THE HOUSE THAT BJ BUILT Page 2

  ‘It’s on all of them,’ Bonu begins to panic as she scoops up a handful of pads from the pile heaped in front of his machine. ‘One, two, thre—shit!’ She turns one over. ‘It’s on the reverse side also! How did this happen?’

  ‘From his mouth only,’ Parveen mutters. ‘He is all the time chewing and chewing, sometimes dribbling also. In summers at least he goes outside to spit. Nowadays, everything is happening yahin par.’

  Daulat Master immediately launches into a loud, incoherent denial of this monstrous accusation. The ladies hiss and smirk.

  ‘Hush, Parveen,’ Bonu frowns. Parveen, a long-time vier for Daulat Master’s job, is always happy to see him in trouble. But it can’t be denied that he’s the only one who eats paan in the unit. Bonu tells him as much.

  ‘She should spend more time with her daughters,’ is Daulat Master’s illogical, whining reply, ‘instead of coming here and making trouble. Her one-year-old girl can’t even say her name… It’s un-Islamic, the amount of time she spends here.’

  Parveen lets out an outraged shriek. Do-laat cowers over his stool, sending up a strong smell of fear and Tiger bidi.

  Bonu stands with arms crossed against her chest, considering the evidence. Finally she speaks. ‘Masterji, please. This is a Susan Adams anarkali. Susan Adams. Do you know what that means?’

  He shakes his head miserably while Parveen pipes up, ‘Susan Adams has the best finish in the industry. Sab kuch tip-top. You can wear her clothes inside out if you want. Sometimes the backside is better than the front side. Crikkits have compared it to Kundan jewellery, which have Meenakaari work on the backside.’

  ‘Thank you, Parveen.’ Bonu glares at Daulat. ‘That is what we are trying to achieve here. A Susan Adams finish! And you have dribbled paan on it. How will we get these clean by evening?’

  Do-laat mutters incomprehensibly, his tone aggrieved.

  ‘What!’ Bonu thunders.

  He speaks again, and this time Bonu manages to decipher the burden of his song.

  ‘It’s not paan ka peek, it’s the exact colour of the orange bar Parveen’s daughter eats when she comes here for lunch every day.’

  ‘You were the one who stitched up all the pads,’ Bonu says severely, ignoring Parveen’s gasp of protest. ‘You always want to stitch up the bustline pads, God alone knows why. So please pick up the whole pile, apply the bleaching chemical and spread them out in the garden. Luckily they’re only poly-fill and satin, so they should dry quickly.’

  Soon countless puffy little poly-filled mounds are lying on cotton sheets, drying in the weak sun like batches of homemade papad. As she watches the gnome-like figure straighten up and slink off to steal a beedi in the back garden, Bonu feels a twinge of guilt.

  Maybe I’m too hard on him, she muses. After all, he is a fantastic master-cutter—it’s largely thanks to him that I’ve realized my dream of running a successful business…

  ‘You need balls to do business!’ Bonu’s small, fiery father used to say over dinner every night, spraying slightly in his eagerness to emphasize the importance of this point. ‘Remember Bonu beta, any incomepoop can work in an office, but setting up your own dukaan, being your own boss—that takes real balls!’

  He had been holding forth on the same theme to his wife as he drove the family down from Bhopal to Delhi, his children eating sandwiches in the backseat, when a speeding Madhya Pradesh Roadways Bus had come out of nowhere, lifted their old Maruti Esteem clean off the road and flung it off a sheer cliff, thus ridding the earth, in one fell swoop, of entrepreneur Vikram Singh Rajawat, his devoted wife Binni, their stolid little son Monu, and their scrawny daughter Bonu’s carefree laughter.

  The stunned ten-year-old had been scooped up by her heartbroken grandparents, Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur and his wife Mamta, less than a day later. Sleeping cuddled between them by night and shamelessly spoilt by day, she had soon healed and smiled again. Over the years her scrawniness slowly filled out, thanks to her grandmother’s fabled cooking, and she grew to be five-feet-six inches tall, black-haired, full-lipped and bold-eyed in the style of her mother Binni and her aunt Eshwari. Laughingly nicknamed Bonus when she was born unexpectedly, three minutes after her twin brother Monu, her bottom and bosom blossomed out so generously as she grew, that all of Hailey Road agreed that this indeed was a lush bumper bonus that any man, anywhere would be very, very happy to receive.

