THE IMMIGRANT (8 page)

Nina emerged, dishevelled and bad tempered. ‘Why are you going to so much trouble? Some biscuits will do. It’s just tea.’

‘You want me to starve her? Will that please you?’ Mr Batra’s lip quivered. Why did Nina have so little sense of the world? Someone with whom you hoped to establish a connection was coming—you had to make an extra effort.

Nina noticed her old friend, the quiver. Her mother would never understand how degraded she felt by the way she slaved on these occasions.

‘If this works out your Daadi will stop blaming me.’

‘I keep telling you, don’t listen to her.’

It was all right for the young. They were less vulnerable. Nina used stupid words about her mother’s endeavours: bought—sold—marriage market. She didn’t understand that if a girl was thirty, you had to submit to the process even more.

How the sister ate! Three dahi bhallas, two barfis and fistfuls of namak para. Some perfunctory praise for the homemade but no deep interest in Nina’s culinary skills, only questions about the places she had travelled and the things she had done. For a bride hunter she spoke much of herself, her old college, Miranda House, teachers, hostel, English Literature, her passion for reading, but above all it was husband, husband, children, children. The new emphasis on progress was keeping Ramesh very busy. Madam’s Twenty Point Programme was left to people like him to implement.

The visit was an hour old before Alka said anything about that simple boy, her brother. After seven years still a paying guest. Orphaned, sensitive, brilliant, doing well, Canadian partner, own clinic.

Then she drove off in an official white Ambassador, leaving them with the suggestion that a letter from the boy might follow.

Mr Batra was jubilant. What culture, such sophistication, no suggestion that if Nina was thirty and unmarried there was something wrong with her, no appraisal of her daughter’s monetary worth; instead an appreciation that she was teaching English Literature in an elite college. With such a background, how could her daughter not be happy, how could she not?

Nina was thoughtful. There had indeed been no hint of a demand for dowry or gifts, an issue which had caused some rejections. If anything her eye wandered approvingly over their meagre room, approvingly over Nina’s books in the verandah, approvingly over Nina herself, of medium height, of a fairness so exquisite that the natural yellow of an Indian skin was replaced by pinkness.

‘See, the astrologer was right,’ gloated the mother.

‘She made it quite clear that it depended on the brother.’

‘If she liked you so will he. What else does he have to go by?’

Abroad. This was the first sign of interest shown by abroad. The grey cool skies of Brussels, the wide streets, the fewer people, the wood panelled library of the International Academy, the hot school lunches, the boy she had exchanged a few glances with, all this came back to Nina vividly, without the barrier of fifteen intervening years. As a first step to a new life, she murmured, ‘What will you do without me? Have you thought of that?’

‘I can do many things. I can go back to Lucknow.’

‘Lucknow? And live with those people?’

‘Why not? They are getting old. They need me.’

‘You are not their servant.’

‘Oh, what does it matter? After you marry, I can die happy.’

‘I don’t want you to die, nor do I want you living here alone.’

‘Once you are settled, I will come and visit you. And I can help look after your children. Help is very expensive there. I have experience of the West.’ Her cheeks glowed.

‘I don’t think we should count our chickens before we have seen the egg.’

‘This time everything will work out.’

‘So eager to send your daughter ten thousand miles away?’

‘For this I have been praying and fasting the last ten years,’ sniffed the mother as tears trickled down her withered face and smeared her work worn fingers as she rubbed them away.

‘If I get married promise me you will stop this ridiculous Tuesday fasting.’

‘We will see when the time comes.’

v

It took three weeks for Ananda to get the letter concerning this visit:

They live in a one room unit in Jangpura. Though clean it is cramped and uncomfortable. The father was in the IFS and she has lived abroad. She studied French in Belgium, where her father was posted for four years. He died when she was fifteen, and life seems to have been a struggle since then. The mother is like Mummy, excellent cook, affectionate, simple. The girl is an only child with grandparents in Lucknow. You will not be bothered by numerous relatives trying to get sponsorship abroad.

