bright, she spoke solemnly: ‘These ten trees are Radha’s trees. They will grow along with her,
taller and stronger with each year. When she is eight they will bear fruit. We will sell the fruit in
Munger and that money will be hers. After that, every year her trees will bear fruit and the money
will be saved for her, for her education, and for her marriage
‘Each time a daughter is born, we will celebrate and plant ten jardalu trees for her and they will
belong to her forever. Ten trees like the ten fingers with which we women can hold our own
destinies firmly in our hands.’
A schoolgirl is riding her bicycle on the narrow paved road towards the outskirts of the village;
sweat drenches her uniform as she pedals furiously. Ruchira is late. She sees Badru, the old
village barber, walking towards her and she calls out, ‘Badru Chacha, what is the time?’
He takes out his mobile phone from the front pocket of his cotton shirt and with a mouth full of
betel leaves which have permanently stained his teeth orange calls out to her already receding
back, ‘Four-thirty! Go slow, Ruchira beti!’
She reaches the clearing. The ceremony has already begun. Colourful mats are spread out on the
grass and on them women in bright saris sit with harmoniums and drums. She sees her friend Indu
sitting next to her mother, the two red plastic tambourines lying in her lap, and quickly goes to take
her place beside her.
The seven-day-old baby is in her mother’s arms while her ten jardalu saplings are being planted
into the ground. The baby’s mother, Vidhi, has a bright smile on her tired face as she distributes
sweets to everyone.
Ruchira watches the ceremony keenly, her fingers idly playing with the bells on the tambourine.
She has her own ten trees in another spot closer to the village. On her fifteenth birthday, she will
perform a simple ritual where she will tie a sacred red thread around each trunk, promising to look
after them as they, in return, will look after her for the rest of her life.
Her mother had told her that this is the only village where people from any caste, even those with
no land of their own, can plant trees for their daughters wherever they find space, even by the side
of the road.
She wonders how this started – this ritual of the jardalu. But no one seems to quite remember, not
even her grandmother, who says that this is just the way things have always been here.
The last sapling is planted and the women begin playing their instruments and singing a song about
the benevolence of the great Lakshmi who blesses each woman in the village with happiness and
prosperity.
It is an old song, passed down through generations and the women singing are unaware that the
song is not about Goddess Lakshmi who resides in the heavens above, but alludes to a gangly girl
who once walked among the mango groves.
2 Salaam, Noni Appa
An elderly woman popped her head out of the window of a dented white Fiat. It belonged to Noni
Appa, who had just returned from Glory beauty parlour, which was why her carefully dyed brown
hair was twisted around eleven rollers and covered with a pink net.
She called out to the watchman snoozing by the gate, ‘Baburam, you duffer, open the gate.’
Baburam, who seemed to spend as much time daydreaming as he did watching the creaky gate of
Sea Breeze, shuffled forward and pushed the gate open.
Noni Appa, struggling with the shift stick, managed to push it into second gear and the car, moving
like it was suffering from a bad bout of hiccups, inched forward towards the small house by the
sea.
Noni Appa entered the weathered house and spotted her younger sister, Binni, sitting at the dining
table, drinking tea, peeling pine nuts and putting them in airtight containers.
Noni and Binni – these were not the names on their birth certificates. But over the years, whatever
nice Ismaili names they had been bequeathed by the great Aga Khan himself had probably been
wiped out of everyone’s memories except theirs.
Binni was very animated this afternoon. She had received a parcel all the way from America. It
She started prattling in Kutchi, their native tongue, a language similar to Sindhi, yet distinctly
different. But her words literally and figuratively fell on deaf ears, as Noni Appa had as usual
forgotten to switch on her hearing aid and had thus missed the volley of words though she had not
missed the spectacle of her sixty-six-year-old, overweight sister bobbing her head up and down in
excitement.
Noni Appa leisurely adjusted her hearing aid which had got tangled within the folds of her cotton
dupatta and finally said, ‘Koro thiyoh, Binni? What are you saying?’
Binni thrust the note under Noni Appa’s nose. ‘See this! Our second cousin Ibrahim, arrey, the
Houston-wala, has spoken to someone in the Jamatkhana there. There’s a nice Ismaili boy for your
Mallika!’
Noni Appa sighed. ‘Leave it, Binni. First of all Mallika is not going to leave London to move
to Houston and, more importantly, she says that she is perfectly fine being single.
Binni squealed. ‘She is going to die a spinster at this rate. How old is she now, forty-six? Put this
videotape in the VCR and at least see what a good match I have found for our Mallika.’
The room filled with the whirring sound of the video cassette player and then a wrinkled man
wearing a striped shirt and grey pants appeared on the screen and said, ‘Ya Ali Madad! My name
is Shakeel Norani and I am a dentist.’
