The Heavens We Chase: A Novel

By Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind

Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind is the winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Special Prize (2011). Her short story, ‘The Crystal Snuff Box and the Pappudum’, was adapted for radio by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and was broadcast in all the Commonwealth countries. Other short pieces include ‘Those You Cannot See’ that appeared in the Griffith Review, Australia, ‘Blueprint’ that appeared in Blink, the year-end fiction edition of the Hindu Business Line and ‘The Idiot’s Guide to the Indian Arranged Marriage’ that appeared in an anthology of New Asian Short Stories being published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia.

Apart from a master’s degree in Business, she holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the City University of Hong Kong. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai and is working on her second novel.
She lives in Mumbai with her banker husband Arvind Narayana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Apr 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9788186939819

Book preview

THE

HEAVENS WE CHASE

Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind is the winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Special Prize (2011). Her short story, ‘The Crystal Snuff Box and the Pappudum’, was adapted for radio by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and was broadcast in all the Commonwealth countries. Other short pieces include ‘Those You Cannot See’ that appeared in the Griffith Review, Australia, ‘Blueprint’ that appeared in Blink, the year-end fiction edition of the Hindu Business Line and ‘The Idiot’s Guide to the Indian Arranged Marriage’ that appeared in an anthology of New Asian Short Stories being published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia.

Apart from a master’s degree in Business, she holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the City University of Hong Kong. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai and is working on her second novel.

She lives in Mumbai with her banker husband Arvind Narayanan and their four-year-old son, Arjun Arvind.

OTHER INDIAINK TITLES

THE

HEAVENS WE CHASE

A NOVEL

Lavanya Shanbhogue–Arvind

ROLI BOOKS

This digital edition published in 2016

First published in 2016 by

The Lotus Collection

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Copyright © Lavanya Shanbhogue-Arvind

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eISBN: 978-81-86939-81-9

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For Patti, for kindness and care

For my parents, for life, for love

For Arvind & Arjun, for love, for laughter

The nearest Dream recedes—unrealized—

The Heaven we chase,

Like the June Bee—before the School Boy,

Invites the Race—

Stoops—to an easy Clover—

Dips—evades—teases—deploys—

Then—to the Royal Clouds

Lifts his light Pinnace—

Heedless of the Boy—

Staring—bewildered—at the mocking sky—

Homesick for steadfast Honey—

Ah, the Bee flies not

That brews that rare variety!

– Emily Dickinson

CONTENTS

Confetti, Chrysanthemum and Curses

The Thief of Wheels

The Pain in Vain

The Truth About Truth

Familiarity of the Madness

Things that Crawl and Scare

Confessions to a Friend

Many Bombay Evenings

To Speak to a Brother

Goodbye, For Now

The Fate of the Blue Lizards

The Price of Difference

The Songs of Bengal

Two Scandals and a Primrose

Happy and Unsettled

A Friend in Rage

The Shadows of Dreams

Maybe Love

What is in Store?

An Unlikely Union

The Beginning of Afterlife

A Sham by Any Other Name

This Pedestrian Life

Acknowledgements

CONFETTI, CHRYSANTHEMUM AND CURSES

Ilost my virginity in Lahore. It was a detour from our travel itinerary. Pa and I were to return to Bombay from Karachi by the end of July 1942, after a well-spent two weeks in Sind; but Pa received an officiallooking letter; not the type Salaam sent Pa to check on our health and whereabouts or to complain about Gossiper and Rumourmonger, but a real letter with the emblem of the government and all that. It turned out that the letter was from Sir Gordon (the erstwhile Esquire Gordon, knighted in the July of 1936 after serving Her Majesty with fealty), Director of Public Instruction, Bombay Presidency. Pa was ordered to go to Lahore, Punjab. I understood from the look on Pa’s face that these things were unusual but there was little choice. So we packed our trunks and left for Lahore.

What happened in Lahore was the stuff of karmic debts. Or so I thought. My religious beliefs were a mass of gooey, overlapping confusions. I was part-Catholic and part-Hindoo, part-British, part-Indian. And Salaam had told me that there were different heavens for different Gods: the pearly white Christian heaven with floating angels sporting yellow halos, flying about serenely, flapping their pristine feathery wings, and then there were the vibrant Hindoo heavens beautified in red and golden and yellow and purple silks, the gods and goddess wearing crowns and jewel-encrusted bodices. Apparently, planets orbited their divine heads as they wielded chakras that could decapitate erring men. Salaam had never described the heavens of Allah to me. But he, Salaam, had told me each time we rode the tonga together, that there was no place for immorality in their heaven. I was afraid of everything for Salaam told me that there were different hells too.