  Binni, perhaps trying to compensate for the fact that she was the only one of her sisters who had received a Hindi-medium education, had named her daughter Bonita. This international-sounding tag had caused Bonu many cringing moments through her school years in Bhopal and at Modern School, Barakhamba Road (Are you a foreigner? Can we call you Bournvita?), but by the time she was twenty-one she was sorted enough to look people straight in the eye, smile and confirm, ‘Yes, Bonita. It’s Spanish for beautiful, you know.’

  At this point, Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur, perhaps in a bid to cover those bountiful curves in sober black robes, had suggested she become a lawyer, but Bonu had been quite clear. The arguments her parents had when she was a child and the babble of careless whispers she overheard after they died had revealed to her that every one of her beloved father’s many business ventures had flopped. So she wanted to start one of her own, name it after him, and make it a huge success.

  ‘But what sort of business, beta?’ her grandparents had asked worriedly, to which Bonu confidently replied as she wolfed down her breakfast paranthas, ‘I’m going to copy high fashion garments from the movies—you know, the ones designed by Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi and Susan Adams which cost like five lakhs each? Those. I’m going to make them available to all the auntiejis of Hailey Road for a fraction of the price.’

  When her bemused grandfather had enquired if this was possible and even legal, she had leaned in and passionately explained that the right to be fashionable belonged to everybody, not just the rich ladies, and that she had already put together some outfits for her grand-aunt Bhudevi, copied from her favourite movies.

  ‘She loved them, BJ!’ Bonu had said earnestly. ‘She was so happy. Fashion is such a rip-off, everything is overpriced, and for every fancy embellishment there is a cheaper, sturdier alternative available in the marketplace if one just looks properly. I’ll make a solid profit, wait and see!’

  All those early years of frugal living with that failure Vicky have turned my granddaughter into a baniya, the Judge had thought resignedly. Well, thrift is a virtue, I suppose, though certainly unusual in us Thakurs.

  Bonu had been true to her word. Her carefully selected and trained team of tailors, led by Daulat Master, studied every glitzy new Bollywood release with the earnestness of art students sketching the Mona Lisa, then trotted back to the workshop and replicated the ensembles faithfully. In case they forgot any details, Bonu would replay the film on pirated DVDs on the massive LCD TV. In less than twenty-four hours, outfits worn by Deepika/ Priyanka/ Sonam/ Katrina/ Kareena would be hanging in her show window in sizes from XS to XXL, with a queue snaking halfway to Connaught Place outside.

  ‘I don’t think we need to worry about the Bonus anymore, Mamtaji,’ the Judge had said with satisfaction as he watched this phenomenon repeat itself week on week. ‘She’s become a real B for blooming businesswoman!’

  But Mrs Mamta hadn’t been so sure. Bonu’s self-sufficiency worried her a little. She feared it was making her too hard too fast.

  ‘A girl ought to be girlish,’ she had fretted. ‘Sometimes Bonu is too grown up. And she’s rude to her aunts. I don’t think she even likes them, LN!’

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ her husband had replied. ‘It’s just that this generation is different. There’s nothing diffident about them. They’re very assertive. They don’t wait till thirty to bloom. They’re—’

  ‘Born with pubic hair on,’ Mrs Mamta had sniffed. ‘Look at that Samar, for instance. Changing girlfriends practically every day.’

  But the Judge, who wouldn’t hear
a word against his darling step-grandson, counselled her not to believe everything she read in the Delhi Times. ‘Besides, our time here is toh almost up, Mamtaji,’ he had added. ‘The fact of the matter is that we are all seated in the departure lounge with our boarding passes in our hands and our destination unknown. Who knows whose flight will be announced first, eh?’

  It was with thoughts like these running through his mind, that he’d had the house neatly partitioned on paper, ten years ago. The upstairs portion was divided between his two eldest daughters, Anjini and Binni, the annexe was allotted to the third, Chandralekha, while the downstairs was split between Debjani and Eshwari. The Judge and his wife continued to live in the downstairs portion belonging to their two youngest girls.

