White Elephant
by Roshna Kapadia
They had to delay the cremation by a couple of hours because Shumeet, who had studied no Sanskrit, insisted on having the prayers translated before he repeated the priest’s recitations. The wait had been worth it. True, there were references to archaic practices and other brahminical sounding jargon, but there were also meaningful utterances: in particular, a prayer in which he begged forgiveness from the deceased for various incursions starting when he was a baby.
Forgive me
Mother,
For having
interrupted your daily meals by my incessant crying as an infant . . .
Forgive me
Mother,
For having
converted your kitchen utensils into playthings when I was a boy . . .
Forgive me
Mother,
For having
neglected you when first I loved a woman . . .
When Shumeet looked across the living room, he wondered if in all her life his mother had received so many people in her little flat for a visit, even one at a time. His attention reverted to the Brahmin—surprisingly personable considering the routine with which he was asked to perform such rites—who instructed him on what to say, when to sprinkle water, spread ghee on the flame. Shumeet’s eyes wandered to his uncle, who sat where his father might have, were he alive. Earlier in the day Hasmukhbhai had seemed incredulous of his younger sister’s death, insisting that at fifty-eight, she was young, too young, to have gone.
Shumeet slept little on the journey to the river. Even considering his significant travels in distant lands, he loved the Indian countryside most. As the train charged through the plains, Shumeet saw a vast expanse of red earth on which farmers plowed manually and women took turns pounding spices in a large stone vat, their parrot green and saffron pallus waving in the breeze. He looked at the earthen pot in his hands and contemplated the weight of the matki, and then the weightlessness of the ashes in it. This was a life—the giver of his life—now he was supposed to relinquish it. He wept bitterly at the river. His uncle put an arm around Shumeet, as much for gaining strength as for lending support. The matki sank quickly; the marigolds and spider lilies lingered and swirled a while before being sucked up by a circular current. The men turned, climbed the stairs at the bank, and dried themselves, exhausted.
On his return to the city, Shumeet undertook the task of sifting through his parents’ belongings. Among his father’s things he found heavy electrical engineering texts and poetry books in languages he couldn’t read; a V-necked cricket jersey; eyeglasses; a framed picture of a bejeweled goddess astride a tigress; a wrist watch whose dial resembled an egg’s yolk. His mother’s possessions were more numerous; she had lived here for over thirty-five years. Where should he start, he wondered, as the door bell rang. Expecting to be greeted by more old friends offering condolences at the door, he was taken aback by the sight of a family unknown to him, dressed in wedding finery.
"Can I help you?" he asked, with an expression of puzzlement.
"We can come in, Mr. Sen?" asked the gentleman, as his wife pushed her way in and started looking around. "I am Mr. Prakash, and this is my daughter, Amita," he said ignoring his wife, who seemed intent on inspecting every detail of his family residence.
"Please excuse the mess," Shumeet said, picking up a stack of books from the sofa to allow his guests to be seated. "I was -- "
"We heard about your mother’s death last week. We are sorry," he added casually, and quickly moved on to the topic of his daughter "who you can see is of marriageable age . . ."
"Xavier’s graduate," his wife interrupted sharply. "Clever girl. Doing computer program."
Was this a marriage proposal? Shumeet’s mother had threatened to put an ad in the Times’ matrimonial section if he hadn’t married by age thirty-five. Shumeet sneaked a glance at the young woman. She was slender and graceful despite her ridiculous gharara getup.
"I’m still in mourning," he said somewhat weakly.
"You will return to America soon, then?" Mrs. Prakash inquired sharply.
"In a few weeks’ time," he answered, still wondering what this visit was all about. "Would you like some tea?"
"Our daughter can wait. Getting a green card does not take too long these days," Mr. Prakash said.
Shumeet couldn’t bring himself to look at Amita now.
"Mr. Prakash, did you know my mother?"
"We knew both your parents," he answered. "Met them thirty years ago. Fine man, your father. Good cricketeer. Do you play?"
"Used to."
"Of course. In America they don’t play cricket."
"When you return to Washington," Mrs. Prakash asked, pronouncing it with a "v," "who will take care of this place?"
