Three Bargains: A Novel Read online

  “Anyway,” said Avtaar Singh. “I’ve been thinking about it. Memsaab would like to go as well, they all want a change.” He gave a disbelieving laugh and Madan smiled too. Neither could imagine being dissatisfied enough with Gorapur to leave, even for a short time.

  “Let them go,” continued Avtaar Singh. “It will be much cooler up in the hills away from the heat, and it’s true the girls haven’t had much of a holiday this time. But what I wanted to ask is, would you go with them?”

  Madan wished that Avtaar Singh would give the order, tell Madan to do what he needed. Yet he had asked, giving Madan a choice that really did not exist, for he could not refuse Avtaar Singh. He didn’t really want to go; the thought of spending even a few days with memsaab and the two girls was not appealing.

  “Memsaab asked that you go, so if the girls want to do sightseeing you can take them around. I know you don’t like leaving Gorapur, but maybe it’ll be a good break for you before college starts.”

  Madan, at least, had the illusion of it being his own decision. Avtaar Singh extended that formality to no one else.

  “Whatever you say, saab. When do they plan to leave?”

  “Soon, soon,” said Avtaar Singh. “Oh, and there will be two cars going—ours and Trilok-bhai’s. His wife and daughter are going as well. They made these plans the other night. Trilok-bhai has a house near Mussoorie, so once they call up there to make it ready, in two, three days’ time I think . . .”

  Avtaar Singh went on talking, but Madan heard no more, and before he knew it he was back home, telling his mother that he was going away for a few days.

  Mussoorie. One road led up to it from the valley below, curving and snaking precariously up the mountainside, requiring all of Madan’s attention. Honking cars, overloaded trucks and shepherds herding goats all fought for space on a narrow road that ended abruptly by spilling into a large square that signaled the entry to the hill town.

  Minnu and Neeta memsaab were in one car with Trilok-bhai’s driver, Bhola, an elderly man who, like all the rest of the help, had been with their family for as long as anyone remembered. In the other car were Madan and all the girls. Rimpy and Dimpy had wanted it like this so that they could talk and listen to their own music.

  “No serious talk, okay, Neha?” Rimpy said when they stopped to pick her up.

  “Agreed,” Neha said. “From what I’ve heard so far, my views aren’t shared by all.” She met Madan’s eyes as she handed him her bag and smiled.

  Heaven’s End, Trilok-bhai’s family bungalow, was a few kilometers away from the town of Mussoorie. The mothers decided to stop in town to pick up groceries before proceeding on. Shops crowded the square, and in the middle stood a statue of Mahatma Gandhi caught in midstride, his walking stick in front as always.

  “It’s cold,” said Dimpy, shoving her hands deep into her jacket pockets.

  “If you’re cold, think how he must be feeling,” said Neha, nodding toward the half-clothed statue of Gandhi in his dhoti as small as a loincloth. In tandem, the twins glanced at Gandhi and then began to laugh, and even Madan, overhearing them from the other side of the car, allowed himself a smile.

  They drove into Heaven’s End as the sun descended over the snowcapped peaks in the distance, bathing the old colonial bungalow in a buttery light. After the daylong drive, they were glad to be out of the cramped cars and decided to leave any exploring for the next day.

  Trilok-bhai’s caretaker, who doubled as a cook, seemed glad for the company. Madan tried stifling his yawns as the old men continued to converse after dinner, but then excused himself. He thought sleep would come easily—he was tired after driving all day—but hours later, he tossed and turned.

  It was no use. He pulled on his jacket and shoes and stepped outside. Moonlight flooded the hillside, bright enough to make his way around. The caretaker and Bhola were fast asleep in their rooms.

  An expansive, well-manicured lawn surrounded the house in the front, but at its end the mountain reclaimed its space and the land fell away down a steep hillside. A short railing marked the beginning of the descent. Madan stood over it, looking into the shadows below.

  “Careful,” said a voice behind him.

