The Henna Artist(56)
She was wearing one of the frocks Kanta had ordered for her, a lighter-than-a-feather chiffon with a slim-fitting bodice. Kanta said, “It’s an exact copy of what Madhubala wore in Mr. and Mrs. 55. I had the tailor weave gold chains into the waist, just like the dress in the movie.”
Radha’s breasts were straining against the fabric. She grimaced now and then, as if the binding were too tight. Her hips, which had been slim as a boy’s when I first met her, swayed as she walked. I watched the faces of the guests and was shocked to see the men taking notice, their eyes following the movement of her buttocks. She was only thirteen! But when I turned to look at her, I had to admit she seemed far older.
I watched the holy assistants circle the main room and the courtyard three times with red thread, starting from the east, while the pandit sprinkled holy water around the area. Then he lowered a clay container filled with grain and red flowers into the pit Malik had dug in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Now that we had fed the gods and asked them to watch over the house and protect us from evil intentions, the house, and its inhabitants, were safe from harm.
* * *
Until a move-in ceremony was finished, the house had to be free of all our possessions, so the driver of the camel cart had waited patiently with our carriers and trunks in front of the house. After the guests left, Malik’s friends (who had also been invited to the move-in festivities) carried everything inside the house. I told Malik he looked tired and should go home; Radha and I would clean up. Pleased that the ceremony had been such a success (the pandit stayed three hours), Malik left with his pals (and the leftover sweets).
Eager to settle in, I began unpacking the first trunk and stacking our clothes on the built-in shelves. I asked Radha to organize our kitchen. She bent over the other trunk, turned and bolted out of the room. I could hear her retching in the privy. When she returned, I asked if she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her.
She shook her head and headed for the charpoy. “If I can just lie down for a few minutes...” Within seconds, she was asleep.
Poor thing. Her days were so full now that she often nodded off at dinner. I decided to finish arranging our clothes. When that was done, I started to set up the kitchen, pulling out pots, stainless steel plates, cups and glasses from the trunk. The carriers stuffed with odds and ends would have to wait until tomorrow. Satisfied, I glanced around the room.
Radha still had not stirred. I walked to the cot in the corner of the room to admire my sleeping sister. The Madhubala dress stretched across her rounded hips. Her hair gleamed with coconut oil. Her skin glowed. She didn’t look sick; she looked peaceful, content. Perhaps I should make her some ginger and honey water. It always worked wonders for women who suffered from nausea early in their pregnancy.
The word started as a tingling in my ear, slid down my throat and snaked into my spine. Radha was nauseous. Her breasts were tender. She was always tired. I remembered her telling me she had already started her menses. Could she be pregnant?
Whom had she been with? She went to a girl’s school—she didn’t know any boys. Malik was too young. There was Manu, Kanta’s husband, but I couldn’t imagine he would take advantage of her. Mr. Iyengar? Baju? Who?
The answer landed on my heart like a thousand-pound Brahma bull.
* * *
I reached the Pink City Bazaar. The air reeked of stale cooking oil, rotting vegetables, diesel exhaust.
I found Malik sitting on a low wall across from his favorite chaat stall, sharing a Red and White with his friends (English cigarettes were more expensive than Indian beedis, and ever since he’d started going to the palace, Malik’s tastes had become more refined).
He was describing to his friends some dish Chef had prepared for him the last time he was at the maharinis’ palace. When he noticed me, he stopped midsentence.
I must have resembled a cheetah on the prowl—wild, dangerous. One side of my hair had come loose from my bun. My sari was wrinkled from unpacking, bending, squatting, rearranging. My eyes blazed with anger.
Malik jumped off the wall and gave the almost-finished Red and White to another urchin. “Auntie-Boss?” he said.
“Can you take me to Hari?”
* * *
We zigzagged down narrow streets, Malik stopping at a tea stall or a paan stand to ask the proprietors if they had seen Hari. The chai-wallas and their customers stared at me. I stared back. We rushed past a woman in the Refugee Market who’d set up shop at the edge of the street. She was sitting on a piece of cotton cloth, her shoe repair tools lined up neatly. She eyed my sandals and said, “Ji, your straps are coming loose.”
We came to a nondescript building that, like the others, had been decorated decades earlier in pink plaster. Shops took up the bottom floor. In one, a man patched a large inner tube. In another, a tailor haggled with a customer while his two male assistants, bent over tiny sewing machines, worked in the faint light of a bare bulb. Next came a busy lassi vendor. Men loitered in front of his shop, talking and laughing, carelessly discarding their empty clay tumblers in the ditch by the road.
Malik turned into a dark passageway. I followed. We climbed a flight of stairs to a dimly lit, narrow landing. Malik moved quietly, peering inside the door of each room. At last, he turned and nodded at me.
In the room, two young men played cards on the wooden floor. They looked up when I entered. There was no window, and the air was fetid. The walls were uneven where chunks of plaster had fallen off. The only furniture in the room was a charpoy, on which a third man was sleeping. Hari. The strings of the cot were so stretched his body hung only an inch or two above the rough wood floor.