W
hy is this happening to her? All this grace, such joy, all of life heeding her bidding, this perfect September day…
Once again Meera raises her face to the sky and smiles. Liquid sunshine melds with distilled fragrances. Top notes that tease and waltz. Apples. Jasmine. Walnuts. Roses. Musk. Wine. A solitary chrysanthemum. The plop of corks. The steady arc of the stream. Cool glass against her cheek.
In the Greek myths that Meera loves, there is a goddess who could be her. Hera, wife of Zeus, god among gods, and queen of the universe.
It is a vivacious Meera who stands in the pathway of the breeze and allows it to play games with her. It ruffles the chiffon of her skirt and raises a strand of hair and teases it across her cheek into her mouth.
Somewhere in her a little girl skips. One two, buckle my shoe, three four, shut the door, five six, pick the cheese sticks, seven eight, eat them straight, nine ten, let’s do it again!
Meera feels as if she can’t stop smiling. It is the most perfect September day anyone could wish for.
Why, everyone else here seems to think so as well. The poolside is rapidly filling up. All these beautiful people, Meera thinks, emerging from their beautiful homes in their beautiful clothes to congregate around the softly lapping waters of the hotel pool under a blue blue sky.
She takes another sip of the white wine. It tastes sour in her mouth. Only for a moment. Then it races through her, the cold
sourness plopping every single knot. Plop. Plop. Plop. With the dissolution of each knot, Meera finds another reason to smile.
The hosts of the brunch, wine makers launching a new wine, will be delighted at the turnout. What more could they want? The beautiful people with their heads pertly held, fingers wrapped around glass stems, striking poses as photographers foxtrot from group to group, clicking, capturing beautiful moments.
They will never allow themselves to feel absurd, these beautiful people, not like me, Meera sighs. That is their hallmark. A deep rooted belief in their own ‘I am inviolable no matter what’. Giri must be pleased that we are here with the beautiful people of Bangalore. He will be even more pleased if one of our pictures makes it to Page Three.
Meera watches a tall svelte woman talking to a podgy man in a ponytail. Meera aches to be that woman, Aphrodite deigning to play knuckle bone with a goat. She knows who he is. Pan by the poolside, chasing his own echo. It would be nice to be pursued if only by a goat-legged Pan. But where nymphs roam, what place for the frowzy, middle-aged Hera?
Nursed too well by the seasons, each seeking to feed her their libations, each wanting to fill her with their goodness, she, Meera Hera, earth goddess, corporate wife, will have to be content to loll amidst the aqua cushions of the poolside. Inconspicuous, quietly corpulent, and on the pale side of neglected.
The nymph tugs Pan’s ear, throws her head back and laughs. Meera sees the curve of her throat and unconsciously, she touches the underside of her own chin. When did this fold of flesh creep up on her?
Sunlight glints on the gold hoops in the woman’s ears. She is wearing a halter-necked blouse and capris. Meera looks at the
expanse of lacquered skin and toned muscle and raises her eyes to the skies. ‘All I ask of you is upper arms like those!’
If she doesn’t do something about hers, she will have bats’ wings very soon. Meera stifles a sigh and takes another sip. Plop. The weight lifts. Another knot of worry unravels. Tomorrow she will call Fitness One and make an appointment. Until then, plop, plop, plop.
A crow caws, its head tilted, its beady black eyes surveying the poolside world. Meera smiles at the crow. What does it see? Elephants knee deep in slush and still brooking no interference. Leopards on the prowl, and hungry hyenas waiting. A bloat of hippopotami and gazelles at a waterhole? Stately giraffes, a zeal of zebras and dumpy warthogs. A shoal of fish gliding. Yellow cabbage butterflies to whom flowers and animal urine exhale the same attraction. And all along, a carpet of vultures scrutinize, ready to pounce. The animal planet. Meera giggles.
A camera stares at her. Meera looks away, schooling her giggle into a demure smile. It wouldn’t do to be seen with her mouth slanting into a snigger, giving away her dissembling thoughts.
