Irudaya Mary

Irudaya Mary, the cook and housekeeper of an old suburban apartment finds herself both repulsed by and drawn to its newest tenant, an expat from New York who appears with just two bags and one expectation.

Photographed by Aishwarya Arumbakkam for Soup. Image used for representational purposes only.

Fresh laundry lies stretched across 6/2 Royal Road in confusing new roles. Curtains cover chairs, a bedsheet is draped across the dining table and cotton table mats cling to the arms of an old chair. 

July rain lashes against the windows as Irudaya Mary hunts for a place to dry the pillow covers. She settles for the rocking chair before she switches the fan on, taking in the lemony chemical scent of Comfort mingling with that of the fishy rain outside. 

It is the 25th, new occupants are set to arrive in two days and before they come, she sets the house in order as she waits for Bosco the old broker to arrive. 

She hides naphthalene balls like pearls into the deep dark of every shelf, she dusts the oil painting of Mirabai and spritzes Colin onto a smudgy mirror wiping a trail of blue to find herself. This is the nicest time, she thinks, before they occupy the house with their bodies, their belongings and their unique scent of food and familiarity. 

When Bosco finally arrives, she greets him with mashed sweet potatoes and a glass of warm honey water for his throat. 

It is difficult not to love Irudaya Mary, surrounded by the freshness of laundry and her own warm consideration. 

“Just one man Mary, only one fellow is coming,” Bosco tells her when she enquires about the new occupants. 

“From New York, Mr Ellmer. He eats Indian food it seems, but you know how these buggers are, can’t handle spice, so you make something bland first time. Then you see. Anything to be repaired?” 

They are sucked into chores, bulbs to be replaced, seepage in the guest bathroom, towels that have become threadbare, money for groceries. And Irudaya Mary barely has time to think about this Ellmer. 

She has been taking care of 6/2 Royal Road as cook and housekeeper for nearly ten years now. The home has seen a South Korean family from Busan, an American documentary photographer, two French engineers, a Columbian musician who left in a hurry and an old American couple, who wished to be closer to their son’s family here in Mumbai. 

If she has to choose, the American couple, the Hupfers are her favourite occupants. She misses them these days. It’s hard to lose someone when you’ve just gotten to know them. But that was how it had to be at 6/2, a distinguished old apartment in the suburbs of Mumbai, only rented out to ‘expats’ who would keep it in ‘good condition’ for the two years it was leased out. 

Irudaya Mary has never met the owners, (they live in Australia), instead she interacts with Bosco, who arranges the initial exchanges between her and the new occupants. 

Usually, there are tedious details to take care of, a list of specific instructions from the occupants that Bosco helps her organise. But with this Ellmer, she knows nothing except his desire to eat only Indian food. 

She will make him prawns in a light coconut curry for his first lunch, she thinks, sweet minus the green chillies, and add a salad of cucumber and tomatoes with lemon juice. No overwhelming spice, just a warm sweet welcome with a curious squeeze of lemon.

******************************************************************************************************** 

Two days later, he arrives. By now, every piece of laundry has returned to its original home and 6/2 appears dressed up for Ellmer’s arrival in clean sheets and the inviting scent of coconut curry. 

When she finally sees him, she only thinks of how worn his eyes look.

Worn brown eyes drooping into creases of crinkles and wrinkles. 

“Good afternoon. Iroodaya Mary, isn’t it?” he says and his smile lifts his eyes. 

“Hello sir,” she responds.

“Bernie, call me Bernie and I’ll call you Iroodaya?”

She wants to tell him everyone calls her Mary but it seems like a lot for him to take, so she smiles back and collects his luggage- two bags and an already defeated umbrella. 

After she shows him around the house and before he decides to take a shower she wants to know if he will eat?

“How is your English so good?” he asks in answer. 

“Sir, all Indians speak little-little, but I’m Catholic no, the nuns taught me,” she smiles. 

“I’ll have lunch,” and the worn eyes seem to acknowledge something, but she can’t quite tell what. 

“Ajeeb aadmi hai re,” she tells Kalpana later on the train. They’re sitting by the window, for a change the local is a mild degree freer of humans. 

Kalpana, her best friend and confidante commutes with her every day from Bandra West to Virar on the most crowded, brutal local train. Her friend isn’t just a friend, but a pair of hands to save her from falling, a rough mouth to assist her in telling off bullies and a body to save her a seat. 

