Later, when Jehangir returned, Mother said during dinner that he should not be seeing so much of the girl. “This is not the time for going out with girls anyway. The proper time will come after finishing college, when you are earning your own living and can afford it.” In the meantime, if he did go out occasionally after asking for permission, he would have to continue to be home by eight o’clock. It would not do to stay out later than that and let things get too serious.
Jehangir said that he would be home by eight if she did not wear that mathoobanoo.
“I am not going to tolerate your ifs-bifs,” said Mrs. Bulsara, covering her hurt with brusqueness, “what I am saying is for your own good.” It was obvious, she said, that the girl came from a family better off than they were, her life-style would make him uncomfortable. “Trust a mother’s instinct. It is only your happiness I think of. Besides, she is the first girl you have gone out with, you might meet someone you like more. Then what?”
“Then I’ll stop going out with her.”
“But what of her feelings? You might be giving her serious hopes.”
“No one has any serious hopes. It’s so silly, all these objections.”
“It is always a serious matter where a girl is involved. You will not understand that at your age.”
Dinner finished without any real unpleasantry. But not for many nights after that. The dinner-table talk grew sharper as days passed. At first, words were chosen carefully in an effort to preserve a semblance of democratic discussion. Soon, however, the tensions outgrew all such efforts, and a nightly routine of debilitating sarcasm established itself. Every dinner saw the same denunciations brought forth, sometimes with a new barb twisted through them.
“There’s something about the way she talks. Without proper respect.”
“Saw what she was wearing? Such a short skirt. And too much makeup.”
“Because you are going out with her you think electricity is free of charge? Ironing shirt and pant from morning till evening.” The ancient dented serving-spoon, descended through hands of foremothers, struck the pot of brinjal with a plangency denoting more to come.
“Why must a girl wear so much makeup unless she is hiding something underneath.”
“Shines his shoes till I can see my unhappy face. More shoe polish has been used after meeting her than in all the years before.”
“If she does not respect your parents, how will she respect you? Your whole life will be unhappy.”
Father said only one thing. “Trust your mother’s instincts. I always do, they are never wrong.”
Things rapidly became worse. Not a day passed without quarrelling. They said things to each other which they would not have dreamt of saying at one time; bitter, vindictive things. Every few days there was a reconciliation at Father’s insistence, with sincere hugs and tears of remorse which sprang from the depths of their beings, so fervent was the desire to let peace and understanding reign again. But this would last for a short time only. The strange new emotions and forces which had taken hold, indecipherable and inscrutable, would soon be manifest again; then the quarrels and hurtful words would resume.
After the first few visits Jehangir did not bring her home any more. Besides, she always refused to come under some pretext — she had felt the antagonism that silently burgeoned on her arrival. There was no outward sign of it, on the surface all was decorum and grace, welcome and kindness. But to sense what lay underneath did not take much. She also picked up the unintentional hints he dropped during those evenings when they met after an excessively trying time at home. Then she would try to help him, and before they parted he would agree to stand up to his parents, become independent, and many more promises.
But the promises were always smothered by a fresh wave of reproaches awaiting him at home. If he managed to speak in the spirit of autonomy that she had inspired in him earlier in the evening, it still turned out unfavourably.
“See?” Mother would say with mournful satisfaction, “see how it proves my point that she is a bad influence? He goes to her and returns with such cruel words in his mouth. And who put them there, that is all I am asking. Because such words were not there before. Now I must start all over again to remove her effect on him. Then he will be more like the son I once knew. But how long can I go on like this, how long?” she would conclude dolefully, whereupon Jehangir abandoned the balance of his painstakingly prepared words.
He looked at his parents now, supporting each other as they slept through heat and dust. The photograph was in his wallet. They had told him to bring it along. He had taken it with her camera during the college picnic at Elephanta Caves. She later gave him a copy. It was a black-and-white, and as he gazed at it he could feel the soft brown of her eyes drawing him in, ready to do her will. The will of my enchantress, he liked to imagine.
Mother had taken to going through his trousers and wallet. He was aware of these secret searches but had said nothing, not wanting to add to her sorrow and to the bitterness that filled the house.
The day after he received the photograph, she triumphantly found it: “What is this, why must you carry her photo with you?”
“What right did you have to look in my wallet?”
“What right? What right, he says! To his own mother he says what right! A mother does not need any rights. A mother exercises her judgement out of love. A mother does whatever she knows is right for her son.”
The photograph was brought up constantly for days after, and with each passing day the rhetoric grew increasingly forceful and wildly inventive.
“It is not enough to see her makeup-covered face in the evening. He must also keep her photograph.”
“People have been made to go crazy by a photo with a magic spell on it. Maybe her parents are involved in this, trying to snare my son for their daughter.”
“She knows you will go to study in America one day and settle there. By thrusting her photo on you she is making sure you will sponsor her. Oh yes, it begins with a photograph.”
“Be careful you don’t forget your own mother’s face, you don’t have much time to see it these days.”
And always, the eight o’clock ultimatum: “Remember, the door will never open for you after eight o’clock.”
In the end Mother was glad to have the photograph. “One good thing she did by giving it to you. Now we have something to show Bhagwan Baba.”
The train braked in preparation for the approaching station. A kayrawalli climbed aboard to flop upon the floor with her basket of plantains. She mopped her brow with one corner of her sari, rubbed her eyes, and sat with drawn-up knees after administering a good scratching in some region under the sari-folds. Any minute now she’ll start badgering the passengers to buy her plantains, thought Jehangir. But she sat where she was, enervated, with no inclination to acquire business. Perhaps she did not dare to wake the slumbering people. In school they used to say that for a quarter rupee a kayrawalli would lift her sari and flash for you. For a rupee she would even perform with a plantain. He wondered if it was true.
The glass bangles on her wrists tinkled as the train swayed along and she fell asleep. The plantains in her basket looked bruised and battered, beginning to show black patches because of the heat. They would have to be thrown away if they remained unsold. Granny had a saying about eating them: a plantain in the morning turns to gold in the stomach and a plantain at noon is silver, a plantain in the evening turns to brass in the belly, but a plantain at night is iron in the gut.