He wanted to strangle her with the thin straps of her beaded purse.
"My uncle, I suppose will -- " he started to say when the phone mercifully rang. Shumeet recognized the happy voice of Boris Bitzer, a colleague and friend exclaim, "Zo! You are in India, the land of elephants!" He never said "India" without following the word with a requisite "land-of-elephants" suffix.
"It’s an overseas business call," Shumeet whispered to the Mr. Prakash, "could you please excuse me?"
"Yes, of course. Here is my card. Do call us some time. We have much to discuss," Mr. Prakash said on his way out.
"Our daughter’s C.V." Mrs. Prakash said, shoving a wad of papers and photos in Shumeet’s hands. "We will be phoning you, OK?"
Some hours later Shumeet had separated the books he would toss from those he could give away; designated who would inherit the large furniture; and decided which of his mother’s saris were to be donated to the orphanage nearby. He came upon an old box filled with photographs. They were mostly in black and white: pictures of himself, in soldier and sailor outfits; his mother, perhaps in her maiden days, dressed in a hoop skirt, her hair neatly coifed under a broad embroidered band; his newly wed parents ready to board a steam engine in Darjeeling. He stopped at his father’s college I.D. picture from 1958, and acknowledged that he was short like his mother, but dark like his father. And he had the same strong jaw line of Ashutosh Sen. Shumeet decided to keep the pictures and some books, an old cricket bat, and the rickety turntable his mother had referred to as the "radiogram." He picked up the dancing elephant statue to take back for Boris, and decided to talk to Hasmukhbhai about the bigger items: some of the furniture and the car. He dreaded bringing up the issue of the flat with his uncle.
It was an airy flat, 650 square feet in all, on the seventh floor of Building B in the Rajhuns complex. Hansa Sen had partitioned the drawing room to create a tiny second bedroom when her son Shumeet was born. Between the two bedrooms, a narrow hallway led to a bathroom with a sunken bathtub. An architect’s error they were told, when they were brought in as tenants in 1962. Mrs. Sen didn’t like this seemingly luxurious feature—she could have used the extra space in the kitchen—but Ashutosh Sen’s eyes lit up at the prospect of taking a lazy bath now and then.
Some men become ogres when they take to drink. They beat their wives, curse their kids, and smell of vomit. But Ashutosh Sen seemed to hold alcohol well, and became all the sweeter to his family and friends when he drank. His eyes twinkled as he reminisced about his star batsman status in college. Invariably, he made spontaneous plans for outings—movies, plays, a stroll on Chowpatty beach. Sometimes he talked about Europe and entertained ideas of grand family vacations. Other times, he recited Bengali poetry, translating verses swiftly for his attentive wife and child. So, even when a glass became a common fixture in his left hand, Hansa Sen said nothing. Two years later, when he lost his management position at Otis Elevators, she was still sure that his college engineering degree would soon land him an executive position elsewhere. It never happened.
Hansa grew increasingly protective of Shumeet. She took him to Azad maidan, so he could watch cricket leagues at play on weekends instead of seeing Ashutosh idle away, retch, then descend into deep sleep. They visited Hasmukh’s house almost every Sunday now, avoiding any talk of home life as it was, and gladly accepted invitations to stay for dinner.
One Sunday, Mrs. Sen took Shumeet to see a magic show. His eyes grew wide and wider at the tricks he saw. Amazingly, Mahajan the Magician pulled a chick out of his turban, cut a sari-clad woman in two, and hypnotized a rather large man from the audience into thinking he was a peacock. Hansa and Shumeet watched with disbelief as the man strutted about the stage with eyebrows furrowed, crying "miao, miao."
"How can that happen, Ma? Was it magic?" Shumeet asked on the way home.
"No, beta," she replied, fixing his hair. "He made us believe many things happened in there, but they didn’t really. They were just tricks." The cab ride home from Tejpal auditorium went quickly. Shumeet yawned and leaned on his mother’s arm. She caressed his face lovingly. "How sad Baba had to miss it." she said. She paid up the cab driver, leaving him with a four-anna tip, and walked toward the lift. She slammed the latticed metal door shut and pressed the button for the seventh floor. In between each level were concrete slabs bearing familiar graffiti signs, new streaks of pan-stained spit, and the mark of the manufacturer, Otis, a daily reminder now of Mr. Sen’s derailed career and life.
