The Henna Artist(17)
Making enemies was not my way, and certainly not with one of Jaipur’s best seamstresses. I pulled a small bottle out of my carrier. “Let me give you this before I forget.”
She grabbed the bottle, and we watched it disappear in the folds of her sari. “It will take two days,” she said.
I stood. “Tomorrow.”
As soon as we left the tailor’s house, Radha asked me what was in the bottle.
“You can’t guess?”
We walked in silence. Suddenly, she stopped. “Bawchi oil?”
Smiling, I took her arm to get her moving again. “Before she started using my oil, the poor woman was almost bald on one side.”
Radha laughed.
“Auntie-Boss!”
A rickshaw pulled up beside us, Malik on the running board.
I squinted up at him. “You’re wasting my money on a rickshaw?”
He held a hand to his heart and tilted his head. “Auntie-Boss, I’m taking care of my ladies.” He pulled me up by the hand, then turned to help Radha. His mouth was busy sucking a tamarind candy, and he offered one to Radha, who hungrily popped it into her mouth.
Thirteenth thing: eating sweets will ruin your teeth, I added mentally to Radha’s list. Busying myself with the purchases, I began unwrapping the newspaper bundles. “Did you get the Moonstar brand of lavender oil?”
Malik, who had squeezed in next to Radha, leaned forward to look at me. “A wise man to the rest of the world is a nobody at home. Madam, not only Moonstar but a discount on the best brand money can buy.”
“So I should be getting money back?”
He held his hands out, palms up, toward the rickshaw driver. “Does the driver work for free?”
This made me want to laugh, but I stopped when I saw him lift his brows and salaam Radha formally, his cupped palm rolling gracefully from his forehead to his mouth to his heart, making her smile. I turned my attention back to the packages.
“Jiji! Look! Just like the crown of Krishna!” Radha shouted, pointing across the street.
Gently, I pulled her arm down. “Sixth thing, Radha?”
Radha frowned, thinking. “Don’t let my mouth hang open?”
“Very good. That building is the Hawa Mahal. It has almost a thousand windows. The ladies of the palace may be looking out those windows, and they do not wish to be seen.”
As we left the Palace of Wind behind, I knew Radha was fighting the urge to turn around and see if the ladies were watching us. I would have to keep an eye on her. My younger sister was lively and curious, which was good, but she was also untamed—and that could be a dangerous combination.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I asked the rickshaw-walla to stop. “I need to run an errand, so I’m getting off here. When you get home, Malik, show Radha how I make the laddus. But don’t let Mrs. Iyengar catch you at her hearth.”
“Certainly, Auntie-Boss. But...”
“What?”
He shrugged exaggeratedly. “Laddus are not food, as you so often tell me, Madam.”
My cheeks felt hot. Of course! I’d completely forgotten that aside from tea at the seamstress’s and a tamarind candy, Radha had had nothing to eat. Malik had noticed. I hadn’t eaten anything, either, but I was used to it. Radha, on the other hand, was a growing girl. I should have known better. “At home there’s aloo, gobi, piyaj. Radha, can you make the subji and chappati?”
She moved her head from side to side, looking serious. Yes.
“Good.” Stepping off the rickshaw, I warned them, “Wash your hands first. And this time, Malik, be sure to use soap.”
* * *
Ten years ago, I was earning my living in Agra by making contraceptive teas for the courtesans to keep them childless, and they paid me well. Madams like Hazi and Nasreen were especially kind to me, offering me lodging in properties they owned in return for my teas. In their spare time, they taught me the art of henna. Skimming a reed across skin was only slightly different than brushing paint across a peepal leaf skeleton as I had done with Munchi-ji back in my village. I took to henna painting quickly. Before long, I was decorating the arms, legs, bellies, backs and breasts of pleasure women with designs they taught me from each of their native lands—Isfahan, Marrakech, Kabul, Calcutta, Madras, Cairo.
Samir Singh frequented the pleasure houses of Hazi and Nasreen whenever he had business in Agra. There, Muslim noblemen, Bengali businessmen and Hindu doctors and lawyers smoked hookahs, and ate and drank as the courtesans recited ancient poetry, sang sweet, nostalgic ghazals and performed classical kathak dances to the beat of skilled musicians. When Samir heard of my henna skills, he sought me out. “There are many gentlemen in Jaipur who would like to start digging a well before their houses catch fire, if you know what I mean. And they’ll pay triple what the pleasure houses pay you.” What Samir proposed was a move to Jaipur and more money than I could have imagined, preventing unwanted pregnancies for men like him, men who dabbled outside their marriages. He explained that while he liked visiting the pleasure houses, he personally preferred young, childless widows. These women, no matter how young they had been when they lost their husbands, were often doomed to a life of loneliness; that was how society preferred it. (Not so for widowers, who could marry without repercussion.) Samir lavished widows with compliments, presents and his considerable charm, and they responded gratefully.