Gypsy Masala

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Ninefish 2000

Copyright © Preethi Nair 2000 and 2004

Preethi Nair asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007305018

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 9780007391479

Version: 2016-12-20

Praise

Praise for Preethi Nair:

‘A little gem of fiction…a mystic and beautifully lyrical book.’

New Woman

‘This book will have you praying for a delayed train.’

Glamour

‘A genuinely moving novel.’

Daily Express

‘She writes evocatively about childhood and there are passages of tight and lyrical immediacy.’

Guardian

‘A warm-hearted tale of survival.’

The Bookseller

Dedicated to you the reader, in the hope that you may follow the African dancer.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

EVITA

SHEILA

BALI

Author’s Note

Keep Reading

About the Author

About the Publisher

EVITA

‘Go away phantom sore throat, untie the muffler and release me so that I may go forth and conquer all that lies before me.’

I have always been a drama queen. I can remember being about seven, scarf tied around my neck, sitting with my Auntie Sheila and her friends listening to incessant banter and clattering coffee cups. Suddenly, I would bolt forth, untie my scarf and ask Argentina not to cry for me. My aunties would stop their slurping and look at me with bewildered eyes. Twenty years later, Evita plays on and the echo of that child resounds deep within me.

I want to bring back this crazy, impetuous child – just for an instant – so I can jump out of my chair at work and tell my boss what I really think of him. And then, maybe, I will stop making excuses and finally escape the mundane routine of a 9-5 existence.

A lot has happened over the past few weeks, and in order to think about things and to locate the little girl I once was, I have feigned illness – the sore throat to be precise – taking a few days off work only to develop the real thing. Cosily tucked up under my duvet, muffler around my neck, my mind wanders.

When I was about eight and played the Virgin Mary in the nativity, I looked at smiling, innocent little Joseph and questioned why he was wearing a tea towel on his head. Indeed, why was I wearing one on my head? The Angel Gabriel and the three shepherds just yawned and accepted the situation, whilst I further contemplated how I had managed to conceive a baby Jesus who was not of ethnic origin.

I took that plastic baby Jesus in hand and threw him into the audience where my Auntie Sheila was sitting. She shared their stern, dismayed looks. It was then I knew that things were going to be difficult.

Not that things prior to that incident had not been difficult. Having lost my own parents in an accident, a long, dusty road had led me to the doorstep of the Vishavans. I’m not too sure about the details of how I arrived there but it was my Auntie Sheila and my Uncle Bali who brought me up. They were a very practical couple and veering away from the realms of reality into flights of imagination was strictly prohibited. The consequences were dire: at best there would be stern looks of disapproval from my Auntie Sheila, and at worst the fear of further abandonment forever loomed around me.

So, like one of those little messages, I have managed to make myself fit into a bottle and have bobbed up and down for a long time now on the crest of other people’s expectations. Desperately yearning for the bottle to break but not quite sure what I’ll do if it does.

Tired of summoning up the courage to try and make my great escape, I closed my eyes on that Sunday evening and fell into a deep sleep. I can’t quite recollect the whole dream but I remember fragments of it, such as embarking on a journey and seeing different people with what looked like huge coals inside of them. These coals were lit by their dreams, their hopes and expectations, and their eyes either glowed or were dull and listless. Someone, I think it was a woman, approached me and asked me what my dream was, and just as I was about to answer I was awoken by the very faint sound of a drum. And then, as my eyes half-opened, I caught a glimpse of a little African figure dancing across my room. He jumped out of my bedroom window.

‘Come follow me,’ he whispered.

Deeply regretting downing half a bottle of brandy the night before to anaesthetise my throat, I dragged myself up, vowing to get a firm grip on reality.

‘Come follow me,’ I heard the voice whisper again.

I know that this is what I heard clearly, but fearing insanity I quickly turned on the radio and made my way into the shower.

It was freezing that Monday morning. I was on the Underground going to work, heading towards Baker Street, willing there to be no further delays due to the forecasted snow falling on the tracks. Luckily, because I had left earlier than usual, the carriages were not as jam-packed as they could have been.