  He didn’t move at first, giving himself time to breathe. He turned around and said, “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  She came to the railing, peeking over as he had a moment ago. Her hair fell forward, draping her cheek, and he shoved his hand in his pockets to keep from reaching out to touch it.

  She leaned against the railing, and he backed away as though to protect himself against a blow. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he repeated, the words hanging like a silent scream in the air.

  “Yet here I am,” she said.

  She slid down and sat on the grass, her back against the rail.

  “Sit with me . . . Madan,” she said.

  Madan looked up at the silent, slumbering house. Come back, it said. Walk away. You’ve always listened to reason. Walk away and it will be okay. Then he looked down at her and the house shut up like someone had cut out its tongue.

  He slid down and they sat side by side, legs stretched out in front of them.

  “Yes, memsaab,” he said.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said

  He didn’t look at her. “You may not agree with my thinking, but you don’t have to rub it in by calling me memsaab,” she said.

  After a while he said, “Why did someone like you get into all that anyway?”

  “Someone like me?” She laughed. “You mean the daughter of the great Trilok-bhai?”

  When he nodded stiffly, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s not funny, he was really upset.”

  And then she began to laugh, doubling over and wiping her eyes. Madan glanced toward the house, sure someone could hear.

  “I’m sorry. I hated going to school in Delhi. My father thought the usual—convent-school-educated girl would make a good match. Sent me to live with my chacha. I begged in the beginning to come back home. But he refused to listen. And then, when I found friends and people I liked and everything finally became bearable, it upset him, so he dragged me back to Gorapur, and now I’m here . . . sitting with you.”

  “And that’s funny,” said Madan.

  She stopped at once. “No, no. It’s because now I really want to be here . . . right here.”

  A girl from school had invited Neha to a meeting of the Youth Communist Party when she saw her reading a paper on “Communism in Plato’s Republic,” she told Madan. At her first meeting—Madan sensed her excitement—these people, they made so much sense, talking about equality and a workers’ state. The meetings took place during the day at a nearby college’s cafeteria. She gave her attendance at school and then slipped out with the other girl. It was easy; the school never thought girls from such good families would attempt leaving the grounds, so there wasn’t much security. And it was wonderful—meeting, talking, believing in something so strongly that you could see no other way. They even held a few protests.

  Then one day her uncle and aunt came to school to pick her up earlier than usual. No one could find her, and when she returned it seemed like the entire Indian army was standing outside. Trilok-bhai let her finish school, but as soon as it let out she was back in Gorapur.

  “Now she . . . my mother . . . they all keep a watch on me like I’m the Koh-i-Noor diamond. They thought I was escaping school to meet up with some boy.”

  “And . . . there was no one?” Madan asked.

  “There were quite a few boys who were members of the YCP, the Youth Communist Party. But no.” She sighed. “All I did was go back and forth—school, home, home, school. Here were people who argued and debated and thought hard and fought for their point of view, coming and going as they pleased. My parents, my brothers, still don’t believe I went to all this trouble to get to know other people besides them, to have thoughts besides theirs.”

  “In that regard,” said Madan, “I don’t think that is where
the country is headed.”

  “The death of Nehru’s socialism and an open economy? You think that will work here?”

  He nodded. “We all want to be our own boss. Isn’t that what we say, ‘Roti, kapda aur makan’? But we want to be the boss of our own basic necessities and have the freedom to multiply them without anyone—the government or anyone else—setting any limits.”

  “You sound like Avtaar Uncle,” she said. She laughed again and then shivered. The temperature had dropped, and as much as they wanted to talk more, it was freezing.

  Reluctantly they got up. “Good night, Madan,” she said, and held out her hand. He considered it for a moment and then took her hand in his own.

  “Sleep well, memsaab,” he said.

  After breakfast, the twins were raring to go. “We’ll meet you later,” said Minnu memsaab, “just take them out somewhere.”

  The morning was clear and crisp but Madan found it hard to keep his eyes on the road. He was tempted to go on looking at Neha.

