The Sari Shop Read online

  There was another Chief Engineer who had built a house close by, though he had built it step by step. First he had saved money for his plot of land. Then, over the next few years, he had saved enough to start construction. He had moved in with his family when the house was still incomplete. Five years later, he had hired carpenters to make built-in wooden shelves and cupboards to replace the two steel Godrej almirahs. He had a lawn and a kitchen garden too, but just a battered old Fiat, one ordinary carpet in the drawing room, old shabby furniture that his wife loved and refused to part with, and a not very large bank balance. He was a most impractical man, people said, most unwise… almost foolish.

  Mrs Sandhu thought she was as good as anybody now. Never mind her weight, at least she was better than all those thin women with dark, rough skins and mousey hair. A beautiful house, status-family, a caring husband and good looks… what more could a woman ask for? Now, if only the children would do well…

  She turned the gas off, and the milk subsided. She poured it carefully into a tall steel glass, filling it up to the brim. Her rolls of fat jiggled as she waddled to her son’s room with the hot glass in her hands. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open and tiptoed to his desk, where he was working.

  ‘Manu, beta, drink this,’ she said encouragingly. Manu looked up at her. He was a gangly adolescent with the beginnings of a moustache and bony knees. He was soon to sit for his entrance exams to medical colleges. All eyes were on him. He was the P.M.T. boy, the pre-medical test boy. His parents were proud, anxious and loving. He took the steel glass from her languidly, leaned back and took a sip. Mrs Sandhu waited, her rolls of fat now still and expectant, her lips slightly parted.

  ‘Chheee!’ Manu made a face and pushed the glass back into her hands. ‘Didn’t you strain it? You know I hate cream in milk. Take it away.’

  He returned to his work without looking at her. She went back to the kitchen and took out her steel strainer, the one her mother had given her when she had got married. It was still in such good shape, she thought with satisfaction. She strained the milk carefully into another glass. The offending cream remained stuck in the strainer. She took the new glass back to his room. He was bent once again over his papers, his lips moving in a silent murmur. He took the glass from her hands without looking at her. He took slow sips without a word. She slipped out of the room.

  The phone in the drawing room rang. She rushed to it, hoping the ringing hadn’t disturbed Manu.

  It was her husband calling from work. He was in a good mood; he had just finished receiving a bribe that was politely disguised as a gift. He asked his wife gently what Manu was doing.

  ‘Studying,’ she answered proudly.

  *

  Two houses away, Mrs Gupta sat in her bedroom on a large bed covered with a peach satin bedspread. She was in her late fifties, though a careful diet and regular exercise made her look younger. Her skin was pale and translucent, but she had thin hair. To cover that up she had got it cut to shoulder length and tied it back with a hair clip. On another woman of her age it might have looked ridiculous, but it went well with her perky, overconfident manner, her smart walk and her trim waist. Her eyes were small, and her nose a little hooked. She didn’t like these two things about her face, and the thin hair of course, but she knew that on the whole she looked good – smart, trendy, respectable and from a well-to-do family at the same time.

  Crystal ornaments sat on a shelf in the wall – crystal was the latest, and she made sure she kept adding to the collection whenever she could. There was a crystal vase, with imported artificial white flowers in it, a miniature crystal violin and a statuette of a dancing woman among other knick-knacks. Though lately she had been wondering if she ought to shift the crystal to the drawing room. Hardly anyone saw it here…

  The large mirror of the glass-topped dressing table reflected the well-kept room – the beautiful double bed with a red velvet headboard, the crystal pieces, the glass-topped side tables, the rust-coloured carpet, and the pleated curtains with the rust and peach check pattern. It also reflected Mrs Gupta, sitting resplendently among all this, deep in thought.

  On the dressing table, below the room-reflection, stood a jar of L’Oréal anti-ageing cream, a bottle of Lakme cleansing milk, packs of deep-red bindis and a big bottle of perfume. There were also sleek, red cases of Revlon lipsticks standing in a row like identical dwarf soldiers in red uniforms. These were the things she used every day. All her other cosmetics were tucked away neatly in the drawers of the dressing table.

