Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories (15 page)

‘We have other drinks too. Foster's, Kingfisher, and yes, Bacardi Breezer. Blueberry flavour, since—Khodhai jaane—Dinu only drinks that,' he continues, in a monotonous voice. ‘I can make a Parsi peg if you like; it's the largest peg in the world.'

It strikes Tanya that there are no servants about, unlike all the other homes she's been to where they miraculously appear whenever the host asks what she wants.

Has Porus sent away the servants on purpose?

‘I'll have cold water for now, thank you,' she says firmly.

‘Chalo, then let me show you aapri rani no mehel.'

She follows him into the living room muddled with antique furniture, most of it chipped and broken. There is a dark brown rocking chair and a marble table—too tall to be a coffee table—in the middle of the room. Porus walks to a large glass-panelled wooden cabinet that contains white chinaware and a row of miniature ceramic doves. He removes two glasses and sets them next to a desktop computer with missing keys.

Tanya catches a whiff of sandalwood and says, ‘What a lovely aroma.'

Porus doesn't turn around but points to a long narrow stool covered with a red velvet cloth. On top of it is a silver vase filled with pieces of sandalwood. ‘It's coming from the sukhar. Dinu says she lights it for religious purposes but—don't tell her I said this—she only does it when I'm around, old habit, so I think it's to hide my cigarette smoke from Kaizu.'

Porus walks ahead to a room where everything is covered with white cotton cloth. Tanya makes out the shape of a large dining table fit for a family of ten, some cabinets which she wonders what they fill with, and a giant white Godrej refrigerator with a bulky steel handle that Porus pulls with a grunt.

‘Looks like there's no cold water,' Porus says, and when Tanya peers into the fridge she sees rows of beer cans, more variety than the Foster's and Kingfisher he'd offered, as well as a few drink mixes and some curdled milk in a transparent Amul packet. What did they feed Kaizad?

‘The boys? Maybe they'd like to eat something?' she asks, tentatively.

‘Oh, don't worry about them. We have another fridge in Kaizu's room that is filled with food. They're probably having raspberry soda and bhakra right now.' He turns to her and says, ‘There's some kaleji papeto if
you're
hungry.'

She doesn't know what that is and it must show on her face because he explains, ‘It's a masala liver dish, a Parsi speciality, very tasty.'

She gags. She misses meat, even more now that she can't have it at home, but liver is something that, as a Hindu, she's never thought of eating. So when Porus brings out a steel dish to reveal blackish grey meat with a fried egg on top, she says ‘No!' rather loudly.

‘Fine,' he says, his eyes widen, taken aback. ‘There's also some tamota ma bhejoo, a tomato dish with goat brain, but I guess you won't like that either. Your loss.'

With his bare fingers Porus picks a piece from the dish and chews it with his eyes closed.

~

The sight of the grey meat reminds Tanya of the time Aditya and she went to see the one-horned Indian rhino. It was before Maneesh was born, when their permanent return to India was a remote—if not impossible—prospect and she had therefore wanted to see more of it. They visited Darjeeling, Gangtok, Guwahati—all tea estates, yaks, rice-millet drinks, Nepalese-Tibetan-Hindi dialects—and at the foothills of the eastern Himalayas, they made an impulsive stopover at the famous Rhino Sanctuary of Jaldapara. It was their first elephant safari and they woke up at five in the morning, climbed the steps of an elephant mount, took their seats on a set of precarious cushions, and hung on to the lone bar that stopped them from toppling off Madhubala, their elephant.

It was a magical trip—the tranquillity of early dawn silencing the lodge, the Malangi river gurgling in the far distance, a pair of bison tongues licking a mound of salt. Tanya sat back to back with Aditya, facing the rear end, seeing everything a moment after him. Hypnotized, they dared not break the silence even when a Bengal florican screeched and partridges scampered beneath their feet. The only human sound was that of the mahout—
Hrrr … Hrrr … Hrr …
—goading Madhubala at each turn and incline.

Knowing that nothing could go wrong in Madhubala's world, Tanya let go of the bar. Her feet scraped the tall grass, leaves gently brushed her face, her outstretched hands mingled with the dewy forest breeze. She watched the fan of a peacock's feathers dancing in glory of the day to come; a still owl on a bare branch. About an hour later, when the sun began to break through the treetops, lifting the darkness and delivering it to the infinite sky, Aditya complained to the mahout, ‘Why haven't we seen a rhino yet?'

