French Lover (3 page)

‘Nonsense—just rumours. If it suits your business then MacDonalds is no inconvenience. Let them give food so cheap—the very idea of competition will be a death-blow to them.’

In one corner it was Sanal and Sunil: arguing non-stop in French. The subject was cricket.

Minakshi and Odil sat on one side; they talked mainly about their children.

Sahana came and joined Nila and Chaitali.

The topic was the home—a new home; markets: where one would get river fish or which shop sold the five spices that were used in Bengali cuisine. Then it was a discussion of recipes.

In Kishan’s group politics was nudged out and industry inched in.

Salmonella in chicken, mad cow disease!

All propaganda!

Fish and meat were being imported heavily and so mutton was very expensive.

‘Damn, there’s no sense in running a restaurant in this country! England is the best for that. All the immigrants are migrating to Italy in hordes—where is my workforce?’ Kishan said. Then he looked at Nila, crinkled one eye and said, ‘I guess I’ll push my wife into the business—she’ll cook and I’ll serve. How good is your cooking?’ Kishan nudged Nila’s stomach with his elbow.

Nila edged out from her group and said, ‘I don’t know how to cook.’

Kishan laughed out loud, ‘What’s this—how can you be a woman and not know how to cook? Go and check out my restaurant—those
boys who never even peeped into their kitchens at home are cooking away merrily. So you’ll do just fine.’

Sunil put his cricket talk on hold and said, ‘Hey, hey, don’t bombard your new bride with talk of cooking just yet. Let a few days pass.’

Nila pressed Chaitali’s hands and said, ‘Enough of this meaningless jabber. Why don’t you sing something?’

‘Sing? No way. That’s for the Bengali group. Non-Bengalis know nothing of singing! Philistines, all of them.’ Chaitali spoke in Bangla.

At eight o’clock a man in a black suit and a necktie came with packets of food. It was from Kishan’s restaurant: rotis and vegetable curry. Kishanlal was a vegetarian. Meat and fish weren’t allowed in his house.

Mojammel, in the black suit and tie, kept the food on the table and came to see Kishan’s wife. He wore a broad grin and his eyes were so dark that he looked like he was wearing kohl in them.

‘Didi, I work in Kishanbabu’s restaurant. I am from Bangladesh.’

‘Bengali!’ Nila’s eyes brimmed with joy.

Chaitali laid the table. Some people sat on the sofa and some at the table.

As they ate, Sunil said, ‘Nila, whenever you feel like having fish curry and rice, come to our place. Chaitali is a great cook.’

Nila said, ‘I feel like going right now. I can have roti and vegetables one day, but not two.’

Mojammel smiled and said, ‘Don’t you worry, didi, just come to Taj Mahal. Our chef cooks fish and meat quite well.’

The banter continued until well after dinner. Kishan opened a fresh bottle. The Tariqs left early because they had left their schizophrenic son alone at home. Rajesh and his wife also left. Sunil and Chaitali had left their daughter, Tumpa, at a friend’s place in Sandani and so they were not in a hurry. Once the bottle was empty, Sanal rose to go. As he put on his warm jacket which was hanging on the coat rack by the door, Sanal said loudly, ‘Nila-bhabhi, it’s customary to kiss you on both cheeks as I leave. But I won’t. Today the honours belong to Kishan and I leave him to do it, right Kishan?’

Kishan was lounging on the sofa and his tummy bulged out of his
shirt; more fat than stomach. He laughed crudely. His shovel-teeth bulged out and the fatty stomach bulged even more.

Once Sanal left, Sunil and Chaitali also made a move to go.

‘What’s this, all of you are leaving! The house will be so empty. Why don’t you stay here tonight?’ Nila held Chaitali’s hand firmly in her fist.

Sunil drew his breath in and laughed, ‘Crazy girl.’

Chaitali took her hand out of Nila’s grip and put on her warm jacket.

The moment they left, a strange silence broke into the house. Nila felt lonely, though she knew that the man in the house was her closest one, her husband.

She went to bed in her full finery of sari and jewellery and lay in a foetal position. Kishan broke that posture, straightened her, undid the buttons of her blouse and unhooked her bra—Nila’s breasts jumped out. Kishan mauled them the way he’d mash boiled potatoes with his hard fingers and soon rendered them lifeless. The room was silent except for Kishan’s panting. Nila lay inert beneath Kishan’s hairy body. She asked herself, ‘Is this pleasure?’

