Thrity Umrigar Read online

  The punk movement that is sweeping across the West does not reach us. As always, we are about five to ten years behind.

  We are still singingPuff the Magic Dragon at school picnics, although thanks to Jenny’s worldliness I am also playing air guitar to Queen’sBohemian Rhapsody .

  But the biggest influence on my life is Bob Dylan. The nuns had taught usBlowin’ in the Wind in school and we all know Peter, Paul and Mary’s airy-fairy version of it. But I don’t really discover the raw power of Dylan until Arvind, my pen pal in Calcutta, plagiarizes the words to Dylan’sShelter fromthe Storm and tries to pass them off as his own. When, embarrassed by my effusive praise, he finally confesses the poem’s true author, I check outBlood on the Tracks . And fall in love with the ingenious word play, the effortless rhymes, the worldly humour and yes—even the voice. Soon, I am greedily seeking out every Dylan album that I can find. And my own poems begin to change. Gone are the earnest, Robert Frost-in-fluenced poems about hard-working old men and rainy nights.

  Suddenly, I am writing about one-eyed gnomes and moth-ball mirrors and the Ticks of Tanzania.

  Discovering Dylan also unwittingly provides me with the perfect weapon in my ongoing battle with my mother. Mummy is convinced that Dylan, with his nasal whine, is a joke on her, somebody whom I’ve invented with the express purpose of irritating the hell out of her. The voice of a generation, the conscience of a nation, the bard of the 1960s is reduced in my mother’s mind to a toad with laryngitis. ‘Listen to the lyrics,’

  I say, in an unconscious echo of the words spoken by Diana’s older sister a lifetime ago. But mummy has a ready answer: ‘If God had wanted us to understand what he’s saying, he would’ve given him a better voice.’

  Mummy is trying to end my friendship with Jesse. After a year of singing her praises she has suddenly turned on her and is bad-mouthing her to anyone who will listen.

  Jesse has become good friends with my mother’s nephew, who lives around the corner from us. They often meet at the bus-stop near his apartment building and ride together to college. This has my mother apoplectic. She is convinced Jesse will scheme to have her poor, innocent nephew fall in love with her and then break his heart. All of my mother’s shame at having grown up poor is now brushing up against Jesse’s privileged, affluent upbringing. She casts this budding friendship between Jesse and her nephew in sinister, suspicious terms. ‘Everybody knows she was in love with that Muslim fellow in her hometown,’ she says, contempt dripping from her voice like fat trimmings. ‘Now to get over him, she’s trying to trap my poor Dinshaw.’

  My father, Mehroo and Babu stare at her blankly. They have no reason to dislike Jesse—other than the fact that my nightly chats with her make me skip dinner—and they don’t think Dinshaw is the unworldly saint that mummy is making him out to be. She turns away from them with dissatisfaction, her hissing hatred needing a better audience.

  She finds it in her sister Villoo. ‘Do you know what that wicked son of yours is doing, nachoing, dancing with that Godless girl?’ she says. ‘You know she’s an atheist? Says so herself, and wah, that too with pride. You mark my words—she is going to use our Dinshaw and then abandon him like a ba-nana peel in a garbage dump. She’s not in our league—every-body knows her father is worth millions.’

  Villoo aunty says a reasonable thing. ‘If she’s such a bad girl, why do you let your Thritu be friends with her?’

  I want to applaud Villoo for her logic. But mummy speaks first. ‘My Thritu is not having an affair with her. She is not a boy, who will go all lattoo-fattoo over some arrogant Godless girl. But he’syour son. Follow my advice, don’t follow, what do I care?’

  Dinshaw’s sister, Persis, gets into the act. So does her best friend, Shinaz, a nice-looking woman with a hooked nose that she generally keeps hidden behind an embarrassed handkerchief. They are good girls, respectable, sexually inexperienced, conventional, who accept without question the authority of their priests, parents and teachers. Jesse’s very existence, the way she carries herself—her jaunty, assertive walk, the joyous angle of her head, her eccentric

  crackle of laughter, her merciless mimicry of the affected, pseudo-British way in which upper-class Parsis speak—is an affront to them. In my kinder moments, I understand how threatening and alien someone like Jesse must appear to them, how she must make their own lives seem so miserably constricted and small and without possibility, how she must make them wrestle with sleeping dreams they don’t even know existed.

