The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi
3
MALIK
Jaipur, State of Rajasthan, India
At Samir Singh’s house, I’m greeted by an old gateman in a khaki uniform—not one I remember from before—who asks me to wait under the mango tree while he announces my arrival for dinner. I watch him totter down the gravel drive toward the stately house, his white turban bouncing lightly on his head. I’ve been in Jaipur for a month now. Before that, I hadn’t visited the Pink City since I was eight years old. Back then, waiting outside houses like this one for Auntie-Boss to finish applying henna to one of her society ladies was a regular part of my day.
The Singh property is much as I remember it: freshly watered rosebushes, their deliciously scented blossoms large, dense and bloodred. The desert heat has not yet scorched Jaipur’s gardens; there will be ample time for that in the coming months. Even so, the Singh house—made of fine marble and stone and shaded by large neem trees—will stay cool. Frangipani vines, gracing each terrace of the two-story mansion, invite visitors to admire the fragrant flowers, their soft yellow centers spiraling into a fan of white petals.
The chowkidar returns and asks me to go straight through the house to the backyard.
As I approach the front veranda, I make note of the servant to one side of the house waxing a Mercedes sedan. Next to it stands a gleaming Rolls-Royce, which has been freshly washed and polished. The Singh-Sharma company must be doing very well indeed; the car I last saw Samir driving was a Hindustan Ambassador, a nod to post-independence made-in-India policy designed to promote the manufacturing of goods in India, including automobiles.
On the veranda, a neat array of shoes to one side of the front door reminds me that I must remove my own. I step out of my loafers, polished to a high shine, as I’d been taught to do at the Bishop Cotton School for Boys. Like my private-school classmates, I never wear socks. When I step through the wide front door into a quiet foyer, I stop a moment to take in my surroundings. I’ve never been inside a home as grand as this, though I spent many an afternoon outside homes I might have found to be as grand, or grander, had I been invited in. But at the time, I was just the boy who came with Lakshmi; the scrappy assistant, known only to the household’s gatemen, gardeners and servants.
On the wall to my right hangs a large tiger skin, the spoils from one of Samir’s shoots with the maharajas of Jaipur or Jodhpur or Bikaner. I wonder what Nimmi would think. She, who has guided sheep and goats through the Himalayan gorges with an eye out for predators like tigers, leopards and wild elephants, might think the killing of such animals for sport unnecessary, even cruel.
On the opposite wall, next to the wide staircase fashioned from pink Salumber marble, a large photo shows Nehru, the late prime minister, standing with Samir and Parvati and several others—official-looking men and women—in front of a government building. I know from Auntie-Boss that Parvati Singh is particularly proud of her past association with our government’s effort to strengthen Indo-Soviet relations.
Would I want to live in a house as imposing as this? Dr. Jay and Auntie-Boss’s bungalow in Shimla is comfortable, and welcoming. Walls and floors of wood, not marble. Cozy nooks where Lakshmi writes her letters or reads books that she borrows from the Shimla library. My next thought surprises me: Where would Nimmi and the children and I live?
Would that ever have occured to me before I came to Jaipur? A month of being separated and I’m thinking marriage? I have to shake my head to clear it.
I continue through the foyer, past the open French doors at the back of the house. I see an expansive green lawn and the many wrought-iron chairs and tables, dazzlingly white, placed in various configurations. The chairs are empty, all save one. A man in a fine linen shirt sits facing away from me. The thinning hair, graying now, tells me that the man is Samir Singh, surveying his domain. I call him Uncle, not because we are related, but from custom and respect. His arm is raised, his hand jiggling the half-full glass of ice and amber liquid.
“Welcome,” he says. He doesn’t turn around.
I drop into the chair beside his own and offer him my hand. He grasps it firmly.
“Uncle,” I say.
I have always found his presence reassuring. He is not a handsome man, nor particularly tall, but people feel looked after in his presence, and protected. I would rather be in Shimla, staying close to Nimmi and her children, or reading by the fire with Auntie-Boss and Dr. Jay. But if I have to be in Jaipur, I’d just as soon be with Samir.