The answer came from within, ‘No.’

‘Wake up, wake up, it’s pretty late.’

Nila hadn’t slept all night. Towards early morning her eyes drooped and she fell asleep. Now she woke up, startled: where was she; this wasn’t her bed. Her glance fell on Kishan and as she registered his thick, black moustache, beady eyes, pockmarked face, she realized that this was her husband’s house and she was here in Rue de Sandani on the sixth floor in Paris, lying on snow-white bedsheets. Kishan wrapped a towel around his waist, headed for the bathroom and said, ‘Just look at all the dirty dishes of last night—they’re still lying there.’

Nila had seen them last night. In Calcutta she would never have spared them a second glance. There were people to take them away, clean them, wipe them and put them away. Kishan reminded her that the luxuries of Calcutta were not available in Paris, where they even had to clean their bathrooms themselves. If it had been Calcutta, Nila would have stayed in bed a little longer. Once Chitra gave her the tea and the newspaper, she’d have drunk the former, read the latter and only then left her bed. There’d be another round of tea after that. But in this house there was no sign of Chitra. Nila must get up and deal with the dirty dishes of last night.

She draped a cotton sari around herself and went into the kitchen. A massive hunt didn’t reveal where the tea was. So she stood at the bathroom door and asked, ‘Where do you keep the tea?’

Kishan had come out of the shower and was halfway through his shaving. He looked away from the mirror in surprise and said, ‘Who’ll drink tea? I don’t drink it.’

‘What! You don’t drink tea?’ Nila’s eyes were tinged with scepticism. She had never come across a person in India who didn’t drink tea.

‘No.’ Kishan turned back to the mirror and continued with his shaving.

‘I can’t do without tea; I need at least two cups in the morning,’ Nila stood at the door and rubbed her sleepy eyes.

‘Are you addicted to tea?’

‘Not really addicted—habit, you could say.’

‘Now that’s a problem.’

‘Problem?’

‘Two kinds of habits in the same house is definitely a problem.’

As she moved away from the bathroom, Nila heard Kishan say, ‘I’m late.’

She set the table and placed the bread, butter, jam and orange juice upon it. For as long as she could remember, Nila had never seen Anirban reminding Molina that he was late. Molina left her bed at dawn and went into the kitchen. She made hot chapattis, or fried dalpuris or whatever Anirban liked to eat. Molina could never be faulted in the art of homemaking. Nila was Molina’s daughter and people said she was as sweet, polite and gentle as her mother. So she should be flawless as well in serving her husband.

Nila quickly removed the dishes of the night before.

Kishan came out dressed in a suit, looked at the table and said, ‘Well, you’re quite a good wife.’

‘Why are you calling me good? Just because I’ve laid the table and put food upon it?’

‘That’s not all,’ Kishan crinkled his eyes and laughed.

Anirban had never smiled like that at Molina. Instead he usually complained about the vegetable not being cooked enough or the egg-yolk not being whole or one side of the bread getting charred. Nila thanked her stars that Kishan was not displeased—on the contrary he looked quite satisfied with so little.

‘When will you be back?’ Nila asked.

‘Not sure.’ Kishan didn’t do a nine to five job that he could say, ‘I’ll leave the office at five and head for home; the traffic on the road should take me thirty-five minutes to reach here and finding a parking spot will take six minutes, two more minutes to come up, so I’ll be back at five forty-three.’ Kishan ran two restaurants. One was called
Taj Mahal at Montparnasse and the other was called Lal Killa in the fifteenth arrondissement. The latter wasn’t doing too well. Kishan believed a change of name would help.

‘Try to think of a new name for it,’ he told her.

‘What will I do all day?’ Nila sat in front of Kishan, leaned on her elbows and asked.

‘Sit and think of me.’

‘And?’

‘And what? Wouldn’t that be enough for the day?’

‘If it isn’t?’ Nila was remote.

‘That’s true.’

He said he’d take her out very soon, to buy warm clothes and shoes. But he didn’t specify when that ‘soon’ was.

Nila’s eyes shifted from Kishan to the window—to the paradise outside.

