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Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Namita Devidayal

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116 pages

English

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In her bestselling novel Aftertaste (over 5000 hardback copies sold), Namita Devidayal provides a captivating account of a baniya family settled in Punjab headed by a matriarch, Mummyji, who is in hospital after a stroke. The Todarmal family, glued together by money not love, includes the weak and emasculated Rajan Papa who is desperately in need of cash; Sunny, the dynamic head of the business with an ugly marriage and a demanding mistress; Suman, the spoilt and greedy beauty of the family who is determined to get her hands on Mummyji's best jewels; and Saroj, Suman's unlucky sister, who has always lived in her shadow. Each one of them wants Mummyji to die.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	20 novembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184002300
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0420€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2011
Copyright Namita Devidayal 2010
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B, A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301 (UP)
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184002300
For Chaitanya
Tulsi jag me do bade Ek paisa ek Ram Ram naam se mukti ho Paise se sab kaam

Two days after Diwali
T HE UNIFORMED SECURITY GUARD IN the hospital waiting room nodded at the couple with the empathy that comes from spending year after year watching people battle mortality. He watched the visitors with detached curiosity, overhearing dribbles of their conversation and allowing his imagination to script little stories.
There was always an interesting cast of characters sitting on the orange bucket chairs. Today, a young man with rimless glasses paced the room waiting to hear from the maternity ward. There was the woman who sneaked past the guard every day, thinking she was the first to smuggle in home-cooked food. A middle-aged man sat in the waiting room with a much younger girl in a short skirt. Her alabaster white legs variegated with pale green veins made the guard shudder involuntarily. Was she the daughter or the lover? The guard decided on the second option out of sheer boredom and conjured up a quick vision of her white legs dangling in the air, the man huffing hopelessly between them.
And then there were the people who had just walked in-a dark woman in a parrot green kurta and salwar and a tall, good-looking man with a thick moustache wearing a white shirt and jeans. The guard s eyes followed them as they went to the other end of the waiting room.
The woman in green went and sat next to an older, stout man who was slouched in a bucket seat near the window. He was fair and fleshy, had curly hair, and wore a shiny black kurta pyjama.
What is the doctor saying, Rajan Papa? she asked.
The man called Rajan got up wearily and squeezed her hand. It s the same. The same, Saroj. The doctor should be out soon, so we will get the latest news.
The guard sensed something different about this lot. He d watched them over the last two days. There were quite a few of them for one patient-there was the man whom everyone called Rajan Papa. He must be the patient s son. He jumped up every time the doctor passed by and followed him through the swinging doors. There was the younger man in jeans, Sunny, who smoked a lot and guzzled sweet betel powder, slitting little packets with his teeth and pouring the contents into his mouth. Probably the other son, he thought. There were two women-the dark one in green who was called Saroj and the other whom they called Suman behenji. The patient s daughters, the guard reckoned, because of their resemblance to each other and to Rajan Papa. They all had the same fleshy lips. Saroj looked a bit dishevelled, while Suman was always tip-top. She rustled in and out in crisp white organza saris and wore a long string of rudraksha seeds interspersed with gold beads around her neck. Her eyes were slits in a pallid doughy face. She looked like a fashionable nun, the guard chuckled to himself.
Suman suddenly clutched Rajan Papa s hand, digging her sharp red fingernails into the flesh.
What should we do about the papers, Rajan Papa? Have we thought about that? Sunny, you d better think of something before it is too late, she said sharply.
Rajan Papa s face turned pale. He held his forehead in his hands.
Sunny did not reply. He turned away and walked up to an empty seat under a laminated poster of a frightfully pink rose garnished with enormous dewdrops. It carried the caption, Life is beautiful. Death is inevitable. Celebrate both.
An hour later, they continued to sit there. Suman kept looking at her watch. Rajan Papa dozed off, his mouth slightly open, his fingers interlocked on his bulging stomach which heaved rhythmically, in slow motion.
Sunny got up and went to the balcony outside. He took out a packet of Gold Flakes from his pocket, lit one, and took a deep drag. A thread of smoke wound its way up sluggishly, disappearing into the smoggy evening. He glowered at the grey ocean in the distance. Downstairs, an ambulance bleated its way into the hospital gates.
The women looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. Suman shook Rajan Papa who woke up with a start, frowned, and ran his hand through his curly hair in quick motions.
I don t know why this Sunny must behave like this, Rajan, she said in an angry whisper.
Forget it. Just forget it, Suman, he replied, looking vaguely stricken.
I mean why
Let it be, Suman, Rajan Papa snapped. He sank back into his chair, holding his head in his hands. It was getting close to that time when he needed to get home and reach into the rosewood cabinet with the bevelled glass door and hear the comforting clink of ice cubes against crystal. He wanted to bolt out, but the doctor had not yet come.
The guard couldn t put his finger on it. It was mystifying. What was it about these people? They should have been like any other family-an anxious, exhausted group of people trying to manipulate modern medicine into fighting what destiny had already ordained. But there was something else going on with this lot. It was almost as if they wanted the opposite. Was it his imagination playing tricks or did they really want the patient to die?

