Moustache

By Seema Jha

Moustache is a metaphor for Rubys quest for bliss. The story spans over two continents, many decades and myriads of dreams both lived and shattered. Rubys journey makes one wonder about the imperfections of love. Passionate, loving, caring, daring, challenging, and enticing, Ruby is your heroine out to challenge prevailing norms and the turmoil that she faces inside as a consequence of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481780988

Seema Jha

Seema Jha is a prolific novelist who lives in Boston, Lincolnshire, UK with her husband and their son.

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© 2013 by Seema Jha. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/02/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8099-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8098-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

A word by the author

Disclaimer for the book Moustache

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Glossary (as explained by Wikipedia)

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my precious angel, my son, Suyash Jha, also known as Bunny.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Amy Whitby-Baker, for typing the first six chapters,

Thanks to my son Suyash Jha, also called Bunny, for typing from Chapter 7 to the last chapter, and also for preparing the glossary,

Thanks to, my late father, Professor Surya Kant Mishra,

my late mother, Mrs. Shail Bala Mishra,

my mother-in-law, Mrs. Durga Jha,

my husband, Dr Mithilesh Kumar Jha,

my sister, Sushma Jha,

her husband, Prabhakar Jha,

my brother, Sunil Mishra,

his wife, Ranjana Mishra,

my brother, Anil Mishra,

his wife, Priyanka Mishra,

and,

my sisters-in-law, Anu, Rupmaji, and Poonam Didi for their encouragement.

A word by the author

I do all my editing myself; in my previous novel ‘Curry and Kisses,’ quite a few typing errors escaped my attention and managed to make their way into the book. I am aware of the mistakes and I apologise for them. For instance, the word ‘besides’ has appeared in one place where it should be ‘beside.’ Things like that. Please overlook these annoying little things.

Yours Sincerely,

Seema Jha

Disclaimer for the book Moustache

This novel might give the impression

That I’ve experienced some sort of tension

A negative character I’ve created

May be watched with breath abated

Let me make this absolutely clear

I do not mean to mock or jeer

It is not my intention to taint

The English society or badly paint

A picture that just isn’t true

Or introduce nuances new

Never in my thirteen years on this land

In this nation grand

Have I been on the receiving end of racism

So this is not a criticism

All the English have ever given me is love

Is the gist of the words above

Politically correct characters can be boring

It is to stop readers from snoring

All the characters live just in my head

Have no link to anyone living or dead.

Chapter 1

Ruby wrote the date in her English Literature notebook, 28-10-1984. She looked out of her classroom window. The slightly plump photographer was outside, putting a chair back in its place. He was the only male allowed in the Convent school apart from the maths teacher who didn’t count, of course, because he was very old and the only emotion he was capable of arousing was one of respect. Unlike this chap, who stirred passions deeper than respect in most probably every girl in the school who was old enough to feel such forbidden thoughts. Yes, Ruby could bet every reasonably old girl had fallen for him hook, line, and sinker. At least, she herself had. And it didn’t help that Sister Rose was teaching Midsummer Night’s Dream and going on and on about love, love, and just love. Of all the Shakespearean plays it had to be this one. Didn’t Sister realise the effect this constant droning on about love in the English class was having on the minds of girls in the tenth standard? Well, even if she did, there was nothing she could have done about it since it was on their curriculum.

It wasn’t as if the photographer was exquisitely handsome. He wasn’t. He wasn’t bad-looking either. Sister Rose seemed to have caught her not paying attention. She fired at her a question and Ruby was stumped. Luckily, Sister Rose wasn’t too cross. It was a fortunate escape from Sister’s usual wrath and Ruby decided to listen carefully so as not to get into trouble.

Lata had painted her nails red. Her nails were long and neatly filed. Sister hadn’t noticed or she would be furious. Lata must be crazy to come to school thus. Surely she knew Sister wouldn’t be too pleased about it, yet she had been bold enough to do the deed, as it were.

