Window Seat

By Janhavi Acharekar

These charming portraits of young girls living far from home, 'secure' in their illicit relationships, of young men full of RSS swagger, of old women waiting late in the night for their grown-up children to come home, capture the lives of ordinary people in vivid and varied hues. Spread across the socio-economic spectrum, these stories are like snapshots of interesting faces in a crowd; faces around whom the author deftly sketches lives and longings, pet ideas and prejudices, loves and hates with bold, confident strokes. From 'Ganesha', the story of a middle-class housewife waiting for her son to return at night and thinking of her other son who died in a road accident, to 'A Game of Cards' about a young urban woman sunning herself on the beach, these pithy sketches are a colourful montage of modern Indian life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9789350294505

Janhavi Acharekar

Janhavi Acharekar is a freelance writer who has worked variously as journalist, advertising copywriter, wine-seller, art researcher and curator of literary festivals. A creative consultant by profession, she lives with her husband in Mumbai.

Book preview

Part I

Mumbai Montage

1

A Game of Cards

¹

The sun was burning the sand a reddish gold and blowing the wind out of the parasails. The sun-baked foreigners, their skins chameleoned from rare to well done within minutes, lolled beside the Indians, who, never satisfied with their own natural tan—and since they could not reverse the process—were now attempting to burn themselves black. Shyla, reclining on her paid-for deck chair, eyes sensuously half closed and seemingly en route to never-never land, is, in reality, a keen observer of never-never land, is, in reality, a keen observer of fellow deck-chair-recliner, a handsome young man currently in the act of peeling off a scaly epidermal layer of sunburnt shoulder. Shyla finds herself saying, ‘Moisturizer’s the best remedy for sunburn.’

Embarrassed and somewhat indignant, if not flattered, at being so slyly spied upon during this unsophisticated act, the man smiles coolly.

Being the sensitive woman that she is, Shyla turns once again towards the sea, eyelids in place.

Noticing, belatedly, her taut curvaceous body, unlike the other near factory-made Barbie bodies on the beach, the man feels a twinge of regret at his impulsive reaction. His mind fumbles for a suitable topic of conversation as his eyes soak in her apple-green bikini and strategically placed dolphin tattoo right near the sacrum.

‘Do you qualify as cosmetologist or beach bum?’ he finally manages.

‘Neither.’

‘A closet doctor then,’ he perseveres. And winces. He’s noticed the book she’s reading only because it’s nestled against her shapely thigh. Erich Segal. Doctors. (In that case, half the English-reading mob with their pirated pavement copies would classify as aspiring medical persons, he thinks weakly.)

But she seems to like it. A hint of a smile.

‘Solo traveller,’ she replies.

‘I’m with friends,’ he discloses, and adds hastily, ‘but we’re doing our own thing.’

‘How long have you been here?’ he asks.

‘A week. I leave for Hampi tomorrow.’

‘They have some wild raves there,’ he says. Then, curious, asks, ‘How do you while away your time when you’re on your own?’

‘I read, travel around, play Solitaire in the day. Party at night. I move on to some place else when I’m bored. What do you do?’ she asks him.

‘I’m on vacation after a long time. No Solitaire for me,’ he says. ‘It reminds me of computers and work.’

‘Would you care for a game of Rummy?’ she asks.

Turning over on her pierced belly (and aware that she is under appreciative scrutiny), she rummages through a fashionable blue jute hamper, and digs out a pack of cards from among a lemon-yellow sarong, a tube of sunscreen, moisturizer and sunglasses. Separating a blank card from the pack, she starts to shuffle the cards and silently holds out the deck for him to cut when she’s done. He pulls out a queen of clubs. She deals the cards and then watches him arrange his set, watches the light ripple of muscle shooting through his arm.

