A Fine Balance (81 page)

“Next time, you must come with an empty stomach,” they said. “We want the pleasure of feeding you.” They put away the snacks and tried to make him join them for a cinema show and late dinner, inviting him to stay the night.

“Please excuse me, I should leave now,” said Maneck when he felt he had done his time. “I have to start early tomorrow.”

Back in Dina’s flat, he accused her of ruining his evening. “I’m never going again, Aunty. They talk non-stop, and behave like silly children.”

“Don’t be mean, they are your mother’s family.”

She helped to take down his empty suitcase from the top of the cupboard, then dusted it for him. Watching him pack, she interrupted often with advice, reminders, instructions: don’t forget, take this, do that. “And most of all, be nice to your parents, don’t get into any arguments with them. They have missed you so much this year. Enjoy your vacation.”

“Thank you, Aunty. And please don’t forget to feed the cats.”

“Oh yes, I’ll feed them. I’ll even cook their favourite dishes. Shall I serve with cutlery, or do they eat with fingers?”

“No, Aunty, save the cutlery for your daughter-in-law. She’ll be here in three weeks.”

She threatened to spank him. “Trouble is, your mother didn’t do it often enough when you were small.”

Early next morning he hugged her and was gone.

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet. Still, how was it possible to feel lonely again after living alone most of her life? Didn’t the heart and mind learn anything? Could one year do so much damage to her resilience?

For the umpteenth time she consulted the dates on the calendar: three weeks before Ishvar and Om returned; and then three more, for Maneck.

The days shuffled along unhurriedly. She decided this was a good opportunity to give the flat a thorough going-over. In every room she heard the echoes of the tailors’ tireless banter, haunting her while she scoured the kitchen, swept the ceilings with the long-handled broom, cleaned the windows and ventilators, washed all the floors.

In Maneck’s room she found his friend’s chess set in the cupboard. To be returned when college reopens, she assumed.

Next, her own cupboard was emptied out, all but the bottommost shelf. She wiped the interior, stacked the Au Revoir remnants, and sorted her clothes. The things she did not wear anymore went in a separate pile. To offer to Om’s wife. Depending, of course, on her size. And what type of person she turned out to be.

Then Dina tackled the bottommost shelf, crammed with a year’s worth of the snippets from each sewing day, the tiny bits, useless for anything except stuffing the homemade sanitary pads. She dug her arms in and out tumbled the mountain of fragments, making her laugh aloud. Not even another fifty years of periods would use up so much cotton filling. She stocked a bag with a reasonable amount and prepared to get rid of the rest.

Then she thought of Om’s wife again. Surely her youth and vitality could use a healthy lot of it. Better save it for now, she thought, happily pushing the shreds back onto the shelf.

The spate of cleaning eased the passage of many days. She turned her mind to the verandah, soon to be home for the married couple and the uncle. The tailors’ one bedding roll was insufficient, she decided, and set to making extra sheets and covers out of Au Revoir’s bounty.

The foot treadle of Ishvar’s Singer was hard going for her. She had never worked on this type of model during her sewing years. She switched to Shirin Aunty’s little hand-cranked machine, and it was fun. With every seam she ran off, she said to herself: how fortunate, to have all this cloth for all our needs.

The picture of Ishvar, Om and his wife sleeping on the verandah bothered her. Just imagine, she thought, if on my wedding night Darab Uncle and Shirin Aunty had slept in the same room with Rustom and me.

The only solution she could come up with was to string a curtain down the middle of the verandah. She measured the distance, then stitched together the thickest fabrics from the hoard of remnants. Better a token wall than nothing.

She hoped Ishvar and Om would be pleased with her efforts. She had done what she could. If the new wife tried half as hard, she was certain they would get along well.

Two nails plus a length of twine, and the symbolic partition was erected. She stood back, examining each side of the curtain. The lives of the poor were rich in symbols, she decided.

A
GAUNT, BEARDED FIGURE
hurried towards the tailors as they wrestled their trunk out of the compartment and onto the platform. “At last,” he clapped for joy. “Here you are.”

“Ashraf Chacha! We were going to surprise you at the shop!” They dragged their belongings to the side, shaking hands, hugging, laughing with no reason other than the pleasure of being together again.

Ishvar and Om were the sole passengers to alight. Two coolies resting by the water tap remained on their haunches; instinct told them their services were not required. The sleepy little station awakened gradually under the engine’s pulse. Vendors with fruit, cold drinks, tea, pakora, ice gola, sunglasses, magazines besieged the train, embellishing the air with their cries.

“Come,” said Ashraf. “Let’s go home, you must be tired. We’ll eat first, then you can tell me what wonders you have been up to in the city.”

A woman with a small basket of figs sang at their side: “Unjir!” The shrill call started out in a plea, sliding into a rebuke as they passed her by. The cry went unrepeated. She tried the passengers on the train, framed by windows like a travelling gallery of portraits. Jogging alongside the compartments, she supported the basket at her hip; it bounced like a baby. The guard blew the warning whistle and startled a cream-coloured mongrel drowsing near the siding tracks. It scratched languidly behind an ear, face screwed up like a man shaving.

“Chachaji, you’re a genius,” said Om. “We don’t write you the arrival date and yet you meet the train. How did you know we were coming today?”

