CHAPTER NINE
Prakash gazed numbly at the brother-in-law who had never acknowledged him as such, apparently unable to take in what he had been saying.
"She's dead. Dina's dead!" he repeated in a dazed voice. Then a spark of anger entered his eyes. "And you've sent her body away to some hospital without even consulting me, without even waiting for me to return?" he asked, accusingly.
It was around 5.30 pm, the day after Dina's death . . .
Prakash had received Fredun's message late night the previous day, but, giving in to the demand of a suddenly querulous Sonali, had waited until after a leisurely breakfast the next morning, to start the drive back to Bombay. He had arrived to find his house invaded by his wife's relatives. Banoo Maa, Fredun, and surprisingly Zerxes, but no Scherezade!
Zerxes had left Scherezade asleep, a note for her on the bedside table, and had driven over to Dina's by around 11 in the morning. He was immediately questioned by Rashna, as to how Scherezade was. It transpired that Fredun had phoned his residence, and Firdauz had given him a sketchy report about her bout of ill-health the night before.
Zerxes made the mistake of giving the true report. He was unprepared for Rashna's reaction.
"What? She actually had to be given oxygen?" she asked sharply, glaring accusingly at Zerxes. "Firdauz didn't tell me that!"
Zerxes shrugged. "1 guess he didn't want to alarm you," he suggested.
Rashna ignored him and looked at her husband. 'Tm going. I must go and see Sherrie. Is she still at your place?" This last was flung at Zerxes. Rashna had visited his flat a couple of times, without her husband.
"Yes she is," replied Zerxes coolly. "Please go over," he continued, as Fredun opened his mouth to speak. "Go over and make yourself at home. Why don't you take your car? I'll bring Fredun there later, after Sattar deigns to land up and we all can leave from here."
Banoo Maa had been tom between wanting to rush over to her Scherezade, and to stay and sort out things for her Dina. Perform this last office for her! Zerxes persuaded her to remain.
Shirin had surprisingly elected to stay at home that day instead of accompanying her husband to Dina's. Jamshed had gone out for a while, having turned up quite early in the morning. As the hours passed without any sign of Sattar, those waiting for him started chafing a bit. Zerxes, in particular was getting quite restive, worried as he was about Scherezade. The only thing that kept him from going back to ensure Scherezade was okay was the knowledge that her mother would be with her. Also, Krishna could be relied upon to telephone him and let him know, if something went wrong.
So, it had been Fredun, Banoo Maa and Zerxes, who had formed the reception committee for Prakash when he arrived from Poona . . .
It was Zerxes who picked up the gauntlet flung by Prakash.
"There was no question of consulting you, or anyone else," he said coolly. "Dina's Will made her intent very clear. It had to be honoured, her wishes carried out, without undue delay. As for waiting till . . ." But here he was interrupted.
"A Will?" echoed Prakash incredulously. "Dina died leaving a Will?" "Yes, she had made a Will." It was Banoo Maa, her voice weary. "Dina was well aware of your phobia about making a Will. She told me that nothing would induce you to make one. Maybe that was why she did not tell you," she shrugged indifferently. "But she herself had made a Will all right."
"Who had attested it?" Prakash demanded.
"I was one of the witnesses," said Banoo quietly.
"You and who else?"
"I say, layoff, will you," broke in Fredun angrily. "What the hell do you think you are doing? Cross-examining Banoo Maa?"
Before Prakash could respond to this, Banoo Maa spoke, casting Fredun an affectionate glance, "I can take care of myself, dear boy. Prakash has a right to know. Besides, it's no secret. Or soon anyway, it will no longer be one." She looked at Prakash steadily. "Fatima was the other witness.
And," she went on firmly, forestalling the exclamation that rose to his lips, "If you'd like to discharge her from your service, kindly let me know right now. I'll engage her myself and take her back with me straight away."
Prakash ran a tired hand over his face, looking defeated. He said in a stiff voice, "I did not mean to offend any of you. But I can't just take all this in! It's too much! Too much!" he repeated. Then almost as though he couldn't help himself, he asked, "Is it a secret, or may I know the contents of the Will? Apart from the disposition of her own body?"
Banoo Maa's answer was drowned in the imperative ringing of the doorbell. Fatima came in, looking frightened, followed by two gentlemen. One was in the uniform of a ranking police officer; the other was in plain clothes, but clearly also a member of the Police Force.
"Good morning, Madam, Gentlemen," said the uniformed Officer politely. "I'm Police Inspector Avinash Patil from the Cuffe Parade Police Station, Crime Cell. This is Sub-Inspector Andrew Rodricks, the Investigating Officer."
The shocked silence was broken by Prakash. "Indeed! May I know the reason for your presence here?"
"Certainly," answered Avinash Patil. He was a man of around forty: slightly over medium height, slim built, with a direct gaze from behind metal-framed spectacles, and few airs or graces. His Sub Inspector was of a more cheerful aspect, a slightly tubby man with a just-about-noticeable beer belly, in his mid-thirties.
Patil looked at Prakash. "You are Mr. Prakash Sattar?" he hazarded.
On Prakash confirming that he was, Patil went on, "We are here to inquire into your wife's death, sir. There appears to be some doubt about her having died a natural death."
Prakash, stunned though he was for a moment, made a quick comeback.
"Indeed?" he said, in the time-honoured phrase used to buy time when one wasn't sure just what to say. "Indeed?" he repeated. "So what did she die of, Inspector, if not natural causes?" he blustered.
"We are not sure, as yet," Patil responded in a soft, polite tone.
"The matter has been referred to the Coroner. We are awaiting the autopsy results." Andrew Rodricks glanced rapidly around the room, appreciating with the eye of a connoisseur the expressions ranging on the faces of the relatives of the deceased. On all except that handsome foreign-looking chap with those curious green eyes. His face was an impassive blank.
Cold-blooded looking chap, thought Rodricks to himself.
It was he who spoke, his tone 'just slightly disdainful. "50 what happens now, gentlemen? I take it we too await the results of the autopsy with . . . er . . . bated breath?" Before either of the policemen could answer, Zerxes supplied his own. "Yes, we do that! What I can't understand is," he frowned, furrowing his brow in feigned puzzlement, "the premature presence of you Gentlemen, here. Unless of course," he I went on with a slightly ironical air, "you have come, as a matter of courtesy, to inform us that the Coroner has ordered an autopsy, and that Mrs. Sattar's body is under his jurisdiction?!" His look held both challenge as well as amusement.
"You are related to the deceased?" asked Patil.
"Not quite," was the amused answer.
Fredun felt that it was time someone performed the introductions and did so, referring to Zerxes as his daughter's 'fiance'.
Patil turned back to Zerxes. "To answer your question, Mr. Avari, yes, that was part of our reason for calling on Mr. Sattar. To inform him that Mrs. Sattar's death has been referred to the Coroner. And also to make a few preliminary inquiries, in case the doctor's suspicions prove justified." For once Patil was not quite successful in making the statement sound so casual as he desired.
Prakash Sattar almost rounded on him. "Doctor's suspicions?
Which Doctor's suspicions?" he asked sharply. "I understand her family doctor was perfectly satisfied that my wife died of natural causes. Dammit, he has given a certificate to that effect."
"Well Mr. Sattar, this won't be the first time a Doctor's certificate will be proven wrong! That is, if it is proven wrong, of course!" Patil spoke coolly, almost soothingly.
Really, thought Zerxes to himself, Patil's manner was a bit too polite. A dangerous manner in a policeman! Zerxes was well aware that during his tenure thus far, Patil held the record in the Force for the highest number of confessions elicited by any policeman. And he had the reputation also, of not resorting to third-degree methods. His genius lay in wearing down his suspects with relentless, unflagging questioning. And trapping them in the contradictions of their replies.
Zerxes glanced a little uneasily at Prakash, who was beginning to look choleric. "You haven't answered my question. Who had these socalled suspicions?" Prakash rapped out.
"The Doctor who dissected her body at a demonstration class at JJ Hospital," said Patil, his expression deadpan.
"Remarkably quick work, for a teaching hospital," commented Zerxes before Prakash could get an edge in. "Dissecting a cadaver as soon as it was brought in!"
Patil did not rise to bait. Nor did he think it necessary to explain the one in a thousand coincidence that had occurred in Dina Sattar's case, exposing an almost perfect murder. A murder which would have passed off as a natural death, had it not been for a series of accidents.
First, of course, was Dina's own act in donating her body for anatomical research in her Will. The second, the body being delivered at the hospital just as the lecture-demonstration given by the visiting German forensic expert was in progress, with the Coroner and the Professor of Anatomy at JJ both being present. . . the German deciding to give an unscheduled demonstration on post-mortem procedure, and demanding a cadaver . . . the chaps at JJ wheeling in the fresh cadaver that had providentially just come in . . .
Jovially cutting open Dina Sattar, making the usual macabre jokes, the expert had suddenly halted in his work, twitching his bony nose in a sniff. The smell of benzene was really quite unmistakable - it wafted even to where the Coroner was seated. The lecture-demonstration was aborted abruptly, as the German forensic expert and the Coroner went into a huddled conference, joined in by the Dean of Anatomy.
All three agreed: there seemed to be some form of benzene or aniline present in the body. This would require further testing, and detailed investigation. The possibility that this was not a natural death, that the deceased had been poisoned by some form of benzene or aniline, could not be ruled out. The Coroner authorized chemical and other tests of the viscera. . . the police were informed. . . and that had brought Patil to the doorstep of the deceased. . .
Patil, a fervent believer in the pre-ordination of human destiny, was convinced that the murderer's fate was sealed. After such a chain of coincidences, the murderer had to be caught and apprehended! He glanced around quickly at those present.
Prakash's face reflected a stunned daze. And something else mingled in it . . . a flicker of fear. . . or was it guilt? Fredun looked ill at ease. But that, Patil knew from experience, could mean anything. Or nothing. The old lady, Miss (he believed) Banoo Kanga had closed her eyes, the very lack of expression in her face revealing the depth of her anguish:
Zerxes A vari was impassive. Unperturbed. Patil smiled to himself. He knew something about Mr. La-di-la Avari, as some waggish cop had nicknamed him. He was certainly a little too well dressed for the scruffy Sessions Court he mainly practised in. But there was no denying his already formidable reputation. Even the most case-hardened cops dreaded having to face a cross-examination by Zerxes Avari. He so often succeeded in making them look like fools!
The doorbell rang. A sniffling, swollen eyed, sullen Fatima opened the door. Jamshed walked into the room and stopped short, casting an inquiring look at Fredun.
Fredun met his gaze briefly, giving a slight, warning flicker of the eyelids. "Come in, Jamshed. Prakash is here. And these are two Officers from the Cuffe Parade Police Station, come here with a rather incredible story." Turning to the two Inspectors, he went on, "This, er . . .
Gentlemen, is the ..er. . . Mrs. Sattar's sister's husband, Mr. Jamshed Dumasia."
Turning to Jamshed again, Fredun said, baldly, "The Police seem to think Dina was poisoned."
Jamshed's mouth opened, then closed again. He appeared to visibly collect his thoughts together. "Think?" he echoed, looking at Patil almost accusingly. "You mean you aren't sure? Then why couldn't you have waited till you were sure, instead of trying to create a scandal in our family?"
Patil was tmperturbed by the attack. He rather welcomed it. When persons connected with the case got a little rattled, one came to learn things one never might have, otherwise. How the devil did that Vatcha chap come to the conclusion that the deceased had been poisoned? But then, fair-mindedly he conceded that poison seemed to be the obvious method used in this case, if this was indeed murder!
What interested Patil more was this Dumasia chap's rather curious response to the news. This was not the way a chap would react, on being told that his sister-in-law had apparently been murdered, surely! Moreover, Patil had a shrewd suspicion the supposed poisoning of Dina Sattar was not the 'scandal' this Dumasia chap was referring to! He said mildly, "We thought it best to inform the family of the deceased that the matter was in the Coroner's hands," thinking of the scene at the Police Station when the call had come through from the Coroner's office.
* * * *
The call had been routed through to the Senior PI: the bluff, burly Sheriyar Irani, who had immediately summoned both Patil and Rodricks.
"Better inform the husband straight away," Irani had ordered. "He's a big noise in fairly high circles. Close to the Home Minister, Finance Minister, etcetera. . . etcetera. . . etcetera. . . I believe this was his second wife. One of those convenient converts. A bit of a hush-hush thing! First wife died just recently. Apparently a case of suicide. Wrists slashed. Gamdevi were on that case. PI there seemed satisfied that it was indeed a case of suicide."
He had shot his two subordinates a keen glance from under shaggy, untidy eyebrows. "Better tackle him tactfully. I want top priority given to this case. Less chance of any interference, if we move very quickly. As I've said, the husband's quite a big shot. And from what I've heard of him, a big bastard, as well! See what info you can get about the set up, reactions, etc. But don't get Sattar riled, for the Lord's sake! We haven't anything concrete to go on, as yet, and I don't want the Commissioner on my back. This'll be a bit sticky,"· he had prophesied gloomily.
* * * *
Rodricks, as was his wont, examined Sattar closely without appearing to. A distinguished-looking man, he thought to himself. Tall, slightly stooped, with iron-gray hair, iron gray moustache, and hooded dark eyes under thick dark brows, almost meeting over the bridge of his nose without any break. The effect was marred, however, by a receding, rather weak chin and a full, sensual lower lip supporting a disproportionately thin upper one. Hedonist or ascetic? wondered Rodricks. The mouth was a combination of both.
The hands were those of a voluptuary: the palm well padded; short, thick fingers, the lower phalanges more fleshy than the others. Hairy hands, noted Rodricks, taking in the expensive gold wrist-watch strapped over bunches of curly black hair which did not allow even a millimetre of the skin of the wrist to show.
SI Rodricks' breezy, casual, almost faddish manner, so deplored by his Superiors, was misleading. He was a highly efficient and capable officer, perceptive and astute. The perfect foil to Patil, who was shrewd, painstaking and meticulous. A man who did not miss much, with a quiet, laid-back manner of working.
Patil turned to Prakash again. "Did your wife complain of illhealth or uneasiness at any time during the last few days?"
Prakash took his time before replying. Then he said, slowly, deliberately, "Your queries will have to wait, Inspector, till you have established that there is a need or a basis for an inquiry. Till then, I would be obliged if you would refrain from invading my privacy at this time".
Rodricks seemed about to say something, but Patil quelled him with a slight frown. "As you wish," he replied equably and nodded at Rodricks and both officers tok their leave.
After they had left, Fredun seemed more ill at ease than ever. "I say, was that wise?" he asked Prakash. Prakash gave a short grim laugh that came out rather like a snarl and walked over to the Bar. "Let them establish there was a case of poisoning, before they start digging into our lives," he said curtly. "These policemen are getting too damn officious."
He picked up the decanter of whisky and looked around inquiringly. "Care for a drink, any of you?"
Banoo Maa looked revolted at the suggestion. The men declined politely. Prakash, past caring about the sensitivities of his wife's relatives, poured himself a generous measure.
Fredun broke the awkward silence, saying, "Well, I'd better be leaving," looking inquiringly at Zerxes, upon whom he depended for a lift.
"Yes, let's all push off," said Jamshed. "Prakash has had a long drive, then all this. . . Come with me, Maa, I'll drop you home," he told Banoo Maa.
Whilst passing out of the door, Zerxes, who was the last, said over his shoulder to Prakash, "I suggest we inform each other if there's any further development in the matter."
Prakash stood frowning into his glass, vouchsafing no reply.
After they had all left, Prakash strode over to the telephone and called Vinod. "I want you to come over here. Immediately," he almost barked into the receiver. "Don't ask questions now, just come. And Vinod - don't inform anybody at home that you're coming over here."
Then he called Sonali Roy and made a formal appointment to see her at her clinic at Pedder Road the following day.
*
Friday, January 30, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The Turning - Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
The hearse from JJ Hospital rolled up rather promptly, just as Scherezade arrived, clinging tight to Zerxes Avari's arm. She had caught him at his Chambers on his way to Court and had blurted out what had happened. Some instinct made him instruct one of his Juniors to get the case adjourned. He had wanted to be there, at Dina's, with Scherezade . . .
After giving the necessary directions at JJ, Fredun had made the other telephone calls. Calls which could not be put off anY longer. To his wife, at the school where she taught. Asking her to contact the children and ask them too to come over to Dina's. To Jamshed and Shirin. To Vinod Shahane, (whose number he found in the small diary near the telephone, and who was fortunately at home for his lunch). Not so much to inform him, as to find out if he knew where Prakash was staying, at Poona, and to get the telephone number from him, if he had it. Vinod did. His father was staying at the Blue Diamond Hotel, he informed Fredun. He too would be coming over, he said, appearing shocked at the news.
The men from JJ Hospital went about their business with the quiet efficiency of the totally uninvolved. As they were bearing the stretcher out of the doorway, they almost collided with a gustily sobbing Shirin Dumasia, closely followed by an unusually grim-faced Jamshed.
Death served to whet Shirin's predilection for histrionics. "Oh my Sister, my Sister," she cried, flinging herself on the shrouded body.
Her husband caught hold of both her arms and pulled her away unceremoniously. "Come, my dear, control your grief at least till you're inside the house." Over her head his eyes met Fredun's.
"But where are they taking her?" shrieked Shirin. "What will happen to her body? Who will. . ."