  Mrs Gupta had recently heard of Feng shui at one of the kitty parties she had been to. She had told her husband about it. ‘It is just like our Vaastu Shastra, but more modern. There are books and all in English about it and Mrs Bhandari has done it too. She has made a rockery just where the book tells her to.’

  Mrs Gupta didn’t have much time on her hands to read books, but she managed to ask a lot of people about Feng shui and now, apart from many other changes and additions to the house, wind chimes hung at the entrance to the room, quivering and tinkling every now and then.

  She stroked the satiny surface of the peach bedspread absently, a satisfied smile on her lipsticked lips. Her elder son Tarun’s marriage had just been fixed up, and she was completely satisfied with the arrangement. The girl’s name was Shilpa. She was a demure girl, not exactly pretty – she had rather indistinct features – but she did have a fair skin and was slim. That was all that mattered, thought Mrs Gupta. The rest could be worked on. She seemed meek and eager to please, her shy manner completely unlike the brash way some girls behaved these days. Anyway, she could be moulded. The real thing, the most important thing, was that her father was a rich and respected industrialist. The status of the two families matched exactly, so there wouldn’t be any adjustment problems between the couple or between the families. Maybe, at a later stage, Tarun could even form a business partnership with her brothers…

  Mrs Gupta had a lot to think about, the whole wedding to plan, in fact. Her younger son, Puneet, a computer engineer in America, would also come down for the wedding. He would help, of course. Mr Gupta was a well-connected businessman. He knew how to handle things. He would do most of the practical stuff, like ringing up contacts and making people like jewellers, caterers and tent owners give concessions on everything, but she’d have to do The Shopping.

  The Guptas had had a lengthy, honest discussion with Shilpa’s parents, and they had all decided that there would be three ‘functions’ – Ladies’ Sangeet which could be incorporated with the Mehndi Ceremony, the actual wedding, and a Reception Party.

  So she’d have to get ready three sets of clothes with matching jewellery to wear at each of these functions. She’d also have to plan and buy Shilpa’s clothes and jewellery for the Reception, for, according to tradition, everything that Shilpa would wear immediately after the wedding, must be a gift from her in-laws. And they’d have to decide about Tarun’s clothes too.

  Mrs Gupta herself had already decided what to wear on the wedding day. She had an old jewellery set of kundan and emeralds set in gold. She’d buy a silk sari to go with it. She couldn’t let her hair down, of course, though she knew she looked much younger that way, but it just wasn’t the done thing for the bridegroom’s mother.

  Mrs Gupta sighed and turned her mind back to the shopping. To begin with she would get about twenty pairs of salwaar kameez stitched for Shilpa. She’d also buy as many saris for her. Then there would be saris for her own relatives, and clothes for the menfolk of the family too, of course. And cheaper saris for the maids… A lot of shopping to be done, Mrs Gupta thought exuberantly. She had spoken to Shilpa’s mother over the telephone the other day. Both the families – the Guptas and Shilpa’s parents – were planning to buy all the saris from Sevak Sari House. She hoped they wouldn’t run into each other there – it would make it awkward to discuss prices.

  It was no fun thinking these thoughts alone, thought Mrs Gupta. She had plenty of relatives in Amr
itsar, but there was another wedding in the family coming up in ten days, and her relatives would think her selfish if she started talking about her own plans till that wedding was over.

  Mrs Gupta reached for the cordless phone that Puneet had got her on his first visit home and called up Mrs Sandhu’s number.

  Mrs Sandhu answered at the first ring.

  ‘Hello, ji,’ she said, when she recognized Mrs Gupta’s voice. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Bas, I am all right.’

  ‘Arrangements started?’ Mrs Sandhu asked her, for she had been informed the very day Tarun’s marriage had been fixed up.

  ‘No, not yet. Hardly any time. You see, my niece is getting married after ten days. So the family is a little busy. I have already done all my shopping for her wedding, so fortunately that tension is out of the way.’

