When Shylock winced

Every time I resisted being Samaritan by lending money, it happened under duress. I was always keen to help the needy, as indicated in the moral science books. I had no money of my own so would have had to borrow it from my parents. But, it seemed, they encouraged a charitable disposition only in theory. For when I tapped them when someone asked me for money, their answer was “No”. I died of shame but the noble soul put me at ease.

Some days later he vanished, with the money he had borrowed from many others. Decency demands that I offer no hints but he also took away a photograph of me with my favourite singer, Jagjit Singh. I used to flaunt it before all. He said he would show it to his wife. He had not said when he would return it. He did not.

Okay, not everybody else is like that. Yes, a classmate did once pocket the change the bus conductor returned after I paid the fare for both, but, maybe, he was just unmindful.

Then there was the colleague who was not at his desk when the food he had ordered arrived. We all pooled in and paid. He returned later and devoured the food, never asking who paid. But, people do forget things after a hearty meal.

A friend who borrowed money had said he would return it in a month’s time. After the month, he was kind enough to say he would return it whenever I needed it.

Now, I have not mustered the courage to ask him yet. Money is not talked openly where I come from. I possibly know why. I spied on it in a magazine my father treasures. It says under a photo in which the famous Kennedy family members are dining that they engaged in varied dinner conversation, but one subject never discussed was money.

So, after the loss of the priceless Jagjit photograph — though I still have a copy — and other damages, I decided to think twice before lending money again.

Next, it was the turn of a student of my teacher, my junior, who was moving from Assam to Calcutta to intern at The Statesman. My teacher had asked me to help him out.

I played the guardian part well, until he called up one day to ask for help. Luckily he could not see my expression as I mumbled, incoherently, that I would love to help. He said his folks were sending him some money, but he did not have an account of his own. He asked for my bank account, saying around Rs 10,000 would be transferred there. And then, he dropped the bombshell. He asked if I could lend him Rs 1,000 for his immediate needs. He would return it from the amount his folks would send. I told him I would discuss this with my folks first. All the alarm bells in my mind were chiming in unison already.

I agreed. He collected the money from my office. I recollect he seemed touched. I saw him pocket the money and wondered if it would ever come back. I can still picture him that day. He wore these old-style spectacles from another era. My elder uncle used to wear similar ones years ago. He also wore ill-fitting trousers and his shirt was just as forgettable, though I have not forgotten it because money, my money, was involved. He had a funny-looking round face and smiled a lot, for no obvious reason.

Some days later he called again, to check if the money had arrived. It had, I confirmed a day or two later. We fixed a day on which he would come over to my place to collect the cash.

The day arrived. I was ready with the money. One thought kept eating my blood, though. He always talked of coming to collect the money, not a word about the money he borrowed from me. What if he just pocketed the Rs 10,000 and left?

There had to be a safeguard. I sat down to think and never stopped till I came up with a foolproof plan.

At the appointed hour, he rang the bell, on the 14th floor of the building I lived in then. I opened the door. He still had that warm smile. Little did he know what I was upto. I shut the door, putting the latch in place. After the usual courtesies it was time. I fished out the money from my drawer, taking a look inside to ensure something I had kept aside was there. I extended him the cash, and readied for my next move, to follow the moment he finished counting.

But, he made no move to count. He just took out two five-hundred-rupee leaves from the wad and handed them to me saying: “Let me return your money with a big thank you. You have no idea how much you have helped me.” He then just pocketed the rest.

My heart sank. I did not know whether to thank him or to die of shame. I watched transfixed, wishing I were elsewhere, wondering why I had never predicted such a scenario.

That a smile could hide an embarrassment was a first for me. I returned him the Rs 1,000 and told him it was not required. He looked confused and wondered if something was amiss. I get the feeling of sinking into quicksand every time I think of that moment.

With great shame, I told him I had taken my Rs 1,000 before handing him the money. He showed a lot of grace in only smiling and saying I had made it easier for him.

