Monsoon Memories (3 page)

It was the other girl in the picture who captured Reena’s attention. She was chubby and dark-complexioned. She wore seventies-style churidars and her long thick hair was in pigtails and tied neatly with matching ribbons behind her ears. She had a kind face and an open smile. And she looked very much like Reena herself...

* * *

Lying on the deliciously cool floor, staring at the photograph, Reena remembered packing her clothes into her case the evening they left Bangalore to come here, desperately hoping for a mystery to sink her teeth into…

Reena’s parents had not meant to visit Taipur in September. They had already been in June during the summer holidays. And they did not like visiting during the monsoons anyway.

As her mother, Preeti, had put it to Mrs. Gupta from the flat opposite, the evening they were leaving for Taipur, her nose crinkling disdainfully: ‘Stuck in that house all day, nowhere to go, what with the relentless rain. Can’t even watch television...’

‘Why not?’ asked Mrs. Gupta, curiously. ‘Doesn’t your mother-in-law own one?’

‘Oh, no, no...’ Preeti hastened to reassure her. She did not want Mrs. Gupta—who always slipped her husband’s royal and hallowed ancestry into any conversation—to think that Deepak’s family did not measure up. Deepak wouldn’t be pleased. ‘They have a very big house and are one of the oldest and most respected families in Taipur. And they have one of those big televisions. Deepak’s father brought it back from the Gulf. It’s huge, really, almost like being in a cinema hall. But you never get to watch. It’s the power cuts, you see. Because it is a village, there is no power, either all day long or all night long. And the mosquitoes and all those insects...’ Preeti gave a practised little shudder, ‘Ohhh... the monsoons attract the
worst
sort of bugs. And the humidity...’

‘I don’t see why you go at all then, Preeti,’ said Mrs. Gupta, delicately taking a sip of her tea, and immediately embarking on a coughing fit.

Reena gulped down a giggle. Mrs. Gupta always did this and any minute now...

‘Murli!’ Mrs. Gupta called shrilly, summoning her harassed cook, who arrived, head bowed and apologising contritely.

‘Is it the tea, ma’am? Too much sugar is it?’

‘Too little, Murli. Too little. Pah! The cooks nowadays—you pay them a thousand rupees a month and they don’t even know how to make tea! Get me another cup right away. You have made a fool of me in front of my guests. If it happens again, I will sack you. I mean it, Murli.’ She waved Murli away and turned to face Reena and Preeti. ‘The servants these days...’

‘I know,’ Preeti murmured sympathetically even though she didn’t have a servant, had never needed one.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, Preeti, why do you go at all?’

As Murli bent to take Reena’s cup, he made a face at Mrs. Gupta behind her back and winked. Reena giggled out loud, unable to hide it this time.

‘What’s so funny, Reena?’ asked Mrs. Gupta, interrupting Preeti who was explaining more to herself than anyone else why they had to go to Taipur during the monsoons.

‘Nothing,’ mumbled Reena, fiddling with her top, her face lowered so Mrs. Gupta could not see the glee on it.

Her mother continued talking as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

‘It’s the Bandh you see. I can’t believe they are having yet another strike! They need an excuse, don’t they, to shut down the city. You whisper the word ‘Bandh’ and the whole of Bangalore shudders to a halt. It’s disgraceful, really...’

Mrs. Gupta made sympathetic sounds of agreement.

‘So, Reena’s off school and Deepak just delivered a release well ahead of time and he’s due some time off. You know how he’s been working all those long hours and weekends. Some days he’s even slept at the office! You are lucky your husband comes home at a decent time, Nupur. You are lucky he runs a business and doesn’t work in software, full stop. Anyway, Deepak feels guilty, now that his mother is getting so old and frail, especially after his father died. And of course Anita never visits...’

‘You should put your foot down.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose I should...’

‘And where is Anita nowadays?’

‘Oh, you know her. She flits around like a butterfly, never in one place long enough...’

‘And what about her husband? Doesn’t he get annoyed with her travelling everywhere?’

‘They are a modern couple,’ Preeti said as if that explained it all.

Reena sighed inwardly. Her mother’s comment was like holding a red cloth in front of a raging bull. Now Mrs. Gupta would embark on a monologue on the state of the country and the wantonness of its youth: her second favourite topic after the despicable laziness of servants—and there would be no stopping her.

And sure enough...

