Family Matters (12 page)

The soup of boiled mutton ladled over white rice was Jehangir’s favourite. He looked forward to a cosy day: reading in the comfort of Mummy and Daddy’s big bed, making his Lake Como jigsaw puzzle, lunch, a little afternoon sleep, more reading.

“So what will you do at home?” asked his father.

“He’ll rest, and do some lessons,” his mother answered.

“And read the Famous Five,” added Jehangir.

Yezad shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know why they still keep that rubbish in the school library.”

“But Enid Blyton is fun for children,” said Roxana. “It doesn’t do any harm.”

Yezad said it did immense harm, it encouraged children to grow up without attachment to the place where they belonged, made them hate themselves for being who they were, created confusion about their identity. He said he had read the same books when he was small, and they had made him yearn to become a little Englishman of a type that even England did not have.

Unheralded by a siren, the ambulance waded through the traffic swamping the lane and sputtered to a halt at the entrance of Pleasant Villa. Meanwhile, Roxana finished attending to her pressure cooker. French beans for dinner in the first compartment, mutton soup for Jehangir’s lunch in the second, plain white rice in the third. The weighted valve was perched upon the vent. She watched it jiggle to the song of steam, then went to hang out the washing on the balcony.

In the years immediately after it was built, four-storeyed Pleasant Villa was indeed a pleasant place to live. But rent control and the landlord’s determined neglect had reduced it to the state of most buildings in Bombay, with crumbling plaster, perforated water tanks, and broken drain pipes. Its exterior, once peach in colour, now resembled the outcome of an emetic. Electrical wiring had badly deteriorated, made a meal of by sewer rats. And the wrought-iron balcony railings, the building’s finest feature, were also being eaten, by corrosion.

On the balcony, Roxana thought again of Yezad. She had waved to him from up here when he left for work – their goodbyes always consisted of a kiss at the door plus a wave from the balcony – and her little outburst was quite forgotten. But it still worried her, his refusal to get his cholesterol checked, or to cut down on eggs.

Like a bad omen, the white animal bulk of the ambulance caught her eye. Wet garments heavy in her hands, she glanced over the railing. The sun was back after three days of cloud and rain. Her ears remained alert to hissing from the kitchen: the cooker was building up a good head of steam. She began pegging the washing to the line.

One by one she shook out the wet clothes, enjoying the fine cold spray that flew when she snapped them, and imagined with pleasure the fragrant sunshine her arms would hold in the evening while taking in the dry things. She remembered when Jehangir was four or five, he had hugged her as she was bringing in the washing, buried his face in it and said, “You smell like the sun, Mummy.”

He didn’t do that any more, hug so spontaneously, nor did Murad. Nowadays it was more stiff, mandated by the occasion. Part of growing up, she thought sadly. Then the cooker released a burst of steam, a shriek that made her hasten to the kitchen.

This mid-morning blast punctuated the continuing practice session of Roxana’s ground-floor neighbour. The scales had ended some time ago, and Daisy Ichhaporia’s fingers were now limbering up with double-stopping exercises that ascended Pleasant Villa muscularly from balcony to balcony, crossing paths with the steam whistle.

“Fair exchange,” said Daisy Ichhaporia once, when Roxana had apologized for the daily nuisance. “My noise for yours.” She played first violin in the Bombay Symphony Orchestra.

“Oh but I love to hear you practice. It’s just like going to a concert.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Daisy had smiled graciously at the compliment and, in return, had shared with Roxana her knowledge about the perils of pressure cooking, perils with which she claimed firsthand acquaintance. She had spoken of explosions and fires, of lunches and dinners that went rocketing in defiance of gravity. She had a stockpile of stories about gastronomy gone awry, which she narrated with gusto: of someone’s papayta-noo-gose that had detonated, sending the potatoes flying like little cannonballs to mash against the ceiling, the chunks of meat shredded like shrapnel, and of so-and-so’s prawn curry that had turned into modern art upon the kitchen walls, worth putting a frame around, art that could satisfy at least four out of five senses. And the super-hot temperatures of pressure cooking made it impossible to clean up the mess, for the food welded to the plaster. Only a hammer and chisel could pry it off, said Daisy.

Roxana had had the privilege of viewing some ceiling stains in Daisy’s kitchen, which, the latter swore, were the remains of pork vindaloo. “The day it happened,” said the violinist, “I sold my pressure cooker for scrap metal.”

Roxana might have followed suit had the warnings come from someone other than a violinist who reputedly practised at home with her clothes off. During
BSO
performances she was clothed, of course – in a long black skirt, a black, long-sleeved blouse, and a string of pearls that just barely reached her bosom.

It was well known that Daisy Ichhaporia, in her heart of hearts, wanted to be a world-famous virtuoso. In Pleasant Villa they joked that she indulged in nude practice sessions to seduce the devil, make him appear and grant her satanic control over the instrument so she could play like a female Paganini. Daisy-ninny, they called her, behind her back.

Roxana herself had never seen Daisy in anything less than a robust brassière and serviceable knickers, of a cut so generous they might as well have been blouse and skirt. The violinist had explained the occasional disrobing, that it got too hot while practising fully clothed because of the passion she poured into the music, passion which made her perspire so profusely that the salt-laden effusions dripping from brow and chin and neck threatened the health of her valuable instrument.