But there’s so much space today, that they place their handbags by their sides. Kalpana’s bag, crammed with photos of her gods, her lunch dabba, a few vegetables and keys is her pride and joy- a counterfeit LV that looks exactly like the one her madam owns. She digs into it now looking for her phone as she distractedly asks Irudaya Mary, “Ajeeb kyun?”

They switch to Marathi and Irudaya confides in her best friend, trying to make sense of her own confusion. 

“He had only two bags…” she begins.

“So?”

“He’s staying for two years, but there’s nothing of his own. One bag had books, the other bag had few clothes, two shoes and laptop. Buss…nothing else. No family photo, no painting…nothing,” Irudaya tells her friend.

“So what? Imagine you had to leave your home and go to another country what will you take with you? You’ll pick what you need.”

Irudaya thinks about it. What will she pick? Yesu, of course, she wishes she could leave her mother behind but no, she would have to take her, her silk saris, her masalas, the bible, her jewellery, her plants by the window sill, the box of cards Rajan bought in Lonavala…

The question should have been, what would she leave behind?

“He is like a murderer or a thief, only those kinds of people can come with so little Kalpana,” she finds herself saying. 

“Arrey why would you dislike the poor fellow. If you ask me, you’re lucky with these goras. Look at me, I had to walk for fifteen minutes looking for a public toilet today. My madam doesn’t have a servant’s toilet and the building one is broken. At least you are treated like a human being.”

Irudaya knows this is true. In India where most domestic workers aren’t allowed to sit on chairs, use the same plates or the toilet, with the goras, she could at least hold onto her dignity. 

Still, she can’t get over an uncomfortable feeling about Ellmer. 

It was the way he’d eaten her raita and laughed casually as he said, “I’m just as curious as you are.” 

***********************************************************************************************************

It happens again that Friday.  

He has begun to call her Iruudaya now. This makes her smile. He also asks her why she won’t use the right spices, why is the marinade so fickle? He wants local food, “food that you make at home,” he says.

So she makes him rasam. She buys fresh pepper, pounds it with three pods of garlic and seasons it with tomatoes blanched in a hot tamarind juice. So when he bites into the softened tomatoes, he gets a taste of her home, a bitter-tangy juice that speaks of her displacement. She adds one slit green chilli to hot ghee, in protest against the sudden loss of her love. It’s a rasam full of sorrow, a mulligatawny soup of pain. 

When he pours it onto the soft mound of steamed rice, he can smell it she thinks. 

He flinches on his first mouthful. When the meal is done, and she clears the table, she finds him looking at her and is disconcerted. But she does not wish to be cowed, so she asks him firmly, “do you need anything, sir?”

But he doesn’t answer.

As the days pass, she learns his ways. The way he likes his eggs where golden yolk runs over toast, the way he lingers in bed on Sunday his morning leaking into the afternoon, his joy in tropical fruit, particularly bananas- he buys them in heaps and a permanent scent of slowly rotting bananas settles into the house. 

He works as a cook of some sort she gathers, which surprises her and yet seems to explain so much about him. Every good cook is a detective, tuned into nuance, perceptive of the slightest change. And he with his endless curiosity must be a good enough one. 

He doesn’t have too many visitors, not yet anyway. But sometimes there are men who come home to discuss fish for great lengths of afternoons. She serves them bananas wrapped in leaves and steamed with ghee and sugar one day. She’s always looking for ways to tackle the growing mound of fruit. 

“This should be on our dessert menu,” one of the men laughs and tells Ellmer.

But Ellmer chuckles at the idea.

She feels mildly insulted until one day when he tells her, “you’re better than half the chefs in my kitchen.”

She’s made him a salad with translucent cubes of a local gourd, seasoned with sesame oil, mustard seeds and pepper. The whole thing is then added to a dish of beaten curd and served with brown rice and pickle. 

She had learnt the recipe from her mother who cooked for the nuns in their parish in Orlem. During Lent, the nuns would eat only the most frugal of meals. This soon became a favourite dish as it was full of delicious flavour and yet its simplicity disallowed spiritual guilt.

As a child, Irudaya Mary was taught English as a favour by the nuns, but every free hour she got, she’d rush to the large bare kitchen and perch on the counter to watch her mother. The sharp scent of clumps of chopped onions and slit green chillies would sting her eyes but she loved the sights and smells of the kitchen. And most of all she loved to watch her usually timid mother’s complete self-assurance.

