Family Matters Read online

  “My father was the chief cashier. Once a week he would carry cash between his branch and the head office, accompanied by an armed guard. It was the system, those days. And the incident occurred during the final months of the Second World War.”

  “How old were you?” asked Jehangir.

  “I wasn’t even born then. But my father was making his weekly trip in a taxi with the guard, Duleep Singh. Suddenly, they heard a terrifying explosion, like the whole city had blown up. And death and destruction began raining from the sky. The explosions continued, no one knew what was happening. People in the streets thought that enemy bombers had arrived over Bombay. Hundreds lay dead in minutes. And my father’s taxi driver was so scared, he stopped the car, jumped out, and ran, screaming ‘Bhaago, sahab, bhaago!’ Then Duleep Singh also panicked, forgot his rifle in the taxi, and took off.

  “So there was my father, left alone with a case containing five lakh rupees, and no transport, no protection, chaos in the streets.

  “All the terrible possibilities began going through his mind. If some bad elements knew he was carrying this fortune in cash, they could kill him and no one would ever know. Or the explosions could finish him – there were hundreds whose bodies were never found. If that happened, the bank might think he took advantage of the situation and disappeared with the cash. This was what he feared most, the loss of his good name.”

  “Couldn’t he hide in a shop or a building?” asked Murad.

  “Shops, houses, everyone had locked their doors. They thought the enemy was invading. The only thing my father could do was to try to reach head office. He kept praying Yatha Ahu Varyo, and walked on.

  “Moving cautiously, sheltering under porticos and doorways, he arrived at head office hours later. There, too, the doors were locked. He knocked and hammered and shouted till the watchman approached. Recognizing my father who came every week, he let him in at once.”

  “But what were the explosions?” asked Jehangir.

  “I’m coming to that. You see, because it was wartime, two British ammunition ships had docked in the harbour. There was an accident, those ships exploded, and the ammunition bombarded the city. It was only later that people understood the extent of the destruction, the thousands who were killed.

  “And in the bank, they realized how brave my father had been, how determined and, above all, honest. When the clock was presented at the bank’s annual function, the chairman made a speech praising my father’s courage. He said that just as the clock would tell the time accurately, so would Mr. Chenoy’s act tell accurately about honesty.”

  Yezad paused. “When your grandfather was in danger of being killed, what concerned him most was not the loss of his life, but the loss of his good name. He always said, when he finished telling me the story, ‘Remember, people can take everything away from you, but they cannot rob you of your decency. Not if you want to keep it. You alone can do that, by your actions.’ ”

  “Let the words of Daddy’s father stick in your mind forever,” said Roxana. “Understood?”

  “Yes, Mummy,” said Jehangir.

  “And what about you, Murad?”

  He nodded.

  The flat was quiet, and it was over an hour since everyone had gone to bed when Nariman started to talk. Roxana prayed he would fall silent before Yezad was disturbed.

  Then her father raised his voice. “You disgrace the role of fatherhood! When you call the woman I love a whore, when you call this house a raanwada just because I invite her here, I despair for you!”

  Yezad jumped out of bed. “Did he say raanwada?”

  Roxana shushed him. “I think he’s arguing with his father about Lucy.”

  “What kind of language is this, for a small boy to hear.”

  “Don’t worry, Jehangir is asleep.”

  “Did you check?”

  She got out of bed and crept to the door. She looked, and smiled: her son seemed safe in the arms of peaceful slumber.

  “Who knows what else your father will scream out? Nariman Vakeel’s life would make a good novel, but it’s not a bedtime story for a little boy.”

  He lay on his back, grumbling it would take him ages to fall asleep now. She put her hand on his chest and played with the hair, caressing and soothing him like a child.

  Nariman lapsed again into soft murmurs Jehangir listened with his head propped up on an elbow. He was glad he’d been able to shut his eyes before Mummy saw him awake. He didn’t want to miss what Grandpa said, it was the only way he would ever learn anything. Every time he asked Mummy-Daddy a question, they told him not to be curious about grown-up people’s problems.