The image on the screen changed to different clips of him – in his office, beaming with a dental
mirror in his hand, proudly pushing groceries in a trolley at a supermarket. The little show reel
ended with him sitting in a car, his face contorted with passion as he lip-synced to an old ghazal by
Mehdi Hassan.
Binni went on to explain, ‘He has asked for Mallika’s picture. Let’s send it quickly, unlike other
Ismaili boys he is very liberal-minded which is why he is accepting someone as old as her. In fact,
before this he had proposed to Maneka, that film actress, but the foolish girl rejected his offer and
married a doctor instead.
Noni Appa snorted. ‘Binni, this NRI dentist looks one year older than Allah Miya himself which
means he must be the same age as you! Let’s send him your photo. Just smile broadly in the picture
and once he sees your three missing teeth, I am sure he will make a new set of dentures for you as a
wedding gift!’ And she removed the tape from the machine and thrust it back in her disgruntled
sister’s plump hands.
Noni Appa and Binni had both reached a stage in life where time had spiralled on to itself and,
like their childhood days spent playing Dabba Eyes Spice in the by-lanes of Amreli, it was once
again just the two of them against the world, having lost husbands to meningitis and cancer
respectively and children to the lure of distant lands.
Noni Appa now filled her days helping out at Muskan, a school for special children, and her
evenings meticulously writing duas into endless lined notebooks, while Binni, with money to spare
and an empty bungalow where the windows rattled with both the sea air and loneliness, attempted
to keep herself busy by constantly trying to fi
nd an appropriate hobby, often recruiting her elder
sister as a companion cum guinea pig.
There had been art classes with poor Prahlad Bhai, where he kept trying to teach Binni to use a 2B
pencil and sketch in grids and she, ignoring him, would jump directly to oil paints and canvas.
There were cross-stitch classes which resulted in a piece of embroidery that proudly stated ‘Home
Seet Home’.
By the time the W had been reported missing by Mrs Mastan, who had been sitting right next to
Binni, she had lost all interest in embroidery and was looking at Noni Appa across the table,
signalling her that it was time to leave.
After that there had been singing classes, baking lessons and attempts at joining a laughter club.
Binni and Noni Appa would walk to the beach dressed identically in printed salwar kurtas and
gleaming white sneakers. They would stand in a circle with elderly gentlemen in a variety of caps
perched on their balding heads, white shorts with socks pulled up to their knees, flailing their arms
about while trying to laugh at nothing at all. And finally today, Binni had decided that it was time
for them to try yoga.
The two sisters walked towards the garden. They were an incongruous pair. Noni Appa was
shorter than her sister, frail and delicately boned, while Binni was well rounded. She had a large
bosom and even larger hips, ‘like a Coca-Cola bottle’ as she liked to think of her formidable
figure.
Binni called out to Bhondu, the cook and general dogsbody, to lay out three towels in the grass
before the yoga teacher arrived. She told her sister, ‘Take your rollers out. You look completely
demented. And where are you going that you want to get all dolled up?’ Noni Appa merely said, ‘Is
the teacher here to make me breathe in and out rhythmically or to pant over my beauty?’
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting cross-legged on their towels in front of Anand ji, their new
yoga teacher. Binni, who had once gone away for a seven-day vipassana retreat only to return in
three days, was giving more instructions than the yoga teacher himself.
‘Anand ji, tell Appa how to do kapalbhati properly, can’t even see her stomach go in and out! See
Noni Appa, like this, watch me.’ And Binni, her entire body quivering, began violently inhaling
and exhaling, while making pitiful bellowing sounds like an asthmatic buffalo.
Noni Appa ignored her as she continued her breathing exercises albeit while occasionally
munching on pieces of papaya from a plate next to her as they sat facing their hapless yoga teacher.
Binni then insisted on performing a few asanas that she had circled in a book called Tantra Kriya
and Yoga that she had purchased the previous week in anticipation of the imminent yoga session.
She decided to try the locust pose where she was meant to lie down on her stomach and lift her
legs alternately, but she had modified it by making Anand ji lift her leg and lower it for fifty counts.
She then slowly flipped over on to her back, wanting to do the pawanmuktasana, which could
literally be translated as the wind-releasing pose, to alleviate her chronic constipation. The yoga
teacher first pushed her bent right knee to her abdomen and then the left, a movement that was
meant to internally massage the intestines.
Anand ji was now drenched in sweat, trying to push and pull Binni into some semblance of yogic
poses. His white cotton kurta with buttons going up asymmetrically towards his left shoulder was
sticking to his back and his thick grey hair was plastered to his head. The tall, elderly Gujarati
gentleman was panting slightly as he repeatedly wiped his face with a handkerchief.
Noticing the yoga teacher breathing heavily, Binni snorted. ‘Noni Appa, he tells us yoga means to
breathe only through the nose and himself panting with mouth fully open, Kutho type. Practise
yourself, Anand ji, and then teach us please.’ The class ended with both the sisters refusing to
chant ‘Om’ – a sound that reverberates inside the skull like a noisy vacuum cleaner meant to suck
away the garbage that the mind produces – with Binni adding, ‘We are not lassi-drinking Hindus,
you know?’ So Anand ji settled for making them close their eyes and make a humming sound
instead, like there was a bee trapped inside their mouths.