She looks at his brown eyes now looking intently back at her, waiting for her to acknowledge his compliment. 

“Sir, this is nothing special, don’t insult your cooks no simply…”

Photo by Kavin Jagtiani

“When you’ve worked in a kitchen since you were 19 you pick up a thing or two,” he shrugs. “Some people use the finest of everything and lack imagination and there are others who can create a lot out of very little…those are the really good ones,” he tells her as he scoops more of her salad onto his plate. 

She’s pleased but too shy to know how to respond. 

“Ah so you don’t like compliments?” he teases her.

“Now that you’re already uncomfortable, there’s no harm in telling you, you have beautiful eyes.”

Irudaya Mary finds this unbearable and feels it would be best to ignore the comment and go about as though nothing happened. 

But later that night after Yesu falls asleep, she thinks about her eyes. They are blackish just like everyone else. So, what does he want?

************************************************************************************************************

 “What’s a good Maharashtrian place for lunch?” Ellmer asks her the next morning as she washes the dishes. 

She dwells for a second on the way he says ‘Maharashtrian’ like it’s something infectious. 

“Sir, our madam before you used to go to Soul Fry. But I will ask Bosco sir, for you. Wait!” and she reaches for her phone.

“No! Iruudaya listen to me, take me where you would go for lunch, where the food is cheap but good. Can you take me?” he comes close and looms over her. She finds it hard to breathe and gets annoyed. 

“Sir what about my work? I don’t want to miss my train.” 

“I’ll help you out, come on now what are you even doing?” he says and joins her at the basin and picks out a pan drenched in rainbow streaks of oil. 

“Sir!” protests Irudaya further annoyed at this familiarity.

“Bernie,” he says slopping the pan with Pril. “And I’ve worked in a kitchen all my life, these vessels are nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve had to clean.” 

He tells her about the time he scraped charred beef off a ceiling.

“It was an explosion,” he says matter-of-factly. “We found bits of it for days, in odd places. One guy had some on the inside of his collar.”

She watches him as he slops generous amounts of Pril nearly emptying the bottle and finds it hard to believe he’s washed much of anything in his life. But then again, these goras have so much to spare and so much more to waste. 

She takes him to Railway Gomantak a bustling restaurant run by a thrifty homemaker with a drunk for a husband. The space is small and unpretentious with Digene-pink walls and a permanent scent of fish frying in oil. 

He asks her to order for him. 

When the waiter comes over, she indulges him in ritualistic small talk.

“Ye mera saab,” she tells him pointing to Ellmer.

“Yahan pe kya khaane ko aaya? Julaab hua toh?” the cheeky waiter feigns worry about Ellmer’s digestion. 

They share a hearty laugh as Ellmer smiles at them, all the more amusing in his ignorance of their conversation.

She orders a fish thali, knowing the monsoon brings slim pickings but often of the finest fish. 

He is mystified by the purple-pink, thick-thin, sweet-tanginess of sol kadi. 

“Soul kadi…sounds like a poem. Do they add this colour?” he asks her with all the fascination of a little boy. 

“It comes from kokum only sir.” 

Despite herself, she can’t help but like him. She tries to see him as others would, a foreigner in brown shorts and a rumpled brown tee-shirt, occupying his side of the three-seater with strong wide legs and large forearms that cover most of the table. 

It’s odd to sit across the table from the man you work for, but with him, it feels natural. She wonders if she should tell Kalpana about this. But she decides not to. Kalpana would think of the worst possible scenarios, as no doubt everyone in this restaurant was. 

Railway Gomantak is a very small restaurant and there are four tables around, all of whom are looking at Ellmer as though he’s a celebrity. The few eyes on her seem to drip with judgement.

Does she look like a prostitute she wonders and adjusts her opaque dupatta over her breasts. She decides not to care and tells him about ‘teesriya sukha’, her favourite dish in the restaurant. 

He licks his fingers and joins in her joy, eating with her, watching her, smiling at her, gratitude and pleasure mingle and radiate from him. 

“It is so good to eat with someone who enjoys a meal, sir,” she says uncharacteristically forthcoming. 

“Bernie,” he corrects her again. 

She feels warm and conscious of his gaze and looks away. 

“My work takes me to some of the best restaurants in Bombay but I’ve rarely had a meal this fulfilling. Most of it doesn’t stay, you forget what you’ve eaten once you leave.” 