"Enough, Shirin," Jamshed's voice suddenly cracked like a whiplash, startling even his wife into silence. Banoo Maa, who liked her the least of the three, put an arm round her shoulders and led her into the drawing room.
"I only wanted to know what they would do to her body," sobbed Shirin quietly now, for Banoo Maa's ears alone.
"Don't you worry about all that, dear," said Banoo consolingly."Everything's been taken care of. Dina took care of that herself," she added, almost to herself.
Banoo herself had no tears left. She pressed Shirin down onto a sofa, sat down herself, closed her eyes, and murmured a silent prayer for Dina's soul. Surely she was entitled in death to that much, at least!
By tacit volition, Fredun, Zerxes and Jamshed had gathered together in one corner of the drawing room. Fredun silently passed the Will to Zerxes. Who read it without comment, before passing it on to Jamshed.
Banoo was sitting with her eyes closed, as immoveable as a bronze Buddha. Shirin had wiped her tears and blown her nose fiercely into a large hanky extracted from her capacious handbag, then wandered into Dina's bedroom. The room where Dina had breathed her last.
She saw Scherezade there, kneeling by the side of the bed, her face buried in the saree Dina had last worn, weeping bitterly. Instinctively realizing that she was being watched, Scherezade jerked her head up. A wave of dizziness swept over her as she did so. Noticing Shirin by the door, she rose to her feet, and walked rather unsteadily out of Dina's bedroom.
Shirin slid into the bedroom. She peered tearfully around: at the mussed-up bed; at the well-stocked bookshelves; at the uncluttered dressing table, containing some cosmetics and some bottles of perfume. It was a bedroom curiously devoid of any personal touch. Except for the bookshelves.
Rashna, Firdauz and Tehmul had not yet arrived. Nor had Vinod Shahane. The three men were still conferring in the corner.
"What do we do about the prayers?" Jamshed voiced the question troubling everyone's mind.
"There's no way we can have Parsee funeral prayers," said Fredun decidedly, as Scherezade walked up to them.
"Oh Dad, don't be so dogmatic," protested Scherezade. "She was born a Parsee, wasn't she?" she asked, tiredly.
"Yes, but she didn't die a Parsee," returned her father implacably.
There seemed to be no answer to this brutal truth. To her own horror, Scherezade found herself breaking down again, and began to sob uncontrollably. Long, gasping sobs. Fredun looked at Zerxes helplessly. Banoo Maa opened her eyes, and hurried up off the sofa she was sitting. Shirin stood hovering near the door to Dina's bedroom, looking around with her bird-like glance. Jamshed tried to pat Scherezade's shoulder, but was frustrated in his efforts by Zerxes.
Putting an arm around her, he half led, half dragged Scherezade to the settee at the far end of the room, almost hidden behind a huge potted fish-tail palm. He then sat down, and made her lie on the settee with her head on his lap, his long sensitive fingers caressing her silken waves.
The doorbell shrilled. Fredun looked up, expecting to see his wife and son.
Vinod Shahane hurried in, brushing brusquely past the swollen eyed Fatima. "I hope I'm not intruding," he began awkwardly, looking around a little helplessly.
Fredun, guessing who he could be, came forward, introduced himself and the others. All except Zerxes and Scherezade, who were still on the settee behind the huge palm, out of their view.
Vinod cast a grateful glance at Fredun, "I thought it appropriate to come over, since you were good enough to telephone and inform me." He paused, clearing his throat, his words sounding stilted even to himself. He was well aware as were all the others, that Fredun had merely phoned Vinod to learn of his father's whereabouts. Nobody had expected Vinod to actually land up there!
"Has. . . has my father been informed?" Vinod inquired, once more glancing at Fredun.
"We tried to get in touch with him at the Blue Diamond Hotel, where you told us he was staying, but he had gone out. I have left a message at the reception, requesting him to return as soon as possible."
"Er. . . the message. . ." ventured Vinod delicately.
"That his wife is seriously ill. I thought that would be less of a shock," said Fredun.
"Thank you. That was thoughtful of you," Vinod said gratefully. "And her body. . . "
"Has been sent to the hospita1."
"Hospital?" echoed Vinod, looking startled.
"Dina had Willed her body to a teaching hospital for medical research," explained Jamshed. "It's been sent to J.J.Hospital"
"I see," murmured Vinod. He shuffled his feet a bit, then mumbled awkwardly, "Well, if there's nothing further I can do here, I'll make a move. I haven't informed my folks yet. Not even my sister. I'd better go and do that. When my father returns, will you please request him to get in touch with me? I'll be at home."
"Certainly," assured Fredun.
Vinod walked away hurriedly, blundering into Dina's bedroom by mistake, before eventually finding his way out.
"Decent of the chap to turn up," said Fredun, looking around at the others a little uncertainly.
Jamshed shrugged. "If you ask me, he merely came out of curiosity," he said uncharitably. "No other reason why he should have come now. It's not as though he was even acquainted with Dina."
* * * *
Vinod broke a couple of traffic lights driving home, his mind racing as furiously. How to tell Nivedita? How should he break the news to her? How would she take it?
Nivedita was pottering about in her terrace garden when he reached the house, at about 5 in the evening. Kuntabai was resting. Suchitra and Arun were in the room allotted to them, probably packing. They were leaving for Calcutta the next day.
Vinod found Nivedita stooping over the rock garden. What had she been up to, now? He went up to her, gently took her by the arm and led her to her room. His medical bag was handy in his own room, next to hers, should the need arise. He made her sit down on the bed, in the crook of his arm. Then he told her.
"So it worked," the words jerked out of Nivedita's lips before she could stop herself. Then she caught her hand to her mouth like a guilty child, looking up at Vinod with frightened eyes.
"Listen to me, Nivedita," said Vinod sternly. "You just forget about everything, keep cool, and don't talk to anybody about this. You understand? Not anybody. I'll take care of things. I'll look after you."
"She's gone. She's really gone?" she asked on a note of inquiry, tilting her head to one side, looking up at Vinod half invitingly, half fearfully.
"She's gone," confirmed Vinod. "Now there's nothing for you to worry about." He then stretched out full length on the bed, pulling her all the way beside him. His hand slid under her loose kurta, found her nubile young breast and fondled it expertly, arousing her nipple to an erection to match his own. Her hands too moved, almost of their own volition, tentative, exploring. There was nothing tentative however, about Vinod's touch. His absent caresses gave way to urgent forays deeper into the recesses of her eager, receptive body, as Nivedita succumbed once more to the sin she would enjoy trying to expiate later.
To the confessional of the figurine.
But for now, it was the time to triumph.
To exult.
And Vinod was marvellous today. Real tigerish! Working her up to a frenzied climax as he played upon her body as expertly as a Menuhin on a Stradivarius . . .
* * * *
At around the same time in Poona, Dr. Sonali Roy returned to their hotel room before Prakash. He would not be back from his conference till quite late. She went to the reception to pick up the key.
And got the message from a carefully blank faced reception clerk who appeared not to notice anything unusual in the existence of two wives of Mr. Prakash Sattar, one apparently seriously ill back home, one hale and hearty, demanding the room key from him.
Sonali was too sophisticated a woman to blush, but she had to admit to herself that that damned hotel clerk had succeeded in making her feel uncomfortable. She would give her ultimatum to Prakash tonight, she promised herself. Careless of appearances as she had been in her youth, as she approached middle age, the inexorable net of convention was closing in upon her and together with it, the craving for respectability.
She would not go about in this clandestine fashion any longer! She wouldn't have done it now, but Prakash had been so desperate! For once, he had even been indifferent to the risk of discovery. Not only had he booked the hotel room in his real name, he had apparently even left word of his whereabouts with people in Bombay! How in heaven's name had Dina's brother known where Prakash was staying, in Poona?
Sonali was aware that they had very little time left. She had often argued with Prakash that it was wrong of him to keep things hidden from his children. Especially Vinod. He should tell Vinod.
Sonali herself had no secrets from her own son, Abhijeet. Who ironically, was a close friend of Vinod Shahane! But that was the one thing Prakash probably wasn't aware of! That their respective sons were known to each other, independently of either of them.
Idly, she wondered how Prakash would react if he knew! Dear, funny Prakash, with his curious ideas of right and wrong. Tailored to suit his own expediency! So typical of most men, she thought, half indulgently, half exasperatedly. Women were more clear in their thinking. And more ruthless in acknowledging what they wanted. And hang the cost!
Sonali showered, got into a comfortable kaftan, and lay down with a book, awaiting Prakash's return. She wondered idly just how seriously ill Dina Sattar was!
* * * *
While Sonali was lying in bed in the hotel room in Poona trying to read, her glance straying to her travelling clock every few minutes, Scherezade was lying on Zerxes' bed in his flat, enduring a severe headache.
After the arrival of Rashna, Firdauz and Tehmul at Dina's, the atmosphere had become even more strained. Unable to face the thought of going to her house with her parents, Scherezade had informed them that she'd return home later, after dinner. Zerxes had brought her over to his flat and taken her straight into the bedroom.
He left her lying on the bed, her forehead bathed in Eau de Cologne, while he went to give instructions to his manservant-cum-cook, Krishna, to prepare a light, easily digestible dinner.
Zerxes went back to the bedroom to find the bed empty. From the half-open bathroom door came the sound of running water, and other unmistakable sounds. He reached the bathroom in a few long strides, to find Scherezade throwing up violently into the black marble basin. After the fit of nausea had passed, he helped her back onto the bed and loosened the collar of her tailored shirt. His gaze was arrested by a very slight bluish tinge at the base of her pale, shell-like right ear.
Suddenly he was seized by an unaccustomed, inexplicable fear. For once without realizing why he was doing something, Zerxes rang up one of his closest friends. A physician. Dr. Subhash Chitaley.
Subhash Chitaley, after he had briefly examined Scherezade, looked at Zerxes with a perplexed frown. "We've got to rush her to a hospital straight away," he decreed. "She needs oxygen urgently."
In the speeding car, Subhash asked his white-faced friend, "What's been happening?"
Zerxes quickly explained the circumstances of Dina's unexpected death and how upset Scherezade was about the whole thing.
Subhash stroked his prematurely graying French beard thoughtfully. "Well, it could be a case of marginal apoplexy caused by convulsive weeping, together with the shock of her aunt's death," he said doubtfully. "But I don't quite see how. . ."
They had reached the hospital by then. It was hardly ten minutes' drive away from Zerxes' flat. Subhash was out almost before the car came to a halt, and had had a stretcher wheeled out, together with an oxygen cylinder, at the entrance itself. He was obviously well-known at that hospital. He had her in the Emergency within a matter of minutes. She seemed to be responding well to the oxygen.
Reassured that she was in safe hands, Zerxes went to the public telephone booth in the lobby and dialled Fredun's number. Firdauz answered the telephone and informed Zerxes that both his parents as well as Banoo Maa were staying over at Dina's, that night. Prakash apparently had not yet returned to Bombay. Banoo Maa had been reluctant to leave Dina's flat till he did. And no way would Fredun leave Banoo Maa there, alone! Also, Firdauz had added distastefully, that that maid of theirs, Fatima, had flatly refused to stay alone in the flat that night.
Zerxes heard him out, then informed him about Scherezade's condition. Firdauz surprised Zerxes by saying he would come over to the hospital immediately, adding, "I think we'd better not say anything to my parents. It would worry them unnecessarily!" Zerxes agreed and awaited his arrival.
"How is she? What's happened?" Firdauz asked anxiously as soon as he reached the hospital and came across Zerxes pacing up and down in the corridor outside the Emergency Room.
"She's better, I believe. The Doctors seem to think she's cried herself into a state of hysteria over Dina's death," Zerxes said slowly. "I'm not sure. . . maybe it's a combination of factors. . ."
He trailed off as Scherezade walked out of the Emergency on her own, if rather wobbly legs, minus the oxygen cylinder. She appeared to have made an almost miraculous recovery.
"It's as I told you," Subhash reassured Zerxes. "It was a mild vasovagal attack, triggered off possibly by sudden, acute, mental distress."
"Vasovagal attack?" queried Firdauz. Zerxes introduced him to Subhash Chitaley.
"That means, temporary suspension of the oxygen supply to the vital organs of the body, especially the brain," explained Subhash. "Luckily, Zerxes called me in time."
Turning to Zerxes, he said, "You can take her home now. She'll be right as rain after a night's rest," smiling encouragingly at his patient.
Zerxes took Subhash aside, asking him in a low voice, "Could there have been the possibility of the suspension of oxygen being. . . not so temporary?"
"Yes," answered Subhash gravely. "In which case, the result could have been. . . well, tragic!"
Zerxes nodded, his face grim. Turning back to Firdauz, he told him abruptly, "I'm taking Scherezade back with me, to my flat for the night, at least," giving him no choice in the matter. Not that Firdauz had any other alternative in mind. Now that Sherrie seemed all right, his natural indolence resurfaced and he was only too relieved to be spared any further hassles. In any case, the whole family knew that Sherrie and that bloke were sleeping together. So let him look after her! It was not that he did not love his sister. It was just that he hated to have his routine disturbed, for anybody!
Firdauz went back as he had come, in his own car. Zerxes drove Scherezade and Subhash to his flat. Subhash parted company from them in the compound where he had parked his car, promising to check up on Scherezade the following day.
Later, snugly tucked up in bed in his almost spartan but beautifully designed bedroom, Zerxes questioned Scherezade closely on exactly what she had done, what she had eaten, what she had drunk, in the past few hours . . .
*
The hearse from JJ Hospital rolled up rather promptly, just as Scherezade arrived, clinging tight to Zerxes Avari's arm. She had caught him at his Chambers on his way to Court and had blurted out what had happened. Some instinct made him instruct one of his Juniors to get the case adjourned. He had wanted to be there, at Dina's, with Scherezade . . .
After giving the necessary directions at JJ, Fredun had made the other telephone calls. Calls which could not be put off anY longer. To his wife, at the school where she taught. Asking her to contact the children and ask them too to come over to Dina's. To Jamshed and Shirin. To Vinod Shahane, (whose number he found in the small diary near the telephone, and who was fortunately at home for his lunch). Not so much to inform him, as to find out if he knew where Prakash was staying, at Poona, and to get the telephone number from him, if he had it. Vinod did. His father was staying at the Blue Diamond Hotel, he informed Fredun. He too would be coming over, he said, appearing shocked at the news.
The men from JJ Hospital went about their business with the quiet efficiency of the totally uninvolved. As they were bearing the stretcher out of the doorway, they almost collided with a gustily sobbing Shirin Dumasia, closely followed by an unusually grim-faced Jamshed.
Death served to whet Shirin's predilection for histrionics. "Oh my Sister, my Sister," she cried, flinging herself on the shrouded body.
Her husband caught hold of both her arms and pulled her away unceremoniously. "Come, my dear, control your grief at least till you're inside the house." Over her head his eyes met Fredun's.
"But where are they taking her?" shrieked Shirin. "What will happen to her body? Who will. . ."
"Enough, Shirin," Jamshed's voice suddenly cracked like a whiplash, startling even his wife into silence. Banoo Maa, who liked her the least of the three, put an arm round her shoulders and led her into the drawing room.
"I only wanted to know what they would do to her body," sobbed Shirin quietly now, for Banoo Maa's ears alone.
"Don't you worry about all that, dear," said Banoo consolingly."Everything's been taken care of. Dina took care of that herself," she added, almost to herself.
Banoo herself had no tears left. She pressed Shirin down onto a sofa, sat down herself, closed her eyes, and murmured a silent prayer for Dina's soul. Surely she was entitled in death to that much, at least!
By tacit volition, Fredun, Zerxes and Jamshed had gathered together in one corner of the drawing room. Fredun silently passed the Will to Zerxes. Who read it without comment, before passing it on to Jamshed.
Banoo was sitting with her eyes closed, as immoveable as a bronze Buddha. Shirin had wiped her tears and blown her nose fiercely into a large hanky extracted from her capacious handbag, then wandered into Dina's bedroom. The room where Dina had breathed her last.
She saw Scherezade there, kneeling by the side of the bed, her face buried in the saree Dina had last worn, weeping bitterly. Instinctively realizing that she was being watched, Scherezade jerked her head up. A wave of dizziness swept over her as she did so. Noticing Shirin by the door, she rose to her feet, and walked rather unsteadily out of Dina's bedroom.
Shirin slid into the bedroom. She peered tearfully around: at the mussed-up bed; at the well-stocked bookshelves; at the uncluttered dressing table, containing some cosmetics and some bottles of perfume. It was a bedroom curiously devoid of any personal touch. Except for the bookshelves.
Rashna, Firdauz and Tehmul had not yet arrived. Nor had Vinod Shahane. The three men were still conferring in the corner.
"What do we do about the prayers?" Jamshed voiced the question troubling everyone's mind.
"There's no way we can have Parsee funeral prayers," said Fredun decidedly, as Scherezade walked up to them.
"Oh Dad, don't be so dogmatic," protested Scherezade. "She was born a Parsee, wasn't she?" she asked, tiredly.
"Yes, but she didn't die a Parsee," returned her father implacably.
There seemed to be no answer to this brutal truth. To her own horror, Scherezade found herself breaking down again, and began to sob uncontrollably. Long, gasping sobs. Fredun looked at Zerxes helplessly. Banoo Maa opened her eyes, and hurried up off the sofa she was sitting. Shirin stood hovering near the door to Dina's bedroom, looking around with her bird-like glance. Jamshed tried to pat Scherezade's shoulder, but was frustrated in his efforts by Zerxes.
