He was back in an instant with the tin of Cinthol powder, watching as his mother eased off the stale shirt and sudra. Grandpa’s skin hung loose on his arms and abdomen. On his chest it formed two pouches, shrivelled breasts. Two little balloons from which all air had escaped. The hair on them like wisps of white thread.
Roxana crumpled the sudra to wipe the sweat from her father’s back and armpits. She shook powder from the tin and rubbed briskly, again lamenting the lack of water. Then she fished a clean sudra and shirt from the jumble in the suitcase and helped him into them.
“Thank you. I feel fresh as a daisy.”
“You won’t say that if you meet our ground-floor Daisy, Pappa, the way she sweats when practising violin.” She took the smelly clothes from the room, setting them aside in a pail for tomorrow’s laundry. “Chalo, lunchtime. I’ve made some light soup-chaaval for Jehangoo’s upset tummy, you can share that.”
She filled a plate for her son and called him to the table; her father’s helping was in a bowl. “Easier for you, Pappa. I’ll hold it if you like.”
He put his hands out to receive the food, and rested its weight on his stomach. The cornflower-patterned bowl rose and fell with his breathing.
“It moves like a boat, Grandpa,” observed Jehangir. “Your stomach is making waves for it.”
“So long as no one gets seasick,” said Nariman, barely avoiding a spill as he raised a spoonful to his lips.
“Did Coomy forget your medicine this morning?” asked Roxana.
“I took my pill,” he murmured, surrendering the bowl and spoon. “It’s been a lot of exertion for one day, that’s all. Tomorrow will be fine.”
Jehangir came and stood by the settee. After watching for a moment, he said he wanted to feed Grandpa.
“It’s not a game. Eat your lunch before it gets cold.”
He polished off the rice and soup in his plate and was back at the bedside. “Now can I?”
Nariman made a small gesture with his head for Roxana to let him.
She handed over the food. “But I’m warning you, be careful, Grandpa’s just put on a clean shirt.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“And don’t try to stuff his mouth, the way you do yours.”
“Yes, Mummy,” he sighed with weary exasperation. “I know Grandpa chews slowly, I’ve seen his teeth.”
The unhung washing was waiting on the balcony. She shook out the clothes, fretting about the wrinkles already settled in the fabric, and kept glancing inside the room to make sure Jehangoo was behaving himself. The balcony door framed the scene: nine-year-old happily feeding seventy-nine.
And then it struck her like a revelation – of what, she could not say. Hidden by the screen of damp clothes, she watched, clutching Yezad’s shirt in her hands. She felt she was witnessing something almost sacred, and her eyes refused to relinquish the precious moment, for she knew instinctively that it would become a memory to cherish, to recall in difficult times when she needed strength.
Jehangir filled the spoon again and raised it to his grandfather’s lips. A grain of rice strayed, lingering at the corner of his mouth. Jehangir took the napkin to gently retrieve it before it fell.
And for a brief instant, Roxana felt she understood the meaning of it all, of birth and life and death. My son, she thought, my father, and the food I cooked … A lump came to her throat; she swallowed.
Then all that was left of the moment were the tears in her eyes. She wiped them away, surprised, smiling, for she did not know when they had sprung, or why. There was contentment on Pappa’s face, and a look of importance on Jehangoo’s, relishing the responsibility of his task. And both had a sparkle of mischief in their eyes.
“Just a little bit left, Grandpa. Let’s do an aeroplane.”
“Okay, but careful.”
“First of all, Biggies is climbing into the plane,” said Jehangir, filling up the spoon. “Now the cockpit is closed.” He started revving and announced the chocks were off, they were ready for take-off. The spoon taxied several times round the bowl and was airborne. After a straight ascent it began to swoop and swerve, banking sharply and looping the loop.
“Prepare for landing, Grandpa.”
Nariman opened his mouth wide. The spoon entered, he clamped down on it, and the food was safely unloaded.
“Last one now,” said Jehangir, scraping the bowl clean. “Ready?” This time the aerial acrobatics were more ambitious. “Bombs away!”
