‘You are so scrumptious,’ she told Aparna. ‘Now have your milk.’ To the ayah she said, ‘Dudh lao. Ek dum !’ And Miriam creaked off to get a glass of milk for the little girl.
For some reason the ayah’s slow-moving back irritated Meenakshi and she thought: We really ought to replace the T.C. She’s quite needlessly senile. This was her and Arun’s private abbreviation for the ayah and Meenakshi laughed with pleasure as she remembered the occasion over the breakfast table when Arun had turned from the Statesman crossword to say, ‘Oh, do get the toothless crone out of the room. She quite puts me off my omelette.’ Miriam had been the T.C ever since. Living with Arun was full of sudden delightful moments like that, thought Meenakshi. If only it could all be that way.
But the trouble was that she also had to run the house, and she hated it. The elder daughter of Mr Justice Chatterji had always had everything done for her – and she was now discovering how trying it could be to handle things on her own. Managing the staff (ayah, servant-cum-cook, parttime sweeper, part-time gardener; Arun supervised the driver, who was on the company payroll); doing the accounts; buying those items that one simply couldn’t trust the servant or the ayah to buy; and making sure that everything fitted within the budget. This last she found especially difficult. She had been brought up in some luxury, and though she had insisted (against her parents’ advice) on the romantic adventure of standing after marriage entirely on their own four feet, she had found it impossible to curb her taste for certain items (foreign soap, foreign butter, and so on) that were intrinsic to the fabric of a civilized life. She was very conscious of the fact that Arun helped support everyone in his own family and often commented to him about the fact.
‘Well,’ Arun had said just recently, ‘now that Savita’s married, that’s one less, you’ll agree, darling.’ Meenakshi had sighed, replying in a couplet :
‘Marry one – and what’s my fate?
Every Mehra on my plate.’
Arun had frowned. He had been reminded once again of the fact that Meenakshi’s elder brother was a poet. It was from long familiarity – almost obsession – with rhyme that most of the younger Chatterjis had learned to improvise couplets, sometimes of surpassing puerility.
The ayah brought the milk and left. Meenakshi turned her lovely eyes back to Buddenbrooks while Aparna sat on the bed drinking her milk. With a sound of impatience Meenakshi threw Thomas Mann onto the bed and followed him there, closed her eyes and went off to sleep. She was awakened with a shock twenty minutes later by Aparna, who was pinching her breast.
‘Don’t be horrid, Aparna precious. Mummy’s trying to sleep,’ said Meenakshi.
‘Don’t sleep,’ said Aparna. ‘I want to play.’ Unlike other children of her age, Aparna never used her name in the Caesarean third person, though her mother did.
‘Darling sweetheart, Mummy is tired, she’s been reading a book and she doesn’t want to play. Not now, anyway. Later, when Daddy comes home, you can play with him. Or you can play with Uncle Varun when he returns from college. What have you done with your glass?’
‘When will Daddy come home?’
‘I’d say in about an hour,’ replied Meenakshi.
‘I’d say in about an hour,’ said Aparna speculatively, as if she liked the phrase. ‘I want a necklace too,’ she added, and tugged at her mother’s gold chain.
Meenakshi gave her daughter a hug. ‘And you shall have one,’ she said, and dismissed the subject. ‘Now go to Miriam.’
‘No.’
‘Then stay here if you want. But do be quiet, darling.’
Aparna was quiet for a while. She looked at Buddenbrooks, at her empty glass, at her sleeping mother, at the quilt, at the mirror, at the ceiling. Then she said, ‘Mummy?’ tentatively. There was no response.
‘Mummy?’ Aparna attempted a few notches louder.
‘Mmm?’
‘MUMMY!’ yelled Aparna at the top of her lungs.
Meenakshi sat bolt upright and shook Aparna. ‘Do you want me to spank you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ replied Aparna definitively.
‘Then what is it? Why are you shouting? What were you going to say?’
‘Have you had a hard day, darling?’ asked Aparna, hoping to arouse a response to her imitative charm.
‘Yes,’ said Meenakshi shortly. ‘Now, darling, pick up that glass and go to Miriam at once.’
‘Shall I comb your hair?’
‘No.’
Aparna got down reluctantly from the bed and made her way to the door. She toyed with the idea of saying, ‘I’ll tell Daddy!’ though what she could have complained about was left unformulated. Her mother meanwhile was once again sleeping sweetly, her lips slightly parted, her long black hair spread across the pillow. It was so hot in the afternoon, and everything tilted her towards a long and languorous sleep. Her breasts rose and fell gently, and she dreamed about Arun, who was handsome and dashing and covenanted, and who would be coming home in an hour. And after a while she began to dream about Billy Irani, whom they would be meeting later that evening.