Having begun the game, they exchange clipped information on their likes, dislikes, pursuits and predilections. Between bursts of silence, they share beach stories from the immediate past. He tells her about the old German man at Zappa’s the day before, kissing two minor boys in the dark. She tells him how she was witness to a lungi-clad man offering to cast a young prostitute in a pornographic film. She narrates her chatai party experiences in Disco Valley, he speaks of the flame-throwers in Palolem. As they alternately pick and discard their cards, they talk of beaches in Thailand and argue about immigration laws in foreign countries.

He loses by a card.

He starts to deal the cards but she suggests they play Bluff instead. She has another pack, she claims. He shrugs and smiles, and admits that he has never played a game of Bluff between two players but what the hell, there’s always a first time. He tells her of his childhood, of how he had mastered the game under the tutelage of his cousins, so that he had earned the nickname ‘Bluffmaster’.

‘You’re obviously out of touch, Bluffmaster,’ she laughs, as she throws two jacks and a six of hearts back at him. ‘Three aces…’ she says, looking him in the eye as they get to know each other better.

She used to be in the stock exchange. Perhaps that explains the poker face.

‘Tell me how to get rich,’ he says.

‘They say you can tell your fortune from playing cards,’ she tells him.

‘Tarot cards, you mean,’ he corrects her.

‘Playing cards,’ maintains Shyla. ‘I have a book called The Gypsy Fortune-Teller that tells you how.’

‘Read my fortune,’ he tells her quietly.

‘I’ll need to see your cards for that, Bluffmaster,’ she smiles, and declares six kings.

They order a couple of beers and vodka with watermelon juice. In the heat of noon, the game with its two players and two packs seems never-ending. Not that they seem to mind. They discuss their lives, their loves. He asks her why a pretty girl like her is travelling all by herself. She says that she is courting a boy five years younger and is taking this break to think of ways to tell him that he is too young for her. Does he love you, he asks her. I guess, she says distractedly.

They had met at a meditation camp. He was there for reasons of health; she, for those spiritual. His asthma got better and she got her salvation. He declared his love for me and I got carried away, she says matter-of-factly. All right, your turn now, she declares, along with her four twos. His story is different. His girlfriend of five years has left him for another man. He spills the details.

They had lived together most of their courtship period. She was an aspiring film-maker; he, a hanger-on production assistant. Together, they had made a few promotional films for corporate houses, and one documentary film. Brought together by necessity, and a need to sustain self-employment at a time when the economy was at its lowest, they fell in love only because of their inhuman work hours.

She was supporting her ageing parents while I was trying to keep up with the increasing entry fee to expensive nightclubs, he says with no regret. To her, I suppose I was a release from a world of household bills, a mother continually nagging her about marriage and a father slowly being devoured by Alzheimer’s. With me, she was free from worries. We shared household chores, partied till the wee hours, left for exotic weekend getaways on my bike…

So what went wrong, she asks him. Monotony, perhaps. Or familiarity even, he replies. She disagrees. That’s not true, sometimes, the more time you spend together, the deeper the attachment, she tells him. I know. She puts her cards down momentarily, in an eagerness to contribute to the narrative.

He shrugs, says that all was hunky dory until she met a foreign producer who promised her a job. I’m doing it for us, she told me. We could go abroad, make shitloads of money, travel to all the places we’ve dreamed of, and never have to worry again.

He pauses, looks away. She went to New York with him. Never came back. And broke the news to me by email.

She clucks sympathetically. And blushes, partly because she doesn’t know what to say, partly because she can identify with the girl he loved. Flushed with embarrassment, she croons words of sympathy, advice on how not to invest too much emotion in a relationship. Not any. Murmurs things that she hopes will make him feel better. And relieve her of her own guilt.

Oh it’s nothing, he interjects, watching her. She resembles a bird of paradise in her greens, yellows and blues, pink drink in hand and a fantail of clubs, spades, diamonds, hearts. Extricating a hand from the mess of colour, she lends it to him as pacifier.

They leave the beach together, fingers entwined. The wind blows the cards from the deck mattress. Suspended like autumn leaves in Russian winter, the cards sway in mid-air, the glittering whites of their underbellies flashing the rays of sunlight, momentarily blinding a stray urchin left hovering around an empty deck chair and its sun-scorched mattress.