He looks tired, the pouches under his eyes more prominent, the creases along his mouth deeper than they were a dozen years ago.
“I trust you had a good trip from Shimla.” He nods at his glass. “Join me?”
I smile. “Sure, why not?”
He calls to a servant in a white uniform and turban, who is watering the petunias and marigolds along the high stone wall at the back of the property. Light from the setting sun makes the shards of glass along the top of the wall sparkle like emeralds. The servant drops his hose and walks into the house.
Samir sips his drink and studies me with those striated brown eyes of his, so much like the marbles we used to play with on the street. “Has that boarding-school education finally turned you into a Pukkah Sahib?”
This is the reason I’ve accepted his invitation to come see him. For twelve years, Samir Singh paid my tuition at the Bishop Cotton School for Boys. My crisp white Oxford shirt, the long sleeves of which I roll upward from my wrists, my slim trousers, cuffed at the ankles, are evidence of that education. Unlike the shapeless half-sleeve shirts and baggy pants that other Indian men my age wear, I’ve adopted the more tailored look of a private-school uniform. I even sport a flat Swiss watch, a gift a wealthy schoolmate gave me in exchange for bourbon I was able to supply him for his birthday party.
Samir’s reaction to me is similar to the one that Kanta Auntie and her husband, Manu Agarwal, had a month ago, upon my arrival from Shimla. When I showed up at their bungalow—far more modest than the Singh estate—Auntie’s eyes went wide with admiration. She quickly brought me inside for a closer look. Manu, quieter and more reserved than Kanta, laughed at her speechlessness—so unlike her—and moved forward to shake my hand. I had not seen either of them in the twelve years since I’d been away. Kanta and Auntie-Boss sent photos and letters to each other every week or so and had long conspired to have Manu take me on as an apprentice before I ever learned of it. Lakshmi had hoped I would live with the Agarwals during my stay in Jaipur. But having boarded at an all-boys school where privacy was a scarce commodity, I wanted my own space. So Manu Uncle had kindly arranged for me to stay at the smaller of two guesthouses, separate buildings on the perimeter of the Rambagh Palace grounds.
Now, surveying Samir’s lawn, I tug at the sharp crease along one of my pants legs and laugh. The grass is cool under my feet, and it feels good to stretch my toes. I notice Samir is also barefoot. The servant returns with a small tray, offering me a cut-glass tumbler of scotch and ice. As I take it, I say, “Think I can pass for an angrezi? With this?” I gesture to my face, the color of my skin not unlike an overcooked chapatti.
Samir chuckles as our glasses clink. His pale wheat complexion could pass for a Brit. He takes a long swallow.
It’s more than the color of my skin that will keep me from the ranks of the privileged. Long used to serving rather than being served, I affect a deference in my bearing that’s hard for me to shed. I suppose the upper classes might suss me out sooner or later, but that doesn’t really bother me.
Samir lowers his voice so the servant in the yard cannot hear us. “I have strict orders to call you Abbas while you’re here in Jaipur.”
The memory of that day makes me smile. Auntie-Boss was filling out my school enrollment form shortly after we’d moved to Shimla. She had marked my age as eight, an age I preferred, though neither of us knew how old I really was. She asked me for my full name to put on the form.
“Malik,” I said.
“First or last name?”
I had to think a moment. If I ever had a naming ceremony as a baby, I didn’t remember it. I shrugged. “Only name.”
She turned down the corners of her mouth as if considering this. “Let’s pick a first name for you, then.” She ran through an impressive list, rattling off the meaning of names like Aalim, Jawad and Rashid. I pretended to be embarrassed, but I was secretly pleased; no one had ever spent this much time thinking about my future. We finally settled on Abbas, which is Urdu for lion. I liked the sound of that: Abbas Malik. For days after, I practiced writing my new name over and over.