‘But since everything is so dark there you won’t be able to see anything, he said, ‘except for the screams. They are same in all the hells.’

Because I had to, I gave myself to a man I loved. It had been the day Pa was away with the school managers, locked up behind important doors. Yet again, the Professor had been excluded by Pa. So, we had walked around the expansive grounds of the Lively Hearts School, under the shade of an endless row of drooping junipers whose leaves rustled and danced when the winds touched them. Far away over the treetops, black birds in a flock dispersed into the air, their dark bodies staining the white of the skies. As we walked towards the trees, mostly in silence, they rose higher and higher. The Professor was nineteen years older than me, a foot taller than I was and more handsome than I would ever be considered beautiful. I was four feet and eleven inches with a face mildly pimpled by stubborn adolescence; dark hair tumbled to my waist in frustrating rebellion and I was a brown being with blue eyes, an infallible mistake. Yet he loved me. I noticed his bleak eyes and cheerless expression and just as I began to ask him if something was wrong, he spoke in a soft, sad voice.

‘Show it to me, again,’ he said.

We stopped walking. I faced him and upon meeting his eyes I had seen both anger and pain. I rolled up the sleeves of my blouse and extended my right arm in a slow and tentative motion.

He ran a light forefinger across the length of my forearm, tracing the path of a deep white ridge, an ugly seam formed by mended skin. His finger touched my wrist and found its way into my palm. I clasped his finger, then his hand and led him away.

I vaguely remember that the walls had been painted a melange of obscure green and gloomy grey – an implausible combination of poverty and distaste. But, it had not mattered, for I loved him and he certainly loved me. There was a certain light in his eyes. And tell me, how can you feign a twinkle in the eye?

I was afraid of society, especially of Rumourmonger and Gossiper and the little evening parties of these ancient women, their ancient china, their hushed whispers that would spread like the panic of idiots, their wagging tongues that would scatter away whole reputations into little tads of gossip. Once, long ago Ma had warned me about them and my brother made it a matter of routine to avoid them.

I did have a reputation. I was known. I was respected. I was an A-grade staff artist at All India Radio and I had cleared seven vigorous rounds of audition by the jury. A-grade, mind you, so you can imagine the quality of the voice, the tonality and the sheer lilt and melody. Staff artist, mind you, not a casual artist. We are a pompous lot, we staff artists. The grading system ensures division. I would never eat lunch with the B-grade and C-grade singers. I could never be seen with the casuals. I also sang for Hindi films. It had all started when Pandit Durgadas Chaturvedi, music composer and maestro par excellence, zealously pursued my voice. Finally, I agreed and Tum Aur Main broke all records as the angels in white and the gods and goddesses in purple and yellow silks showered me with snow-white confetti and chrysanthemums. The only people A-grade artists looked up to were maestros from various gharanas, them with the voice of God. I was no less, me, the voice of the goddess. I was aptly named too – Saraswathi, the Goddess of Music, Arts, Education, and Wisdom. So, yes, I had a reputation.

‘Is everything all right?’ Pa asked in an impassive fashion, flipping through the pages of some important-looking document that was marked CONFIDENTIAL, and from where I was sitting I could make out the words Education Society Press, Byculla, written in an almost calligraphic style on the outer cover.

Pa’s accent was British. The Oxford-bred demeanour always spoke, always intimidated, even before he did, although the eyebrowless visage and bald pate was Indian and the colour of his skin was indisputably brown. He was a veritable mash of many places. Pa’s Englishness faltered very briefly and only when he chewed the betel leaf – a habit that was a relic of the days he had spent in Bombay’s chawls. In reality Pa wanted us, my brother and I, to call him Baba; he was holding on fastidiously to an Indianness that was perhaps unconscious because all conscious actions were done the English way: English breakfasts, English attire, Anglican hymns, visits to Criterion Restaurant on the good days and visits to Brandon’s on the very good days. Why then did I sing Ae Watan Main Tumhari Hoon? For the seventy rupees that promptly went into Pa’s deep pockets, I think. I sang when I had Pa’s permission and I had auditioned for All India Radio because Pa allowed me to.

While we were growing up and when Ma was not what she eventually became, she would refer to him as Pa in a manner of, ‘wait till your Pa comes home’ or ‘Pa won’t be home for dinner tonight m’dears’. So the title (that’s all it was to us) stuck on and the man whom we feared became Pa… not Baba, just Pa.

