or walking in a public garden.

But when they ventured into the private garden of intimacy, it was a troubled relationship. There were certain things she could not bring herself to do. The bed – any bed – was out of bounds, sacred and reserved for married couples only. So they used a chair. Then one day, as she swung a leg over to straddle Fredoon, her action suddenly resurrected the image of Rustom flinging his leg over his bicycle. Now the chair, like the bed, was no longer possible.

“Oh God!” said Fredoon, groaning softly. He put on his trousers and made tea.

A few days later he persuaded her into the standing position, and Dina had no objections. He began to refine the procedure as much as he could, finding a low platform for her to stand on; their heights became more compatible during their embraces. Next he bought a stool, took some personal measurements, and sawed off precisely two and a quarter inches, adjusting it to the proper size for her to rest one leg. Sometimes she raised the left, sometimes the right. He arranged these accessories against the wall and suspended pillows from the ceiling at appropriate heights for her head and back, and under the hips.

“Is it comfortable?” he asked tenderly, and she nodded.

But the ultimate satisfaction of the bed could only be approximated. What should have been the occasional spice to vary the regular menu had become the main course, leaving the appetite often confused or unfulfilled.

The opposite wall of Fredoon’s room had a small window in it. Outside the window was a streetlamp. Once, between dusk and nightfall, as they were locked in their vertical lovemaking, it started to rain. A moist garden smell came in through the window. Through her half-open eyes Dina saw the drizzle float like mist around the lamplight. Occasionally, a hand or elbow or shoulder strayed beyond the pillows, onto the bare wall, and the cement felt deliciously cool against their heated flesh.

“Mmm,” she said, enjoying with all her senses, and he was pleased. The rain was heavier now. She could see it slanting in needles past the streetlamp.

She watched it for a while, then stiffened. “Please stop,” she whispered, but he continued moving.

“Stop, I said! Please, Fredoon, stop it!”

“Why?” he begged. “Why? Now what’s wrong?”

She shivered. “The rain…”

“The rain? I’ll shut the window if you like.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, something made me think of Rustom.”

He took her face between his hands, but she pushed them away. She swam out of his embrace and into the memory of that night from long ago: she was wearing Rustom’s warm raincoat; her umbrella had broken in the storm. And after the concert, at the bus shelter, they had held hands for the first time ever, their palms moist with the finely falling drizzle.

Remembering the purity of that moment, Dina contrasted it with the present. What Fredoon and she did in this room seemed a sordid, contraption-riddled procedure, filling her with shame and remorse. She shuddered.

Silently, Fredoon handed Dina her brassière and underpants. She shrank towards the pillowed wall while she dressed, turning away from him. He put on his trousers and made tea.

Later, he tried to cheer her up. “In all the bloody Hindi movies, rain brings the hero and heroine closer together,” he complained. “But it is, from this moment onwards, the bane of my life.” She smiled, and he was encouraged. “Never mind, I’ll dismantle this and design a new set for our performance.”

And Fredoon kept trying. Despite his creative efforts and secret consultations of sex manuals, however, the past could only be imperfectly distanced. It was a slippery thing, he discovered, slithering into the present at the least excuse, dodging the strongest defences.

But he remained uncomplaining, and Dina liked him for it. She was determined to keep him a secret from Nusswan as long as possible.

“No boyfriend as yet?” said Nusswan, counting out the money from his wallet. “Remember, you are thirty already. It will be too late for children, once you have dried up. I can still find you a decent husband. For what are you slaving and slogging?”

She put the sixty rupees in her purse and let him have his say. It was the interest he extracted on his loan, she thought philosophically – a bit excessive, but the only currency that she could afford and he would accept.

The violin had sat untouched upon the cupboard for five years. During the biannual flat cleaning, when Dina wrapped a white cloth over her head and swept the walls and ceilings with the long-handled broom, she wiped the top of the cupboard without moving the black case.

For six more years, she continued to employ the same strategy against the violin, barely acknowledging its existence. Now it was the twelfth death anniversary. Time to sell the instrument, she decided. Better that someone use it, make music with it, instead of it gathering dust. She got up on a chair and took down the case. The rusted metal snaps squealed as her fingers flipped them open; then she raised the lid, and gasped.

The soundboard had collapsed completely around the f-holes. The four strings flopped limply between the tailpiece and tuning pegs, while the felt-lining of the case was in shreds, chewed to tatters by marauding insects. Bits of burgundy wool clung to her hands. Her stomach felt queasy. With a trembling hand she drew out the bow from its compartment within the lid. The horsehair hung from one end of it like a thin long ponytail; barely a dozen unbroken strands remained in place. She put everything back and decided to take it to L.M. Furtado & Co.