No Tomorrow

Amrita Sher-Gil Three Girls.  Wikipedia

Shinjini Kumar

“Do men grow on trees, Didi?” Roshni raised her eyebrows pensively. This was in answer to my casual enquiry about her plans to get married. I had really not meant to be nosey. For that matter, I was not interested in the least. It was one of those things you do when the beautician takes charge, conjuring the heady mix of fragrances and glamour. Those days, I visited the salon regularly, remembering my mother’s advice to keep the fire in my marriage, and the ambition in my career. And Roshni always ended up prancing up to claim me, even though when I called to make the appointment and was asked if I wanted anyone special, I inevitably said no, because remembering names is not my thing. 

This tiny, sallow complexioned girl remembered what services I had booked, did not push me to try new things and got me started in a jiffy, considerate that I had to go back to my baby. She remembered every small detail of my life that I shared in those moments of awkward nakedness, but rarely talked about herself. Maybe I never asked. The parlour was my only access to fashion and I spent all my time browsing enviously pictures of svelte actresses who had given birth around the same time as me, but had half my waist and twice my glow! when I could read no more, I shut my eyes and planned the dinner for the night, or the client presentation for Monday. 

When I asked Roshni about her life and her plans as she shaped my toenails, she started like a freshly opened bottle of coke and poured forth her growing- old-without-a-man story. She did not care for a match arranged by her poor mother because she had dreams of falling in love and marrying for love. To do that, she needed to meet men. Her workplace had none, her village was full of loiterers who did not qualify for attention and she wasn’t so pretty that an eligible man would solicit the seat next to hers in the bus and break into a conversation. 

But then, that is just what happened! A ‘most decent looking man’ as she described him, did ask to sit next to her in a rare DTC bus that not only had a seat for her, but an extra one as well. Over my next few visits, it was an eager, cheerful face that greeted me as soon as I entered the salon and filled me in on the budding romance. 

“I looked around Didi and there were actually other seats, so I first wanted to tell him to break himself up and go find another place. But then I saw his face. Didi, he was so cute, I just smiled and shifted a little bit.” Roshni was surely in love, glowing and blushing. She continued, “and then Didi, he did not say anything. Sat very stiff and did not try any funny business. So, I was very puzzled. Why he wanted to sit only here and now he had nothing to say? I was getting close to my bus stop and I was more than puzzled now. I was disappointed. It was also a nice evening. You know when it is cold but still nice. And I saw he was only wearing a T Shirt. I made bold to ask if I should shut the window. He did not look at me. He just hurriedly said no. And that was that.” 

“I found myself waiting for him next day, but no trace of him. Then over the next few days I realized that if I left at a certain time, he was always there and if there was a seat next to me, he would quietly take the seat and would smile a little bit, but still too shy. Then, one day, the bus broke down on the way and everyone got out. That was the first time we talked. He asked if he could walk me home. It was far, but we walked almost an hour together; talking as if we had to complete all our stories that very evening.” 

“You will not believe Didi, if I tell you how I felt that evening when he told me his name. Riyaz. It was like I had gulped a lot of the cold wind and it had stabbed my intestines. But at the same time, I also suddenly wanted to reach my hand out and touch him. I had never spoken to a Muslim person in my life Didi and here I was, sure as I was of Shankar Bhagwan, that I wanted to be with this man forever even though he was a Muslim! He must have sensed my confusion. He said that if it was not ok for me, he would step out of my life. I don’t know from where I had the courage to actually reach out for his hand and hold it tight and tell him that I was never going to let him go.”

My visits to the salon were becoming less frequent as I lost my post maternity blemishes and weight. Promotion at work took me routinely to destinations, where lonely evenings could be spent at the hotel spa, recovering from the guilt of leaving baby and her struggling dad behind. I saw Roshni intermittently and learnt about her marriage, discord with mother, moving to a little place in the basti and her charmed life with Riyaz, who now owned a motorcycle and gave her a ‘drop’ to work. When Roshni left, I did not notice her absence. As comfortable as I was with her, when some other equally pleasing girl turned up to tell her little stories, I was equally indifferent. 

