Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra Page B

Occasionally somebody would come and stand in front of the thrones and stare frankly at Sheila and T.T., whispering to friends. Sheila had her chin in one hand and she was lost in the fire and the chant. Then suddenly the ceremony was over and the couple were sitting on a dais at the end of the hall, on thrones of exactly the same magnificence as those provided for the Bijlanis. Sheila and T.T. were first to go through the reception line, and Sheila hugged Asha, and T.T. shook hands with her husband, whose name was Rakesh. Then Sheila and T.T. sat on their thrones, which had been moved to face the dais, and food was served. Everyone was eating around them. Sheila ate the puri bhaji and the biryani and the sticky jalebis ,and watched as Ganga moved among her seated guests, serving them herself from trays carried by her relatives behind her. She gave Sheila and T.T. huge second helpings, and they ate it all.
    After the food, Ganga gave gifts to the women at the wedding. She walked around again and gave saris to her nieces and aunts and other relatives. She came up to Sheila, who said without thinking, “Ganga, you don’t have to give me anything.”
    Ganga looked at her, her face expressionless. “It is our custom,” she said. Sheila blushed and reached up quickly and took the sari. She held it on her lap with both hands, her throat tight. She felt perilously close to tears. But there were two girls, sisters, seven and eight, leaning on her knees, looking up at her. She talked to them and it passed, and finally she was sitting on one side of the room, away from the lights, not on a throne but on a folding chair, tired and pleasantly sleepy. T.T. was on the other side of the room, talking about the stock-market scandals with a circle of men. Ganga’s father sat beside him, quiet but listening intently. Sheila thought drowsily that T.T. looked animated for the first time in months.
    Then Ganga walked up. She paused for a moment and then sat beside Sheila, on a brown chair. They looked at each other frankly. They had known each other for a long time and they liked each other well enough, but between them there was no question of love or hate.
    “How did you manage this, Ganga?”
    “I sold my kholi .”
    “You sold it?”
    “For thirty thousand rupees.”
    Sheila looked around the hall. A song was ringing out, and a group of children were dancing, holding their arms up like Amitabh Bachchan in Muqaddar ka Sikandar.
    “Thank you,” Sheila said in English, gesturing awkwardly at the sari that she held in her lap.
    For a moment there was no reaction, and then Ganga smiled with a flash of very white teeth. “We got them at wholesale,” she said. “I know someone.” She pointed with her chin at a man Sheila had noticed earlier bustling about, herding people from here to there. “Him.”
    “That’s good,” Sheila said.
    “You speak English well,” Ganga said.
    “I learned it as a child.”
    Ganga settled herself in her chair with the motion of someone who is very tired. “I have heard that Boatwalla speak English.”
    “You work for her, too?”
    “For longer than for you.”
    “I didn’t know. I didn’t ask.”
    “I didn’t tell you. I wash dishes and clean the kitchen. Their other people don’t do that. I never see her.”
    “I see.”
    “Except now and then, once or twice every year, when she comes into the kitchen for something.”
    “Yes.”
    “But she never sees me.”
    “You mean you’re hiding?”
    “No, I’m right there in front of her.’
    “Then what do you mean?”
    “I mean that she doesn’t see me. If she’s talking to someone she keeps on talking. To such high people the rest of the world is invisible. People like me she cannot see. It’s not that she is being rude. It’s just that she cannot see me. So she keeps on talking about things that she would never talk about in front of you or somebody else. Once she saw me, but it was because she wanted to get water from the fridge