  “Come down from the ledge, my love,” he heard Grandpa say in a begging voice. “Please, Lucy, that’s not a good place to sing. Come down, my darling, stand beside me, and I will sing with you …”

  Grandpa was getting very upset now: “I’m frightened, Lucy, please step down, my love …,” and Jehangir was afraid he would become loud and wake Daddy again. He wondered if he should hold Grandpa’s hand, the way Grandpa had held his the other night, maybe that would comfort him.

  But after pleading for a few minutes, Grandpa began to hum his song, “One Day When We Were Young.” So Lucy must have listened to him. Lowering his elbow, Jehangir let his head touch the pillow. He fell asleep to the soft singing, puzzling about what ledge it was that Grandpa’s girlfriend was standing on, and why was Grandpa so scared of it?

  JEHANGIR STUDIED HIS reflection and wondered if anything about his appearance had changed. He knew stories in which guilty secrets were revealed in physical manifestations – skin breaking out in boils, nails turning black, voice getting hoarse, hair falling out.

  The twenty rupees had sat hidden in his pocket for days while he agonized. How to use the money without getting into trouble? Thankfully, the face that stared back at him from the mirrored door of his father’s cupboard seemed normal.

  Then he heard a violent blast from the kitchen – much louder than the pressure cooker’s usual whistle. He ran to see. His mother told him to stand back, it was too dangerous to go near the stove. She herself stood frozen, a few feet away from the beast spouting steam and food through its valve. The first powerful gush had left its mark on the wall and ceiling.

  He watched from the passage, fascinated by the cooker. Then, through its hissing and gurgling came the sound of the doorbell. His mother didn’t seem to have heard it ring, so he went, looked through the peephole, and opened. Daisy Aunty marched briskly past him into the kitchen.

  “Put off the stove,” she said, and his mother jumped at the voice.

  “Daisy!”

  “Put off the stove,” repeated Daisy Aunty, then decided to do it herself. She grabbed a kitchen cloth and wrapped it over her hand for protection. With the other hand shielding her face, she bent low and crept closer to the stove.

  Like a cowboy trying to get the drop on a rustler, he thought. Then she reached out and put off the gas with a quick turn of the knob. The fastest knob in the West, he decided.

  “Now a bucket of cold water,” she said, still very businesslike, and poured it over the cooker. The beast was subdued.

  “Thank you,” said his mother, limp with relief. “I don’t know how it happened, I’m always so careful, the weight was on the valve, everything was fine, and I was with Pappa.”

  “It happens,” said Daisy Aunty. “Soon as I heard that fortissimo trumpet, I knew your cooker had exploded.” She stepped back to survey the results. “Looks like a Jackson Pollock.”

  “What?” asked his mother.

  She pointed to the wall. “Modern art. What was in the cooker?”

  “Yellow dal, and a tomato gravy.”

  “Nice colours,” she said, admiring the combination.

  Jehangir returned to the back room, to the mirror, where he had been examining his face. He opened the cupboard door, and the inside drawer, where Mummy kept her envelopes. What if he slipped his twenty rupees in them, without saying anything?
She would find the money, think it was from Daddy’s salary, and just spend it.

  She was still with Daisy Aunty in the kitchen, cleaning the mess. Neither Murad nor Daddy were home. And Grandpa was asleep. Now was the time.

  He reached for the familiar envelopes that he handled on paydays, sitting with Mummy while she divided the salary. She would let him count the cash when the bank notes were new, and he enjoyed their crisp smell. If they were old notes, she was more cautious – you never knew who else had touched them, how hygienic were their hands, did they wash twice with soap after going to the toilet?

  He leafed through the envelopes and read their labels: Butter & Bread, Gas Cylinder, Ghee, Rice & Sugar, Milk & Tea, Water & Electricity, Meat … on and on they went, flooding his head with their demands. All he had was twenty rupees. How worn and crumpled the envelopes were, the flaps tearing at the fold. He could remember three years ago when they were sparkling white. Mummy-Daddy had been talking for days about something called an increment. He asked what it meant. “More money,” she said happily. Then Daddy said that with inflation it would buy less, and he asked what inflation was. “A monster that dines on our future,” said Daddy, explaining about rising prices and purchasing power. But Mummy was hopeful, she was going to make up a new budget, with a new set of envelopes for good luck.