Meera nibbles on a tartlet. I would have gone easy on the dill, she thinks. She longs for some more of the calamari rings. That they got right. Most restaurants turn calamari into rubber rings. But these are delicious. Just a hint of garlic and glistening with olive oil.
Meera sees the steward with the calamari at the farther side of the patio. She rises from the cane sofa. ‘Nikhil, I’ll be back in a little while,’ she says. ‘Will you be all right?’ she adds, a little uncertain.
She hadn’t wanted him here. ‘He’ll be bored, Giri. He is thirteen, for heaven’s sake. What will he do at a wine launch?’
But Giri had insisted. ‘It’s not a cocktail party. It’s a Sunday brunch. I am sure there will be other kids there. Probably a few
from his class even. Besides, it’s time he got out and saw how real people live.’
Zeus spoke as he worked his way through the Sunday newspapers. Zeus, whose bidding even the heavenly bodies obeyed, would tolerate no interference. He made the laws. She, Meera Hera, listened. Or he would hurl that vicious thunderbolt of sullenness. Silence and quiet, but determined pacing through the rooms, which frightened her more than any fanged words could.
‘A poolside brunch and real people? You must be joking,’ she had wanted to protest but she was afraid to shatter the fragile peace between them.
It seemed to her that they had done nothing but argue these past months. Hushed, so no one else in the house knew that they were warring. Hissed accusations, deflected by cold mute anger. Spilling over emotion erased with composure. So she said nothing and coerced and finally bribed Nikhil into going with them.
She touches his elbow now when he doesn’t respond.
‘What?’ he asks, drawing his iPod earphones out.
‘I need to circulate a bit. Would you like to eat something? Shall I fix you a tray? Some tartlets, a quiche slice, calamari rings?’
‘Ugh! Do they have pizza?’
Meera shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Then I don’t want anything.’ He puts his earphones back and opens his book again.
Meera frowns. Either he eats all the wrong things or he starves. What is she to do with him? Hera had a son too. Python. What did she do with him?
She takes another sip. Plop.
The smell of sizzling meat wafts through the air. She looks around. There are only so many gods and goddesses and they are all here. People she recognizes from the society pages in the newspapers. People she knows. And some strangers. Even a
maharaja, with an entourage of bodyguards and attendants. The sun catches the gems on the rings he wears as he reaches for one salted cashew nut after another from a bowl an attendant holds out to him. Eventually they would all meet and play out the upper epidermis of emotion. That is the nature of such parties. You network with a drink in one hand and a smile on your face, clasping hands, air kissing, and all the while stewards tag you: mothers with trays of canapés to tempt the errant, wandering child.
Where is her Zeus by the way? She hasn’t seen Giri since they got here. Meera thinks again of Hera. How strange that the trajectories of their lives have followed almost the same path. Like Hera, she too has gathered a bedraggled cuckoo into her bosom. It has eaten and drunk its fill, nestled in her warmth and love, and now it wants her home. What is she to do? Be Hera who wised up to what Zeus in the disguise of that cuckoo wanted of her? Or allow herself to be manipulated like a guileless crow mother with a cuckoo child in its nest? Her head throbs suddenly. She can’t be drunk already!
Where is Giri? She thinks she sees the flash of a turquoise blue shirt. She hears his laugh emerge from a group of men. Meera smiles. The wind is Hera’s own. But it is only when Zeus smiles that Hera can puff the sails and winnow the fields. Or what use is the wind to Hera? Wives are the same everywhere. When Giri smiles, so does she. A wife in love. Meera Hera.
She starts towards him, then pauses. She tugs the ruby teardrop clusters in her ear, runs her fingers through her hair and stands undecidedly. Should she go up to him or mingle with the others?
Giri doesn’t like it when she stays attached to his side. ‘We might as well stay at home then,’ he said once. ‘What’s the point of going out if you don’t socialize, meet a few new people? Circulate, Meera, circulate. Chat. Introduce yourself if no one else will. Give them a sample of that famous Meera charm!’
