The Sari Shop Read Online Free PDF Page A

stalls in the nearby lanes that were out of Mahajan’s range of vision and away from the demanding cacophony of Sevak Sari House, stalls where he could relax, be alone, and sip his tea, for Ramchand needed much more than two cups a day.
    Now, after the oily puris, it was when he had a cup of hot tea in his hands that he began to feel slightly calm again. He sipped the hot, fragrant brew and tried to think why he was feeling uneasy. And this uneasiness wasn’t new. It had always been there, but it had been growing on him lately. He imagined he could glimpse some reality. What, he did not know. He felt that if he really concentrated, really
thought
, he would be able to reach some sort of a final truth. He wasn’t articulate enough, that was the problem. He knew it. Look at other people, look at how clearly they spoke. When Hari described a cricket match, or when Gokul gave directions to a passer by, or when Mrs Gupta had explained what kind of saris she wanted, look how clear and precise they sounded. And
his
own thoughts – they always fanned out, spiralled upwards and downwards unintelligently, rolled themselves up into random curls, chased their own tails and came to nothing. He was twenty-six, but look at the way his mind worked!
    Ramchand finished his tea and looked down into the empty tea-stained glass.
    Or was he just being silly? What had he been thinking about? What reality? Ramchand paid for the puris and the tea in utter confusion.
    He returned to the shop with a worried, wrinkled forehead, just in time to attend to the two women who had just come in. He knew who they were. One was Mrs Sachdeva, Head of the English Department at a local college. She was a squatwoman with a hoarse voice and hair pulled tightly back into a severe bun. She was known to have actually written things that came out in the Sunday supplements of the
Tribune
.
    The other was Mrs Bhandari, a haughty, beautiful woman, wife of the D.I.G. of Police. She had won a beauty contest in college and was now in her early forties. She did up her hair in an elaborate way, with tiny curls piled high on her head in a kind of bun. She called herself a social activist when she introduced herself to people, and often organized charity programmes at the Rotary Club. Everyone said how talented Mrs Bhandari was! Even women who disliked her grudgingly admitted it. She could bake the most marvellous cakes that could beat the cakes in Delhi’s best bakeries, she could embroider every stitch that was known, the soups she made were heaven, and she could even make soufflés, which hardly anyone in Amritsar could. She spoke perfect English, had an unerring taste in clothes and any party that she organized was bound to be a success.
    Both the women were regular customers at the shop but Ramchand had never attended to them personally before. He said an awed ‘Namaste’ to them. They both nodded graciously in reply.
    It seemed to the anxious Ramchand that the Head of an English Department must be terribly knowledgeable and well read. He had read only a few books himself, bought from the second-hand book dealer behind Sangam Cinema near the City Bus Stand. And they hadn’t even been in English. They were Hindi paperbacks – detective novels with revolvers and half-dressed women on the covers. He had read three of them and had thought that they were very good, very exciting and inventive. But after reading the fourth one, it had dawned on him that they were a little repetitive. In all four the villain had forced the heroine to sleep with him, in one he had succeeded and the heroine had drowned herself because she thought itwas the only honourable way out. In the other three, the hero had come in with a pistol and had saved the heroine and her honour. Ramchand had felt cheated when he had realized they were all similar, and he had given up buying and reading them. And then one day he had passed a grocer’s shop that smelt of jute sacks and gramflour. It had