  Now they were old and smudgy, and didn’t seem to hold any luck. There were so many of them, so much more money was needed to make a real difference. Where to put the twenty rupees, where would it do the most good? He had to decide quickly, Mummy and Daisy Aunty would soon finish in the kitchen.

  He flipped through and stopped at Butter & Bread. Yesterday morning Daddy had said, “Dry toast again, thanks to your family.” And Mummy replied, “I haven’t seen your family being much help in fifteen years,” which made Daddy angrier. “At least they don’t treat our home like a hospital,” he said.

  They had begun fighting again, Mummy reminding him how halkat his three sisters had been just before the wedding, they hadn’t allowed him one chair or bed or cupboard from the family flat though he was entitled to his share of the furniture. Not one broken stick had they given him from Jehangir Mansion, and it was a wonder he could take his clothes and shoes with him. And Daddy said that if she was going to bring up his family history, he could do the same about hers, only hers was too terrible to utter in front of the children.

  Mummy said had it not been for his sisters, they could have settled in his house, Grandpa wouldn’t have spent all his money, he’d still be master of his destiny. But Grandpa had sacrificed everything for them, he had said not to start a new life in quarrel and bitterness.

  “So just remember,” said Mummy, “my family didn’t create our problem.”

  Daddy had pointed at Grandpa on the settee. “What do you think this is? Let me tell you, I didn’t marry you for the honour and privilege of nursing your father.”

  Remembering his parents’ harsh exchanges, Jehangir stood frozen with the money in his hand. Everything felt heavy inside his chest, the way his head did when he had a headache. He wondered if this was what a heartache felt like. Was there a pill for a heartache?

  Noise in the kitchen alerted him; he decided: Butter & Bread was the best choice. He slipped in the twenty rupees, replacing the envelopes just as his mother came down the passage. Daisy Aunty was inquiring about Grandpa, and they went into the front room.

  “Look who’s here, Pappa – Daisy Ichhaporia.”

  His grandfather looked blank for a moment, then his face became bright: “The violinist.”

  “Very good!” they said, and Jehangir thought it sounded like the praise from Mummy when his exam marks were good.

  “And where is the violin?” asked his grandfather.

  “Oh Pappa,” his mother laughed, “Daisy came to help me in the kitchen, not to play a concert.”

  “ ‘If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it,’ ” he whispered to Daisy’s delight. “You should go nowhere without your violin.”

  “Why don’t you tell her, Pappa, how much you enjoy her music? You know, Daisy, whenever he hears you practise, he is in heaven, you should see his face.”

  Taking her aside, she said the music was a blessing on days when Pappa was having a bad time – the moment her violin started, he grew calmer, as though he had taken a dose of medicine.

  “How interesting,” said Daisy. “Some time ago I read a book about music therapy. It prescribed specific compositions for things like migraine, high or low blood pressure, stomach cramps. I don’t remember exactly, but Bach was the one prescribed most often, especially certain fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Wait, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She returned with the violin and started a lively piece that filled the room with its energy. Smiling, Nariman closed his eyes to listen, and Roxana gestured to Daisy, indicating his pleasure.

  The music swerved and circled, and Jehangir thought that was how it must feel racing along in an open motor car on an empty road, lots of birds flying above, sun shining, small white clouds floating in the sky. The piece ended with a flourish of the bow.

  “Bravo,” said Nariman, and tried to clap but there wasn’t much sound. The others made up for it. “I used to have a 78 rpm of Heifetz performing it,” he continued. “Sarasate’s Zapateado, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, pleased that he knew the piece.

  “What does Zapa … the name mean?” asked Jehangir.