The Guests

That night at Haroon’s home, the hysterical lobbing back and forth of bitterness, mistrust and abuse was drowned only by the sound of Kasab and his heavily armed men emptying their guns on multitudes. After that there was complete silence, no words were spoken, neither in his house, nor in the city.

He had moved to Mumbai to escape what his life had become in Kolkata. Everything had been wonderful in the City of Joy. It had moved at a pace that had suited him. It made no demands on him. It let him be. And then things changed: he got married and it felt like the ground had been pulled from under his feet. After a difficult year he took a flight, as if to escape, and found himself in Mumbai, in the hope that relocating to the City of Dreams could rescue his marriage. From an easy life in Kolkata, he suddenly discovered he had it in him to brave the challenges in Mumbai — living as a paying guest, savouring dabbawala food, travelling by BEST buses and local trains — all done with the intention of saving enough to take a 1BHK on rent before his wife and kid could join him. Within a week of their arrival, however, the old problems resurfaced. Regular raising of voices, banging of doors, breaking of crockery, often amusing for the toddler who had no way of telling apart entertainment from violence.

The silence since their last fight had been broken by the arrival, three months later, of his senior and friend from school and his wife who came in from New Delhi. Chandan worked in the world of corporate communication. He wasn’t exactly coming to Mumbai on vacation. His wife had to sit for an exam for a correspondence course she was doing. The college had arranged for accommodation during the exam period. Chandan would arrive after the exam, take his wife to Lonavala and then stay a day or two in Mumbai before returning. “Could you please suggest a hotel that’s close to your place so that we could meet and discover Mumbai with you? Haroon, it would be great if you could take leave through that period…” his friend Chandan had written to him in a mail a month ago.

Shaken by the timing of the arrival, Haroon had had to break the silence to tell his wife that some guests were expected. She stood by the window, staring outside at nothing in particular and snapped: “When are they coming? How long will they be here?”

As he called up Chandan to say “Of course, you’ll stay at our place… No, no, I will have none of it”, he overheard Jemima calling up her mother, like she usually did after a fight. Her parents had said, after Haroon and Jemima’s last fight, “Enough is enough. We will come and take our daughter away.” Ever since an uneasy calm had descended on the house. He had no clue if they meant to carry out the threat but the silence at home only left the door ajar for speculation of all kind.

Chandan and Chitra turned out to be a vivacious couple — they got along like a house on fire, highlighting to him what was missing in his own married life. They let go of no opportunity to hold hands, to hug and loved Haroon and Jemima’s son like he was their own, indications that happily ever after too existed in some marriages. Haroon tried his best to brush his fractured relationship under the carpet, smiling whenever the situation warranted, cracking a joke with Jemima, even though she mostly didn’t respond. Jemima joked with Chandan though, like one would with a husband’s brother. Haroon was more reserved and yet courteous with his “Bhabhi”.

Once the bedroom doors closed at night, their son, Aeshan, came between them on the bed, as much a partition as a glue. But when they entered the living room in the morning, the façade of warmth returned for the guests’ eyes.

Mumbai brought out the child in Chandan. On the local to Bandra, he had screamed, much to other passenger’s glee, “Mumbai ka don kaun (Who’s the don of Mumbai)” while pointing to himself, as his wife nudged him with an indulgent smile.

On seeing Chandan hold Chitra’s arms from behind, recreating the famed scene from Titanic, while standing near the rocky sea at the Bandra Bandstand, Haroon remarked to Jemima: “See, how much she loves him?” She gave no reply.

The guests were loving every bit of Bandstand, wetting their feet briefly and running away before a wave did greater damage. Just then a jet took off from the nearby domestic airport and the playful couple looked up in synchrony, their hands going to their mouths, as they together mimicked the aircraft’s sonic boom. To the onlooker, the guests, though older than their hosts, would have appeared like a newly married couple. Haroon and Jemima, in contrast, came across as too old for such frivolity. That something was missing in the relationship stood out because of the exuberance the other couple displayed.

