Thrity Umrigar Read online

The men are workers from my dad’s factory and Babu had asked them to come over for precisely this reason. The arrival of the two large suitcases creates another round of excitement.

  I disentangle myself from my father’s embrace and follow the bags. The two grunting men have hoisted the suitcases on their shoulders and Babu hurriedly directs them into the living room, where they look as if they are about to drop them on the floor with a thud. ‘Saala, idiots,’ Babu scolds. ‘Bricks instead of brains. What do you think is inside these bags, gold bars, that you can just drop? Lower them gently, gently.’ The two men

  grin, familiar with my uncle’s quick anger but also with his soft heart. Pesi reaches into his pyjama pocket to retrieve two notes, which he presses into the palms of each man. ‘Okay, go,’ he says. ‘Buy yourself some mithai tomorrow, to celebrate my brother’s safe return.’ The two men leave, touching their foreheads in appreciation, nodding shyly to my dad on their way out. ‘Factory all okay?’ he says in response and I am disappointed that this is all he has to say to them.

  At the front door, there is some movement. Mehroo, noticing that Perviz is about to enter the apartment and make herself at home, thinks quickly on her feet. Yawning in an exaggerated way, she says, ‘Chalo, it’s getting late. We can do the opening-fopening of the bags tomorrow. My bhai is tired right now.

  We should all go to bed.’ I find my toes curling in embarrassment over Mehroo’s obvious ploy but if she notices, Perviz aunty does not say. In response, she stretches her arms and pretends to be sleepy herself. ‘Good idea,’ she says. ‘Bas, I wanted to stay up to look at my Burjor one time only. Now I can sleep peacefully, knowing he is home safe and sound.’

  Once inside, my uncle performs the nightly ritual of applying the stopper and locking the front door. The adults look as if they are about to act on Mehroo’s words and leave the suitcases unmolested until the next day. But I am sick with a feeling of letdown because I had asked my dad for a walking-talking Japanese doll and I want to know if he has remembered. None of his letters home had mentioned the purchase of a doll. I know that I will never fall asleep without knowing for sure.

  I tug at his sleeve. ‘Please, daddy,’ I say. ‘I want to open the bags now only. Please. I cannot wait till morning.’

  When he first looks at me, his eyes seem tired and sleepy.

  But then he shakes his head once, as if to shake off the cobwebs of sleep and he grins. ‘I also cannot wait till morning,’ he says, pulling a set of keys out of his suit pocket.

  ‘You open the first bag.’

  Carefully, proudly, as if I am carrying the flame at the Olympics, I take the key and fumble with the small lock on the largest suitcase. ‘To the right,’ Babu advises. ‘Turn the key to the right,’ I tug the lock open, praying that this is the bag that carries my doll.

  At first, I do not see the doll because my dad’s shirts are neatly folded on top of the box. Also, there are scores of gold coins the size of a man’s fist, strewn all over the top of the suitcase. ‘Oh, God,’ dad mutters. ‘They must have fallen out.’

  He picks up one coin and hands it to me and I realize it is chocolate wrapped in gold foil. The chocolate coin feels soft and mushy in my hand. ‘It’s all melted,’ I say and my mom bends to scoop them out one by one, before the chocolate leaks into the suitcase.

  I can barely contain my excitement now, hopping from foot to foot. As always, the adults laugh and as always, I ham it up even more to keep their laughter coming. I am almost nine years old and already I am cast in the role of the family clown, the comic relief. Getting carried away, I start pulling out dad’s neatly pressed shirts, tossing them out of the suitcase as if I am tossing out dirt from a cave that I’m excavating, until Mehroo puts a firm hand on me and stops me. ‘Behave yourself,’ she says to me firmly. ‘Act ladylike, now. Two more minutes will not hurt you.’

  But they do, they do. The minutes feel excruciatingly long until we reach the bottom of the suitcase and there, lying in a large pink and white box wrapped in transparent cellophane paper, is my Japanese doll. I let out a yelp. He’d remembered.