Putting an arm around her, he half led, half dragged Scherezade to the settee at the far end of the room, almost hidden behind a huge potted fish-tail palm. He then sat down, and made her lie on the settee with her head on his lap, his long sensitive fingers caressing her silken waves.
The doorbell shrilled. Fredun looked up, expecting to see his wife and son.
Vinod Shahane hurried in, brushing brusquely past the swollen eyed Fatima. "I hope I'm not intruding," he began awkwardly, looking around a little helplessly.
Fredun, guessing who he could be, came forward, introduced himself and the others. All except Zerxes and Scherezade, who were still on the settee behind the huge palm, out of their view.
Vinod cast a grateful glance at Fredun, "I thought it appropriate to come over, since you were good enough to telephone and inform me." He paused, clearing his throat, his words sounding stilted even to himself. He was well aware as were all the others, that Fredun had merely phoned Vinod to learn of his father's whereabouts. Nobody had expected Vinod to actually land up there!
"Has. . . has my father been informed?" Vinod inquired, once more glancing at Fredun.
"We tried to get in touch with him at the Blue Diamond Hotel, where you told us he was staying, but he had gone out. I have left a message at the reception, requesting him to return as soon as possible."
"Er. . . the message. . ." ventured Vinod delicately.
"That his wife is seriously ill. I thought that would be less of a shock," said Fredun.
"Thank you. That was thoughtful of you," Vinod said gratefully. "And her body. . . "
"Has been sent to the hospita1."
"Hospital?" echoed Vinod, looking startled.
"Dina had Willed her body to a teaching hospital for medical research," explained Jamshed. "It's been sent to J.J.Hospital"
"I see," murmured Vinod. He shuffled his feet a bit, then mumbled awkwardly, "Well, if there's nothing further I can do here, I'll make a move. I haven't informed my folks yet. Not even my sister. I'd better go and do that. When my father returns, will you please request him to get in touch with me? I'll be at home."
"Certainly," assured Fredun.
Vinod walked away hurriedly, blundering into Dina's bedroom by mistake, before eventually finding his way out.
"Decent of the chap to turn up," said Fredun, looking around at the others a little uncertainly.
Jamshed shrugged. "If you ask me, he merely came out of curiosity," he said uncharitably. "No other reason why he should have come now. It's not as though he was even acquainted with Dina."
* * * *
Vinod broke a couple of traffic lights driving home, his mind racing as furiously. How to tell Nivedita? How should he break the news to her? How would she take it?
Nivedita was pottering about in her terrace garden when he reached the house, at about 5 in the evening. Kuntabai was resting. Suchitra and Arun were in the room allotted to them, probably packing. They were leaving for Calcutta the next day.
Vinod found Nivedita stooping over the rock garden. What had she been up to, now? He went up to her, gently took her by the arm and led her to her room. His medical bag was handy in his own room, next to hers, should the need arise. He made her sit down on the bed, in the crook of his arm. Then he told her.
"So it worked," the words jerked out of Nivedita's lips before she could stop herself. Then she caught her hand to her mouth like a guilty child, looking up at Vinod with frightened eyes.
"Listen to me, Nivedita," said Vinod sternly. "You just forget about everything, keep cool, and don't talk to anybody about this. You understand? Not anybody. I'll take care of things. I'll look after you."
"She's gone. She's really gone?" she asked on a note of inquiry, tilting her head to one side, looking up at Vinod half invitingly, half fearfully.
"She's gone," confirmed Vinod. "Now there's nothing for you to worry about." He then stretched out full length on the bed, pulling her all the way beside him. His hand slid under her loose kurta, found her nubile young breast and fondled it expertly, arousing her nipple to an erection to match his own. Her hands too moved, almost of their own volition, tentative, exploring. There was nothing tentative however, about Vinod's touch. His absent caresses gave way to urgent forays deeper into the recesses of her eager, receptive body, as Nivedita succumbed once more to the sin she would enjoy trying to expiate later.
To the confessional of the figurine.
But for now, it was the time to triumph.
To exult.
And Vinod was marvellous today. Real tigerish! Working her up to a frenzied climax as he played upon her body as expertly as a Menuhin on a Stradivarius . . .
* * * *
At around the same time in Poona, Dr. Sonali Roy returned to their hotel room before Prakash. He would not be back from his conference till quite late. She went to the reception to pick up the key.
And got the message from a carefully blank faced reception clerk who appeared not to notice anything unusual in the existence of two wives of Mr. Prakash Sattar, one apparently seriously ill back home, one hale and hearty, demanding the room key from him.
Sonali was too sophisticated a woman to blush, but she had to admit to herself that that damned hotel clerk had succeeded in making her feel uncomfortable. She would give her ultimatum to Prakash tonight, she promised herself. Careless of appearances as she had been in her youth, as she approached middle age, the inexorable net of convention was closing in upon her and together with it, the craving for respectability.
She would not go about in this clandestine fashion any longer! She wouldn't have done it now, but Prakash had been so desperate! For once, he had even been indifferent to the risk of discovery. Not only had he booked the hotel room in his real name, he had apparently even left word of his whereabouts with people in Bombay! How in heaven's name had Dina's brother known where Prakash was staying, in Poona?
Sonali was aware that they had very little time left. She had often argued with Prakash that it was wrong of him to keep things hidden from his children. Especially Vinod. He should tell Vinod.
Sonali herself had no secrets from her own son, Abhijeet. Who ironically, was a close friend of Vinod Shahane! But that was the one thing Prakash probably wasn't aware of! That their respective sons were known to each other, independently of either of them.
Idly, she wondered how Prakash would react if he knew! Dear, funny Prakash, with his curious ideas of right and wrong. Tailored to suit his own expediency! So typical of most men, she thought, half indulgently, half exasperatedly. Women were more clear in their thinking. And more ruthless in acknowledging what they wanted. And hang the cost!
Sonali showered, got into a comfortable kaftan, and lay down with a book, awaiting Prakash's return. She wondered idly just how seriously ill Dina Sattar was!
* * * *
While Sonali was lying in bed in the hotel room in Poona trying to read, her glance straying to her travelling clock every few minutes, Scherezade was lying on Zerxes' bed in his flat, enduring a severe headache.
After the arrival of Rashna, Firdauz and Tehmul at Dina's, the atmosphere had become even more strained. Unable to face the thought of going to her house with her parents, Scherezade had informed them that she'd return home later, after dinner. Zerxes had brought her over to his flat and taken her straight into the bedroom.
He left her lying on the bed, her forehead bathed in Eau de Cologne, while he went to give instructions to his manservant-cum-cook, Krishna, to prepare a light, easily digestible dinner.
Zerxes went back to the bedroom to find the bed empty. From the half-open bathroom door came the sound of running water, and other unmistakable sounds. He reached the bathroom in a few long strides, to find Scherezade throwing up violently into the black marble basin. After the fit of nausea had passed, he helped her back onto the bed and loosened the collar of her tailored shirt. His gaze was arrested by a very slight bluish tinge at the base of her pale, shell-like right ear.
Suddenly he was seized by an unaccustomed, inexplicable fear. For once without realizing why he was doing something, Zerxes rang up one of his closest friends. A physician. Dr. Subhash Chitaley.
Subhash Chitaley, after he had briefly examined Scherezade, looked at Zerxes with a perplexed frown. "We've got to rush her to a hospital straight away," he decreed. "She needs oxygen urgently."
In the speeding car, Subhash asked his white-faced friend, "What's been happening?"
Zerxes quickly explained the circumstances of Dina's unexpected death and how upset Scherezade was about the whole thing.
Subhash stroked his prematurely graying French beard thoughtfully. "Well, it could be a case of marginal apoplexy caused by convulsive weeping, together with the shock of her aunt's death," he said doubtfully. "But I don't quite see how. . ."
They had reached the hospital by then. It was hardly ten minutes' drive away from Zerxes' flat. Subhash was out almost before the car came to a halt, and had had a stretcher wheeled out, together with an oxygen cylinder, at the entrance itself. He was obviously well-known at that hospital. He had her in the Emergency within a matter of minutes. She seemed to be responding well to the oxygen.
Reassured that she was in safe hands, Zerxes went to the public telephone booth in the lobby and dialled Fredun's number. Firdauz answered the telephone and informed Zerxes that both his parents as well as Banoo Maa were staying over at Dina's, that night. Prakash apparently had not yet returned to Bombay. Banoo Maa had been reluctant to leave Dina's flat till he did. And no way would Fredun leave Banoo Maa there, alone! Also, Firdauz had added distastefully, that that maid of theirs, Fatima, had flatly refused to stay alone in the flat that night.
Zerxes heard him out, then informed him about Scherezade's condition. Firdauz surprised Zerxes by saying he would come over to the hospital immediately, adding, "I think we'd better not say anything to my parents. It would worry them unnecessarily!" Zerxes agreed and awaited his arrival.
"How is she? What's happened?" Firdauz asked anxiously as soon as he reached the hospital and came across Zerxes pacing up and down in the corridor outside the Emergency Room.
"She's better, I believe. The Doctors seem to think she's cried herself into a state of hysteria over Dina's death," Zerxes said slowly. "I'm not sure. . . maybe it's a combination of factors. . ."
He trailed off as Scherezade walked out of the Emergency on her own, if rather wobbly legs, minus the oxygen cylinder. She appeared to have made an almost miraculous recovery.
"It's as I told you," Subhash reassured Zerxes. "It was a mild vasovagal attack, triggered off possibly by sudden, acute, mental distress."
"Vasovagal attack?" queried Firdauz. Zerxes introduced him to Subhash Chitaley.
"That means, temporary suspension of the oxygen supply to the vital organs of the body, especially the brain," explained Subhash. "Luckily, Zerxes called me in time."
Turning to Zerxes, he said, "You can take her home now. She'll be right as rain after a night's rest," smiling encouragingly at his patient.
Zerxes took Subhash aside, asking him in a low voice, "Could there have been the possibility of the suspension of oxygen being. . . not so temporary?"
"Yes," answered Subhash gravely. "In which case, the result could have been. . . well, tragic!"
Zerxes nodded, his face grim. Turning back to Firdauz, he told him abruptly, "I'm taking Scherezade back with me, to my flat for the night, at least," giving him no choice in the matter. Not that Firdauz had any other alternative in mind. Now that Sherrie seemed all right, his natural indolence resurfaced and he was only too relieved to be spared any further hassles. In any case, the whole family knew that Sherrie and that bloke were sleeping together. So let him look after her! It was not that he did not love his sister. It was just that he hated to have his routine disturbed, for anybody!
Firdauz went back as he had come, in his own car. Zerxes drove Scherezade and Subhash to his flat. Subhash parted company from them in the compound where he had parked his car, promising to check up on Scherezade the following day.
Later, snugly tucked up in bed in his almost spartan but beautifully designed bedroom, Zerxes questioned Scherezade closely on exactly what she had done, what she had eaten, what she had drunk, in the past few hours . . .
*
The Turning - Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
The day after her birthday, Dina awoke feeling hung over. She had taken rather more than her normal dose of sedatives the night before, after tossing and turning in bed for a couple of hours.
Her birthday luncheon party had depressed her more than cheered her. She had almost been sorry to see Prakash leave for Poona. Almost but not quite. She smiled, remembering.
She was to meet Khurshed today. Distance and the lapse of time had served to diminish his shortcomings in her mind, and enhance his attractions. Expediency had now become Dina's God, at the altar of which was served her memory, as well as her conscience.
She tossed off her bed clothes and got up. And then fell back, feeling slightly dizzy. She rang for Fatima, asked for coffee in bed, and ordered her to get the cordless telephone to her.
She'd call Khurshed over to the house since Prakash was away, instead of going to the Club to meet him. She dialled her ex-husband's number. Then she dragged herself out of bed and had a leisurely shower.
Seated before the mirror in her choli and petticoat, Dina grimaced at her pale face and opened a pot of rouge. She had not really made up her face for a long, long time. She touched up her eyelashes and darkened her lips with lipstick. Deep maroon: her favourite shade. It was ironical, she acknowledged to herself, that she should be making up her face to receive her divorced husband.
She changed into a saree, reached for the bottle of 'Joy' Prakash had presented to her, unscrewed the top and dabbed on the perfume liberally all over. Perfume was one of her great weaknesses. Then she powdered her nose finally and went to the drawing room to await her guest. Her ex-husband.
* * * *
Khurshed sipped the mint tea brought in on a tray by Fatima. One glance at him was sufficient to assure Dina that he was not his usual self. He seemed to have something weighing heavily on his mind.
His birthday greeting to her was almost perfunctory, his replies to her questions hardly less so. He cast several speculative glances at Dina when he thought she wasn't looking at him, averting his eyes quickly, if she was! Ultimately, he appeared to come to some sort of a decision, and met her eyes squarely, his own unusually grave. Almost judgmental.
"Dina, I hate to bring this up, especially when I've come to wish you for your birthday; but tell me, have you been going to the Fire Temple lately?" the words came out in a slight rush. As though he wanted to get something unpleasant off his chest rather quickly.
Dina set down the milk jug heavily on the tea tray. "Who told you?" she asked him sharply, realizing that a denial would be useless. Khurshed knew her too well for her to be able to lie successfully to him.
"Aftab saw you at the Fire Temple at Bandra," he replied quietly.
Dina swallowed her vexation. After all the trouble she had taken, to choose a Fire Temple at Bandra, far from Cuffe Parade! Far away from her relations, all of whom lived South of Worli. To have been seen by Aftab, of all the people!
Aftab Dastoor was Khurshed's nephew, his elder sister Meher's son. A practising priest, he was rabidly orthodox, violently opposed to inter-caste marriages. Well aware of Dina's conversion and her second marriage, he had been livid to see her at the Fire Temple. She had no right to be there. No right at all! He had gone ranting to Khurshed and warned him to warn her. Failing which, he threatened, he, Aftab, would be forced to take matters into his own hands! He had also muttered something about informing Fredun, and warning him to control Dina.
Khurshed had been alarmed enough to now convey a muted version of the warning to Dina. He looked rather pityingly at his ex-wife as he did so. That ruffled Dina's temper even more than Aftab's officiousness. She couldn't bear to see pity in Khurshed's eyes. Not directed towards her! About to say something cutting, she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing imperatively. From the lobby came the sound of an angry male voice. Khurshed held his breath, suddenly arrested by that voice.
After a moment, they heard the front door bang shut, and Fatima entered the drawing room. Looking at Khurshed, she said hesitantly, "A gents to see you, Sahib."
"Let him come in," bade Khurshed before Dina could react. After Fatima had gone away to do his bidding, Khurshed turned to Dina. "From the sound of his voice, appears to be Porus! My younger brother. But he's supposed to be in Hong Kong. What he's doing here, I don't know." He did not quite succeed in keeping the apprehension from his voice.
Khurshed, in fact, was badly shaken. Because of the break-up of their marriage, Porus had developed an unreasoning hatred for Dina, resenting her for what he imagined she had done to his brother. When Porus came to learn from their sister Meher that Khurshed had started seeing Dina again and that her second marriage too was almost on the rocks, he had become violently abusive of Dina over the telephone to Khurshed.
"Hasn't that bitch done you enough harm? You stay away from her, understand? Ask her to leave you alone. If you can't, I will!" Porus had almost shrieked into the receiver, causing Khurshed to shift his own set an inch away from his ear. Khurshed, shaking with rage and suppressed frustration, had coldly asked Porus to mind his own business.
Porus had banged the phone down, at that. Even as a child, he had been prey to ungovernable rages. Which was why Khurshed was extremely uneasy at the thought of Porus landing up so suddenly, not only in Bombay, but here, on Dina's doorstep.
Porus entered in Fatima's wake. His face was set and flushed, the nervous twitch at the side of his mouth working uncontrollably.
He looked at Khurshed and blurted out without preamble, "1 landed at Bombay this morning. I went to your place. And I was told by your servant that you had come here. Here!" His voice suddenly rose to a high, almost feminine pitch as he stood glaring at his brother. "Hasn't she done you enough harm? Don't you know enough to stay away from her?" He suddenly whirled on Dina, speaking now in a soft, almost normal tone, which somehow was the more menacing. "You stay away from my brother. Do you hear? You stay away from him. Otherwise I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you!"
Then he turned and walked out of the house, as suddenly and abruptly as he had appeared, without a backward glance at either of them.
Khurshed sighed wearily and came towards Dina, his hands outstretched. "Looks like this meeting was not such a good idea, after all!" he said ruefully. "I apologize for Porus, my dear. At times he's a little imbalanced, as you know! I . . . I had no idea it was this bad! I'm sorry." He averted his eyes and said awkwardly, "I'd better go after him . . . make sure he's Okay."
"Sure," said Dina mechanically. She was seething underneath. "Make sure he's Okay," she repeated aloud to herself, after he had gone. "Who's to make sure I'm Okay?"
She was beginning to feel tired. Her head began to pound. Almost of their own volition, her feet dragged her to her bedroom. She undraped her saree, dumped it on one side of her large bed - too large for one person - and, feeling too listless and weary to remove her make-up or to change out of her choli and petticoat, lay down in those, pulled the bed sheet up to her chin and tried to sleep.
