Love Across Borders (5 page)

“
It’s a
haveli
,” she says.
Nobody marries and moves out; all the children grow up together;
you can’t tell who is whose child; everyone is equally loved,
equally reprimanded; nobody gets any preferential treatment. I try
to understand the equation—yes that’s my math’s teacher’s brain
doing overtime—but the number of
khalas
and
appis
she mentions
leaves me confused. I like things in neat slots.

Is the carpet from Lahore, I
ask. Yes, she nods proudly. Some
mamu
who lives in Kuwait gave it
to her as a wedding present. The only brother my mother has is a
good-for-nothing wastrel wheedling money from his unsuspecting
sister.
Aayi
never seems to see through his antics; she
pampers him to this day. Perhaps because she didn’t have a
son.
Kakaji
is too simple to say anything, even if it
happens right under his nose. We call our father
Kakaji
,
though it actually means uncle. An older cousin who lived with us
when Kirti and I were small used to call our father
Kakaji
; we
just picked it up. I wonder if our father ever missed being called
father. He never complained, so I’ll never know.

Anjum regales me with more
stories about her family; I am fascinated. I love her lacy
salwars
I
tell her, and she promises to get me some. There she goes again!
How can she be so generous to a mere acquaintance? My own fixed
ideas about family and people look a little tainted, even to my own
eyes. In Nagpur we were familiar with our Marathi neighbours, but
here, in Bombay, with somebody not even from the same
country...Suddenly it is too much for one day—culture shock
perhaps. I return home promising to see her for dinner.

I let myself into 702, my
hom...house. It is breezy inside. The white lace curtains are
flying. We don’t have any wedding pictures on our walls.

***

“How can you be so stupid?” Vineet
has returned after nine and is more grouchy than usual. The local
trains do it to you, I don’t really blame him.

“She is very sweet, I couldn’t say
no.”

“
Hello, this is not your
Nagpur where everybody is sweet, this is
Bombay!
I’m so tired and now
I’ve got to dress up and meet new people!”

“
Ok, you go for your shower,
I’ll make dinner,” I say. I hadn’t cooked thinking we were going to
Anjum’s.

I am very angry and feel like a
fool at the same time. What do I have to occupy myself with for the
whole day? This man won’t let me give tuitions, he is tired every
day of his life, never takes me out and leaves me alone at home the
whole day, every day. And now he shouts at me. Does he care about
how I spend the whole day, what I read, who I call? Selfish brute!
Hot tears roll from my eyes. Damn! I’m no weakling, I had five
people working under me, I was respected and loved—and look at me
now.

I wipe my tears, pick up the
box of sweets I’d bought for Anjum and Shahaab and ring their
doorbell. Anjum opens the door. She looks lovely in a turquoise
silk suit and big matching
kundan
earrings.

“
Arrey bhaiya
kahan hain
?”

He is too tired to come, I
tell her. She looks at me for a meaningful moment, and I feel my
tears threaten again, but she helps me retain my dignity with
a
“koi baat nahin, aap ghar
jao, main dus
minute
mein aati hoon.”

I protest feebly but am no
match for her
.
As I turn to leave, she asks me if we’ll eat
meat cooked in their house. I turn beet-root red as I nod. Our
doorbell rings in ten minutes and the smiling couple is at the
door. Vineet is hospitable and invites them in, he even wishes
Shahaab happy birthday as Anjum bustles ahead of me into the
kitchen while I follow as if it were her house. She places a huge
tray on the counter and as she uncovers various bowls our house
fills with the aroma of
biryani, gosht and seviyaan
.

I hug Anjum and howl.

***

Afterwards, I can’t believe I
let my guard down like that. It’s something about Anjum—something
that I can’t explain though. Vineet was visibly shocked and quite
embarrassed. After they left he was tender with me for the first
time. I let myself be held and felt a flicker of something new and
warm.