It was nine o’clock—too late for her eight-year-old to be up—and Mrs. Sen planned to put Shumeet to bed right away. But when she opened the door and stepped into the drawing room, she knew instantly that something was wrong. The hall was pitch dark and water was everywhere. She cried in a desperate voice for her husband, groping for the light switch, on her way to the source of the running water in the bathroom. The last thing Shumeet heard before his mother hit the floor was the sound of breaking glass. He ran to the flat next door, crying, "My mummy fell, mummy fell down." Within minutes the house was swarming with neighbors and inquisitive servants pretending to clean up the mess; the din was unbearable. The police took half an hour to arrive. Shumeet remembered feeling a fleeting twinge of delight at the sight of a uniformed cop in his house. Other memories of that day—of loss, fear and shame—were spiked with the smell of cheap whiskey.
In the days that followed, Shumeet wondered if Mahajan the Magician might be able to bring his Baba back. In subsequent years, when he understood that his father could never return, he wondered if a magician would at least make the rest of the world believe that his father were alive, so he wouldn’t have to endure those whispers and taunts, or words oozing with pity.
About two months after the death, Hasmukhbhai came to see his sister at her little rented flat.
"Look, Hansa, you’ve had bad kismet. We’re not going to let that ruin Shumeet’s future."
"But I don’t know what to do. I was hoping Ashu would get a job again soon . . . and you saw how his family treated us at the crematorium. They blame me. They still blame me . . . I think I can get a job . . . then I’ll be able to pay the rent . . . but I’m so worried for my boy."
"Bharati and I can help, too. We could buy this flat for you now," Hasmukhbhai said, "or we will pay for Shumeet’s post-graduate studies in London or U.S.A. in ten-twelve years. And you don’t have to worry about Shumie. Bharati and I will treat him as our own son."
Relieved, Hansa plonked herself into a rattan chair, quickly choosing the latter option. A year later, she knew she’d taken the right decision. The government’s Urban Land and Ceiling Regulation Act gave her and thousands of other tenants throughout the city their lucky break: squatting rights. With government-enforced rent control, she knew at last that her son was guaranteed an affordable residence in South Bombay. And if he did well in his studies, he could also get a U.S. education. He would be an engineer like his father. She was sure of it.
In fact, Shumeet chose to pursue an Economics Ph.D. His years at Brown were spent in earnest discovery and hard work. Upon graduating, he had a few academic offers, but accepted a position as a research economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., writing and publishing papers, and quickly rising to the ranks of chief economist. Once a year, Shumeet traveled to India on home leave for a month or so, and took his mother to places she’d only dreamed she’d see—first to prominent European cities that Ashutosh had promised to show her, and later, to forgotten places or favorite spots within the subcontinent itself. Mrs. Sen was impressed at the ease with which her son navigated foreign airports and cities. And she admired his gentle, soft-spoken, respectful manner with strangers. During this home-leave trip to India, they had planned to see the Taj once more. That was two days before her life had been cut short by an aneurysm.
For a few days, Shumeet had suspected that someone was following him: at the Citibank, where he’d gone to change money, at the Cyber Cafe, and just yesterday, at the Fax-O-Rama. On this day, during his morning jog, he knew who it was. She was wearing blue jeans and looking straight at him this time, unlike the time before, when she was dressed up like a Christmas tree.
"Hello. It’s Amita, isn’t it?"
"Mr. Sen," she said, softly. "I just wanted to. . ."
"Call me Shumeet, after all, if your parents had their way, we would be married soon," he said cockily. "Was it at St. Xavier’s College that you studied computers?"
"Yes. We had a very modernized computer laboratory." She pronounced it "lab-OR-a-tree." "Did you have computers when you were there?"
It flattered Shumeet to know that her family had researched him, their prospective groom, so well.
"No. But that was almost twenty years ago, and I was studying Economics," he said. "I had some good times at Xavier’s in spite of that."
