A Fine Balance (34 page)

For all the vast inventory it carried, the shop’s backbone, ultimately, was a secret soft-drink formula handed down in the Kohlah family for four generations. There was a little factory in the cellar where the soft drinks were mixed, aerated, and bottled. An assistant washed and prepared the empties, and loaded the crates for delivery. To maintain the formula’s secret, Mr. Kohlah did the actual mixing and manufacturing himself; his eyepatch testified to that, covering the hole created by a defective bottle exploding under the pressure of carbonation.

With a handkerchief covering the mess on his face, he had gone upstairs to his wife. Barely a year had passed since their marriage, and it was their first crisis. Would she weep and wail, or faint, or stay composed? He was as curious about her reaction as he was concerned about his eye.

Seven months pregnant, Aban Kohlah was quite in control. “Farokh, would you first like a peg of brandy?” He said yes. She had a tiny sip herself, then drove him to the hospital down in the valley. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive – his spectacles had broken the impact of the glass projectile, keeping it from reaching his brain. But it was impossible to save the eye.

Mr. Kohlah said that was all right. “One eye is sufficient for the things I am looking forward to seeing,” he smiled, touching his wife’s swollen belly. Whereas, he added, the ugliness of the world would now trouble him only half as much.

He refused to have a glass eye fitted after the socket had healed. An eyepatch became part of his daily attire. He wore it while working in the store, and at social occasions. On his long evening walks through the hillside forest, however, the patch occupied his pocket while he admired for the umpteenth time the beauty of the place and munched on a carrot.

The loss of his eye allowed him to indulge his fondness for carrots. It had been kept in check by Mrs. Kohlah, who said that though carrots were a good thing, any kind of mania was a bad thing. But now she had to allow his passion full play: carrot juice, carrot salad, carrot-ma-gose, carrots in his pocket as walking companions.

“I need carrots,” insisted Mr. Kohlah. “My one remaining eye must stay fitter than ever, it has to do double duty.”

Their little son, growing quickly, soon learned about his father’s craze. When he was scolded for misbehaving, he would steal a carrot from the kitchen and carry it to his father as a peace offering, risking a second scolding from his mother.

After the accident Mr. Kohlah was extra careful in the cellar. He allowed no one in the area while the tired old machines rattled and hissed, filling bottles with the fizz of Kohlah’s Cola and the till with the tinkle of much-needed money.

His friends, fearing for his safety, showed their concern by joking about it. “Careful, Farokh, it can be dangerous when you go underground. Cola mining is as risky as coal mining.” But he laughed with them and ignored their hints.

Sacrificing subtlety, they suggested he should seriously consider replacing the ancient equipment, give some thought to modernizing and expanding the operation. “Listen, Farokh, look at it rationally,” they urged. “Kohlah’s Cola is so good, it deserves to be known throughout the country, not just in our little corner.”

But modernization and expansion were foreign ideas, incomprehensible to someone who refused even to advertise. Kohlah’s Cola (or Kaycee, as it was known) was famous through all the little settlements perched on hillsides for miles around. Word of mouth had been good enough for his forefathers, he said, and it was good enough for him.

From time to time contenders emerged with fanfare, touting rival brands, but soon went out of business, unable to compete with the Kohlah family’s product. Nothing could approach Kaycee, claimed the faithful patrons – its delicious flavour was as unique as the air in the mountains. The soft drink and the General Store flourished.

And so, by the time Maneck started school, the business was on a sound footing. Mr. Kohlah carefully guarded the formula that had salvaged their livelihood, waiting for the day when he would reveal it to Maneck, as his father had revealed it to him. An air of contentment surrounded his life, a quiet pride at having survived the ordeal by fire. It surfaced when neighbours gathered in the evening and the talk shifted gently to times gone by, to the stories of their lives; and when Mr. Kohlah’s turn came he told of his family’s glory days, not from self-pity or notions of false grandeur, nor to sing his own achievement in the present, but as a lesson in living life on the borderline – modern maps could ruin him, but they could not displace his dreams for his family.

