This Is The Life Back to Other Writing I hear my hsuband, Rahel, call out in English: “Come. Very good food. Not too hot. Not too spicy. You will like. My restaurant is best in town. Best in all of Tamil Nadu. Come. This way please.” Through the gaps in the flimsy wooden wall of the kitchen, I peer into the pitch black night, towards the dirt path leading past our place and pick out two white faces suspended, ghost-like in the dark. I follow their look and see the outline of Rahel lying in his hammock: one leg thrown carelessly over its side, arms folded behind his head for a pillow. As my eyes adjust I see he’s smiling. I love Rahel’s smile. “In all of India!” he shouts now. Night after night, he lies there, waiting for passing tourists. “And cool beer,” he calls as he throws his other leg down over the side of the hammock and stands up. “What kind you like? Kingfisher! You like Kingfisher?” “No thanks.” They call back, slowing a little as they come abreast of where he now stands at the edge of our veranda. “Not right now,” they say. “Tomorrow maybe, yeah?” “Ahh, that’s what you all say. You English?’ “No, Irish.” I see the girl pull at her boyfriend’s hand, anxious to get away from yet another poor, pleading Indian keen to part them from their money. “Ahh, Ireland! I know Ireland. Lots of Guinness – yes! Lots of fighting.” Rahel makes the sound of an explosion. “And Bombs! You know Enya?” he calls but they make no reply and continue walking. I hate this. The way Rahel pleads each night with people like these to stop at our restaurant. I hate the way he flatters them and cajoles them while they look at him like he’s nothing. But my darling Rahel’s skin is thicker than mine. That’s why I’m in the kitchen and not out front. That and the fact that I’d give up a lot sooner than he does. He crosses over to our old cassette player, goes through a small stack of tapes mostly cadged from tourists such as these, picks one out, pops it in and turns the volume to full. Laughs of recognition at the singer’s voice float back. I hear the man say something. The couple stop, and then they turn around. “Welcome,” cries Rahel throwing open his arms. He flicks on the row of white lights hanging the width of the veranda and they take up seats at a table directly under the lights. “OK then, some beer,” they order, these our first customers of the evening. Despite Rahel’s nightly persistence, business hasn’t been as good as we’d hoped in our new restaurant and now Rahel, barely managing to hide his delight, hands our two customers menus then disappears to get beer on credit from Amit Singh. Amit runs the town’s other restaurant, the third generation of his family to do so and, because our little enterprise is no threat to his, he’s happy to supply us with beer when we need it. It’s more expensive this way but it means we’re not tying up money we don’t have. Managing to look as if he’s just strolled into our kitchen and picked up the beers there, and not just run a couple of hundred metres, Rakel places an ice-cold bottle of Kingfisher in front of each of the tourists. As they take their first drink and scan our menu he stands at the side of their table watching, waiting. They start asking questions. “Are there chillies in this?” “Do poppadoms come with that?” When they finally make up their minds, he carefully writes their choices down in his purpose bought notebook When he comes into the kitchen to give me their order, I’m already gathering the ingredients together for I’ve heard every word of course but Rahel feels it’s important to be seen writing the orders down. It’s more professional, he says. Before going back out he lifts up my hair and nuzzles into the nape of my neck and whispers, “See – things are looking up.” He’s happy now, my beloved husband. I listen to him while I cook. “Are you enjoying India? Ireland is very green, yes?” I hear him ask, standing once again at the side of their table. He talks on and, soon, as he’d hoped they would, they ask him to join them. I know the pattern well – questions about their country and his opinions on India’s problems.  Later when he’s drunk some more he’ll move onto love, life and me – his skinny, green-eyed wife. Now my foolish husband calls out for me to join them and while the pots simmer and the nan bread bakes I do but I soon see that this foreign woman pities me and mistakes my shyness for servility. When Rahel hands me a beer, she looks at me, surprised. To her, all Indian women are the same. She does not know that I too have travelled. That I was born up north, hundreds of miles from here. That I finished high school. That by marrying Rahel I have, as my mother said, made my bed and now I have to lie on it. The woman suddenly stops talking and leaves out a scream and I look to see what’s startled her. On the far side of the path, stands a stationery silhouette. The woman screams and screams. What does she think is out there? What does she fear?  