  But my charitable moments are few. I love Jesse too much to be kind to her detractors. Most of the time, I fight battles on her behalf, battles that she is blissfully unaware of because I cannot bring myself to tell her how much resentment she inspires in people who barely know her.

  ‘What the hell does she think wearing those pink pants?’

  Persis says.

  ‘I tell you, this girl has no sense of taste,’ Shinaz adds.

  ‘It’s not taste. It’s shame. She has no shame,’ Persis says, as if she is a world-wide authority on the matter.

  ‘What does shame have to do with how you dress?’ I say.

  ‘Someone might say the way the two of you dress, in your short dresses and all, is shameful.’

  Persis addresses the air, the way she does when she’s very angry. ‘Just listen to her,’ she says, not looking at me. ‘Always leaping to Jesse’s defence, right or wrong. Totally and utterly brainwashed. Now she, too, is running around wearing keds and all. And talking like this to her own cousin, for the sake of someone she barely knows. Well, we’ll see when she comes running back to us in two-three months.’

  Shinaz fixes me a baleful look which I ignore.

  My cousin Dinshaw is a strange fellow and apparently does not share my need to defend Jesse against his family the way I do. In fact, he goes out of his way to create misunderstandings and ill-will. It appeals to his sense of humour that his new friend arouses so much negativity within his family.

  So he goes for the jugular—or rather, for the nose. Shinaz’s nose.

  ‘Jesse was commenting the other day on Shinaz’s long nose,’

  he tells his sister in a conversational tone. ‘She said it was more hooked than the hook on Captain Cook’s arm.’

  World War III has just been launched.

  My mother stomps around in a cloud of fury, refusing to even acknowledge Jesse’s presence when she runs into her on the street. Persis is dripping venom and outrage. ‘Who does she think she is?’ she mutters repeatedly. ‘The bleddy bitch.

  Just because they have money…’

  Shinaz plays the part of a beatific martyr as if she was born to play the role. Villoo aunty mutters every foul word and curse she knows, going back to Jesse’s great-grandfather.

  I fight back with what I think is scientific detachment. ‘Look, I know Jesse’s patterns of speech, okay? She’d never say something stupid and crude like that. If she wanted to insult Shinaz, she’d think of something better than a silly, personal insult.’ My words land without even creating a ripple in their rage.

  Things get so out of hand that I finally confront Dinshaw.

  ‘Why don’t you tell Persis the truth that you made this shit up?’ I say. ‘Here they are hating Jesse’s guts because of you and your damn lies.’

  But Dinshaw only winks. He is enjoying himself.

  Mummy finally takes it upon herself to tell Jesse what Dinshaw’s whole family thinks of her. She accuses her of playing with her nephew, of insulting family friends. She returns to our apartment smug and full of herself. ‘Told her off, got it off my chest,’ she brags. ‘My family—we are honest, direct people, unlike some I could mention,’ and here she throws a glance at Mehroo. ‘If we want to say something, bas, we just say it, regardless of consequences. I just spoke my mind. She just listened chup-chap. After all,

  what could she say? But it will teach her not to try any stunts with my family.’

  I am mortified, repulsed by my mother’s language and at h
ow completely she has turned on Jesse. This is not the first time mummy has turned on an erstwhile friend but her unpre-dictability has never impacted on me before.

  I know that my friendship with Jesse is over. I mourn its passing, going over each sweet memory, holding it in my mind like a piece of hard candy in the mouth. Anyway, I should’ve known. If there’s any goodness in my life, it will be taken away.

  That’s just the pattern to my life, as irreversible as the patterns on a zebra. It has always been this way. I was foolish to think that the friendship with Jesse was truly a break from the past, that the sheer fun and joy of it would propel me into a different future.