Three days before Diwali
H OSPITAL WAITING ROOMS HAVE A peculiar odour about them-a cloying, persistent smell of antiseptic. That was what Mummyji s room had started smelling like after she had the stroke.
That morning, nine long and painful days ago, Bimla Kulbhushan Todarmal, universally known as Mummyji, had embarked on her usual rituals. It was still dark when she woke up to her internal alarm clock. She lay in bed for a few minutes until her body got used to the stiff aching leg, then slowly got up and pulled her brassiere down to get it back in position. It was an old habit and she insisted on wearing one even though there was nothing to hold up but two soft, shrivelled marshmallows sucked dry by her four children. She shuffled towards the mirror, picked up two aluminium curlers and clipped them to the sides of her hair. She walked to the front door, unlatched it and picked up the milk that had been left in the cloth bag on the doorknob outside. Why hadn t the newspaper come? That idiot delivery boy must have got drunk again last night. She limped into the living room and switched on the tube light. As it flickered on, she sat in her big round chair and picked up a frayed copy of the Bhagavad Gita. A few loose pages fluttered on to the carpet like ancient moth wings. She picked them up and slipped them back in, not worried about whether they were in order. She knew that with this book, you could start reading from anywhere and it didn t matter.
This was her most cherished time. For the last fifty years, it was the only half hour she got entirely to herself. Many years ago it was worse. By the time the sun was up, Cozy Villa had turned into a circus. It was either her mother-in-law demanding her hot neem water or her children tugging at her sari for attention or her husband complaining about the tea, or the servants lazing around insolently, and of course the perpetual visiting relative who needed this or that. Now they were all long gone, safely incarcerated in picture frames where she could enjoy them from a distance. So she spent this time of the morning in quiet contemplation, before the house stirred slowly into action.
Mummyji sensed the sun rising by the warmth that was creeping into the second floor room and silently seeping into her shoulders. But it was still bearable. The fierce October heat had not yet pushed its way through the blinds to linger on all day like an unwanted guest. At least the heat was better than the cold, when her joints would stiffen and crackle and she had to have them massaged with apricot oil every day to get them to function.
After a few minutes, she got up and went into the room next to the front door to wake up Rajni and Ratansingh, her servants. That donkey Ratan always has an erection. Must be thinking of Sridevi in a swimming costume, she thought with a silent chuckle. Ah, men. She sighed to herself. Sex, for her, had mostly been distilled into a sharp abbreviated act, conducted in hushed whispers, so that the children sleeping on the floor next to them didn t wake up. It was a response to a man s primal urge. There was no communication, only the hand that would fumble for a breast and signal that she must lie flat and lift up her petticoat. Sometimes, he made her lie on her side and entered her from behind, though that stopped after his belly started coming in the way. When he died, she felt the void, but did not miss him.
Rajni, go see if the Navbharat Times has come. And then get me my tea. She went back to her meditative seat and continued to read while the morning light slowly filtered into the room and settled on the dusty brown upholstery. Her left leg started its familiar throb and she winced before shutting it out with practised grit.
Mummyji was faintly conscious that even these mundane morning motions would be difficult to pull off in a matter of time. But that was later. For now, she was fine and there were things to be done. She had now decided that she would raise Rajni s salary-after all next month she wou