‘Modern couple...’ Mrs. Gupta sniffed loudly, making it clear to all and sundry what she thought of modern couples. ‘All those young girls strutting around showing their belly buttons, boys hanging on their arms! No values, nothing. No respect for elders. I saw a couple kissing each other—
on the mouth,
Preeti, in full view of everyone! Chi! I swore loudly and spat on the street right next to them but they didn’t even notice. Too busy tasting each other’s lunch, they were...’ Mrs. Gupta shuddered. She paused to take a breath and her narrowed gaze settled on Reena. ‘I hope you don’t go about behaving like that, Reena, when you grow up...’

‘No, Aunty,’ Reena mumbled, eyes down, suitably demure.

‘What is this country coming to? Politicians corrupt, young people with loose morals...You know what it is, don’t you, Preeti? It’s the
influence of the West
. Our impressionable young blindly following what they see on TV, all those half-naked women...’

Reena noticed her mother’s eyes start to glaze over. Preeti had come round to Mrs. Gupta’s for her daily fix of gossip but none seemed forthcoming. Silently, Reena willed her to interrupt Mrs. Gupta’s rant, and for once she did.

‘My God, is that the time? Reena, we should be going. We’ve got the packing to do. Thanks for the tea, Nupur. It was lovely.’

With that they were saying their goodbyes and were out of Mrs. Gupta’s flat, across the landing and inside their own.

In the living room, Preeti collapsed onto the sofa and reached for the phone. ‘Rinu, go and pack what you want to take with you, sweetie. The bus is at 10 o’clock tonight. Why they don’t have a proper train line connecting Bangalore and Mangalore I don’t know. I hate going in that bus; it always gets stuck in the ghats...’

Leaving her mother still grumbling, Reena escaped to her room, lay down on her bed and stared out of the window, not really seeing the blue of the swimming pool which the peon was half-heartedly cleaning, or the landscaped gardens, or the little playground in the centre. ‘I liked that plot we saw in Dasarahalli, Deepak,’ her mother had said when they came to view this flat. ‘We could build a two-storey house and still have some land left over for a garden and it’s a quarter of the price of this one.’

‘Ah, Preeti,’ her dad had beamed, standing in the shade of the palm trees by the swimming pool, and Reena knew then that his mind was made up, ‘Ma will be voted president of the parish council when word gets around that we are buying a flat in the same apartment complex as Shivarajkumar. A pat on the back for the Taipur Diazes.’ Status meant so much to her dad.

‘He’s like Mrs. Gupta that way,’ her mother had said once, laughing conspiratorially. ‘Good job he works the hours he does. If he and Nupur had a family pedigree contest, it would result in a tie…’

Reena had not wanted to move here, despite the fact she was going to have, as her father had said, his eyes sparkling, ‘Your own room, Rinu, as big as our entire flat in Hosur Road.’

‘But I
like
our flat, Dad,’ she had protested. ‘My best friend, Divya, lives nearby. Here I will have no friends.’

‘You will make some. Who would not like to be friends with you?’ her dad had beamed.

Most people
, she had wanted to say.
I am not that popular, you know.

She sighed deeply, worrying the tassels on her pillow cover. She missed Divya sorely, her once best friend who still lived in the old apartment complex. She used to knock on Divya’s door and they would walk together to the bus stop. And then Reena had moved to this apartment complex where
film stars
lived, and where her school bus had to make a special detour just to drop her off. There were hardly any other kids living here and the ones who did went to very expensive schools at the other end of the city and would not deign to talk to her. Paradoxically, her classmates, including Divya, assumed that she was too snooty now that she was keeping company with the stars, and would not talk to her either.
What use is status if you have no one to share it with, Dad?

A lone bird flew past her window—a fan-shaped shadow against the peaceful azure sky, framed by a couple of lazy clouds. Reena wished she could fly too, back to her old flat, to her friend. But then, she mused, she wouldn’t have Murli.

She hoped Mrs. Gupta had not meant what she had said about firing Murli. Every time Reena visited Mrs. Gupta with her mother, there was always a little fiasco with her tea. Murli hadn’t been sacked yet. Surely that was a good sign.

‘Why do you do that? What do you put in her tea?’ she’d asked Murli once. She was off school, recovering from the measles, miserable and bored. Murli had come to visit with chicken soup. It was the most heavenly thing she had ever tasted.