Rice spilled down Nariman’s chin and throat and collar. Roxana rushed in from the balcony, still clutching Yezad’s crumpled shirt. “I warned you! Not for five minutes can you behave yourself!”
“My fault,” chuckled Nariman. “I didn’t open properly.”
“Don’t encourage the boy, Pappa, he’ll go from bad to worse. You should be strict with him.” She asked if he wanted the basin for a gargle – he was meticulous about his dentures after every meal. From the way he declined, she knew that he was trying to save her the extra work.
“What’s next on the agenda?” he asked Jehangir. “You fed me lunch, I could help with your homework.”
“My lessons are not on the agenda,” he laughed, delighting in the new word. “Mummy’s big bed is on the agenda, I’ll lie in it and read my book.”
“You could read here, aloud, so I can enjoy as well.”
Jehangir hesitated; reading aloud was something he did twice a year only, for the Reading and Recitation exam. “I’ve already finished three chapters. And you won’t like it, it’s just a children’s story, Enid Blyton.”
“No matter, you can continue with chapter four. If I’m bored, I’ll tell you, I promise.”
So Jehangir and Nariman learned in chapter four that George, for some defiance in the earlier pages, was now sulking in her room where she had been sent by her father, who, to make things more difficult, insisted on calling her Georgina (“She hates her name,” he interrupted to tell his grandfather, “she’s a tomboy”). Julian, Dick, and Anne, who were visiting for the hols (“They’re George’s cousins,” he explained quickly), felt that Uncle Quentin was being rather beastly to poor old George. And how rotten for her not to be out with them, walking along the shore, especially since the weather was simply topping, and the sea was such a smashing shade of blue that morning (“Cerulean,” said Grandpa, “like the sky,” and Jehangir repeated, “Cerulean”) while Timmy, whose gorgeous tail just wouldn’t stop wagging, ran beside them, having a jolly old time examining every rock and shell, barking in fright at a frightened crab and making them all laugh, only it wasn’t much fun laughing without good old George and …
His mother touched him lightly on the shoulder. He looked up. She put a finger to her lips and pointed to the settee: Grandpa was asleep.
Her father and her son were still sleeping when she lit the stove and made tea at three-thirty, dropping the leaves directly into the kettle of boiling water. Afternoon tea did not merit the teapot and cosy she used in the morning. And when she thought about her routine, crystallized into domestic perfection over the years, she found it odd because morning was the hectic time – the leisurely ritual would have better suited the afternoon.
But it was worth the trouble for Yezad’s sake; he loved mornings. He loved the breakfast hour, the radio playing, and the bustle in the flat and building, and in the street below where the vendors sang out their wares, alert to summoning customers who gained their attention by clapping or producing that special staccato hiss. Sometimes Yezad imitated the vendors’ songs and chants, and then the boys competed to see who could do better.
She listened for the vendors too, waiting to run downstairs with her purse. Some in the building kept a basket and rope ready by their window, to lower with money and haul back up with their change and their potatoes, onions, mutton, bread, whatever they needed. Roxana did not use the system, too public for her liking. As Yezad joked, this now was real window-shopping: by keeping an eye on the basket-on-a-rope commerce, you could tell who was
eating what on any given day.
Yezad was always laughing and joking in the morning, chatting with the boys, telling them little stories. Just yesterday he’d told them the one about old Mr. Engineer, who had lived all his life in Pleasant Villa, and had died recently. “Remember his special rope-trick, Roxie?”
She nodded, while Jehangir and Murad pleaded to hear it. The bath water had not reached a boil, so Yezad narrated Mr. Engineer’s escapade from many years ago, when he had fallen on hard times: every morning, when it was time for the eggman to arrive, Mr. Engineer would wait by his second-storey window. From the balcony above him, the third-floor basket would hurtle towards the pavement, then ascend slowly with its fragile cargo. As it was rising past Mr. Engineer’s window, an unseen hand would emerge, snatch an egg, and carry it off to the kitchen for breakfast. When the basket reached its destination, they would shout from the third floor at the eggman below: Hai, mua eedavala! Dozen means twelve, not eleven! The eggman would stand firm for a while, argue, then capitulate and send up one more egg.