2

The Storyteller

The clang of aluminium vessels being washed, the sound of a bunched-up sari being beaten against the sidewalk, the white foam of cheap soap running in rivulets to merge with tributaries of snot, spit and road grime. These were Ravi’s earliest memories of early morning. And as he dodged the neighbour’s naked children and their excreta every morning, he silently prayed to Nageshi that no one from school should spot him slinking shamefully out of the Lalitnagar slum.

Today Ravi, who recounts the story of his humble origins over a drink at Geoffrey’s, heads his own firm. He works as consultant to several others abroad.

His mother hailed from near Rajapur; his father, from Devgad.

He would visit his grandparents’ home in the village, once a year, during his summer vacations.

Sometimes, the boys from school would ask him where he lived. And he’d point to the big skyscraper near the slum. I live on the fifth floor. We don’t have as great a view of the sea as my friends on the sixteenth and the seventeenth floors, but that’s all right, he’d sigh. When they sauntered out of school, some of the boys would stop at the paanwala near the entrance to the slum. Ravi would hurriedly say goodbye and disappear into the tall building. He would walk slowly around its large compound, meander about the fountain, and stop to read the names on the nameboard, before cautiously making his way home. He knew all the names by heart.

The school was a short walk from the slum. His friends would often ask him to take them home for lunch. You live so close by, they’d say. He would give the same excuse every time—my mother works in a bank, I will invite you home on a weekend, when she is free. They would be impressed because their mothers were housewives.

One day, his friends were with him when he bumped into his neighbour’s wife, Kokila kaki, who was almost like a blood relative. His face turned a kokum red. Her sari was shabby and her language coarse. She told him that she had made his favourite sweet the previous night and had saved some especially for him. Later, he told his friends that she was their maid. Once home, he wept in remorse.

Saraswati Vidyalaya was one of the better schools in the area. Ravi’s father couldn’t quite afford his son’s education but Ravi’s mother had threatened to sell her jewellery if he didn’t. Do you want him to live in a slum all his life? she had said. And work as a peon like me, his father had rationalized, and acquiesced. They did not think at the time that they would ever live to see their son buy them an independent flat in the posh Shivaji park area.

That he would roam the world as easily as his father had roamed the city.

Ravi eagerly awaited his summer vacation, when they would take the dusty ST to their village in the Konkan. To his cousins, he was a hero of sorts. He would tell them about his school in Bombay, the cars, the lights, the movies, and they would listen in awe. Every summer, he would narrate the plot of a new film he had seen on the big screen that was put up in the zhopadpatti during festivals. His cousins heard the story of Qayamat se Qayamat tak in rapt attention. They would ask Ravi if he had seen Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan in person. Or at least Laxmikant Berde.

Back in school, he would tell his friends about all the exotic places that he had been to. This time he had visited the Taj Mahal in Agra. He waxed eloquent about its architectural beauty. His uncle was a government officer in Delhi and had put them up at the government guest house, he said. He had also arranged for an air-conditioned car so they hardly felt the summer heat.

Ravi laughs even as he confesses, I live at the Taj Mahal hotel now, whenever I travel.

His class teacher heard of his holiday and asked him to share his experience with his classmates in the form of a presentation. That week, Ravi spent the small change given to him by his grandmother on second-hand airline magazines from the raddiwalla, for information on the Taj. After his talk, his teacher patted him on the back and set him up as an example for the other children.

Ravi always did well in class. Always did his parents proud. On returning from school, he would wash, drink half a glass of buffalo’s milk and complete his homework. In the evening, when the dim yellow bulb in their little kholi was lit, he would look at it and recite his tables from eleven to nineteen, by force of habit from childhood.

