THE HOUSE THAT BJ BUILT Read online

  ‘Really.’ Samar’s voice is now silky with speculation. ‘How tragic. Thank you, Lachhu.’ He accepts the key from the manservant, who has already loped up with it, Doberman-like. ‘In that case, I’ll just clean the machine myself. Shall we go upstairs?’

  Bonu jumps to her feet. ‘You can’t clean a sewing machine! It’s a very specialized skill. Tell you what, let me do it for you! It’ll be such a lark. Ha ha.’

  But Samar’s large hand has clamped down on her wrist. ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he says gently. ‘We’ll all go up and clean it together. Ha ha.’

  They go upstairs in a little procession, lanky Lachhu in the lead, with the key in his hand, followed by Samar, smiling blandly, then Chachiji, huffing and puffing, and finally Bonu, pale, clammy-palmed, and wringing her hands.

  The main door to the upstairs, common to both portions, is locked—Bonu’s workers are anything but disobedient. With a quailing heart she bids them open. They do.

  ‘Naaice,’ drawls Samar as he looks about the unit. ‘Truly world-class. Namaste, everybody. Bonita, I thought your workers weren’t here today?’

  But Bonu is beyond answering. Samar Vir Singh strides through the workshop, ignoring the stunned tailors, seeming to move (at least to the numb Bonu) like a panther zooming in on its prey, and stops at the large wooden door which marks the beginning of his portion.

  ‘Open,’ he tells Lachhu.

  Lachhu steps forward, the dull brass key in his hand poised to enter the keyhole. But as he grasps the door, it gives under his hands and swings open smoothly, on remarkably well-oiled hinges.

  ‘It’s unlocked,’ Lachhu says, bemused.

  ‘No shit,’ says Samar softly. ‘And what do we have here?’

  What they have there is the newest, most state-of the-art section of Vicky’s Secret. Ten large Friend work-stations, behind which sit ten more ladies tailors, all busily embroidering a vibrant pink lotus motif onto a consignment of turquoise chiffon harem pants, in sizes M, L, XL, XXL and XXXL, as the song Achha sila diya tune mere pyaar ka plays melodiously on a radio set to Mirchi 98.3. A banner is strung along the back wall.

  HEALTHY CHILDREN = HAPPY MOTHERS!

  IF YOUR BABY IS UNDER FIVE YEARS, DON’T FORGET TO BRING IT HERE FOR PULSE POLIO DROPS ON SUNDAY, 3rd FEBRUARY

  Beyond this is a large, well-stocked kitchenette, from which the fragile, sweet-faced Parveen now emerges, bearing a massive tray loaded down with about forty cups of tea. She blinks up at the little contingent and gives them a very hospitable smile.

  ‘Aadaab ji. Chai? Mera matlab, tea. You vant tea?’

  There is stunned silence for almost a minute. And then, predictably enough, Chachiji is the first to react. She had scuttled ahead once they reached the first floor, sniffing tension in the air, and now she whirls around, beating her hands upon her bosom, her voice rising in shrill reprimand.

  ‘Hai hai, Bonu-ki-bachhi, you have ghussoed into Anjini’s hissa? Chhheee chhheee chheeee! How could you do this, you ungrateful girl? After all the family has done for you!’

  Bonu’s pale face turns even whiter at this reproach but she doesn’t flinch. Her shoulders are thrown back, her stance unrepentant, her eyes on Samar.

  Chachiji’s voice spirals higher. ‘Your grandfather trusted you! Your aunts trusted you! Samar trusted you!’

  ‘Hush, Chachiji,’ Samar says finally. ‘You’re freaking out her workers.’

  Then he turns to look at Bonu, his expression inscrutable. ‘Is there some place we can discuss this privately?’

  Now he wants to be private, Bonu thinks bitterly. After making such a big hoo-haa, leading a bloody procession up the stairs. Hypocrite.

  ‘Sure,’ she says tightly. ‘Come to my room.’

  Inside her little lair, he stands before her with long legs spread wide, hands crossed across his chest, his entire attitude, at least to Bonu, extremely judgemental.