* * * *
Fatima let her mistress sleep undisturbed until lunch time. Till about 1 O'clock. Then, finding no response to her increasingly loud knocks on her door, she turned the handle and went in.
Dina had not locked the door. She was lying still on the bed. When she went up to her the maid realized, to her horror, that her mistress's eyes were open in a wide, unseeing stare.
"Bibiji, bibiji," a note of terror vibrated in the maid's upraised voice, as she shook Dina violently. There was no response from the flaccid body. Dina's face was white as chalk, her lipsticked lips outlined grotesquely in dark maroon. The lips were parted, the mouth open as though gasping for breath. The hands, suddenly seeming claw-like to the distraught maid, appeared to feebly clutch the bedsheet.
Fatima gave a sob of terror and ran from the room. She rushed to the telephone and with shaking hands dialled the number of Prakash's office. While the bell was ringing, she suddenly remembered that Sahib had gone to Poona. She rang off before anyone could pick up the telephone in Prakash's office, and dialled Banoo Maa's number, which Dina had drilled into her.
"Memsahib, Banoo Memsahib, come soon. Come quickly. The Bibiji, she. . . Allah! I think she be dead!"
* * * *
At the other end of the line, a stunned Banoo Maa pulled herself together sufficiently to order Fatima briskly to remain calm, promising to be there in the next half-hour. Then she called Fredun at his office and relayed to him Fatima's strange call, begging him to come over as quickly as possible, so that they could both go together to Dina's and see what had happened. She felt too shaken to go over alone.
A recent memory stirred in her mind, and she went over to the cupboard where she kept her valuables, opened the locker, took out a document carefully wrapped in cellophane and put it in her handbag.
Then she quickly donned a white saree, before giving way to tears.
Fredun did not keep her waiting long. The drive from his office at Nariman Point to Banoo Maa's roomy old tenanted flat at Marine Drive was accomplished in hardly ten minutes, at that hour. It was about fifteen minutes past one in the afternoon. Banoo Maa had caught him just as he had been on the point of leaving for a luncheon meeting. He had hurriedly instructed his secretary to cancel the meeting. All said and done, thought Fredun to himself, Dina was his sister! What the hell had happened?
Banoo Maa had seen his car turn into the gate from her balcony on the second floor, and had come down by the time Fredun pulled up. She got into the car and he turned and drove back swiftly towards Cuffe Parade.
* * * *
They were admitted by a hysterically weeping Fatima. Fredun rushed into Dina's bedroom. Banoo Maa followed more slowly. He shook his head at her when she reached the door of the bedroom. Dina was dead. No doubt about it.
Banoo Maa sat down by the edge of the bed, steeling herself consciously, drawing upon all her fortitude to see her through this ordeal. Dina's heavily made-up face was horrific in death. . . those staring, mascara'd eyes . . . that open mouth, the maroon lips affording a grotesque contrast to the pallor of death. Banoo Maa raised a hand, hesitated, then chiding herself, resolutely caressed the dead face, closing Dina's glassily staring eyes in the process. This was not Dina . . . her Dina!
Who was this woman? What had she become?
Fredun dragged his eyes from the bottle of sedatives on the bedside table and gave Banoo Maa's shoulder a slight squeeze. "I'd better call some Doctor," he muttered. Like most persons confronted by sudden death, he seemed uncertain what to do. "1 think we'll require a death certificate, won't we?" Then, as Banoo Maa remained silent, he asked, "Do you know whom she used to go to, in the past few years?"
Banoo Maa shook her head, her eyes still on Dina's face. "1 don't think she had any regular family Doctor, ever since. . ." her voice cracked. At last she looked up at Fredun, and clutched his arm. "You'd better call our old Dr. Dhondy, dear. At least he knew her well in her childhood and youth. But Fredun," she got up abruptly, suddenly her old brisk self, reaching out for her handbag lying on the bed. "You'd better have a look at this, first."
"What's this?" he asked, rather gingerly accepting the cellophanewrapped package she held out to him.
"Dina's Will."
"When did she make this?" he asked sharply.
"Just a couple of days ago. She had telephoned me and called me over here."
Fredun read the Will through, a slight frown in his eyes. Then he handed it back to Banoo Maa, his eyes going again to the bottle of sedatives. "Better not say anything about this to old Dhondy. Let's get all this over and done with, as quickly as we can."
* * * *
Dr. Dhondy arrived, round and rubicund, his kindly face looking shocked as he gazed at Dina. His eyes wandered round the bedroom curiously.
"Well, well, well! This is rather sudden, hmmn?" he asked chattily, glancing up at Fredun over the top of his spectacles. His bedside manner was too deeply ingrained to desert him even when confronted with a corpse instead of a patient. "What's happened?" He looked around inquiringly, expecting explanations.
Fredun replied, unable to keep a tinge of unease out of his voice, "We really don't know, Doctor. We'd had lunch with her yesterday. She seemed quite all right then. Today, there was no one in the house except her maid. She. . . this seems to have happened in her sleep! Maybe she had a sudden stroke, or something." He shrugged. "I . . . we've not had much contact with her, these last few years. But 1 believe she's not been keeping too well. And not bothering about her health, either," he added.
Dr. Dhondy looked thoughtful. Then he turned an inquiring look at Banoo Maa, who avoided his glance. Dhondy stroked his straggly toothbrush moustache, shaking his head as he went over to the bed and pulled the bedclothes off Dina's dead body.
Banoo Maa averted an embarrassed gaze from the exposed midriff between the choli and the petticoat. The plunging choli looked almost indecent without the drape of the saree pallo. Had Banoo Maa but known it, death had been particularly remorseless to both of Prakash Shahane Sattar's wives, stripping them of dignity in more ways than the obvious.
Banoo Maa forced herself to speak. To tell the doctor what he wanted to hear. "She has not been keeping too well of late," she said evenly. "She's often complained of pains in the chest, insomnia, breathlessness. She's been living under tremendous strain."
"Quite, quite," murmured the Doctor, wrinkling both nose and moustache. "She seems to have changed a lot from the young woman I knew," he added, looking at Fredun curiously. The fellow appeared to be strangely ill at ease! Then Dhondy's eyes went to the almost empty bottle of sedatives on the bedside table, and back to Fredun's anxious gaze.
"How long has she been like this?" he asked whilst making a quick examination, opening her eyelids and shining his torch into her eyes.
"We're not sure." It was Banoo Maa who replied. "Her maid Fatima called me at around 1 O'clock in the afternoon. Apparently, she had found her. . . like this when she tried to awaken her for lunch. She had retired to her room earlier, at around 11.30."
"What about her ..er husband? Isn't he here?"
"He's at Poona. I've left a message for him," said Fredun quickly. "It'll take him quite some time to get here," he added. Banoo Maa looked up at him sharply, her eyes thoughtful. Fredun had made no telephone calls, except to the Doctor! But she said nothing.
The Doctor finished his examination, straightened, and closed his medical bag with a snap. "It appears to be a case of apoplexy, resulting in death. Maybe if treatment were given to her in time. . . " he left it at that. Then he coughed discreetly and asked, "Won't her husband like her to be seen to by his own Doctor?"
"I don't think that is at all necessary, Doctor," said Fredun quickly. Too quickly. "It'll only prolong things. After all, you've known Dina, treated her in the past."
"But not for many years," demurred Dr. Dhondy.
"Well," muttered Fredun awkwardly, "It's not as though anyone could do anything for her. If you would be so good enough as to certify her death, Doctor. . ."
Dr. Dhondy looked at Banoo Maa and read the entreaty in the faded old eyes. She was one of his oldest patients. And not just a patient! He and his wife had enjoyed many a delicious Dhanshak dinner at her table.
Tut-tutting a bit, Dr. Dhondy wrote out a death certificate, certifying death by natural causes, evidently due to apoplexy. He then took his leave, shaking his head.
As soon as the Doctor had left, Fredun opened the telephone directory, found the number he was looking for and dialled, without consulting Banoo Maa. She seemed to divine whom he was telephoning, and seemed to approve.
"Hello," spoke Fredun into the telephone. "JJ Hospital? . . . . . ."
The day after her birthday, Dina awoke feeling hung over. She had taken rather more than her normal dose of sedatives the night before, after tossing and turning in bed for a couple of hours.
Her birthday luncheon party had depressed her more than cheered her. She had almost been sorry to see Prakash leave for Poona. Almost but not quite. She smiled, remembering.
She was to meet Khurshed today. Distance and the lapse of time had served to diminish his shortcomings in her mind, and enhance his attractions. Expediency had now become Dina's God, at the altar of which was served her memory, as well as her conscience.
She tossed off her bed clothes and got up. And then fell back, feeling slightly dizzy. She rang for Fatima, asked for coffee in bed, and ordered her to get the cordless telephone to her.
She'd call Khurshed over to the house since Prakash was away, instead of going to the Club to meet him. She dialled her ex-husband's number. Then she dragged herself out of bed and had a leisurely shower.
Seated before the mirror in her choli and petticoat, Dina grimaced at her pale face and opened a pot of rouge. She had not really made up her face for a long, long time. She touched up her eyelashes and darkened her lips with lipstick. Deep maroon: her favourite shade. It was ironical, she acknowledged to herself, that she should be making up her face to receive her divorced husband.
She changed into a saree, reached for the bottle of 'Joy' Prakash had presented to her, unscrewed the top and dabbed on the perfume liberally all over. Perfume was one of her great weaknesses. Then she powdered her nose finally and went to the drawing room to await her guest. Her ex-husband.
* * * *
Khurshed sipped the mint tea brought in on a tray by Fatima. One glance at him was sufficient to assure Dina that he was not his usual self. He seemed to have something weighing heavily on his mind.
His birthday greeting to her was almost perfunctory, his replies to her questions hardly less so. He cast several speculative glances at Dina when he thought she wasn't looking at him, averting his eyes quickly, if she was! Ultimately, he appeared to come to some sort of a decision, and met her eyes squarely, his own unusually grave. Almost judgmental.
"Dina, I hate to bring this up, especially when I've come to wish you for your birthday; but tell me, have you been going to the Fire Temple lately?" the words came out in a slight rush. As though he wanted to get something unpleasant off his chest rather quickly.
Dina set down the milk jug heavily on the tea tray. "Who told you?" she asked him sharply, realizing that a denial would be useless. Khurshed knew her too well for her to be able to lie successfully to him.
"Aftab saw you at the Fire Temple at Bandra," he replied quietly.
Dina swallowed her vexation. After all the trouble she had taken, to choose a Fire Temple at Bandra, far from Cuffe Parade! Far away from her relations, all of whom lived South of Worli. To have been seen by Aftab, of all the people!
Aftab Dastoor was Khurshed's nephew, his elder sister Meher's son. A practising priest, he was rabidly orthodox, violently opposed to inter-caste marriages. Well aware of Dina's conversion and her second marriage, he had been livid to see her at the Fire Temple. She had no right to be there. No right at all! He had gone ranting to Khurshed and warned him to warn her. Failing which, he threatened, he, Aftab, would be forced to take matters into his own hands! He had also muttered something about informing Fredun, and warning him to control Dina.
Khurshed had been alarmed enough to now convey a muted version of the warning to Dina. He looked rather pityingly at his ex-wife as he did so. That ruffled Dina's temper even more than Aftab's officiousness. She couldn't bear to see pity in Khurshed's eyes. Not directed towards her! About to say something cutting, she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing imperatively. From the lobby came the sound of an angry male voice. Khurshed held his breath, suddenly arrested by that voice.
After a moment, they heard the front door bang shut, and Fatima entered the drawing room. Looking at Khurshed, she said hesitantly, "A gents to see you, Sahib."
"Let him come in," bade Khurshed before Dina could react. After Fatima had gone away to do his bidding, Khurshed turned to Dina. "From the sound of his voice, appears to be Porus! My younger brother. But he's supposed to be in Hong Kong. What he's doing here, I don't know." He did not quite succeed in keeping the apprehension from his voice.
Khurshed, in fact, was badly shaken. Because of the break-up of their marriage, Porus had developed an unreasoning hatred for Dina, resenting her for what he imagined she had done to his brother. When Porus came to learn from their sister Meher that Khurshed had started seeing Dina again and that her second marriage too was almost on the rocks, he had become violently abusive of Dina over the telephone to Khurshed.
"Hasn't that bitch done you enough harm? You stay away from her, understand? Ask her to leave you alone. If you can't, I will!" Porus had almost shrieked into the receiver, causing Khurshed to shift his own set an inch away from his ear. Khurshed, shaking with rage and suppressed frustration, had coldly asked Porus to mind his own business.
Porus had banged the phone down, at that. Even as a child, he had been prey to ungovernable rages. Which was why Khurshed was extremely uneasy at the thought of Porus landing up so suddenly, not only in Bombay, but here, on Dina's doorstep.
Porus entered in Fatima's wake. His face was set and flushed, the nervous twitch at the side of his mouth working uncontrollably.
He looked at Khurshed and blurted out without preamble, "1 landed at Bombay this morning. I went to your place. And I was told by your servant that you had come here. Here!" His voice suddenly rose to a high, almost feminine pitch as he stood glaring at his brother. "Hasn't she done you enough harm? Don't you know enough to stay away from her?" He suddenly whirled on Dina, speaking now in a soft, almost normal tone, which somehow was the more menacing. "You stay away from my brother. Do you hear? You stay away from him. Otherwise I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you!"
Then he turned and walked out of the house, as suddenly and abruptly as he had appeared, without a backward glance at either of them.
Khurshed sighed wearily and came towards Dina, his hands outstretched. "Looks like this meeting was not such a good idea, after all!" he said ruefully. "I apologize for Porus, my dear. At times he's a little imbalanced, as you know! I . . . I had no idea it was this bad! I'm sorry." He averted his eyes and said awkwardly, "I'd better go after him . . . make sure he's Okay."
"Sure," said Dina mechanically. She was seething underneath. "Make sure he's Okay," she repeated aloud to herself, after he had gone. "Who's to make sure I'm Okay?"
She was beginning to feel tired. Her head began to pound. Almost of their own volition, her feet dragged her to her bedroom. She undraped her saree, dumped it on one side of her large bed - too large for one person - and, feeling too listless and weary to remove her make-up or to change out of her choli and petticoat, lay down in those, pulled the bed sheet up to her chin and tried to sleep.
* * * *
Fatima let her mistress sleep undisturbed until lunch time. Till about 1 O'clock. Then, finding no response to her increasingly loud knocks on her door, she turned the handle and went in.
Dina had not locked the door. She was lying still on the bed. When she went up to her the maid realized, to her horror, that her mistress's eyes were open in a wide, unseeing stare.
"Bibiji, bibiji," a note of terror vibrated in the maid's upraised voice, as she shook Dina violently. There was no response from the flaccid body. Dina's face was white as chalk, her lipsticked lips outlined grotesquely in dark maroon. The lips were parted, the mouth open as though gasping for breath. The hands, suddenly seeming claw-like to the distraught maid, appeared to feebly clutch the bedsheet.
Fatima gave a sob of terror and ran from the room. She rushed to the telephone and with shaking hands dialled the number of Prakash's office. While the bell was ringing, she suddenly remembered that Sahib had gone to Poona. She rang off before anyone could pick up the telephone in Prakash's office, and dialled Banoo Maa's number, which Dina had drilled into her.
"Memsahib, Banoo Memsahib, come soon. Come quickly. The Bibiji, she. . . Allah! I think she be dead!"
* * * *
At the other end of the line, a stunned Banoo Maa pulled herself together sufficiently to order Fatima briskly to remain calm, promising to be there in the next half-hour. Then she called Fredun at his office and relayed to him Fatima's strange call, begging him to come over as quickly as possible, so that they could both go together to Dina's and see what had happened. She felt too shaken to go over alone.
A recent memory stirred in her mind, and she went over to the cupboard where she kept her valuables, opened the locker, took out a document carefully wrapped in cellophane and put it in her handbag.
Then she quickly donned a white saree, before giving way to tears.
Fredun did not keep her waiting long. The drive from his office at Nariman Point to Banoo Maa's roomy old tenanted flat at Marine Drive was accomplished in hardly ten minutes, at that hour. It was about fifteen minutes past one in the afternoon. Banoo Maa had caught him just as he had been on the point of leaving for a luncheon meeting. He had hurriedly instructed his secretary to cancel the meeting. All said and done, thought Fredun to himself, Dina was his sister! What the hell had happened?
Banoo Maa had seen his car turn into the gate from her balcony on the second floor, and had come down by the time Fredun pulled up. She got into the car and he turned and drove back swiftly towards Cuffe Parade.
* * * *
They were admitted by a hysterically weeping Fatima. Fredun rushed into Dina's bedroom. Banoo Maa followed more slowly. He shook his head at her when she reached the door of the bedroom. Dina was dead. No doubt about it.
Banoo Maa sat down by the edge of the bed, steeling herself consciously, drawing upon all her fortitude to see her through this ordeal. Dina's heavily made-up face was horrific in death. . . those staring, mascara'd eyes . . . that open mouth, the maroon lips affording a grotesque contrast to the pallor of death. Banoo Maa raised a hand, hesitated, then chiding herself, resolutely caressed the dead face, closing Dina's glassily staring eyes in the process. This was not Dina . . . her Dina!
Who was this woman? What had she become?