“Maybe they only don’t want to eat what they make.”

“And here they do?” Bernie asks as he pushes away his empty plate towards the waiter.

“Taai makes the food her mother taught her, and her mother was taught by her aunts in the village. They’ve carried these recipes in their memories for so many generations Bernie sir. And each person will add something different. Taai comes from Goa, but she will put some Kolhapuri flavor because her mother-in-law was from there. It’s somewhat like you’re eating all her family history in one plate,” Irudaya finds herself telling him.

“They’re lucky they have so much to draw from. I’m worried that isn’t the case with my restaurant.” 

“What restaurant are you opening?” she asks curiously.

They’re walking home now, a light drizzle falls, the last of the rains and Ellmer hops over a puddle as he answers, “contemporary Indian. I’m copying a lot of ideas from you, you know.”

“Cuntempriry?” she asks, not knowing this harsh-sounding word.

“Like new Indian food. Where you keep the basics of traditional recipes but experiment quite a bit…”

“But food from? Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab? Which one? If you’re copying from me that’s Tamil food.” 

“Ah…is that why your rasam gives me so many feelings?”

She has to laugh. 

“Bernie-sir…my rasam, my husband used to call it, punishment! I used to make it when I was angry with him. Throw in very very thinly sliced chillies and ground pepper from my native place, I would make him sweat and weep. Poor fellow,” her eyes light up with the memory. 

“Used to make…? Does he no longer piss you off?” Ellmer asks her laughing.

She pauses anticipating the awkward silence that will follow. 

“He died in an accident eleven years ago. He was a driver, Bosco sir’s driver,” she rushes into practical details to avoid all the discomfort that death tends to bring. “That’s how I got this job. When he died, I didn’t have money to raise my son Yesu, so Bosco sir made me a cook in 6/2.” 

He tells her he is sorry. He buys her chai, at the tapri below their house. The watchman stares at them curiously and just like that she remembers herself and the moment is gone. 

****************************************************************************************************************

The next day as she makes his bed, he tells her she looks nice today, what has she done? 

Instead of disliking this personal comment, she answers him with curiosity, it’s rare to hear a compliment these days and she must dig deep into each one to find something to hold close and remember later.  

“Nothing Bernie-sir. Why?”

“Your hair, it’s different I suppose.”

She has washed her hair that morning and worn her long, damp locks in a loose braid that frames her face. 

Irudaya who doesn’t see her face as anything but a collection of features, eyes, ears, mouth, nose- feels strange suddenly, like she’s made of water and might collect in a puddle on the floor. 

As she hangs one of Ellmer’s many brown clothes to dry, she thinks of Rajan. She thinks of him often these days. Did he ever find her beautiful? If he did he never mentioned it. But he’d take her to the beach on festivals. Once they watched a movie, in a theatre and he had put his arm around her in the dark, smiling. She remembers his white teeth in that dark hall and a sense of companionship she felt with him, something they never had time for usually.

When he wanted sex, he’d drop her hints- a packet of halwa wrapped in a banana leaf along with a string of jasmine. The oldest code for courtship gleaned from songs and poems. 

Their lovemaking was furtive in that shared 1 bedroom, as they waited for the others to fall asleep. When they were sure of no intrusion, there would be a fumble under her kurta as he sought her breasts, a tugging of her salwar strings until they came loose. Rajan had never seen her entirely naked, and her body exposed in intervals under the blanket, must have seemed like different bits of a puzzle that he put together with his hands. 

Still, he had been a good man and she missed his company, his humour and the way he read her food. Because for him, she wrote letters in every meal.

Each meal she cooked spoke of things she couldn’t say but wanted him to know. And every night at dinner, he’d sink his teeth into the very middle of her conversation deep-fried, steamed, drenched and tossed. Ginger bullying a gentle marinade, the sharp, impaling ends of sweet tapioca chips from their hometown. 

She meant for him to know of her sublime affection or a birthday, he’d forgotten. And he favoured some letters for their element of surprise like tamarind juice squeezed into a fried bitter gourd (a reminder to pay the electricity bill, sharply hit his sensitive teeth) or green chillies sliced so fine he’d wonder if he had simply imagined her annoyance. Or was this her way of saying, “nothing’s the matter, why?”

That afternoon in 6/2, she has a strange desire to know herself from another’s eyes. 