Like me, Samir is wearing a custom tailored shirt and raw-silk pants. He has loosened his tie—he must have just come from work—and it sits like the wilted stem of a plant on his chest. “Manu Agarwal told me you’ve come to Jaipur only at Lakshmi’s request, and I think it a wise move. But then, Lakshmi has always been wise.” He sounds wistful, and I wonder if he misses her. She has never talked to me about the two of them, and I have never asked. “The Maharani Latika trusts Manu Agarwal to manage the facilities department. It’s a big job, and he’s been doing it now for fifteen, sixteen years? I’m of course grateful he hires my firm to design and build the larger projects.” Samir is not being entirely truthful; his blood relation to the royal family makes his work for the palace a foregone conclusion. Luckily, he has the talent to justify the nepotism. “You’ll learn a lot about the construction business from Manu. After a time, you can decide whether the work suits you. It’s what I tell my sons. Their career, their choice.”
When Auntie-Boss and I left Jaipur in 1957, Samir had just merged his architectural firm with Sharma Construction, now known as Singh-Sharma. Lakshmi had arranged the marriage of Samir’s son Ravi to Mr. Sharma’s daughter Sheela, so the business merger was inevitable. Ravi Singh, having completed university at Oxford and architecture school at Yale, now works alongside his father as an architect in Singh-Sharma. Samir’s younger son, Govind, is studying civil engineering in the United States. Manu told me Samir is hoping both his sons will eventually take over the family business. Singh-Sharma is now the biggest design-build firm in Rajasthan, constructing projects throughout northern India.
“I heard Mr. Sharma had a stroke?”
Samir nods. “Five years ago. The good Mrs. Sharma looks after him.” He jiggles his glass and a servant comes forward to pour more scotch into it. “None of his sons or his brothers wanted to take over his part of the firm. Besides, they’re scattered over the globe.”
“So it’s all on your shoulders now?”
“Mine and Ravi’s.”
“Congratulations.” I raise my glass and he taps his drink against mine.
It makes me feel better to hear Samir say that my apprenticeship at the palace is a chance to see if I like the work. I’ve been wondering if I should give this opportunity my all rather than looking at it as a way to appease Auntie-Boss, who I know is only looking out for my future.
Nimmi had a hard time understanding why I would want to go four hundred miles away just when she and I were getting close. I told her: Auntie-Boss made it possible for me to look after Omi and her children. Without her, where would I be? Hustling contraband cigarettes off the back of a truck? Serving time for peddling pornographic films? I knew Nimmi was terribly lonely after the death of her husband, and that I had filled a gap in her life, so the news about my internship in Jaipur came as a blow to her no matter how many times I told her it was temporary. I think what hurt her the most is that my immediate loyalty is to Lakshmi; Boss is my family.
Would it be too much to hope that Nimmi and Auntie-Boss might become friends in my absence? Their relationship is important to me in a way it wasn’t with any of the private-school girls I bedded. First, because Nimmi is older than me by two or three years. (We don’t know for sure how far apart we are in age because she never had a birth certificate either, but we made a guess based on what she could remember about the time when India gained her independence. And the answer was: nothing! So she must still have been a baby.)
Moreover, in Nimmi’s presence, I feel like a grown man—an adult—though I can’t explain why. I do know I want to take care of her, and Rekha and Chullu. But I’m only twenty—too young to have a ready-made family. Here in Jaipur, I know many of the cousin-brothers I grew up with must already be fathers, but I never expected that to be my fate.
These thoughts are interrupted by a woman’s scolding voice, which startles both Samir and me. “Ravi!”
We both turn around to see who is shouting.
There, on the veranda, stands a young woman in a yellow silk sari, a sleepy baby resting on her shoulder. A young girl, maybe five years old, is trying to conceal herself behind her mother. The girl is dressed in a pale pink tutu; she’s crying. It’s hard to understand what she is saying. The woman’s dark curly hair is only long enough to reach her shoulders, as is the way of India’s modern women. Her cheeks are flushed. And at the sight of me, her eyelids flutter. “Oh! I’m sorry. I thought you were my husband.”
Samir Uncle looks amused. “Come and meet our guest, who will be joining us for dinner.”
The woman hesitates, before hoisting the baby higher on her shoulder and coming down the steps. The little girl follows.
