Noon (2 page)

‘Rehan saab. Your father is a very big man. So is his son, Isphandiyar Tabassum, and his brother-in-law, Mr Narses. They have many companies. See if you can’t speak to one of them
about a job for me in Port bin Qasim?’

‘I’ll try, Mirwaiz,’ I replied. ‘I’ll definitely try. But I can’t promise anything. You see,’ I added, looking long at him one last time, ‘our
situations are not so different. Sahil Tabassum may be my father, but I’ve never met him.’

(1989)

‘We passionately long for there to be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for
that other life, in this life, after a few years, we are unfaithful to what we once were, to what we wished to remain immortally.’

The dressing table was the first thing she had bought herself since Sahil. It had attracted her, with its tiny bulbs, gilt and mirrors, from the pages
of a foreign magazine. She decided at length to take the magazine down to the colony market and have the dressing table copied. Rati Ram, the carpenter, inspected it, seemed to translate its charms
into an Indian reality, then agreed to reproduce it for a few hundred rupees. When he returned a few days later with his replica, thickly coated in gold paint, and decorated with fat full-sized
bulbs and crudely cut strips of mirror, its arrival caused tension in the little house with the gardenia tree.

‘Phansy shmansy,’ her mother sniffed, as the men brought it in.

‘Give me a break, Mama. You know very well I haven’t so much as bought myself a salwar since I moved here. And it’s not as if you’re paying for it.’

‘Who’s saying I am! But let me remind you, I pay for other things. And they cost me an arm and a leg. Not that I’m not happy to do it. But I won’t have you getting on
your high horse.’

‘Would you like me to thank you for it again? “Thank you, Mama, for paying Rehan’s fees; I am eternally grateful and so is he.” Happy?’

‘Don’t take that tone with me. He’s my grandson. I’ll give him what I like. I don’t need you to thank me.’

Rehan looked into the house from the veranda, where moments before he had been servicing his gods, cleaning the idols, putting fresh marigolds in their tray. When he heard the
raised voices, he slipped behind the cooler. Through its grey slats, the two women appeared to him as mute shadows, their voices drowned out by the whirr of the cooler’s fan and the slurping
of its pipes. He saw his mother pace and bring her palms together in frustration. His grandmother, in reply, threw up her arms and rushed out of the room, leaving Udaya alone. Rehan’s gaze
was diverted by drops of water growing fat along the cooler’s soaked matting. They swelled, their bellies striped by the blaze. Then they fell fast and soundless to the few inches of dark
water below. The room now was empty and a batch of fresh drops sprouted on the matting. Rehan returned to his gods.

Udaya had brought him to her mother’s house as a temporary step after Sahil.

It had been impossible, once that relationship ended, to stay on in London. Not without Sahil. Who, after moving them out of his flat on Flood Street, became difficult and unreachable. He had
always travelled a lot, between La Mirage, Dubai and London, and in the end, like an airline reducing its flights to a destination, he had come to London less and less. It had always only been an
‘arrangement’ forged fast when she became pregnant with Rehan. She had hung on to the hope that it would deepen. But after a last holiday in Kathmandu, to which Sahil brought along two
children he claimed were his nephew and niece, the calls and visits came to an end.

Love was one reason she hung on in London; pride another. After the scandal of her relationship, she found it difficult to face her mother with the news that it was over, not three years after
it had begun. She found work as a freelance lawyer, but made only enough to pay the rent on the north London bedsit they had moved into.

Then, several years after her last conversation with Sahil, she ran into an uncle, visiting from Delhi. It was a bleak moment; she had been forced to sell some jewellery the day before; in her
weakness, she confessed everything. He convinced her to let him prepare the ground with her mother and a few weeks later Udaya returned, with Rehan, to rebuild her life in the city she had left
some years before, trusting completely to passion.