And so, the dinner she cooks is a deceptively light meal of curd rice secretly heavy with various aspects of herself. Bits of sweet jewel-like pomegranate hidden amongst piquant mustard seeds, crunchy curry leaves, jeera, chillies, salt and subtle hints of pungent heeng. Far too much is poured into it and yet there was nothing at all in that curd rice of confusion. 

When she comes to work the next day, for the first time she finds her food wasted, half-eaten. 

She doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t eaten, suddenly ashamed of herself.

But Ellmer is in the kitchen with her now. Wordlessly, he picks up the dirty dishes and joins her as she washes them. She lets him, because she knows now that he understood, that he thinks of her as a person, as an equal. 

****************************************************************************************************************

It doesn’t entirely leave her, this desire to know herself. 

And in thinking of what others may think of her, she feels the need to craft an outward appearance that’s pleasing on the eye, so that judgement is gentle.

She washes her long, thick hair with three sachets of supermarket shampoo. She adds a string of jasmine to the end of her long braid. She wears a sari in a deep shade of pink, so the dark brown of her skin lights up from within. It’s Sunday. She is all set for church and Yesu asks her, “Ma, is there special mass today?”

She looks at her ten-year-old walking with her to church and smiles as she asks him, “Why? Does Amma look nice today?”

“I don’t like you in lipstick,” he says with all the reckless cruelty that ten-year-olds seem to possess in abundance.

After mass, she rubs off the lipstick and washes the thin layer of talcum powder off her face, before she takes the train. 

Even Kalpana eyes her oddly, “Is there a party at 6/2?”

Irudaya prickles, “There’s nothing wrong with wearing your good saris once in a while.”

Kalpana in her pragmatism is as cruel as her ten-year-old, “Nothing wrong in washing toilets in your good sari I suppose.”

When Irudaya walks to 6/2 from the station, she is full of anticipation. 

But Ellmer isn’t home. The bed is not slept in, the dinner untouched. It seems like he’s been away all night. 

She imagines a woman wrapped around him in a bed she doesn’t know. And strictly tells herself, it is no business of hers. 

Later, a biryani of subservience is made, meat and potatoes slow-cooking with fragrant rice, softening to eventually yield to the demands of teeth that will dig in, leaving nothing but bones behind.

She transfers the biryani into a glass bowl, she wishes to leave before he can show up or comment.

She cleans the fans, dusts his books and occupies herself in a cleansing so thorough it’s almost as if she is sanitizing herself. 

“Iruudaya?”

She chooses not to answer.

He finds her perched on a stool, dusting the cobwebs behind an old cupboard. 

“You’re wearing a sari today.”

She doesn’t respond. Today she will inform Bosco that she doesn’t like this attention from her employer. 

“I was at the restaurant all night, we open day after. It has been relentless, please give me lunch so I can sleep and not wake up till tomorrow.”

She should’ve poured rum into the biryani she thinks, ground in sleeping pills…

Her anger abates when she sees him and his worn eyes now held in a drooping, tired face. She steps down from the stool and smiles at him. 

“I made a nice mutton biryani Bernie-sir,” she smiles wider noticing the admiration in his glance.

As he crumples onto his bed, she decides to heat his food and serve it to him there so he can sleep immediately.

When she comes back, balancing a plate of biryani and curd on a tray, once again she is a picture of consideration.

It really is hard not to love Irudaya Mary, whichever way you choose to do so.

Ellmer appears to have known this all along.

He takes the tray from her, sets it by the bedside and looks up at her. Some instinct makes her run her fingers through his brown hair. His arms encircle her hips as he buries his face in her sari, his cheek cold against her warm midriff. Before she can submit to him, he has yielded to her.

As she sits down beside him on his bed, he clumsily loosens her hair. His hands are lost in the tangles of shampooed jasmine strands. 

“I’m tired Iruudaya,” he says unnecessarily as he kisses her deeply.

She can’t bring herself to speak. She feels too much. 

Golden late evening light falls on their naked bodies, when she wakes up later. She is suddenly very aware, of sleeping in the bed she makes every day, of his body beside her, the small mound of his stomach rising and falling as he breathes through a heavy sleep and her own body…she’s most aware of her own.

She knows this will happen again. 

****************************************************************************************************************

 It happens every day. 

They spend evenings together, lingering in bed and sometimes in conversation. 

