NOON (Chapter 1)Last Rites (1989) ''We passionately long for there to be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years, we are unfaithful to what we once were, to what we wished to remain immortally.'' Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust The dressing table was the first thing she had bought herself since Sahil. It had attracted her, with its tiny bulbs, gilt and mirrors, from the pages of a foreign magazine. She decided at length to take the magazine down to the colony market and have the dressing table copied. Rati Ram, the carpenter, inspected it, seemed to translate its charms into an Indian reality, then agreed to reproduce it for a few hundred rupees. When he returned a few days later with his replica, thickly coated in gold paint, and decorated with fat full-sized bulbs and crudely cut strips of mirror, its arrival caused tension in the little house with the gardenia tree. ''Phansy shmansy,'' her mother sniffed, as the men brought it in.
''Give me a break, Mama. You know very well I haven''t so much as bought myself a salwar since I moved here. And it''s not as if you''re paying for it.'' ''Who''s saying I am! But let me remind you, I pay for other things. And they cost me an arm and a leg. Not that I''m not happy to do it. But I won''t have you getting on your high horse.'' ''Would you like me to thank you for it again? "Thank you, Mama, for paying Rehan''s fees; I am eternally grateful and so is he.
" Happy?'' ''Don''t take that tone with me. He''s my grandson. I''ll give him what I like. I don''t need you to thank me.'' Rehan looked into the house from the veranda, where moments before he had been servicing his gods, cleaning the idols, putting fresh marigolds in their tray. When he heard the raised voices, he slipped behind the cooler. Through its grey slats, the two women appeared to him as mute shadows, their voices drowned out by the whirr of the cooler''s fan and the slurping of its pipes. He saw his mother pace and bring her palms together in frustration.
His grandmother, in reply, threw up her arms and rushed out of the room, leaving Udaya alone. Rehan''s gaze was diverted by drops of water growing fat along the cooler''s soaked matting. They swelled, their bellies striped by the blaze. Then they fell fast and soundless to the few inches of dark water below. The room now was empty and a batch of fresh drops sprouted on the matting. Rehan returned to his gods. Udaya had brought him to her mother''s house as a temporary step after Sahil. It had been impossible, once that relationship ended, to stay on in London.
Not without Sahil. Who, after moving them out of his flat on Flood Street, became difficult and unreachable. He had always travelled a lot, between La Mirage, Dubai and London, and in the end, like an airline reducing its flights to a destination, he had come to London less and less. It had always only been an ''arrangement'' forged fast when she became pregnant with Rehan. She had hung on to the hope that it would deepen. But after a last holiday in Kathmandu, to which Sahil brought along two children he claimed were his nephew and niece, the calls and visits came to an end. Love was one reason she hung on in London; pride another. After the scandal of her relationship, she found it difficult to face her mother with the news that it was over, not three years after it had begun.
She found work as a freelance lawyer, but made only enough to pay the rent on the north London bedsit they had moved into. Then, several years after her last conversation with Sahil, she ran into an uncle, visiting from Delhi. It was a bleak moment; she had been forced to sell some jewellery the day before; in her weakness, she confessed everything. He convinced her to let him prepare the ground with her mother and a few weeks later Udaya returned, with Rehan, to rebuild her life in the city she had left some years before, trusting completely to passion. It had made sense at first to stay with her mother. But no sooner had she arrived than the fights began. And, as with those of her childhood, they seemed never to be about what they were ostensibly about. If then the issue of cutting her hair or smoking or marriage had become an expression of some deeper tension between them, so, now too, seemingly innocuous things, such as the cleanliness of the kitchen, the trouble in Punjab and Rehan''s upbringing became laden with their old animus.
The difference was that they were not alone. Rehan, every day more aware, was there among them; and she was determined to save him the scenes. It had been fight enough to convince her mother to let Rehan feed himself. Udaya had a secret terror that her mother, well-intentioned as it might be, would instil in him, through that special brand of Indian compassion that debilitates when it means to commiserate, a feeling of want or misfortune. Rehan had given no indication of ever being aware of Sahil''s absence; and though she had given him his father''s name and even an explanation of a kind - Sometimes, just as you fight with your friends, grown-ups fight too - he had never seemed interested in knowing more. It made her happy to think of him as unscathed by their separation. No, if she was to protect Rehan, she must find her own place, and quickly. She had already begun making enquiries.