Of course, the stories had all been heard before, many times over, yet there was always room for one more telling. And Mr. Kohlah was not the only one guilty of repetition.

Most of his and Mrs. Kohlah’s friends were army men and their wives, who, grown used to a lifetime of British-style cantonment living, had chosen to retire here in the hills, unable to countenance a return to dusty plains and smelly cities. They too had oft-told tales to tell, of bygone days, when discipline was discipline and not some watered-down version unworthy of the name. When leaders could lead, when everyone knew their place in the scheme of things, and life proceeded in an orderly fashion, without daily being threatened by chaos.

When these retired brigadiers, majors, and colonels came to tea at the Kohlahs’, they arrived suited and booted, as they called it, with watches in their fobs and ties around their necks. These trappings might have seemed comical to a nationalist bent of mind but had talismanic value for their wearers. It was all that stood between them and the disorder knocking at the door. Mr. Kohlah himself was partial to bow ties. Mrs. Kohlah served the tea on Aynsley bone china; the cutlery was Sheffield. If it was a special dinner at Navroze or Khordad Sal, she used the Wedgwood set.

“Such a lovely pattern,” said Mrs. Grewal. “When will they learn to make such beautiful things in this country?”

Brigadier and Mrs. Grewal were the Kohlahs’ closest neighbours, and dropped in fairly often. Mrs. Grewal was also the unchallenged leader of the army wives. Taking the cue from her, someone lightly struck a crystal glass to test the purity of its music; another inverted a plate to gaze lovingly at the manufacturer’s monogram. Praise was lavished in equal portions on the food and on the bowls and platters that held it. Chaos was successfully kept at bay for yet another day.

Later, the talk turned, as it had countless times before, to the nightmare that would haunt them to the end of their days – they anatomized the Partition, recited the chronology of events, and mourned the senseless slaughter. Brigadier Grewal wondered if the sundered parts would some day be sewn together again. Mr. Kohlah fingered his patch and said anything was possible. Consolation, as always, was found in muddled criticism of the colonizers who, lacking the stomach for proper conclusions, had departed in a hurry, though the post-mortem was tempered by nostalgia for the old days.

After such evenings, Mr. Kohlah wondered why his air of contentment felt ruffled – not undermined, but as though someone or something was trying to tamper with it. He enjoyed the dinners and tea parties greatly, and would not have absented himself for anything; yet there was a sense of unease, like a smell which should not have been there, of something rotten.

It took a day or two for his equilibrium to return. Then he began to feel again that yes, it had been the right decision not to leave his home in the hills, it was still a good place for his family. “The air and water is so pure, the mountains so beautiful, and the business is doing very well,” wrote he and Mrs. Kohlah to the relatives who periodically beseeched them to leave. “Nowhere else can Maneck have better expectations for his future.”

If Maneck had been consulted he would have agreed completely; and never mind the future, the present would have been reason enough for him, for his happy childhood universe. His days were rich and full – school in the morning and afternoon, the General Store after that, followed by a walk with his father, late in the evening, when he would stride manfully alongside to keep up, or else Daddy would tease him that slow coaches got left behind.

But Sundays were the best days. On Sundays a gaddi man called Bhanu came to tidy the garden behind the house. Maneck looked forward all week to being outdoors with Bhanu, wandering around the property and doing chores under his direction. The area beyond the first fifty yards, where it began to slope downhill, wild with shrubs and trees and thick undergrowth, was the most interesting. There, Bhanu taught him the names of strange flowers and herbs, things which did not grow near the front of the house with the roses and lilies and marigolds. He pointed out the deadly datura plant and the one that was its antidote, and leaves that mitigated the poison of certain snakes, others which cured stomach ailments, and the stems whose pulp healed cuts and wounds. He showed Maneck how to squeeze a snapdragon to make its jaws open. Late in the year, when the weather turned chilly, they gathered dead twigs and branches as the afternoon drew to a close, and made a small fire.

Sometimes Bhanu brought along his daughter, Suraiya, who was the same age as Maneck. Then Maneck divided his time between chores and play. At noon, Mrs. Kohlah called the children in for lunch. Suraiya was shy about eating at the table; there were no chairs in her house. It was a few visits before she would run in with Maneck and readily take her place. Bhanu continued to eat his food outside.

