The Sari Shop (11 page)

So it
could
be done. So Ramchand devoted half an hour every evening – after he was done with the essays and had been wading through the letters, perplexed – to learning words and their meanings. In starting with ‘a’, he hadn’t bargained for the single lettered word ‘a’ that was the first one in the dictionary. It seemed to have a million meanings, so Ramchand skipped it. In six days’ time, he had worked his way from Aback to Altitude, spending every single spare moment he had on the dictionary. He would even mutter the words in the shop. However, after the initial fever went down a little, he slowed down, and developed a steady pace.

*

During the evenings Ramchand sat at his table and worked, for the winter days were short and by the time he got back from the shop it was already dark. But on Sundays Ramchand would open the windows, and settle down on his tin trunk by the back window to read. From this window, not only could he see the landlord’s courtyard, but also the living room and kitchen of his house. There were two tiny bedrooms too, and a bathroom, but they were behind the living room and the kitchen, invisible to Ramchand’s eyes.

He often watched Sudha working in the kitchen. He had seen her there in all seasons, for the past eleven years, sweating and panting over the stove in the middle of summer, and happily making ginger-flavoured tea on cold winter days. He had watched her cutting paneer into neat little squares, peeling potatoes, chopping ginger, slicing French beans, pounding masalas in a little stone mortar, kneading flour to make chapatis with, stirring daal and various curries, boiling milk in a large steel pateela and frying pakoras for her family on some evenings. Sometimes, he saw her dusting the living room. She was a careful housekeeper and she’d thoroughly dust the television, change the bedspread on the divan once a week, and shake out the tablecloth every day. When the fifteen-year-old Ramchand had rented this room, the landlord had been a newly married man.

His young wife was slim and had a heart-shaped face that was somewhat spoiled by a flat nose. Though she wasn’t very beautiful – apart from her flat nose, she had a rather short neck and close-set eyes – to Ramchand she was the most attractive woman he had ever seen. She smiled and nodded at him whenever she saw him.

As a newly wed bride, she wore shiny saris that left her beautiful, smooth midriff bare. At other times, she wore embroidered salwaar kameez with bright, sequinned chunnis. She had long hair that she coiled into a loose bun most of the
time. She wore sindoor in the parting of her hair, a red bindi on her forehead and kaajal in her sparkling eyes. She wore gold earrings in the shape of flowers. The overall glowing effect enchanted Ramchand.

Her name, he learnt one morning, when the landlord yelled for her to get him his tea fast, was Sudha.

The landlord went to work every day, at some kind of a business, on a blue Bajaj scooter that he had received in dowry. Every evening before his return, Sudha would take a bath, put on perfume, and do up her hair elaborately using a lot of coloured hair clips.

Ramchand often got back a little before the landlord did, and on coming back, the first thing he did was open the back window with a quiet eagerness.

And there, in the courtyard, he would see her sometimes, taking the washing down, her silver payal tinkling at every step she took. Or sitting cross-legged, with a thali in her lap, cleaning rice, or chopping ginger and onions.

For the first few months of her marriage, she wore the bridal ivory chooda on her wrists. Then she had taken it off. In its place, on her right wrist, she now wore a thick gold bangle. A beautiful bangle with two elephant heads facing each other, their trunks raised high as if in salute to each other. She never took this bangle off, and two bright, shiny steel safety pins always dangled from its smooth, warm surface. The curved heads of the safety pins would always be wedged safely between the two elephant trunks.

When her hands and her forearms were wet, after she had been washing clothes or utensils, the bangle gleamed on the wet, golden skin of her arm.

On her other wrist, she wore glass bangles that she changed every day to match the colour of her clothes. When she chopped vegetables or cleaned rice, her bangles would tinkle and strands of hair would come undone from her bun. She
would impatiently push them away, tucking them behind her ears.

Sometimes she sat in the courtyard to clip her toenails. Then she’d sit on the charpai, and concentrate on each toe, clipping the nails, according to Ramchand, to perfection. Then her sari pallu or her chunni would fall forward as she bent in concentration over her toes, and Ramchand would stare at the warm place between her neck and breasts – the place where her chains and necklaces rested snugly.

