The Sari Shop (15 page)

‘Don’t be so stupid, Hari,’ Gokul said. ‘Your father just scolds you when you try to watch two films instead of one every Sunday. And your mother, it is wicked to say that your mother is always after your life, when she packs food for you and stops you from coming to the shop in unwashed shirts.’

Ramchand grew a little morose at this.

Gokul continued, ‘You fool, these are not family problems. Doesn’t my Lakshmi nag me so much? And doesn’t my Munna howl all night without the slightest reason. Hari, all this is part of every family. But Chander has serious problems.’

‘What problems?’ Hari asked, very curious by now.

‘His wife is not a good woman,’ Gokul said evasively.

Ramchand remembered the foul-mouthed woman who was Chander’s wife. But he also remembered the woman lying in a huddled heap in Chander’s house.

‘Means?’ asked Ramchand, a little warily.

‘Oh, there are no other men,’ Gokul said hastily. ‘Nothing like that. We would have known if there had been. At least till now there haven’t been. But who knows with a woman like that? I didn’t really want to spread this about her, but now that you are asking, I’ll tell you.’

There was a dramatic pause, then Gokul said, ‘She drinks.’

Hari gasped at this. Drinking was bad enough, but a
woman
drinking.

‘And she has none of the symptoms of being a woman belonging to a respectable family. Doesn’t take a bath every morning, doesn’t do puja, doesn’t wear sindoor in her hair
parting. What sindoor? Doesn’t even comb her hair. Just roams about. And the language she uses! Tauba, tauba! I can’t tell you how I pity Chander. Because she wasn’t like this when he married her. I know, I have heard that from a lot of people living around in that area. She changed. Some say she is mad. Had a miscarriage or went for an abortion or something like that and then went mad. But how can that be? Things like miscarriages and all keep happening to women. If all of them reacted like this, what kind of a society would we be left with?’

Hari looked solemn now.

‘And that is not all,’ Gokul said. ‘She has created a lot of trouble for him. She is rude to anybody she feels like. She stops strangers on the streets sometimes, full of drink, and insists that they owe her money. Whenever she sees the pundit of the Hanuman temple close to their home, she calls him a hypocrite and pretends to pick up a stone to throw at him. You know, the way one does to scare away stray dogs. Now tell me, how can Chander be happy?’ Gokul sighed. ‘A woman should know her place. Maybe she has had difficulties, maybe she has had problems, but it is a woman’s duty after all to take care of her husband and his home first, and later think about herself.’

Hari was drinking all this in eagerly. Ramchand listened in silence, remembering the red hand imprints on the face of Chander’s wife.

Gokul said, ‘And some people say there is nothing wrong. She is just one of those nasty, evil women – a devil in the guise of a woman. Women in that neighbourhood shield their children and especially their babies from her evil eye. She never prays. Never even smiles.’

‘Why doesn’t she smile?’ asked Ramchand in a low voice.

‘Says Chander gives her no money, there is nothing to eat at home and what not,’ Gokul said in impatient dismissal. ‘She
doesn’t even get any work at people’s houses, cleaning or cooking. She is so foul-mouthed. What decent family would let her inside the four walls of their house?’

Every coin has two sides
– the sentence suddenly came back to Ramchand. Maybe even more than two, he thought grimly.

Rina Kapoor’s wedding would always be remembered in Amritsar as the Grand Affair where forty different kinds of desserts were served.

There had been so much talk about it that Ramchand was dying of curiosity. When Mahajan went to the Kapoor House himself to settle the bills, he was graciously given an invitation card for the wedding.

Mahajan came back and showed it to Shyam and Rajesh, ‘An invitation to the Kapoor wedding,’ he explained, unable to keep the pride out of his nonchalant voice. Shyam and Rajesh had been visibly impressed, examining the expensive-looking card from all angles. Then, with Mahajan’s permission, they passed it around. ‘Imagine how much each card must have cost,’ said Gokul. ‘It is shiny, like the paper of those foreign magazines.’

It was. When Ramchand took the invitation card in his hands, he was very impressed. It wasn’t just expensive-looking, it was beautiful. The card was made of thick, firm silver paper and had a large, flamboyant ‘Om’ embossed on the front in a brilliant blue. Inside the letters were printed in English, cordially inviting everyone to grace the auspicious occasion with their benign presence. Ramchand ran his fingers over the letters, happily noting that he could read almost all the English words on it. He noted the date, time and venue.