She smiled, showing a straight set of teeth. Their eyes met for a brief moment before she looked away and sighed, her bosom rising slightly under layers of lace and lycra.
"Mr. Sen, I came to talk to you about the other day," she tried again, as they settled on seats by the fresh fruit juice stall. At the entrance of the stall stood a large chalk board with its daily list of proscriptions: NO Division of Beverages. NO Sitting Long. NO Spitting. NO Combing.
"I’m sorry if I was brusque," he offered, still concerned that he might have shot down her adolescent ego, although he’d already dreamed of making mad love with her in his Washington apartment twice. "It’s because my mother had just passed away and -- "
"It’s not that at all," she said bashfully. Then, taking a deep breath she continued, "Actually I came to tell you that my parents will be calling you again soon. . . "
"Yes, your mother had threatened to do so," he said confidently.
". . . and to ask you to refuse the proposal, please," she begged, her eyes welling up, "on any pretext. You can say I’m ugly, or our stars don’t match, or something. Anything." She explained, "I’m in love with a boy I met in college, but my parents want me to marry you because . . . because of that flat."
She didn’t want him. Shumeet tried not to look crestfallen.
"Why do they want that little flat for you? Surely your boyfriend’s family owns a bigger home?"
"Yes they do. They have a family business and all," she said demurely. "They’re quite well off."
Shumeet reflected for a few minutes.
"So, the reason your parents want you to marry me is . . . for a green card?"
"Not exactly, Mr. Sen," Amita said softly, looking away. Her hand trembled slightly as she ran her slim fingers through her hair. "You know that flat you live in? It’s my Dad’s flat, and your family has rented it from us for all these years. But my Dad owns it, and he wants it back. He seems serious about the proposal and all, but only because it’s a way of making sure we keep the flat in the family."
Today, more than on other days, Shumeet missed his mother. He missed her cardamom-scented breath; the sound of her bangles clanking as she rolled out puris to deep fry. How he wished he could be a little boy again and lose himself in the soft gathers and folds of her sari! It was she who had taught him to eat and bathe the right way, she who forbade him alcoholic drinks of any kind, she who instilled in him values that sought a healthy balance between simplicity and modern living, and she who encouraged him to always pursue the collective good of mankind. "What’s the difference between us and other animals if we don’t practice loksangraha?" she’d ask.
As she had chosen to withhold any information about their landlord family from Shumeet he was left to wonder if, in some twisted way, his mother’s mind had rationalized the fact that loksangraha was in practice if a widow and her son "inherited" a residence from a property-rich family.
For most of his life Shumeet had been badgered into feeling lucky and grateful that he had a residence—small as it was—in South Bombay. But he’d hated everything about living there—the quarterly accounts of thorny meetings with their landlord, the ritual of dodging large rats scurrying in their garage space, and that stench of urine and incense that permeated every wall. Shumeet avoided even imagining how his mother would have reacted to his desperate desire to ditch the flat she had clung to for him, in the city she considered the navel of her universe.
Once a thin string of islands on the Arabian Sea, Bombay city had grown massively since Independence, its expansion rapid and all encompassing. Tall residential buildings, soot-filled factories, glitzy boutiques, dank-smelling slums, and tiny offices cropped up daily, competing aggressively for space. This was the city that everyone came to in search of a better job or flirtation with fame. Despite the outrageous shocks—the high cost of living, ubiquitous filth, cruel disregard of city folk, impenetrable traffic—migrants seldom returned to their ancestral villages. Because this city had everything. It was vast, swelling robustly with its additional charges so that somehow, somewhere, it embraced everybody. Shumeet understood that the pull of the city was great, and that he would come back to it someday. But he also knew that he would never return to the Prakash family’s little flat.
A few days before his departure for D.C., Shumeet telephoned his uncle. "Want to go for a walk?" he asked. "There are some things we need to talk about."
This was it. Hasmukhbhai had known for a long time that the day would come when his nephew would inquire about the circumstances surrounding his father’s death. How would he attempt to explain family losses, failures, and social injustices to this boy, he wondered. Or was it something else—did the boy need money? Had he a bride in mind??