For the last nine years she has taught English at Miranda House; she spoke very knowledgeably of books, which will appeal to you. A career is important to her, you can decide later whether you want to be a double income family. Her voice is low, her colour fair, she has a straight nose, large eyes and sharp Punjabi type features. Height medium. Her circumstances will make her grateful and loving. They are certainly not well-off.

Here is the girl’s address. Should you decide to correspond with her, she will understand there are no obligations. She is thirty years old and sensible.

Give this a try, I beg you. Even though you have taken citizenship at heart you are an Indian, with Indian values. Why else have you not been able to settle down? Thank god you have not chosen to marry a Canadian, like our uncle.

After you set up practice in Dehradun our mother was looking for a wife for you. It is my duty to finish the work she started.

Now it is up to you.

Ananda read this letter several times, increasingly exasperated. How was it his sister managed to aggravate his sensibilities every single time? What did she mean, the girl would be grateful? If gratitude was what he wanted, he would marry a beggar off the streets. And what did she mean at heart he was an Indian? He was no such thing. He was now a Canadian of Indian origin. What did she know of him, they hadn’t met in seven years.

His sister reminded him of all that he found objectionable about arranged marriages, with her talk of gratitude, adjustment, double income families and paranoia about future in-laws before he even had a wife. It was disgusting.

He looked at the photograph and wondered exactly how fair she was. Pictures were deceptive. He who appeared so light-skinned in his own knew that.

Thirty—how come still unmarried? The father’s death must have something to do with it. People may say that time was a great healer, but such events marked you for life. That was one thing they had in common. No other proposal from his sister had included a French speaking girl. If her knowledge was good she could help him acquire another skill useful in Canada.

He would write to her on the weekend. The post office had some special air mail letter forms printed with the flowers of Canada. She might find them pretty.

A letter to a stranger was a step in the dark; on the other hand he was writing to someone who understood the end goal. That immediately brought her closer.

The flowered aerogramme that was to appeal to Nina’s aesthetic sense arrived in Jangpura two weeks later. With a casual air the mother handed it to Nina as she was sipping her first cup of evening tea.

‘What does it say?’ she murmured involuntarily, staring at her daughter’s hand as it slowly sliced the letter open with the back end of a spoon.

Nina instantly held out the still folded page.

‘No, no, you read first. It came at eleven o’clock. I knew at once it was from him, such a nice design, don’t you think, why can’t we do things like this? Your father was always buying paintings by Indian artists to hang in the embassies abroad, maybe he is like him.’

‘He’s a dentist, Ma, not an artist. Everybody there must be using these things.’

‘Come on, read, what are you waiting for?’

This aerogramme held the promise of change, a commodity rare in Nina’s world. The anxiety she felt was reflected a thousand fold in her mother’s scrutinising face. She pushed her half drunk, now cold, tea away.

Her mother got up and carried the tray into the kitchen. Nina remained on the front steps. From there she could see the arc of the newly completed flyover. Day and night cars zoomed down it, the swish of traffic, the blare of horn accompanied every waking moment of the road facing Jangpura residents.

Slowly she opened the two flaps. The handwriting was legible (his patients must love him), the ink blue (conventional? but then he was a doctor), the style formal, the tone correct (a man well brought up by middle class Indian parents) and the information one could have got from a guide to Halifax. Expectations of romance would have to wait in the wings a little longer. This letter did not invite their presence.

As she mused over the nature of hopes that refused to die Mr Batra came out and sat next to her.

‘Well?’

‘Read it.’

The mother quickly grabbed the sheet that hung from Nina’s hand. The neat, blue, evenly spaced handwriting met with her approval. Respectability and decency shone through every careful statement about his life in Canada. Her instinct after the sister’s visit was vindicated.

‘It’s a nice letter, no?’ she asked her daughter, whose standards were not her own.

‘I suppose.’

‘Then?’

‘Why is he looking to India for a wife?’

‘He probably wants one of his own kind. That’s not hard to understand. Many do it.’

