Unmarriageable(43)

Darsee and Wickaam set eyes on each other. Darsee blanched. He looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. Wickaam turned red. He squawked a hello. Darsee turned and marched away. Bungles mumbled a weak hello in response to Wickaam’s greeting and then, telling Alys he was looking forward to seeing her sisters at the NadirFiede walima, he hurried after Darsee, the visitors in tow.

Alys took her Pakola and sipped slowly from the neon-green soft drink. Clearly something was amiss. Should she ask Wickaam directly? But how to ask without being intrusive?

‘Out of all the places to meet my dear cousin.’

Alys nearly choked on her Pakola. ‘Valentine Darsee is your cousin?’

‘My first cousin. Our mothers are sisters. How do you know him?’

Alys told Wickaam about meeting Darsee recently in Dilipabad at the NadirFiede wedding.

‘I see,’ Wickaam said. ‘I went to school with Nadir too, you know. I’m invited to the walima, but I’m not sure I’ll attend what with Darsee being there. There’s the myth of close cousins and then there’s Darsee and me. I bet you found him wonderful at the wedding.’

‘I certainly did not,’ Alys said. ‘No one did.’

Wickaam brightened. ‘I’m not surprised. Darsee is a dreadful person who pretends to be a saint. He betrayed me. The betrayal is hard to talk about, though I’m perfectly happy to tell you.’

‘It would be my honour,’ Alys said, ‘to hear your story.’

‘Are you hungry?’ Wickaam said. ‘Pak Tea House cafe is close to the law offices on our way back. Have you ever been there?’



Alys had always wanted to go to the illustrious Pak Tea House, established in 1940, and she eagerly followed Wickaam through the doors and into a snug hall. Men were seated at a few of the wooden tables. One was reading a newspaper, a cigarette smouldering in a glass ashtray. Another two were playing chess. Alys and Wickaam settled in a corner and Wickaam ordered chai and chicken patties. Alys gazed at the walls lined with photos of famous male novelists, poets, and revolutionaries who had once congregated here.

‘Where are the women writers?’ she asked.

‘Upstairs, I think,’ Wickaam said. ‘So, how does it feel, Miss English Literature, to be sitting here surrounded by Local Literati Legends?’

‘A little sad that they might have as much, if not more, to say to me than Baldwin or Austen, Gibran or Anzaldúa, but since I can’t read Urdu fluently, though I do try, that’s that. Anyway, hurrah for translations.’

‘Too much is lost in translation,’ Wickaam said. ‘I used to have an ayah, Ayah Haseena, whom I affectionately called Ayah Paseena. But while in Urdu the riff on Haseena/Paseena made perfect sense, in English trying to rhyme “Beautiful” with “Perspiration” was nonsense.’

‘You gain in translation by opening up a new world unto others,’ Alys said. ‘Anyway, a translation is better than nothing. We ourselves are works in translation, in a way.’

‘You sound like Valentine Darsee.’

‘Do not insult me.’ Alys frowned.

‘My cousin is an insult!’ Wickaam grinned. ‘I’m planning to write a novel to expose him, and not because it’s fashionable these days to be a writer, ever since that Indian woman won the Booker Prize for the Small Thing something—’

‘The God of Small Things.’

‘Yes, that one,’ Wickaam said. ‘I haven’t read it. I don’t think I’ve read a novel since, oh, I don’t know, years.’

‘You’re planning to write a novel but you don’t read them?’

‘How hard can it be?’ Wickaam said. ‘We all jot down words. Just a matter of finding time.’

‘Since we all have a brain, I plan to perform brain surgery as soon as I have a spare moment.’

‘You’re funny,’ Wickaam said.

The waiter arrived with their order. Wickaam poured chai into their cups and Alys added a splash of milk to hers. She bit into the rich flaky pastry with the spicy chicken filling.

‘Delicious! Listen, Wickaam, if you’d rather not tell me about Darsee—’

‘I have nothing to hide. I’m an open book. In fact, I believe it’s my duty to tell everyone what my cousin has done to me.’ He took a deep breath. ‘My maternal grandparents, as you know, are dey Baghs, descendants of royal gardeners and luminaries of this land. They had three daughters. The eldest is Beena, then Deena, and lastly Weena.

‘BeenaDeenaWeena attended Murree Convent School, followed by a year of finishing school in Paris and then a year in London. When they returned to Pakistan, they married within months of each other. Beena married a first cousin, Luqman “Lolly” dey Bagh, whom she’d always had her eye on. Deena married the son of a family friend her father held in great regard, Fauji Darsee, an army officer in the intelligence. And my mother, Weena, married a Pakistani-British man she’d met in London during an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. My father was not wealthy, but he’d studied philosophy and dreamt of becoming a great playwright, and my mother was happy to support him.

‘BeenaDeenaWeena got pregnant within months of each other, and soon Weena had me, Deena had Valentine, and Beena had Annie. I have pictures of the three of us cousins in identical tartan dungarees, in a tree house, playing the piano, riding horses, that sort of thing. Our life was so nice; we used to say we never wanted to grow up. BeenaDeenaWeena were also happy, and they decided to fulfil a dream they shared – of being educators – and so they established a private school for girls, British School Group. Now it has branches all over the country. What! You teach in a British School branch! Small, small world.