  “Za-pa-te-a-do,” his grandfather repeated. “A dance in which you stamp your feet. From ‘zapato,’ which means shoe in Spanish.”

  Jehangir preferred his own interpretation of birds and clouds and a motor car. He echoed the word, “Zapato – sounds a lot like sapat.”

  “Correct. That’s because Gujarati and Spanish both belong to the same Indo-European family.”

  Daisy began to play Mendelssohn’s On Wings of Song and they fell silent. Jehangir thought this time the music was more tender, pouring so sweetly out of the violin he could almost taste it. It reminded him of honey pouring from a spoon in delicate golden threads. When he had a sore throat, his mother mixed honey with lemon juice to make the throat smooth.

  Daisy finished the piece, and they clapped again. She began putting the violin away. “Is that all?” said Nariman. “You can just as well practice here today.”

  “You don’t want to listen to all my rubbish, Professor Vakeel.”

  He convinced her that he did. But her sheet music and stand were downstairs, so she played a few more pieces from memory, then returned the violin to its case, promising to come the next day if he really wanted.

  “Promise me one more thing.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Promise me that when I’m dying, you’ll come to play for me.”

  Daisy said she was sure he had many years ahead of him.

  “The number of years is not the issue. I want your violin to fill my ears when my breath is leaving me – whenever that may be. Is that a promise?”

  He held out his hand to her. She hesitated, but was unable to refuse him. Her hand clasped his, to seal the pact: “Promise,” she said.

  Roxana was frowning now, and Jehangir was very distressed, as though her agreeing to his grandfather’s request would hasten the sad moment.

  Miss Alvarez made a little speech in praise of the Homework Monitors and her class. Jehangir was convinced she would see guilt in his eyes, and was afraid of meeting hers. He picked a spot on the blackboard to focus his gaze.

  “Boys, I want you to know there is improvement in the marks of those who were not doing well at the start of the year; even the Perpetual Problems are working harder. Do you know why? Because you want the respect of your classmates. I am so proud of you. Thank you, keep it up, and congratulations to everyone.”

  Then Miss Alvarez crossed her class-electrifying legs and began marking test papers while her Homework Monitors went about their task. It was a quiz on dates of the Mughal Empire: ten questio
ns for each student.

  Moving from desk to desk, Jehangir was preoccupied with what would happen when he came to Ashok. A week had passed since the last time. Would he offer money again? The fear of getting caught by Miss Alvarez sat in the pit of his stomach.

  Long before it was Ashok’s turn, the brown paper cover on his history textbook was damp from the sweat of his palms. He wiped them on his shirt sleeves, but they grew moist again in seconds. He kept his fingers away from the centre, trying not to streak the ink where Daddy had written on the brown paper cover:

  Jehangir Chenoy

  Standard IV A

  History

  Daddy’s handwriting was perfect as pearls. That was how Mummy praised it, and the letters were all joined together by the lustre of royal blue ink. She encouraged him to try and write as beautifully. It was too late for Murad, his handwriting crawled like bedbugs all over the page, she said at the start of each school year, when they brown-papered their books and sat with Daddy at the dining table while he wrote out their names, classes, and subjects. It was the best part of going back to school after the May vacation. Jehangir loved the fresh gloss of the brown paper, the smell of new books, the thrill of his name flowing from the nib of Daddy’s fountain pen. And he could tell that Daddy enjoyed it too from the important look on his face. Sometimes Daddy joked that the process of learning couldn’t begin till the books bore the student’s name, for the knowledge inside them wouldn’t know whose brain to travel into.

  And now, Daddy’s beautiful pearls were in danger of being smudged by the sweat of his wickedness. Dragging the burden of guilt and fear behind him, Jehangir reached the source of his anxiety.

  He commenced the homework questions about the Mughal Empire, ignoring the wink Ashok gave him. The ease with which he could maintain a dignified distance, as though they were not handcuffed by a nasty secret, now surprised him.

  “What year did Babur become king of Farghana?”

  “1947,” grinned Ashok, and put his hand in his pocket.