Hari was very excited, ‘All the top people of Amritsar are going to be there. Will you go, Bauji?’ he asked Mahajan.

Mahajan shook his head sadly, ‘I won’t be able to. My nephew is getting married on the same day. Must be an
auspicious day, there are weddings in many families on that day. I won’t be able to go to the Kapoor House. You know, my nephew’s father, my brother, is dead, so I have to be there.’

Everyone nodded with a look of understanding sympathy.

Hari cleverly put in, ‘You are like a saint, Bauji. Always duty before pleasure.’

Mahajan looked pleased and went downstairs, while Hari nudged Gokul slyly and everyone laughed.

*

On the day of Rina Kapoor’s wedding, Ramchand thought about it all morning. Mahajan had taken the day off for his nephew’s wedding. ‘Must be stuffing his fat face with pakoras and samosas and sweets, while we work on an empty stomach in this tomb-like shop,’ said Hari. Since he had been eating alu tikkis all day from a paper bag and hadn’t done any work, determined to make the best of Mahajan’s absence, no one paid him any attention. However, Gokul did tell him that it was important to respect both your instrument of work, if you were a craftsman, and your place of work. He said it could be very inauspicious for Hari to call the shop where he earned his living a tomb. At this Hari muttered rude things under his breath against the shop and against Mahajan and against ‘that bloodsucker Bhimsen Seth’, and then went out to buy warm groundnuts. Gokul began to say all sorts of uncomplimentary things about Hari, more out of habit than any real rancour.

Ramchand was still wondering about the wedding at the Kapoor House. He hardly heard what Gokul was saying.

In the evening Ramchand had a stroke of good luck. Gokul had been complaining of a headache all day and by evening he said he was feeling a little feverish. When Ramchand was wrapping up some saris that an irate customer had pulled out
while looking for a sari with a thin border, Gokul asked him, ‘Ramchand, will you do something for me?’

‘What, Gokul Bhaiya?’ Ramchand asked him, concerned, noticing the pinched, drawn look on Gokul’s face.

‘Do you think you can take my bicycle home with you today? And bring it back tomorrow? Because my head is almost bursting. I think I might have a fever coming on. Though the headache might be entirely because of that idiot Hari and his monkey chatter.’

Ramchand smiled. He knew that, despite his sharp tongue, Gokul had a soft spot for the cheeky Hari.

Gokul rubbed his temples with both his forefingers and said, ‘I think I’d better take a rickshaw and go home. Is that all right with you?’

‘
I
will take the bicycle, Gokul Bhaiya. You don’t have to worry about anything,’ Hari offered, with the air of one making a sacrifice for a friend.

‘Certainly not, Hari,’ said Gokul. ‘I want my bicycle in one piece tomorrow. Will you take it, Ramchand?’

Ramchand agreed readily. Soon after, Gokul departed gloomily in a jolting rickshaw, groaning and complaining. Hari wandered off, looking disappointed. He had been hoping he could borrow the bicycle and ride to a kulfi stall a couple of miles away that sold creamy, cold kulfi with almonds and pistachios embedded in it, served with soft, white falooda.

It was when Ramchand was done for the day, had gone out of the shop and touched the gleaming handle of Gokul’s bicycle that he knew he just had to go and take a peek at the Kapoor House. Just a little peek! The temptation was too great to resist.

He rode Gokul’s bicycle all the way to the Kapoor House in Green Avenue. The sun had set. The bazaar was closing. Shop owners were downing their iron shutters and making for their homes. Ramchand was enchanted by the evening.
The sky was not completely dark yet. A faint, smoky golden haze left over from the day still hung in it. Streetlights were on; vegetable and fruit vendors had hung oil lanterns over their little carts and stalls. Piles of red tomatoes, purple brinjals and green capsicum shone in the light from the lanterns. Excitable housewives and middle-aged men were haggling at each of these stalls, knowing that it was easiest to get good bargains at this time of the day.

Ramchand rode on, a quiet excitement and a sense of well-being flooding through his heart.

*

He reached Green Avenue and turned into the lane where the Kapoor House was situated. And he was mesmerized by what he saw. At the entrance of this lane, a gateway made of flowers had been erected. Marigold, roses, jasmine flowers and green leaves were entwined in invisible threads to completely cover an iron frame that made the gateway.