  ‘Ya, so?’ she says, not quite looking him in the eye. ‘Okay, I know, strictly speaking, it wasn’t the legally correct thing to do, but we’re family! And with the business getting bigger, I couldn’t cram all the workers into my hissa. You saw for yourself how much space those machines take up. It’s so stupid to lock up half the house like this, and deprive women, desperate to feed their families, of employment! Makes no financial sense whatsoever! Especially when anarkalis are all the rage and they contain up to fifty panels and have to be spread out on the floor to assemble. I know BJ is really strict about everybody sticking to their own portions, but he can’t climb the stairs anymore, so I just got the Trings to um…fiddle with the locks a little.’

  Samar, who, truth be told, has started to feel hopelessly out of his depth, holds up his hands.

  ‘Whoa, go slower please. Who are the Trings? And why do they know how to pick locks?’

  ‘They live in the annexe,’ she says sulkily. ‘Biren Tringji and Namgay Tringji. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ replies the harassed Samar, raking his hand through his hair. Why is the girl being so brazen about everything? She could at least offer some bullshit story as her excuse—that the locks got rusted and broke by themselves or termites ate up the door. Clearly, she’s too shameless for that. Or too honest. Which?

  ‘You could’ve called my mother and asked for her permission,’ he suggests.

  ‘As if!’ Bonu tosses her head contemptuously.

  Samar’s eyes narrow. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing,’ she mutters. ‘So what are you going to do now? Sue me? File an FIR?’

  He throws up his hands in exasperation. ‘Look, this is none of my biz. It’s Ma’s. She’ll have to know, and then the two of you can figure it out.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She scrambles up, stricken. ‘Samar, don’t tell her. Please don’t! She’ll tell BJ and he’ll get all worked up and make himself more sick than he already is—please!’

  ‘Unbelievable.’ Samar shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No!’

  The anguish in her voice seems real enough.

  Samar sighs. ‘Look, brat, I have to keep Ma in the loop, okay? And I suggest we drag out Naniji’s old machine. Maybe if you service it lovingly enough, she won’t be so mad at you.’

  Bonu’s mobile features go through a series of convulsions as he speaks, before settling into an expression of mutinous martyrdom.

  ‘Everybody always gets mad at me. I don’t care.’

  ‘BJ will find out in any case,’ Samar says. ‘Chachiji was there, and Lachhu. They’ll tell him—in fact, he probably knows already.’

  ‘That’s your fault,’ Bonu says bitterly. ‘Chachiji hasn’t been up these steps in years—her knees give her too much trouble. But you got her antenna up with all your insinuations, so up she waddled, sniffing scandal. She’ll spread the story up and down Hailey Road now and everybody will despise me.’

  ‘Well, you did encroach on somebody else’s property,’ Samar tells her, losing patience. ‘You’re in the wrong here. Stop blaming other people! And learn to face up to the consequences of your actions.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me!’ Bonu snarls tearfully. ‘Get out of my room!’

  ‘Oh no, Bonita,’ he leans in and says, very gently but very firmly. ‘You get out of my rooms—and make it fast.’

  Samar gets drawn into a long conference call with his producers that afternoon. When he emerges, it is evening and Bonu Singh, that two-faced, encroaching toad, is talking earnestly to a pink-faced young man in natty clothes, in the pillared verandah outside the Judge’s room.

  ‘Yes of course,’ she nods vigorously. ‘No no, I’m not over-tired… Yes, yes, I won’t neglect myself! Thank you so much.’

  As Samar watches she reaches out for the pink young man’s hands and squeezes them hard. He blushes even pinker and stammers incoherently.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you!’ Bonu practically coos. Her bosom leans in confidingly towards the pink-
faced stranger’s chest and Samar is strongly reminded of his own stepmother, Anjini, operating at the top of her game.

  Practically incandescent now, the stranger takes his leave. Bonu stands in the verandah, looking after him, her expression dreamily satisfied.

  ‘Who’s the Pinky?’ Samar inquires as he steps out from behind a pillar.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, that’s Dr Bharadwaj, BJ’s GP.’

  ‘Ah,’ Samar remarks. ‘The doctor. Why were you flirting with him?’

  ‘Huh?’ She seems to have something else on her mind. ‘Oh, because when I flirt with him, he doesn’t charge for house visits.’

  ‘You pay BJ’s medical bills?’ Samar is surprised.

  ‘Obviously not! The mausis do.’

  ‘Then why do you care how much it costs?’

  Bonu looks confused. ‘But money is money, no? Why should anybody spend extra?’

  ‘Or maybe you just fancy the doctor. What are you looking so happy about, anyway?’