‘I can’t tell you all my secrets, little one,’ Murli had chuckled, eyes twinkling. ‘Let’s just say it’s my revenge...’

‘But it might get you fired!’

‘Oh, she wouldn’t dare fire me. No one knows how to make Dal Makhani to her satisfaction quite like me. They are empty threats. She wants to show off in front of her friends. You’re sweet to worry about me.’

‘I wish she’d treat you better, though. If you left, who’d get non-vegetarian food for me when I am ill?’ Reena had said, making Murli laugh. She was on a strict diet on account of the measles. ‘How did you manage to smuggle it past my mother, Murli?’ she had asked curiously between mouthfuls.

‘Oh, I told her it was soup. She assumed it was vegetarian. I didn’t lie or anything...’ He’d winked at her, his bony face lighting up when he smiled. He was perched on the chair beside her bed, a little slip of a man, wearing a worn white mundu, the bones sticking out of his bare torso, looking at her with such tenderness.

‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll get the measles too?’

‘I already had them when I was little. I’m immune to them. You’re sweet to care about me. I hope my little girl is growing up with a kind heart just like yours,’ Murli had said, a wistful look in his eyes.

Murli’s wife and two children lived in a village on the outskirts of Bangalore. Murli saw them once a year, when Mrs. Gupta grudgingly allowed him a week off work. The first time Murli had met Reena, he’d told her that she reminded him of his little girl, who was her age.

‘Don’t you miss her, Murli?’ Reena had asked.

‘Oh, I do, Reena, so much.’

‘Then why do you stay so far away?’

‘I have to. There is no work in our village. My family lives in a mud hut like the ones you see in the slums in Rajendra Nagar.’

‘No…’

‘Yes. I save the thousand rupees Mrs. Gupta gives me every month and send it to my wife. This way they can afford to eat and my children can go to school. English Medium, like you. Fees—eight hundred rupees. I want them to get good jobs and live in a big house like you, Reena, when they grow up. If they are educated, not illiterate like me, they can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone...’ And Murli’s face would glow with his dreams of a better future for his children.

Even though she’d never experienced it, Reena knew all about poverty. She saw it every day, on her way to school, all those slums by the road, the beggars—bedraggled mothers with children on slings around their neck, dirty wisps of hair hiding their sad eyes, knocking on the windows of her chauffeur-driven car as it stopped at a traffic light. If she could, she would have helped them. As it was, she tried to ignore them. She imagined herself to be invisible, or deaf, or in a planet far away, which perhaps in a way she was—cocooned safely in an air-conditioned car, living in a flat in a gated complex with a swimming pool which kept away the riff-raff: the same riff-raff her parents and others in the complex then employed to clean their cars and their houses, to cook their food, wash their clothes and look after their children.

The clock in the dining room chimed the hour, interrupting Reena’s thoughts, galvanising her into action. She jumped off the bed, pulled her suitcase out of the wardrobe and started to pack. She overheard her mother in the living room, on the phone to one of her friends.

‘The tea was horrible,’ Preeti was saying, ‘And the way she shouted at Murli! I feel so sorry for him... What? Oh the new decor. I don’t think it’s any better than the last one. How much did she spend? You’re joking! Fifty thousand rupees to redo the living room? But it’s just the same as before. Of course I looked. Hardly any difference. Well, personally I liked the old sofas better...’

Packing complete, Reena slumped back into bed and pulled out her notebook—her detective’s handbook, as she liked to call it—from underneath her pillow. In four hours, they would be on the bus, on the way to Taipur. She was so looking forward to this unexpected holiday. No homework, no school. A whole week of Madhu’s cooking, so much better than her mother’s, though Reena wouldn’t dream of telling her that. Playing with Chinnu and Gypsy. Going for long rambling walks among the fields, weather permitting. Monsoons or not, Reena liked Taipur, full stop. And, she figured, as she packed the handbook along with the latest
Nancy Drew
in the side pocket of her suitcase, there was more chance of her finding a mystery in Taipur with all those open spaces than here, cooped up in her flat.

And to her great surprise, she did.

SUPER SLEUTH REENA DIAZ AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUS GIRL FROM THE PHOTOGRAPH, she wrote carefully in her best handwriting in her sleuthing handbook, while squinting at the picture. Yes, the girl definitely looked like her. Hmm... Not bad for a debut case. Not bad at all.