My Kind of Girl (3 page)

Laying out an elaborate meal for her husband, she broached the subject. Raghab was amenable but for a different reason: a big fat dowry would enable him to expand his business. Hiranmayee dismissed the idea at once, saying, “If destiny wills, the money will come on its own – why should you have to beg for it?”

“No, no, it's not a question of begging, just that . . . Avinash-babu was saying the other day . . .”

“Who's Avinash-babu?”

“His shop is next door to mine.”

“The liquor shop? Ugh – a wine seller's daughter?”

“Not exactly a wine seller, his background is different. Seems interested, too. Maybe you could take a look at the girl – it would make sense all around . . .”

“Enough. I'm the one who's done all the thinking for you – don't get in the way now.”

“As you please. But will a professor's son-in-law still be interested in running a shop?”

“Is that what's worrying you? My Makhan isn't like that. I can promise you he will take over the responsibility for our family very soon.” Hiranmayee turned to her son. “Well? I hope you agree?”

Makhanlal had been eating next to his father – he paused at this question. He said nothing and, looking very solemn, only lowered his face and started to trace patterns on his plate. The answer was obvious, you could see as much; shoulders that were broad enough to support the entire family were not going to find it troublesome to bear the responsibility of a slender young woman.

Are you wondering whether there's a history to this? Yes, there is. Mother Nature never spares us from her wiles – even he, so powerfully built, with his broad, hair-covered chest, cannot prevent a tiny flower from budding within.

The thing is, Makhan ran into Malati virtually every day. “Ran into” is perhaps the wrong way of putting it; he could see her every day. Their neighbors' inner veranda was visible from his room, and there was hardly a day when a light breeze clad in a sari didn't lead Makhanlal's
mind to wander. Of course, like a true gentleman – or perhaps in embarrassment – he averted his eyes immediately, though not without stealing a glance or two. Sometimes Malati would bring a cane chair with her to the veranda. She seemed supremely oblivious to the fact that someone close by was watching her, or could be watching her – she sat there and read, laughed, spoke loudly, hummed songs with her brothers and sisters. Everyone knew you weren't supposed to stare at a lady, but if the lady chose to present herself before you all the time, you weren't expected to gouge out your own eyes, were you? Many a time Makhanlal was not even aware of what he was gazing at, but the moment Malati left the veranda for her room, he realized why his eyes had been roving. And was it just the eyes? Had the heart beneath his wide breast not been beating faster too?

This was the history. Hardly anything – and yet, was it entirely insignificant? Makhanlal, you've guessed correctly, was a bit of a simpleton; unlike the quick-witted city boys, he had not acquired a great deal of the knowledge of certain subjects they had learned of at an early age, precocious fellows. He was happy to be able to see Malati, indeed he felt as though he really knew her. Did he know that in Malati's universe her well-built neighbor did not even exist? Did he think about it? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but when he did think of her, it wasn't as anyone other than an intimate. Hence he was not very surprised at his mother's proposal – nor was he overjoyed, accepting it as inevitable. He even drafted out in his mind that first night in bed, how he would talk to her; how he would conduct himself with the occupant of the next-door veranda when she became occupant of his life. His
first question would be: did you ever see me from your veranda? What would her reply be?

A day or two later, Hiranmayee got down to business. After lunch she changed into a mint-fresh sari with a red border, marked the vermilion on her forehead so it was a little more prominent, popped a
paan
into her mouth, and headed off to the professor's home. When she returned, her smile had been wiped out; nor was any other kind of pleasant expression displayed on the mouth that had earlier consumed
paan
so happily.

Raghab was home napping, as it was siesta time. But this day, his age-old habit was broken. From his room, Makhanlal could hear only the sound of his mother's voice speaking continuously, occasionally interrupted by the sound of his father's soft comments – but every time she raised her voice, he could hear what she was saying.

