Noon Read Free

returned to his gods.
    Udaya had brought him to her mother’s house as a temporary step after Sahil.
    It had been impossible, once that relationship ended, to stay on in London. Not without Sahil. Who, after moving them out of his flat on Flood Street, became difficult and unreachable. He had
always travelled a lot, between La Mirage, Dubai and London, and in the end, like an airline reducing its flights to a destination, he had come to London less and less. It had always only been an
‘arrangement’ forged fast when she became pregnant with Rehan. She had hung on to the hope that it would deepen. But after a last holiday in Kathmandu, to which Sahil brought along two
children he claimed were his nephew and niece, the calls and visits came to an end.
    Love was one reason she hung on in London; pride another. After the scandal of her relationship, she found it difficult to face her mother with the news that it was over, not three years after
it had begun. She found work as a freelance lawyer, but made only enough to pay the rent on the north London bedsit they had moved into.
    Then, several years after her last conversation with Sahil, she ran into an uncle, visiting from Delhi. It was a bleak moment; she had been forced to sell some jewellery the day before; in her
weakness, she confessed everything. He convinced her to let him prepare the ground with her mother and a few weeks later Udaya returned, with Rehan, to rebuild her life in the city she had left
some years before, trusting completely to passion.
    It had made sense at first to stay with her mother. But no sooner had she arrived than the fights began. And, as with those of her childhood, they seemed never to be about what
they were ostensibly about. If then the issue of cutting her hair or smoking or marriage had become an expression of some deeper tension between them, so, now too, seemingly innocuous things, such
as the cleanliness of the kitchen, the trouble in Punjab and Rehan’s upbringing became laden with their old animus. The difference was that they were not alone. Rehan, every day more aware,
was there among them; and she was determined to save him the scenes. It had been fight enough to convince her mother to let Rehan feed himself. Udaya had a secret terror that her mother,
welli-ntentioned as it might be, would instil in him, through that special brand of Indian compassion that debilitates when it means to commiserate, a 
feeling of want or misfortune. Rehan had given no indication of ever being aware of Sahil’s absence; and though she had given him his father’s name and even an
explanation of a kind – Sometimes, just as you fight with your friends, grown-ups fight too – he had never seemed interested in knowing more. It made her happy to think of him as
unscathed by their separation.
    No, if she was to protect Rehan, she must find her own place, and quickly. She had already begun making enquiries.
    *   *   *
    From where he lay on the bed, Rehan could see just his mother’s back, her long straight hair and a few inches of flesh trapped between her petticoat and blouse. She sat
before the new dressing table, opening her mouth wide for lipstick, smacking her lips closed on a tissue and reaching for tweezers to remove stray hairs.
    ‘Where are you going for dinner?’ Rehan asked.
    ‘It’s a work dinner, baba. A client . . .’
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘Amit, Amit Sethia.’
    ‘What does he do?’
    ‘He’s an industrialist.’
    ‘What’s an industrialist?’
    ‘Someone with industries. Coal, steel etc. . . .’
    ‘Is he rich?’
    ‘Yes, baba,’ Udaya said, closing one eye over a silver stick lined with kohl.
    ‘Ma,’ Rehan said abruptly, ‘why do you hate Nani?’ His mother blinked rapidly, half-turning around. An expression of withheld amusement and a threat to come clean played
on her face.
    ‘Rehan! What have you heard?’
    ‘Nothing, Ma, really. I swear. I was just curious.’
    ‘Why are you