Fredun dragged his eyes from the bottle of sedatives on the bedside table and gave Banoo Maa's shoulder a slight squeeze. "I'd better call some Doctor," he muttered. Like most persons confronted by sudden death, he seemed uncertain what to do. "1 think we'll require a death certificate, won't we?" Then, as Banoo Maa remained silent, he asked, "Do you know whom she used to go to, in the past few years?"
Banoo Maa shook her head, her eyes still on Dina's face. "1 don't think she had any regular family Doctor, ever since. . ." her voice cracked. At last she looked up at Fredun, and clutched his arm. "You'd better call our old Dr. Dhondy, dear. At least he knew her well in her childhood and youth. But Fredun," she got up abruptly, suddenly her old brisk self, reaching out for her handbag lying on the bed. "You'd better have a look at this, first."
"What's this?" he asked, rather gingerly accepting the cellophanewrapped package she held out to him.
"Dina's Will."
"When did she make this?" he asked sharply.
"Just a couple of days ago. She had telephoned me and called me over here."
Fredun read the Will through, a slight frown in his eyes. Then he handed it back to Banoo Maa, his eyes going again to the bottle of sedatives. "Better not say anything about this to old Dhondy. Let's get all this over and done with, as quickly as we can."
* * * *
Dr. Dhondy arrived, round and rubicund, his kindly face looking shocked as he gazed at Dina. His eyes wandered round the bedroom curiously.
"Well, well, well! This is rather sudden, hmmn?" he asked chattily, glancing up at Fredun over the top of his spectacles. His bedside manner was too deeply ingrained to desert him even when confronted with a corpse instead of a patient. "What's happened?" He looked around inquiringly, expecting explanations.
Fredun replied, unable to keep a tinge of unease out of his voice, "We really don't know, Doctor. We'd had lunch with her yesterday. She seemed quite all right then. Today, there was no one in the house except her maid. She. . . this seems to have happened in her sleep! Maybe she had a sudden stroke, or something." He shrugged. "I . . . we've not had much contact with her, these last few years. But 1 believe she's not been keeping too well. And not bothering about her health, either," he added.
Dr. Dhondy looked thoughtful. Then he turned an inquiring look at Banoo Maa, who avoided his glance. Dhondy stroked his straggly toothbrush moustache, shaking his head as he went over to the bed and pulled the bedclothes off Dina's dead body.
Banoo Maa averted an embarrassed gaze from the exposed midriff between the choli and the petticoat. The plunging choli looked almost indecent without the drape of the saree pallo. Had Banoo Maa but known it, death had been particularly remorseless to both of Prakash Shahane Sattar's wives, stripping them of dignity in more ways than the obvious.
Banoo Maa forced herself to speak. To tell the doctor what he wanted to hear. "She has not been keeping too well of late," she said evenly. "She's often complained of pains in the chest, insomnia, breathlessness. She's been living under tremendous strain."
"Quite, quite," murmured the Doctor, wrinkling both nose and moustache. "She seems to have changed a lot from the young woman I knew," he added, looking at Fredun curiously. The fellow appeared to be strangely ill at ease! Then Dhondy's eyes went to the almost empty bottle of sedatives on the bedside table, and back to Fredun's anxious gaze.
"How long has she been like this?" he asked whilst making a quick examination, opening her eyelids and shining his torch into her eyes.
"We're not sure." It was Banoo Maa who replied. "Her maid Fatima called me at around 1 O'clock in the afternoon. Apparently, she had found her. . . like this when she tried to awaken her for lunch. She had retired to her room earlier, at around 11.30."
"What about her ..er husband? Isn't he here?"
"He's at Poona. I've left a message for him," said Fredun quickly. "It'll take him quite some time to get here," he added. Banoo Maa looked up at him sharply, her eyes thoughtful. Fredun had made no telephone calls, except to the Doctor! But she said nothing.
The Doctor finished his examination, straightened, and closed his medical bag with a snap. "It appears to be a case of apoplexy, resulting in death. Maybe if treatment were given to her in time. . . " he left it at that. Then he coughed discreetly and asked, "Won't her husband like her to be seen to by his own Doctor?"
"I don't think that is at all necessary, Doctor," said Fredun quickly. Too quickly. "It'll only prolong things. After all, you've known Dina, treated her in the past."
"But not for many years," demurred Dr. Dhondy.
"Well," muttered Fredun awkwardly, "It's not as though anyone could do anything for her. If you would be so good enough as to certify her death, Doctor. . ."
Dr. Dhondy looked at Banoo Maa and read the entreaty in the faded old eyes. She was one of his oldest patients. And not just a patient! He and his wife had enjoyed many a delicious Dhanshak dinner at her table.
Tut-tutting a bit, Dr. Dhondy wrote out a death certificate, certifying death by natural causes, evidently due to apoplexy. He then took his leave, shaking his head.
As soon as the Doctor had left, Fredun opened the telephone directory, found the number he was looking for and dialled, without consulting Banoo Maa. She seemed to divine whom he was telephoning, and seemed to approve.
"Hello," spoke Fredun into the telephone. "JJ Hospital? . . . . . ."
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Turning - Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
On June 26, her birthday, Dina awoke to the alarum of a deafening clap of thunder, and was astonished to find that it was already past 9.
The monsoon that year was even more erratic than usual. Days of bright sunshine would be followed by a sudden deluge, which would last a day or two.
June 26, 1994 was a wet, gloomy day. All signs of the sun had been successfully obscured by the heavy downpour that roared furiously from a gray sky. Noisy gusts of rain-laden wind blew into Dina's bedroom, causing the lace curtains to writhe in wild frenzy, and made the connecting door between her bedroom and Prakash's rattle.
The persistent knocking ultimately made Dina realize that it was Prakash, and not the wind, rattling the connecting door. Prakash was awaiting her permission to enter.
Pulling the bedclothes more securely around her, she bade him enter.
"Happy Birthday," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, giving her cheek a hurried peck and thrusting a package into her hand at the same time. "I hope you like it. It's. . . er perfume again," he said almost apologetically, thinking of the bottle of 'L' Air Du Temps' his secretary had got last year, when he had asked her to go and get a bottle of perfume for his wife. The light, summery scent was about the most unsuitable for Dina's personality! But there had been no help for it.
This year he had played safe. Asked his peon to go and get a large bottle of 'Joy'. The gift-wrapping had been done by the secretary. For the last couple of years, his imagination had been unable to go beyond a bottle of perfume when it came to choosing gifts for his wife.
Dina's lips curved into the semblance of a smile. She had no illusions about the amount of time and thought expended by Prakash in choosing her birthday present.
"That's all right," she said in reply to his sheepish semi-apology, her eyes on the silver-wrapped package he had pressed into her hand. Looking up at him she said quietly, "It's the thought that counts."
For some reason, that remark annoyed him and added to his sense of guilt where she was concerned. For a brief moment, he fantasized Sonali sitting on the bed where Dina sat: her long hair rippling down her shoulders, her liquid eyes smouldering with a fire Dina had never known. With something of a shock, it suddenly struck him that he and Dina had never been able to sexually climax with each other. Whereas with Sonali . . .
. . . "Prakash, don't," she had giggled, the first time he had undressed her.
Her 'Don't' was an invitation. She never said 'Do!' Her husky voice was an allure in itself. . . unlike Dina's clipped, often sarcastic tones. And as for her body . . . not that Dina was bad, but Sonali was lush . . . voluptuous! And she knew how to drown a man in the honey of her tongue as well as the treacle of her lips . . . she was soft, seemingly subservient; while Dina was almost aggressive, putting him on the defensive where his own sexuality was concerned.
Dina threatened his maleness; Sonali flattered it. He remembered those clandestine hours stolen from his work, at her clinic . . . on her couch. . . on the patient bed. . . ultimately, on the floor, to give full rein to Sonali's expertise. . . she was like a Khajuraho statue come to life, thought the besotted Prakash, after Sonali had initiated him into yet another way of making love . . . he had no idea it could be such fun in the standing position, with his back against the wall, one leg straddling her soft, yielding hips, the other supporting her rounded thigh, her long fingers guiding him expertly, unerringly, while she gyrated rythmically against him, as agile as a belly-dancer . . .
He got off her bed. Dina's bed. "I'll go and shower, then we'll have a quiet breakfast before your family descends upon us." Now he hadn't meant to say that about her family. But it had slipped out. Shrugging with mental resignation at the hopelessness of it all, he went back to his own room.
Dina slowly untied the gold thread, unwrapped the silver wrapping paper and opened the bottle of perfume after he had left. 'Joy'! At least he had chosen the right perfume this time, she mused wryly.
It had gone wrong. It had all gone wrong with Prakash too, almost since the Nikah. They had been lovers before, but then their relationship had had a different flavour altogether! Prakash was one of those men for whom the chase is more thrilling than the conquest. Shortly after marriage had ended the reason for that marriage. And as Dina became more and more aggressive, both in bed and out of it, Prakash, with purely chauvinistic notions about women,
was repulsed by her almost to a stage where he couldn't perform. And he began to blame Dina, hate her, for that. Adding to Dina's bitterness.And exacerbating her feelings of guilt.
The breakfast a deux brought to Prakash's mind hazily, the words of an almost forgotten Neil Diamond song. Something about a man and a woman and no words between them. No conversation. That was the situation between him and Dina, now. No conversation. Just resentful silences on her part, a rising, resolutely curbed frustration on his. Relieved only by the moments snatched with Sonali. And the time spent with.. .
The telephone bell shrilled, breaking into his thoughts. It was for Dina, said Fatima. Dina rose from the breakfast table and passed through the bead-curtained door into the drawing room to take it. She looked slightly flustered when she returned. Prakash looked at her narrowly. He had a shrewd suspicion of who had been on the line. Well, he did not care! Not any longer. He did not have much time left for caring, one way or another. Soon all this would end, he told himself almost thankfully, his mind going back to what the Doctor had told him. Subsequently confirmed by a tearful Sonali.
The doorbell rang. Fatima woodenly announced that a lady called Nivedita Shahane had come to see Dina Memsahib.
Casting a glance at Dina's set face, Prakash told Fatima, "Ask her to wait in the Hall. The Memsahib will be with her shortly." He then steeled himself to meet Dina's eyes.
"You knew she was coming." It was a statement. Dina managed to turn it into an accusation as well.
"She is keen to build bridges now. She thought the best way to start would be to come and wish you on your birthday." His words sounded hollow even to himself. His tone betrayed the struggle to remain casual.
"When did she tell you this?"
"She telephoned me earlier, while you were asleep."
Dina looked at him steadily. "You hadn't gone out of town for work." Again, it was a statement. And the accusation even more evident.
He drained his coffee and rose. "! don't wish to have any arguments with you today. You may think what you choose. But Nivedita's in a slightly sensitive frame of mind right now. At least try and pretend to return her sentiments." There, now that's tom it, he told himself wryly. Might as well have admitted where he'd been, the last couple of days!
He had to pass the Hall, (he had persistently resisted all Dina's efforts to get him to call it 'drawing room'), to get to his room. Both the bedrooms, his and Dina's, opened out into the Hall, apart from being internally connected with each other. On the other side of the flat, the bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which also led directly to the small lobby which was the main entrance, often used by Dina as a get-away, if Prakash was entertaining some of his business cronies in the the Hall. The Hall was designed as a central focus, opening out into two of the four bedrooms, the dining room, and the lobby leading to the entrance.
Nivedita was hovering near the door of Dina's bedroom, rummaging in her handbag for something. At his "Hallo," she started violently and looked up almost guiltily. "The child's nerves are shot to pieces," thought Prakash to himself worriedly. "I wonder if she realizes what she is getting into, wanting to meet Dina in this frame of mind!"
"Do you want me to be here when you meet her?" he asked his daughter gently.
"N..no," she stammered somewhat breathlessly. "I think it's better if I do it on my own."
Prakash went back to his room and started packing. He had to leave for Poona in the evening. Hence the lunch party with her family, instead of the more convenient dinner. As it was a Sunday, that had been possible.
Jamshed had retired a year ago as the Headmaster of a reputed boys' school; his wife had never worked in her life; their son Tehmul worked in a Bank; Fredun worked for a fairly reputed private limited company as the General Manager (Finance); no school for Rashna, who was a teacher in a girls' school. Scherezade was a trainee copywriter in one of the larger, more reputed ad agencies, having joined just about a couple of months ago. Zerxes was a rapidly rising criminal lawyer, acquiring a formidable reputation for cross-examination. Both he and Scherezade often worked on Sundays for a few hours, mostly at Zerxes' home, in his study. But they'd agreed to make an exception on Dina's birthday.
Dina was determined to preserve appearances in front of her family members. They mustn't know that this marriage too had failed. Else she'd never live it down, she thought to herself, blanching at the thought of the malicious "I told you so's" that she was sure would ensue.
By around noon, Dina had still not come out of her room. Prakash knocked on her door. "What time are your people coming?" he shouted through the closed door.
"Around one o'clock," replied Dina, coming out of the bedroom, fully dressed. She led the way to the drawing room.
"Er.. how did the meeting with Nivedita go?" asked Prakash hesitantly.
"It didn't," was the cryptic reply.
"Meaning?" asked Prakash puzzled, a hint of foreboding stealing into him.
"Meaning that she appeared to have changed her mind about wanting to 'build bridges', and had disappeared by the time I left the dining room and went out into the Drawing Room," responded Dina acidly.
"Poor child, her nerve must have failed her at the last moment," murmured Prakash.
"Possibly," answered Dina in a tone indicating clearly that she wished to have no further discussion on the subject.
* * * *
Nivedita had rushed home and wandered out onto her sanctum, the terrace. She glared in vexation at the passion flower. The Krishna Kamal. The Kaurav-Pandav Phool, as the mali had explained to her, insisting that the deep purple outer calyx numbered a hundred petals in all. The Kauravas. Then came the five greenish-white Pandavas, cherishing in their midst the single, graceful green stamen, Draupadi.
Nivedita had ever since been fascinated by that flower. Good, Evil, Beauty. All in one. All fused together to form a complete whole. After all, good without a touch of evil is insipid; evil without any good at all, intolerable; and as for beauty - beauty is its own justification, in a way that poor virtue alone can never be!
As always during the monsoon, the Krishna Kamal creeper bloomed in profusion, throwing out new shoots almost every other day. A lot of them had got entangled with a tall thorny cactus growing wild, close by. Nivedita tried to disentangle the tendrils of the Krishna Kamal from the cactus, getting badly scratched in the process. At last she gave up. Let the creeper remain entangled! The tender, pliant tendrils were clinging too tightly to the thorns of the cactus. Sighing in exasperation, she- turned her attention to the rock garden.
* * * *
While Nivedita had been busy on the terrace, Dina's luncheon guests had arrived almost en masse. Over lunch, Dina assumed a brittle gaiety which her guests pretended to accept at face value. Prakash was clearly ill at ease. It was a strange, strained luncheon party.
"Deadly undercurrents," murmured Zerxes Avari in Scherezade's ear. "One pinprick, and all hell will break loose!"
Banoo Maa's smiles were even gayer and more determined than Dina's. But all the while her heart bled for her.
Fredun gulped down his lunch as one anxious to complete a distasteful job as soon as possible and get it over and done with. Rashna was composed and distant. Firdauz had excused himself. "Some impossible-to-break prior engagement," Rashna had politely explained on his behalf.
The usual birthday greetings were conveyed, presents given, and Fredun wondered how soon he and Rashna could take their leave without seeming rude. Sherrie, he knew, would leave with Zerxes.
Fredun had accepted his daughter's relationship with the brilliant thirty-two-year old lawyer, as he had always accepted anything his daughter had ever done. Without disapproval and without understanding.
Shirin was even more effusive than usual, her sharp acquisitive eyes darting over the curios and the crystal in the fabulously furnished apartment. Prakash had really minted in the last few years! And of course, he had become a bit of a 'big noise' in the city. His name was quite often in the papers. And the tabloids mentioned 'what he read,' 'where he ate,' etc. . . etc. . . etc. . ., thought Shirin, who had her own perception of fame. Her own husband was his usual retiring self, unobtrusively controlling his wife if he thought she went too far. And Tehmul was only interested in his lunch.
Zerxes had been looking rather narrowly at Dina. She had embraced him when he and Scherezade had entered, "now that he was almost one of the family," and Zerxes' fastidious nostrils had wrinkled at the strong aroma of 'Joy' that emanated from her. She appeared to have been drinking rather heavily before they had got there! Her gait was a shade unsteady and her colour a bit too high. Possibly the lashings of perfume were meant to drown the smell of liquor, he thought cynically. He had few illusions about his Scherezade's Dina Fui.
And even fewer about the man she had supposedly married.
He wondered if Prakash Sattar, as he now called himself, realized the legal consequences of his actions. After all, he did have two children of his own, no matter how strained their relations!
"So, how are you two celebrating this evening?" Shirin's slightly shrill voice broke in upon Zerxes' thoughts. She was smiling brightly at Dina and Prakash, oblivious of Dina's frown and Prakash's indifferent shrug. Dina was forced to break the awkward silence, ultimately. They had just about finished lunch, and the dessert, orange souffle, had been served.
"Prakash has to go to Poona for work," she said shortly.
"Oh! But surely he won't be leaving today itself?" gasped Shirin, putting her other foot into her mouth. "Jamshed would never dream of leaving me alone on my birthday, would you, darling?"
"Dina's a more independent woman than you, my dear," was her spouse's diplomatic response, dodging her question and drawing a chuckle from Fredun, who was gulping down his souffle.