  Two days later, Jesse bangs on the balcony door. I do not answer. I know she wants to tell me off, to make formal what I already know in my heart. Mummy is off visiting her mother, as she does each evening. Mehroo looks at me inquiringly when I don’t answer Jesse’s shouts, but she doesn’t say anything. Finally, the calling and knocking stop. The next day, she knocks again. This time, I go to the balcony, dragging myself there. I feel numb, without hope. There is a metallic taste in my mouth, as if I’ve gnawed on tin.

  Jesse looks angry. Well, after what my mother did, who can blame her? ‘I called and called yesterday but you didn’t answer,’ she says. She waits for me to say something but I just shrug lightly.

  She starts again. ‘You have been avoiding me. Why?’

  She won’t make this easy for me. ‘Well, after what my mother did to you…’ I say.

  She interrupts me. ‘But that was between your mother and me. Why haveyou been avoiding me?’

  Do I really have to spell out the obvious? ‘I didn’t think you’d want to be friends with me after what mummy did. I thought you’d never want to see me again.’

  The silence drags on so long, I think this is how it’s going to end, with both of us drifting away…

  When Jesse speaks her voice is raw with…pain? anger? ‘I can’t believe you hold me in such contempt,’ she says. ‘You must think so little of me if you think I’d let your damn mother or anybody get in the way of my friendship with you.’

  Is it possible to feel two contradictory emotions at the same precise moment? It is. I did. A sharp sting of hope pierces my heart like a needle. A boulder of remorse at having lost Jesse because of my own stupidity rolls down my body.

  ‘Jesse, please,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought…’ I am so close to tears I can’t go on. ‘You have no idea,’ I start again.

  She reaches out over the partition between the two apartments and grabs my hand. ‘Don’t be stupid, Thrity,’ she says.

  ‘You know we’re surrounded by silly, petty people. They have their own reasons for being that way. But we don’t have to get caught up in all that.’

  That night, I wish I still believed in God because I want to shout my thanks to the heavens. Instead, I stand on the balcony and talk to the stars. One of them winks back at me.

  Fourteen

  BABU IS PERTURBED, I CAN tell. He paces the balcony and stares at the end of the street to where it meets the main road, as if looking for something on the horizon. Then, he comes in and fidgets with the buttons of his shirt. In contrast, dad is calm but obviously angry. ‘Pesi,’ he says sternly. ‘Don’t worry so much. After all that we’ve been through, this is nothing.

  Just a minor embarrassment, that’s all.’

  But Babu is taking this personally. He is, after all, in charge of the workshop. Dad’s duties mostly take him out of the office, canvassing for orders, submitting tenders, meeting with customers, doing on-site inspections. The factory is Babu’s prov-ince, his responsibility, and his casual, hail-fellow-well-met relationship with the labourers is a source of pride to him. He swears at them, jokes with them, yells at them, steals an occasional chappati from them, gives them extra money when they go to their villages once a year. And they, in turn, worship him, grin when he calls them sisterfuckers, perk up when they hear the dry cough that precedes him into the factory each morning, beg him to share the modest meals they prepare on their kerosene stoves each evening.

  And now, these same workers are on strike. Worse, any minute now they will show up at the house, armed with placards and red banners and bullhorns. They will stand on the street below our balcony and shout slogans condemning dad and Babu. It’s a strike tactic commonly used in Bombay these days, everybody knows that, but we have never beenFirst Darling of the Morning / 161

  picketed before and all of us are embarrassed and afraid. But of all the family members, Babu and I are taking it the most personally—Babu because of his almost-fraternal relationship with the striking workers, and I, because of my childhood bond with Jamal.

  When I was little, I loved Jamal. He was a young, tall, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with enormous white teeth and an ever-ready, quick smile. Dad said that if only Jamal had been educated, there was no telling how far in life he could’ve gone because he was smart and learned things in a flash. Among all the workers, he was Babu’s favourite because although he didn’t talk as much as Babu did, they were alike in some ways—gregarious, generous, quick with a laugh.

  Whenever there was extra work at home—if the apartment had to be washed and cleaned from top to bottom or if some heavy trunks were to be brought down from the loft in the kitchen or if ice-cream had to be hand-whipped in the wooden churn—Babu would always ask Jamal if he wanted to earn some extra money. Always, the answer was yes, so that Jamal was a regular presence in our home.

