Life Apart, A: An Autobiography

66.

In Indian mythology, Sati – the consort of Shiva – is the embodiment of a woman who dedicated her whole life to a single man, and to him alone. I was always drawn to her and today, as I review my long life of over half a century and mentally bow to her, I also salute the remnants of the woman I once was.

I arrived in New York yesterday to find everything changed. The crater that now marked the site of the World Trade Center was a huge shock and I couldn’t help remember an earlier visit made years ago to this city on another sparkling day. I had crossed seven seas and thirteen rivers with Dr Saraf and arrived at New York’s Jackson Heights, flying over the foam-tipped waves of the blue Atlantic Ocean before landing. Dr Saraf had come for a heart check-up, leaving his family behind in Calcutta and asked me to accompany him ostensibly because – unlike his wife – I was a smart businesswoman who could speak English, but the truth was that he enjoyed my company more than that of his family. All that his wife had said to him when she bade him goodbye was to take care of his health because his life was more precious than theirs: I want nothing more than that you should be happy and healthy, and here is a list of things I want you to get for us while you are there, she quickly added. Every day, her husband would dutifully check his diary to make sure he had bought all the items on that list: almonds, pistachios, saffron. We can get all this here in Jackson Heights at the Indian stores, right, he had asked me.

After the doctors gave him an all-clear, we were so relieved that I decided to use the rest of our time in the US exploring the possibility of adding to my repertoire of leather exports. For some time, I had been toying with the idea of including bags and fashion items to the industrial leather gloves and boots my company manufactured for export and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to check out some fashionable bags. I walked past New York’s glittering stores, looking out for samples I could pick up and identified some interesting designs. Banana Republic had a stunning one and I noted down the location to explore it in greater detail when I got another chance. One day, my heart free of the care after Dr Saraf’s medical check-up, I decided to walk over to Banana Republic and spend some more time there.

I entered the store and a tall, leggy salesgirl came forward to help. ‘Is this the bag that you liked in our shop window?’ she asked me.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘How much is it?’

‘$250.’

A steep price for a canvas bag, I thought to myself, but well worth investing in as a sample because Ismail Mian, my master craftsman back home, would need one to copy. I also knew that when my principal buyer, Ron Garden came to us in October he would place a hefty order if I could duplicate this bag for him. I paid up and collected the khaki North-South canvas bag and when I reached the hotel, proudly pulled it out to show it off to Dr Saraf.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Prabha?’ he shouted, outraged at my extravagance. ‘Go and return it at once!’

‘I want to copy this because my business sense tells me…’ I began when he cut in rudely.

‘Your business sense? I wonder if you have any sense at all,’ he scoffed. ‘Who do you think you are?’

‘Doctor sa’ab, I have money of my own to pay for this,’ I reminded him. ‘After all, we have bought things for the others, haven’t we?’

‘I can’t stand this arrogant attitude of yours,’ he burst out. ‘The things we have bought for them are things they need!’

‘But this is something I need,’ I retorted.

We continued arguing like this all the way to Jackson Heights and finally, he snatched the bag out of my hands and flung it petulantly on the pavement. ‘Stay here if you want it so badly,’ he spat out in anger, hailed a taxi and drove off in a huff, taking my passport and wallet with him as well.

Was this an indulgence, I asked myself seriously, as images of the slum around my factory swam before my eyes. I was perfectly aware that more than half my workers lived in inhuman conditions: eating and shitting in the same place. Drunken brawls were common there and knives slit throats at the slightest provocation. The children, their filthy faces smeared with snitch and mango juice, were covered with flies that no mother had time to clean. Hunger and misery were their only companions and if someone died of hunger, the neighbours shook their heads in sorrow at yet another one who had succumbed to poverty and neglect. When Nafisa Bibi died of malnourishment and TB, her husband Alam could not be found anywhere. ‘Go search him in his gambling den,’ his mother had told the neighbours. ‘Tell the bastard to at least bury his wife before he settles down to play the next game.’