  In town, they headed to Camel’s Back Road, where Madan procured horses for them to ride along the curving lane, the blue-green deodar trees perfuming the air with their cedarlike aroma. Flocks of chestnut-feathered bulbuls rustled in the branches, and trails of mist lingered around the lichen-dusted tombstones clinging to the hillside at the old British cemetery.

  “It’s so beautiful out here,” said Dimpy as the girls pointed out things that caught their interest along the way. The horses lumbered on, used to traversing this path all day. The twins and Neha rode a little way ahead while Madan hung back, but she turned around now and then, catching his eye.

  The twins mapped out their activities for the rest of their day and, after their ride, they took the cable car up to Gun Hill, where one of the touts persuaded the twins to dress up in costumes of the tribal hill women for a photograph against the panoramic backdrop of the mountains. Neha chose to dress as a British colonial soldier in a khaki safari suit with a handlebar mustache that drooped past her jawline. She stood between the twins adorned in glittery imitation finery, her ancient rifle held up as if she were ready to pillage the local villagers.

  They walked the Mall, the main thoroughfare, browsing in tiny boutiques, warming up with chicken corn soup and mutton momos, then back to purchasing more knickknacks from the Tibetan shops. The twins would often shop like this, buying everything in sight and never using most of it.

  “The original capitalists,” Neha whispered to Madan, swishing past him, her hand brushing against his as she followed the twins into another store.

  That night she was waiting at the railing when Madan got there. “This spot is easily visible from the house,” he said, giving her the chance to reconsider and head back.

  But she said, “Come with me. I haven’t been here for a few years, but if I remember correctly . . .” She led him back toward the house. He was sure someone would see them, but before they got too close, she turned, heading away from the cliff. Wooden steps took them down to a terraced garden. Unlike the gardens on top, it was unruly and overgrown. Tucked into a corner was a circular gazebo. They stepped into it; fallen leaves littered the cement floor and soft moss crept up the pillars.

  “I don’t think anyone’s been down here for ages,” said Neha.

  “Doesn’t your family come up here much?”

  Neha sat down and patted the spot next to her. “Not much, my father’s too busy. My brothers come up here sometimes, with their friends. They have big parties. There is hunting in the area but they don’t have the same freedom. Here it’s someone else’s turf.” Though not too far apart in age from her brothers, she did not share any of their interests and was not close to any of them. “Sometimes I used to wonder, in Delhi, whether I’d recognize them if they passed me on the street.”

  When she asked about him, he found it difficult to say much. About his mother, he simply said that she worked in the house. And about Avtaar Singh, he told how Avtaar Singh had made sure Madan went to school, and how he helped now in the office with the orders and books.

  “You’ll like this,” he said. “We stopped chopping down trees from the forests some years ago and now buy them from the farms, especially poplar and eucalyptus, which grows like a crop—we call it social forestry.”

  She punched him playfully in the arm as he laughed. He told her what he was unable to articulate to anyone yet, that he believed that Avtaar Singh was going to give him the new factory to run, after he completed college. “If it weren’t for Avtaar Singh . . .” He shook his head and trailed off. If it weren’t for Avtaar Singh he would not have much of a life at all.

  A true account of himself was not possible without telling her about Jaggu too. Their ties were stronger than those of brothers. He told of how he made a protesting Jaggu study for every exam and now he would be going to college too.

  Madan glanced at his watch. “We better go back.”

  “Next time I’m going to bring a blanket or something to sit on,” she said, and then continued about Jaggu. “It’s wonderful you have a friend like that, we always need those.”

  She got up, stretching and dusting the back of her jeans. “Are you my friend, Madan?”

  He got up too. She was standing still, facing him. The trees swished restlessly, and below them the lights of the town glowed like splatters of paint against the dark hillside. He reached out, pulling her toward him, the space between them insignificant.

  This was nothing to do with friendship. Friends met out in the open, not secretly in the dark of the night. “No,” he said.

