With a finger to his lips, Maneck-signalled to her to ignore him. “He is completely illogical about this marriage business,” he whispered. “Why argue with him?”
“Only because I feel sorry for Om. But you’re right, it’s between him and his uncle. They can do what they like. This thing has become trouble with a capital t.”
Om heard them in the back room, and buried his face in his hands.
The hours dredged the stagnant afternoon in vain, revealing nothing. Ashraf’s abandoned letter lay on the dining table. The clock’s big hand fell from mark to mark like a stone. No one made tea, no one went out for tea. Ishvar on the verandah, Om in the back, Maneck and Dina in the front room: the household was frozen.
The sun dropped towards the horizon, and the light started to change. A breeze visited each window, rustling the letter on the table. Soon it would be dinnertime — time to make chapatis. Om was hungry.
He walked around with his chappals flopping purposefully. He drank water, letting his glass clatter against the pot. He wanted his noises to touch the others; friendly noises could melt hostility. He sat down, drummed on the Singer’s bench, rattled the scissors, filled six bobbins. Then he went to the front room.
They were relieved he had come. Maneck winked. “That was something else, yaar. He exploded like a Divali Atom Bomb.”
Om forced a short laugh. “I just don’t know what to do with my uncle,” he confided, his voice hushed. “I’m worried about him.”
His words amused Dina, for they echoed the ones that Ishvar the conciliator would use in the old days when Om was rude, sewed badly, or misbehaved in general. “Be patient,” she said.
“What is it about marriages and weddings that turns people crazy. On this one topic he becomes a madman.”
“Yes, he does, doesn’t he,” grimaced Dina. “Reminds me of my brother.”
“Just wait, I’ll straighten out my uncle.” He went to the verandah, where Ishvar sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bedding roll.
“Are you crazy, speaking like that to someone who has been so good to us?” Om began scolding, arms folded across his chest.
Ishvar looked up, smiling weakly. He heard the same echo in his nephew’s words that Dina had detected. After his freak outburst of anger, he felt confused, foolish, ready to make amends.
“You go at once and tell Dinabai you are sorry. Tell her you lost your head, you didn’t mean the nasty things. Go right now. Say that you respect her opinions, you realize what she says is out of concern for us. Now get up, go.”
His uncle held out a hand; Om grabbed it, leaned back, hoisted him up. Ishvar shuffled into the front room and stood sheepishly before the sofa to apologize. For Dina it was a reprise: the sermon on the verandah had been audible inside. But she remained stiff, scrutinizing the wall to her right.
Having almost run out of words, Ishvar sighed. “Dinabai, to thank you for your kindness and beg forgiveness for my rudeness, I fall at your feet.” He started to bend, and the threat worked.
“Don’t you dare,” she broke her silence. “You know how I feel about that. We will speak no more about all this.”
“Okayji. It’s my problem, I agree to work it out in my head.”
“Fine. He is your nephew, and the fatherly duties are yours.”
The agreement was broken by Ishvar the following evening. The correspondence he had initiated was yet to be dealt with, and the ordeal was putting him through bouts of excruciating doubt. Sighs of “Hai Ram” steamed from his lips at intervals. The real cause of yesterday’s explosion was now clear to everyone.
“The opportunity is perfect,” he brooded. “Only, it comes before we are ready for it.”
“Om is a handsome fellow,” said Maneck. “Look at his chikna hairstyle. He does not need a marriage reservation. Top-notch girls will line up for him by the dozen.”
Ishvar whirled around and pointed, his finger an inch from Maneck’s face. “You stop mocking such a serious matter.”
For a moment it seemed he might strike Maneck; then he dropped his hand. “Like a son I look on you — like a brother to Om. And this is how you treat me? Jeering and making fun of what is so important to me?”
Maneck was nonplussed; he thought he saw tears starting in Ishvar’s eyes. But before he could come up with something to reassure him, Om intervened, “You’ve gone crazy for sure, you can’t even take a joke anymore. All you do is drama and naatak every chance you get.”
His uncle nodded meekly. “What to do, I am so worried about this. Bas, I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on and think quietly.”
But he badly wanted their opinions, wanted a proper discussion, a favourable consensus to cloak his obsession. And within minutes he started again. “Who can tell when a golden chance like this will reappear? Four good families to choose from. Some people go through life without finding even one suitable match.”
“It’s too soon for me to get married,” Om repeated wearily.
“Better too soon than too late.”
“What if our tailoring goes phuss because of a strike or something?” said Dina. “These are bad times, you cannot take anything for granted.”
“All the more reason to marry. A new wife’s kismat will change all our lives for the better.”
“Even if that’s true, where is the space for her in this tiny flat?”
“I would not dream of asking for more space. The verandah is enough.”
“For you and Om,
“No, Dinabai, I am not. Next time I go searching for accommodation, you should come with me, see how families live. Eight, nine, or ten people in a small room. Sleeping one over the other on big shelves, from floor to ceiling, like third-class railway berths. Or in cupboards, or in the bathroom. Surviving like goods in a warehouse.”
“I know all that. You don’t have to lecture me, I have lived my whole life in this city.”
“Compared to such misery, three people on the verandah is a deluxe lodging,” he said fervently. “But I am not insisting on it. If it’s not your wish, we’ll just go back to our village. The important thing is Om’s marriage. Once that is done, my duty is done. The rest does not matter.”
A week after Ashraf Chacha’s letter, Ishvar found the courage to proceed with the viewing of the four brides- to-be. He wrote back, laboriously forming the words, that Om and he would arrive in a month. “Which will give us time to complete the dresses you brought yesterday,” he told Dina. With his response in the mail, the old calm returned to him, slipping like a shirt upon his person.
Dina found it baffling: a sensible man like Ishvar, suddenly turned irrational. Could he be conducting a form of blackmail? Could he be hoping that her need for their skills would force her to take in Om’s wife?
Her suspicion waxed and waned. It was stronger at times when he kept emphasizing how Dina’s fortune would change if the bride resided in this flat. “You will see the difference the minute she crosses your threshold, Dinabai. Daughters-in-law have been known to transform the destiny of entire households.”
“She will be neither my daughter-in-law nor yours,” Dina pointed out.
But he was not to be put off by a trifling technicality. “Daughter-in-law is just a word. Call her anything you like. The hand of good fortune is not fussy about words.”
She shook her head in frustration and amusement. Ishvar and deceit — the two just did not go together. His inability to dissemble was well known. If his mind was in turmoil, his fingers were never far behind in manifesting the confusion; when he was pleased about something, his half-smile radiated uncontrollably, his arms ready to embrace the world. Cunning strategies did not proceed from such an open nature.
She dismissed her suspicion about blackmail. It would have made more sense in dealing with someone like Nusswan. Now he — he was capable of every devious twist and turn. A person could go crazy trying to predict his actions. She wondered how it would be when the time came for the children to get married. Not children anymore — Xerxes and Zarir were grown men. And Nusswan trying to select wives for them, putting to use all the practice he got when he was set on finding her a husband.
