Ash and Smoke (short story) - Part 1

“… the pattern of their marriage was so set that it needed no comment or deliberation. They were what they were: a couple decoupled from inception.“

Some things needed replenishment, and in any case Madhu wanted to go to the city for a while. She was in the inner bedroom, getting ready, when on a whim she shouted to ask Varun if he wanted to come along. The boy was glued to the Playstation in the drawing room and made no sound. Madhu tapped her hair clips before the dressing table, checked for cash and car keys in her handbag, and tugged at the sleeves of her kurta. It was to her surprise, really, when Varun shouted, ‘Yes, I’ll come,’ a whole minute after she had asked. She realised she didn’t actually want his company. Today, a Sunday, was the only day in the week when she was free of him, when she didn’t have to peek in his room at intervals to ensure he was attending his classes.

She opened the heavy front gates fully, then reversed the Micra from the shed in the raised front yard, taking it down the cemented ramp and parking it parallel to their boundary wall. This little operation reminded her of Sanjay’s message from three days back: Car servicing, past due. She made a mental note to get it done, or to at least reply saying she had.

The car was a Diwali surprise last year. A happy surprise, though she would have liked her husband’s smile to reach his eyes when he handed her the keys, or when, the next day, he gave her the money for driving classes inside a yellow envelope. It took her only four weeks of practice to be good enough for Muzaffarnagar roads. And the instructor—a gaunt man who went by Harfu, from the taxi service she occasionally used to visit her brother, a professor in IIT Roorkee—was employed for only the first half of that period. She had used the saved money to buy a chic envelope bag and an oyster-pink chikan kurta. She was wearing the kurta now, over a white pencil salwar—an ensemble that she was sure distinguished her in Muzaffarnagar. The bag she had lodged beside the handbrake.

There was a gearless scooter in the shed, too. She drove it sparingly now. Her main task with it was to resist her son’s pleas. Sanjay had ordained that the scooter couldn't be in Varun’s hands till he was fifteen. ‘December this year, promise,’ she would say to her son. But that was still a few months away, and the boy tried his luck with her now and then. 

‘Come quick, where are you?’ she yelled from the main gate. Mask on, eyes buried in his phone screen, Varun dragged his feet out into the front yard. He handed her a crisp new mask and walked past her to stand beside the car. She had assumed he would have the good sense to lock the house door too. He didn’t. She crossed the front yard to do that now. While walking back to the main gate she glanced at the potted plants along the side wall and sighed; she had again forgotten to water them this morning.

There was that ghastly metal-on-metal shriek as she bolted the main gate. ‘Where are mummy-beta going, all dressed up like this?’ Kusum from the house across the street asked. Madhu gave her a plastic smile before turning the key in the fat lock. 

*

The lock was as old as her marriage: sixteen years. They’d been with each other for about three of them—as per a calculation she updated twice a year. Sanjay worked at a soda ash manufacturing factory in north Gujarat, where his job was ‘too specialised’, something to do with monitoring a set of ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ processes. He liked to stress that he was irreplaceable where he worked and unemployable elsewhere. 

In the first year of their marriage, the whole family had discussed moving to Gujarat a few times, but she was pregnant before a decision could be made. Sanjay didn’t consider the factory-side residential colony ideal for raising a child. And so, either because it made perfect practical sense or because it fit unsaid expectations, Madhu ended up raising Varun with Sanjay’s parents in Muzaffarnagar. Sanjay visited often during the pregnancy and when Varun was little, at least once every three months. This lent a temporary shade to the raw fact of them living away from each other. Those early years were now a blur to Madhu. Looking back, it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly when the situation became permanent. Perhaps when Varun entered school, perhaps when he crossed kindergarten, perhaps when Sanjay’s father passed from a major heart attack, perhaps when his mother developed a nervous condition. 

Three years ago when Maaji passed away in sleep, the topic of living together did not even come up between Sanjay and her. By then, the pattern of their marriage was so set that it needed no comment or deliberation. They were what they were: a couple decoupled from inception. But a functional unit in society’s eyes, with Madhu’s ‘selfless’ role in it admired among extended families on both sides. Intimacy between husband and wife was anomalous; it brought confusion, and, conversely, often it was confusion that caused its initiation. When Madhu hugged a sobbing Sanjay the night of the day he’d given fire to Maaji, he got aroused, and then she got aroused, and then they had sex. They averted their eyes the next morning, in a weird shame that was not without its minor pleasures for Madhu. And perhaps because of this shame—although it would be silly to think it was only because of it—Sanjay got into a hyperactive mode in the ensuing days: making frequent calls, pacing around the hall, and going off on the scooter now and then. Only later did Madhu realise that he was following a plan she hadn’t known the existence of. He put his parents’ house on the market and had her sign the deed for a new one. This new bungalow was already fitted with ACs and an expensive inverter and a modular kitchen and other things of comfort. Madhu and Varun moved there within two weeks. And that was that: Sanjay’s wordless way of thanking her for the years, for taking care of his parents and his child all alone; her grand payoff. 

Could things change? Did she want a change? One morning about a fortnight back, in front of her washing machine, she had suddenly wondered if her Surf Excel used soda ash from Sanjay’s company. For an hour, as the load moved from washing to drying, she toyed with the idea of calling him and asking the question. Eventually, she didn’t. It would have been too awkward; abnormal, even. But that evening, the idea that a silly, impulsive conversation was impossible in their marriage—had always been impossible—made her feel resentful. Distance from civilisation, a busy enough job, and the manly pleasure of providing for wife and child, a pleasure that could be availed from mere bank transfers—this was Sanjay’s life. And what did she have? Old locks, detergents, an allowance that sometimes felt like a salary, and an indifferent boy who would also in three years—or four, if he’s no good—leave.