“I didn’t,” he smiled. “But I knew it would be this week. And the train rolls in at the same hour every day.”

“So you waited here every day? And what about the shop, hahn?”

“It’s not that busy.” He reached to help with the luggage. His hand, corded by prominent veins, shook uncontrollably. The whistle blew again, and the train rumbled past. The vendors disappeared. Like a house abandoned, the railway station sank from sleepy to forlorn.

But the emptiness was transitory. Slowly, more than a dozen figures materialized from the shadows of the sheds and storehouses. Lapped in rags, wrapped in hunger, they lowered their brittle bodies over the edge of the platform onto the rails and began moving systematically down the tracks from sleeper to sleeper, searching for the flotsam of railway journeys, bending now and then, collecting the garbage of travellers. When two hands grabbed the same prize, there was a tussle. The wood and gravel underneath where the wc had halted was wet, stinking, buzzing with flies. The tattered army retrieved paper, food scraps, plastic bags, bottle tops, broken glass, every precious bit jettisoned by the departing train. They tucked it away in their gunny sacks, then melted into the shadows of the station, to sort their collections and await the next train.

“So the city has been good to you, nah?” said Ashraf, as they took the level-crossing to the other side. “Both of you look prosperous.”

“Chachaji, your eyes are generous,” said Ishvar. The trembling of Ashraf’s hands distressed him. And age, taking advantage of the tailors’ absence, had finally taught his shoulders to stoop. “We have no complaints. But how are you?”

“First class, for my years.” Ashraf straightened, patting his chest, though the stoop returned almost immediately. “And what about you, Om? You were so reluctant to go. Look at you now, a healthy shine upon your face.”

“That’s because my worms have vacated the premises.” He explained with gusto how the parasites had been vanquished by the vermifuge.

“You meet Chachaji after a year and a half, and all you can talk about is your worms?”

“Why not?” said Ashraf. “Health is the most important thing. See, you could never have got such good medicine over here. One more reason to be happy you went, nah?”

Ishvar and Om slowed at the corner near the rooming house, but Ashraf steered them on towards his shop. “Why waste money for a bed filled with bugs? Stay with me.”

“That’s too much trouble for you.”

“But I insist – you must use my house to entertain for the wedding. Do me that favour. It’s been so lonely this last year.”

“Mumtaz Chachi won’t be pleased to hear you say that,” said Om. “Doesn’t her company count?”

Puzzlement clouded Ashraf’s smile. “You didn’t receive the letter? My Mumtaz passed away, about six months after you left.”

“What?” They stopped and let the luggage slip from their hands. The trunk hit the ground hard.

“Careful!” Ashraf bent to lift it.”But I wrote to you, care of Nawaz.”

“He didn’t give it to us,” said Om indignantly.

“Maybe the letter came late – after we moved to the hutment colony.”

“He could have brought it to us.”

“Yes, but who knows if he received it.”

They dropped their speculating and took turns hugging Ashraf Chacha; they kissed his cheeks three times, as much for their own comfort as his.

“I was worried when there was no reply,” he said. “I thought you must be very busy, trying to find work.”

“No matter how busy, we would have written if we knew,” said Ishvar. “We would have come to you. This is terrible – we should have been here for the funeral, she was like my mother, we should never have left…”

“Now that is foolish talk. Nobody can see into the future.”

They resumed walking, and Ashraf told them about the illness that had overtaken, and then taken, Mumtaz Chachi. As he spoke about his loss, it became clear why he had waited at the station platform every day to meet their train: he was matching his wits with time the great tormentor.

“It’s a strange thing. When my Mumtaz was alive, I would sit alone all day, sewing or reading. And she would be by herself in the back, busy cooking and cleaning and praying. But there was no loneliness, the days passed easily. Just knowing she was there was enough. And now I miss her so much. What an unreliable thing is time – when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl’s hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair.” He sighed and smiled sadly. “But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”

A clutter of troublesome feelings filled Ishvar – guilt, sorrow, the foreboding of old age waiting to waylay his own future. He wished he could assure Ashraf Chacha that they would not leave him alone again. Instead he said, “We would like to visit Mumtaz Chachi’s grave.”

The request pleased Ashraf greatly. “Her anniversary date is next week. We can go together. But you have come a long way for a joyous occasion. Let us talk about that now.”

He was determined not to let the sad news dampen their spirits. He explained that preliminary meetings with each of the four families were three days away. “Some of them were worried at first. I, a Muslim, making arrangements for you, nah.”

“How dare they,” said Ishvar indignantly. “Didn’t they know we are one family?”

“Not at first,” said Ashraf. But others who were aware of the longstanding ties between them had explained there was no cause for concern. “So it’s fixed now. The bridegroom must be anxious,” he prodded Om’s stomach playfully. “You will have to be patient a little longer. Inshallah, everything will go well.”

“I’m not worried,” said Om. “So tell me what’s new. Anything in town?”

“Not much. A Family Planning Centre has opened. I don’t think you would be interested in that,” he chuckled. “And everything else, good or bad, has remained the same.”

A surge of excitement quickened Om’s steps as their street came into view, and then the signboard of Muzaffar Tailoring. He walked ahead, greeting the hardware-store owner, the banya, the miller, the coal-merchant, who leaned out from their doorways and bubbled good wishes and blessings for the auspicious event.