Pa’s voice cut through my thoughts, disrupting the private turbulence of my mind. He had asked if I was all right.

‘Yes,’ I said in a feeble voice.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Pa, folding the important-looking document and placing it neatly on the side table. He rolled up the sleeves of his impeccably starched, white cotton shirt, patted his handlebar moustache of horsehair consistency, adjusted the turban on his head, took a betel leaf out of an intricately carved ivory betel-leaf box, added a dash of limestone on its spine, spread it throughout the leaf’s modest area, folded it in three, placed it strategically in the centre of his mouth and flicked it with savage precision to the sides of his mouth with the deft movement of a tongue that could bruise egos, break hearts, and cause the abetment of suicides. I have seen grown men crying right after a verbal duel with Pa. He then looked at me with a certain amount of disdain. I had always been terrified of this particular look – eyebrow-skins raised and ice in his eyes.

‘You see,’ he stated with amusement, chewing the leaf with relish and offering me glimpses of his front teeth stained with the red juice, ‘you were scratching your nubbin time and again, your eyebrows were doing a dance of their own, going up and down, and then dear girl, you frown and then they go up and down again. Yes, yes, I have been watching you for a while now. Something is certainly wrong!’

So my nubbin had given me away, the littlest finger on my right hand, right beside my little finger. I had to tell him something, not the truth but something.

‘Well, Pa… I want to go back to Bombay. I am missing Ma you know, Salaam Bhai also, and Hyacinth of course. I have to go back and I miss going to the studios for practice and… Not that I don’t like it here Pa, I do.’ My voice trailed and Pa gave me a look of incredulity.

I looked around the room: the floor was an insipid combination of large white and brown squares; the furniture comprised cane chairs in some rooms and wooden chairs in more important rooms like Pa’s home-office. The curtains were a dull grey and white. I forced on a smile in a frivolous attempt to suggest that I was happy here. We were staying at a government-owned guest house, four miles east of the Lahore Cantonment.

I saw the look on Pa’s face and stopped. He thought I spoke too much. He liked women to be demure, silent and imperceptible, an unseen being whose domesticity seeps through the intangible columns of air. A warm meal. A pile of clothes, washed and ironed. Spotless mirrors. An invisible being seated on a bed with her head bent, hands folded around raised knees in a dark room. She is not seen. She is not heard.

‘My work will be over in three days, Saraswathi. We will return to Bombay after that.’

Pa picked up his important-looking document and with a pat of his handlebar moustache and a disdainful look thrown my way he left the room.

I sat there in the cane chair, completely still. Three days? I wanted to see the Professor right away. I began to panic. I scratched my nubbin again with my thumb. The Professor and I had crossed an unforgiving line the day I had led him away to the room of green and grey. Both my faiths did not permit such corruption. Neither did his. I was guilty. We both were guilty.

That evening we had lain down beside each other in a lightless room filled with the noise of wall crickets, our fingers entwined, our voices mute, our breathing heavy and swaying, and between ease and unease, I had spoken.

‘Is this wrong?’

He was silent for a long time. I thought he had fallen asleep.

‘Faith exists,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘to keep people in control when they might act out of hate. Not love.’

I believed him.

Do you want to hear my opinion on society?

No Grandpa Ed! No! No!

You don’t have a choice in the matter girlie. Society is that collective force that sniggers and scoffs at the odd man out.

Grandpa Ed repeated this through my childhood.

Pa’s moustache was fashioned by the make-up man of Nazir Ahmed Khan, the reigning star of the movies. It was handlebar shaped and looked intimidating enough to make a sitting man stand and a standing man salute, although Bhaiya and I had our doubts as to whether it was made of human hair or horsehair.

‘Horsehair! Real hair does not grow on him. Shhhh…!’

Bhaiya agreed with me. Pa had a fake moustache and no eyebrows. Ha! But the pride was real. Pa, you see, was the Educational Inspector of Schools for the Central Division of the Bombay Presidency.

In itself, it was a simple enough vocation, except that it was a tough job to come by for a Brown Sahib. The other Educational Inspectors of the northern, southern and Sind Divisions of the Bombay Presidency were either British Majors or Esquires – an English gentry ranking just below a Knight. Well, Pa was Pa. Finest education and a quasiroyal existence of sorts, with horses and decorative tongas, the fourth Indian gentleman in all of Bombay to buy himself a motor car, a palatial house (albeit gifted by his father-in-law: Edward Lord), an English lady – my mother, his lawfully wedded wife – clutching his arm (although Ma was confined to a bed after being rendered paraplegic; sorry, that story would have to wait) silk turbans with gold zaris, a deep voice with crowd-pulling abilities, a tongue with the sharpness of a bayonet and the heart of a fox. Pa stood tall at six feet three inches. He had a pallid complexion and fiery eyes that danced with the light of ambition – the kind of eyes that could peer into your soul and dismantle the lie on your lips.