After Anand ji left, the two sisters had a quick discussion about him. Binni said, ‘He was all right,
nothing too great, Husna Ben recommended him like he was the great Patanjali himself.’ And Noni
Appa replied, ‘I feel good, Binni, my muscles feel all pulled and stretched, like a ball of dough
smoothened out into a nice flat chapatti.’ Noni Appa then climbed into her white Fiat again and,
with her foot constantly on the brake pad, carefully drove home.
She took the small elevator to her fourth-floor apartment in Juhu Scheme, unlocked the door and
walked into her tiny apartment. She freshened up, removed her rollers, fluffing her mid-length hair
into a wavy mass around her head, applied some maroon lipstick, changed into a grey sari and
clasped a string of tiny yellowing pearls around her neck. She uncapped a bottle of whisky and
poured some into two heavy crystal tumblers, topping each with cubes of ice.
Noni Appa leaned against the sliding windows and looked out at the towering gulmohar tree
across the street, its branches laden with red flowers, moving in the breeze like blazing fireflies.
She glanced around the ramshackle, rather mouldy living room, at the peeling plaster and the ever-
leaking roof of her home. She recalled entering this house as a new bride. The years of laughter
when Farhan would urge her to slip into her imported chiffon saris, the same string of pearls
dangling from her neck. He always wanted her to wear court shoes and not the Kolhapuri slippers
that other women sported on their feet. The evenings spent sitting on the rattan chairs in the balcony
outside, with a bottle of Black Label whisky and an ice bucket as she slowly acquired a taste for
‘Scotch on the rocks’ as he called it. Their daughter, Mallika, hanging a bird feeder on one side of
the balcony and diligently filling it with grain and water for the parrots, sparrows and crows that
flocked towards the tree-lined street.
She had dressed up for Farhan today, for what would have been their forty-eighth wedding
anniversary. She looked at the black-and-white picture of her husband with his shy smile and his
freckled nose, and placed the other glass of whisky in front of it on the mantel.
Clinking her own glass against it, she wished her dead husband a happy anniversary, wherever he
was and in whichever form he existed, though his body was six feet under, in the large graveyard
behind Galaxy theatre in Santacruz.
Noni Appa went out into the balcony and settled in one of the chairs. She sipped her drink,
watching the colours of the gulmohar tree, all the green and red, change to a dark shadow against
the night sky, as the sun began its journey to light up a day across some other distant land.
***
The next few days went by quickly, with Noni Appa spending more time than usual at Muskan. The
children were getting ready for their annual play, which would be staged in the first week of
September. There were costumes to be stitched, intense negotiations with a seven-year-old who
insisted that the cow she was meant to portray in the play should say ‘mew�
�� instead of ‘moo’ and a
vegetable stamping art class, to make the stage background, where Noni Appa ended up with
smudges of white paint on her blue linen dupatta. Then before she knew it, it was Thursday and she
once again drove up to Binni’s house for their second yoga class.
The house was deserted aside from Bhondu, who informed her, ‘Binni Memsaab has gone with
Shamim Didi to the market.’
‘And what about the yoga class?’ asked Noni Appa.
‘I think there is class because she asked me to put out three towels in the garden before she left.
Can I get you anything, Appa?’
Half an hour later, with two Glucose biscuits in her stomach and no sign of Binni, she was about to
leave when she saw a rickshaw pulling up outside the gate and Anand ji walked in.
Anand ji peered at Noni Appa, who was sitting elegantly at the table with her wavy brown hair
and pink lipstick, wearing a white cotton salwar kameez with embroidered blue flowers. She was
a far cry from the creature he had seen at their last class, with her hair in rollers, trapped under the
pink net like a captured hedgehog.
Noni Appa explained to the yoga teacher, ‘Perhaps we should cancel today. Binni isn’t home yet,
though of course, Anand ji, you must charge us for the class as you have come all this way.’ But
Anand ji smiled. ‘Mrs Machiwala, you are here, let’s begin and Mrs Shroff can join us when she
arrives.’
He placed his striped cloth bag on the small glass table to their left and then sat cross-legged on
the towel, facing her.
They began stretching each joint, beginning at the toes. Noni Appa felt a flare of pain in her creaky
right hip as they went along but soon that subsided as well.
Then they did some simple breathing exercises and finally Anand ji asked her to lie down with her
eyes closed. ‘Now we will begin the practice of yoga nidra. Make yourself comfortable. See that
darkness in front of your eyes, it is called chidakasha, now as I say the words, try and see the same
images in your chidakasha.
‘The rising sun, a white lotus, a cloudy sky, a full moon,’ Anand ji continued, throwing words at