  Her lips were soft, cold. They pressed against the half wall of the gazebo. He felt her hands on his shoulders and the dense structure of her bones unyielding through layers of clothes and skin. When they broke apart, he waited, watching her closely to see her reaction. She zipped up her jacket and walked out wordlessly, and he, not knowing what to do, followed her back up to the house.

  In the morning, Minnu memsaab called for him. Everyone was in the dining room finishing up with breakfast. Neha was reading the newspaper, her back to him. She didn’t turn when he entered, but he was conscious of the slight firming of her posture as she became aware of his presence.

  They were going for a day trip to Kempty Falls. Minnu memsaab got up from the table and began to explain how to organize the cars, pointing out the picnic baskets by the door and giving him a message from Avtaar Singh. He listened with half an ear.

  Suddenly Dimpy’s voice rang out, “Where were you last night, Neha? I got up and you weren’t in the room.”

  Everyone fell silent. Madan saw Neha hesitate for a moment as she turned the page. “I don’t know . . . bathroom, maybe?” she said.

  “But I went to the bathroom,” persisted Dimpy, “and you weren’t there.”

  An awkward hush permeated the room, but Neha didn’t pause this time. “Must be when I went to the kitchen to get a bite. I was hungry.”

  She went back to her paper and Rimpy began talking about how she was hungry last night as well but it was too cold to get out of bed. Minnu memsaab resumed her instructions to Madan, but not before he saw Neeta memsaab’s eyes roll over Neha with a worried look.

  “I can’t believe this is our last day,” wailed Dimpy on their way back from Kempty Falls. Neha and Madan exchanged glances in the mirror. “This was my favorite day,” said Dimpy. “The waterfall was spectacular.”

  “You said yesterday was your favorite day,” said Rimpy. They began to discuss the highlights of their trip, soliciting Neha’s and Madan’s opinions now and then. Madan couldn’t think beyond the present, he had already forgotten what they had seen and done.

  That night he waited in the gazebo. When he heard the creak of the wooden stairs and she stepped into the circular dome, he was actually surprised. She was holding a rolled-up blanket in her arm.

  “I thought you wouldn’t come,” he said.

  The blanket dropped to the floor and they kissed as if hours and hours had not passed since
the last kiss. Neha shrugged off her jacket. The floor must be cold, he thought, as her back touched it, but the thought was short-lived. Their limbs tangled like the branches of the ancient trees above them; his hands were under her T-shirt, his fingers splayed along the grooves of her rib cage. Who sighed first? Whose hand first fiddled with the clasps of their jeans? The curve of her hip rose to meet his, robbing him of every sane thought, and he succumbed without hesitation.

  When their trembling subsided, they pulled on their clothes and Madan retrieved the blanket, folding it around them. They leaned against the wall. He stroked her shoulders, her arms, twisted strands of her hair in his fingers. He couldn’t resist the urge to feel every inch of her.

  “What’s going to happen when we go back to Gorapur?” she asked.

  Do we have to go back? he wanted to ask, but he knew the answer to that question better than she did.

  “Madan?”

  “I’ll think of something.” If there was one thing Avtaar Singh had taught him, it was to find a way where none seemed to exist.

  When it was time to return to the house they sensed the reluctance in each other. There was no choice, though, but to leave the moonlit gazebo. Madan turned back to look at it one last time before he reached the top of the stairs and then the moss-covered refuge crept back into its little corner of the hillside.

  They seemed to have more bags than when they’d arrived, thought Madan as he loaded the car the next morning. He fitted another paper bag into the back corner of the trunk and when he closed it up, Neha was standing by the open car door.

  They stood smiling at each other, unwilling to look away, when Madan sensed the presence of someone else. Rimpy was standing by Neha and looking from one to the other. Abruptly, Neha got in the car and Rimpy followed, slamming the door shut.

  From the house, Dimpy came running down the steps. “I’ll remember this place forever and ever!” She rolled down her window and waved to the silent snowy peaks as Madan slowly followed the other car out of the gate and away from Heaven’s End.