My own life turned predictably boring. We moved to Singapore, where everything worked. Little Roma, who earned her baby name for being fat and red as a tomato, grew up to be slender and bright and charmed the whole world around her. Shekhar did better than we had ever thought. I went through a few job changes, always pegging my career a few notches below his, to make sure the order of the universe was not disturbed. We had enough money to afford everything we could have wanted. To move to the next level of desires would have taken so much more effort that it was not worth contemplation and that was that. Also, in the natural order of things, when Roma started college in Singapore, Shekhar and I felt the inevitable tugging at our hearts of motherland calling. Of course, there was pollution and chaos on the streets, but we could afford a bungalow in Gurgaon with a sunny garden and there was the consolation of being close to our parents, who seemed like they needed us, although they would never admit. 

When we finally moved back to Gurgaon, it was more difficult than we had thought. Shekhar found the commute to be impossible and I could not cope with the job that had seemed so exciting at first. I figured that in our absence, there was a new generation of professional Indians that had more self-confidence, but also an annoying arrogance. It was ironic to feel that way, because in our youth, we missed confidence and exposure to the world. Now everyone had it, so I should have celebrated, but I guess I was actually being mean and old. Of course, I had enough money to afford my attitude. So, I decided to be at home, keep a nice house and indulge myself. 

An obvious indulgence was the Spa. And who should I meet there but our heroine, Roshni? Of course, I did not recognize her. She had not kept well. Never pretty, she now looked worn and had visible lines around her lips and eyes, camouflaged with expert strokes of makeup. I thought she looked shorter, but that was only because she was a bit plump now. I, on the other hand, elicited exclamations from her for how much prettier I had become. She remembered everything about me, which cut me a little because it sounded a bit down market. I cannot say that I was happy to meet Roshni, but I was polite enough to go ahead with her care. Which was good. Because what she had lost in beauty, she had gained in experience. Her hands were like those of a magician. I don’t know how she figured the right spots and the right pressure, but by the end of the therapy, I felt new. 

After she had asked about Roma, my job, our new house, I felt duty bound to ask her about hers. I will narrate it in her words: 

“You remember when I became pregnant and stopped working Didi? Riyaz thought the strain of my job would be bad for our kid and I was also relieved to get a break. We had a normal pregnancy. He was doting and cared for me like even my mother would not have. In fact, when we ended up with a daughter, I was happy that we had no families to be accountable to. You know na Didi, how it is in our society? You have a daughter and you have to suddenly start justifying your life. Ruby is now sixteen and you should see her. She is slim and beautiful, like you. And she comes first in her class, always. 

It was bliss to raise Ruby with Riyaz. He was not like the other men in our basti. He would not drink and never lost his temper even, what to speak of beating up and fighting. His job was not great and he continued to work for a company that sent him to different offices every six months, so sometimes he would have a good set of people and sometimes not so good. But Riyaz managed. Once he was home, Ruby was everything to him, as though she could shield him from the insult and humiliation in his office. Every so often, he would call a few friends and cook food his way. He was so effortless in the kitchen. I felt like a queen on those days, laughing and sharing jokes with his friends and showing Ruby off. We did not have much, but we did not seem to want. 

In retrospect, it was too good to last. In our village, they name precious children after bad things, like garbage. Or, a common plant. That is supposed to ward off the evil eye. Ruby was the name Riyaz chose. He laughed when I said we should name her something more ordinary. He said by marrying a Muslim, I had lost the power to invoke Hindu gods and slayers of evil. I laughed too. Maybe we laughed too much. So that we would lose it and live with the sadness of that laughter for the rest of our lives. 