But even if the guests had noticed this, they made no mention of it. Instead, over dinner, they invited their hosts to stay with them in New Delhi and visit nearby places. “You must come down, please make a plan soon or just tell us your dates. We’ll chalk out your entire vacation,” said Chandan, as he began attacking the mutton dhansak and keema beri pulao at the crowded Parsi eatery Britannia and Company.

The next day they had pita bread, hummus and chicken shawarma for lunch at a mall before Haroon took them to his favourite address in town, Landmark, a book shop. And there, Chandan bought a city nightlife guide that he gifted to Haroon, saying: “You can’t be living in the city that never sleeps and not look up places to take Jemima out to.”

To complete the Mumbai experience, they took a bus ride home from Landmark. Haroon and Jemima sat quietly while Chandan and Chitra, who sat in the row behind them, sang “Ae dil hai mushkil...” all through the trip.

The next day the guests left. Haroon dropped them at Mumbai Central. On his way back home, he thought how the arrival of the guests had brought a sea change in their lives. How it looked like nothing had ever gone wrong in their married life. He began hoping the warmth of the past three days would still be in evidence when he reached home, but the warm house he had left just a while ago was back to being frigid.

But there was Aeshan, who pounced on him and later wondered why his father again went back to sleeping on the sofa-cum-bed in the living room. He would normally play with him till his mother dragged him back to the bedroom. That night Jemima let Aeshan sleep with his father. Haroon held on to his son like he had never held him before and whispered, “Just for you, I will do all it takes to make this relationship work.”

The next day the mother and child left. “We would have gone a week earlier. But I had to reschedule my tickets because of your guests,” Jemima said, as she handed him a paper saying she was authorising him to order LPG refills which were in her name.

This was worse than the worst he had ever feared. He had assumed there would be a visit from her parents, a mild rebuke and yet another attempt at brokering peace. But not this.

Haroon returned to walls where the little one had doodled with an untrained hand, toys – soft or hard, chewed or otherwise – crying for attention, outgrown clothes and voices that reverberated from the room, piercing screams and a child’s meaningless yet welcome laughter.

The emptiness at home made him run away from the place whenever he could. He dreaded returning, dreaded being asked how his family was, especially about the little one. Weekdays were still manageable; he had his office. But Sunday was the most painful. He had to just find a way to evade home. And again, he fell back on Landmark, where books and movies became his balm. He sometimes looked for his child amongst the many kids there, imagining it was just another Sunday and just another visit.

All communication channels had broken. It had been two months since he had any news of Jemima or Aeshan. He had joined Facebook after they left, so she was not on his friends’ list. He longed to see his son, what he looked like now, what he thought of him, if he missed him at all. He looked at all the photographs he had of Aeshan. But soon he tired from looking at the same pictures all the time and longed for new ones. There was no way of getting new snaps, until, he remembered... He could ask Chandan to send him the ones that he had clicked during their visit. Talking would mean giving many a difficult explanation; answers to how was the family doing, how was the little one, why are Jemima and Aeshan in Kolkata, when are they returning? No, he didn’t want to give those explanations. So, instead, he wrote an email.

Some days went by without any reply. He put it down to how busy one gets in a big city. He hoped for a reply by the weekend, and when none arrived, he looked ahead at the next weekend. When there was no response in over a month, he called up Chandan. But the calls now went unanswered. He had more than one number but there was just no reply. He wondered what was amiss, until he finally got an email from him. 

“You’re like a brother,” Chandan wrote. “You must be wondering why I haven’t written to you all these days, but I cannot tell you what I am going through. My marriage is falling apart… I have been at the receiving end of inexplicable, terrible temper tantrums and spent many a dreaded weekend at home. My life is broken. Mumbai was the last time we were civil, things worsened once we were back. I will talk to you in detail later, please forgive me for my long spell of silence. Only I know what I am going through. You will never be able to imagine it.”

Haroon switched to YouTube and listened to Ek Akela is Sheher Mein (A loner in a city) and, for a change, he was smiling.