  A few years later, when the Celestial Control Tower decreed that it was Mrs Mamta Thakur’s flight that would depart first, the Judge had been terribly put out. He kept telling the mourners at the funeral that he’d been ten years ahead of her chronologically and one letter ahead of her alphabetically. His family handled the situation as best they could, hiding their own grief, chattering brightly, playing endless games of cards with BJ. The sisters made it a point to visit every month in those days, spending hours with the old man, walking in the garden, listening to music with him late into the night. There was chatter and intellectual stimulation and determined laughter all around, but still BJ sat—bathed, changed and exuding Brut 33 to be sure, but also exuding a constant, heartbreaking confusion.

  He never quite recovered. He would have good days, when he would scan the newspapers keenly, harangue the luckless gardener and make waspish remarks about Eshwari’s continued spinster status; and bad days, when he would chat garrulously with people long gone—like his beloved wife, his troublesome daughter Binni and his gentle grandson Monu. His eyes grew hazier and his movements slowed. The doctors pulled long faces and muttered to one another about Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease and vascular dementia but couldn’t quite agree on anything. The family took him to the US for treatment but it didn’t take, and he became scarily vague in the unfamiliar surroundings. After a few abortive trips to Bombay and Allahabad that were enjoyable for nobody, they re-installed him at Hailey Road, upon which familiar turf he did much better. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, they brought in Lachhman, a trained male nurse, worked out a sort of roster system, phoned every day, and visited as often as they could.

  But it is Bonita, living and working out of her mother’s hissa upstairs, who really holds the fort at Number 16 Hailey Road.

  Now, she wraps her pashmina tighter around her and exits the warm space, making her way to her grandmother’s floral-themed drawing room downstairs where BJ will be waiting for their afternoon ritual of tea, snacks and a chat. It’s that supremely depressing time of year, the post-new-year’s-eve slump, when all the festivals and the partying is over and a cranky, hungover Delhi hunkers down to just somehow, grimly, survive the cold, the fog and the sleet. BJ never does well in this weather. Lately, he has been lacking the concentration required to play cards, even a simple game of seven-eights.

  She finds him sitting in state, flanked by his bulldoggy sister-in-law Bhudevi, glowering at the chicken sandwich the Doberman-faced Lachhu has set before him.

  What a soft, insipid-looking thing, the Judge thinks irritably. Such a far cry from the devilled Maggi with chopped chillies and crunchy baked beans on fried toast I feasted upon at tea-time in my heyday! Then again, I’m a soft insipid thing myself these days. He reaches for a sandwich resignedly.

  ‘Hi, Chachiji, whassup? Did you miss me, BJ?’

  The Judge perks up immediately at the sound of Bonu’s cheerful young voice. He drops the despicable sandwich, looks up twinklingly, and recites, his voice quavering slightly:

  ‘Did you miss me?

  Come and kiss me.

  Never mind my bruises,

  Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices…’

  ‘Hai hai, what is he saying!’ Bhudevi Thakur hides her face in her hands, hot with embarrassment.

  ‘It’s Christina Rossetti, Chachiji,’ Bonu explains. ‘Very high-level poetry.’

  ‘Call me Naniji,’ says her grand-aunt. ‘Not chachiji.’

  ‘But everybody calls you chachiji,’ says Bonu. Then she links hands with the old man and grandfather and granddaughter finish the verse with a flourish.

  ‘Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

  Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,

  Goblin pulp and goblin dew!’

  He chuckles, she claps and perches herself on the arm of his chair and picks up a sandwich. As she bites in, Chachiji leans forward and says cosily, ‘Woh paanch number ka suna?’

  The years have been kind to Bhudevi Thakur. Her iron-grey curls have brightened to white and her eyes are softer, more peaceful. Her need for constant politicking well nourished by the torturous daytime TV serials she watches so avidly, she has become almost mellow. Besides, her philandering husband Ashok Narayan Thakur has recently been operated for prostate cancer and is currently out of sexual commission, thus giving her a break from her constant, agonized husband-guarding. Still, she keeps up with the dramatic happenings on Hailey Road, just to keep her hand in, so to speak.

  Now she tilts her eyebrows at her niece inquiringly.

  ‘No,’ Bonu responds, mouth full. ‘What happened at number 5, Chachiji?’