The overpowering smell, however, was that of the marigolds, and it brought back a whiff of a memory. For a moment, Ramchand was transported to his barely remembered childhood, to the memories of a smiling face with a big red bindi and a leaf-shaped nose-pin, the smell of marigold petals in his hands and the sound of big brass bells ringing on happy Monday mornings.

He stood there dreamily for a while, his mind uplifted into a euphoric daze and then he cycled on. Every wall, every tree, every bush in the neighbourhood had been decorated with fairy lights. They twinkled and glimmered at Ramchand. For a moment, he felt that
this
was real, and the stuffy, dirty, inner city was just something his own diseased mind had conjured up. When the gentle breeze shook the leaves on the trees, all the tiny lights trembled slightly.

Even the road had been cleaned. Ramchand peacefully rode right up to the house.

The house itself was lit up brilliantly. All the entrances were draped with strings of flowers. In the park opposite the house, huge red and white canopies fluttered grandly in the slight breeze. Beautifully dressed people wandered around, flitting between the house and the tents. Even though it was early, long, sleek cars had already begun to line the road.

Ramchand stopped and got off the bicycle. He wheeled it along slowly, enraptured by all he saw. Suddenly, somebody stopped him.

‘Hey, who are you?’

Ramchand was suddenly brought down to earth.

It was a security guard.

Ramchand looked at him with resentment. He knew he wouldn’t have been stopped if he had been well dressed and prosperous looking. Then he saw that the security guard had some sort of a weapon tucked in his belt, and Ramchand began to stutter. ‘I – actually –’

Big drops of perspiration immediately appeared on his forehead.

The guard was waiting. Another guard came up and stood beside them.

Ramchand tried again, desperately looking around for something to say. Then he finally said, ‘You see… Rina Memsahib –’

The guard who had appeared later quickly said to the other, ‘Better take him to Rina Memsahib and ask her. She might get angry otherwise.’

Without a word, Ramchand was steered towards the gate of the house by the hefty security guards. He started to sweat profusely. What would happen now?

*

Rina stood in front of the long mirror, feeling satisfied. She had been very apprehensive about what the Amritsar beauticians could do with her on her wedding day. Finally, her anxiety had driven her to fly in a beautician from Delhi. The beautician was a thin woman with cropped hair, and ran a beauty salon affiliated to a five-star hotel in Delhi. She was addressed as Dolly. Dolly had worked on Rina’s clothes, hair and face for the past five hours and had now gone to take a ten-minute rest, before coming to work on Tina.

‘Thank God!’ said Rina, addressing her sister, who was sitting on the bed behind her, in a pale green lehnga that was far more expensive than it looked. ‘I was so afraid that these people here in Amritsar would ruin my looks. Imagine my wedding pictures, showing my cheeks red with rouge, three necklaces hanging around my neck, shiny scarlet lipstick and garish eye shadow.’

Tina nodded. ‘Yeah, they are such fools. No standard.’

Rina was, indeed, looking different from most brides. The lehnga she wore wasn’t from Sevak Sari House. It was designed especially for her by a famous fashion designer based in Bombay. In designing the rich maroon lehnga, the designer had delicately incorporated silk, net, brocade and real gold thread to produce a magnificent outfit.

Instead of the usual numerous strings of gold, she wore a single handcrafted gold necklace, exquisitely made and beautifully embellished with rubies and diamonds. Matching earrings flashed at her ears, and a matching tikka hung from her centre hair parting, lighting up her forehead. Expensive kaleere hung from the chooda that was made of real ivory. Two days ago, a Rajasthani mehndi-wala had made a lovely henna design on her hands, reaching almost to her elbows. She had also covered Rina’s delicate feet and ankles with the same design. The exquisite henna patterns were made of flowers, peacocks,
leaves, palanquins and other motifs that the Rajasthani woman had learnt from her own grandmother.

Today, the mehndi shone brilliantly.

Dolly had applied matte make-up to Rina’s face. Her eyes were expertly highlighted. Her hair was slicked back into an elegant knot behind her neck, just the right shape for a pallu to be draped over.

Yes, Rina felt satisfied.

She had prepared for her wedding day in her own way, ignoring most of the instructions her mother and other female relatives had given her.