On Sunday mornings she washed her long hair with amla and reetha. Then she would sit in the sun drying it, the back of her blouse alluringly damp, running her slender fingers through her thick locks, while her husband assiduously washed his Bajaj scooter nearby, his pyjama rolled up to his knees.

Ramchand had begun to fantasize about her in his spare time. However, he had very little knowledge of the female body. The little that he had, had been gleaned from pictures in porn books covered with plastic that were sold on the pavements near the City Bus Stand. They usually had grainy pictures of nude white women, frolicking in the sea or kneeling, always with inviting looks on their faces. Once, Ramchand had seen a second-hand foreign colour magazine, in which women were not completely nude, but were pretty close to it. They wore glossy lipstick and their hair was red or gold or some other such impossible colour. But such magazines rarely came his way, and it was the black and white grainy pictures that he relied on the most. The latest he had seen had a picture of a naked white woman with huge breasts looking blankly into the camera, standing by a swimming pool, her legs slightly parted.

From the demure figure of Sudha in the colourful saris to the bare creatures in the porn books seemed like a very long and difficult journey to Ramchand, but he managed somehow.

He came across many women in the sari shop, with its
intense atmosphere of pervading femininity, but it was only the sight of Sudha, fully clothed, doing ordinary household chores, that could inflame Ramchand completely.

There was a tap in the courtyard where she usually washed the clothes. He loved to see her hitch up her sari, or the pauncha of her salwaar, and squat there, calmly scrubbing and rinsing clothes. She always seemed so unhurried, so calm, so different from the demanding customers and the neighbourhood women who were always quarrelling with each other in the streets. Many a time did Ramchand undress her in his imagination, stroking her midriff, touching her alluring pale ankle, running his hands through her long hair, biting her downy neck, unbuttoning the tight sari blouses she wore, slipping his hand under her petticoat…

His fantasies made him worry that he was not respecting her as he should. To make himself feel better, he was extra polite whenever he happened to meet her, but continued to fantasize about her when he was alone. But her newly wed self hadn’t lasted long. In quick succession she had given birth to three children, two boys and a girl. She named them Manoj, Vishnu and Alka. Ramchand could never see the children playing about without feeling surprised that the slim, young woman he knew had produced all of them so efficiently, with the right number of toes and ears in the right places. The eldest boy, Manoj, had grown up to be a smart, sarcastic child who treated Ramchand with great disdain whenever their paths crossed. At the age of nine and a half, he was capable of completely intimidating Ramchand. No matter what Ramchand said, he was unable to quell the mocking air of superiority that Manoj adopted whenever he spoke to Ramchand. Vishnu was a friendly, boisterous boy. He was addicted to the new songs from Hindi films that played on the radio. He would dance energetically in the courtyard, copying all the dance steps that Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan did in
their films. Alka, the youngest, resembled her mother. She was a bit of a show off, preening in front of the living-room mirror whenever she had a new frock on, and reciting ‘Baa-baa black sheep’ in the courtyard loud enough for Ramchand to listen. Her eyes were like Sudha’s, so was her flat nose. Ramchand almost felt a fatherly affection for Alka.

The landlord also surprised Ramchand by being very ambitious for his children. He had always struck Ramchand as a dull, uninteresting man. Yet now he was an energetic, eager, committed father. He bought bright-coloured clothes for his children himself – Mickey Mouse lime greens and Garfield fluorescent oranges. He fed them almonds throughout the year and cod liver oil in the winters to improve their brains and prevent colds. He sent them, including his daughter, to an English-medium school. His wife contented herself with cooking meals, cleaning the house and washing clothes, her placid manner intact, while he took over the responsibility of bringing up his children to be successful in the new world that was emerging – the world of English speaking jobs and passports and visas and big companies in Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Delhi.

And once, when the landlord had come up to collect the rent, he had told Ramchand, ‘This money that I take from you every month, this goes straight into a special bank account. Not a rupee will I spend till we have saved enough to move out of the inner city. Then my children can study in an even better school and become something. They will learn to actually
talk
in English, not just write essays and all. Maybe they can even learn to
swim
in a real swimming pool.’