From where he lay on the bed, Rehan could see just his mother''s back, her long straight hair and a few inches of flesh trapped between her petticoat and blouse. She sat before the new dressing table, opening her mouth wide for lipstick, smacking her lips closed on a tissue and reaching for tweezers to remove stray hairs. ''Where are you going for dinner?'' Rehan asked. ''It''s a work dinner, baba. A client.'' ''What''s his name?'' ''Amit, Amit Sethia.'' ''What does he do?'' ''He''s an industrialist.'' ''What''s an industrialist?'' ''Someone with industries.
Coal, steel etc.'' ''Is he rich?'' ''Yes, baba,'' Udaya said, closing one eye over a silver stick lined with kohl. ''Ma,'' Rehan said abruptly, ''why do you hate Nani?'' His mother blinked rapidly, half-turning around. An expression of withheld amusement and a threat to come clean played on her face. ''Rehan! What have you heard?'' ''Nothing, Ma, really. I swear. I was just curious.'' ''Why are you suddenly asking me if I hate your grandmother?'' ''You both fight a lot so I was just wondering.
'' Turning back to the mirror, but watching him closely with one kohled eye, she said, ''Well, it''s not that I hate Nani, it''s just that there comes a point in everyone''s life when they stop seeing their mother or father as just their mother and father but as people. And sometimes you like those people for who they are, and sometimes you find, well, that you don''t have much in common with them. Nani and I, for instance, have never had much in common. She didn''t understand me; I couldn''t understand her. We were miles apart. She believed in God and couldn''t believe she''d produced a daughter who didn''t. I couldn''t believe she believed in a God who cared how long your hair was. I mean was this God a hairdresser?'' Rehan laughed loudly.
He didn''t mind her insulting her own Sikh god as long as she didn''t begin on the Hindu ones, for which he had acquired an unlikely obsession since his arrival in India. ''She read Mills and Boons,'' his mother continued, ''I didn''t. She was forever concerned about respectability; I couldn''t care less. When your aunt got married, she told me, "Now, it''s too late for you. I''ve told your father to put some money aside, and bas, try and best make do." I was twenty-five! No, she was horrible!'' Udaya, now nearly fully made up, smiled as she spoke and it seemed to drain her words of ill feeling. Rehan adored his grandmother, and it was unsettling that his mother, whose voice was like the voice of truth, could feel differently. He hated to be at odds with her.
But whenever he tried to bring her around to his way of thinking, she would irritate him by taking an agree-to-disagree tone. ''I love Nani!'' he said provocatively. ''And when her ship comes in, she''s going to buy me Castle Grayskull for my gods to live in.'' ''So you must,'' his mother replied, reflecting on whether Rehan had been told what his grandmother''s ship coming in would mean. ''She''s been wonderful to you.'' ''Stop talking in that fake voice!'' Rehan yelled. His mother smiled and turned her full attention to putting on her sari. She chose a handbag and, carefully, the things that went in it - all of which angered Rehan so much that he stormed out.
Summer power cuts and fluctuations had begun and the light in the corridor was dim. The disc-shaped ceiling light, high above like a white Frisbee, grew fainter and fainter, till its milky glass barely sustained a glow. Then like a small angry sun burning away a thick bank of clouds, it flared, sending Rehan fleeing down the stairs that separated his grandmother''s section of the house from his mother''s. Below, where the surge had ended and the light was dull and dusty again, servants were setting the table, lighting the odd white candle. Rehan slipped past his grandmother''s room in the hope of beginning his favourite mythical movie, The Marriage of Shiva and Parvati, before dinner. He had only been watching a few minutes when he heard his grandmother call him. ''No, no, Nani, please. Not now, just come here and see where we are.
'' She wandered in a second later, wearing a loose, faded salwar kameez. Her greying hair was in a thin plait and when she sat down nex.