‘What’s that? Is that a palace?’ She pointed to an impressive building with stone statuettes outside the window.

‘That’s the station—Gare du Nord.’

‘Really? A railway station and so pretty?’ Nila ran to the window.

‘When will you show me around the city?’ Her voice was childlike, excited.

‘You did see some of the city yesterday. Why are you so restless? You’ve just arrived and you have the rest of your life to see the city.’ Kishan left the house.

Nila knew she had the rest of her life to look around. But she felt a dance of impatience in all her nerves. She had felt the same way in that room with walls of steel. Waiting to be free, although she didn’t know free of what or free to go where. In this room too, her heart beat like a caged bird. The walls of this room were no less disciplinary than those.

Nila sat at the window impassively and observed the flow of people and cars down below: the urbane, smooth, busy lives of people amidst silent loneliness. At this time of the day Calcutta would be split wide open by terrible sounds—a siren, a truck’s tyre bursting, push-carts, hawkers, beggars, dogs bickering, women quibbling at the common tubewell, and so many other sounds that make life
unbearable. Nila felt she had landed somewhere outside the planet where there was no dirt, no hassles, nothing that piqued the eye, nothing uncontrolled, uncouth or ugly.

This city never burst at its seams, never screamed. But in this city everyone had somewhere to go to, except she. No one waited for her, anywhere. Absent-minded, Nila began to sing, ‘
Break free these doors and take me away
!’ As she sang, the sound of her own voice startled her. The Gare du Nord began to seem like the palace of the king of France; the prince stood at the window and looked out. He saw the princess, with long dark tresses, trapped in the house of a wicked giant. The prince charged up on horseback, to rescue the princess. He held a magic wand in his hand—a touch of that wand and the lock on the giant’s doors would break free. He would take the princess and they’d both alight in front of the huge gates of the palace. Then they would walk inside, hand in hand. Nila looked at her own hands. She couldn’t remember Kishan ever taking those hands in his. Perhaps their hands had brushed accidentally. But Nila couldn’t remember him ever looking at them with even the mildest appreciation or desire. When he got down to pleasuring himself with her body in the dark, she never felt Kishan’s body cry out for each and every part of her body; at the most, only one part of his body panted for one part of hers. Nila’s delicate fingers, shapely nails, large dark eyes and masses of black tresses lay untouched in the dark, as untouched as a low-caste untouchable.

She moved away from the window and hunted for books in the house. She looked high and low and the only things in print that she could find were five mammoth telephone books, an English-French dictionary, three cookbooks in Hindi, seven
Le Monde
which were two years old, four
Herald Tribunes
and three porn magazines. She gave up and looked for music instead. That yielded some Hindi film songs, four English, some Bhangra and one Edith Piaf. There wasn’t a single Rabindrasangeet or even any Hindustani classical. Nila put the Edith Piaf on and found that the French sparrow was chirping away in the same tune over and over again. An unknown chirping in an unknown land can make one feel even more alone. She switched it off and
walked from one room to another, her footsteps her only companion. Eventually Nila, who didn’t follow a single word of French, turned on the television and concentrated on the conversations and antics of the white people. It was broken by the sound of the phone, when it was nearly evening. It was Kishan, ‘Hello there, wife, what have you cooked today?’

‘Wife hasn’t cooked anything.’

‘What shall we eat then? Do you want to starve your husband to death?’

Nila couldn’t decide what to say. She had no intention of becoming a widow so soon.

Kishan’s voice was solemn, ‘Something had slipped my mind totally, you know. I should have left a door-key with you, in case there was a fire or something . . .’

‘Why should there be a fire?’

‘Accidents—they happen, don’t they? It’s good to be prepared in such cases.’

‘That’s true.’ Nila wondered how she would react if there was a fire, how she would put it out and for the life of her, she couldn’t tell what was the connection between a fire and the door key. She asked, ‘What happens if there’s a fire?’

‘Then, if you had the key, you’d have been able to leave.’ Kishan answered as simply as if she had asked what should she do when she was thirsty.

‘Oh.’ Nila understood—if the house was on fire, she had the freedom to run outside and save her life. But if there was no fire, the question of saving her life didn’t arise.

But if it did?

She went into the kitchen and as she washed the dishes and started cooking rice, daal and vegetables, the thought kept humming in her mind—what if the question arose?