What has seeped into her days finds its way into her food. And she makes him dinners that hold a sweetness so gentle, you could miss it altogether.

Their world belongs only to them, no one has entered it yet. His restaurant has been launched, Yesu has stepped into another year at school, months have gone by and despite her anticipation of his eventual loss of interest, he continues to want her. And she for her part, has never felt anything like him. 

Late one evening she bumps into Kalpana at the station, she has only seen her sporadically the past few months. 

“Lots of work today?” she asks her friend. 

The local is nearly empty at this hour of the day. They’re sitting together, Kalpana by the window and Irudaya on the seat opposite her. 

“The old man needs a trained nurse but all they have is me! I wish I could find another job Iru, I’m exhausted,” Kalpana is close to tears. 

“What’s the matter? It’s not as though you haven’t taken care of the old man before…”

Kalpana looks out of the window, tears are rolling down her cheeks by now. 

“My son is sick, my husband lost his job and just sits home watching TV. Thankfully that fool hasn’t started drinking yet, but it makes my blood boil…coming back and cooking for him after slaving the whole day. He won’t even look for a job and I might be forced to take up another, where do I have the time?” 

Irudaya feels a pang of guilt for not being there for her friend, for living a life that Kalpana could neither access nor approve of. 

“Shall I ask my saab if he knows anyone who needs a driver?” she asks Kalpana, her guilt mingling with concern.

“Ask him, please. I’m at my wit’s end Iru,” she sighs and looks away, lost for a moment.

“But let me not bore you with my problems, I have them every two months,” Kalpana laughs bitterly, “where have you been… you seem to have been working long nights for months! Isn’t it just one gora?” 

Irudaya nods but she feels shame creeping over her. It isn’t entirely uncommon for help to sleep with single men in the house but she has an old-fashioned sense of propriety as does Kalpana. 

“He throws a lot of parties,” she lies. 

She finds Kalpana looking at her oddly but she says nothing, perhaps she’s far too consumed by her own problems to care.

****************************************************************************************************************

 He leaves everything half-open, half done. The bottle of shampoo is screwed on but not completely, the sock drawer is shut but also slightly open, and from the corners his half-pulled out socks hang out like tongues. Even his hand when he holds hers sometimes is so fleeting in its touch that she only feels the weight of a hand that has already left hers. 

So it seems typical of him to hold her waist at a party and proclaim, “this is my Iruudaya.”

The statement could mean anything- she could be his favourite cook, she could be his passionate lover- half-open, half done, nothing certain- tongues hanging from drawers without closure, taunting her. 

The party is a celebration- the restaurant has been open for eight months now, and it’s a reasonable success. 

Most of the food has been catered from the restaurant, but some of it is her own. She has made cocktail samosas, batter-fried prawns and fingers of fish- layers of oil, batter and maida defensively coat the tender insides everything she’s cooked. 

The normally calm 6/2 is choking with people, some hang from the balcony smoking, others are draped around chairs in the living room drinking and talking. A hum of differently toned voices have mingled with the music and made the air thick with noise.

He is bright, full of laughter, someone hangs onto his every joke, a plump bald man invites him for dinner next Saturday, he agrees. She serves plates of food and smiles when something is complimented. She desperately wants to leave; she isn’t prepared to face the world he inhabits outside of theirs. 

She watches him as he speaks to a woman with long straight hair, the woman wears shorts displaying creamy thighs and long slender legs. She often flips her hair over her shoulder and tilts her head to smile up at him. He smiles down at her with equal interest. 

Irudaya feels tired and goes to the kitchen to collect her things. 

She hears him call out to her. 

This is when he grabs her by her waist and exclaims to half the room, “this is my Iruudaya.”

The long-haired woman smiles at her with an altruistic kindness that makes Irudaya prickle with anger. 

“Bohot accha khana banaya Irudaya. Saab bohot baat karta hai tumahre barein mein,” she tells her in Hindi.

“Loan her to me Bernie, come on!” she goes on, switching to English and Irudaya is somehow less than who she was. 

Bernie whose breath is heavy with alcohol now holds Iruudaya closer and says, “No way, she’s mine.” 

Irudaya smiles with great effort, extricates herself from his grip, collects her things and heads home. 

The local is brutal that day, someone rips her handbag off her in a rush to get in. Irudaya, exhausted, sad and vulnerable, doesn't even have the energy to grab it back.

