All during the train ride, Karun kept rhapsodizing about her sweetness, her empathy, her gracious fortitude through the years of hardship she had endured. With the stories he’d related already, I expected someone with a halo over her head—a combination of Mother India and the holy Mary, who could whip up a killer curry to boot. She did, in fact, look ethereal when I first glimpsed her at the door—sunlight shining off her white sari and sluicing down her cascade of silver hair—a queen mother from a fairy tale.
Except she turned out to be more witch than fairy. “Karun’s told me so much about you—this spell you’ve cast on him. One day I’ll have to come and see for myself why you’re so special as a roommate.”
“It’s the flat that’s special, not me—since we’re so close to Karun’s college.”
“Surely not closer than the campus hostel? But I suppose if he moved you’d have to pay the full rent yourself.”
She had prepared the garlic mutton Karun always mentioned so reverentially. To me, it tasted quite acrid, with alarming chunks of gristle left in, to stretch the meat, perhaps. “Karun tells me you’re hoping to save money for your wedding. Who’s the lucky girl?”
“I haven’t found one yet, not exactly.”
“No girl? Aren’t your parents looking for one?”
“I’m just not in any hurry.”
“Why not? You’ve already got a job, so this is the time to settle down. Don’t wait too long—you know how people can talk. I keep telling Karun even he should marry, but perhaps he’s too taken by your example. Who better than a wife to look after him while he’s slaving over his physics? All the time he wastes on shopping and cleaning, not to mention these kitchen experiments with you every night. Besides, I’m fifty-five already—it’s time to give me a grandchild.”
She asked the obligatory questions about job and parents, being careful to display only polite surprise at my being Muslim. (“I didn’t realize Jaz stood for Ijaz—Karun’s never used your full name.”) Instead, she used her inquiries to peck away at the central riddle of why I was in Delhi, living with her son. “Didn’t your mother try to stop you when you chose to move so far away? Surely there are better jobs for you in Bombay with all the financial centers there?”
“I needed the change.”
“That’s the same thing Karun said when he applied for his Bombay scholarship. I’m not sure why everyone wants change so much—each time my life has changed, it’s been for the worse.”
After lunch, she carefully unfolded two ten-rupee notes from a tiny purse. “Why don’t you go get some jalebis from the sweet monger? It’s three, so they should be really fresh.” I rose to accompany Karun, but she waved me back to the sofa. “Not you, you’re the guest.”
Unsure what Kali incarnation she planned to metamorphose into once Karun left, I scrambled to turn on the Jazter charm before she could produce a phalanx of extra arms or a garland of severed heads. “He’s very smart, your son. You must be so proud of him.” A bit lame, but I couldn’t muster any other compliment.
It was enough. The smile frozen on her lips since my arrival finally broke through to her eyes and lit up her face. “He topped his class every year in school right from the eighth standard. Studying so hard every night that I’d have to insist he put away his books and go to bed. I have all his report cards saved in his old attaché case.”
She told me how they collected one-rupee coins in empty jam jars for him to spend. “Except he always bought books, so one day, I decided to empty all the bottles and get him something fun—a game, perhaps. You should have seen his face when I told him what I’d done—I don’t think I ever saw him so furious.” She laughed. “But he ended up loving my purchase—a small telescope, not much more than a toy really, since that’s all the money I had. He would set it up by that window and study the stars through it every night.” She gazed towards the corner of the room as if Karun still stood there peering through his telescope, and for an instant, I could picture him as well.
“Did you know his father passed when he was eleven?”
“Yes, Karun told me how much you’ve done for him ever since.”
“No more than any other mother would have. But with just the two of us left instead of three, I had to keep every fiber in my body attuned towards his success. I’d always known he was a bit of a dreamer, prone to get lost in thought, unsure of what he wanted for himself. Channeling him into science was easy—his father had already laid the groundwork for that. The books, too, he’d always liked—I taught him to bury all his grief in them. It tore my heart to see him so lonely, but I told myself it would pay off in future happiness. Even that day in the toy store, when I went to buy something purely for fun—the telescope, I couldn’t help thinking, might be more profitable, lead to a possible career interest.”
“You were just doing what was best for him.”
“That’s what I thought. Except if I’d encouraged him to make some friends, to go to movies or play cricket, he’d have suffered from his father’s absence less. He’d be less inclined to take the wrong path to cure his aloneness. Less vulnerable to having his head turned, to fall under anyone’s spell.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean.”
She fixed me in her stare, the clarity in her eyes breathtaking. “What I’m trying to say is that Karun is my son, the focal point in my life—I understand him better than he understands himself. He’d find it difficult to hide even a sneeze from me—anything going on in his life, I can tell. I know exactly what will make him fulfilled, who will bring him misery and nothing else. I can look into people’s faces and recognize their natures much better than he can—I’m prepared to do anything in my power to keep him safe from harmful influences. His happiness is sacred to me—I’ve worked too long and hard to let him just throw it away like that.”
Whole minutes seemed to elapse before she released me from her gaze. “I’ll make some teas for the jalebis,” she finally said.
“I THINK SHE KNOWS about us,” I told Karun on the train back. “I think that’s why she probably doesn’t like me very much.”
“That’s absurd. If she did know, she’d like you more, not less. I’m thinking of telling her anyway.” Seeing my stunned expression, he retreated. “It’s only a thought.”
But he did disclose things to her, on a visit some months later. I could tell by his disheveled hair, his wild-eyed look, when he returned. “She didn’t take it as well as I thought. She wants me to marry—she reminded me of everything she’s done and said it’s the only thing she asks in return. She thinks you’re a bad influence, not so much because of your community or religion, but the foreign ideas you’ve brought back from living abroad. Ideas against our culture, she says—she demands I move out at once.”
That night, Karun didn’t want to have sex, but I insisted. I wanted to remind him why he stayed with me, to head off any notion he might form of leaving. At first, he simply spread his legs and stared into his pillow as I explored him with my tongue. He offered no resistance or reaction when I wrapped him in my arms and began to enter him. As my thrusts increased, he tried to shake loose, but I held him in place. He arched his neck back, crying out and curling his fingers into fists as we simultaneously came.
Cuddling him to my neck the way he liked afterwards, I asked him if he’d do what his mother wanted. “Don’t worry. I just have to make her understand that this is the way it is.” He said it defiantly, as if affirming it more to himself. “Besides, I’m no longer eligible for the hostel, and it’s not like I can afford my own place.”