The other children in the slum would ask him to join them for a game of carrom. They would arrange the black and white coins in a beehive pattern, with a solitary purple-pink coin in the centre, on a board illuminated by the light of a sixty-watt bulb suspended from a wire above. He would only play on weekends, when there was no danger of being spotted by teachers and friends. His exemplary behaviour was lauded by parents, and elicited both the admiration and the resentment of the slum children.

Luckily, he had passed that crucial age—of birthday parties. At first, he would go in his good shirt-pant. But his presents were embarrassing, and while he enjoyed the games and ceremonial cutting of the birthday cake, he knew that he could never reciprocate the invitation. His own mother only performed a small aarti for him and bought a box of mithai.

That year, when his class-teacher wished him on his birthday, he stopped to ask Ravi about his future plans.

I want to be an engineer like my father, he lied.

His teacher began to give him special coaching in maths and science. I would like to come over to your house to meet your father, he said one day, and Ravi panicked. My father’s out of town on business and will be back only after a month, he said on the spur of the moment.

Ravi asks the waiter for a refill. He tells us that he owes his financial skills to Joshi Sir’s coaching.

He surpassed himself that year. He topped the class, as always, and scored full marks in maths. His friends were proud of him and demanded he treat them to a vada pav each. When he told them that he’d forgotten to carry his wallet, they insisted on accompanying him home, to ensure he didn’t wriggle out of the treat. As they walked him to the building, he had a brainwave. He said he’d call out to his mother, asking her to throw the wallet downstairs. They shouted themselves hoarse, but there was no sign of his mother. There’s no one at home, he informed his friends, and they treated him to an icecream instead.

The slum had its annual festivity during the Ganesh festival. The Ganesh aarti was performed twice a day to shlokas set to the tune of the latest film songs, on a dais prepared especially for the event. It was ten days of revelry, flagged off by the corrupt local politician. It was a time when husbands stopped beating wives, when rival gangs from the neighbouring slum demanded no confrontations, and when young and old alike stayed away from their black-and-white television sets. There were film screenings and sumptuous meals every night, and puppetry and magic shows for children. A junior film artiste had even managed to get a small-time actor to make a guest appearance.

On the last day, the day of the immersion, there was to be a felicitation ceremony with the elephant-god as witness. Bravery awards, entrepreneur awards, young achiever awards and many more would be given to the deserving recipients of Lalitnagar slum.

Ravi’s family had been tipped off about his award that year by one of the committee members. His mother had dressed him in his best clothes and was as excited as he was. The award ceremony was on the last day, and Ravi had waited for it impatiently.

Ravi won the Asian Entrepreneur award in 1997. He’s bought a beach house in Kashid with the money, and a fancy car. His friends marvel at his rags-to-riches story.

The celebrations finally came to an end with the felicitation ceremony. The entire slum had gathered around the dais. In front were the old grandmothers in their nine-yard saris and bifocals, with snivelling grandchildren in their tattooed arms. Young boys and girls exchanged secret glances at the back. Ravi, with his family, occupied the hired plastic chairs in the third row.

The head of the Lalitnagar Committee gave a concluding speech and, amidst claps, announced the chief guest. Suddenly, Ravi’s head began to spin. He felt sick and nauseous. He sneaked out of the ceremony, noticed only by his parents. He escaped to the kholi and lay unmoving under the steel cot. His mother followed him to the room and asked him what was wrong, but he would not answer. When his mother did not return for long, his father came into the room. I don’t know what is wrong with this boy, she said.

My class teacher had been invited as the chief guest, Ravi tells us. I had to tell my parents the truth. My father was deeply saddened but my mother was angry with me. You are a bad boy. A storyteller. This award will be your punishment for lying to your friends and teachers. What is there to be ashamed of, she asked me. She dragged me out in tears and pushed me towards the dais for they had already called out my name twice. I received the young achiever’s award with my eyes lowered so I did not see the look on Joshi Sir’s face.

After the ceremony, Ravi’s parents invited his teacher to their humble dwelling. His mother talked incessantly about how highly Ravi spoke of him. Ravi could not meet his eye. And his father