One morning, the culprit was finally observed with his hand in the basket. Caught egg-handed, said Yezad, and the upstairs neighbours confronted Mr. Engineer with reluctance, embarrassed by the whole business. Unabashed, Mr. Engineer said, Who am I to reject what God sends floating to my window?
Jehangir and Murad laughed loudest at this point in the story, laughter filled with admiration and fellow-feeling, while their father concluded, “Ever since, the entire building has called it Mr. Engineer’s Famous Rope-Trick.”
Murad said it reminded him of another story that Daddy had told them, about the king named Sisyphus who was punished in Hades. “I think Mr. Engineer is like Sisyphus.”
“How?” challenged his brother. “Mr. Engineer didn’t have to push a big rock up the hill, over and over.”
“It feels like that,” insisted Murad, but uncertain how to explain his feeling. “The basket going down every day, then going up, and poor Mr. Engineer with no money, standing there to steal his egg – it’s just like a punishment, day after day. It’s sad.”
“I know what you mean,” said his father. “If you think about it, in a way we are all like Sisyphus.”
There was silence while they thought about it. Then Jehangir, nodding gravely, said he understood. “It’s like homework. Every day I finish my lessons, and next day there is more homework. It never ends.”
They laughed. “But Mr. Engineer’s story has a happy ending,” said Yezad. “A few days after he was caught, his doorbell rang in the morning, and when he opened, no one was there. Only a brown paper bag upon the floor. Inside it, one egg. This kindness happened twice a week, and continued till the day he died.”
“Why only twice a week?” asked Murad. “Why not one egg every ’day?”
“Who knows,” said Yezad.
Roxana, with a meaningful look in his direction, said whoever it was probably didn’t want to give the old man high cholesterol. Yezad pretended not to hear.
Meanwhile, the boys started a list of food they wished would float past their window: muffins, porridge, kippers, scones, steak and kidney pie, potted meat, dumplings. Their father said if they ever tasted this insipid foreign stuff instead of merely reading about it in those blighted Blyton books, they would realize how amazing was their mother’s curry-rice and khichri-saas and pumpkin buryani and dhansak. What they needed was an Indian Blyton, to fascinate them with their own reality.
Then the announcer on the radio said it was time for one of yester-year’s golden hits, and Engelbert Humperdinck came on. Yezad and the boys sang along with the refrain, “ ‘Just three little words: I love you!’ ”
Roxana smiled, waiting till the song ended before sending Murad and Jehangir off to get ready for school.
But that was yesterday morning. And how things had changed this afternoon, she thought, pouring a cup for herself, leaving the kettle on the stove. Later, around six, she would boil fresh water for Yezad’s tea. His evening cup was not at all like the morning. In the evening she saw the bruises inflicted by the working day. The love she felt for him then was like a hurt, as he told her about the clients he had had to deal with, obnoxious because they controlled large budgets and knew they could be rude with impunity, invariably angling for kickbacks from the money they spent to purchase sports equipment for the schools or colleges or corporations they represented. And he had to swallow his disgust, let them know tactfully that the proprietor, Mr. Kapur, did not allow it …
Anger and frustration would fill his face as he sipped the tea. Sometimes he drank from the cup; more often he poured a little in the saucer and stared into it, as though the answers he needed lay in its unfathomable depths. She was afraid to touch him with words, silence was all he could bear. And she understood, in some small way, what it was to be him who tried so hard for the family he loved. All she could do was wait for night to fall and restore him in the alembic of sleep.
So in the morning he was ready again, armed with optimism. She watched him return to the fray, knowing how it would end in the evening, and knowing that he knew it too, and yet he persevered. Then she felt her husband was as brave and strong as any Rustam or Sohrab, her hero, whose mundane exploits deserved to be recorded in his very own Shah-Nama, his Yezad-Nama, and she thanked fate, God, fortune, whoever was in charge.
She feared about how Pappa’s arrival would affect their morning. No matter what, she had to preserve its rhythm for Yezad. Yes, she was determined: not a hair of the routine that gave him so much joy would be allowed to change.