At his words, Ramchand had remembered with a pang his own father’s plans of sending his son to an English-medium school.

The landlord’s family still hadn’t moved, but Manoj could already
sing
a whole song in English.

Ramchand was once again sitting on the drawing-room carpet of the Kapoor House, with his bundle of finery. This morning Mahajan had told him that they wanted to see a few more georgette lehngas that came with gossamer net chunnis.

Mrs Kapoor and Rina had just settled down, and he had just opened his bundle when the servant, Raghu, came in and said, ‘Memsahib, there is someone to see the younger memsahib. She says her name is Mrs Sachdeva.’

Mrs Kapoor got visibly irritated. ‘Really, Rina, now these people have started to come to our home also. We are friends with the highest status families in Amritsar. Even in Delhi, people from top business families know of us. And just because of you, we have these ordinary, professor-type, service-class women coming here.’

Rina looked at her mother coldly. ‘Mother, there are other things in the world besides money. You know, this is a big world, and out there, there are people who are considered very high status because of their learning, because of the work they have done. And it is not like this respect, respect from a few small towners, a few crass businessmen. No,’ her eyes gleamed, ‘it is respect from all over the world, from the academic, cultured world. It is recognition in its true sense.’

‘It is wisest,’ Rina said to her mother, ‘to take the best of both the worlds.’

Then turning to Raghu, she said, ‘Raghu, send her in, and please bring in some cold drinks or tea or something.’

Mrs Sachdeva was ushered in. She wore a muted rust and beige silk sari and a thin string of pearls around her neck.
There were tiny pearl drops at her ears and her hair was done back in a plain bun. She advanced to Rina with her hand outstretched. Rina got up, smiling.

They shook hands. Then Mrs Sachdeva said, ‘I got your invitation card, my dear. So, so happy to hear the good news. I was passing by and I thought I’d just drop in to congratulate you.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Rina said. ‘It is so kind of you.’

Then Mrs Sachdeva said a polite Namaste to Mrs Kapoor. Mrs Kapoor replied with a tight little smile.

‘So, my dear, how are things going?’ Mrs Sachdeva asked Rina.

Mrs Kapoor excused herself and went out, telling Ramchand she’d be back soon. That woman, speaking in English
on purpose
, just to show her up, she thought, as she left the room fuming. Well, they didn’t even have their own house, they lived in accommodation provided by the college, so she wasn’t going to bother about this sort of a woman.

Ramchand sat waiting. Nobody even seemed to notice that he was around. He sat on the carpet with his bundle of saris, watching the two women exchange pleasantries in English. He listened attentively. He should be able to make out everything now. This was like a test.

Now, Rina and Mrs Sachdeva, relieved of Mrs Kapoor’s restraining presence, launched into an involved conversation.

‘So nice for you, and actually, Rina, I am glad you are not marrying into one of those business families. I mean, I don’t mean to be offensive, but a girl like you does need a more cultured atmosphere to explore her potential.’

Rina pursed her lips. Ramchand listened carefully. ‘Explore potential’ was difficult, but he persevered.

‘Well, ma’am, as you know, there have been cloth merchants and jewellers in this old city for years, even before the Partition,’ Rina said, ‘so it is very difficult to break out of the
commercial streak that runs through one’s life. There are, of course, what we call the “service class” families. They look down upon us moneyed, uncultured ones, and we look down upon them, for they have no money, no big houses, though I must say that these days, with bribes and all, even they are doing quite well. Most of them have big houses at the outskirts of the city. Also ancestral property, I suppose. Some Sikh families, even the most ordinary-seeming of them, sometimes own quite a lot of land in villages.’

Mrs Sachdeva was listening intently.

Rina continued, ‘But the chasm is great. Maybe in my own way, I am seeking to span that gap.’

Mrs Sachdeva gave a pleased sigh. ‘Really, Rina, I do admire you. Maybe an MA in Anthropology would have been better for you. You even manage to place
yourself
and your own family in society with so much objectivity.’