“What? Shopkeeper! Shopkeeper's son! And what do they have to be so pompous about? Professor? And how much does he earn anyway? All our property, all those boats, all those celebrations – have they ever seen anything like that? No. They didn't even give me a hearing. ‘We're not thinking of her marriage yet, she's still a child!' Child indeed! How much more of a tomboy will they let her become? Like him? My son is as good as anyone else. Hasn't he got a college degree? Isn't he a good boy? Does he lack for food and clothing? Where will they find a more suitable boy? She's so dark, what prince will take her away on his golden steed? They were so fortunate that I . . . oh!”

It was the same story over and over again. Raghab probably fell asleep, and Makhanlal gave up trying to listen. But he could still
hear his mother speaking, on into the afternoon, for quite a while longer.

Hiranmayee smarted under the insult for a few days. The added injury was that as much as she wanted to get her son married, she wanted even more for him to have Malati as his bride. “I told them, ‘If you'd like Malati to continue studying, we'll take care of it, a daughter-in-law with a B.A. would be a matter of pride, we have no demands by way of dowry,' but they didn't even entertain the idea. Oh my God, their arrogance. But why – may I know why? Is it because they eat their pathetic meals at a table?”

“Oh, please be quiet, Ma!” Makhanlal protested, in a low voice. “The houses are so close to each other, what if someone hears?”

“Let them,” Hiranmayee moved toward the professor's veranda and raised her voice a few decibels more. “Am I scared of them? Am I going to beg them for this? Huh, I have such a wonderfully eligible boy in my son, what do I have to worry about? Take my word for it, Makhan, a day will come when they will burst with envy when they look at you. I guarantee it.”

The storm continued thus for a few more days, then the topic of Makhanlal's marriage faded gradually. Avinash-babu, the liquor shop owner, got his daughter married off by July, and many other virgin foreheads were touched by vermilion, but the subject of the marriage of Mr. Makhanlal Ghosh, B.A., and his special ability to shoulder the responsibility of a wife never even came up. Certainly there was no lack of unmarried girls in Bengal that year, but despite all her talk Hiranmayee just didn't take the initiative. Why not? Couldn't she have
gotten a wonderful bride for her son and astonished the professor's family? Would that not have been her natural response? Certainly. Just why she behaved to the contrary, I cannot say. Had she really imagined she would be able to wreak some kind of extraordinary revenge on that scholarly family? There was no indication this would ever be realized. A month went by, two months; not out of a sense of courtesy, or even out of mere neighborliness, did the professor's wife pay Hiranmayee and her family a visit, although Hiranmayee had visited them a few times now. The veranda remained as uncaring as before. There were still gusts of laughter, the flash of a sari, but Makhanlal no longer looked her way.

You think it was out of grief? No; Makhanlal possessed that singular virtue of not understanding grief or rejection. The truth was, he had no time. He woke in the morning, ate a frugal breakfast and went off to the shop, came home for lunch and took a brief rest, then went off to the shop again, only returning late in the evening. He had taken most of his father's responsibilities on his own broad shoulders. Practically all of them, actually. His enthusiasm was matched by his enterprise, and if he lacked for a brain in that great big head of his, he compensated for it with sheer hard work. I saw him back then, working like a horse, shuttling between different places in town. When did he have the time to think of the talented daughter of the erudite professor?

No, he did not have the time for this. Only, he felt a little uncomfortable whenever he passed the professor's house on his way in and out of his own home. Suddenly he felt he was too tall, too fat; maybe
his clothes were dirty, his gait and posture terrible. The professor's drawing room was on the ground floor, by the road – try as he might, Makhanlal could not resist stealing a glance every once in a while. Did he see anything? Nothing, only a blurred hint of something behind the curtains. Sometimes the curtains would part by chance, and then he could see . . . an unknown world. In the house Makhanlal had known since birth, everything was unkempt; even clean meant half dirty. But here was a well-decorated room, in it a gracious welcome: paintings on the walls, rows of books. A different world altogether. Laughter, snatches of conversation, perhaps the flash of a sari. Some days it would so happen that Makhanlal's feet refused to move, at that moment. The heart within his muscular chest beat a little faster; suddenly the carpentry shop, that hand-run printing, all felt as dry as wood, as anemic as paper. But whenever he felt that way, he lengthened his stride, ran to catch his tram, and forgot everything in the rush of work.