I have never seen Pa without his turban; I know that it had something to do with the fact that Pa is completely bald and perhaps, just perhaps, the man felt shame. Alopecia – Ma had told me once in hushed whispers. I was forbidden to talk about it.

‘It would hurt his feelings,’ she’d said. Feelings? Dog’s Bollocks.

Pa would put on his turban each morning, comb his handlebar moustache with horsehair consistency with a tiny silver moustache comb, wear a starched cotton shirt in impeccable white over baggy grey trousers (that perhaps were meant for a younger man, but Pa was vain), and head off each day in a colourful tonga (if it were matters of school inspections in Bombay), waving his swan-headed walking stick in callous abandon.

Pa had a travelling job. As the educational inspector of schools, he had to travel to different locations to conduct school inspections.

I know about these inspections. Salaam spoke about them every now and then. As Pa’s tonga driver, he accompanied Pa everywhere; he’d carry Pa’s walking sticks, his betel-leaf box, and a spare turban

Up and down a classroom floor, terrifying a group of children, brandishing his walking stick, picking up their thin books printed on cheap paper, scrutinizing its runny ink, the blurry vernacular, flinging it outside the room in anger, children huddling closer, Salaam laughing by his side, Pa spoke:

‘What is this? Kabir? Who authorized this reading? Kabir? Who is Kabir? Now, now, see Tennyson…’ His voice rising, ‘Poet Laureate. My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure.’

Pa would travel by train, first-class, mind you. And the days he was gone Salaam would ask Ranga to make chicken for us and Bhaiya, would stretch in a feline fashion, slowly and luxuriantly, with his feet up on the couch. When we were much younger he would somersault in the drawing room around his metal train set that he would have lain out, its tracks stretching snake-like from the winding staircase with the ivory railings right to the entrance of Pa’s office room. Hyacinth and I would sing All things bright and beautiful and other Anglican hymns in loud voices that could be heard outside. Our school books would be laid outside in a haphazard fashion and sometimes Hyacinth would bring out her embroidery and her knitting. The ball of yarn would unwind itself on the floor, free of all care. All this when Pa was away. None of us would dare enter Pa’s office room. Ah, in that room everything was perfection.

A curtain that should bellow with the wind was held back by brass clasps, every crease of its drape a pre-planned curbing of its freedom. The walking sticks (three in all: one with a swan head, another resembling the visage of a magnificent and fierce elephant – its glorious trunk extending into the stick, the third a roaring lion with a ferocious mane whose tongue morphed into the stick), all of equal length, hung in exactness on the rosewood stand. Fountain pens were neatly stacked on a seesham table. The ink pot was placed at a right angle to sheaves of paper. The cushions, curtains, aloe vera plants, turbans, pens and pencils, the chessboard, the chairs and table, shoes and slippers, umbrellas, the newspaper – all waited in silence, happy to just be in their assigned spots. Important looking books, leather- bound hardbacks with glossy golden embossment, flaunted their perfect spines upon the sandalwood bookcase. One could look at the garden from there, the stables, – not a blade of grass would be out of place. Pa was a man in control of the soul of every object.

So finicky, so imposing was Pa about orderliness and the placement of objects in their assigned places that it bothered Ma. She was quite a tidy person, with regard for cleanliness, but the obsessive nature of Pa and his insistence that everybody follow his way became a matter of discord.

Once Ma, at a time when she could speak, unable to stand it any longer, told Pa, ‘That you would rather hurt my feelings than see an inanimate object shifted to another place, is despicable!’

Another time, he saw Bhaiya and me draw a moustache onto an image of a rather regal looking lady (turned out to be Queen Victoria) and Pa’s eyes turned eerie and cold, the blood rushed to his face, his hands went to his waist and within seconds we were howling in pain. Lash one, lash two, lash three… lash eight. The echo of a swish and the cracks of air, the blood on our knees and back and hands, some gashes, some bruises, the pain… the memory and the pain and the humiliation and the remainder – a deep white ridge, an ugly seam of mended skin across the length of my right forearm. All that for one moustache on a picture…

What would he do when Pa