Nila’s rice was burnt, the vegetables were half cooked and the daal had too much salt in it.

Kishan returned home after dark and hurled his heavy body on to the sofa.

‘Change into something more comfortable and wash up—you’ve had a tiring day at work,’ said Nila. Immediately she realized her voice was dripping with sisterly concern.

Kishan laughed. ‘Do you think this is your dirty Calcutta that I have to wash my face and hands the minute I come home from work?’

‘At least take off those heavy shoes that you’ve been wearing all day.’ Even as she said it, Nila remembered that this was the exact tone Molina used when she asked her son Nikhil to take his shoes off.

‘Why don’t you do it for me,’ Kishan stretched out his legs.

Nila sat at his feet and untied the shoelaces with her slim fingers and took off his socks.

Now she felt like the housemaid, a little like Chitra who used to take everyone’s shoes off, just as she was doing.

‘There’s a basket for unwashed clothes in the bathroom. Keep them there and do the washing tomorrow.’

Nila took the dirty socks into the bathroom and thought that at night she’d have to be the perfect whore and sell herself just as they sold their bodies for some money. Nila wondered if there was any difference between a prostitute’s client and a husband. The only difference she could find was that the client can get away only after paying off the prostitute whereas the husband can get off the hook without ever paying his wife’s dues. She felt the prostitute actually had more freedom than the wife in more ways than one.

A mother, a sister and a prostitute—were they the three roles which a woman had to play to the hilt or were they merely the three personas that a woman was born with.

Kishan asked, ‘How do you like it here in Paris?’

Nila looked soulfully outside the window and said, ‘This is my first time outside the country. Although there were no oceans to cross, I feel I’ve crossed the seven seas to get here. It’s a whole new world, totally strange.’

Kishan nodded unhurriedly and spoke slowly, ‘Let a few years pass and you’ll see yourself finding India a strange place. That’s life, Nila: a habit and nothing else. Once you get used to the life here, you won’t be able to adjust in India although that’s where you were born
and raised.’ Then he changed track and asked, ‘So what did you do all day?’

‘I felt very lonely the whole day. If I had their phone numbers I could have talked to them . . .’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘Those who were here last night . . .’

‘Why would you call them for no reason? Last night was over once they left. It’s more important that you call home.’

Kishan called Calcutta. It was nearly midnight there and everyone was getting ready to sleep. Kishan informed them all that Nila had reached safely, that she was fine and they had had a small reception the night before. After speaking to Anirban, she spoke to Nikhil and finally Molina’s voice floated down the receiver, ‘The house feels so empty without you. You’ve never been away, you see.’ Molina was crying.

Nila chided her, ‘Stop it. You’re just being silly. Would you rather I rotted in that house in Ballygunge?’

Molina asked, ‘Tell me how you are.’

Nila was ecstatic, ‘I’m fine, really. Everything here is very beautiful. Last night we had a great time, many people were here. Everyone is very nice.’

At the other end Molina was still sobbing.

It got to Nila. This ‘mother’ business was very messy—they’d cry if the daughter didn’t get married and cry if she did.

Kishan poured himself a glass of Scotch and relaxed on the couch. As he drank he told her that his restaurant, Lal Killa, was going bankrupt. The name would have to be changed very soon. Nila couldn’t really understand how a change of name would rejuvenate the business. When she asked as much, Kishan laughed and said, ‘You won’t understand these things.’

Nila pleaded, ‘If you explain, I’m sure I will.’

Kishan didn’t think so. As far as he knew, women had no business sense.

Nila proposed the names ‘Suruchi’ ‘Khabar-Dabar’ or ‘Tripti’ for the restaurant. But Kishan blew them off into his alcoholic haze.
They won’t do. So what would? Something like Gandhi. How was Gandhi related to food? Even if they were not related, the French could relate Gandhi to India. They knew Gandhi’s name far better than they did the Lal Killa. And would the food in the restaurant change? Not at all—that’ll stay the same, the same chef and the same waiters.

When the bottle was half empty Kishan sat down to have dinner. Nila served him the food and regretted that the cooking wasn’t up to scratch. She sat in front of him with an apologetic face. As he ate, Kishan said, ‘However, a wife’s cooking is something else.’