It was the middle of the second year of the Second World War. There was a feast of money in the interiors of the supply offices, you could smell it in the air. Like many others, Makhanlal headed toward it – maybe a little apprehensively, but the returns were undoubtedly beyond his wildest expectations. It helped that he looked older than his years; maybe his powerful frame evoked trust, or perhaps he had more staying power. Whatever the reason, he succeeded in getting a lot of quick orders through contacts and persuasion. And then when Japan joined the war in winter, it simply – but all of you know what happened . . .

It was an amazing time. There were no people in Calcutta, you couldn't add another person to Calcutta, Calcutta bombed, thousands of people dying on the pavement. The two-paise stuff cost twelve annas; neither rice nor sugar, coal nor salt was to be found; all you could get was khaki, jobs, and a bounty of easy cash. It seems amazing to think about it now, and it seemed as amazing back then to Makhanlal. Perhaps it was destiny – or was it his mother's blessings? – but anything he touched seemed to trigger an avalanche of money. A fortune in quick cash was to be made by supplying material to the armed forces. He used to get practically a porter's load of cash, he couldn't fit it into his pocket; the notes were bundled up in newspapers and deposited in the bank. Every day he'd deposit more money, write out fat checks, and somehow the days, weeks, months and years went by. He had lost track of day and night when one morning he discovered he had become a millionaire. Really.

Where there used to be a small shop in a lane, there was now a huge factory, a showroom on the main road. Makhanlal was now the provenance of a hundred people's bread and butter. Both his younger brothers quit college to join him at work, and this time Hiranmayee raised no objections. As for Raghab, he was now retired, retired on full pay! His landowner's spirit soared and thrived on the vast current of his son's accomplishments; every morning he would buy enormous quantities of food for the day's meals, then gossip with his wife, enjoy a leisurely lunch sitting on the doorstep of the kitchen, spend the afternoon sleeping and, sometimes, discuss the accounts in detail with Makhanlal at night. Since his son had taken on the responsibility
of earning, he had returned to the responsibility of spending. Of both spending and not spending, actually – in other words, how much to spend, how to spend it, how much to save. Raghab was involved in resolving these complex issues, and Hiranmayee's approval of his participation in their financial planning was so assured that Makhanlal didn't have to do anything at all in this respect. He didn't have the time, nor the inclination; brimming over with the impulse of the work itself, he was actually relieved to leave everything to them. Food and clothes were plentiful now – the food even more than the clothes – but even when food prices were going through the roof how much could you eat, and the burden of having a lot of money caused no less worry than the anxiety of not having enough. Appearances remained unchanged, however, still stamped with the untidiness of poverty: no one would have realized that the family's earnings had not just doubled or quadrupled, but grown tenfold.

You think it was self-discipline? Not exactly, though perhaps they had not indulged in small luxuries, preserving their riches for large-scale displays of affluence. For securities held their faith! Raghab kept buying up land, not to mention Hiranmayee's gold and jewelry purchases. Soon, it was time to arrange the daughters' marriages. Very soon for the elder one, if traditional norms were to be applied, though as for the younger girl, Hiranmayee's second vow was to get her through college as well. She would be the mother of not just a son with a B.A. degree, but also a daughter with a B.A. degree. “Let them see, let them realize we're no less when it comes to academics.”

Them, of course, referred to the next-door neighbors, and mostly
to the vain wife of the professor. Learned your lesson? If only you had agreed to the marriage, your daughter would have lived like a queen, my son's a millionaire now.

Hiranmayee had been going so far as to send news of their good fortune through the shared domestic help; she didn't once forget to inform them of her family's wealth. Certainly not on the day Raghab purchased a half-finished house in Ballygunge. Her messages reached their recipients, but the professor's family never broke its silence. Its obliviousness to its neighbors equalled Hiranmayee's inability to forget about hers. Strange was her competitiveness, extraordinary her desire for vengeance.