"I really have no choice, but to leave this evening," said Prakash irritably. He gave a short laugh. "As Jamshed seems to appreciate, Dina and I don't live in each other's pockets, you know!"
"You really must give me the recipe for this orange souffle, Dina" intervened Banoo Maa serenely, ignoring the earlier exchanges, turning the conversation into safer, more general channels.
Scherezade chipped in with a recipe for a really sinful chocolate souffle.
As even the culinary discussion seemed to be in danger of petering out, Fredun, seeing that everybody had finished dessert, judged it was time to leave, and rose, nodding at his wife. That seemed to be the signal for general dispersal. Dina did not rise to see her guests off. She seemed both tired and off colour.
The morning's downpour had settled into a steady drizzle, as Dina's guests left. Scherezade, getting into the car with Zerxes, had expressed a desire to drive down to Aksha beach. Zerxes had agreed almost absently. He seemed rather preoccupied during most of the long drive, responding to Scherezade in monosyllables.
As they turned off on to the highway, he suddenly asked, "What's bugging your brother Firdauz? Why didn't he turn up?"
"Because he's a pompous ass," Scherezade replied, scorn for her brother vibrating in her normally musical voice. "He's been even more snooty about this conversion business than Dad himself. And God knows, he's been snooty enough!"
"Snooty? In what way?" queried Zerxes, at last succeeding in overtaking a road-hogging, exhaust-emitting truck just ahead of them.
Scherezade answered slowly, choosing her words with care, "Dad adored Dina Fui. Especially when they were small. Even afterwards, when I was a child, I remember she and Khurshed Fua were always in and out of our house. Hanoz came along much later. Dina Fui often dropped in alone without Khurshed Fua. I think at times Mom used to get quite fed up of her." Scherezade wrinkled her brow in the recollection of those far-off memories. "Dad is her younger brother, you know! He actually used to hang on her words -'- her opinions, her advice."
"Both of which no doubt she gave quite freely," cut in Zerxes.
The note of satire in his tone was evident. Scherezade wrinkled her brow again. "Umm . . . come to think of it, perhaps she did!" she admitted reluctantly. "But she always meant it for the best," she added defensively.
"They all do," Zerxes murmured sarcastically. The car bumped over a pothole he couldn't avoid. "But go on . . . you were saying, your father respected his sister's advice. And your mother resented it."
"I did not say that!" flashed Scherezade, turning round in her seat and glaring at him. "Stop twisting my words!"
"Okay, okay," he gave a lazy grin, glancing at her amusedly through green eyes gleaming behind half-closed lids, his left hand flung up from the steering wheel in a gesture half of surrender, half of conciliation. The hand found its way to her delicate nape beneath the swathe of heavy brown hair and caressed it. "Don't take on so, my Baby! You're feeling guilty because you think your loyalties are divided. But you needn't! You can love both, your parents and your aunt, you know," he said softly, adding bracingly, "and you can tolerate both their points of view without yourself accepting either."
"I suppose you're right," Scherezade murmured, sinking her chin into her cupped hands, elbows resting on bunched-up knees. "But tell me," she urged, her voice quickening, her quicksilver mind darting back to something he had said earlier. "Why did you say Dina Fui didn't seem 'quite normal' to you?" .
By now they had reached the turn-off on the highway, leading to INS Hamla. Zerxes negotiated the bend, murmuring as he did so, "Well, she's either been drinking too much, or she's taken a particularly heavy dose of sedatives, or she's on drugs." "You must be joking." Scherezade stiffened.
Zerxes did not comment on that. Which was comment enough, for Scherezade.
Her face suddenly clouded. Hesitantly, almost tentatively, she asked in a small voice, "Do you honestly think she's on drugs?"
"Could be," he answered briefly, casting a shrewd, sideways glance at her exquisite profile, with its chiselled cheekbones, and the lovely, lovely line of the jaw. A study in uncertainty.
"But why? Why is she changed so?" She whispered almost to herself.
"Do you really need me to answer that question?" was the amused query.
"I suppose it's this damned conversion business. But tell me, would it have bothered you, so much?"
"The question really doesn't apply. Either to you or to me. Because we don't give a damn for 'what people say'. But your Dina Fui obviously does! That being the case, taking the refuge of secularity, she changed her religion to give a semblance of respectability to an otherwise invalid marriage."
She knit her brow. "Are you saying that her marriage to Prakash is invalid?"
"Let's say, of doubtful validity," he temporized. "In the opinion of quite a few eminent jurists and legal experts, if the only reason for conversion is to avail of the benefit of a second wife without otherwise believing in and following the tenets of Islam, both the conversion and consequently the second marriage would be invalid. But that's a gray area still. The legal position on this aspect is not quite clear cut. Nor will it be, unless in some such case the first wife initiates bigamy proceedings against the husband and the so-called 'second wife'."
"I'm sure Dina Fui still considers herself very much a Parsee, Zerx." She looked so troubled that Zerxes overlooked the corruption of his name. His left hand left the wheel again and clasped both her small ones, agitatedly worrying each other on her lap.
"Stop thinking about it, darling," he told her gently. "Whatever it is, now Dina has to live with it. She was no child when she took that decision. She knew well it would be irrevocable. I shouldn't worry too much about it." But he himself was worried. Worried about the mental and physical condition of his Scherezade's favourite aunt. And the state of her doomed 'marriage'.
"This is what happens," he thought to himself savagely, "when people rush into things without bothering to examine the possible ramifications, the consequences. On themselves, on their families!"
"You don't think she'll do something drastic, do you?" Scherezade asked suddenly, her implication clear in her tone.
"Now, Sherrie," he mimicked, deliberately malicious. "Have we come on this drive to talk about your wretched aunt and her problems?" By now, the concrete structures on either side of the road had given way to the lush greenery that signalled the proximity of the beach they both loved. Scherezade shook her head, brightening perceptibly at the changed scenery. She shook back her hair and gave him a mischievous, sidelong glance. "1 have better things in mind!" ''I'm relieved to hear that," he returned a trifle dryly, bringing the car to a halt outside the Motel Blue Ballerina and giving her a bruising kiss before getting out of the car, opening her door, and dragging her out with an ungentle hand. Then he slid his arm round her waist and led her out onto the sands and the surf.
* * * *
While Zerxes and Scherezade were strolling on the beach, inter alia, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, Shirin was regaling her spouse with hot bhajiyas, freshly made; hot coffee, freshly ground; and hot gossip, most of it made up.
Jamshed, who hadn't been able to go through the Sunday papers at his leisure that morning, had piled them up on a low cane stool next to his easy chair and was glancing through them one by one, his legs comfortably propped up on the sliding arm of the easy-chair. Six Sunday papers was the one extravagance he indulged in, to the volubly expressed perplexity of his wife. He grunted from time to time when Shirin paused for breath, his eyes on the paper.
Shirin ultimately, inevitably, came round to the subject of her younger sister. "Poor thing's been more sinned against than having sinned, that's what I've always said and that's what I say," she said, nodding defiantly to an imagined audience. The spoon rattled in her cup as she stirred the sugar vigorously.
"Seduced by that man, that's what she was. Pregnant, no doubt," she went on, as is usual with most gossips, hitting the nail on the head without realizing it.
This was too much for her husband to ignore. "My dear," he protested mildly from behind the shield of the paper, "If that were really the case, what's happened to the baby?"
"Dead," pronounced his ever-fertile wife with ghoulish relish. "Must have miscarried it," she added as a clincher.
Jamshed slowly lowered the paper and looked at his wife thoughtfully. The reasoning advanced by her now seemed rather obvious, in the circumstances surrounding his sister-in-law's second marriage. And in his experience, the obvious, the predictable, was often the truth. That was what made his wife such a very dangerous woman!
* * * *
A few kilometres away from the Dumasias' home, Rashna Vatcha entered a pretty old building in the tree-lined Laburnum road and trudged up the two steep stories to her flat, struggling with the heavy bags in both her hands. She stopped outside their flat door, panting for breath, put down one of the bags, and fumbled in her handbag for the latch-key. There was always such a lot of rubbish in her bag! She really must clean it out sometime soon, she told herself yet again. The drizzle had progressed to a steady shower. She was dripping water from her rain-proof skirt and wind-cheater onto the doormat while she hunted for her key.
Opening the door at last and entering the passage that led to the living room, she found her husband dressed and apparently on his way out. Surprised, she asked him if he was going somewhere. He hadn't said a word to her earlier about going out anywhere!
Fredun looked a little uncomfortable. He mumbled indistinctly, "Er . . . yes. Something's come up. Have to go out for a while", edging past her towards the door.
"Something at work?" Rashna asked sceptically.
"No. . . not really," snapped Fredun, irritated by the questions. "One of my friends. He's got a slight problem. Will be back soon, darling." He hurriedly opened the door and stepped out.
* * * *
The shower had progressed into a relentless deluge. Nivedita watched the sheets of rain lashing her pots on the terrace. The roses were flooded. But she no longer cared. No longer cared about mixing sand. About ensuring drainage. But the roses still bloomed. And if their roots had started putrefying, that was not as yet apparent in the plants above the soil.
She took out the handkerchief from her pocket - her handkerchief! Disregarding the pouring rain, she went out to the rock garden, lifted a few rocks, and pulled out the figurine. The new figurine that she had specially got. Today was the day, she told herself with certainty. The time had come! She took the figurine and the handkerchief to her room and locked the door. This was going to be the one secret she would not share even with Vinod!
She got to work.
The time was right.
Dusk had fallen.
* * * *
While Nivedita was thus engrossed, a rather shabby looking man was arguing with the newly appointed watchman on duty in Dina's building, demanding to be allowed to go up to the Sattars' flat. The watchman looked at the stranger dubiously, reluctant to phone Dina on the intercom, knowing that she was alone except for her maid. Sattar sahib had left to go out of town, a short while ago. Ultimately giving in to the man's insistence, he buzzed Dina's flat on the intercom.
"A man here wants to come up to your flat, ma'am. Says you've called him with regard to some problem with the television," said the watchman, his respectful tone barely disguising his disbelief. He listened for a moment and then nodded to the man. "All right," he said brusquely. "Go."
Dina answered the doorbell herself. She had just sent Fatima out on a long errand. Fatima had left by the servants' lift. Now that Sattar Madam had vouched for the chap, the watchman didn't dare to insist that he use the servants' lift.
Dina opened the door and let the man in. Then she closed the door and faced him resolutely.
*
On June 26, her birthday, Dina awoke to the alarum of a deafening clap of thunder, and was astonished to find that it was already past 9.
The monsoon that year was even more erratic than usual. Days of bright sunshine would be followed by a sudden deluge, which would last a day or two.
June 26, 1994 was a wet, gloomy day. All signs of the sun had been successfully obscured by the heavy downpour that roared furiously from a gray sky. Noisy gusts of rain-laden wind blew into Dina's bedroom, causing the lace curtains to writhe in wild frenzy, and made the connecting door between her bedroom and Prakash's rattle.
The persistent knocking ultimately made Dina realize that it was Prakash, and not the wind, rattling the connecting door. Prakash was awaiting her permission to enter.
Pulling the bedclothes more securely around her, she bade him enter.
"Happy Birthday," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, giving her cheek a hurried peck and thrusting a package into her hand at the same time. "I hope you like it. It's. . . er perfume again," he said almost apologetically, thinking of the bottle of 'L' Air Du Temps' his secretary had got last year, when he had asked her to go and get a bottle of perfume for his wife. The light, summery scent was about the most unsuitable for Dina's personality! But there had been no help for it.
This year he had played safe. Asked his peon to go and get a large bottle of 'Joy'. The gift-wrapping had been done by the secretary. For the last couple of years, his imagination had been unable to go beyond a bottle of perfume when it came to choosing gifts for his wife.
Dina's lips curved into the semblance of a smile. She had no illusions about the amount of time and thought expended by Prakash in choosing her birthday present.
"That's all right," she said in reply to his sheepish semi-apology, her eyes on the silver-wrapped package he had pressed into her hand. Looking up at him she said quietly, "It's the thought that counts."
For some reason, that remark annoyed him and added to his sense of guilt where she was concerned. For a brief moment, he fantasized Sonali sitting on the bed where Dina sat: her long hair rippling down her shoulders, her liquid eyes smouldering with a fire Dina had never known. With something of a shock, it suddenly struck him that he and Dina had never been able to sexually climax with each other. Whereas with Sonali . . .
. . . "Prakash, don't," she had giggled, the first time he had undressed her.
Her 'Don't' was an invitation. She never said 'Do!' Her husky voice was an allure in itself. . . unlike Dina's clipped, often sarcastic tones. And as for her body . . . not that Dina was bad, but Sonali was lush . . . voluptuous! And she knew how to drown a man in the honey of her tongue as well as the treacle of her lips . . . she was soft, seemingly subservient; while Dina was almost aggressive, putting him on the defensive where his own sexuality was concerned.
Dina threatened his maleness; Sonali flattered it. He remembered those clandestine hours stolen from his work, at her clinic . . . on her couch. . . on the patient bed. . . ultimately, on the floor, to give full rein to Sonali's expertise. . . she was like a Khajuraho statue come to life, thought the besotted Prakash, after Sonali had initiated him into yet another way of making love . . . he had no idea it could be such fun in the standing position, with his back against the wall, one leg straddling her soft, yielding hips, the other supporting her rounded thigh, her long fingers guiding him expertly, unerringly, while she gyrated rythmically against him, as agile as a belly-dancer . . .
He got off her bed. Dina's bed. "I'll go and shower, then we'll have a quiet breakfast before your family descends upon us." Now he hadn't meant to say that about her family. But it had slipped out. Shrugging with mental resignation at the hopelessness of it all, he went back to his own room.
Dina slowly untied the gold thread, unwrapped the silver wrapping paper and opened the bottle of perfume after he had left. 'Joy'! At least he had chosen the right perfume this time, she mused wryly.
It had gone wrong. It had all gone wrong with Prakash too, almost since the Nikah. They had been lovers before, but then their relationship had had a different flavour altogether! Prakash was one of those men for whom the chase is more thrilling than the conquest. Shortly after marriage had ended the reason for that marriage. And as Dina became more and more aggressive, both in bed and out of it, Prakash, with purely chauvinistic notions about women,
was repulsed by her almost to a stage where he couldn't perform. And he began to blame Dina, hate her, for that. Adding to Dina's bitterness.And exacerbating her feelings of guilt.
The breakfast a deux brought to Prakash's mind hazily, the words of an almost forgotten Neil Diamond song. Something about a man and a woman and no words between them. No conversation. That was the situation between him and Dina, now. No conversation. Just resentful silences on her part, a rising, resolutely curbed frustration on his. Relieved only by the moments snatched with Sonali. And the time spent with.. .
The telephone bell shrilled, breaking into his thoughts. It was for Dina, said Fatima. Dina rose from the breakfast table and passed through the bead-curtained door into the drawing room to take it. She looked slightly flustered when she returned. Prakash looked at her narrowly. He had a shrewd suspicion of who had been on the line. Well, he did not care! Not any longer. He did not have much time left for caring, one way or another. Soon all this would end, he told himself almost thankfully, his mind going back to what the Doctor had told him. Subsequently confirmed by a tearful Sonali.
The doorbell rang. Fatima woodenly announced that a lady called Nivedita Shahane had come to see Dina Memsahib.
Casting a glance at Dina's set face, Prakash told Fatima, "Ask her to wait in the Hall. The Memsahib will be with her shortly." He then steeled himself to meet Dina's eyes.
"You knew she was coming." It was a statement. Dina managed to turn it into an accusation as well.
"She is keen to build bridges now. She thought the best way to start would be to come and wish you on your birthday." His words sounded hollow even to himself. His tone betrayed the struggle to remain casual.
"When did she tell you this?"
"She telephoned me earlier, while you were asleep."
Dina looked at him steadily. "You hadn't gone out of town for work." Again, it was a statement. And the accusation even more evident.
He drained his coffee and rose. "! don't wish to have any arguments with you today. You may think what you choose. But Nivedita's in a slightly sensitive frame of mind right now. At least try and pretend to return her sentiments." There, now that's tom it, he told himself wryly. Might as well have admitted where he'd been, the last couple of days!
He had to pass the Hall, (he had persistently resisted all Dina's efforts to get him to call it 'drawing room'), to get to his room. Both the bedrooms, his and Dina's, opened out into the Hall, apart from being internally connected with each other. On the other side of the flat, the bedrooms opened out onto the balcony which also led directly to the small lobby which was the main entrance, often used by Dina as a get-away, if Prakash was entertaining some of his business cronies in the the Hall. The Hall was designed as a central focus, opening out into two of the four bedrooms, the dining room, and the lobby leading to the entrance.
Nivedita was hovering near the door of Dina's bedroom, rummaging in her handbag for something. At his "Hallo," she started violently and looked up almost guiltily. "The child's nerves are shot to pieces," thought Prakash to himself worriedly. "I wonder if she realizes what she is getting into, wanting to meet Dina in this frame of mind!"
"Do you want me to be here when you meet her?" he asked his daughter gently.
"N..no," she stammered somewhat breathlessly. "I think it's better if I do it on my own."
Prakash went back to his room and started packing. He had to leave for Poona in the evening. Hence the lunch party with her family, instead of the more convenient dinner. As it was a Sunday, that had been possible.