  Bonu beams. ‘You were right. While you and I were yelling at each other upstairs, Lachhu glided up to BJ and gave him a comprehensive account of my encroaching.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re so happy?’

  She gives a little wriggle of excitement. ‘Samar, the news galvanized BJ! I haven’t seen him so sharp or so animated in years! He called me in and blasted me thoroughly, and used all these big-big legal words and he was perfectly coherent!’

  ‘O…kay,’ Samar says slowly.

  ‘Dr Bharadwaj says his vital signs are looking great,’ she continues, all glowing cheeks and shining eyes. ‘He even recognized Chachiji, which he hasn’t done in over a year! Asked her if Gulgul had finally got his law degree—which means he’s still confused about which year we’re in, but still, at least he didn’t poke me in the ribs and tell me to slip her a hundred chips so she’d git! She was so touched I thought she’d start crying. And now he’s in there organizing a family Skype concall!’

  What a strange, strange girl, Samar thinks, staring at her as she burbles on with excitement at being in so much trouble. But before he can say anything, a voice rings out from behind them, so clear and commanding that they both jump.

  ‘Bonita. Samar. My chambers. Now.’

  ‘Just listen to him!’ Bonu chortles. ‘Summoning us to his chambers, indeed. Well, come on, you’ve got to see this!’

  They walk into the study, Samar striding ahead, Bonu, for once, chhamchhamming docilely behind him.

  The Judge is sitting erect on his green leather-upholstered swivel chair. His frail figure is girthed in a dressing gown, and his hair is rakishly disarrayed. His computer, a 52-inch Mac, a gift from his youngest daughter, is open behind him on the desk. Upon a split screen are the faces of his four daughters, Anjini, Chandralekha, Debjani and Eshwari.

  ‘And it’s the Newshour with Arnab Goswami!’ Samar says lightly. ‘Ma, Mausi C, Mausi D and Mausi E! What are we discussing?’

  ‘Hurry up, you two,’ the Judge replies irritably, swinging his chair around to face the computer screen. ‘I don’t have all day.’

  ‘Hello, kids!’ Anjini Singh exclaims gushingly as Samar and Bonu move closer to the screen. Fifty-year-old Anjini mausi’s first words—‘I sabse pretty’—weren’t entirely untrue. Her glossy curls, as stiffly set as ever, frame a girlish, pouting face that clearly has no clue that it is now fifty. A delicate pair of glasses are perched on the tip of her perfect nose for extra IQ points. She leans forward, flashing just the slightest hint of cupcakey décolletage. ‘Hi Summerwine… Oh baby, you have dark circles! You must drink two litres of water as soon as you wake up in the morning! Bonu beta, step forward, we all want to look at you…’

  Bonu steps forward, her hair already up in its militant top knot and secured with her trusty Natraj pencil. ‘Hi mausis,’ she mutters.

  Bonu’s mother’s first words had been ‘Not fair!’ and they pretty much summed up her time on the planet. She would have been forty-seven if she were alive today.

  ‘Haiiiii!’ responds Anji with full enthusiasm and then runs out of anything more to say.

  Awkward silence.

  ‘Well, look who it is,’ Anjini sniffs finally. ‘The elusive Chandralekha—we haven’t seen you for at least ten years. Still looking like a besan ka laddoo, I see. When are you going to get over this silly phase?’

  Forty-four-year-old Chandralekha, who is shaved bald and dressed in the banana yellow robes of her order—Redemption Is God’s Immortal Design or RIGID—looks at her eldest sister out of cold, untroubled eyes. ‘Please be as accepting of my choices as I am of yours.’

  Nobody knows what Chandu mausi’s first words were because she didn’t speak much.

  Anjini bridles. ‘What’s wrong with my choices?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Chandu says, making it sound like everything is wrong with them.

  Anjini tosses her head.

  ‘Well, I think it’s stupid of them to make you shave your head but not allow you to thread your upper lip,’ she says bluntly. ‘Hair is hair, na.’

  ‘Earthly vanity hampers our quest for the eternal,’ Chandu replies. ‘How are all of you? Well?’

  ‘Oh, you just think the shape of your head is pretty,’ Anji says dismissively. ‘And it is, thank God. We’re all well, I suppose. And you?’

  ‘I am well too,’ Chandu replies stiffly. ‘I pray for all of you every day.’