"Sure, where do you want to go?"
"We could walk by the seaface and grab some bhutta."
"O.K. But you better take an umbrella. We’re in for a solid drenching," his uncle said.
They drove past the traffic-altered Haji Ali circle, the racecourse, and into Worli, where a bridge would soon miraculously connect two distant points of land across the sea.
"Look at all this construction," Shumeet said, "the economy’s looking up."
Hasmukh parked the Fiat by the milk factory, but said nothing. He was still working out what he would say about his long-gone brother-in-law, Ashutosh. The truth is, he hadn’t known him too well. After his sister had eloped with the Bengali "with a brilliant future," the family had come apart. Their mother had passed on, despondent over the loss of her daughter to a drunk. And then Ashutosh himself had mysteriously died.
"So I’m leaving on Thursday," Shumeet said. "Air France. I’ll stop over in Paris for two days and meet some colleagues at the O.E.C.D."
"When are you going to resign your post? You’ve told them, haven’t you?"
Shumeet paused a while. "No. I’m not leaving the Bank," he said, searching his uncle’s face for signs of disappointment or disbelief. "I know it’ll mean I’ll lose the flat, but I’m not moving back to India."
"It may be a small flat, but do you know what it’s worth?" Hasmukh asked his nephew, leaning forward. "Forty lakhs at a minimum. That’s eighty thousand U.S. dollars. And it’s yours. Only, you have to claim it in court."
"Five or seven years—or however long it takes to settle court cases these days—is a long time to put your life on hold for a small place you don’t even care about." Images of his mother’s body at permanent rest in her bed, and a faint picture of his father’s lifeless naked body in the bathtub flashed before Shumeet’s eyes. "I’ve decided I don’t want it," he said, shaking his head.
"Your name is on the lease, beta. You’ll get it eventually. For a small fraction of its value. Then you can sell it and go back to America. Start up your own business, or do anything else. You know, your mother went to court five or six times to make sure she could keep it. For you, Shumeet."
"I know," he said. "But it wasn’t hers to give me. I met the family that owns it. Very oily couple, that Mr. and Mrs. Prakash. Didn’t like them at all . . . but I’ve been thinking about how unfair it is that they had to rent it out to us for decades without being allowed to raise the rent even to account for inflation."
"Oh yes. You’re an economist, I forgot." Hasmukh said dryly, cleaning his glasses, thinking how much Shumeet was sounding like his socialist father. He turned toward the young man, "You don’t think life has been unfair to you? You can forget about that Prakash. He’s a crook, I tell you," he warned, waving a forefinger. "And if you want, I can help you with the legal costs."
It occurred to Shumeet that since he and his uncle hadn’t talked money for almost a decade, an explanation might be in order.
"What do you think I do with my tax-free salary?" Shumeet asked.
"You’ve seen the world. . . supported your mother very well."
"I’ve lived cheaply, and invested my savings well . . . I won’t be needing that flat. I can take care of myself."
"Arre, don’t talk nonsense!" Hasmukh said, clearly irritated. "Stock market goes up and down. If you lose your job, you’ll have no job and no home. That is your only home. Just take it now. The court case may take only two years. . . you’ll see . . . the courts are always on the tenant’s side nowadays."
"I’ve invested in property, not the market, Hasmukhbhai, so I’m a landlord too, now. Besides, why?" Shumeet asked, raising his voice. "Why should I live here? What’s here for me?? To claim the property I’d have to live in it, like a rat in a hole, for many years."
"These are strong words, Shumeet." Hasmukh was thinking that not long ago this little flat was what saved his sister and nephew from becoming instantly homeless. Now the boy was saying his use for it was over. He was saying it was worth nothing. Nothing.
"You gave me the chance to further my education in America; for that I’m grateful. I have a great job that I love. I need to get back to it now. It’s mine," Shumeet said deliberately.
Hasmukhbhai took a deep breath. It was no use. The young man was determined to seal his fate in an unknown world. "You wanted to eat some bhutta?"