Jamshed had retired a year ago as the Headmaster of a reputed boys' school; his wife had never worked in her life; their son Tehmul worked in a Bank; Fredun worked for a fairly reputed private limited company as the General Manager (Finance); no school for Rashna, who was a teacher in a girls' school. Scherezade was a trainee copywriter in one of the larger, more reputed ad agencies, having joined just about a couple of months ago. Zerxes was a rapidly rising criminal lawyer, acquiring a formidable reputation for cross-examination. Both he and Scherezade often worked on Sundays for a few hours, mostly at Zerxes' home, in his study. But they'd agreed to make an exception on Dina's birthday.
Dina was determined to preserve appearances in front of her family members. They mustn't know that this marriage too had failed. Else she'd never live it down, she thought to herself, blanching at the thought of the malicious "I told you so's" that she was sure would ensue.
By around noon, Dina had still not come out of her room. Prakash knocked on her door. "What time are your people coming?" he shouted through the closed door.
"Around one o'clock," replied Dina, coming out of the bedroom, fully dressed. She led the way to the drawing room.
"Er.. how did the meeting with Nivedita go?" asked Prakash hesitantly.
"It didn't," was the cryptic reply.
"Meaning?" asked Prakash puzzled, a hint of foreboding stealing into him.
"Meaning that she appeared to have changed her mind about wanting to 'build bridges', and had disappeared by the time I left the dining room and went out into the Drawing Room," responded Dina acidly.
"Poor child, her nerve must have failed her at the last moment," murmured Prakash.
"Possibly," answered Dina in a tone indicating clearly that she wished to have no further discussion on the subject.
* * * *
Nivedita had rushed home and wandered out onto her sanctum, the terrace. She glared in vexation at the passion flower. The Krishna Kamal. The Kaurav-Pandav Phool, as the mali had explained to her, insisting that the deep purple outer calyx numbered a hundred petals in all. The Kauravas. Then came the five greenish-white Pandavas, cherishing in their midst the single, graceful green stamen, Draupadi.
Nivedita had ever since been fascinated by that flower. Good, Evil, Beauty. All in one. All fused together to form a complete whole. After all, good without a touch of evil is insipid; evil without any good at all, intolerable; and as for beauty - beauty is its own justification, in a way that poor virtue alone can never be!
As always during the monsoon, the Krishna Kamal creeper bloomed in profusion, throwing out new shoots almost every other day. A lot of them had got entangled with a tall thorny cactus growing wild, close by. Nivedita tried to disentangle the tendrils of the Krishna Kamal from the cactus, getting badly scratched in the process. At last she gave up. Let the creeper remain entangled! The tender, pliant tendrils were clinging too tightly to the thorns of the cactus. Sighing in exasperation, she- turned her attention to the rock garden.
* * * *
While Nivedita had been busy on the terrace, Dina's luncheon guests had arrived almost en masse. Over lunch, Dina assumed a brittle gaiety which her guests pretended to accept at face value. Prakash was clearly ill at ease. It was a strange, strained luncheon party.
"Deadly undercurrents," murmured Zerxes Avari in Scherezade's ear. "One pinprick, and all hell will break loose!"
Banoo Maa's smiles were even gayer and more determined than Dina's. But all the while her heart bled for her.
Fredun gulped down his lunch as one anxious to complete a distasteful job as soon as possible and get it over and done with. Rashna was composed and distant. Firdauz had excused himself. "Some impossible-to-break prior engagement," Rashna had politely explained on his behalf.
The usual birthday greetings were conveyed, presents given, and Fredun wondered how soon he and Rashna could take their leave without seeming rude. Sherrie, he knew, would leave with Zerxes.
Fredun had accepted his daughter's relationship with the brilliant thirty-two-year old lawyer, as he had always accepted anything his daughter had ever done. Without disapproval and without understanding.
Shirin was even more effusive than usual, her sharp acquisitive eyes darting over the curios and the crystal in the fabulously furnished apartment. Prakash had really minted in the last few years! And of course, he had become a bit of a 'big noise' in the city. His name was quite often in the papers. And the tabloids mentioned 'what he read,' 'where he ate,' etc. . . etc. . . etc. . ., thought Shirin, who had her own perception of fame. Her own husband was his usual retiring self, unobtrusively controlling his wife if he thought she went too far. And Tehmul was only interested in his lunch.
Zerxes had been looking rather narrowly at Dina. She had embraced him when he and Scherezade had entered, "now that he was almost one of the family," and Zerxes' fastidious nostrils had wrinkled at the strong aroma of 'Joy' that emanated from her. She appeared to have been drinking rather heavily before they had got there! Her gait was a shade unsteady and her colour a bit too high. Possibly the lashings of perfume were meant to drown the smell of liquor, he thought cynically. He had few illusions about his Scherezade's Dina Fui.
And even fewer about the man she had supposedly married.
He wondered if Prakash Sattar, as he now called himself, realized the legal consequences of his actions. After all, he did have two children of his own, no matter how strained their relations!
"So, how are you two celebrating this evening?" Shirin's slightly shrill voice broke in upon Zerxes' thoughts. She was smiling brightly at Dina and Prakash, oblivious of Dina's frown and Prakash's indifferent shrug. Dina was forced to break the awkward silence, ultimately. They had just about finished lunch, and the dessert, orange souffle, had been served.
"Prakash has to go to Poona for work," she said shortly.
"Oh! But surely he won't be leaving today itself?" gasped Shirin, putting her other foot into her mouth. "Jamshed would never dream of leaving me alone on my birthday, would you, darling?"
"Dina's a more independent woman than you, my dear," was her spouse's diplomatic response, dodging her question and drawing a chuckle from Fredun, who was gulping down his souffle.
"I really have no choice, but to leave this evening," said Prakash irritably. He gave a short laugh. "As Jamshed seems to appreciate, Dina and I don't live in each other's pockets, you know!"
"You really must give me the recipe for this orange souffle, Dina" intervened Banoo Maa serenely, ignoring the earlier exchanges, turning the conversation into safer, more general channels.
Scherezade chipped in with a recipe for a really sinful chocolate souffle.
As even the culinary discussion seemed to be in danger of petering out, Fredun, seeing that everybody had finished dessert, judged it was time to leave, and rose, nodding at his wife. That seemed to be the signal for general dispersal. Dina did not rise to see her guests off. She seemed both tired and off colour.
The morning's downpour had settled into a steady drizzle, as Dina's guests left. Scherezade, getting into the car with Zerxes, had expressed a desire to drive down to Aksha beach. Zerxes had agreed almost absently. He seemed rather preoccupied during most of the long drive, responding to Scherezade in monosyllables.
As they turned off on to the highway, he suddenly asked, "What's bugging your brother Firdauz? Why didn't he turn up?"
"Because he's a pompous ass," Scherezade replied, scorn for her brother vibrating in her normally musical voice. "He's been even more snooty about this conversion business than Dad himself. And God knows, he's been snooty enough!"
"Snooty? In what way?" queried Zerxes, at last succeeding in overtaking a road-hogging, exhaust-emitting truck just ahead of them.
Scherezade answered slowly, choosing her words with care, "Dad adored Dina Fui. Especially when they were small. Even afterwards, when I was a child, I remember she and Khurshed Fua were always in and out of our house. Hanoz came along much later. Dina Fui often dropped in alone without Khurshed Fua. I think at times Mom used to get quite fed up of her." Scherezade wrinkled her brow in the recollection of those far-off memories. "Dad is her younger brother, you know! He actually used to hang on her words -'- her opinions, her advice."
"Both of which no doubt she gave quite freely," cut in Zerxes.
The note of satire in his tone was evident. Scherezade wrinkled her brow again. "Umm . . . come to think of it, perhaps she did!" she admitted reluctantly. "But she always meant it for the best," she added defensively.
"They all do," Zerxes murmured sarcastically. The car bumped over a pothole he couldn't avoid. "But go on . . . you were saying, your father respected his sister's advice. And your mother resented it."
"I did not say that!" flashed Scherezade, turning round in her seat and glaring at him. "Stop twisting my words!"
"Okay, okay," he gave a lazy grin, glancing at her amusedly through green eyes gleaming behind half-closed lids, his left hand flung up from the steering wheel in a gesture half of surrender, half of conciliation. The hand found its way to her delicate nape beneath the swathe of heavy brown hair and caressed it. "Don't take on so, my Baby! You're feeling guilty because you think your loyalties are divided. But you needn't! You can love both, your parents and your aunt, you know," he said softly, adding bracingly, "and you can tolerate both their points of view without yourself accepting either."
"I suppose you're right," Scherezade murmured, sinking her chin into her cupped hands, elbows resting on bunched-up knees. "But tell me," she urged, her voice quickening, her quicksilver mind darting back to something he had said earlier. "Why did you say Dina Fui didn't seem 'quite normal' to you?" .
By now they had reached the turn-off on the highway, leading to INS Hamla. Zerxes negotiated the bend, murmuring as he did so, "Well, she's either been drinking too much, or she's taken a particularly heavy dose of sedatives, or she's on drugs." "You must be joking." Scherezade stiffened.
Zerxes did not comment on that. Which was comment enough, for Scherezade.
Her face suddenly clouded. Hesitantly, almost tentatively, she asked in a small voice, "Do you honestly think she's on drugs?"
"Could be," he answered briefly, casting a shrewd, sideways glance at her exquisite profile, with its chiselled cheekbones, and the lovely, lovely line of the jaw. A study in uncertainty.
"But why? Why is she changed so?" She whispered almost to herself.
"Do you really need me to answer that question?" was the amused query.
"I suppose it's this damned conversion business. But tell me, would it have bothered you, so much?"
"The question really doesn't apply. Either to you or to me. Because we don't give a damn for 'what people say'. But your Dina Fui obviously does! That being the case, taking the refuge of secularity, she changed her religion to give a semblance of respectability to an otherwise invalid marriage."
She knit her brow. "Are you saying that her marriage to Prakash is invalid?"
"Let's say, of doubtful validity," he temporized. "In the opinion of quite a few eminent jurists and legal experts, if the only reason for conversion is to avail of the benefit of a second wife without otherwise believing in and following the tenets of Islam, both the conversion and consequently the second marriage would be invalid. But that's a gray area still. The legal position on this aspect is not quite clear cut. Nor will it be, unless in some such case the first wife initiates bigamy proceedings against the husband and the so-called 'second wife'."
"I'm sure Dina Fui still considers herself very much a Parsee, Zerx." She looked so troubled that Zerxes overlooked the corruption of his name. His left hand left the wheel again and clasped both her small ones, agitatedly worrying each other on her lap.
"Stop thinking about it, darling," he told her gently. "Whatever it is, now Dina has to live with it. She was no child when she took that decision. She knew well it would be irrevocable. I shouldn't worry too much about it." But he himself was worried. Worried about the mental and physical condition of his Scherezade's favourite aunt. And the state of her doomed 'marriage'.
"This is what happens," he thought to himself savagely, "when people rush into things without bothering to examine the possible ramifications, the consequences. On themselves, on their families!"
"You don't think she'll do something drastic, do you?" Scherezade asked suddenly, her implication clear in her tone.
"Now, Sherrie," he mimicked, deliberately malicious. "Have we come on this drive to talk about your wretched aunt and her problems?" By now, the concrete structures on either side of the road had given way to the lush greenery that signalled the proximity of the beach they both loved. Scherezade shook her head, brightening perceptibly at the changed scenery. She shook back her hair and gave him a mischievous, sidelong glance. "1 have better things in mind!" ''I'm relieved to hear that," he returned a trifle dryly, bringing the car to a halt outside the Motel Blue Ballerina and giving her a bruising kiss before getting out of the car, opening her door, and dragging her out with an ungentle hand. Then he slid his arm round her waist and led her out onto the sands and the surf.
* * * *
While Zerxes and Scherezade were strolling on the beach, inter alia, getting thoroughly drenched in the process, Shirin was regaling her spouse with hot bhajiyas, freshly made; hot coffee, freshly ground; and hot gossip, most of it made up.
Jamshed, who hadn't been able to go through the Sunday papers at his leisure that morning, had piled them up on a low cane stool next to his easy chair and was glancing through them one by one, his legs comfortably propped up on the sliding arm of the easy-chair. Six Sunday papers was the one extravagance he indulged in, to the volubly expressed perplexity of his wife. He grunted from time to time when Shirin paused for breath, his eyes on the paper.
Shirin ultimately, inevitably, came round to the subject of her younger sister. "Poor thing's been more sinned against than having sinned, that's what I've always said and that's what I say," she said, nodding defiantly to an imagined audience. The spoon rattled in her cup as she stirred the sugar vigorously.
"Seduced by that man, that's what she was. Pregnant, no doubt," she went on, as is usual with most gossips, hitting the nail on the head without realizing it.
This was too much for her husband to ignore. "My dear," he protested mildly from behind the shield of the paper, "If that were really the case, what's happened to the baby?"
"Dead," pronounced his ever-fertile wife with ghoulish relish. "Must have miscarried it," she added as a clincher.
Jamshed slowly lowered the paper and looked at his wife thoughtfully. The reasoning advanced by her now seemed rather obvious, in the circumstances surrounding his sister-in-law's second marriage. And in his experience, the obvious, the predictable, was often the truth. That was what made his wife such a very dangerous woman!
* * * *
A few kilometres away from the Dumasias' home, Rashna Vatcha entered a pretty old building in the tree-lined Laburnum road and trudged up the two steep stories to her flat, struggling with the heavy bags in both her hands. She stopped outside their flat door, panting for breath, put down one of the bags, and fumbled in her handbag for the latch-key. There was always such a lot of rubbish in her bag! She really must clean it out sometime soon, she told herself yet again. The drizzle had progressed to a steady shower. She was dripping water from her rain-proof skirt and wind-cheater onto the doormat while she hunted for her key.
Opening the door at last and entering the passage that led to the living room, she found her husband dressed and apparently on his way out. Surprised, she asked him if he was going somewhere. He hadn't said a word to her earlier about going out anywhere!
Fredun looked a little uncomfortable. He mumbled indistinctly, "Er . . . yes. Something's come up. Have to go out for a while", edging past her towards the door.
"Something at work?" Rashna asked sceptically.
"No. . . not really," snapped Fredun, irritated by the questions. "One of my friends. He's got a slight problem. Will be back soon, darling." He hurriedly opened the door and stepped out.
* * * *
The shower had progressed into a relentless deluge. Nivedita watched the sheets of rain lashing her pots on the terrace. The roses were flooded. But she no longer cared. No longer cared about mixing sand. About ensuring drainage. But the roses still bloomed. And if their roots had started putrefying, that was not as yet apparent in the plants above the soil.
She took out the handkerchief from her pocket - her handkerchief! Disregarding the pouring rain, she went out to the rock garden, lifted a few rocks, and pulled out the figurine. The new figurine that she had specially got. Today was the day, she told herself with certainty. The time had come! She took the figurine and the handkerchief to her room and locked the door. This was going to be the one secret she would not share even with Vinod!
She got to work.
The time was right.
Dusk had fallen.
* * * *
While Nivedita was thus engrossed, a rather shabby looking man was arguing with the newly appointed watchman on duty in Dina's building, demanding to be allowed to go up to the Sattars' flat. The watchman looked at the stranger dubiously, reluctant to phone Dina on the intercom, knowing that she was alone except for her maid. Sattar sahib had left to go out of town, a short while ago. Ultimately giving in to the man's insistence, he buzzed Dina's flat on the intercom.
"A man here wants to come up to your flat, ma'am. Says you've called him with regard to some problem with the television," said the watchman, his respectful tone barely disguising his disbelief. He listened for a moment and then nodded to the man. "All right," he said brusquely. "Go."
Dina answered the doorbell herself. She had just sent Fatima out on a long errand. Fatima had left by the servants' lift. Now that Sattar Madam had vouched for the chap, the watchman didn't dare to insist that he use the servants' lift.
Dina opened the door and let the man in. Then she closed the door and faced him resolutely.
*
The Turning - Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Prakash shook out his kurta-pajamas out of the overnighter, trying to reorient himself with his surroundings.
Back in these walls after a gap of ten years! So far, his daughter had hardly spoken to him. His mother who had come down from Baroda had been resting in the room allotted to her. She was as yet unaware of his presence in the house. He wondered how she would greet him now, after all these years. Ten years ago, she had vowed that he was no longer any son of hers.
Dina, of course, would play merry hell if she got to know! But that was a remote possibility he had been impelled to risk. He had had to come here, for Karuna's twelfth day ceremonies. He just had to! He'd stay here overnight, sharing Vinod's room, and leave the next evening.
It was just a matter of a day and a half, really!
Prakash glanced at his watch. Almost 5 in the evening. Arun and 5uchitra had been closeted in their room, after greeting Prakash briefly. But thank God they, at least, did not display any animosity towards him! Arun was a sophisticated, highly educated man. Prakash hardly knew Suchitra, but she seemed sensible enough. He sighed, trying to shrug off past ghosts. Vinod should be in shortly.
Here he was! Prakash smiled slightly at him and went on unpacking his overnighter, while Vinod prowled around, making desultory conversation. Vinod had cleared some space for him on the small bedside table, so Prakash could keep some of his stuff there shaving cream, after-shave cream, cologne, a silver-wrapped package tied with gold thread, tooth brush and paste, razor, bottles and strips of capsules . . .