  ‘That’s what I admire about you, Mrs Gupta. One has to say, you are so efficient,’ gushed Mrs Sandhu.

  Mrs Gupta said self-deprecatingly, ‘No, no, hardly…’

  Then she came to the point. ‘Actually I was thinking of going out to do some shopping. Will you come with me? There are so many saris to buy.’

  This reminded Mrs Sandhu that she too would have to buy a sari as a gift for Mrs Gupta’s would-be daughter-in-law.

  When Mrs Sandhu’s niece Mini had got married, Mrs Gupta had been invited to the wedding. Mini had studied to be a dentist and had married another dentist. The couple had opened a clinic together – the dentist’s chair alone had cost one-and-a half lakh rupees. At the wedding, Mrs Gupta had graciously presented the blushing bride-dentist with a beautiful, heavily embroidered purple silk sari.

  Pity that Mini had never worn it, Mrs Sandhu thought, but Mini had said she was a doctor, even if just a tooth doctor, and she ought to look smart and professional, and she felt she looked smarter in short, plain salwaar kameezes. But, anyway, now she must buy a sari for Mrs Gupta’s daughter-in-law that cost the same, at least, if not more, for Mrs Gupta remembered these things, and told other women too.

  ‘Of course, I’ll come,’ she said aloud to Mrs Gupta.

  ‘Oh, thank you. You know how it is, you just can’t shop for saris alone.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me. After all, it is as if my own son was getting married,’ Mrs Sandhu said piously, still desperately trying to remember exactly how much that sari had cost. ‘And anyway Manu won’t be back for three hours. He has gone to college. After college, he’ll go to his Physics tuition, then to the Chemistry tuition, poor boy. And they are having the Sports Day at the younger one’s school. So, he won’t be back before evening either, though he –’

  Mrs Gupta interrupted her. ‘Okay, so you come to my place in half an hour and then we’ll go,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. I am just coming,’ Mrs Sandhu said, still wondering how expensive a sari she should give to the girl who was to be Mrs Gupta’s daughter-in-law. The trouble was, the Guptas were the only business family in their neighbourhood. So the woman thought she had a lot of money, but Mrs Sandhu always made sure, in her placid way, to show that she was no less than anyone else.

  ‘Okay, then. I’ll tell the driver to keep the car ready,’ said Mrs Gupta, before turning her new, cordless, Japanese phone off.

  *

  ‘Ramchand Bhaiya, I have a sudden craving for a hot samosa,’ Hari said thoughtfully to Ramchand. ‘Or two hot samosas,’ he added.

  A harassed frown immediately appeared on Ramchand’s face.

  ‘Look here, Hari,’ he said, ‘Gokul has gone to deliver some big order, and if you slip off…’

  ‘No, I won’t slip off, not really,’ Hari said reassuringly. Then after a while he piped up again, ‘Think of it. Just think of a big, fat, hot samosa. Crisp outside, and hot mashed potatoes inside. Spiced with chillies and coriander and onions. Oh, and the chutneys. The red chutney with imli in it, and the green mint chutney. With a hot and crisp samosa. Fresh from the kadhai. Ah ha ha ha.’ Hari closed his eyes in rapture. His words were making Ramchand’s mouth water as well.

  Ramchand tried to adopt Gokul’s stern method. ‘Hari, see, I tell you, you must not…’

  ‘I am really hungry, Ramchand Bhaiya,’ Hari said with pathos. ‘I’ll just run out, eat, and run back. That’s what I think I’ll do. These people, the Seth and all, are rich enough without me having to starve myself and slave. And I’ll get a samosa back for you too.’

