The Heart Is a Shifting Sea Page 26

  Upstairs, Maya flopped, exhausted, onto her hotel bed and ordered room service, Indian-Chinese. She thought of how Subal loved Indian-Chinese, and then she could not stop thinking of him. She checked her phone, but he had not messaged her. She tried hard not to get upset. She pictured herself standing like an idiot in traffic and grew angry. Veer had not messaged her either. When she fell asleep, her teeth were clenched.

  The next morning, Subal came to pick up Maya at the hotel and acted as if nothing had happened. He was smiling and talkative and told her all about his visit to his cousin’s. Then he peppered her with questions. But Maya wouldn’t answer. As he got onto the highway, she refused to answer, sitting still in her seat. Eventually, he fell quiet and pulled over at the same rest stop with the watery sambar. As Maya went to the bathroom, he sucked down another cigarette.

  Back in the car, Subal asked how Maya had found her hotel, and she told him about the night’s adventure. She said there had been almost nowhere to stay and that she had asked the engineer for help.

  Subal let loose. He called Maya stupid for not booking a hotel in advance. He told her it was unsafe to roam around the city at that hour. He implied she was a randi, a prostitute, for calling the engineer.

  He saw on her face that he had gone too far. “Okay, Maya, I need to close my mouth.”

  “You need to use your head and then maybe you wouldn’t use your mouth,” she snapped back. Her voice was bitter, but then it faltered. “Your behavior, the things you say, you can’t keep doing them and expect me not to break,” she said, and began to cry.

  “Okay, Maya,” Subal said. “I am wrong . . . Okay, Maya, I am wrong. Okay, Maya, I am wrong.” He went on like this, like a broken record on a British-era gramophone, while Maya said nothing. Finally, he stopped talking. The car was silent as they passed back into Mumbai city limits.

  When Subal dropped her off at home, he said he would understand if she “walked out” of what they had. Maya didn’t answer and slammed the car door behind her.

  Later that week, she was at school, trying not to think about Subal, when the phone rang. It was Veer, calling in the middle of the day, which he never did.

  “Mayu,” he said, “I’m on my way back from the factory. Are you home? I thought we could have tea.”

  Maya held the phone away from her, astonished, and brought it back up to her ear.

  “No, Kancha. I’m at school,” she said. She was always at school at this time. “I—I need to stay here. But Pallavi is at home. She can make you tea.”

  There was a pause, and the silence seemed to stretch for a long time.

  “No, that’s okay,” Veer said. “I only wanted it if you were there.”

  * * *

  In the weeks after the Pune trip, Veer—who saw Maya was upset over something she would not share—began to pick fights with her at home. He asked why she was always on her phone at night, out with friends after work, and why they never went on vacation. After Maya finally agreed to plan a trip, they settled on Alibaug, an old, dusty coastal town a few hours away.

  On the way there, Veer drove fast, though the roads were winding. As they approached Alibaug, he hit a stray dog as it ran in front of their car. He said it could not be helped and did not stop. He said he was sure the dog kept running after it was hit. Many people hit dogs and kept going. Maya and Janu did not look back. It was better not to spoil the day.

  They checked into a guesthouse that was cheap and basic, but the outside was lovely, with hammocks, tall trees painted red, white, and yellow, and palm trees that hung very low. The coast was not far away.

  When they reached the beach, the sun was falling deep in the sky. Janu ran onto the sand and begged to ride a pony. The horse was pure white with a colorful saddle and was making trips up and down the beach. They gave Janu a few rupees and told him to go ahead. After the pony ride, Janu dug deep holes in the sand, and Maya walked toward the surf. Veer started to follow her but hesitated. He had always been afraid of the water. The force around the ocean was not good for epileptics, or so he believed. He feared another seizure. When Maya turned back and saw his trepidation, she took his hand in her own.

  Together, they walked toward the water, navigating around shells and fallen coconuts. The sun was setting now, and the surf was frothy. The tide was coming in, the water covering their feet. As they looked out at the sea, Veer let his hand drop from hers, and they turned back toward the sand.

  “Bana—” they called, and Janu came running.

