She remembered the years when her nephews were small. What a time of fun it had been, but so brief. And how miserable they were when Nusswan and Ruby and she argued, and there was screaming and shouting. Not knowing whose side to take, whether to run to Daddy or to Aunty to plead for peace. In the end, she had missed out on so much. Their school years, report cards, prize distribution days, cricket matches, their first long trousers. Independence came at a high price: a debt with a payment schedule of hurt and regret. But the other option — under Nusswan’s thumb — was inconceivable.
As always, on looking back, Dina was convinced she was better off on her own. She tried to imagine Om a married man, tried to imagine a wife beside him, a woman with a small delicate figure like his. A wedding photo. Om in stiff new starched clothes and an extravagant wedding turban. Wife in a red sari. A modest necklace, nose- ring, earrings, bangles — and the moneylender waiting in the wings, happy to put the noose around their necks. And what would she be like? And what would it be like to finally have another woman living in this flat?
A picture began to form, and Dina let it develop for two days, adding depth and detail, colour and texture. Om’s wife, standing in the front door. Her head demurely lowered. Her eyes sparkling when she looks up, her mouth smiling shyly, lips covered with her fingers. The days pass. Sometimes the young woman sits alone at the window, and remembers forsaken places. Dina sits beside her and encourages her to talk, to tell her things about the life left behind. And Om’s wife begins at last to speak. More pictures, more stories…
On the third day Dina said to Ishvar, “If you seriously think the verandah is big enough for three people, we can try it out.”
He heard her through the Singer’s hammer and hum, and braked the flywheel, slamming his palm upon it.
“Good thing you drive a sewing-machine and not a motorcar,” she said. “Your passengers would be chauffeured straight into the next world.”
Laughing, he leapt from the stool. “Om! Om, listen!” he called to the verandah. “Dinabai says yes! Come here — come and thank her!” Then he realized he himself still hadn’t done that. “Thank you, Dinabai!” He joined his hands. “Once again you are helping us in ways beyond repayment!”
“It’s only a trial. Thank me later, if it works out.”
“It will, I promise! I was right about the cat… the kittens coming back… and I will be right about this, too, believe me,” he said, breathless in his joy. “The main thing is, you are willing to help. That’s like receiving your good wishes and blessings. It’s the most important thing — the most important.”
The mood in the flat changed, and Ishvar couldn’t stop beaming at the seams he was running off. “It will be perfect, Dinabai, believe me. For all of us. She will be useful to you also. She can clean the house, go to the bazaar, cook for — ”
“Are you getting a wife for Om, or a servant?” she inquired, her tone caustic.
“No no, not servant,” he said reproachfully. “Why does it make her a servant if she does her duties as a wife? How else do people find happiness except in fulfilling their duty?”
“There can be no happiness without fairness,” she said. “Remember that, Om — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Exactly,” said Maneck, concealing the inexplicable sadness that came over him. “And if you misbehave, Umbrella Bachchan and his pagoda parasol will straighten you out.”
Dina felt that granting consent for the verandah had legitimized a role for herself in Om’s marriage, and given her certain rights. He had come along quite nicely in these past few months, she thought. The scalp itch was gone and his hair was healthy, no longer dripping with smelly coconut oil. For this last, the credit went to Maneck and his distaste of greasy stuff in the hair.
Slowly but surely, Om had reinvented himself in Maneck’s image, from hairstyle to sparse moustache to clothes. Most recently, he had made flared trousers for himself, borrowing Maneck’s to trace the pattern. He even smelled like Maneck, thanks to Cinthol Soap and Lakme Talcum Powder. And Maneck had learned from Om as well — instead of always wearing shoes and socks in the heat, which made his feet smell by the end of the day, he now wore chappals.
But imitation only underscored the difference between the two: Maneck sturdy and big-boned, Om with his delicate birdlike frame. If anyone was to become a husband, she thought, Maneck seemed more ready, not Om, the skinny boy of eighteen.
Once more, she was acutely aware of the painful thinness flitting and darting about the flat, especially in the kitchen, in the evenings, when it charmed her to watch his flour-coated fingers fly, kneading the dough and rolling out the chapatis. The rolling pin moved like magic under his hands. His skill, and the delight he took in it, had a mesmerizing effect. It made her want to cease her own chores, just stand and stare.
She reflected on the time Om had been living with her. She had observed him devouring hearty meals, quantities that were anything but birdlike. Which removed one possibility — he was not underweight because he ate poorly. And her original suspicion of a year ago wriggled out again.
“It just won’t do,” she said, discussing the matter with Ishvar. “Thanks to you, the boy is going to take on a big responsibility. But what kind of husband and father will he make with a stomachful of worms?”
“How can you be so sure, Dinabai?”
“He complains about headaches, and itches in private places. He eats a lot but continues to be skin and bones. Those are definite signs.”
Next day, she showed Ishvar the dark-brown bottle of vermifuge she had purchased at the chemist’s. “It’s the best wedding gift I can give the boy.”
The pink liquid was to be ingested in a single dose. He examined it, unscrewing the top to sniff: not a pleasant smell. How good it would be if Om were cured before the wedding, he thought. “But what if it’s something else, not worms?”
“That’s okay, the medicine won’t do any harm. It just acts like a purge. He must fast this evening, and take it late at night. Look, it explains on the label here.”
But the directions were quite complex for his rudimentary English, lost when it strayed too far beyond chest, sleeve, collar, waist. He promised to make his nephew swallow the dose before going to bed.
The more difficult part was to persuade Om to miss dinner. “Such injustice,” he complained. “Starving the cook who makes your chapatis.”
“If you eat, the worms eat. They need to be kept waiting hungrily inside your stomach, with their mouths wide open. So when you take the medicine, they swallow it eagerly and die.”
Maneck said he had once seen a film about a doctor who became very tiny, in order to go inside the patient’s body and fight the disease. “I could take a tiny gun and shoot dead all your worms.”
“Sure,” said Om. “Or a tiny umbrella, to stab them. Then I won’t need to drink this foul stuff.”
“One thing you are forgetting,” said Ishvar. “If you are very tiny in the stomach, the worms will be like giant cobras and pythons. Hahnji, mister, hundreds of them swarming, seething, hissing around you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Maneck. “Forget it. I’m cancelling my voyage.”
Dina lost count after Om’s first seven trips to the toilet next morning. “I am dead,” he moaned. “Nothing left of me.”
Then late in the afternoon he burst out of the wc, shaken but triumphant. “It fell! It looked like a small snake!”
“Was it wriggling or lifeless?”
“Wriggling madly.”
“That means the medicine couldn’t sedate it. What a powerful parasite. How big was it?”
He thought for a moment and held out his hand. “From here to here,” he pointed from fingertips to wrist. “About eight inches.”
“Now you know why you are so thin. That wicked creature and its children were eating up your nourishment. Hundreds of stomachs within your stomach. And none of you believed me when I said worms. Never mind, it won’t be long now before you put on weight. Soon you’ll be as well built as Maneck.”
“Yes,” said Maneck, “we have three weeks to make a strong husband out of you.”
“And the father of half a dozen boys,” added Ishvar.
“Don’t give bad advice,” said Dina. “Two children only. At the most, three. Haven’t you been listening to the family planning people? Remember, Om, treat your wife with respect. No shouting or screaming or beating. And one