To my right, a couple were seated. He, in his mid-thirties, attempted to read the newspaper, and she, clinging on to his arm, evaporated into him. Not far from them was a man with a beard and a huge coffee-coloured mac and opposite me sat a dark-skinned woman dressed in fine magenta, wearing numerous gold bracelets. I thought not only must she be cold but also brave for exposing them like that, but judging from her attire I figured she must have come from afar and not been aware of the concept of muggings, or snow for that matter. She appeared totally misplaced, sitting amongst all the people in their grey suits. Finding her a strange curiosity, I studied her even more closely. Her eyes looked like still puddles; I could see myself in them. No one I’d ever met had eyes like that. She must have come from a faraway island and been a princess or something. The princess, though, had chipped nail-varnish.

As I looked at her nails and contrasted them to her whole demeanour, it reminded me of the fact that perfection does not exist – everyone has something missing. It was probably best to see things as imperfect, to have no expectations so that things could not come crashing down. This is what my Auntie Sheila had endeavoured to teach me. But why was it that I was incapable of doing this? Perhaps because I am a dreamer; I dream of infinite possibilities because there must be more to life than just this.

Passengers got on at Finchley Road and hunted for space in the carriage. As one of the commuters sat on the end of the bearded man’s mac he huffed in an irritated manner and then shuffled along his seat and sprawled his newspaper across his lap. He then emitted a defiant ‘tut’ as the coat-creaser began freely reading his paper. Being on the Underground in some way seemed to incite the most rodent-type behaviour. People become incredibly predatory over their space. Maybe it is because they want to feel safe and secure.

Perhaps there is no real security or safety, just a perceived sense of one. Things happen from out of the blue that you cannot account for, random acts of fate. In my case it was my parents dying, so I think it’s pointless trying to control things. This is what I believe deep down inside but this is not how I act; possibly because I don’t want to hurt my Auntie Sheila and my Uncle Bali by going against everything they have tried to instil in me, or maybe this is just my excuse. So I remain cosseted in the life that they have given me, not venturing out of all that I know, except, that is, in the world of my imagination.

I scrutinised the face of the man who huffed and tutted: he looked unhappy. The crumpled end of a coat is not worth that amount of unhappiness. As I sat watching all the different types of people and imagined what their lives were like, I wondered if they were happy, truly happy, and enjoyed what they did; or did they share the same feelings of frustration as me and just waited for their Christmas bonus and then made a whole load of resolutions in the New Year which they knew they would never keep. My Uncle Bali always told me that life wasn’t about being happy, it was about getting a stable routine so that you could be buffered by life’s disappointments. Just as I was thinking this, I remembered more of the dream about the coals. I searched people’s eyes to see if they had realised their dreams or whether they were riding the same beaten track as I was because they were afraid – afraid to do something bold, something different; afraid of disappointing others.

The lady to my right who formed part of the couple had eyes that were completely glazed over. Somehow she had managed to surrender herself to a pair of black stilettos, she squeezed herself into them so that the fragile heels supported the weight of eighty kilos. What did this tall, mousy-blond gentleman have that made her surrender herself not only to her shoes? This wasn’t right either, putting all your hopes and expectations into one person – I had done this too. It had ended disastrously, in fact just last week. I was supposed to be getting married until I caught him with his fingers in the locks of a curly brunette.

‘Will you give me a ring then at lunchtime and tell me how we’ll arrange it?’ stiletto lady asked.

The word ‘yes’ was followed by the word ‘darling’. It sounded as if the passion with which he had first spoken those words had ebbed, leaving the sound of hollow letters that made an empty phrase. Does the passion wane in all relationships after a time?

‘Shall we get in some of those dips and some bites?’ the stiletto lady said, attempting to resuscitate his words.

Mr Mousy continued to read his FT. ‘Hmmmm…’ he mumbled.

‘And a bottle of red,’ she continued.

‘Hmmmmm.’

The art of communication was not one of his stronger points. That was what probably attracted her to him in the first instance, hoping that she could change that. Her friends had probably told her not to settle for less, to leave him, that there were plenty more mousies out there in the big blue sea, but this just strengthened her conviction and made her cling to him tighter. Her coals were probably kept alight by the thought of being with him.

And then amongst the group of random strangers in that tube carriage, there was me. My real name is Molu: Molu Vishavan. I’m twenty-seven years old. I used to be a Cancerian but on arriving at my Auntie Sheila’s house she changed my birthday so I am now a Scorpio. I have had two failed serious relationships, one near-miss at marriage, and I still live at home with my adoptive parents, Sheila and Bali, and still sleep with the light on. I have decided to change my name to Evita because I don’t want to be me any more; I want to leave the security and the safety of all that I know and embark upon a crazy adventure.