“Meet Abbas Malik,” says Samir. “He’s working with Manu Agarwal at the Jaipur Palace, and he’s joining us for dinner tonight.” Now he turns to me. “Abbas, this is my daughter-in-law, Sheela.”
Instead of greeting me with a deferential namaste, Sheela steps forward and offers her hand for me to shake. Her fingers are long and carefully manicured, the nails are polished and catch the sun’s light. She wears a slim gold watch, seed pearls surrounding the face. Her handshake is firm, warm.
She says, “How do you do?” Of course she has no reason to remember me, but I remember her as if I’d seen her only yesterday, when, in fact, I last saw her when she was fifteen, dressed in a pretty satin frock, telling Auntie-Boss she didn’t want a Muslim decorating her mandala.
The girl in the tutu must be her daughter, who has now stopped crying and is staring at me. Sheela introduces her as Rita. “For now,” she says, patting the baby’s bottom, “the baby is just Baby.”
Sheela turns to address Samir. I can see the infant now over her shoulder. Her kohl-lined eyes are trying to focus on me.
“Papaji, it is shameful,” Sheela says. “Must I do everything myself? The nanny and housemaid should not have been allowed to take the same day off.”
Whether or not Sheela is stamping her foot, underneath her sari, she might as well be.
Samir Uncle’s eyes are smiling. “I hear you took second in the tennis match at the club today. Shabash!” He toasts her with his glass and smiles at little Rita, who scurries to hide behind her mother.
Sheela’s expression softens slightly. “Let me tell you, it was no easy victory. Jodi Singh thinks that all she’s there for is to stand on the court in a short skirt and smile. As usual, I had to do all the work!”
Now I know the rosy color of Sheela’s cheeks is the result of exercise. She gives off an energy, an aura of vitality that is palpable. In fact, she makes me think of sleek young goats, charging up the Himalayan hills, their exertion producing a steaming heat. The image amuses me.
“Jodi does have nice legs,” muses Uncle.
Sheela slaps him playfully on the shoulder. “Shame on you! Now, I need to put Baby down for a nap. And then feed Rita. When that lazy husband of mine comes home, tell him to come help me.” She turns to me and smiles. “So nice to meet you,” she says, then briskly turns and heads back into the house, followed by her daughter, who is clutching a handful of her mother’s sari.
“E-man-ci-pa-ted,” Samir Uncle whispers. He winks at me. “Modern generation.”
“How long have Sheela and Ravi been married?”
Samir purses his lips. “Six years. They married after Ravi graduated with his architecture degree.”
I nod. I’d been wary the week before, when Manu told me over dinner that Samir Singh wished to invite me for dinner. “Singh-Sharma is close to completing the work on the Royal Jewel Cinema, the palace’s latest project,” Manu said. “It’s the first substantial building Ravi has managed on his own. It would do you well to reacquaint yourself with the Singhs. If you thought they were important all those years ago when you lived here, they’re even more important now. Ten times what they were before.”
Although Lakshmi never told me to stay away from the Singhs, I don’t think she would be pleased that I’m spending the evening with them. The last time I remembered seeing Auntie-Boss and Samir together, in Jaipur, they had seemed tense—painful currents running between them. I don’t think they parted on good terms. But a lot of time had passed since then, and I, for one, am all for letting bygones be bygones, especially where business is concerned. What the two of them once had between them is nothing to do with me now.
And Manu Uncle is like family. If Manu says that I should go somewhere, I go.
When the Singh’s maid calls us inside for dinner, Samir invites me to join the others in the dining room while he takes a phone call.
Dinner turns out to be a seven-course affair that lasts two hours. Samir’s wife, Parvati, presides. She scolds the servants as they’re serving food. “You call this dal?” she says. “Who ever heard of putting potatoes in dal?” And, later, “Take back these paranthas. They’ve gone cold. Even ghee won’t melt on them.”
In the years since I last saw her, Parvati Singh has put on weight, but it has only added to her beauty. Her cheeks are plump, her bosom larger but still firm, and her full lips are painted with mulberry-colored lipstick. She has lively dark eyes and a lusty laugh. She stands almost as tall as her husband.