  ‘Jamal,’ I would scream and rush toward him whenever he showed up at the door and he would laugh and pick me up and perch me on his shoulders while mummy followed him around the house saying, ‘Careful, careful.’ His body was muscular and carried the same clean, sweet scent of sawdust that was on my dad and uncle when they came home from the factory each evening. Sometimes, when he was cleaning the house, he would toss me a rag and allow me to wash the walls with him, with me scrubbing the section closest to the floor while he stood on a ladder beside me, occasionally looking down to throw me a quick smile, his dark black eyes twinkling.

  I would scrub until my hands ached and then he would climb down the ladder and pull the rag from my hands. ‘Enough, baby,’ he’d say. ‘You go play now.’ How impossible it was to explain to him that working by his side was more fun for me than anything I could do on my own, that I was tired of making up an only child’s lonely games of invention and this act of working side by side with another person felt happy and exciting to me.

  As I grew into my awkward teenage body, my relationship with Jamal changed as we both became more guarded and self-conscious around each other and as the invisible taboos against physicality and horseplay took hold under my family’s protective gaze. Our relationship became more complex and we were more reserved around each other but beneath that exterior reserve was the knowledge of the past, of the years that I had hero-worshipped him and he had treated me like his younger sister. Jamal’s affection for me now took different form. When I would show up at the workshop during summer vacations, he would confidently order someone to go get a Coke for me, in contrast to the old foreman who would go through his litany of, ‘What will you drink, baby? Mangola?

  Limca? Gold Spot? Coca-Cola? Hah, one Coca-Cola then, icy-cold.’ Jamal had now started calling me memsahib instead of baby but there was an irony in the way he did it, as if the two of us shared an old joke.

  I, too, was less exuberant in my pleasure at seeing him but I still acknowledged our past bond by lingering to talk with him in front of the other workers, asking about his family and how his father’s asthma was. Often, Jamal would point to the book I invariably clenched in my hand, asking to see it, flipping through the pages although we both knew that he could not read. When he returned the book, his face shone with pride.

  ‘You keep reading, memsahib,’ he’d say. ‘You learn everything in the world there is to learn. Then you come and educate poor Jamal.’ We’d both laugh at that but sometimes I had to look away,
to beat back the tears that would inexplicably sting my eyes at his words.

  And now here’s Jamal, standing below our balcony, leading a group of about twenty-five other workers, as they chant their slogans and raise their fists in the air. Even from this distance, I notice that those twinkling dark eyes are now flashing with fury, and his open mouth is twisted with rage. Along with their flags and placards, they have brought drums and bells and are using these to tide over the silence in between the slogans. Our entire family is lined up on the balcony, too stunned and embarrassed to move until dad takes charge.

  ‘Okay, come on,’ he says. ‘Everybody get in the house. The longer we stand here, the worse their antics will get.’ There is real anger in his voice. But it is Babu’s face that catches my attention—he looks as stunned by Jamal’s transformation as I feel. And there is something else in his face—a pained look of betrayal as well as a hopeless confusion, as if he is realizing for the first time that all the jokes and back-slapping in the world cannot alter the basic fact that people like us and people like Jamal occupy different worlds, that the walls that separate us are too thick to be torn down by only goodwill. Right at that moment, the union leader—a stranger who has shown up to organize the workers only two months earlier—leads the workers in a particularly lewd slogan about the women in the family and hearing this, a light goes out of Babu’s eyes and his shoulders slump. But the next second, he lets out a roar.

  ‘Bloody motherfuckers,’ he says. ‘I’m going downstairs right now and grabbing that bastard union leader by his throat. They can do all their maja-masti about me but if they say a thing about our women…’ He looks around for a shirt to throw over his sadra but dad steps toward him. ‘Pesi, calm down. This is exactly the reaction they want from us, don’t you see? Then they’ll accuse us of breaking the strike by using physical violence. No, let’s get on with our day. Sooner or later they will get tired of acting like monkeys and go home.’