  Somebody lifts the box gently and opens it. A large, pinkish doll with an unblinking gaze is put in my hands. I am disappointed that the doll is not wearing a kimono but my disappointment vanishes when my dad pulls a round, white pendant at the nape of the doll’s neck and out pours a flurry of high-pitched Japanese words, which my dad translates for me. I tug at the string myself but impatience makes me pull too hard and the string simply boomerangs back and my doll makes a choking sound. ‘No, pull slowly, like this and release gently,’ my dad coaches. A torrent of words escape the doll’s mouth again. I am totally enamoured.

  Somebody opens the second suitcase but I am no longer interested. I keep pulling at the string, savouring the sound of the incomprehensible words. A few other gifts land my way and I give them a cursory glance. I notice the yards of dress material he has brought for all the women, hear them fawning over them, but I am not interested. But then, a kind of hush falls over the room, followed by a rapid gasp from my mother and my aunts and this gets my attention. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, my father pulls out a large blue box from the second suitcase. ‘This is my pride and joy,’ he says. ‘It’s the finest bone china, a complete teaset.’ He glances quickly at my mother and aunts and continues: ‘Unfortunately, the set is not for the house. It’s a business gift for Thakoor. He’s helped us a lot during the bad times, as you all know.’ My mother looks as if she is about to argue but both my aunts are nodding in assent, swallowing their obvious disappointment, and she feels compelled to nod too. Dad smiles, a sudden, happy smile. ‘But if my collaboration with the Japanese goes as planned, there will be many such sets for the house, God willing.’ The other adults smile their assent, used as they are to making all kinds of sacrifices for the family business. But I can hear the sighs that they are willing themselves not to breathe. They are disappointed and trying their best not to show it. My dad must’ve heard something too because he stares at the box sadly for a minute and then sits upright as if he’s made a decision. ‘You should at least look at the pieces before I give them away,’ he says. ‘Mehroo can pack it all back later.’

  He opens the box as carefully as if it contains a soufflé. Each cup and saucer is individually wrapped in soft, white tissue paper and he uses his handkerchief to touch them and set them carefully on the newspaper that Mehroo has spread on the floor. Bewildered and excited by the reverent way in which the adults are admiring the set, I put my doll down and rush to where my dad is sitting. ‘Let me see, let me see,’ I say, grabbing one of the cups.

  ‘Careful, darling,’ he says, his eyebrows shooting up. ‘It’s very delicate…’

  I’m not exactly sure what happens next. I try to set the cup down and somehow it lands on the stone floor harder than I’d anticipated and somehow it lands on its side, so that I’m suddenly holding only the cup handle in my hand. I stare at the handle in horror and my eyes are already welling up as I see that horror mirrored on the faces of the adults around me. I force myself to meet my father’s gaze but his face is a mask.

  Only the slightly parted lips convey his disappointment.

  I want to wail, sob, say I’m sorry, curse myself for my ancient clumsiness, want to curl inside myself and disappear but to do any of these things would be to shatter the silence that has descended upon the room. It has all happened so fast—the pride in my father’s voice, his regret at having to give the teaset away, his careful handling of his treasure and my impulsive, thoughtless destruction of it—that no one quite knows how to react. Finally, I see Mehroo and my mom both simultaneously reach for my shoulders, as if to yank me up before I do more damage. I tense up, waiting for the recriminations and lamentations about my clumsiness and my impulsiveness that I know must follow, when I hear my father speak.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘It’s just a cup after all. Tomorrow, at the factory, I’ll glue the handle back in such a way that Thakoor will never
even know it was broken.’

  All of us remain unconvinced. I still want to die. Seeing this, he cups my face. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeats, smiling this time.

  ‘Don’t worry. I know you didn’t do it purposely. Now, come on, we have other gifts to open.’

  I have already spent eight years of my life living with my father. Although he has mostly been a shadowy presence in my life, has not quite played the influential role that Mehroo has, has not quite stood in sharp relief to the others in my life, I have known for a long, long time that I love him. But today, for the first time, hearing him say those words, watching him struggle to make the lump in his throat disappear, I make an exciting and new discovery: Ilike my dad. I like this tall, serious, kind man sitting in front of me. I’d have liked him even if he didn’t belong to me.

