The clean smell of soap
An excerpt from The Lights of Shantinagar by Nidhi Arora
Word of the missing plate spread quickly, and later that evening, Maya and Mrs Bansal came over for chai.
Unlike the matchbox-like, three-storeyed faculty building of Sumi’s parents’ house, houses in Shantinagar took their space. They were laid out in rows separated by narrow alleys, with their backs to each other. The Kapoor house was the first in the lane. Their next-door neighbours, at number two, were the Bansals, owners of the local grocery store. Right behind the Kapoor house was number seven, which belonged to Maya. Sometimes Sumi would be staring outside the kitchen window lost in thought and find herself looking straight into Maya’s kitchen.
Mahima, Maya and Mrs Bansal were like sisters. They spoke to one another on the phone every day around noon, with such punctuality that Mr Kapoor claimed to set his watch to when the phone rang. They took turns meeting at one of their homes every week, to confabulate on any matter that may have slipped through calls.
Mrs Bansal had fair skin and every passing year deposited a layer of prosperity around her middle. Her hair was knotted in a careless bun and she smelled of soap. Not of any particular soap, but the clean smell of soap in general, of all the soaps they had in their store, the extra stock of which was stored in their home.
Mahima said that the Bansals moved to Shantinagar when Dhruv was a year old. They had had their eyes seton the neighbourhood for a few years, and when they had enough savings, they bought house number two. Shantinagar was the right place for them, where people had enough, but not too much. Just like them. They started with a small shop that sold different types of flourthat Mrs Bansal ground herself and were now proud owners of the largest grocery shop in the area.
Although they saw each other practically every other day, they still invited the Kapoors over for dinner to welcome the new bride. When she entered their house, the first thing Sumi noticed was the smell. Their house smelled like their shop. It was a mix of whole wheat, rice, gunny bags and detergents. They used one of their bedrooms as an additional store for their inventory. When Mahima or Maya or any other neighbours needed something late at night or early in the morning, Mrs Bansal took it out of the store and sent Dhruv to deliver it. She recorded these transactions in a register. Payments could be made in cash or kind, upon delivery or later. It was a parallel economy that ran on goodwill.
Maya’s house, on the other hand, was tastefully decorated with artisan furniture, not expensive but beautiful. Like Maya herself. She had large eyes set off with thicklashes and long, jet-black hair that reached below her waist. Her saris were always starched, crisply ironed and tightly draped, she wore matching lipsticks and bindis and single-handedly ran a tiffin business.
Maya was the youngest of them all but, according to Mahima, she had gone through a great deal in life, so if experience was any measure of seniority, she outdid most people in the neighbourhood. The very same people who placed food orders with her a week inadvance said all kinds of things about her as they licked her kadhai gosht off their fingers. It was rumoured that her oldest daughter, Neeti, was born out of wedlock. It tied in well with the rest of the story that her husband, Bhaskar, disappeared leaving her in charge of three young daughters. But Mahima was not one to dwell on these scandals about her friend. People said anything, especially if it was about a woman who was good-looking and independent. She had known Maya’s husband briefly. Sure, Bhaskar was a widower and quite a bit older than Maya, but Mahima had known him to be a simple man, always in his white kurta pyjama and chappals. He was a helpful neighbour, a loyal husband and a devoted father, his only vice being cigarettes, but those too he smoked where people didn’t mind and never in the presence of elders. On Sundays, he took his daughters cycling to the river. One Sunday, about six years ago, he was seen without his bicycle, walking in the same chappals, never to return. Mahima did not press Maya for details; she respected her friend’s privacy. But for the rest of Shantinagar, it was a major incident in their sleepy colony where nothing of much importance ever happened.
Shantinagar, as the name suggested, was a quiet locality where ordinary people went about their ordinary lives, earning livelihoods, sending children first to school,then to engineering or medical college, looking after ageing parents, reading the newspaper, watching cricket, praying to their gods, arguing over which mango had more flavour – langda or daseri – and which politician was more corrupt. Each day was more or less like theprevious one, and when it was done, people checked in on their neighbours to make sure that their day had been no less ordinary.
This trio was no different. When they met, they resumed their on-going conversation about their children. Their children went to the same school. Textbooks had been passed back and forth from one family to another so many times over the years, and bore notes in so many handwritings, that there was no telling who they had originally belonged to. Luv and Kush were only five, but Mahima spoke of her youngest brother-in-law, Vivek, as her own child. Mrs Bansal’s Dhruv was in twelfth standard, preparing for both the school board and engineering entrance exams. Maya’s middle daughter, Nalini, was one year his senior, like Vivek. Last year, they had both prepared for their medical and engineering exams respectively and had both failed to get through. While Vivehad been sent to a private college, Nalini had enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree in the local college and was preparing for her second attempt this year. Maya’s youngest daughter, Naina, was two years younger than Nalini. She had topped her high school board exams. Now the neighbourhood was turning blue holding its breath to see what subject she would choose in eleventh standard.
When they heard about the plate, they convened at the Kapoor house the same evening. They scrutinised the disappearance from every angle, considering all possibilities. Maya gave Mahima a full hearing but firmly ruled out Pushpa, saying she did not have the brains to do something like this. She asked who else had been inside the house that morning. Mrs Bansal asked what the plate was worth. Mahima went through their lines of inquiry zealously while Sumi sat with them, adding information wherever she could. No one had entered the house that morning, narrowing down the possibilities to an inconvenient few. They too agreed that the plate wouldn’t have gone anywhere and would turn up inside the house sooner than later. Although she wasn’t convinced, Mahima felt suitably attended to and they reverted to talking about their children.
“Neeti is so busy with her internship, she doesn’t have time to visit us, even to meet prospective grooms,” Maya said. “Says ‘you can choose’ – can you believe that?! Nalini is lost in her books. As for Naina, she’s always angry. I’m scared of saying anything to her, she will only go and do exactly the opposite. Sumi, dear, will you talk to her? You have so many degrees, she might listen to you.”
“And while you’re at it, Sumi, can you tutor Dhruv in maths? He barely passed in the unit test last week,” Mrs Bansal piped in.
Sumi looked at Mahima. She had no desire to impinge upon this sorority. Equally, she did not want to offend them. All she wanted to do was go to her room and work on her application. Yet here she was, having an extended afternoon tea, going over the missing plate yet another time and debating subject choices of the neighbours’ children. Mahima was looking at her too.
“Of course, why not! That is one thing our Sumi knows very well,” she said with a smile that made it impossible to tell if it was a compliment or a complaint. Sumi found herself agreeing, as her alleged extended family closed in on her.
The Lights of Shantinagar was published on June 5 by Unbound Firsts