Staring at the reflection as I leaned against the tube window, I looked like anything but an adventurer. My hair was longer than it needed to be and swamped my face, and my eyes did not sparkle. The woman dressed in magenta saw me studying myself and smiled at me. Embarrassed, I looked away, wanting to tell her that it wasn’t because I was vain but because I had this dream and I didn’t think I was big enough to realise it.

‘Follow him,’ the woman in magenta whispered.

I looked up in utter amazement.

‘Excuse me, what did you just say?’

‘You have seen him. Just follow him.’

She then got up. I wanted to tell her not to go, to run behind her, but I was too shocked to say or do anything and then she disappeared.

‘Did you hear that, did you hear what that woman just said?’ I wanted to shout to the other passengers in the carriage.

But they continued to ride the train, consumed by their own thoughts. Some nodded off into their papers, eyes shut, mouths half-open. Then, by some miraculous force, once they reached their stop they would suddenly awake. I wanted to close my eyes and wish that the same mysterious force would wake me too. I didn’t want to see what other people didn’t. I didn’t want to do this on my own. The train arrived at Baker Street.

My job is the most uninspiring, monotonous work in the history of economic periodicals. I work as a researcher for the publishers of one.

What I do most of the day is call up heads of Fortune 500 companies and ask them how they invest their money. This is done by a series of questions on derivatives, swaps and the foreign exchange. It sounds complicated but it’s pretty simple really as all the questions are written out on a script which I read through whilst ticking lots of boxes. This is then handed over to Stephen Kolinsky, a nerdy guy with glasses who’s our data analyst. And then I go down my contacts list and begin again. I often wonder how on earth I got into it – perhaps it was the wording on the job advertisement – ‘working with scripts’ – that lured me.

I’d always wanted to be an actress and my Auntie Sheila keeled over when I first told her. Her impressions of what it was to be an actress went something like this: images of an Indian woman with a wet sari clinging to her body in the rain, prancing around like a stunned fairy. In between some kind of sing-song, the protagonist, seeing her lover jumping from behind the trees like a flasher, runs off whimsically, refusing his advances. After a pursuit involving running round and round the same tree, a frenzied disco dance erupts between them. It was that ‘filthy’ love scene etched in her mind that summed up what an actress was, so, understandably, she was having none of it.

Instead, I tried to get her to take me to the theatre but she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to dress up and pretend to be someone else. My Auntie Sheila is firmly grounded in reality and the only flights of fancy she has is going to Tesco’s and picking up a deluxe chocolate gateaux, or ‘ga-tux’ as she pronounces it. So there was no persuading her to send me to stage school. Instead, she sent me to a private school and selected the appropriate course for me to study at university. It sounds weak now to say I just went along and did what she wanted, but I did it to keep the peace: it was a household fraught with tension.

Sometimes at work, to vary my script-reading technique, I read the questions with different accents. The American one seemed to go down quite well, as did the Italian. CEOs weren’t so hot on the Nigerian one as it seemed to take me forever to get through: I had to keep repeating things and eventually they lost their patience. But sometimes the heads of these corporations would flirt outrageously with these fictitious characters and I would create whole lives that didn’t exist – and that, sadly, is how I got through my days. That, and going to the cinema and theatre at every possible opportunity and envisaging myself on stage.

My boss caught me doing the accent thing last week. He reprimanded me in front of everyone, saying we were not running some sleazy call-service, and asked me to think very carefully about my career. He didn’t realise that thinking about my career was what I had been doing ever since I started three years ago. That very same lunchtime I caught my fiancé, Avinash Kavan, with his fingers in the locks of a curly headed brunette. It was time to face facts – hence my hasty retreat into bed and the sore throat that followed.

That Monday morning as I walked into work, I didn’t know what to believe. Confused, I sat at my desk and pulled out the script along with the list of contacts to call for the day. A few friends at work asked if I was feeling better. ‘Yes, a whole lot better,’ I replied, hoping not to give away any signs of mental instability.

What had happened to me? Was it real? I sat staring out of my window.

The office had two large windows. Sitting next to one of them was one of the perks of the job. I had bagsied it when my friend Elaine, who was sitting there previously, plucked up the courage to leave. My colleagues only let me have it because they fell about laughing at the word ‘bagsie’ – ‘bagsie the window’ to be precise, said just as her office stationery was being redistributed. However, the windows were kept firmly shut. I had tried to un-jam mine at various times but to no avail. As a result, all the tension collected during the day, and left with the staff at home-time when the doors were opened.

