“He has his tea here. With me.” There was ice in Dina’s voice.
“Yes, but maybe… maybe just for today I can go out, Aunty?”
She said if he wanted to waste his parents’ payment for boarding and lodging, it was fine with her.
At the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel the air was alive with hearty cooking smells. Maneck felt he had only to stick out his tongue to sample the menu. His stomach rumbled hungrily.
They sat at the solitary table and ordered three teas. The spills from countless spicy meals had imparted a pungent varnish to the wood. Ishvar took the packet of beedis from his pocket and offered it to Maneck.
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
The tailors lit up. “She won’t let us smoke at our machines,” said Om. “And now the room is so crowded with her bed also in there. Place is like a dingy godown.”
“So what?” said Ishvar. “It’s not as if you have to run around in it catching goats or something.”
The cook in one corner of the restaurant was working within a circle of pots and pans. They could see their tea simmering in an open kettle. Three roaring stoves sent clouds of greasy smoke to the ceiling. Flames licked the black bottom of a huge karai full of boiling oil, bubbling dangerously and ready for frying. A drop of sweat from the cook’s shining brow fell into the oil; it spat viciously.
“You like your room?” asked Ishvar.
“Oh yes. Much better than the hostel.”
“We also found a place,” said Om. “At first I hated it, but now it’s all right. There are some nice people living near us.”
“You must come visit one day,” said Ishvar.
“Sure. Is it far?”
“Not very. Takes about forty-five minutes by train.” The teas arrived with a splash, the cups sitting in little brown-puddled saucers. Ishvar slurped from the saucer. Om poured his puddle back into the cup and sipped. Maneck followed his example.
“And how is college?”
Maneck made a wry face. “Hopeless. But I’ll have to finish it somehow, to please my parents. Then home I go, on the first train.”
“Soon as we collect some money, we’re also going back,” said Ishvar, coughing and hawking. “To find a wife for Om. Hahn, my nephew?”
“I don’t want marriage,” he scowled. “How many times to tell you.”
“Look at that sour-lime face. Come on, finish your tea, time’s up.” Ishvar got up to leave. The boys swallowed the last draughts and tumbled out of the little tea shop after him. They hurried back to Dina’s flat, past the beggar on his rolling platform.
“Remember him?” said Om to Maneck. “We saw him on the first day. He’s become our friend now. We pass him every day, and he waves to us.”
“O babu!” sang the beggar. “Aray babu! O big paisawalla babu!” He smiled at the trio, rattling his begging tin. Maneck tinkled into it the small change from the Vishram.
“What’s that smell?” Dina leaned forward angrily to sniff Maneck’s shirt. “Were you smoking with those two?”
“No,” he whispered, embarrassed that they would hear in the back room.
“Be honest. I stand in your parents’ place.”
“No, Aunty! They were smoking, and I was sitting next to them, that’s all.”
“If I ever catch you, I will write straight to your mummy, I’m warning you. Now tell me, did they say anything else about yesterday? The real reason they were absent?”
“No.”
“What did you talk about?”
He resented the cross-examination. “Nothing much. This and that.”
She did not pursue it, snubbed by his taciturnity. “There’s another thing you better be warned about. Omprakash has lice.”
“Really?” he asked interestedly. “You’ve seen them?”
“Do I put my hand in the fire to check if it’s hot? All day long he scratches. And not just his head. Problems at both ends — worms at one, lice at the other. So take my advice, stay away if you know what’s good for you. His uncle is safe, he’s almost bald, but you have a nice thick thatch, the lice will love it.”
Dina’s advice went unheeded. As the days turned to weeks, the afternoon break at the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel became a regular affair for the three. Once, Maneck was delayed in returning from college, and Om whispered to Ishvar that they should wait for him.
“My, my,” said Dina, overhearing. “Postponing your tea. Are you feeling well? Are you sure you will survive that long?”
Ishvar reflected upon why it annoyed Dinabai so much, their going off together. When Maneck arrived and Om leapt up from his Singer, he decided to stay behind. “You boys go, I want to finish this skirt.”
Dina was all praise for him. “Listen to your uncle, learn from his example,” she said to Om as the two left. She poured Maneck’s tea into the segregated pink roses cup and brought it to Ishvar. “You might as well drink it.”
He thanked her for her trouble. He took a sip and remarked that Maneck and Om were getting on well, enjoying each other’s company. “They are both the same age. Om must be fed up being with his old uncle all the time. Night and day we are together.”
“Nonsense.” She said that in her opinion, if it weren’t for the uncle’s steadying presence, Om would turn into a wastrel. “I only hope he is not a poor influence on Maneck.”
“No no, don’t worry. Om is not a bad boy. If sometimes he is disobedient or bad-tempered, it’s only because he is frustrated and unhappy. He has had a very unfortunate life.”
“Mine has not been easy either. But we must make the best of what we have.”
“There is no other way,” he agreed.
From that day, he stayed behind more and more while Dina continued to make tea in Maneck’s name but poured it in Ishvar’s cup. They chatted about matters both tailoring and non-tailoring. His half-smile of gratitude was always something she looked forward to, with the frozen half straining to catch up as his face beamed at the pink roses along the rim of the saucer.
“Om’s sewing is improving, hahn, Dinabai?”
“He makes fewer mistakes.”
“Yes yes. He is much happier since Maneck came.”
“I am worried about Maneck, though. I hope he is studying properly — his parents are relying on it. They have a small shop, and it’s not doing well.”
“Everybody has troubles. Don’t worry, I will talk to him, remind him to work hard. That’s what these two young fellows have to do, work hard.”
Ishvar noted that the tea breaks upset Dinabai no more. It confirmed his suspicion, that she was longing for company.
The boys’ conversation inevitably took a different turn when they were on their own. Om was curious about the hostel Maneck had abandoned. “Were there any college girls living there?”
“You think I would leave if there were? They have a separate hostel. Boys are not allowed inside.”
From the Vishram they could see a cinema advertisement on a roof across the road, for a film called Revolver Rani. The billboard was a diptych. The first panel showed four men tearing off a woman’s clothes. An enormous bra-clad bosom was exposed, while the men’s lips, parted in lewd laughter, revealed carnivorous teeth and bright-red tongues. The second panel depicted the same woman, her clothes in tatters, mowing down the four men with automatic gunfire.
“Why is it called Revolver Rani?” said Om. “That’s a machine-gun in her hands.”
“They could have called it Machine-Gun Maharani. But that doesn’t sound as good.”
“Should be fun to see it.”
“Let’s go next week.”
“No money. Ishvar says we must save.”