Day three after their arrival in Delhi Shobha began calling Chandakant ‘Chandu’ while he continued calling Shobha Shobha. Chandrakant began to get a little worried watching Shobha buy so much stuff, but she just scooped her hand into the flowered purse and said, ‘Don’t worry, Chandu! No worries at all! I hit the big one with Ramakant and inspector and contractor’s cash.’
It was a Monday, when the bazaar at Vijaynagar was closed and Chandrakant had the day off.
He stretched out on the ground in the little room and began listening to the radio. Oh don’t shake down the apples from my tree! A little thorn will break the skin in a flash! Every once in awhile he joined in. As he sang along, Shobha’s voice rang in from outside, ‘Nice voice, Chandu, it’s like you’re Kishore Kumar singing along with Lata Mangeshkar! Today’s a singing kind of day!’
Chandrakant gazed outside, transfixed. Shobha was sitting next to the tap on the ‘balcony’ bathing, rubbing the soles of her feet with a little pumice stone, her sari bunched up to her thighs. As she poured water over her head with the red plastic mug, it was as if her sari was dissolving in the water, the sari turning to liquid and washing over her skin in glistening colours, clinging tightly to her body, revealing more and more of her wet form.
Chandrakant felt a lump in his throat, his voice began to crack, and so he stopped singing along with the radio and started staring at Shobha. His gaze must have burned into her backside; she turned around suddenly. ‘What happened, Mr. Mohammed Rafi crooner man?’ she teased. ‘Lose your voice? Cat got your tongue, Chandu? Feeling shy?’
He didn’t say a word, but just kept staring. Lather ran down her face, little white soap bubbles popped on her closed eyelids, she couldn’t see a thing. This was the first time Chandrakant could observe her the way he wanted for as long as he wanted to. Beneath the folds of her sari, she lathered her chest, bar of soap in hand.
Chandrakant realised for the first time how huge her eyes were, just like the actress Hema Malini’s, but bigger, even bigger.
They had been living together in the half flat for ten days, and he had known her even longer, from before, in Sarani, but he had never really looked at her body and her eyes as he did now. Chandrakant felt embarrassed for having spent so much time with Shobha — for having lived so long — without ever having been as close as he was now to the kind of body and shape of eyes that this girl had.
And how this girl looked though the soap lather that glittered like dewdrops, how it took his breath away, this was a new sensation.
Shobha stood up in her dripping wet sari and began drying her hair with a towel.
The magnetic field that originated from the water tap and enveloped him was also something new. It was like a zap from inside inducing him toward her with full force. His mind was in a bad way. He could see only colours swimming in front of his eyes, like the soap bubbles that floated in the air.
He walked up behind Shobha and clasped her around the waist, then lifted her back into the half flat, the ten-by-seven ‘room’ that, for the moment, was the Delhi home of these two winged creatures.
Shobha said nothing. She was still wet; her hair too, eyes closed, face flushed with a flame that slowly let its heat seep over her body, and into her blood, until heat rose from her skin and met Chandrakant’s lips. Not a drop of dew escaped his waiting mouth while hands explored every place on Shobha’s body, tracing her wet skin.
The little mat on the floor beside the trunk, in the cramped half flat, was wringing wet. And atop that wet rug Chandu and Shobha seized one another as if at the epicentre of a consuming blaze. Soap bubbles of all hues seeped through the room, while outside on the balcony it wasn’t water that gushed from the tap and noisily filled the bucket, but a rainbow of colour.
Shobha felt as if she was sinking into a deep dream on a magic carpet, not just lying on a rug. Her wet sari lay to the side, while atop her body was a blushing nineteen-year-old boy, smiling nervously, rather than the old, savage inspector, or contractor, or the husband she had been made to marry. That night in Sarani, she had grabbed hold of the edge of the rope that sprang from the smile of the boy born while eating her homemade curry and roti. And now it looked as if she might make it out alive.
It was as if the mouth of nineteen-year-old Chandrakant, whom she had begun to call Chandu, was still stuffed with the bits of her food, hungry and blushing as he smiled. Overcome with love for Shobha, he gathered her tangled hair in his hands and kissed her feverishly.
After that Monday, some thirty years ago, and a mere ten days after the two of them had moved to their half flat at E-3/1, bylane number seven, Jahangirpuri, Shobha had begun referring to the covering on the floor as the carpet rather than a rug. She hummed while she worked, and after Chandrakant left for work in Vijaynagar, she sang duets with Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle on the radio.
Shobha prepared food for the two of them, peeled and chopped and sliced the vegetables, did their laundry, took naps, while Chandrakant swept her up and onto the magic carpet where the two of them would make love in a blaze of heat. Like this, years passed, Shobha grew plump, Chandrakant’s hair thinned and turned grey, both of them sometimes fell ill, then got better, all the while and for thirty years playing the nonstop game of fanning the flames atop their magic carpet.
Shobha got pregnant seven times. She registered with the government hospital in Aadarsh Nagar, stitched and sewed clothes and booties and a bed for the baby, and ate and drank with great precaution. But either she miscarried, or the baby succumbed to an illness a few months after birth — each and every time. Chandrakant and Shobha were devastated. They decided that the mosquitoes and bacteria from the sewage gutter in front of their house had infected the babies with some illness; a thick, damp, and often strong stench came through their windows from the gutter. During the monsoon season, earthworms, centipedes, millipedes, snails, and frogs would crawl or hop from the gutter into their flat. One time when Shobha and Chandrakant were deep in the middle of playing their favourite game on the magic carpet, Shobha screamed when she saw a baby snake slithering on the ground off to her left. Another time it was a boa constrictor that sprang out from behind a box. Things got even worst during the rainy season — spiders were everywhere.
Both of them wished to move somewhere else, somewhere clean and tidy. But as time went on, rents began to soar. Chandrakant had always been on the lookout for another job or additional income, but nothing ever materialised. His boss at the shop, Gulshan Arora, was a good man, and no other shopkeeper would have paid a better salary. Over the thirty years, Arora had become an elderly seventy-year-old. Both his daughters had been married off, and he had one son who ran a small travel agency in Paharganj. Father and son didn’t get along, and the son didn’t care about the father’s shop. The son, too, was already married, and had for the past several years waited for his father to die so he could sell the Kwality Departmental Stores. Gulshan Arora seemed to have an inkling of his son’s wishes: time and again after a serious illness he returned from the brink of death, as if to dash his son’s hopes. Gulshan Arora placed great faith in Chandrakant, since he didn’t have any other option. The store limped along, but Arora still had to pay expenses.