The primary source of this tension emanated from my boss, a bald-headed man who backcombed the four remaining strands of his dyed hair and who strapped himself into some ill-fitting trousers by using a pair of antiquated braces. He would pounce from behind us when we were on the telephone and do a post-mortem on the things we got wrong, never praising us for the things we got right. After I had put the telephone down last week he had begun swearing at me for pretending to be Onsawawa Bonumboto.

‘Feeling yourself again?’ he sneered when he saw me back at work.

‘Yes thank you. Everything is under control,’ I replied politely.

‘Back to it, then.’

I opened the script, switched on my computer and began gazing at my screensaver.

What if the coal thing was true; what if people were ignited and called to adventure by listening to their dreams? What did a burning flame inside you feel like? Did it get rid of all the doubts, the fears? Who was this little man who jumped out of my bedroom window? Why did the lady in magenta say she saw him? Did she mean him? What if I was going crazy? Was this covered under my medical protection plan?

The sounds of the fax machines and telephones seemed to get fainter and fainter. One resounding thought was beating like a drum in my head. Who was he? The sound of the drum grew louder and louder. I could no longer control it. The thought bounced out of my head and manifested itself in the shape of a dancer. It was the same African dancer from this morning. He ran along my keyboard and across the screen, unravelling himself before me.

A slight tremor of a rhythm took a hold of my fingers and I began to type out my resignation letter. It was almost as if my fingers worked automatically, requiring no thought from me. After I’d typed it, I reached for an envelope, stuffed the letter inside and walked over to my boss’s desk. The dancer followed beside me.

The tension which had knotted in my throat during the last three years diffused into the air as the letter landed on his desk. An enormous smile spread across my face. My boss stared at me; I looked at the dancer next to me but he was heading off towards my closed window.

‘No, don’t go,’ I wanted to scream.

But it was too late; he had somehow managed to jump out.

I grabbed my coat and ran out to find him but he had gone.

Frantically running up and down Marylebone High Street, I searched for him. He was nowhere to be found. It was insane; I’d left my job on the basis of a figment of my imagination. I sat in a doorway and began to cry. What was I thinking of? What was happening to me? As I held my head in my hands, I felt someone touch my shoulder. I saw sandals and toes with pink chipped nail-varnish. I did not dare look up.

‘Follow the African dancer, my child; take your heart in your hands and follow him. As you walk, tread firmly on fear, clear the path and let the African dancer dance; dance his way into reality.’

When I managed to glance up, she had disappeared.

Once the decision had been taken to follow the African dancer, the laws of nature somehow conspired and I found myself riding on the crest of a tidal wave that propelled me to a faraway land.

It was a similar sort of journey to the one that I had made as a small child, in the sense that I don’t quite remember the specifics of how I got there. All I know was that one moment I was living happily with my grandmother on her farm in rural India, playing with calves, chickens and goats. Then, suddenly, on a flip of a coin, I had to exchange all that for a battered merry-go-round, swings and slides, and this couple called the Vishavans whom I had never met before.

Twenty-two years later it was a similar scenario: one moment I was crying on the pavement in Marylebone High Street and the next I was on a beach, far off the beaten track.

I woke up confused and dazed, trying to find my bearings. The sun dazzled my eyes, my head was throbbing and my hair was covered in sand. As I hauled myself up, an old man approached me.

‘Ma’am, a watch for your beautiful wrist, or perhaps a necklace?’

I looked towards my wrist and found I was still wearing my suit. I shook my head, and when I finally managed to speak I asked if he knew where I was.

‘It’s not so important to know this now – just know your call for adventure was heard.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was relentless. Every day, all we heard was, “Please get me out of here. I don’t know how, but please do it.” You never stopped and now you have taken a leap of faith and come here of your own accord.’

‘But where am I? What’s going on?’

‘You are wherever you want to be.’

Surely half a bottle of brandy could not have this effect a day later. I looked around and panicked at the unfamiliar surroundings. There was no one on that empty beach, no big umbrellas, no sun-beds, nothing except two sets of footprints that belonged to the old man and me. Trying to gain some sense of perspective, I turned around and my breath was almost taken away. There behind me, as far as the eye could see, was lush green foliage and the peak of a glorious purple mountain.

‘It’s beautiful, truly beautiful, but I…’