‘True.’

‘So why criticise him?’

‘I am not criticising him. I am just wondering.’

‘When do you think you will write back?’

‘I’ll see.’

‘Marriage is a question of luck.’

If luck determined relationships so far she had not been lucky. Not with that creep who could talk of books so well, who was witty, who loved the same songs she did and who had made her pay for every moment of happiness with a bucket of tears. No, she had definitely not been lucky with him.

Nina stared at the cars that streamed across the skyline. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I will reply. My life does not have so many opportunities that I should ignore this one.’

Now it was the mother’s turn to stare mournfully at the auto studded horizon.

The letter was taken to college the next day. It lay among the pages of
Paradise Lost
Book I all morning. Nina’s intention had been to show it to Zenobia, but when the moment came she hesitated. Nothing might come of the correspondence she temporised uneasily, knowing this was no reason to withhold confidences. Instead, she dismissed her tutorial early, came back to an empty department room, took the letter out and examined it. The flowers, the handwriting, the even lines. Wasn’t the fact of the letter more significant than its actual contents? She might have thought this yesterday, if her mother had not darted in with her plucking hands and fearful heart. She who had been so scarred by the death of her father was now looking at the letter of a man who had been doubly traumatised. Her thoughts began to flow and she started a reply in her head.
Dear Ananda, I was so pleased to get your letter. I am sitting in the department room of my college. It is hot and the electricity has gone. Do you remember such times?
etc, etc. Tomorrow she would bring her nice letter pad to college. It was not easy to think at home.

Ananda responded immediately. His answer included details of Gary and Sue, his paying guest arrangement, the money he was engaged in saving. Flatteringly he wanted to know more about her. His sister used to tell them so much about Miranda House—was all of it true?

How should she tell him, thought Nina, what living in India was like? Even in academia the effects of the present regime were felt. A peon of their college had recently been killed. Such murders were no longer isolated. For the past few months the staff had heard rumours, based on accounts by eyewitnesses, of the way in which selected bastis were being razed to make a Delhi Beautiful.

The poor are so stubborn. They do not want to be compensated by land miles away in outlying areas, do not want relocation that would mean hours and hours, rupees and rupees spent in commuting to their sources of livelihood, their pavement shops, their menial transient jobs. They do not want to leave neighbourhoods replete with memories of fathers and grandfathers.

So they have to be taught by force. Police firing and bulldozers, some deaths, some arrests, some curfews and terror, all this do the job.

The peon’s extended family came to college begging for help, they were poor people, they wanted relief, some redress of wrongs, their voices heard, their woes considered; the tears of the poor, never ceasing, always flowing.

Though the staff felt bad, they could do nothing. A year ago they would have organized a march to the prime minister’s residence, drawn attention to the atrocity—now it was illegal for more than three people to meet in public.

They took up a collection for the widow. But collections are a one time thing. How long could any amount of money last? They drafted a letter to the editor of
The Statesman
which was never published.

Nina tried to convey some of this to Ananda. Fear was rampant, letters were read and people arrested in the night. She could be imprisoned for the criticism she was implying. Though she told herself that the State could not be interested in an obscure citizen like herself, her pen was not free. At times like these she missed Brussels very much.

Ananda paid more attention to her distress than to the incident itself. In particular he was inspired by her reference to Brussels. Though he had never been there, he could assure her that Canada was equally sane, civilised and secure. On and on he talked of his adopted country.

Nina got to know of Pierre Trudeau, young, dynamic, visionary, charismatic, flamboyant, a leader who he assured her was the envy of the world. She got to know of the lovely city of Halifax, its parks and gardens, its wonderful weather, the coastal climate (the winter was a bit long, the damp and wind were sometimes too persistent, but that was all), its small place charm, its cosmopolitan qualities. She was acquainted with the acceptance he had gained, with the citizenship he had taken because in Rome, he wanted to be a Roman. Then there was dentistry, the ideal profession, a doctor who didn’t have to be on call. You could call your soul your own if you were a dentist.