  Bhudevi Thakur blows out her cheeks and assumes a lugubrious expression. ‘Bhai, it is very sad. The brothers were fighting—over the property, of course—the case has been going on for fourteen years—and this morning the younger brother took out a pistol, put it inside his elder brother’s mouth and pressed the trigger. I heard there’s a hole in the back of his head like a sambar vada. All soggy and uneven.’

  Bonu puts down her sandwich. ‘Ugh.’

  Chachiji continues, ‘Of course, some are saying it wasn’t just the property. Apparently the older fellow—a bachelor, you know—was carrying on with the younger one’s wife. She’s lucky her husband didn’t shoot her too—really lucky, because now one is dead and the other will go to jail and she will end up inheriting everything!’

  ‘Wow.’ Bonu looks impressed. ‘You think she planned it, Chachiji?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Chachiji lowers her voice into a confidential whisper. ‘She’s as chunnt as they come. Does yoga the whole day so she’s as supple as a snake. They say she can twist herself into any position, that’s why all the men are mad after her. Now, of course, she will swallow the whole property like a python and digest it so completely that there won’t even be any shit left to fight over.’

  The Judge and Bonu consider this, stunned.

  Chachiji continues, ‘And at number 4 toh you know what is happening. Such a close family they used to be, mother-father, two brothers and one sister. But today there is an ad in the newspaper saying ki please, we want to make it very clear ki there is no sister-shister! This woman was an orphan we kept in the house out of kindness and now she is getting ideas above her station and demanding a hissa! The brothers have burnt her birth certificate and told the old parents ki khabardaar! She has no hissa! If you open your mouth we will borrow the next-door-ka-pistol and sambar vada you both. Imagine!’

  What drivel this infernal woman talks, the Judge thinks as he munches drearily through his soggy sandwich. Always going on about hissas. Hisssssas! He’s not very sure what the word means anymore, but it makes him think of a cobra, all flickering tongue and flared hood, hissing and swaying, ready to strike. Why does she visit so often, anyway? He has no idea who she is. Lachhu’s wife perhaps? Or the cook? If she’s the cook, he’s got a thing or two to say to her about these insipid sandwiches. Or is she one of those pushy ladies who keep coming around seeking donations?

  He prods Bonu in the ribs. ‘Give her a hundred chips and tell her to git.’

  Bonu hushes him. Just then, the curtains fly up as a massive gust of breeze sweeps through the room. ‘Oh God, is it raining?’ Bonu groans. ‘Please let
it be just breeze but not too much breeze—shit!’

  She puts down her tea, grabs her shawl, and rushes out to the lawn just as another gust of wind sweeps in, tossing the treetops, scattering champa flowers over the grass and, as Bonu watches horrified, hurling all the buttercup yellow, Dubai-bound boobie-padding into the air and sending them tumbling and spinning in the misty wind, towards the front gate.

  With a collective agonized wail, the entire tailoring unit gives chase. Bonu leads the charge, hitching up her black pyjamas, and kicking off her shoes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she calls out pantingly to her little crew. ‘They’ll hit the gate and stop. Thank God the gate is shut. If it wasn’t, they would have blown right out into the stree—’

  And even as she says this, the gate opens, the wind surges, and just like that, the entire consignment of feather-light falsies is loose and whirling on Hailey Road.

  ‘Oh no!’ groans Bonu, doubling up in dismay. ‘Go, Masterji! Run! Why are you staring at my face? I don’t have my shoes! Catch them! This is all your fault! Go!’

  The miserable Daulat and the rest of the unit caper out, leaping and lunging after the wildly whirling pads. Bonu, meanwhile, squares her shoulders and turns to face the person who has opened the gate at that exact, inopportune moment.

  ‘Your sense of timing,’ she says with exaggerated politeness, her heart thumping hard and not just because she’s been running, ‘is perfect.’

  The new arrival, tall, brown, scruffy, and attached to a bulging backpack, looks down at her sardonically.

  ‘Lovely to see you too,’ he says politely. ‘What are those poor unfortunates being yelled at for now?’

  ‘You’re the one I should be yelling at,’ she says shortly, not quite meeting his eyes. Her step-cousin Samar’s eyes have always been hard for her to meet. Looking straight into them, for some reason, feels like looking straight into the sun. ‘If the gate had been shut we’d have caught them in time.’

  ‘What’s “them”?’ he enquires, looking out onto the road interestedly.