  * * *

  As Janu had gotten older—he was now almost five—he had grown very close with his mother. At home in the mornings, while she was reading the paper, he often sat on her lap until she scolded him to go get dressed for the day. When they were riding in the car to school with their driver, Maya would lean on Janu’s shoulder and say, “I love you,” pouting her lips into a kissy face. Janu would always say “I love you” back, and squish his lips the same way. He’d often wrap his arms around her face and draw her close until they got to school.

  Over time, they had developed a kind of sympathetic relationship. If Maya stayed home from work because she was feeling sick, Janu insisted he was sick and couldn’t go to school either. If she stayed out at night, he couldn’t sleep. He’d toss and turn and even wet the bed. If she ate nonvegetarian food, Janu insisted he also had to eat it, though Maya made him promise not to tell his father. Janu called his father, who was in Africa for work again. On WhatsApp, his father’s away message was “DND”—Do Not Disturb. But Janu wanted to disturb him. He called and called and got his voicemail. “Papa, family,” Janu said into the phone, his voice serious, his long eyelashes flapping. “Family means relationship. Relationship with Mama, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, all. Work in this country. A family means a relationship. And you don’t leave the people you love. You work in the same country. Where you live. Not another country.”

  While Janu was close to Veer, he could also be distrustful of him. On the rare times Veer watched him, the day would always start out well. They’d often practice exercises together. “First exercise continuously begin,” Veer would call out, like they did at school, and Janu would show off a somersault or jumping jack, wearing only his white undershirt and chaddis. “Wahhhahahah. Tom Cruise or Salman Khan,” Veer would say, grinning, and Janu would giggle.

  Or Veer would help him with his homework, or they’d drive around their suburb and Veer would buy Janu gifts—a giant Spider-Man balloon or an Avengers or Minions toy. But inevitably Veer would get distracted by a work call, and Janu would be left to play by himself, his balloon deflated on the floor. Veer was working harder than ever again, and it showed on his body. He had lost weight, but his paunch had come back. His hair had grown long, he had a scraggly beard, and he’d developed dark circles under his eyes.

  On these days, by the time Maya got home from work or errands, both of them might be in a bad mood and fighting. Veer had been trying to work or read the newspaper, and Janu annoyed him. Or Veer had flicked Janu’s ear in an awkward attempt at play, and Janu had recoiled, saying, “Hey, don’t disturb me, Pop.” Or Janu had been allowed to play with his dad’s phone as a distraction, but then the battery ran down and Veer tried to take it back. “Dirty, dirty fellow,” Janu shouted one night, with startling intensity. “Liar on a fire.” “Matkar,” Veer shouted back. On these days, when Maya walked in the door, both seemed relieved to have her home.

  Still, at night, it was not Maya but Veer who rubbed Janu’s feet, singing him old Bollywood tunes or made-up lullabies. “Bana,” he’d sing, “soja bana . . . Laddoo . . . Pyaar.” When Janu got overtired, it was often Veer and Maya together who got him to stop crying. While he remained a good-humored, independent child, he still got fussy at nighttime. When he cried like this, Maya would lift him up off the couch, and Veer would take him into their bedroom, patting him on the back, saying, “Bash, bana, bash bash bash.” And if they ever asked Janu whom he loved more, the old, joking question they had first as
ked when he was a baby, he would still raise both arms in the air.

  * * *

  By September, several months after the Pune trip, Maya and Subal had stopped talking for good, and Veer began to ask where he’d gone.

  Perhaps he’d noticed that Maya no longer went out with him or was on her phone far less at night. She had even unpinned the photo of Subal from her office wall. “He’s busy,” Maya said.

  A few weeks later, he asked again. “He’s busy,” she repeated.

  It happened in fits and bursts, but when Subal and Maya finally ended things, Maya had cried for days. One of the last times she saw him, they had lunch, and as Maya followed him out of the restaurant, she fell down the stairs and hit her arm on the wall. On the floor, she clutched her elbow in pain. “Tell me what happened,” Subal said, sitting beside her, his voice soft. “How did you hurt yourself?”

  By then they’d both known they were over.