It had been awful when her periods had started. She knew they would sooner or later because they had been told about it in class. But that had not prepared her for the amount of blood there was every time. And it was accompanied with pain to make it worse. How awful that boys had to endure none of that—the mess, the uncomfortable feeling and the anxiety that any moment her skirt would reveal her closely-guarded secret. Once it had. It had been physical training day and blood had spread all over the back of her white divided skirt. Her friend had advised covering it up with her navy blue cardigan by tying it around her waist and she had done just that. She had gone to the teacher and asked to go home saying she felt quite unwell without disclosing the actual fact. Then there had been the day when she had sat over her father’s white bed-sheet and had bled all over it. Her sister had almost had a fit. Ruby had felt quite impure then feeling she had done something absolutely revolting and unforgivably dreadful. The bed-sheet had been changed before her dad had arrived but it had been hard to forget the shame of it all.

But the advent of teenage had brought pleasant things too. The whole adult male world seemed to be besotted with her. Of course she knew males looked at anything in a skirt but somehow the flattering glances did a lot for her self-esteem. She had been the recipient of various comments by boys regarding her beauty and although boys scared her a little, she couldn’t deny that she loved the power she seemed to possess over them. The best comment so far had been when one amongst a group of boys had made his bicycle lean a little and remarked that even inanimate objects were attracted by her looks. Then there were the vulgar statements she absolutely loathed and could have done without, not to mention the horrible rare events when a man had been horrid enough to slap her across the breasts and touch her bottom in a crowded station.

In fact, these had been two separate incidents. The first one, the breasts episode, had happened not in a railway station but when she had been in a rickshaw with her mother. The shock of it had stunned both of them to silence. After a while, her mother had told her to speak of the happening to no one and she had shyly nodded. The second one had happened in a railway station when they had gone to see her cousin sister off. Ruby, furious, had looked back at the crowd behind her and a man in a cap had glanced at her guiltily. Ruby had given him what she considered her angry glare, picked up from one of the fiery male film stars and it had seemed to work for the man in the cap, if indeed it had been him, had stopped touching her.

Well acquainted with English novels of all kinds, Ruby couldn’t help thinking that the reason for this atrocious behaviour by some gross men was that they had no girlfriends and were starved for sex. In the West, perhaps this sort of thing was less likely to happen owing to the fact that people were quite content in that department, although this was pure conjecture on her part and maybe quite separated from reality, who knew?

Ruby began reading the whodunit she had borrowed from the school library. The reading of fiction had always been her passion and it had the added advantage of hiding from the scores of men who seemed anxious to take out their tongues and lick their lips menacingly in what they not doubt thought was a provocative and highly desirable gesture. She was, after all, on a rickshaw on her way back home from school and was open to the judgemental staring of anyone and everyone.

Ruby changed into a pink frock leaving her navy blue school skirt, white shirt, and navy blue tie in a crumpled mess on the floor. Mummy would take care of that, of course. It wasn’t her problem. She went into the bathroom and washing her face with sandalwood soap, scrubbed it with a blue towel looking with an amused expression at the new mugs Mummy had bought so that her daughter-in-law could use them instead of the old ones which she had thrown away. Mummy thought of everything.

Ruby looked at the damp walls. The huge peepal tree¹ in front of their house was responsible for the lack of sunshine in the house, yet there was no way they could get rid of it because people advised against it for religious reasons. They would have some of the branches cut off every year but the tree would soon grow back to its former glory and deprive them of sunrays. It wasn’t as if she didn’t like trees, she loved them, it was just this particular tree that she loathed.

The sound of loud music caught her attention. An English song was playing and she realized with the swift beating of her heart that the next door neighbours’ handsome second son had arrived from Bombay. He was much older than her, worked as an engineer and came home occasionally. Whenever he did so, he seemed to announce his presence with English songs on the stereo. She went up to the terrace and pretended to look at the people going towards the river from the corner of her eye trying to see if he had come to his terrace. Sure enough, he was soon there and she could see him staring at her. She continued to feign disinterest. It was a beautiful sunset made lovelier by his presence and she looked at the sky while studiously avoiding his gaze.

Not wanting to arouse Mummy’s suspicion that she was up to no good, she went downstairs, Sister Rose had given them heaps of English homework apart from the homework in other subjects.

She looked at the table-cloth with the fruits painted on it. Mummy had been quite pleased when she had bought it and there was no denying that it was beautiful. The same could not be said of the numerous books that lay before her with their unwanted and unasked for knowledge, why was she supposed to care that a country produced oranges or that a metal was Au or what a²-b² was supposed to be?

English was the only