Others, like my Ismail Mian, were hard-working men, sweating it out in the stuffy shed that was their workplace. He rose five times a day to read the namaz and never forgot to pray for the success of my company each time he prayed for his own family. My manager, Nikhil, went every Saturday to the Kali temple to pray. The cashier, Jitendra often pulled his leg: ‘What is point of all this, my friend, if you don’t improve your character? What about the petty pilfering you do, hain?’ I knew all this but was secure in the knowledge that as long as I had workers like Ismail Mian and Jitendra, my factory would be in safe hands. What is the loss of some petty cash after all?

All this flitted through my head as I sat down on a step and wept at my humiliation at the hands of Dr Saraf. He had never really understood my dedication to my business, and it was true that we hadn’t come here on a business trip or holiday. What did I mean to him, I wondered? Lover, mistress or half a wife? I had spent twenty years of my life with this man but still had no adequate word to describe our relationship.

What role does a lover play in a man’s life? So many women have loved a man but while a mother, a wife or a sister are acceptable relationships, any woman who does not fall into these neat categories can only expect to be called a mistress. Worse, she is looked upon as a kept woman, someone who is looked after, provided for financially by a man. But I had never sought any of these from my lover. I was an independent, successful businesswoman who had her own income and relied on no one to fight my battles. Certainly I loved him but I had chosen to do so and accepted that I would be single all my life. I was fully aware that he was a married man and that I would never have the status that his wife had. He could never offer me a marriage, yet I was prepared to remain single and love him for all that. Surely, despite all this, I could still love him and I did.

Our relationship never started off like that: I went to him first as a patient with an eye problem. But the problem was that he lost himself as he peered into my eyes. Perhaps this was a mistake but a mistake is a mistake, not a crime! We weren’t the first couple who found themselves in a situation where one was already married to someone else when we fell in love. I can bet that we weren’t the last either.

My reverie broke as I saw a black woman approach the spot I was sitting on. She was wearing a filthy pair of torn jeans, her hair was like a crow’s nest and frankly, she looked a little mad to me. Must be a junkie, I thought as I turned my face away from her, quickly wiping away the tears with my hands. I stole a glance at her and she came closer and flopped down next to me. ‘Are you crying?’

‘No,’ I replied as brusquely as I could.

‘Go ahead and howl if you want to,’ she went on. ‘But why are you crying?’

I reeled with nausea as her breath hit me. Pure hashish streamed into my face and I tried to get up and move away.

‘Don’t get up,’ she said kindly, ‘what is the problem? Did someone hit you?’

‘No, it’s nothing,’ I mumbled.

‘It can’t be nothing: those tears must have some reason. And where is the bloke who was with you this morning? Who is he? Your husband or …?’

‘He’s a friend,’ I mumbled.

‘That’s all right: what difference does it make whether he is a husband or a friend? He’s left you, hasn’t he? Let me tell you behind every woman’s tears there’s always a man. All men are bastards,’ she went on, ‘for nine minutes of pleasure, we women suffer them for nine months and ever after, if you ask me.’ And she flashed her teeth at me.

‘We had an argument,’ I offered.

‘So what?’ she asked. ‘People argue all the time, don’t they?’

‘No, this was serious,’ I confided. ‘He was furious with me and stomped off.’

‘Let him go,’ was her advice. ‘He’s not likely to come back. Just as well he left, if you ask me. He may have beaten you or something.’

‘How could he do this to me?’ I wailed and burst into fresh tears.

‘Shall I tell the police? You look like a tourist to me,’ she offered helpfully.

‘No, he’ll come back.’

‘Such confidence!’ she scoffed. ‘Honey, take it from me when a man stomps off, he doesn’t come back.’

She let me sniffle and then said, in a kinder tone, ‘Would you like some coffee? I think I have just about enough money for a cup. Here, I have $10.’

‘What will you do tomorrow, when this runs out?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, I’ll get by,’ she smiled. ‘Someone will turn up. And anyway, there’s always the soup kitchen for lonely people like us.’

I glanced at my watch: it was two in the afternoon and still there was no sign of the man. He’d taken my wallet along with him, how would I make it to the hotel, I worried. What had I said to him that got him so mad? I had spent ten days looking after him, making sure that he did not have to lift heavy bags and strain himself. For his sake, I had even put up with the rudeness of Dr Kedia’s obnoxious wife, when we stayed with them in St Louis.