One afternoon, Suraiya squatted on the far slope among the bushes. Maneck waited out of sight for a moment, then followed her curiously. She smiled as he approached. He heard the soft hiss, and bent over to look. Her little stream had made a frothy puddle.

He unbuttoned his pants beside her and produced a fluid arc. “I can do soo-soo standing,” he said.

Laughing, she finished and pulled up her underpants. “So can my brother, he also has a small soosoti like yours.”

It became a ritual from then on to go in the bushes every time Suraiya came to work with her father. Gradually, their curiosity led them to closer anatomical examinations.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Kohlah when they came in to tea. “Why are you two giggling all the time?”

Over the next few Sundays she began watching from the kitchen window, and saw them go repeatedly down the slope, where her eyes could not follow. Her attempt to sneak up on them failed. They heard her footsteps before she was anywhere near, and ran out laughing.

Later, she confided her suspicions to Mr. Kohlah. “Farokh, I think you need to keep an eye on Maneck. While Suraiya is here.”

“Why, what has he done?”

“Well, they go in the bushes and –” she blushed. “I haven’t actually seen anything, but…”

“The little rascal,” smiled Mr. Kohlah. The following Sunday he stayed out in the garden, supervising Bhanu’s work and patrolling the periphery of the slope. It became part of his routine for the rest of that year. The children had to exercise all their cunning to evade the adult’s watchful eye.

When Maneck completed the fourth standard, Mr. Kohlah began to investigate the possibility of sending him to a boarding school. The quality of instruction available in the local day school had become quite appalling, Brigadier Grewal and everyone else agreed. “A good education is the most important thing,” they said.

The boarding school they selected was eight hours away by bus. Maneck detested the decision. The thought of leaving the hill-station – his entire universe – brought him to a state of panic. “I like my school here,” he pleaded. “And how will I work in the shop in the evening if you send me away?”

“Stop worrying about work, you’re only eleven,” laughed Mr. Kohlah. “You have to enjoy your boyhood first. It will be great fun, living with fellows your own age. You will love the school. And the store will still be here when you come home for holidays.”

Maneck learned to tolerate boarding school but not to love it. He felt an ache of betrayal. Not one day passed without his remembering the house, his parents, the shop, the mountains. He found his classmates very different from the boys he had known. They behaved as though they were better than he. The older boys talked about girls, and touched the younger boys. Someone showed him a deck of playing cards that had pictures of naked women. The dark patches between their legs horrified him. It couldn’t be, the pictures had to be fake, he thought, remembering the smooth, sweetly whispering hole of Suraiya.

“That’s hair – that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” said the older boy. “These are genuine photographs. Look, I’ll show you.” He undid his pants to display his pubic hair, also releasing his tumescent penis from its confines.

“But you’re a boy, it doesn’t prove anything about girls,” said Maneck. He wanted a closer look at the cards. The fellow would not let him unless he did him a favour. He held Maneck very close, rubbing against him and moaning. It was a strange sound, thought Maneck, as though he was trying to do kakka. The cards were handed over after the fellow had spurted.

Maneck returned home for the Divali vacation, let two days pass, then tried to convince his parents not to send him back. He kept it up till Mr. Kohlah got annoyed. “There will be no more talk on this subject,” he said.

Maneck went to bed without wishing them good night. The omission tormented him for a long time, leaving a hollow that sleep refused to fill. After midnight had struck, he considered going to his parents’ room and rectifying his foolish defiance. But pride, and the fear of angering Daddy again, kept him in his own bed.

Up at dawn, he hugged his mother by the stove and murmured good morning, then skirted his father at the kitchen window and slipped into his chair. “His little lordship is still sulking,” said Mr. Kohlah, smiling.

Maneck looked down at his cup, frowning into it. He did not want to lose control of his mouth and smile back.

It was Sunday, and Bhanu came as usual to work in the garden. Suraiya was not with him. Maneck tagged along for a while before asking about her.

“She is with her mother,” said Bhanu. “She will be with her from now on.”