But someone else holds her and pushes her in, someone else hands her the bag, and all those people are Kalpana who looks of all things, angry with her. 

They don’t speak for an hour, the train is too full, a collection of sweaty armpits and frustrated elbows digging in like knives. 

When they get off, Kalpana still doesn’t speak. 

“How does he like his new job?” Irudaya attempts.

“It’s good, thank you,” comes the cold retort.

Irudaya angry with everything else is forced to say, “What is the matter now? Why aren’t you talking?” 

They walk  back home and in hurriedly caught breaths Kalpana tells her, “I know about your saab.”

“What’s there to know?” she asks casually.

“Don’t pretend now Iru, everyone knows, your watchman told the tapriwala, he told Radha and Radha told me. And before you call them all liars, I’ve seen you both on that balcony. He was stroking your hair.”

“So now? Everyone thinks I’m a slut?” Irudaya asks enraged, the day has been overwhelming, angry tears well up in her eyes. 

“Ya may be, aren’t you one? Who sleeps with a gora? What will the nuns in your church think, what will you tell your son? Don’t you think? And look at your age. Shameless!” Kalpana spits pure venom.

“My age? I’m only 33!” 

“People have grandkids at 33!”

“Accha. Show me this medical miracle re.”

Despite herself, Kalpana smiles at that. 

“So…are you in love with this man? You idiot! This is what happens when we teach our women too much English,” she is finally herself.

“He was kind to me…”

“Whatever it is, put an end to it Iru. You’ll lose your job, in the end, it’s always our fault.”

****************************************************************************************************************

When she comes in the next morning, he smiles at her as he always does and makes himself a cup of coffee.

His presence in the kitchen nauseates her. She is not angry as much as she is humiliated. But she won’t bring it up, it’s not her place.

She smiles back, makes him the breakfast and when he leaves for work, waves him goodbye. 

Nothing she makes turns out well today, too much water in the steamed lentil, undercooked vegetables, a daal of held back tears. 

She isn’t home when he comes back to eat his dinner.

The next day she’s willfully late, so she doesn’t have to face his queries. Five days of this and he will tire of her, it was leading to this all along- she has simply hastened the progress of his disinterest.

But that morning, he has left her a note, “Make dinner for two.”

She imagines the woman with long hair will be home again and in those thoughts, she overcompensates for her jealousy by cooking food that throbs with romance. 

An East Indian ‘wedding rice’ that tastes like a celebration, a duck moilee with a sly dash of rum. 

That night she weeps and tells her mother the Head Cook, Kitchen Chief everything. She expects a torrent of abuse but her mother looks at her sadly and gives her a glass of healing turmeric milk. 

“It isn’t stupid Iru, but you need to know your place,” says her mother echoing her every thought from that day. 

The knowing of her place, however, is interrupted when Bernie accosts her in the middle of the day. He hasn’t gone to work and he has bought her of all things, a dress.

Does he know how I feel she wonders as he guilelessly hands her a soft, long cotton dress brimming with summer flowers. 

“Take it,” he insists. 

She wears it for him, but soon he pulls it off her. And later, as they lie in bed, the one place where they’re equals in every sense, desire being the great leveller- he asks her, “where did you go off to?”

She doesn’t cry, but says with equanimity, “I don’t belong here.”

“I noticed that after the party you acted strange. Don’t you like me anymore? I don’t want to force myself on you. I know you work for me but that isn’t…this shouldn’t be…” 

She almost laughs.

“It’s not that. I feel...I was prepared for this. But I didn’t know when it would happen.” she begins. “Your friends think I’m just your cook. The servants think I’m a loose character. Maybe everyone else thinks I’m a woman without morals. The sahibs and servants, both!” she rambles as her thoughts collide.

“Iruudaya why do you care…,” his voice is calm, measured, “my mother cleaned houses in New York. She was a housekeeper, and she raised me, as a single mother. I have nothing but respect for her, for you. Don’t you know that by now?” he lifts her chin and looks at her.

“So now what? You’ll marry me? We’ll live happily ever after?” Irudaya demands, irrational and practical at once.

“Marriage is not for me anymore. I cannot promise you that.” 

“I also don’t want it…but where is the space for a woman like me in your world?” 

****************************************************************************************************************

He takes her to his restaurant for dinner. He wants to prove her wrong. She wants him to prove her wrong.