From her seat at one end of the long table, she is now overseeing the serving of hot puris, fresh from the stove. “Abbas,” she says, “you are a bilkul mystery to us.” She makes a gesture with her fingers, touching them to her thumbs, then opening her hands again, as if she were sprinkling salt on the table. “Samir told me only that a bright young man would be coming to dine with us. That’s all he said, and nothing more.”
“Yes,” says Ravi, the couple’s older son. “We’ve been wondering just who is this bright young man?” He flashes an engaging smile in my direction. It’s hard not to like Ravi, whom I would have met already if he hadn’t been out of town on business. Like his father, he seems to enjoy everything he does, which, as I’ve learned in the past half hour, includes playing polo, eating and talking.
Now Sheela chimes in. “Satisfy our curiosity,” she says. “We want to know more!” I notice she has applied a coral lipstick since we shook hands on the lawn. The color suits her.
All eyes are now on me. “It’s no use pumping a dry well,” I say. “I am neither mysterious nor very bright, as you will soon find out.” I smile.
“But that can’t be true. Samir said you’d been to boarding school up north? Of course, both my sons attended Mayo College.” Parvati beams proudly at her oldest. “Ravi continued to Eton, then went on to Oxford and Yale. And our younger son, Govind, is now in New York studying at Columbia. And you?”
“Nothing quite so grand,” he says. “Your sons are definitely smarter. I was a Cottonian.”
Parvati’s face is frozen, halfway between a smile and a frown. “You went to Bishop Cotton School? In Shimla?” She pauses, seemingly to search her memory. “But that’s where Samir went!” she says. “He didn’t tell us.”
I keep my expression blank and look at Ravi. “The English winters must be just as cold as those in Shimla. Brrr!” I wrap my arms around myself and mimic shivering to distract Mrs. Singh from whatever thoughts are now whirling in her head.
“Right enough!” says Ravi. “We used to have spitting contests to see whose spit could freeze before it hit the ground.” He laughs.
Across the table, Sheela is giving him a stern look with her wide-set eyes. “Ravi!” she says. “Don’t give the children ideas!” She tilts her head toward little Rita, sitting next to her, quietly eating her rice and dal.
Ignoring his wife, Ravi turns to me again. “No doubt we have stories to share—after dinner.” He raises his eyebrows and wags his head in amusement.
Samir arrives and sits at the head of the table, opposite his wife. “After dinner?” he says. “Does that mean that everyone has gone ahead without me?” He shakes open his napkin, lays it on his lap and smiles. Everyone else around the table seems to breathe a sigh of relief.
When I was a boy working with Auntie-Boss, she used to lecture me about discretion. “We know things about people, Malik, because we go into their homes, the place where they are most vulnerable. That does not mean that we can divulge what we’ve have seen or heard to everyone we know. There’s more power in keeping a secret than in betraying it.”
I never thought Lakshmi meant that we should blackmail people using our knowledge, only that our clients would be loyal to us if we showed loyalty to them.
I look around the dinner table and consider what I know about this family—the Singhs.
I know Lakshmi helped to keep many of Samir’s mistresses childless during the ten years she spent in Jaipur.
And I know that Samir Uncle once shared a bed with Auntie-Boss before she married Dr. Jay.
I also know that Auntie-Boss’s younger sister, Radha, had a baby boy, and that Ravi Singh was the baby’s father. Now that boy is twelve years old, and Ravi’s never seen him. That’s because Parvati Singh whisked Ravi away to England, where he could finish his studies without being touched by scandal.
I also know that Sheela Sharma—then fifteen and plump—didn’t want a dirty street child like me to help with the mandala Lakshmi was designing for her sangeet.
But since that time, my face has filled out, and my hair is styled neatly. My style of dress is more appropriate to someone of her class; no wonder she doesn’t recognize, or remember, me now, sitting opposite her at the dinner table.
Why would she? For Sheela I was nothing more than a blemish on an otherwise perfect afternoon that ended years ago.
But I have not forgotten how she looked at me that afternoon. I didn’t need to know her, or anything about her, or her family, or what she must have thought of me—however worthy, or unworthy. It was enough to witness the expression on her face.