  A few weeks after my father returns from Japan, he takes me to the Parsi-owned Paradise Café for lunch. The Paradise, with its funky paintings of a naked Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is one of my favourite restaurants. We each order our favourite dish—chicken steak for me; chicken lollys for him.

  As we eat, dad tells me about Japan, the elegant restaurants that he dined in, the grand reception he got from his Japanese hosts. I listen for a while but then my mind wanders. Suddenly, I shush him into silence. ‘Daddy, please. Just be quiet for a moment.’ He looks at me quizzically but obliges. I close my eyes and bow my head. After a few seconds, I look up again.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Now you can talk again.’

  ‘What were you doing, Thrituma? Why did you tell me to be quiet?’

  ‘I was just imagining that I was having lunch with the Emperor of Japan.’

  My dad tilts back his head and laughs, a laugh that climbs up and down an entire octave scale. Overhearing my dad’s laughter, Jimmy, the restaurant owner, looks over from his place behind the cash register and beams. Every time we leave Paradise together, Jimmy always tells me how happy it makes him to see the closeness between me and my daddy.

  Now, dad takes my hand in his and kisses it. ‘God Bless.

  May all your dreams come true. May you someday really have lunch with the Emperor of Japan and other important people.’

  I beam. I love that I can make my father laugh. I love that he revels in my flights of fancy, love the boyishness in him that makes him share my appetite for large dreams.

  Much like a Polaroid photo, my dad has come into focus for me since his trip to Japan. Before that, he was an elusive figure in my life, someone who flitted in and out of my life, the dual pressures of a demanding business and a fraying marriage conspiring to drive him out of the house. Occasionally, he would play ‘Driver, Driver’ with me, where we would each take turns sitting behind the other on the raised threshold to his bedroom and pretend to drive a bus. But the picnics and summer vacations and swimming lessons that my classmates took for granted, had eluded us.

  Still, he was immensely popular with my friends, this madcap man who once drove through a park with me and two other friends riding on the hood of his car. After one of my birthday parties, he took all my friends downstairs to feed milk to every stray dog in the vicinity.

  But what most charmed—and bewildered—my friends about my dad was his insistence that he was my older brother and not my father.

  ‘This is my dad,’ I’d begin on those occasions when he’d drop me off at school after I missed the school-bus.

  ‘No,’ he would say in a loud voice, frowning a bit. ‘I’m not her dad. I’m her older brother.’

  My classmates would stare at me and then at the dark-haired, youthful man who had just bounded up the stairs two at a time. ‘Uncle, please, tell the truth, no,’ someone would finally plead and then he’d give in with a grin. Drawing me close to his side, he’d say, ‘Yes, I’m her daddy but she’s also my best friend.’ I’d squirm in his grasp, embarrassed and proud at the same time. And the other girls, remembering their aging, grim-faced, stern fathers, would sigh.

  For my seventh birthday, my father had declared that rather than trouble my friends’ parents, he would drop each one of them off to their homes. We piled on top of each other, eight or nine giggling girls in his old black Hillman. ‘Okay,’ he had asked. ‘Who wants to be dropped off first?’ But there were no takers. Nobody wanted to go home yet. ‘Drop her off first, uncle,’ Anita said, pointing to Roxanne.

  ‘No, not me first,’ Roxanne squealed. ‘Pick someone else.’

  Dad caught my eye in the rearview mirror and raised his eyebrows slightly to alert me to what was coming. Whistling tunelessly, he headed for the nearest traffic circle and drove around it once. ‘Okay, we’ll keep going round and round the island until someone volunteers to be dropped off first,’ he said. The carload of girls giggled when he went around it a second time. By the fourth round, they were looking at each other uncertainly, glancing at me for direction. But I looked resolutely ahead. By the sixth round, there was much shuffling and whispering, broken by an occasional tentative giggle. By this time, dad was singing, ‘It’s a hap, hap, happy day,’ and somehow, this broke the ice, convinced them that they were in the company of a madman, albeit a funny madman. ‘Okay, uncle, me first,’ someone said. ‘You can drop me off first.’

  ‘Done,’ dad replied. ‘Now, who’s next?’