They walked over to a hawker fanning hot charcoals. Shumeet gave him twelve rupees and asked him to roast two ears of corn. Although the monsoon was in full swing, they’d had a four-day dry spell, which looked about ready to end. It was a strange day; the clouds above were dark and bulbous, but the sun shone persistently through cracks in the cloud mass.
It was Hasmukhbhai who raised the question he was expecting to be asked.
"Beta, do you have thoughts about your father?"
Shumeet shrugged his shoulders, then nodded his head slowly.
"I think about the day he died quite often. . . although I no longer think he drowned in the bathtub, if that’s what you mean. Amazing how much your life can change in a single day, isn’t it? It was bad enough we lost him. Then we had to suffer the insult of being excluded from weddings and holiday functions. When Baba died, all the invitations ceased. Overnight. Forever. Just like that." Shumeet snapped his fingers, his facial expression still bearing the sting of disgrace. "It was as if we’d killed him or something."
Hasmukhbhai knew there was truth in his nephew’s words. His sister had suffered much in this ferociously competitive city, with its ever-increasing stratified middle class. He had worried needlessly about her, too, after she had lost her husband, but she had managed well: she’d kept a job, never incurred financial debts, and raised this abstemious boy who was now the boss of an office. Hasmukhbhai bristled at the thought of his own son’s racetrack addiction and decided to let the matter rest.
"You got the promotion, then?"
"Yup. Got the confirmation fax yesterday. Wish I’d had the chance to tell Ma about it. We seldom discussed my work or money situation. . . it would have been nice to reassure her."
His uncle looked at him, now with a certain sweetness, and squeezed his nephew’s hands. The boy had his mother’s hands, hard-working hands, with coarse dark skin covering thick fingers and oversized knuckles.
"She knew many things that you didn’t have to tell her, Shumeet. In the last ten years, she never questioned your judgment. She told Bharati only a few months back that she knew that you would marry the right girl when the time came. Which brings me to another point," he added, raising an eyebrow.
Shumeet wondered if he should tell his uncle about the knockout he’d had lunch with at the office cafeteria just prior to his departure for India. A cross between Morocco and Monaco, Leila’s face was framed by a heap of dark curls, her gem-like green eyes conveying a look of perpetual wanting. Shumeet thought she’d brushed her hosed limbs against his legs under the table one time too many, and had seriously considered delaying his flight to indulge in a vastly more exciting way to spend the night.
The corn kernels were making loud snapping sounds now, the coals beneath them releasing a delicate wisp of smoke. A smiling child wearing a dirty half-sleeved shirt trotted up to them with two blackened ears of corn glistening with lime juice and spices. Shumeet tipped the boy and sat with his uncle on a cement ledge facing the water to eat. This had been their favorite outing spot for decades now, and the scene before them was almost always the same: a few feet below the ledge children combed a rocky beach for little treasures, and young lovers struggled for comfort, trying in vain to dampen their passions. As always, to Shumeet, the sea resembled a gray sari in raw silk stretched over the horizon, rhythmically billowing out and caving in, as if it were telling him to go away and return, sail away, then row back.
Far away, a fisherman in a flimsy skiff repeatedly cast and drag his net in the water as scavenging gulls attacked his meager catch.
"Imagine how his boat gets thrown about on a stormy evening," Hasmukh observed cavalierly. Shumeet nodded, then smiled at the thought of returning to America—to his job and a life that had him at least in partial control of his destiny. With each promotion, he had carefully charted his own course, a steady ascent in an environment where birth origin, wealth status, or physical features played no part in advancement.
The cloud cover above them had moved on. The sun dropped rapidly, causing the moisture-laden heat to lift almost instantly. A strong wave slapped against some rocks sending a gentle spray of surf Shumeet’s way. He reviewed the events of the past month: his mother’s sudden passing, the fake marriage proposal from the Prakash family, the incessant rain and heavy flooding, the sale of the family’s twenty-two-year-old car, the seemingly endless chore of cleaning out the flat. Soon the place he’d called home for more than thirty years would be occupied by a tenant of the real owner’s choosing. Shumeet licked the salt off his lips and pondered the irony of his feelings—a buoyant sense of liberation at the prospect of an impending material loss.
Roshna Kapdia .... bio coming soon.
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