Dr Kedia was a friend of Dr Saraf’s and as soon as we stepped into their house, his wife asked me, ‘Are you Dr Saraf’s nurse?’

‘My name is Prabha Khaitan,’ I replied.

‘So?’ the woman retorted. ‘Can’t a nurse be called Prabha Khaitan?’

‘Sure,’ I answered.

‘All we were told was that Dr Saraf was unwell and that he was coming for a check-up to the US after a heart attack. He would be accompanied by a nurse who would take care of him.’

I was appalled at her rudeness. Her husband stepped in quickly to ease the situation. ‘This is Prabhaji,’ he explained to her. ‘She is Dr Saraf’s business partner who has come here in connection with her own work. Why don’t you go and organize lunch?’ he added.

To ease the earlier embarrassment, he steered the conversation towards my export business and kept it there throughout the meal. Dr Saraf told them how I had started off from scratch to build up my business and how courageous this was for someone who came from a conservative Marwari family. At a time when most women of her background did not step out of their homes, he told them, she travelled all the way to Hollywood to do a course in beauty therapy and came back to Calcutta to start a famous chain of beauty salons called Figurette. ‘India Today did a feature on her, do you know? She’s quite a dynamic woman,’ he concluded and looked at me with pride.

Mrs Kedia gave me a sharp look and then turned to Dr Saraf. ‘I wish you had brought Mrs Saraf along,’ she cooed.

‘She couldn’t come in such a hurry,’ Dr Saraf replied. ‘This is a fairly expensive trip and it isn’t easy to organize foreign exchange at short notice. Prabha, on the other hand, is a businesswoman and is better prepared for a sudden foreign trip.’

I was seething throughout this exchange of pleasantries between them. The bitch! She knew perfectly well that I had an identity of my own but refused to acknowledge it. She couldn’t decide what to make of me: neither married, nor a widow, not even a kept woman. That I had chosen to live life on my own terms was something that she could not understand. Perhaps I was naïve, even foolish, I thought. If I had decided to have an affair, someone like her would shrug it off as a temporary aberration but for a woman to knowingly forge a relationship with a married man who had five children was incomprehensible to her.

So she now turned to me, determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. ‘Why did you never marry, Prabhaji?’ she asked.

‘There must have been some compulsion,’ her husband offered me an answer helpfully.

‘Go on,’ she shot down his olive branch. ‘Here is a woman who is educated and a successful businesswoman. Don’t tell me she never met a suitable man!’

‘These are personal matters,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t wish to make a public statement here.’

‘Oh Prabhaji,’ she said sweetly. ‘I seem to have offended you. I was just curious,’ she said, sucking on a slice of lemon and rolling her eyes innocently.

I somehow managed to swallow a few morsels of the lunch and as I got up, she called out: ‘Oh, by the way, I have made up a bed for you in the basement.’ ‘I will sleep in the same room as Dr Saraf,’ I told her firmly. ‘He’s not well and if he needs help in the night, I have to be there.’

‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ she replied nastily. ‘We are right next door to his room. We’ll take care of any help he may need.’

Both men remained silent throughout this exchange but I had my way and we shared the same bedroom. I slept on the floor while Dr Saraf slept on the bed. I could have joined him on the bed but perhaps my encounter with Mrs Kedia frightened me off. How obsessed we are with the bodies of men and women!

Back in our room, I turned angrily on Dr Saraf. ‘How could you remain silent throughout that episode and leave it to me to handle that woman?’

‘What did you want? That I take on her foolish and crude innuendoes?’

‘So you preferred to watch me being insulted by her?’

‘What can I do about it now? If I think of all that, I feel stressed,’ he replied.

‘Forget it,’ I said wearily. ‘We don’t want that you should fall ill here.’

At the airport, as she saw us off, Mrs Saraf had implored me to bring back Dr Saraf safe and sound. ‘He is all I have,’ she went on, ‘my husband, the father of my children…’ And what about me, I wanted to ask in turn. Do you think he means nothing to me? I have spent twenty-five years with him so do I have any claim on him or not? All the people around us were fully aware of our relationship but it was as if they did not want to own up to it.