Ruby was two years and three months then. I remember, because we had a small birthday party for her. And for the first time, it was not just friends of Riyaz, but also a few of my friends who had accepted our invitation. We had worked hard to get ourselves accepted. I was always helping women look better with little makeup tips and Riyaz was so good at healing. He said his family had always been into healing and even though his father had migrated to Delhi and started working in a factory, they had a knack for herbal remedies and a healing touch. He always said Ruby would grow up to be a glamorous doctor, because she would have the right genes and we would work hard to send her to medical college. But I digress. 

On her birthday, I had invited a few of her friends as well and the little room of ours was a mess with all the shouting and crying and fighting and laughing and cake on the floor and cake in the kids’ hair. For days after the party, I was discovering popcorns in the corners of the room and laughing about it. We had started thinking about school and with our best intentions, it did not seem possible that she could go to a private school, so Riyaz and I decided that I would go back to work as soon as something could be worked out and Ruby could be left to the care of one of our nice neighbours. 

This happened exactly three months after the birthday party. I had my usual day with Ruby and got the dinner ready before Riyaz came home. His timing had become erratic. Apparently, his office was understaffed and expected people to double up, often at short notice. So, till midnight I was my usual self, putting Ruby to sleep and taking short naps between checking the watch and the door. He had never come so late. But this could be one more new job, I thought. 

I remember dreaming of Riyaz. He was like my father in my dream-drunk and abusive and I was in my mother’s house. He threw something at the TV and it broke with a loud sound. I woke up and felt relieved it was a dream. It was 4 a.m. We did not have a phone. So, there was no way for me to do anything. I just sat up and waited. At six a m, I ran to knock on my neighbours’ door. She came out brushing her teeth. In minutes, there were five-six of our neighbours in my house and we were having loud arguments on what to do next. Mostly, they agreed that we should just wait and not go to the police yet. Didi, sometimes I think how would it have been if this happened to a girl today, when all of us have mobile phones. I always, almost always, know where Ruby is and I make sure she knows where I am. But those days, only the rich had phones and we did not know anyone rich. Even if I could go to a phone booth, whom would I call? So, I waited. Around nine, I called his office. They said he had not come to work on the previous day. I felt the blood disappear from my veins but I kept asking silly questions. They were nice enough to call a few of his friends on the phone to talk to me, but no one seemed to have met him the previous day or had missed him, assuming he would have just taken the day off. 

I came back and started looking everywhere for phone numbers of his friends outside work. Although many of them had come home, it had never occurred to me to know more about them. They were often men of similar age and many of them were Muslim, so I had never opened a lot to his friends. Riyaz used to keep a small diary with phone numbers, but he always carried it with him and he had not left it behind that day either. In short, we were desperately looking for clues, but found none and had no choice but to go to the police. 

All this time, I had assumed there was an accident and something bad had happened to Riyaz. But his motorcycle was parked outside our house like other days when he took the bus to work. Everything was as it would have been had Riyaz come back home at his usual time; the kettle waiting to make tea for him, his bike, his daughter, his clothes in the little steel almirah we shared, his pillow that he folded to prop against the wall and read, his mat on which he prayed, his toothbrush, even his fingerprints on the bathroom mirror. And somehow the being of all these things conspired to give me a tiny little suspicion about Riyaz having abandoned me and Ruby. 

The thought of Riyaz being back to his mother, his community, his religion, drove me crazy. My thoughts went everywhere; I left the television on, expecting his picture to be flashed as a dead body or a wanted terrorist. I searched in my mind for any girls or women we knew who could have seduced and kept him. As bad as it may sound, my best hopes were of finding him in a hospital, hurt or dead, but innocent. Days passed, but there was no trace of him. I stayed up at night imagining him, not on my door or with Ruby on his lap, but in jails, with a beard, or with burqa-clad women. 

It was somehow very important for me to know if he had gone back to his mother; even more important than knowing if he was alive. From Riyaz’s description of his village, I knew it was near Mehrauli. Whenever we would take Ruby to the Qutub Minar, he would point in that direction and wish that he could take her to see his mother. My mother was already dead by then and I had no relations with my only other sibling, a much older sister living in Muzaffarnagar. I made bold to call Vikas, the workplace friend of Riyaz who had been nice enough to come home to ask about him. He did not know the address, but agreed to come with me to look for Riyaz in his village. 