*

‘I’m going to ask Dhaka Uncle if he needs anything,’ she said to the boy. ‘You want to come do namaste?’

‘I’ll wait here,’ Varun said without looking up.

She put on her mask and walked up to the gate of the house next to theirs. For a month or so, a burst of bougainvillaea had covered one side of the main wall; it partly hid the nameplate now. 

Ek Ghar
(Late) Dr. Mohini Dhaka
Colonel (retd.) S. P. Dhaka

She decided to discipline the bougainvillaea with the big shears later in the day. The gate was open except for the small semicircular latch at the top; she turned it and went in. She liked the small porch, with its solid takht, two old rattan chairs, and a low table. It had an old-world charm; both its order and disorder were easy to the eye. Four different newspapers were splayed on the takht, two in English and two in Hindi. Some of the sheets were coming loose, so she folded the papers tightly and placed them closer to the wall as a single roll. The plants in the front yard had all been watered. The pink pipe that had done the job lay snaking over the small uneven lawn, its algae mouth drooling.

She rang the bell, knowing it could be some time before Dhaka Uncle opened the door. A drop of sweat fell from her eyebrow. Should have switched on the car AC for Varun, she thought.

There was a rustle from inside the house. Uncle opened the inner wooden door and then the screen. ‘Ma-dhu!’ he said with his usual excitement.

He was wearing an old grey T-shirt, whose rubbery front print spat tiny specks of colour after each washing, and navy blue track pants with white piping.

‘I am going to the market with Varun,’ she said. ‘You needed flour and daal. And Dettol. Anything else?’

‘People have started going to the market?’

‘It’s more relaxed now, with some rules.’

‘Right, right.’ Uncle scratched his bristly chin and turned to glance inside the house. ‘Should I come with you?’

‘You’ll come? Varun would love that,’ she lied, not knowing why.

‘I have already watered the plants, you see, and they’re just repeating the same things on the TV.’

‘Wear that check shirt,’ she said. ‘I pressed it last week.’

As Uncle went inside to change, she switched on the small porch fan and sat on the takht. She reminded herself to talk to Harender, Uncle’s middle son, soon, about the house help she was considering. Harender was the most responsive. The other two had cut her call once each, which had inflamed her on both occasions. 

*

Dhaka Uncle lived alone. His three sons—all of them settled overseas—visited with their families on yearly turns. Until three months back, Madhu had never stepped into his house and had known nothing about this old neighbour of hers. It was in a phone conversation with Vandana from the street behind theirs that she had learnt of Uncle’s problems. His two servants had gone to their villages at the start of the lockdown, leaving him to cook and clean for himself. ‘Both have died, my kaamwaali told me on the phone,’ Vandana said. ‘Run over by a truck. Near Hapur, she said. What lives these people live, no?’ The next evening, Madhu walked up to Uncle’s door and introduced herself. The house was a mess, with dishes piled high in the kitchen sink and thick dust settled on the furniture and the floor. It was a sorry sight, an old man fending for himself. It took Madhu two hours to clean everything that needed cleaning. From that day, she started visiting him twice a week—to cook meals in big batches, run the washing machine, get groceries, do the cleaning, and do other small errands. Her visits improved his discipline too. He washed his utensils on time and even rediscovered an interest in cooking. Fixing himself a cup of tea, or eggs and toast for breakfast, had never been a problem.

*

Uncle appeared in the green chequered shirt, but the track pants had not been changed. ‘I just remembered,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Ravinder had called yesterday. He said they’re relaxing the lockdown in India but that I need to take the same precautions. So, I think…’

Ravinder was the eldest son. ‘So you’ll stay at home?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I think that’s better,’ he said. ‘He says there’s another three-four months to go before things become completely normal.’

She stood up and pressed her mask’s top to the bridge of her nose. ‘No problem. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

‘I was thinking of something,’ he said. ‘You want to come inside for a minute?’

‘Varun is waiting. Tell me, what is it?’

Uncle looked hesitantly towards the floor, then at the far-side porch pillar. She wondered if he needed some hygiene product that he was too shy to mention.

‘I have been craving it a lot in these last few days,’ he started, ‘so I thought maybe you could…’

‘What?’

‘Your aunty hated it whenever I did that,’ he said, in a tone which sounded as if he was evading aunty’s ghost. ‘But now, you know, Covid and all. How does it matter?’

‘How does what matter?’

‘Smoking,’ he blurted out. ‘Cigarettes.’

Uncle had used the Hindi word dhumrapaan, somewhat dramatically. It amused her.

‘You’re smiling… behind the mask,’ he said. ‘The lines here.’ He moved his fingers up to the corners of his eyes. ‘I can see that you’re smiling.’

‘Which brand do you like?’

‘I like this one,’ he took out an empty, crushed pack from the track pants’ pocket, and she wondered if that was what he’d gone inside to fetch. She couldn’t say how old the packet was. It said Classic, below a ghastly image of a cancer-ravaged mouth.

‘I will get it. One packet?’

‘Get two. Or maybe… maybe three. One never knows how long this virus will last.’

She nodded and made the thumbs-up sign. 

‘Don’t tell them,’ Uncle said as she turned towards the gate. ‘Them’ meant his sons.

She found Varun sitting on the ground next to the left rear wheel. ‘You took so long,’ he complained.

‘Sorry. You lost your game?’

He grunted and stood up.

Inside the car, while adjusting the rear-view mirror, she smiled behind her mask and moved her fingers over the corners of her eyes. The lines had deepened without her knowing. 

*

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Thank you for reading. Part 2 is here.

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