‘Why do you let a person like Mrs Kedia get to you?’ Dr Saraf asked me. ‘You should have got used to people like her by now.’

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘But wherever we go, we seem to only meet people like her.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ he conceded wearily and I realized that he did not wish to pursue this line of conversation. In any case, like most men, he had a horror of tears and tantrums. On the other hand, I flew into operatic rages when upset, screaming and pulling my hair, beating myself with shoes. I hated myself for it later but at that time it seemed the only way to vent my frustration. Why did I live such a life, why don’t I end just end it, I would scream at him. Dr Saraf handled me sometimes with love, sometimes with anger and sometimes tried to reason me out of the rage. Why do you become so hysterical, he’d ask. Is marriage the be-all and end-all of life? Does all your education, your successful business, your writing mean nothing to you? No, I’d scream back: because all this is invisible to the people we meet. ‘Are you married?’ was their first question. Then with a sly glance at Dr Saraf’s younger children, they’d ask, ‘Are these your children?’ And if the older ones were around, their question became, ‘Are these your siblings?’ Sometimes I’d say yes, sometimes shake my head in denial. God knows what the poor children had to hear as well. Steeped in a perpetual state of guilt, it seemed to me that Dr Saraf and I were doomed to live together in a relationship we could neither own nor deny.

Ours was not merely a physical relationship, although it started with love. Yet gradually, that love was overlaid with layers of other feelings and the sharp sweetness of that first flush of love receded. What remained was a sick dependence, a habit and – for me – a security blanket. My life was so completely tied with his that I could not even visualize my existence without him. He became a sort of sanctuary and even though I earned as much or more than him, the prospect of a life without him was so frightening that I turned away from the possibility of his absence. He and I shared a bond that I was never able to make with anyone before or after. Perhaps making these knotty bonds with others has been a part of my nature since childhood.

Unable to sleep in the Kedias’ home, I tossed and turned as such thoughts flitted through I and my mind silently wept at my predicament.

‘I think, perhaps, you should go and visit your sister Geeta in Montreal for a week,’ Dr Saraf’s voice floated over to me from the bed.

‘What? And leave you here alone?’

‘Look, I’ll check into the hospital tomorrow for a week and there’s nothing that you can do there. In any case, Dr Kedia’s here to take care of me.’

‘All right then,’ I told him.

I went off to Montreal to my sister, thinking that I must devote some time to my business interests as well. Love and its problems takes up so much of our time that if women were to devote as much energy and dedication to their own work, what could they not achieve! If I had shed as much sweat as tears over my business as I did over Dr Saraf, I thought, I could have conquered the world. But the problem was that apart from him, there was nothing that engaged me so completely, nothing absorbed my whole being the way he did. I was never able to resolve this dilemma. Love and revulsion, independence and slavery, truth and lies, life and death…. Is there no possibility of another choice beyond these fundamental states of being? We are doomed to choose one of these and then make them the bedrock of our personality.

I often wonder how I survived my childhood. My mother called me ‘Chaumasa’, the sultry pre-monsoon season dreaded by every Bengali because it saps one’s energy. This is not to say that she did not complain when the monsoon followed bringing in its wake wet laundry, sniffling children, coughs and colds and her migraine. The maids were constantly running, applying hot poultices and rubbing mustard oil on the soles of feet. Radhabai would grumble: ‘As it is Prabha bai is so dark, this mustard oil isn’t going to help matters! How will we ever make her skin lighter?’

‘Stop talking nonsense! My Prabha bitiya is very pretty,’ my nursemaid, whom I called Dai-ma, would shush her.

‘What do you know of pretty girls, Chameli’s mother?’ Radhabai retorted. ‘My earlier employer, Mrs Heddinger, was so fair that she could blind you and yet she made me rub rose-water and cream into her every day.’

‘Then go there again, you witch,’ my Dai-ma shoved her aside. ‘I’ll take care of my child. Go on, scram!’ Dai-ma was my one and only champion and her lap my sanctuary when I was running away from Amma or my siblings.

We were brought up by our servants, they