Halfway through Roxana’s second cup, Jehangir and Nariman awoke, roused by Murad’s doorbell. She opened the door and squeezed his arm as he rushed past, not risking a rebuff by detaining him for a hug. He flung his school bag under the desk and went to the front room.
“Hi, Grandpa,” he said, as though to find him lying on the settee was quite normal.
“Don’t you want to know why he’s here?”
He listened while she told about the accident, and thought a bit. “Since Grandpa is visiting, I’ll sleep on the balcony, Jehangir can have the cot.”
“No, I’ll sleep on the balcony,” said his brother.
“What?” said Nariman. “Both of you want to flee the room? Do I smell so bad?”
They protested it wasn’t that – sleeping on the balcony was an adventure for them, where they could see the stars and the clouds.
“We’ll decide after Daddy comes home,” said Roxana, unwrapping the bedpan and urinal. She examined them and took them to wash. People have different standards of cleanliness, she thought, fuming anew at Jal and Coomy.
“What are those?” asked Jehangir, as his mother returned and slipped the utensils under the settee.
“They are for Grandpa.”
“For what?”
“That’s his soo-soo bottle,” pointed Murad, “and that’s for number two.”
Jehangir made a sceptical face. “What’s it really for, Mummy?”
“What Murad said. Grandpa cannot walk to the toilet.”
Jehangir made another face and said chhee, but it was more a matter of form than actual revulsion.
At six-thirty, the boys heard their father at the door and raced to open it.
“Daddy! Can I make a tent and sleep on the balcony?” shouted Jehangir before Murad could turn the latch.
“No, Daddy, it was my idea, you can ask Mummy!”
The excited reception pleased Yezad. “At least let me put a foot inside. Say hi to your tired father before making demands.”
“Hi,” they said in unison. “Can I sleep on the balcony?”
He shut the door, sliding home the security bolt. “Roxie, what’s this crazy plan your sons have?”
He entered the front room and stopped. “Hello? Chief? Is that you?” He puzzled about it: came to visit, of course – but all by himself? And why lie on the settee? Feeling unwell, maybe.
The plaster cast that would have offered a hint was conceal
ed by the sheet. Not to seem taken aback, he smiled and went to shake hands while Jehangir insisted that since Grandpa was in his bed, he should be the one to get the balcony. Murad argued that he was older, he would be safer there, Jehangir might get up in the night and fall over the railing.
“Quiet, or I’ll give you each a big dhamaylo,” said their mother. “Balcony, balcony, balcony! Is that all? Before I can even tell Daddy about Grandpa?”
Drying her hands upon her skirt, she approached the settee. “You won’t believe it, Yezad, when you hear how badly Jal and Coomy have behaved.”
“They tried their best, my dear,” said Nariman softly. “Don’t be angry with your brother and sister.”
“Half-brother and half-sister, Pappa, let’s be accurate.”
“You never thought this way when you were children,” he said sadly.
“And they never acted this way.”
“Will someone please tell me what happened?”
She related the events of the morning and the past week. Yezad’s head was shaking when she finished.
“I must say, chief, I have to agree those two have behaved badly. I’d use much stronger words. Turning up like thieves, leaving you in the ambulance, blackmailing Roxana.”
“They couldn’t cope,” said Nariman. “This was a way out. For successful dumping, advance notice is unadvisable. Remember that, both of you, when you want to return me to Chateau Felicity.”
“That’s not funny, Pappa. Where is their sense of decency?”
“I wonder what would happen if you demanded to go back,” said Yezad. “It’s your home, after all. You should put your foot down, chief, just to see what they do.”
“If I could put my foot down, everything would be fine,” said Nariman with a wry smile. “How can you force people? Can caring and concern be made compulsory? Either it resides in the heart, or nowhere.”
“Still, it’s infuriating – they’ve pushed you out of your comfortable flat into this cramped little space.”
Nariman shook his head. “That huge flat is empty as a Himalayan cave for me, this feels like a palace. But it will be difficult for you.”