It had made sense at first to stay with her mother. But no sooner had she arrived than the fights began. And, as with those of her childhood, they seemed never to be about what
they were ostensibly about. If then the issue of cutting her hair or smoking or marriage had become an expression of some deeper tension between them, so, now too, seemingly innocuous things, such
as the cleanliness of the kitchen, the trouble in Punjab and Rehan’s upbringing became laden with their old animus. The difference was that they were not alone. Rehan, every day more aware,
was there among them; and she was determined to save him the scenes. It had been fight enough to convince her mother to let Rehan feed himself. Udaya had a secret terror that her mother,
welli-ntentioned as it might be, would instil in him, through that special brand of Indian compassion that debilitates when it means to commiserate, a 
feeling of want or misfortune. Rehan had given no indication of ever being aware of Sahil’s absence; and though she had given him his father’s name and even an
explanation of a kind –
Sometimes, just as you fight with your friends, grown-ups fight too –
he had never seemed interested in knowing more. It made her happy to think of him as
unscathed by their separation.

No, if she was to protect Rehan, she must find her own place, and quickly. She had already begun making enquiries.

*   *   *

From where he lay on the bed, Rehan could see just his mother’s back, her long straight hair and a few inches of flesh trapped between her petticoat and blouse. She sat
before the new dressing table, opening her mouth wide for lipstick, smacking her lips closed on a tissue and reaching for tweezers to remove stray hairs.

‘Where are you going for dinner?’ Rehan asked.

‘It’s a work dinner, baba. A client . . .’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Amit, Amit Sethia.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s an industrialist.’

‘What’s an industrialist?’

‘Someone with industries. Coal, steel etc. . . .’

‘Is he rich?’

‘Yes, baba,’ Udaya said, closing one eye over a silver stick lined with kohl.

‘Ma,’ Rehan said abruptly, ‘why do you hate Nani?’ His mother blinked rapidly, half-turning around. An expression of withheld amusement and a threat to come clean played
on her face.

‘Rehan! What have you heard?’

‘Nothing, Ma, really. I swear. I was just curious.’

‘Why are you suddenly asking me if I hate your grandmother?’

‘You both fight a lot so I was just wondering.’

Turning back to the mirror, but watching him closely with one kohled eye, she said, ‘Well, it’s not that I hate Nani, it’s just that there comes a point in everyone’s
life when they stop seeing their mother or father as just their mother and father but as people. And sometimes you like those people for who they are, and sometimes you find, well, that you
don’t have much in common with them. Nani and I, for instance, have never had much in common. She didn’t understand me; I couldn’t understand her. We were miles apart. She
believed in God and couldn’t believe she’d produced a daughter who didn’t. I couldn’t believe she believed in a God who cared how long your hair was. I mean was this God a
hairdresser?’

Rehan laughed loudly. He didn’t mind her insulting her own Sikh god as long as she didn’t begin on the Hindu ones, for which he had acquired an unlikely obsession since his arrival
in India.

‘She read Mills and Boons,’ his mother continued, ‘I didn’t. She was forever concerned about respectability; I couldn’t care less. When your aunt got married, she
told me, “Now, it’s too late for you. I’ve told your father to put some money aside, and bas, try and best make do.” I was twenty-five! No, she was horrible!’ Udaya,
now nearly fully made up, smiled as she spoke and it seemed to drain her words of ill feeling. Rehan adored his grandmother, and it was unsettling that his mother, whose voice was like the voice of
truth, could feel differently. He hated to be at odds with her. But whenever he tried to bring her around to his way of thinking, she would irritate him by taking an agree-to-disagree tone.

‘I love Nani!’ he said provocatively. ‘And when her ship comes in, she’s going to buy me Castle Grayskull for my gods to live in.’

‘So you must,’ his mother replied, reflecting on whether Rehan had been told what his grandmother’s ship coming in would mean. ‘She’s been wonderful to
you.’

‘Stop talking in that fake voice!’ Rehan yelled.

His mother smiled and turned her full attention to putting on her sari. She chose a handbag and, carefully, the things that went in it – all of which angered Rehan so much that he stormed
out.

Summer power cuts and fluctuations had begun and the light in the corridor was dim. The disc-shaped ceiling light, high above like a white Frisbee, grew fainter and fainter, till its milky glass
barely sustained a glow. Then like a small angry sun burning away a thick bank of clouds, it flared, sending Rehan fleeing down the stairs that separated his grandmother’s section of the
house from his mother’s. Below, where the surge had ended and the light was dull and dusty again, servants were setting the table, lighting the odd white candle. Rehan slipped past his
grandmother’s room in the hope of beginning his favourite mythical movie,
The Marriage of
Shiva and Parvati
, before dinner.

He had only been watching a few minutes when he heard his grandmother call him.