Tanya's spell broke. She tittered. It wouldn't be long before she discovered that this was typical of Aditya, this breaking of idyllic dreams and thrusting them into the humidity of daily disappointments.

They moved on, catching a glimpse of a spotted deer, some wild pigs and another bison, when Tanya saw it: a 3000-kilo hulk of a rhino with a black horn curving backwards from its nose, as if in salute—a male, she would later learn on Google. Camouflaged by a rock, it stood still amid the elephant grass, and for a moment Tanya thought she must be mistaken. Then it blinked and she saw its bushy tail swing momentarily in the air, swishing away horse flies. She didn't call out to Aditya or to the mahout whose sights were set fixedly ahead, but looked past the giant's thick greyish-brown skin—pink near the chunky skin folds—its wart-like bumps, its body divided by clean-cut lines—as if it were wearing an armour—and gazed directly into its eyes. And though she'd heard that a rhino's eyesight was weak, it looked right back at her, not blinking, not moving, staring as though it were expecting her. They stayed like that for a while, orange rays reaching both of them, extending through the shreds of torn sky. Tanya was convinced that the rhino had a message to deliver, something that she could translate and convey to the world, but she never figured out what, since too soon Madhubala took a turn and the rhino was gone.

~

She's never told anyone about the rhino—not Aditya, not the mahout who tried to make them stay another night (‘Sir, tomorrow pukka you will see the rhino'), not her new friends in America who wanted to know all about her little Indian adventure, not even her son whom she's promised never to lie to. This becomes the only part of her that she can keep to herself—her treasure to carry alone. For it was that morning, after seeing the rhino, that she'd realized that there should be, that there can be, has to be, a less worn-out way to live her life. All she had to do was find it. One day.

~

‘Tanya?' Porus is saying. ‘There's no cold water. Do you want something else to drink?'

Tanya stops staring at the fridge's handle and turns to Porus. Since her afternoons follow the path of eat-lunch, clean-dishes, serve-mother-in-law, watch-TV, prepare-Maneesh's-snack, clean-Maneesh's-schoolbag, go-over-Maneesh's-homework, prepare-Aditya's-tea, she's seized by a sudden recklessness.

‘I'll have a Breezer. Yes, why not?'

‘That's the spirit.' Porus winks.

‘And I'd love to try that liver. It looks great.'

Porus smiles at her for the first time since they've met. She blushes, as if she's Maneesh's age and has got a nod from the popular kid in class.

Porus hands her the bowl containing the kaleji papeto. She takes a bite and says, ‘Delicious.'

‘Next time I'll take you to Jimmy Boy for mind-blowing dhansak,' he says, pecking his forefinger. His eyes crinkle at the edges with the force of his smile.

Is he asking her out on a date?

If her life rewound eleven years when she'd been another person, she might have said yes. For then she was a passionate student of journalism at JNU, staging protests against nuclear testing, investigating a recent corruption scandal, reporting mock live from the scene of a train accident. That's all she wanted from life then; to make some sort of difference. She graduated top of her class and was hired as a junior correspondent by NDTV in Delhi. Her mind was prepared for the gruelling work, the fourteen-hour days and six-day weeks of a job in journalism, but soon after, her body gave way and she fell ill, not recovering for two months, by which time she'd been replaced, as had her dreams. Quickly, her mother found ‘Aditya from New York'—a ‘decent' NRI boy whose parents had a flat in Khar that—being almost in South Bombay—was three times more expensive than their Gurgaon flat. At twenty-three she moved to America, had Maneesh three years later, and gave up any ambition except to raise her son well.

Porus passes her an open bottle of Bacardi Breezer—blueberry flavour.

What she's doing
is
childish: drinking alone with a strange man in a strange house in the middle of the day and eating meat, forbidden meat.

What will Maneesh say if he sees her? What will he tell his father, who he's trying to ape, or his grandmother, whose physical deterioration confuses him?

It's too late. She takes a long, thirsty sip.

A sharp shooting pain gathers in a tooth and rises straight to her brain.