  He struck me to my core, Maya thought now. I feel wrecked, snapped like a tightrope. But after a few weeks, she decided she couldn’t keep crying and that she would not think of him again. She blocked him by phone, on Facebook, and WhatsApp. For months, Subal tried different ways of reaching her, until Maya asked Ashni at work to send him a message: “Maya has taken really long to get over you and she has suffered enough and so have you. It’s time you move on.” Maya had not gotten over him but thought she had to pretend.

  It was worse for Subal. He had stopped sleeping at night. It’s like I have fallen on my head, he thought. Or like she has shut a door on me, locked it, and thrown away the key. He wondered if she had written him off as a fat, old man; he had always worried that she was younger and so beautiful. He had several boxes of belongings at Maya’s preschool, and he called her and threatened to come to her school and burn them. He said he’d walk off into the woods and never come back. He knew he was acting like a fool. But in her, I found the best in life, he thought.

  Maya thought otherwise. She could see that Subal came into her life for a reason, to teach her how to love again. But in the end he had shown his true self, and she didn’t like what she saw. And now, it was all over.

  After a month, Veer asked Maya again, “Where is Subal?”

  “We don’t talk that much anymore,” she said. “We’ve had some disagreements.”

  After that, Veer didn’t ask again.

  * * *

  Veer called Maya from Africa to tell her that his father was buying them a giant flat. Or multiple giant flats. A three-bedroom-hall-kitchen for Maya, Veer, and Janu, another for Veer’s brother, and a third for himself and his wife. All in the same apartment building. Veer’s parents would be just a few floors away.

  Veer tried to sell Maya on the benefits. The house would be closer to her preschool. It would be far fancier and larger than what they had now. And Maya could design and decorate it any way she wanted. Still, Maya thought it sounded like hell—or a trap. She couldn’t imagine living in the same building with her in-laws again. When she had visited them recently, they’d been cold to her, and Veer’s father said she did not come to see them enough. She told Veer she’d move into the apartment on one condition: “If you don’t get me out of the house in the next two years, I’m going to walk out of it.”

  Veer had expected this kind of response from Maya and didn’t let it worry him much. He was thrilled about the flat. A 3BHK, 1,800 square feet—three times the size of their current apartment. It would be evidence they’d made it beyond middle class, that perhaps they were even rich. It would show off the money he had worked so hard with his father and brothers to make. And now that a new house was within reach, Veer focused on his goal of having Maya open her own school. Not a franchise, but a school she ran—a school from which only she took money. If Maya did that, she could live independently of him at last. And perhaps he could retire alone to the shack by the sea, which he still dreamed of, selling beer, whiskey, and coconut water on the first floor to keep busy, and living alone on the floor above.

  Maya went to see her astrologer. On this visit, the astrologer told her she would not leave Veer. He said they would continue to live unhappily together and never get divorced. At least for now, Maya thought the astrologer was right. There was something about Veer that wouldn’t let her leave him, some vestige of the man she’d fallen in love with on the banks of the Musi River and promised herself that she’d marry.

  After she and Subal ended things, Maya had begun to think about trying to kill herself again. She thought about jumping off a ledge. The astrologer knew this, even though she hadn’t mentioned a word about it. “Don’t do that,” he told her sternly. “If you think about it again, you tell me.” She promised him she would.

  With Subal gone from her life, Maya had begun going out with other men. Married women in the city, it seemed, were no longer out of reach. She went out with Mohan, the engineer from Pune. She texted with a man she had gone to school with, who now lived in Berlin. And she Facebooked with a philosophical motorcyclist from New Delhi. Each of these men provided her with a kind of companionship Veer didn’t, and she only occasionally thought about hisaab, and whether her behavior was about a debt to repay.

  As if she had a sixth sense, Maya’s mother called around this time to ask what was going on in her daughter’s marriage. But she could tell something was wrong because Maya was never with Veer when she called. Maya decided not to lie to her. “If someday I get up from this marriage, I don’t want you to be shocked,” she told her mother.

  “It’s very easy to get up and leave,” her mother said, “but what are you going to do next?” Maya was quiet. Her mother continued, “All relationships are the same. They might be in different degrees. But they all require the same amount of work and understanding.” Her mother had been married to Maya’s father for thirty-five years. She implied that there were almost always other people in a marriage, and that this was something you got over.