She wears a luscious green silk sari with gold parrots on the border. 

He holds her hand and takes her into a dimly lit room, brimming with sounds of chatter and elegant music. 

The man at the door smiles at Bernie, his eyes rest just a bit longer on her. 

And just like that, Irudaya wishes she had worn a less bright sari, wishes she had rubbed off the lipstick, wishes she had not come at all. 

She feels eyes follow her as she heads to their reserved table, her palms are sweaty, her hands seem too long and her entire body is an inconvenience. 

Her discomfort grows when Bernie hands her the menu. She recognizes some names here, but is reluctant to pronounce any.

“Madam?” the waiter wants to know her order.

She tenses further before she whispers, “Bernie you only order something for me…”

Bernie sips wine and she looks at him smiling for nothing to do until their order finally arrives. An appetizer of salmon ceviche, drenched in a bed of tangy purple kokum juice. 

He smiles at her, “Remember? Railway Gomantak?”

She remembers, surprised at how well their two worlds have come together on this plate. 

“It’s really very good,” she says savouring the fish, the tender wisps of spring onion crackling over it and the milky sweet tang of kokum juice. 

For a moment now, there is hope in mingling, in blending.

He senses her thoughts and softly says, “I can’t wait for you to try…”

A sharp clang and shattered glass bring everyone’s attention to their table.

In her eagerness to appreciate the dish Irudaya has knocked down her glass of water. She feels her face grow warm and looks down at her lap. She’s embarrassed for him more than her. 

“I’m sorry sorry sorry,” she tells the waiter, as she takes his napkin and bends down to pick up the broken pieces with him. 

“What are you doing?” Bernie asks her, startled at the sudden turn of events.

Her hasty, clumsy hands allow a shard to tear across her finger and the waiter’s napkin is soaked in fresh, dark red blood.

“Iruuudaya get up, stop this! Mohan will deal with it.” Bernie barks at her. 

“Can we leave?” she asks him desperately.

He grunts yes and Irudaya leaves with the weight of those eyes on her back once again.

In the car, he doesn’t speak.

“I’m sorry Bernie.”

“Why can’t you relax?” 

“It was too much for me…” she says, her voice small.

****************************************************************************************************************

This Sunday she wears the dress full of flowers to church. It makes her feel beautiful in its softness and flounce. 

Uncharacteristically her son tells her she looks nice. 

They’ve been in Goa for three months now.

Taai from Railway Gomantak put in a word with an uncle who owns a shack and on weekdays she cooks for him.  

The money is sufficient and the methodical work gives her a measure of peace. Mornings take her back to her childhood with the reassuring scent of chopped onions and chilli. 

Every day she coats mounds of marinated fish in rawa, fries them crisp from the outside but leaves them tender within.  

Sometimes for the weary ones she sends a complimentary glass of cool lime water with a sprig of mint and a bit of honey. And once again she is Mary, our lady of consideration. 

Yesu seems happier, there’s space in their new home and a playground nearby. Her mother has found her way into another kitchen in a new parish.

It turns out Kalpana was right when you leave you only take what you need- Yesu, her mother, clothes, jewellery- two bags full. 

She left the plants behind, she didn’t take her bible either. The world has many more of those. 

Besides, when she left, she was barely better than a thief. There were no goodbyes- not to Bosco, not even to Kalpana.

 Only a farewell note for Bernie.

****************************************************************************************************************

He comes back home to find that Irudaya isn’t around, but the house feels full with the scent of her food. He cracks open the windows to lighten the air and heads to the kitchen to heat up his dinner.

But on his way, he finds the dining table crammed with dishes. It appears as though Irudaya has used all the plates and bowls she could find and filled up every inch of space on the table with his food.

The arrangement is haphazard and yet when he looks closely it is also quite careful.

Uneasy, he curiously opens the lid of each vessel to find the oddest assortment of cuisine. 

A sweet prawn and coconut curry.

Sugary bananas steamed in leaf.

A bowl of over-the-top curd rice.

A sycophantic lamb biryani. 

Weepy daal. 

Brittle edged samosas.

An uncertain omelette curry.

A rasam full of fury.

Celebratory wedding rice.

And saunf to end the meal. 

He lingers in every bite but flips through each dish impatiently. It feels like looking through a collection of photographs that Irudaya has sequentially arranged for him. It feels like she didn’t want him to forget. 

Written by Meera Ganapathi