Page 30 of All Our Evenings

All our evenings together needn’t mean that Ganesh was loved, or that he was someone worthy of dignity or tenderness. All of what happened that night could have been something pedestrian, like my father said. Somebody was there, and then they weren’t. It needn’t even be Ganesh, it could simply be a drunk lying amongst the thornbushes behind the Red House, like my father said. What did his life matter? He wasn’t even in school. Believe it, my father commanded, the cold water from the hose hitting every exposed bit of my skin. It was so painful I could have shrieked. All that blood need not be blood, it could be something pedestrian. Like sap. Or something. Believe it, my mother whispered, putting a thick towel around me and telling me to bite down on one end to keep my teeth from chattering. It was so painful I could have shrieked, but I didn’t. I was my father’s son, for me he would do anything. I owed him at least this much.

XI

Travel & Living

On Sunday Priya rang. “Arjun, you’re coming right? Ma’s expecting you.”

Instead, we took a trip to the Golkonda Fort; I didn’t tell Ruhee that we were supposed to go to Ma’s for lunch. I was happy, living in someplace blissful with Ruhee. I didn’t want to leave.

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday―Ruhee was working this weekend, and that suited me just fine. Priya called me every single day; but even Priya’s temper couldn’t make me go.

Sundays came around one after the other, and each time I refused to go home.

Every morning, I got dressed in my office going clothes, made breakfast, dropped Ruhee off at the hospital and went to the water office. In the evening I went home before her, did the dinner shopping, cooked us a simple meal, switched on the water heater in the bathroom, laid the table before she arrived. It was nice, to see how delighted she was by everything I did.

When my beard grew, I did not shave. I’d left my shaving kit at my parents’ house.

I took the scissors from the kitchen drawer and trimmed my beard as neatly as possible. I told Ruhee I’d joined a gym near work, when she asked why my shirts looked a little big for me. She thought it suited me, the beard and the baggy clothes. “You look very artistic,” she said.

One afternoon, Priya caught me before I left the office.

“Arjun, don’t ignore me―listen! You didn’t come to my graduation, fine. You didn’t call to congratulate me when I started at my first job, Arjun. That’s mean. But fine, don’t be there for me, but go to Ma’s. She doesn’t understand why you’ve cut everyone off. She’s worried.”

When I went home I switched on the TV and put on Travel & Living. Tarla Dalal’s hour with Sudhanshu; Travel & Living played reruns of the old cooking show. I loved Tarla Dalal, she had the best recipe for tomato soup. I wanted to cultivate an interest in continental cuisine. One night I made spaghetti, but for the sauce, I used a sweet and spicy ginger chutney, diluting it with cream and pasta water. Ruhee loved it. She ate with gusto.

Priya stopped calling every day, but she got into the habit of ringing me at work just before I left each Friday. Then again on Sunday mornings; she rang from our house, and I knew the conversation would be happening within my mother’s earshot. “Arjun, you don’t even have to bring Ruhee, okay? Visit her, Arjun. She suffers.”

Instead we met Ruhee’s friends from work, sometimes for lunch at a new restaurant, or we went to a movie, or to a show at the auditorium, or some art exhibit. Once we went to the old temple ruins outside of town, another time we went away for the entire weekend, drove to Goa. I imagined the phone rang in our empty apartment.

I made it a point to not step into the old neighborhood under any circumstances. Ruhee worked alternate weekends. On those days I cooked, did the dishes. Watched Travel & Living to pick up new recipes.

One evening, my father came to the apartment.

He sat across from me on the sofa and looked around with a neutral expression. I was glad I hadn’t started cooking yet, didn’t have things on the stove I needed to attend to. Because Ruhee wasn’t home I didn’t offer him anything to eat or drink, I knew it would be awkward for him to sight me in such domesticity.

My father was graceful and dignified, always had been. But now he looked uncomfortable, looking around the apartment with the neutral expression. I was uncomfortable too, I didn’t know how to act in a place that did not belong to him.

He didn’t comment on my appearance, didn’t tell me to go home, visit my mother, he didn’t bring her up at all. Instead he told me that he’d been to the hospital. Learned from the compounder that I hadn’t visited Ganesh since Ruhee and I got married. He approved of it.

“I’ve been wrong,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve been wrong, Arjun,” he said.

He said he’d take care of whatever needed taking care. I could live my own life, that was what he always wanted for me. “Priya got a childhood,” he said. “But you didn’t.”

How strange it was to sit across from him like this, hear him talking to me as if to an equal, worthy of being addressed. It was unreal. He said, “You made the right choice with Ruhee, letting all that awful stuff go. She’s a good girl.”

On his face was something like approval or affection for me. He said that he respected the decision I made as an adult, and he should have trusted that I would be able to keep my secret. Something about this made it seem like we’d had a vague contract all along, but it had only been cemented now. Proof, that I could keep my secret, the way he would have if he were in my place. Graceful and dignified. That finally, I was my father’s son.

It was an emotion I’d had rare occasion to feel.

Before he left he asked that Ruhee and I visit him and Gita Miss at their apartment. “It will be nice,” he said. “But come earlier in the day. In the evening she has her pupils. She gives Hindi tuitions for kids in the building.”

There was a note of pride in his voice. I said I’ll bring Ruhee and visit, I wouldn’t mind seeing Gita Miss again.

A few days before Ruhee’s birthday, I called Jiten from the water office.