The next morning, after my
howling fiasco, Anjum came over in the morning and sat me down to
explain how hard Vineet works, and why it was important that we
keep a peaceful home. Anjum is the wisest bride I have ever met.
She also told me how I should always be nicely dressed and smelling
good when he returns from work, how men stray if their wives don’t
look pretty or if they nag too much. I took her teaching to heart
and made an effort to make Vineet love me. And if he was tired, I
loved myself.

***

Our days shift into an easy rhythm.
We spend our mornings together, talking, laughing, shopping and
cooking. I begin to see Bombay with her wide-open eyes and begin to
like the craziness of it, the freedom of the trains and the variety
of its shops. For her everything is new and she is eager to learn
it all from me.

I meet Shahaab and learn that he is
from Gorakhpur and has family ties in Pakistan—hence the marriage
with Anjum. How he got a bride from beyond the border, and then
managed to get her across, is still a mystery to me. But I have the
decency not to pry. He smiles at her and she looks back adoringly.
I look at them, curious but no longer clueless. Vineet and I are
getting along better, although we have miles to go before we reach
this altitude. I even told him Anjum was from Pakistan and, apart
from a ‘hmm that explains the food’, didn’t get much of a response.
His rating went up a little that day. We’ve even gone out as
couples together once or twice and I can see him warming up to
Anjum like almost everyone around her does. Like I say, that’s just
Anjum.

***

I have my head down and almost walk
into Shahaab at the grocers’. He gives me a familiar smile. Who
said Bombay was cold?

“Where’s Anjum?” I ask. I need to
see her and tell her my news.

“She’s cleaning the house. My
brothers are coming from Gorakhpur today,” he says.

“How much more will she clean?” I
laugh.

He laughs along, “You know her by
now, and then she has to cook a hundred things,” he says
fondly.

“Let me go and meet her now, before
she gets busy with her guests,” I say.

“
Devar aa rahe
hain aaj,”
I say as she opens the
door.

“
Shahaab
miley the kya neeche
?”
she smiles.

“No, you are busy, I won’t sit,” I
say.

“Arrey sit, ya,” she imitates me
and laughs. She’s one of my best students. There’s a long way to go
but her interest in learning English is admirable. She keeps my
morale boosted by saying I speak excellent English and she wants to
be like me. I’ve never told her how often I wish I were like her;
I’d be a happier person. But I must say, I am learning more every
day.

The ‘brothers’ who were
coming were village-brothers, no blood relations, and yet, the
enthusiasm, the preparation, the
warmth
that I see in Anjum makes
me question myself on a human scale. I think I’ll give myself a
five. I haven’t even called my own sister to my new home, fearing
she would sense we were not the lovey-dovey couple that I’d
portrayed Vineet and I to be. Maybe a four. I also wouldn’t cook
for my husband’s birthday at eight in the morning.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” I
say as I follow her to the kitchen.

“I also,” she says, “but you
first.”

“We are moving to Kuwait,” I say
quietly. I expect her to cry, ask me to stay, not leave her alone
in Bombay. “I feel like going back to Nagpur ya,” I whine. “Let
Vineet go to Kuwait if he’s so mad about money.”

“
No, Vandu, you will go
with
bhaiya
,” she admonishes, “what will he do without you?” I hadn’t
thought of that. I feel ashamed.

“
Kuwait
mein mere mamu rehte hain
, I’ll give you his number.
Mami
is very good, she’ll take
care of you,” she says decisively.

“
Like you take care of me
here,” I smile through misty eyes. “The carpet-
mamu?
” I
ask.

She laughs, “You remember?”

I nod with pride.

“Ok, I’ll tell him to buy you a
carpet,” she says like she’s consoling an errant child. And then
hugs me as I go off on a crying spree again. It is all too much for
me. It seems so unfair. I have just opened my heart and mind and
now I am being asked to learn all over again.

Some time later, red-nosed
but happier I am ready to leave. “
Arrey
, what did you want to tell
me?” I remember as I am stepping out of the house. She blushes and
caresses her tummy. I shriek and hug her. “Anjum! You didn’t tell
me!” She turns red and hides her face in my shirt.