Sometimes, lost in rehearsing, Daisy forgot to draw her curtains as dusk fell and lights came on. Then a small crowd would gather outside the window to watch the bajavala woman. Eventually, someone from Pleasant Villa would bang on her door to draw her attention, the curtain would shut, the fans disperse.

The violinist’s absentmindedness was uppermost in Roxana’s mind when exploding pressure cookers had been discussed. She rather enjoyed the sense of danger with which Daisy’s descriptions had endowed the mundane appliance; she liked being the mistress who put the demon of steam into harness. It would be silly to take Daisy too seriously.

But it would be injudicious to ignore her entirely. Thus her curiosity about the ambulance took second place to the cooker’s warning whistle.

A recrudescence of doubt made Jal hesitate at the building entrance. What would happen afterwards, after Pappa came home again, how would it be between them? And between Roxana and them? How much bitterness was all this going to create?

He tried to look on the bright side – at least he could resume his mornings at the share bazaar.

“Go on, hurry,” said Coomy. “Talk to Roxie.”

He looked up at the Chenoy balcony and saw clothes drying on the line. “I have a feeling we are about to do a horrible thing.”

“That’s because we are such sensitive people. We need more sense and less sensitivity. Isn’t our plan the best choice for Pappa?”

“I hope so. But you come with me, I don’t want to go upstairs alone.”

“Stop worrying, Yezad is at work, and she’ll agree immediately.” Her words denoted confidence, though her tone shared his misgivings. “If I come up, will Pappa be all right, alone with the ambulancemen?”

“You think they’ll run off with him?”

In the lobby a dirty, faded cardboard sign hung upon the lift:
OUT OF ORDER.
Coomy grumbled that she couldn’t remember the last time they had been able to use it, and it was tragic that for a flat in this broken-down building, Pappa had spent all his savings.

“Looks too small for the stretcher anyway,” said Jal, peering between the bars into the tiny cubicle, dusty and cobwebbed.

Taking the stairs gave them time to rehearse their strategy. He was to describe the events, starting with the fall and ending with the doctor’s warning. She would join in if he forgot something; her trump card would be held in reserve.

They were out of breath as they reached the top. His hand went to the doorbell, but she made him desist till they stopped panting. After a minute she nodded her assent; he rang; they waited.

“Hallo,” said Roxana. “What a surprise.” More than surprise, she felt a vague anxiety. It had been years since her brother and sister had just dropped by.

“Can we come in?” asked Coomy.

“Of course.” She stepped aside to make way. “Everything all right? Pappa okay?”

“Fine, fine.”

She had to excuse herself, the pressure cooker was calling again. On her way back from the kitchen she told Jehangir, snuggled in bed, to come and greet them.

“There’s a very important matter to discuss,” began Jal, after she sat down.

“Shouldn’t Yezad also be present?”

“Preferably, yes, but it’s urgent. You see, a week ago, Pappa had an accident.”

Roxana’s hand flew to her face as he described the evening, the ghatis lifting Nariman out of the ditch and carrying him home, the taxis to Parsi General, the X-ray, the plastering of the broken ankle. She was in tears as she imagined the harrowing hours for her father.

Coomy put an arm around her, stroking her hair, while Jal explained that Pappa was slipping into depression, according to Dr. Tarapore, and it was hindering his recovery. Roxana’s tears turned to anger.

“Why didn’t you let me know at once? All of us would have come to keep him company. Why did you wait so long?”

“We didn’t want to worry you,” said Coomy. “And frankly, there hasn’t been one spare minute.”

“But the bad days are over now,” said Jal. “We are here now, and Pappa needs your help. Let’s concentrate on that.”

“Of course,” said Roxana. “Yezad and I and the children will visit him every evening.”

Coomy shook her head. “That’s no good. He’ll be happy when you arrive, depressed when you leave. Up and down like a yo-yo he will go, even worse off.”

“The scariest time for him is in the night,” said Jal. “After midnight he weeps the most – so intensely, it wakes us up.”

“Don’t cry,” said Coomy, kissing Roxana’s cheek. “There’s an easy solution. If Pappa stays here for a few weeks, in your happy, homely atmosphere, he’ll soon be smiling again.”

“How lovely that would be.” She paused to wipe her eyes with her fingers, then dried the fingers on her skirt. “How I wish I could do that.”

“Why can’t you?”

“You have to ask? Don’t you see the size of this flat?”

“I’m sure you can make space if you try.”

Roxana considered in silence. “You’re right. Let’s look around and find a place for Pappa.”

She began pointing out the few items that filled up the small room, explaining their function as though they were arcane museum pieces: “The daytime settee, on which you two are sitting, is Jehangir’s bed at night. Under it, Murad’s cot. There,” she lifted a corner of the counterpane.

“Nice and low, comes out at night, slides back in the morning. Next to it, one armchair, and a Formica teapoy, which Murad moves aside when he pulls out his bed. And our huge dining table for two, with four chairs. Shall we go to the back room now, where Yezad and I sleep?”

Feeling uncomfortable, Jal demurred, that there was really no need, they had no business poking and prying.

“Not at all,” said Roxana. “You’re family, you are helping.”

The sight of Jehangir in bed surprised them, as though they had not bargained for a witness. “No school for you?” exclaimed Coomy.

“Upset stomach,” said Roxana. His uncle and aunt patted his shoulder, told him to get well soon and not eat too many mangoes.

Besides the small double bed, there were two cupboards and two clothes horses. A little desk and chair were squeezed into the corner by the bed, where the boys did their homework. She showed the furniture like a tourist guide presenting the sights.