The Begum Khan has a reputation as a hard, opinionated woman, with too much learning and too few manners. Muslim traits; but that’s not the sort of thing you mention in company. But she is a voice men listen to, in her articles and radio pieces and talks. And there are strange rumours about her quiet, busy little husband.
“Seems we’re dammed if we do and damned if we don’t,” Mts. Sharma puns in English. The ladies smile and the cricket ground rustles to applause as Bharat hit a boundary. A sport of gentle, distant sounds, cricket; muted handclaps, a click of ball on bat, muffled voices. The umpire lowers his finger, the scoreboard flips over, the ladies turn back to the sky. The confrontation is ended, the contrails blowing ragged on a high wind from the southeast, the monsoon wind. The shy Mrs. Sood wonders who won.
“Why, our side, of course,” says Mrs. Chopra, but Parvati can see that Begum Khan is not so sure. Parvati Nandha shades herself with her parasol from the sun that edges under the canopy. It doubles as sunscreen for her palmer on which scores and Test statistics flash up, beamed diagonally across the pitch, through the umpires and the outfield and the infield and the wicket keeper and the batsman and the bowler, from Krishan, down on the boundary line in the day-ticket stands.
The English bowler winds up. TREVELYAN, says the palmer. SOMERSET. PACE. 16TH
CAP FOR ENGLAND. CLEAN BOWLED SIX SRI LANKAN WICKETS IN THE SECOND TEST IN COLOMBO. 2046 SEASON.
The batsman steps forward, bat hold out in front like a narrow shield. He bears the ball down, his counterpart at the far wicket tenses. No. The ball runs a little way before a fielder (SQUARE SHORT LEG, says the palmer) scoops it up, looks around, sees no one vulnerable out on the wicket, lobs it back to the bowler.
LAST BALL OF OVER, Krishan palms.
“Their square short leg was fight on top of that one,” Parvati says. The ladies halt in their talk of state, mildly perturbed. But once again she feels outbatted, a Deep Fine Leg watching the ball scurry towards the boundary. She has tried so hard, learned the language and the rules and still they are beyond her; the war, government strategy, the Ranas, international power politics. She persists: “Husainy’s up next, he’ll take Trevelyan’s pace delivery like it’s being served to him on a thali.”
Her words are less than the jet contrails evaporating in the yellow air above Sampurnanand Stadium. Parvati flips up zoom on her palmer, scans the ranked faces across the pitch. She thumbs WHERE ARE YOU? A message comes back: TO RIGHT OF SIGHT SCREENS. THE BIG WHITE THINGS. She swings her screen over the brown, sweating faces. There. Waving smally, so as not to disturb the players. That would not be cricket.
She can see him. He cannot see her. Fine features, naturally pale skin darkened by his work in the sun on the roof of Diljit Rana Apartments. Clean-shaven; it is only when she contrasts Krishan with the exuberance of moustaches around him that Parvati realises that has always been an important thing for her in a man. Nandha is a shaving man, too. Hair lightly oiled, springing from its chemical confinement, spilling over his forehead. Teeth, when he shouts in delight at some male pleasure from the rules, good and even and present. His shirt is clean and white and fresh, his trousers, as she notices when he stands up to applaud a good two runs, are simple and well ironed. Parvati feels no shame at watching Krishan anonymously. The first lesson she learned from the women of Kotkhai was that men are their most true and most beautiful when they are least conscious of themselves.
A crack of willow. The crowd surges to its feet. A boundary. The scoreboard clicks over. The Begum Khan is saying now that the Ranas have made N. K. Jivanjee look quite the fool since the Awadhi incursion sent him and his silly rath yatra flying back to Allahabad like Ravana fleeing to Lanka.
I SPY YOU, whispers the palmer. The screen shows her Krishan’s smiling face. She tilts her parasol in unobtrusive greeting. Behind her the ladies have fallen to chatter of the Dawar’s party and why Shaheen Badoor Khan had not stayed for the entertainment. Begum Khan pleads that he is a very busy man, doubly so in this time of Bhatat’s need. Parvati hears the hooks in their voices. She turns to the game. Now that Krishan has opened up cricket’s mysteries, she can see that there is much subtlety and wit in it. A Test Match is not so different from Town and Country.
MAZUMDAR WILL TAKE JARDINE, Krishan messages. Jardine walks lazily back from the crease, examining the ball, working at it with his thumb, polishing it. He lines up. The fielders tighten up in their strangely titled positions. Mazumdar, two stripes of anti-dazzle cream beneath his eyes like a tiger’s stripes, prepares to receive the delivery. Jardine bowls. The ball bounces, hits a scuff in the grass, bounces high, bounces sweet. Everyone in Sampurnanand Stadium can see how high, how sweet; can see Mazumdar judge it, weight it, shift his position, bring his bat back, get underneath it, send it soaring up, out into the yellow sky. It is a magnificent stroke, a daring stroke, a brilliant stroke. The crowd roars. A six! A six! It must be. All the gods demand it. Fielders run, eyes on heaven. None will ever catch it. This ball is going up, up, out.
Keep your eye on the ball, Krishan had told Parvati when it was spades and apricots on the roof garden. Parvati Nandha keeps her eye on the ball as it reaches the top of its arc and gravity overcomes velocity and if falls to earth, towards the crowd, a red bindi, a red eye, a red sun. An aerial assault. A missile from Krishan, seeking out the heart. The ball falls and the spectators rise but none before Parvati. She surges up and the ball drops into her upheld right hand. She cries out at the sting, then yells “Jai Bharat!” mad on the moment. The crowd cheers, she is marooned in sound. “Jai Bharat!” The noise redoubles. Then, as Krishan showed her, she hooks back her sari and flings the ball out across the boundary. An English fielder catches it, nods a salute, and skims it to the bowler. But it is six, six, glorious six to Mazumdat and Bharat. I kept my eye on the ball. I kept my hand soft, moved with it. She turns to show off her pride and achievement to her ladies and finds their faces rigid with contempt.
Parvati only allows herself to stop when she is outside the ground but even then she can still hear the muttering and feel the burn of shame on her face. A fool a fool a country fool, carried away with the mob, getting up and making an exhibition of herself like someone with no manners, no class at all. She had shown them up. Look at the Cantonment lady who throws the ball like a man! Jai Bharat!
Her palmer has been vibrating, message after message after message. She does not want to see them. She does not want even to look back for fear he might have come after her. She heads across the landscaped area to the road. Taxis. There must be taxis, any time on a match day. She stands by the cracked roadside, parasol raised as the phatphats and city cabs slide past. Where are you going who are you driving this time of day? Can’t you see a lady is hailing you?
Hope-to-be lady. Never-was lady. Never-can-be lady.
A moped cab swings through the traffic to the curb. The driver is a buck-toothed youth with a straggle of down for a moustache.
“Parvati!” The voice is behind her. This is worse than death. She climbs into the back and the driver accelerates away, past the startled, staring figure in the pressed black trousers and the sharply ironed pure white shirt. Returning to the empty apartment, shaking with shame and wanting to die, Parvati finds the doors unlocked and her mother with her travelling baggage encamped in the kitchen.