Ganapati Bappa
Morya
, we can hear the chant till our
seventh floor. The Ganesh Puja festivities have started.

***

Kuwait turned out to be good
for Vineet’s career; he was happier than he was in Bombay.
Consequently, he was better at home too. His work hours were less
demanding; the company shuttle picked and dropped him home; and our
quality of life improved. I soon got used to Thursday being a
half-day and Friday our new Sunday. The neighbourhood school
selected me as the head of their Mathematics department, and
earning in
dinars
felt satisfying. The loud
azaan
five times a
day, rattling at first, soon became a part of me.

And I conceived my first
child in Fintas, Kuwait, with maternal advice from Anjum’s
mami.

***

When Ganesh was three we
decided to move back to India. We wanted him to grow up in his own
country and imbibe his own culture. We had made enough money to buy
a house and Vineet had been offered a lucrative position. During
the move, Anjum was not far from my mind, even though over time we
had lost touch. The initial calls had become infrequent. Anjum was
not an email person and after the first few mails routed through
Shahaab, I’d gradually given up. Life had been busy with my job and
then Ganesh, and those carefree days of
gupshup
over
chai
remained somewhere in the distant past.

The decision to move back to
Bomaby, the task of shutting shop in Kuwait, and travel back to the
homeland all passed in a haze. Underlying the exhaustion was the
satisfaction that we were doing the right thing. We spent the first
week in Vineet’s friend’s house. His wife cooked us delicious
meals, helped me buy things for our flat and after the men left for
work, looked after Ganesh as I collapsed on the bed exhausted.

The first weekend, they helped us
move into our rented accommodation and helped in setting up the
place. I thanked and hugged them, remembering a time when someone
else had made my homecoming easy for me. Anjum had changed me,
opened me up to be able to accept help from others and to give in
return.

I thought of her often. I had
taken her address and number from her
mami
and planned to get in
touch with her. But somehow the days slipped away and, for some
reason or the other, I kept putting it off. Perhaps I was afraid
that she had changed, or that she would find me changed, and things
would be different from the memories I held so dear.

Slowly, we settled into our new
environment. Vineet was enjoying his position of power in the
office. I was looking for a school for Ganesh where I could also
teach and we were settling down well. Most importantly, Ganesh
found many playmates his age and did not seem to miss Kuwait.

And now it really was time to go
and find the person who had made this city feel like home to me. So
one fine day, I found myself clutching Ganesh’s hand looking up at
the building that Anjum lived in. I went in and found the elevator
door open and a little boy standing inside.

“
Kaun sa
floor, aunty?” I looked down at the little boy
and smiled.

“
Third please.” I notice the
third floor indicator was already red. “Aap
bhi
third floor?” I
ask him. He shakes his head vigorously, smiling at
Ganesh.

In no time, we have reached.
The friendly, little boy skids out of the lift, presses the
doorbell at 301 about half a dozen times and says, “Aunty,
aaiye na hamare ghar.”
We can hear his mother’s exasperated tone from
inside as she approaches to let him in, “Sammarrrr!”

She opens the door as the
tornado rushes past her, almost toppling her small frame, shouting,
“
Ammi
, aunty
aayi
hain
.” I look straight into Anjum’s eyes,
and without a word, we hug each other. “Vandu!” she cries tears of
joy holding me. “Where did you disappear?”

I laugh and cry together. “Anjum,
perfect English!”

She scoops Ganesh into her
arms and drags me into her three-bedroom
haveli
that smells of
biryani
and
murgi ka
saalan
. It is spotlessly clean with the
same beautiful carpet on the floor that I remember. Her first-born
Zoya comes and takes Ganesh away , and he laughs delightedly as she
tickles him. Samar points to a picture of us on the wall; Anjum and
Shahaab’s huge wedding portrait has been joined by numerous other
family photos, but we have pride of place
.
She makes
chai
and
takes my phone from me when Vineet calls to insist we have dinner
with them that night. I sip my tea and am content to listen to her
stories as our children play close by.