The Henna Artist(5)

Ravi’s appearance was the perfect segue to what I’d come here to accomplish. Still, I needed to move forward cautiously.

“Home from boarding school?”

“Hahn. I wanted Ravi to help me cut the ribbon on the new gymkhana. You know Nehru-ji—how he wants to modernize India.” She sighed and laid her head against the cushion, as if she were besieged by daily calls from the prime minister. For all I knew, she was.

Lala entered with a silver tea tray. While I took out the savories I had cooked especially for Parvati from a tiffin, I heard her say to the older woman, “Did I not tell you to send her away?” Her voice was reproachful.

The servant put her hands together in prayer, touching them to her lips. “My niece has nowhere to go. I am her only family now. Please, Ji. We are at your mercy. Won’t you reconsider?”

I had never seen Lala so distressed. I turned away, afraid she was about to drop to her knees. A shrine for Lord Ganesh sat on a small table beside the four-poster bed. A garland of gardenias and another of tulsi leaves were draped around the statue, in front of which a diya burned. As modern as she liked to portray herself, Parvati spent every morning praying to the gods. I used to pray to my namesake, Lakshmi, the Goddess of Beauty and Wealth. Maa loved reciting the story of the Brahmin farmer who offered his scythe, his sole possession, to the goddess. In gratitude, she gave the farmer a magic basket that produced food any time he desired. But that was only a story, as true as any other Maa told and, at seventeen, I turned my back on the gods, just as now I turned away from Ganesh’s shrine.

Parvati was still addressing Lala. “I wouldn’t want to lose you, too, Lala. See that the girl is gone today.” She glared at Lala until the servant dropped her gaze, her shoulders drooping.

I watched Lala leave the room, She did not look up. I wondered what Lala’s niece had done to make her mistress so angry.

Parvati reached for her cup and saucer, a signal for me to pick up my own. The tea set was the kind the English loved, depicting women in corseted gowns, men in pantaloons, curly-haired girls in frocks. Before independence, these objects had signified my ladies’ admiration for the British. Now, they signified their scorn. My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile.

I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows. “Your son has grown into a handsome young man.”

“Unlike the Rao boy who thinks he’s the Rajasthani Devdas.”

Parvati, like my other ladies, said things to me she would never have said to one of her peers. I was childless and, therefore, a subject of pity, someone to whom my ladies could feel superior. At thirty, I was neither a foolish girl nor a gossipy matron. My ladies had long assumed my husband had abandoned me—an assumption I’d taken no trouble to contradict. I still wore the vermillion bindi on my forehead, announcing to the world that I was married. Without this assortment of credentials, I would never have been allowed into the confidence of my ladies, or into bedrooms like the one I found myself in now, my feet resting on pink Salumbar marble, my mistress seated next to me on a rosewood divan.

I took another sip of my chai. “Finding a perfect match for such a perfect son! I certainly don’t envy you.”

“He’s only seventeen. At twelve, I lost him to the Mayo School. A year from now, I’ll lose him once again to Oxford. Losing him to a wife? I can’t bear to think about that now.”

I adjusted my sari. “That’s smart of you. The Dutts, I fear, may have been in too much of a hurry.”

I caught the sparkle in her eye.

“Meaning?”

“Well,” I continued. “They’ve only just arranged for their son to marry the Kumar girl. You know the one—with the beauty spot on her cheek? Of course, the marriage will be put off until he’s completed his degree.” I looked out the window at her sons in their cricket whites. “The good ones are going like hot jalebis. Once a son is off to Britain or America, parents worry he’ll come home with a wife who doesn’t speak a word of Hindi.”

“Quite. The happiest marriages are when parents choose the girl. Just look at Samir and me.”

I could have said something, but I didn’t. Instead, I made a show of blowing on my tea. “I also heard the Akbar girl has been promised to Muhammad Ismail’s boy. One of Ravi’s classmates, isn’t he?”

I took another sip while holding Parvati’s gaze.

She sat a little straighter and looked out the window. On the lawn, Lala’s niece was serving the boys their tea. Ravi spoke to the girl and tapped her nose once, playfully, which brought a fit of giggles from her.

Parvati frowned. Without taking her eyes off the scene outside, she leaned toward me, slowly, like a baby bird, a sign for me to feed her. I placed a namkeen in her mouth, the one I’d made this morning, seasoned with parsley. Like all my ladies, she never suspected that the ingredients in my treats, combined with what I drew on her hands and feet, fueled her desire and her husband’s lust.

After a moment, she turned from the window and set her teacup delicately on the table.

“If I wanted a match—and I’m not saying I do...” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Would you have anyone in mind?”

“There are many eligible girls in Jaipur, as you know.” I smiled at her over the rim of my cup. “But Ravi is not just any boy.”