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.

*