Meera didn’t speak then either. She didn’t know if that last throwaway line tossed at her was a compliment or a barb.
Increasingly, with Giri, she never knows.
Meera walks towards the barbecue. She would fix a plate for Nikhil. She knows exactly what he won’t be able to resist.
‘Hey Meera,’ a voice breathes in her ear. Meera turns abruptly. It is Akram Khan. A fashion photographer she knows rather well and likes immensely. She helped style a shoot for him once, a long time ago. She smiles and kisses three centimetres of air on either side of his face. And waits for him to do the same. Gods and goddesses seldom deviate from the rituals. ‘How are you?’ she asks.
‘Great! What about you? How’s the book doing?’
A diminutive woman with the snout of a shrew drifts towards them. ‘I hear the book is essential reading for every corporate wife these days,’ the rodent says in greeting.
‘Hello, Lata,’ Meera says, wishing she could cut her dead instead. Queen Lat. Mouse cunt. Meera bristles. The rodent was so patronizing in her review. She called Meera the Madhur Jaffrey of the boardroom. And here she is, continuing to patronize her.
Meera smiles as she does when fazed. A vague tremulous smile that gives nothing away but a benign sweetness. And Akram, reading Lata’s veiled insult as an accolade, beams, ‘That’s great news, Meera.’
Please don’t go, she pleads in her head as he shows signs of drifting off to another group.
What am I going to say to her when what I really want to do is bash her head and her little mouse snout in with my cast iron skillet. She takes another sip of the wine. Plop.
It doesn’t really matter. Mice will be mice. And a single Ms Mouse? Sneaky, furtive, and almost laughable in its attempt to damage. The woman is just doing her job. And it seems to Meera, wife of Giri, queen of her world, mother of two, author of cookbooks, mentor of corporate wives and friend to the rich and celebrated, that she who has everything can afford to be forgiving. All the rodent has is an occasional book review. So Meera can afford to be generous.
She gleams at the woman. ‘I meant to call you and thank you for the review. You were so…’ Meera gropes for a word, ‘… insightful in the way you approached the subject. Not everyone understands how demanding it is to be a corporate wife!’
‘Hello, my dear,’ a voice purrs in her ear. Meera swings around, a smile lighting up her eyes. It is Charlie Fernandez. He holds her firmly by her shoulders and kisses her resolutely on both cheeks. Meera doesn’t bother to hide her pleasure.
‘So how’s my favourite cookbook writer?’ Charlie says, loud enough for everyone around to hear. ‘I tried that Thai prawn recipe. It was just brilliant! Which idiot found fault with it?’
Meera sees the flicker of uncertainty in the rodent’s eyes. The small rodent’s small eyes. If she had whiskers, they would have twitched. Queen Lat, not so queenly any more. Everyone thinks of Charlie as the high priest of culture. His taste can’t be faulted. And the Thai prawn curry had come in for much criticism in the rodent’s review. Something to do with the coconut milk and how tiring it is to actually make it yourself, etc. Especially for women battling with sloppy home help.
Hasn’t the woman heard of coconut milk in tetrapaks? You snip the end with scissors and pour. Or there is coconut milk powder that you stir into water with a spoon and if a spoon is unavailable, the tip of a finger will do. Can’t even the most harassed of cooks manage that? Meera fumed reading the review. Now seeing the rodent’s discomfort, Meera tries very hard to hide her glee. A glee that morphs into a confident voice as she cocks a finger at a steward.
‘Would you give this to the boy sitting there?’ she says, thrusting a plate of barbecue into the steward’s hands and gesturing to Nikhil. ‘And oh, do give him a glass of Coke.’
‘More wine, ma’am?’ Another steward stands at her elbow.
‘I shouldn’t. This is my second glass and it isn’t even noon yet,’ Meera dithers.
‘Go on, you are a big girl,’ Charlie urges. And then: ‘Oh, look what’s come in through the door,’ he murmurs.
Meera sees a well-known society hostess and dancer sweep in.