  The next day at school, the classroom teacher stopped me in the hallway. ‘Sounds like the girls had a good time at your house. But tell me, is it true that your dad drove around the same traffic island fourteen times before he dropped the first girl home?’

  ‘Nobody wanted to be the first to be dropped off,’ I explained. ‘And anyway, he only went round a few times.’

  The teacher shook her head. ‘I see. Maybe I should call your dad and get some tips from him about how to discipline my class.’

  Like me, my dad doesn’t have a practical bone in his body.

  This trait distinguishes us from the rest of the family. If we bring home flowers, Mehroo lectures dad on wasting money.

  ‘Bring home some fruit or vegetables, something we can use,’

  she says. ‘What good are these flowers that’ll die in two days?

  I can’t feed the children flowers.’

  The same ethic governs the gifts I receive from my family.

  For my birthday, I get polyester blouses and gabardine pants.

  I only want to wear jeans. Nobody buys me any. I long for a pair of suede shoes but the adults tell me they will get dirty in the Bombay dust. So I get yet another pair of black patent leather shoes. I have such a hard time finding shoes that fit my requirement for comfort and my family’s requirement of elegance, that every shoe salesman at Metro Shoes in Colaba hates my guts. I am convinced of this.

  Everybody knows that I devour books like chocolate cake, that I love music with a passion. Yet, no adult ever buys me a book or a record as a gift. Besides, it’s probably just as well that they don’t buy me the kind of gifts I want. Seeing how little they know my taste in books or music, I’ll probably end up with polyester books and gabardine records.

  My father broods.

  It is an old family curse, this brooding. My grandfather was a brooder also. That’s how my dad refers to himself, as a brooder. He ruminates and worries and thinks obsessively about the past. He remembers slights and insults and embarrassments, collects them the way other people collect seashells. He is what the nuns in school have labelled me—hypersensitive. He considers himself an unlucky man, a man whose achievements have not measured up to his talents.

  He works harder than anyone I know and yet the family business is like the old B.E.S.T buses that ply the streets of Bombay—spluttering, working in fits and starts, running well on some days and breaking down on others.

  We are alike, my dad and I. I have known this since his return from Japan because after the incident with the teaset, we have been spending a lot of time together. We have taken to going to the seaside at least once a week. Sometimes mummy accompanies us and those times are different tha
n when it is just dad and me. Mummy complains continually about dad’s driving, asks him to slow down and nags at him until I feel myself stretched as tight and taut as a guitar string.

  I may look like a younger version of my mother but under the skin I resemble my father. We are alike in all the important ways. I see his face on gloomy, rain-heavy days, see how the wind and the rain makes him melancholy-happy, how it propels him, this kind of subdued weather, and I see my own soul reflected in him. I, too, love weather like this when the skies are grey and heavy with rain. Like him, I love the sea more when it is rough and in turmoil, than when it is calm and orderly. I, too, understand well that complicated melancholy feeling, because that’s when I write my poems and my stories.

  It’s a feeling I dread and welcome, at the same time. Bad weather frees something within me, makes me feel large and grand and as big as the world itself, ready to take on the roaring ocean with a roar of my own. I despise the ordinary, cloudless, sunny Bombay sky because it makes me feel small and ordinary and just—me. It doesn’t take me outside of myself, doesn’t make me feel powerful and capable of anything, the way a tumultuous day does.

  We never discuss any of this, my dad and I. In fact, I’m not even sure that he knows how I feel, only that I ‘like’ rainy days, also. But I sense all this in him and it makes me feel close to him. I already have a well-honed radar for spotting loneliness in others, or so I fancy. I figure I can recognize them anywhere, that something about the way their faces search the skies or that hollow look in their eyes, tells me who my people are.

  My father happens to be one of my people, even if our mode of expressing ourselves is different. My father is dually cursed—although he feels the same lonely-crazy feelings that I do, he is not a writer. So the outlet that lets me express myself on paper, that keeps me from going insane, is unavailable to him. Instead of writing, my dad hums. On wet twilit evenings when the city streets are bathed in gold and orange light, when the Bombay sky bleeds red and purple blood, my father hums.