Is she being punished for her misdemeanour?

Then, she remembers. This pain is from her filling that fell out nine weeks ago, which she hasn't got fixed because there are so many other things about herself that she has to fix first. Recently, she's noticed three to four, actually fourteen, white strands of hair on her scalp, and she's sure that there are more that she can't see. She needs to dye her hair. Then, she has to dump her drab kurti-jeans and buy fashionable new dresses and skirts and low-neck tops showing cleavage, to align herself with mothers like Dinaz and distance herself from the lumpy salwar-kameez-sari mothers. After that, she has to ditch the Dr Scholl's shoes she's been wearing for her post-pregnancy back pain and wear open-toed sandals with brightly painted nails. In the past, Tanya has made appointments at the parlour near her building to have her nails scrubbed, polished, and painted red, but then Sunday becomes Wednesday and she forgets her appointments till it is Friday. She will go tomorrow.

Porus is still smiling at her and she smiles back. He's got strong white teeth, not yellowing like hers; she must ask him what toothpaste he uses. She follows him back to the living room where he switches on a small TV with jumbled wires popping out of its set-top box. She sits on a sofa with the foam peeking out from under it, thanking her luck. Now she can talk comfortably, knowing that any gaps in conversation will be filled by the sound of the TV, which is showing a cricket match between a team in blue and one in black, though all the players look Indian. Why are Indian players playing against each other? She doesn't ask, not wanting Porus to know that she hasn't watched cricket in over a decade.

Still, she has to say something, so she enquires, ‘Why is everything in the dining room covered in cloth?'

Porus, who has spread his legs on a brown beanbag next to which is an ashtray filled with at least twenty cigarette stubs, lights another cigarette and says, ‘This is Dinu's bapavaji's flat. Her uncle let her live here after we … split … you know. Anyway, she hates this stuff: antique clock, antique chair, antique this, antique that. She's a modern girl, you know, but that nalayak uncle is not allowing her to renovate. So this is her compromise, keep all the furniture but don't look at it. Still, she has to listen to him, to all of them, being a single mother with a young son, faaltu musician father. Things get tight around here, you must have noticed.'

Tanya takes a sip while thinking of an appropriate reply, not sure whether she's supposed to notice. She nods, a half-half, not a yes, not a no, and says, ‘Families,' the way she's heard men at parties say ‘Women', as if no one understands them but has to suffer them anyway.

‘Yeah,' he says flippantly. ‘Dinu told me you moved here after ten years in New York. Why the hell would you move
here
?'

‘My mother-in-law has not been well since my father-in-law died. So we moved to take care of her,' she replies, hoping her ensuing tired laugh doesn't betray her regret at this decision.

‘The other woman, huh?' he says.

‘The other woman? My husband has never cheated on me,' she says firmly, hoping it to be true.

‘I'm talking about your mother-in-law,' he replies, and chuckles.

He is mocking her decision.

When she repeats their reason for moving to Aditya's relatives they too disapprove but for different reasons, saying that Aditya and she should have come
immediately
after Aditya's father died, not waited for five months till his mother developed health problems. Then they ask Tanya why she didn't have a second child while she still could have? Tanya doesn't explain the long frustrating years they've spent trying for a second child, but replies that she has two kids now—Maneesh and her mother-in-law—so why worry? Aditya allows her this one snide joke, accepting it as his punishment for uprooting her life. Then Aditya's relatives complain that Maneesh is too dark. Why didn't she apply besan on him when he was born?

‘Look, I'm a typical bawa so don't mind my honesty, but it sounds like that husband of yours is more focused on his mother than on you. When you emotionally belong to someone other than your spouse, that's cheating, right? It's cheating of another kind, but still cheating, no?'

Though she's never seen it as cheating, Porus has a point. Aditya has been moping since his father died, claiming that his mother is the only reason he's not yet an orphan. And his mother is no less, vying for his attention—quiet through most of the day, and then, the minute Aditya comes home from work, zealously coughing, complaining of mysterious aches and pains. Tanya doesn't say a thing. Her parents are long gone and she has no siblings. Aditya and Maneesh are her only family, and being a good wife and mother are her only responsibilities. If she fails in that, what will she have to show for her unfulfilled life?