  ‘Ya, well, you could phone us more often instead,’ Anjini retorts and turns to Debjani. ‘And you look like Vaitaal from Vikram and Vaitaal. So much long, lanky grey hair!’

  Dabbu mausi, simple and silvery, grins her attractive lopsided street urchin grin. ‘I don’t think mutton should dress as lamb,’ she says, her amber eyes twinkling.

  Anjini, whose hair is a lustrous L’oreal #05 streaked with a luminous L’oreal #13, flushes at this.

  Forty-three-year-old Dabbu mausi’s first words had been ‘My turn, my turn!’ Being the fourth of five sisters isn’t easy, but she has handled it remarkably well and is now a media person of note, anchoring a daily primetime show on India’s most watched news network, and a senior vice-president there, besides.

  ‘You’re vegetarian,’ is all Anjini can come up with in response.

  ‘We are all vegetarian in RIGID,’ Chandu volunteers. ‘We believe cows are our sisters.’

  ‘And we believe our sisters are cows,’ Eshwari says with an inelegant snort of laughter. ‘Stop scrapping, you guys! Hiii, BJ! Lookin’ so dapper! But could you back up a little? All I can see are your nostrils. Children, show yourselves—hello young Bonu, hello Samruddin—how are you hotties?’

  Thirty-seven-year-old Eshu mausi’s first words, uttered whenever she was told to eat or bathe or play or sleep, were ‘Eshu, eat!’ Now a chic, athletic New Yorker who works hard and parties harder, her appetite for life remains largely unchanged.

  The Judge makes an exasperated noise and leans forward, unmindful of his nostrils, which now loom even larger on the Skype screen. His daughters cower at the sight.

  ‘If you have all quite finished with the social niceties, can we talk?’ he demands.

  ‘Wow, BJ, you’re in good form,’ Eshwari says admiringly. ‘Acting so bossy and all!’

  ‘Stop drivelling, you!’ thunders the Judge. ‘This is a serious matter. A VERY serious matter!’

  There is total silence. Bonu’s heart starts to thump. Yeah sure, it’s cool that he’s so articulate and everything, but what is he going to do with her?

  How handsome BJ looks, thinks Dabbu, meanwhile. That lovely grey hair, the royal blue robe and (I’m sure) the scent of Brut 33. His eyes hold a sort of grim confusion, though. Last week he had confessed to her that, nowadays, the words he wants to say wobble before his eyes in jumbled letters, like alphabet soup, and that he has to struggle to nail them into place. They’re slippery buggers, he complained.

  ‘Um, has he gone to sleep?’ Anjini ventures as the silence lengthens.

  Samar steps closer to his grandfather
and puts his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Aaye!’ says the Judge, coming alive with a start.

  He pauses.

  ‘…I have allowed things to…’

  They wait. He continues:

  ‘…drift for too long. I have always been organized…and methodical…and…’

  ‘And?’ Bonu can’t help urging.

  ‘And I will not leave behind a mess!’

  He roars this out suddenly and with great emphasis, glaring balefully around the room. Everybody squirms, immediately wondering if they are the mess he is referring to.

  The Judge looks around, scanning every face. Dabbu looks serene, he notes with satisfaction. Anjini likewise. Chandu, placid. Eshwari, distracted. Bonu, his youngest, most urgent responsibility is looking confused…and hurt. Her big black eyes (so much like my Mamta’s) meet his, wide with apprehension. How much he loves this girl. But can he trust her? She idolizes her father too much, and the less said about that bugger the better.

  She is speaking now, her young voice chastened. ‘I…I didn’t realize that what I did was so serious, BJ.’

  ‘Wha’d she do?’ Eshwari inquires.

  ‘No clue,’ whispers back Dabbu.

  ‘It is serious.’ The old man’s voice is stern. ‘Because, you see, the thing you did is how it always begins. I thought you would realize that, Bonu.’

  Bonu flushes. ‘That part of the house is empty anyway. What’s the big deal if I opened up the rooms and—’

  ‘You did what?’ Eshwari’s voice is sharp. ‘Man, you’re impossible, Bonu Singh! Such a little brat! BJ, how can you possibly condone this?’

  Cow, thinks Bonu. How mean she used to be to me when she lived here, always telling BJ and Naniji that carrying me around was going to give them spondylosis. She used to deworm me with such gusto too, and comb out my lice, and come to school and gossip about me to my teachers. And Samar had a crush on her! How? Why?