‘No, no, Nani, please. Not now, just come here and see where we are.’

She wandered in a second later, wearing a loose, faded salwar kameez. Her greying hair was in a thin plait and when she sat down next to Rehan, he could smell Nivea cream on her. Her skin was
smooth and her eyes, though losing colour, still shone. There was something coquettish about her smile of clean-capped teeth, giving, even now, the impression of a once-beautiful woman. Rehan
grabbed her soft stomach and squeezed it. She pretended at first to be indifferent to the drama coming from the old Japanese VCR, but Rehan knew she was riveted. The story had raced ahead and
Parvati, witnessing her father dishonour her husband, a bellied and middle-aged Shiva, was about to commit herself to the sacrificial fire.

Rehan’s grandmother watched through her large amber-rimmed spectacles, the glare exposing fingerprints on their lenses, as Parvati’s anger built. She clutched an optician’s
artificial leather case in her hands, and muttered, ‘OK then, why not! Arre, suno!’ she yelled for a servant. ‘Koi hai?’

Bihari arrived a moment later, a stained napkin draped over his shoulder.

‘Bihari, go and get baba’s food.’ Then, she added, ‘And listen, don’t say anything to Udaya madam.’

‘Nani, yes!’ Rehan squealed.

‘Your mother will kill us.’

‘No, no, she’ll be fine. She’s going out to dinner at the house of a rich industrist.’

‘Industrialist, baba.’

Parvati, burning with rage, was moments away from committing the first sati ever when dinner arrived on a steel and tinted glass trolley.

‘Baba, come on now, eat your food.’

‘Nani, please, just see where we are. Please feed me.’

‘Your mother will throw a fit. She has told me time and time again not to feed you.’

‘Come on, Nani, what difference does it make? Look, look, Shiva’s being told about Parvati having jumped in the fire.’

Drum rolls had begun in Kailash, demons tittered and studio lightning flashed as Shiva was informed of Parvati’s fate.

‘He’s going to dance the tandav,’ Rehan’s grandmother gasped, ‘he is the Natraj after all.’ And this simple comment on the drama, said in a voice fearful and
resigned, as if his grandmother, too, was part of the world Shiva was to destroy, spread gooseflesh over Rehan’s arms and back.

‘Nani!’ he breathed. She put a little packet of food, mutton and lentils in his mouth. He chewed tensely, as Shiva now bent over Parvati’s ashes, fingered them gently as though
searching for some small trinket. Rehan found this scene, of the most powerful god in the universe grieving, very affecting. Shiva’s loneliness was so acute; it made Rehan wish that they were
friends so that he could help lessen it in some way. At the same time the display of male emotion intrigued him.

‘Nani, look how he’s almost crying.’

‘He’s sad, no?’ Rehan’s grandmother said, putting another bite of food in his mouth. She tried another but Rehan turned his face away.

‘But still strong, Nani?’

‘Yes, baba. Eat. One for Nani . . .’

He accepted.

‘One for Mama . . .’

‘No, Nani, enough.’

‘One for Shiva ji.’

‘Nani!’

Then it occurred to Rehan to ask why Parvati had jumped into the fire in the first place. His grandmother smiled knowingly. ‘Baba Re,’ she said in a hushed voice, ‘the supreme
sacrifice.’ And perhaps thinking the words too complicated for a child, she added, ‘When a girl enters her husband’s house, his honour becomes hers. Then everything else becomes
secondary, even her own parents’ house, which once she leaves it for her husband’s, is no longer hers.’

Distracted by their conversation and the noise from the television, neither of them heard the clatter of Udaya’s heels. His grandmother was still trying to shove in a last mouthful when
Rehan saw her standing in the doorway in her mustard chiffon sari. Her long black hair was washed and dried, the evening bag hung from her arm and her dark skin was touched with rouge and brownish
red lipstick. Taking in the scene before her, Udaya’s smile fled.

‘Mama!’ she moaned. ‘What are you doing?’

Rehan’s grandmother pursed her lips; a martyred expression formed on her face; she looked directly ahead at the television, where Vishnu had now persuaded Shakti to stand between Shiva and
the destruction of the world. ‘The next step you take,’ Shakti said, looking up with simpering resolve at the dancing Shiva, ‘will be on my head.’ Rehan stared at his mother
as though she had jumped out of the screen.