I had thought it would be as easy as turning in the direction of the village and finding his mother sitting on a cot. But it was very complicated with a maze of villages, animals, half built houses, fortress like boundaries of farmhouses and fields. It was a very hot day, so hardly anyone was outside. Vikas was smart. He could make out Muslim villages and would go and check with shopkeepers and mosques if they knew Riyaz, showing the photo we took with us. The excitement of catching Riyaz red handed in his mother’s house and screaming hysterically at him was giving me a high and I could think of nothing else. 

We finally found his house. It was a neat piece of work, although tiny and not well maintained. We knocked on the door. My heart was beating really fast. I expected Riyaz with a prayer cap. I expected him to have surma in his eyes. I expected to find a gang of loafers around him like they show in the movies. I expected to see rifles on the wall. I expected him to shoot. I expected him to embrace me and tell me that all the time he spent with me was a cover to do what he really wanted to do before coming back to his mother and his gangster friends. I can’t tell you what all I expected between the time we knocked and the door gently opened. I had not been breathing. The sight of this old woman in a dirty white salwar kameez reminded me to breathe. And talk. But I did not know where to start. 

I do not have much recollection of what happened in that meeting. Fortunately, Vikas took charge. He introduced, explained, apologized, consoled, mediated and managed to get all the information that there was. And it led to nothing. She had not seen Riyaz since our marriage and was distraught at the news of his disappearance. Vikas told her we would come back to her as soon as we had news and we left before the villagers could crowd around us. 

It is a long story after that, but it is really no story at all. We never heard anything about or from Riyaz. I was very angry at first. I was convinced he had cheated on me. I was convinced he had used me to do whatever he was doing. I was convinced he was always a bad person and I was a fool. We sold the motorcycle and got some money to pay rent. I knew I had to start working but it was tough to think of leaving Ruby. Vikas came often and between him and Namrata, my neighbour, they managed to convince my mother in law to accept us. His brothers had left home and his father was dead. I realized it was probably Riyaz and I who distanced ourselves from our families deliberately rather than the other way around. They accepted us and I agreed because it just seemed like the only way for Ruby to get a home. 

I had to make many adjustments. I was annoyed with all the rules. Everything seemed like a cruel reminder of Riyaz. My mother in law strongly believed that Riyaz was alive and would come back. She talked about him as if he had just stepped out for a paan. The more I saw her conviction, the more convinced I felt that Riyaz was dead and gone. That was the only way for me, Didi, to cope with life. If he was alive, he had to be there for us. And he was not. In my mind, if he was dead, he had lived a good life and had been a good husband and good father. If he lived, he had to be a bad man. And in time, my memories took over my anger and I felt convinced that he was a good man, even if it meant convincing myself that he was dead and giving up the hope of ever seeing him again. 

Seeing his mother with the blind faith in his return hurts me day and night. I guess because he had already left her once, his disappearance is not proof for her of his death. Also, maybe if he comes back today, she will accept him without a question or doubt. I will probably not be able to do that. She is calm in her hope. I am calm in my despair.
Ruby is the light of our lives. Initially, she was confused about her father, who was living to her grandmother and dead to her mother, but she has learnt to deal with it. And so has it been since then. Three of us in that village house of Riyaz; living our burdens of love, guilt, anger, hope and despair.” 

I could think of a zillion things and possible ways to get information about Riyaz. Facial recognition, government databases, terrorist lists, fake passports, death record matches. But out of respect for the three women, I let it pass with a generous tip and the next appointment. 

*****

Shinjini Kumar is a Mumbai-based banker and short-fiction writer. She holds an MA in English from Delhi University and another in Public Policy from University of Texas- Austin, USA.She is co-founder of Indian Novels Collective. Her stories have appeared in Indian Literature, Out of Print among others. The story above is the first one in The Beacon