He laid out a pair of clothes on the back of a chair, unwrapped his bedroom slippers, then took Vinod by the arm, led him to the bed and sat down with him. "Now, Vinod, tell me. . ." began Prakash.
* * * *
While her fatehr and Vinod had been conversing, Nivedita was crying her heart out in her grandmother's lap.
"There there child, don't take on so," crooned Kuntabai, stroking the long black hair spread out on her white saree'd lap.
The sobbing ended in a series of shudders. The stream iof tears dried up a tlast. Nivedita raised a white, red-eyed face, her thick hair billowing out like a storm cloud pregnant with rain, and gazed blindly ahead of her.
Just as Kuntabai was beginning to feel a bit uneasy about that fixed unfocused stare, Nivedita pronounced, "Now I know what I have to do. I shall do it! I have to do it!" in a queer calm tone, as though repeating a lesson learnt by rote. Then she ran out of the room before her startled grandmother could react, and rushed straight like a homing pigeon into her brother's room.
There was nobody there. But even in that empty room, Nivedita could feel her father's presence almost tangibly. . . in the clothes piled up on a chair. . . in the toiletries lying on Vinod's dressing table. . . in the shining silver package, indecently opulent in this house of mourning.
Nivedita crept closer to the package and read the message on the card stuck on to it. She felt an almost physical shock of anger, mingled with pain. "And my mother's ashes not yet immersed," she thought to erself resentfully, turning and walking blindly out of Vinod's room. She blundered into her grandmother who had come into the living room, and rushed past her without a word to the main door, and out of the house.
Kuntabai stared after Nivedita, troubled and bewildered. "Hey Ram," she cried out. "What is happening here?" She wandered round the house, looking for Vinod. It was clear at the child needed help. Medical help. Badly. And soon! Where had that boy disappeared without telling anyone? This day, of all the days?
Vinod, however, when he ultimately returned, laughed at her fearS. "Yes Dadi, it's true that she has a deathwish for this other woman. It is but natural! She was at an extremely vulnerable age when Father left us. But she's been working it out of her system in her own way. At least that's a healthy sign." He shook his head at the sceptical look on her face. "Don't believe? Come, I'll show you something. But," he cautioned, "you must keep it to yourself.".
It was quite dark now. A little past 7.30 pm. Vinod led Kuntabai onto the terrace. Not normally given to imaginative fancies, the old lady could not repress a twinge of apprehension that shuddered through her body as she followed Vinod. He switched on the terrace lights, then went straight to the rock garden, knelt, lifted a few rocks and stood back, his eyes on Kuntabai's horror-stricken face as she beheld what was lying below the rocks: a messy, elongated lump of wax with several pins stuck onto it. The sharpness of the figurine was a little blurred by the passage of time, but the figure was still fairly recognizable as a female one.
"Nivedita's brand of voodoo," quipped Vinod with ill-judged jocularity.
"You call this 'healthy'? Kuntabai glared at him, her face puckered with worry.
Vinod shrugged his shoulders. "This kind of thing is harmless enough," he said casually. "This way, Nivedita can expend some of her frustration and resentment on something tangible, instead of bottling it all up inside her."
"Surely something should be done about her?" said Nivedita's grandmother, her heart troubled.
Vinod laughed mirthlessly. "There's no sense in rocking the boat right now. God alone knows how she may react to the suggestion of therapy. And," he added savagely, "I'm not having any sister of mine locked up!"
"Do you think it might come to that?" she inquired, alarmed. Her flash of temper at his flippancy had been replaced by an urgent sense of concern about Nivedita. "Beta. . . what is your professional opinion? As a Doctor?"
Vinod shrugged pettishly. "I'm a GP as of now, not a specialist, much less a psychiatrist. My professional opinion in Nivedita's case won't be worth a damn!"
Something in his tone made the old lady look up at his face appraisingly. "Problems at the hospital?"
"Just the usual," Vinod muttered irascibly. "Petty jealousies, trying to keep a good man down because they themselves can't rise further." He looked at Kuntabai, noted her slight look of bewilderment at his suddenly vicious tone, and gave a determinedly brave smile. "Don't you worry Dadi, I'll make good someday. See if I don't! I'll get the money somehow and set up a clinic of my own."
The old lady patted his shoulder, looking more troubled than ever.
They went back to the drawing room, and Kuntabai froze.
Standing with his back to them stood Prakash at the bar, pouring himself a measure of whisky. He appeared to have showered and changed. He turned and encountered his mother's condemning look. Without uttering a word, she turned her back on her son and walked out of the room.
Prakash looked at Vinod helplessly. "Looks like everyone is against me. Except you." He took a gulp and said gruffly, "I've not said this to you earlier, Vinod, but I really do appreciate your . . . your feelings for me; the support and affection you've shown me all through this . . . this. . . " He seemed to falter, which was unusual for him, and looked at Vinod with unaccustomed gratitude. "Y ou've been more of a son to me than anybody ever could have been!"
"It's your life, Father. I've always believed that people should be free to do what they want." He smiled at Prakash wryly, adding meaningly, "React as they want, reflect the attitudes they want!"
"Point taken," sighed Prakash, draining his glass. ''I'm going out for a stroll. I think I'll skip having dinner here tonight, under the circumstances. " Vinod nodded. "Take your time."
* * * *
Dina, in the meanwhile, had been glad to be by herself in the house. Karuna's death had brought horne to her the inevitability of her own mortality and transported it from the level of the subconscious to the ultra-conscious. Her approaching birthday merely served to heighten the feeling. Creeping upon her insidiously.
What would happen to her soul after her death was no longer her prime concern. The more'tangible worry was, what in God's name would they do to her body?
"What will happen to you when you die?" an inner voice taunted her. "Karuna at least has had all ceremonies performed for her. The religious rites of her faith. What will happen to you . . . to you . . . when you die?"
Suddenly, Dina knew what she could do. What she had to do. The only thing to be done. And it would be in keeping with her own image of herself. Of altruism. And selflessness.
She picked up the telephone and dialled Banoo Maa. Then she called out to Fatima to make her a cup of tea. Then she got out pen and paper and began to write. . .
* * * *
Prakash returned to his old home and entered the drawing room to find his daughter by herself, sitting curled up on the sofa, rather like a cat. She looked up as he carne in, and to his astonished delight, actually gave him a slight smile! A queer, unfathomable smile. But a smile nonetheless.
He was encouraged to go and sit next to her on the sofa. She leaned her head on his arm and rubbed her cheek against it. The gesture was disturbingly feline. And quite out of character. But then, Prakash hadn't known her for so long, now! He awkwardly patted her hand, lying delicately on his thigh. He was not quite sure what to say. Nivedita solved that problem for him. She startled him by asking how Dina was.
To Prakash, it was a bolt from the blue. His astonishment at her sudden, strange question was obvious enough even to Nivedita, causing her to break into explanations.
"I've been thinking," she said in a rush, "Especially after Mama's death. And I feel I've been wrong to feel this way about her." Nivedita looked up at her father with wide, innocent eyes, saying earnestly, "1' d like to get to know her, Papa; maybe. . . maybe make friends with her.
I'd like to meet her. Really!"
Too dazed and overwhelmed to question her sudden reversal, Prakash squeezed his daughter's arm. "I knew it," he told her. "I was sure that some time, some day, you'd change your attitude towards Dina. See darling, I've got to go for a business trip for a couple of weeks to Poona. We shall all have a small family dinner after I return. You can meet her then. How's that?"
Nivedita frowned and traced a pattern on his sleeve with her finger. "Can't I just myself meet her earlier?" she asked in a small-girl voice. "When are you leaving?"
Prakash thought for a moment and made a quick decision. "Okay, Baby. We'll do this. It's her birthday the day after tomorrow. I'll be leaving from here tomorrow evening after the ceremonies are over, and going back to Cuffe Parade. Why don't you come over, day after tomorrow in the morning, before her family lands up for lunch? Will that be all right?" "Yes," replied Nivedita, sounding pleased. 'I'll come on her Birthday first thing in the morning, and greet her. That will be appropriate. Yes, that will be very appropriate!"
*
Prakash shook out his kurta-pajamas out of the overnighter, trying to reorient himself with his surroundings.
Back in these walls after a gap of ten years! So far, his daughter had hardly spoken to him. His mother who had come down from Baroda had been resting in the room allotted to her. She was as yet unaware of his presence in the house. He wondered how she would greet him now, after all these years. Ten years ago, she had vowed that he was no longer any son of hers.
Dina, of course, would play merry hell if she got to know! But that was a remote possibility he had been impelled to risk. He had had to come here, for Karuna's twelfth day ceremonies. He just had to! He'd stay here overnight, sharing Vinod's room, and leave the next evening.
It was just a matter of a day and a half, really!
Prakash glanced at his watch. Almost 5 in the evening. Arun and 5uchitra had been closeted in their room, after greeting Prakash briefly. But thank God they, at least, did not display any animosity towards him! Arun was a sophisticated, highly educated man. Prakash hardly knew Suchitra, but she seemed sensible enough. He sighed, trying to shrug off past ghosts. Vinod should be in shortly.
Here he was! Prakash smiled slightly at him and went on unpacking his overnighter, while Vinod prowled around, making desultory conversation. Vinod had cleared some space for him on the small bedside table, so Prakash could keep some of his stuff there shaving cream, after-shave cream, cologne, a silver-wrapped package tied with gold thread, tooth brush and paste, razor, bottles and strips of capsules . . .
He laid out a pair of clothes on the back of a chair, unwrapped his bedroom slippers, then took Vinod by the arm, led him to the bed and sat down with him. "Now, Vinod, tell me. . ." began Prakash.
* * * *
While her fatehr and Vinod had been conversing, Nivedita was crying her heart out in her grandmother's lap.
"There there child, don't take on so," crooned Kuntabai, stroking the long black hair spread out on her white saree'd lap.
The sobbing ended in a series of shudders. The stream iof tears dried up a tlast. Nivedita raised a white, red-eyed face, her thick hair billowing out like a storm cloud pregnant with rain, and gazed blindly ahead of her.
Just as Kuntabai was beginning to feel a bit uneasy about that fixed unfocused stare, Nivedita pronounced, "Now I know what I have to do. I shall do it! I have to do it!" in a queer calm tone, as though repeating a lesson learnt by rote. Then she ran out of the room before her startled grandmother could react, and rushed straight like a homing pigeon into her brother's room.
There was nobody there. But even in that empty room, Nivedita could feel her father's presence almost tangibly. . . in the clothes piled up on a chair. . . in the toiletries lying on Vinod's dressing table. . . in the shining silver package, indecently opulent in this house of mourning.
Nivedita crept closer to the package and read the message on the card stuck on to it. She felt an almost physical shock of anger, mingled with pain. "And my mother's ashes not yet immersed," she thought to erself resentfully, turning and walking blindly out of Vinod's room. She blundered into her grandmother who had come into the living room, and rushed past her without a word to the main door, and out of the house.
Kuntabai stared after Nivedita, troubled and bewildered. "Hey Ram," she cried out. "What is happening here?" She wandered round the house, looking for Vinod. It was clear at the child needed help. Medical help. Badly. And soon! Where had that boy disappeared without telling anyone? This day, of all the days?
Vinod, however, when he ultimately returned, laughed at her fearS. "Yes Dadi, it's true that she has a deathwish for this other woman. It is but natural! She was at an extremely vulnerable age when Father left us. But she's been working it out of her system in her own way. At least that's a healthy sign." He shook his head at the sceptical look on her face. "Don't believe? Come, I'll show you something. But," he cautioned, "you must keep it to yourself.".
It was quite dark now. A little past 7.30 pm. Vinod led Kuntabai onto the terrace. Not normally given to imaginative fancies, the old lady could not repress a twinge of apprehension that shuddered through her body as she followed Vinod. He switched on the terrace lights, then went straight to the rock garden, knelt, lifted a few rocks and stood back, his eyes on Kuntabai's horror-stricken face as she beheld what was lying below the rocks: a messy, elongated lump of wax with several pins stuck onto it. The sharpness of the figurine was a little blurred by the passage of time, but the figure was still fairly recognizable as a female one.
"Nivedita's brand of voodoo," quipped Vinod with ill-judged jocularity.
"You call this 'healthy'? Kuntabai glared at him, her face puckered with worry.
Vinod shrugged his shoulders. "This kind of thing is harmless enough," he said casually. "This way, Nivedita can expend some of her frustration and resentment on something tangible, instead of bottling it all up inside her."
"Surely something should be done about her?" said Nivedita's grandmother, her heart troubled.
Vinod laughed mirthlessly. "There's no sense in rocking the boat right now. God alone knows how she may react to the suggestion of therapy. And," he added savagely, "I'm not having any sister of mine locked up!"
"Do you think it might come to that?" she inquired, alarmed. Her flash of temper at his flippancy had been replaced by an urgent sense of concern about Nivedita. "Beta. . . what is your professional opinion? As a Doctor?"
Vinod shrugged pettishly. "I'm a GP as of now, not a specialist, much less a psychiatrist. My professional opinion in Nivedita's case won't be worth a damn!"
Something in his tone made the old lady look up at his face appraisingly. "Problems at the hospital?"
"Just the usual," Vinod muttered irascibly. "Petty jealousies, trying to keep a good man down because they themselves can't rise further." He looked at Kuntabai, noted her slight look of bewilderment at his suddenly vicious tone, and gave a determinedly brave smile. "Don't you worry Dadi, I'll make good someday. See if I don't! I'll get the money somehow and set up a clinic of my own."
The old lady patted his shoulder, looking more troubled than ever.
They went back to the drawing room, and Kuntabai froze.
Standing with his back to them stood Prakash at the bar, pouring himself a measure of whisky. He appeared to have showered and changed. He turned and encountered his mother's condemning look. Without uttering a word, she turned her back on her son and walked out of the room.
Prakash looked at Vinod helplessly. "Looks like everyone is against me. Except you." He took a gulp and said gruffly, "I've not said this to you earlier, Vinod, but I really do appreciate your . . . your feelings for me; the support and affection you've shown me all through this . . . this. . . " He seemed to falter, which was unusual for him, and looked at Vinod with unaccustomed gratitude. "Y ou've been more of a son to me than anybody ever could have been!"
"It's your life, Father. I've always believed that people should be free to do what they want." He smiled at Prakash wryly, adding meaningly, "React as they want, reflect the attitudes they want!"
"Point taken," sighed Prakash, draining his glass. ''I'm going out for a stroll. I think I'll skip having dinner here tonight, under the circumstances. " Vinod nodded. "Take your time."
* * * *
Dina, in the meanwhile, had been glad to be by herself in the house. Karuna's death had brought horne to her the inevitability of her own mortality and transported it from the level of the subconscious to the ultra-conscious. Her approaching birthday merely served to heighten the feeling. Creeping upon her insidiously.
What would happen to her soul after her death was no longer her prime concern. The more'tangible worry was, what in God's name would they do to her body?
"What will happen to you when you die?" an inner voice taunted her. "Karuna at least has had all ceremonies performed for her. The religious rites of her faith. What will happen to you . . . to you . . . when you die?"
Suddenly, Dina knew what she could do. What she had to do. The only thing to be done. And it would be in keeping with her own image of herself. Of altruism. And selflessness.
She picked up the telephone and dialled Banoo Maa. Then she called out to Fatima to make her a cup of tea. Then she got out pen and paper and began to write. . .
* * * *
Prakash returned to his old home and entered the drawing room to find his daughter by herself, sitting curled up on the sofa, rather like a cat. She looked up as he carne in, and to his astonished delight, actually gave him a slight smile! A queer, unfathomable smile. But a smile nonetheless.
He was encouraged to go and sit next to her on the sofa. She leaned her head on his arm and rubbed her cheek against it. The gesture was disturbingly feline. And quite out of character. But then, Prakash hadn't known her for so long, now! He awkwardly patted her hand, lying delicately on his thigh. He was not quite sure what to say. Nivedita solved that problem for him. She startled him by asking how Dina was.
To Prakash, it was a bolt from the blue. His astonishment at her sudden, strange question was obvious enough even to Nivedita, causing her to break into explanations.
"I've been thinking," she said in a rush, "Especially after Mama's death. And I feel I've been wrong to feel this way about her." Nivedita looked up at her father with wide, innocent eyes, saying earnestly, "1' d like to get to know her, Papa; maybe. . . maybe make friends with her.
I'd like to meet her. Really!"
Too dazed and overwhelmed to question her sudden reversal, Prakash squeezed his daughter's arm. "I knew it," he told her. "I was sure that some time, some day, you'd change your attitude towards Dina. See darling, I've got to go for a business trip for a couple of weeks to Poona. We shall all have a small family dinner after I return. You can meet her then. How's that?"
Nivedita frowned and traced a pattern on his sleeve with her finger. "Can't I just myself meet her earlier?" she asked in a small-girl voice. "When are you leaving?"
Prakash thought for a moment and made a quick decision. "Okay, Baby. We'll do this. It's her birthday the day after tomorrow. I'll be leaving from here tomorrow evening after the ceremonies are over, and going back to Cuffe Parade. Why don't you come over, day after tomorrow in the morning, before her family lands up for lunch? Will that be all right?" "Yes," replied Nivedita, sounding pleased. 'I'll come on her Birthday first thing in the morning, and greet her. That will be appropriate. Yes, that will be very appropriate!"
*
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