  ‘Yes, but, Hari…’ Ramchand tried again, but Hari had already got to his feet. He just winked at Ramchand and then made a big show of tiptoeing out, which was wasted, since there was nobody around. Ramchand sighed, and went back to work, feeling tense and edgy, cracking his knuckles non-stop, desperately longing for a cup of tea that would calm him down. Soon customers would start to come in. He hoped either Hari or Gokul would be back by then. Chander hadn’t come to work, and Shyam and Rajesh had gone out to eat at a dhaba. He was all alone. If a customer came and bought something, he would have to go to the counter downstairs where payments were made and write it out on the pad with the carbon paper underneath. He had done it only once before when Mahajan was out, and had shown it to Mahajan when he had come back. Mahajan had nodded approvingly, but the whole procedure had made Ramchand very nervous and he didn’t want to do it again.

  In most shops shop assistants never took the payment, but Mahajan was sure that nobody could cheat in a shop he was the manager of, and always said that if any sari went missing he’d be the first to notice it and call in the police. Everyone believed him too, for his sharp eyes missed nothing. No one would ever try to sell a sari in Mahajan’s absence without making out a bill for it. However, usually when Mahajan was out, it was Shyam or Rajesh who did it. Only Hari wasn’t allowed to, not because Mahajan doubted his honesty, but because he said he doubted Hari’s brains, if he had any, that was. ‘I am not letting that monkey go near the billing counter for the next ten years, not till that monkey becomes a man,’ he had openly said. At this, Hari had asked, ‘And what if I am still a monkey after ten years, Bauji?’

  ‘If I were in your place, Hari, I would be ashamed to be called a monkey at the age of twenty-two, but to you it is just a big joke. You really are a completely shameless monkey,’ Mahajan said angrily before walking away.

  Hari had burst into peals of laughter after Mahajan had left and said, ‘The problem is, I might become a man from monkey in ten years’ time, but I think Mahajan will still remain Mahajan. Now that is a real problem. I forgot to ask our Mahajan something. How does he tell the difference between a shameless monkey and a monkey with proper shame?’

  *

  Ramchand leaned back against the wall after Hari had left. He pressed his palms over his tired eyes. He didn’t know why he had headaches so often these days. And there were days when he woke up at four or five in the morning and just lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of nothing at all, and then he’d realize it was eight o’ clock. Who was he during those three or four lonely hours? And why had the shop started to suffocate him? Why had he begun to get the feeling that something was wrong? A feeling that he was being told lies – big lies, small lies, by everyone, all the time, day after day after day. Always the horrible feeling, some gap, something missing, something that he didn’t know, something that he couldn’t see, something terribly important. And that something was the reason that he felt different in the shop, with all the people around him, and different when he was alone in his room.

  And sometimes, he felt different from both these selves, especially when he woke up in the middle of the night, in the dark, floating between wakefulness and sleep for a few moments, before he drifted back to sleep again.

  Then Ramchand heard the wooden steps creak. You could hear the steps only in the morning. Later, there would be women swarming all over the place, more saris would be shouted for, packets of saris would fly across the shop from the hands of one shop assistant into another’s and one wouldn’t even be able to hear oneself think, let alone hear the wooden steps.
The door opened and Mrs Gupta appeared, with Mrs Sandhu panting in tow. Ramchand groaned. Did they have to come while he was alone in the shop?

  They both talk too much, he thought unhappily.

  The two women were talking even as they sat down.

  ‘I told you, it’s best to come before every shop becomes crowded. Later in the day, it is more elbows and less saris,’ Mrs Gupta said.

  ‘I know, I know. It is better to make important decisions with a calm mind,’ Mrs Sandhu replied.

  Ramchand gave them a watery smile and asked what he could show them.

  ‘Good news, good news,’ beamed Mrs Gupta. ‘My son is getting married. So show me the best saris you have.’

  Ramchand sighed. It had been such a lazy morning until now. He wished people wouldn’t keep getting married left, right and centre. It made him very sulky. But he started taking out saris anyway. They continued talking meanwhile, apparently resuming where they had left off to huff and puff up the stairs.

  ‘It is just the right time for him to get married. He has just opened his own factory, and, touch wood, it is doing very well,’ Mrs Gupta said smilingly.

  Mrs Sandhu folded her hands and looked towards the heavens. ‘It is all God’s grace. You should thank God that your children are doing well.’