  * * *

  In January, when Janu turned five, Maya wrote him a long, mushy letter, telling him that he taught her “what it meant to love someone more than I could ever love anyone else.” Veer’s hardworking, hard-drinking cousin gave Janu a gift of four lovebirds. The birds were chartreuse and russet brown and aquamarine blue. They had beady, watchful eyes, short beaks, and downy bodies. She and Janu named them Eenie, Meeny, Miney, and Moe. Janu liked the blue lovebird best. The blue lovebird was the smartest and soon learned how to open the cage with its beak. “You are very naughty,” Janu told the bird. But Janu liked that his bird was so smart.

  Maya started coming home to find all the lovebirds out in the house. Pallavi had to catch them one by one and put them back in their cage.

  One day, a lovebird went missing, and then another. Maya realized it was because Pallavi was leaving the door to the porch open when she took the clothes out to dry. On another day, they came home to find them all gone.

  On the day Janu had turned five, Veer had turned thirty-nine. He was now working so hard his family, friends, and colleagues began to worry about him. He kept saying he wanted to make enough money for Maya to start her own school, and so that Janu didn’t want for anything. He hoped to be able to give away money like his grandfather had. He felt exhausted and drained but told himself he was fine. I am a Marwari, I am never exhausted from work, he thought. He told himself he had to surrender his emotions, including the emotion of being tired. My DNA is muted, he thought. I am more of a robot now.

  But Veer did get emotional sometimes. He couldn’t always be a robot. He felt this way when Maya didn’t give him any time or when she stayed up late typing on her phone, which she had recently resumed doing. Sometimes, Veer snapped at her: “Are you going to take a sleep or just check your Facebook all night?” When he did this, Maya waited a few minutes so she wasn’t giving in so easily, and then quietly followed him to bed.

  Maya was also working harder. Her preschool had expanded, and she had had to hire a babysitter for Janu. The school continued to attract n
ew students every month, but she still knew every child’s name; this was important to her. She often made spot visits to the classrooms to talk with the children. Whenever parents of prospective students visited, Maya or Ashni gave them a speech about how the school would change their child’s life. Though Maya didn’t like the performative nature of this, she believed in what she was saying. “You will feel good when the child comes home and you see them doing things they couldn’t do before,” she or Ashni promised, and by the end of their speech, the parents were hooked. Any good parent in Mumbai now wanted their child to learn English, and at an international-style school, which would ensure a high-paying job in their child’s future.

  Over the years, Maya had grown into a tough but fair principal. During meetings with the teachers, she spoke in a no-nonsense tone: “Nobody is taking a leave on that Saturday. Check karo. Chutti nahi milega.” The girls listened with serious expressions, arms folded behind their backs. Maya told a girl who had begun coming late to work that it could not continue. When the girl made excuses, Maya cut her off: “I understand, but other girls will do it and it will become a trend.” The girl promised not to come late again. Another teacher asked for a salary increase, and Maya explained when and why she would get it, or not. At the end of meetings she asked: “Any doubts?” There weren’t any.

  But Maya was also their friend. She ate lunch with her staff every day, which her father taught her to do so that they would respect and work harder for her. At lunch, the younger teachers told Maya and Ashni about their love lives and problems with their parents when they tried to date across community lines. “This is a boyfriend-friendly workplace,” Maya said, and she and Ashni sometimes gave them advice. But when one girl showed Maya and Ashni a sexy selfie, Maya drew the line. “Don’t show that to the boss,” she said.

  That year, Maya and Ashni decided to put on a huge Annual Day celebration for the school, for which they set an extravagant budget of 1.5 lakhs. They hired a professional choreographer for the children, bought elaborate costumes, and rented a large auditorium. It was not easy to wrangle 140 wailing children to sing and dance, but at least Maya had Ashni to help. The theme of the performance was “What I want to be when I grow up,” and the kids danced in different costumes—policeman, artist, teacher—professions beyond the traditional careers of lawyer, doctor, and engineer. At the end of the song the kids said in unison: “Whatever I want to be at the end of the day, I want to be a good human being.” Many of the parents cried.