by Vani Viswanathan
Geetha
I smile every time I catch my reflection in a puddle, on the shiny surface of a car, a rickshaw mirror. I’ve been walking for over twenty minutes in the sweltering afternoon heat of Bombay’s June, and it seems like I’ve been looking for opportunities to see my face anew each time: I have, for the first time in my life, shaped my eyebrows. They look like two beautiful arches, jet black, not a hair astray. Yes, it was painful, and there are areas of micro-pain, but my face looks so different – and beautiful. I’m a new Geetha.
You might find it amusing that a thirty-one-year-old is waxing eloquent about threaded eyebrows, but I should tell you that growing up in Chennai, this was something that only women from rich or modern families would do. But here, in this magical city, all I needed was one gentle nudge to try it. After all, every other woman my age in the flat’s playground had neatly shaped arches to frame her face. The other factor, of course, was the fact that for the first time in my adult life there was a beauty parlour that was nearby and affordable.
I’ve reached my destination. The sea stretches out in front of me, waves gently lapping up against strangely-shaped stones on the shore. I sit on the wall and wipe my face with the end of my pallu. There aren’t too many people, just a few couples and some college students – girls in jeans and long plaits laughing away with boys. Nobody bothers the couples; they are in their own world of fresh romance, where everything seems colourful and hopeful, the tribulations of couple life but a distant speck in their horizon. Nobody is looking at the college students sticking to each other animatedly, boys’ arms casually thrown around girls’ shoulders. They remind me of molecules that I’d draw in college, shading different atoms with different colours, all distinct but fused into one entity.
That’s what I love about this city. Anonymity. The freedom to just be. Something I’m rediscovering after ten years of following Suresh as he got transferred from one small town to another. Where landladies and neighbours monitored where I went, how many times I went to fill my pots with water at the common pump, and how long I took to return home after dropping Aarthi in school. In the two months I’ve spent here, I’ve barely spoken to the next door neighbour in my Borivli apartment; the woman politely nods if we happen to see each other. The other mothers in the playground chat about tiffin recipes but scatter their different ways once the children are done playing. I could take trains all the way from Borivli with no one enquiring where I was going.
It’s two-thirty. I have to leave now to make it to Aarthi’s school to pick her up, and I have to walk all the way back to VT. I’ve had less than half an hour here, but Marine Drive, I’m coming back to you soon.
Aarthi
I’m in Anjali’s house. They have a phone. It looks like just in the movies: you have to turn the numbers around the dial to make a call. It rings with a shrill sound, like Amma’s alarm clock. Anjali tells me everyone in the flat has a phone at home. I must ask Appa to get one for us.
Anjali is my best friend in the flat. We go to different schools, she’s one year older than I and we speak different languages at home. She speaks Marathi and I speak Tamil, so we can only talk in English, which I don’t find easy, but I manage. Did you know that in Marathi, you call your mother ‘aai’? I laugh every time Anjali calls her mother that, I’ve told her what it means in Tamil. Anjali has a tall tub full of toys that we empty every afternoon when we start playing and start hurriedly putting back when my mother calls out ‘Aarthi’ in the evening, screaming through three floors. Anjali’s mother rushes me out, saying it is time for Anjali to do her homework. Sometimes she presses a tiffin dabba in my hand, asking me to take it home. We open it at dinner at home and find vegetables or curry that we have not tasted before. Sometimes it is nice but most often Amma and Appa scrunch their noses, saying ‘It’s full of garlic’. I like it, though, and they let me have it, but I usually have to hear ‘Your breath smells of garlic’ the rest of the evening until I brush my teeth and go to sleep.
Anjali also has many things different from me, so I prefer going to her house to play. She has Barbie dolls. Barbie wears beautiful clothes, has shoes with heels, has yellow hair. Her hands and legs move, and you can lift up her skirt to see her panties. My dolls just close their eyes when you tilt them. My assortment of toys is rather colourless compared to Anjali’s: I have some cars, some choppu samaan, and a tin boat that runs on oil that Appa lights with a wick every Sunday in our tub and it goes round and round. Anjali has many Hot Wheels cars, an electric game where you connect different wires and things light up. She also has a kitchen set and a make-up kit that Barbies can use. Anjali also has different clothes: she has many pairs of pants and jeans, and some very cute frocks with frills. Most of my clothes have been stitched by Amma at home. They are usually sleeveless frocks with tails that I can knot at the back. I find one dress that Anjali has particularly very nice: she calls it a ghaghra choli; it is colourful, with mirrors. It has a blouse, a long skirt and a dupatta. I will ask Amma to make me one.
We are playing fashion show-fashion show, and I’m wearing Anjali’s clothes. Her mother walks in and tells me ‘Arrey, these clothes fit you so well! Anjali has grown so tall. Take them home’. Anjali translates for me because her mother doesn’t speak much English. My mother speaks good English.
Suresh
I’m travelling the length of Bombay, literally, as I get into the train at Church Gate to Borivli. I don’t know why we took a flat in Borivli; Geetha was somehow stuck on the idea as her college friend had lived in Borivli at some point and felt that was the best place in Bombay. It’s not even in Bombay.
It’s been two months and I’m still disoriented. I’ve been thrown from the cocooned confines of Thoothukudi to the vastness of Bombay, where I know no one, where I don’t speak the language. I get by with English, but it gets difficult because people tend to state numbers in Hindi. It is alienating. I miss the familiar banter that the bank branches I worked in earlier had; we knew about each other’s lives, we would help each other out when needed. Here, people are polite, but always in a rush to go somewhere. In my earlier postings, the short bicycle ride from home to office would have been full of ‘hello’s and ‘good morning’s. Here, I have a train schedule: Borivli to Church Gate at 7:32. I have seen a few men in the same train every morning, in the same coach as me. They greet each other but don’t talk. I wonder if a few months down the line I will get a nod of acknowledgment from one of them.
Am I the only one struggling with the city’s isolating tendencies? When I come home at eight, Geetha beams a contented smile as she opens the door and takes my briefcase and lunch bag with a ‘How was the day, Suresh?’. Aarthi is dutifully doing her homework and then tells me about her day. She has a new demand every day; today it is to get a telephone installed at home. Geetha wants a little extra money. ‘Groceries are expensive here. You can’t expect Thoothukudi rates in cities’, she says. I also notice a slight variation in her cooking: she made something called dhaal thaduka yesterday, saying she was bored of making rasam-kozhambu every day. She has stopped giving me my lunch when I leave for office in the morning. She has started using a dabbawaala to send it to my office instead. What does she do in the morning? Why does she need extra time to cook when earlier I would get it when leaving for office? Today, she tells me that she went to a beauty parlour. This city isn’t the right influence for her. But what can I do; I was overdue for a north posting, and it is crucial for my next promotion. I suppose I’m lucky we’re here when Aarthi is still young; I shudder to think what would have happened if she were to spend her teenage years in Bombay.
I have to stick it out here for another two years. And then it will be back to the familiarity of Tamil Nadu. Mellifluous Tamil, our food, no Western influences, and people who care and check in on you, instead of coldly pretending you don’t live or work in the same space.
Picture by https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanready/