That a band of malevolent dacoits are lurking in the shadows, waiting for their opportunity to slit her throat with long, shiny knives. I see her hands instinctively reach down and tightly grip her money-belt. Little good that would do if it truly were dacoits and not Aisha, the little girl who lives in the hut across the path from us. “Aisha,” calls out Rahel, “come here.” Warily Aisha steps up onto the veranda into the light. “Ahh,” says the woman for Aisha is a pretty little thing. The woman reaches out to stroke Aisha’s hair but pulls back when Aisha suddenly scratches her scalp. She slips past the woman and goes and sits on Rahel’s lap, a good vantage point from which to watch these foreigners in safety. Poor little Aisha. For whom home is a hut with a dirt floor and a leaking roof and bed is whatever space she can find on the mats each night between her four wild brothers and her sick father; nobody knows where her mother is. But such a smart child though she doesn’t go to school. Rahel says he will take it upon himself to teach her and the others like her. Rahel, who also says he won’t drink our meagre profits away with the customers, now uncaps another bottle and takes a long swallow.   * * *   Rahel and Samara are nice. People say their restaurant won’t last long. Samara doesn’t cook well. Rahel drinks too much. Sometimes I creep out of our hut at night across to their restaurant and the foreigners, especially if they are drinking, give me food. Then my brothers with their empty bellies follow. Rahel only lets us stay if the customers don’t mind. Tonight I sit on his lap and watch the foreign man and the pretty lady drink beer while they talk to him and Samara. The lady drinks a lot and laughs and laughs at the things Rahel says. After a while she asks me to sit on her knee. “Go on,” says Rahel. So I do. When Samara brings out the food the boys appear and make lots of noise and run about the place. “Shoo,” says Rahel, but the man tells him to let them stay and laughs when the boys take food from his plate and sups from his beer. The foreigners ask Rahel about a song from a Bollywood movie. I’ve never seen a movie but I know all the songs. Rahel puts the song on and I sing. They all listen. “Beautiful,” says the lady. Later when I dance they all watch and after a while the boys join in and then the lady. Rahel says that the lady thinks I dance and sing so well that I should be in Bollywood. Later he tells me that she thinks I am very pretty and that she would just love to take me home. He asks me would I like that. I nod. Ever since Mum left and Dad got sick, I lie awake at night imagining something exactly like this happening to me. Then I will have a mat all to myself at night and during the day I will go to school. Then the boys will have room enough to sleep. Then my Dad will have one less mouth to feed and maybe he won’t be so cross all the time. I can’t wait to tell Gita and Indira tomorrow. Maybe the lady will take them too; with my two best friends close by, I wouldn’t be lonesome. And even if she can’t take them, maybe she knows other people who will, other rich people who live near her.   * * *   We would have passed Rahel’s place last night; it was just a hut really and you can’t be too careful what with Delhi belly and that but when he started playing Enya, well, we just to stop for a beer at least. I mean to say, nobody else in this whole country seems to have ever even heard of Ireland so you can imagine what a surprise it was to suddenly hear Orinoco Flow in a backwater like this. We’d a great evening. Rahel was so funny and he’s really, really handsome. His wife joined us in between cooking but her English wasn’t nearly as good as his though I did my best to talk to her, at least to begin with. Eoin thought she was very beautiful but I didn’t think so. She was terribly skinny and, if you ask me, her green eyes just looked odd with her dark skin. For the life of me I couldn’t see what Eoin was going on about. When we were on our second or third beer, this pretty little beggar girl arrived. What a darling! But filthy of course. Even so I let her sit on my lap and stroke my hair for I could see she was very much taken by it. As soon as Rahel’s wife bought out the food, I’d swear the little girl’s brothers must have smelt it for they suddenly appeared out of nowhere. To be honest, I wasn’t at all keen on them for, whatever about Aisha, they were just crawling! And they were like wild animals running about all over the place, yelling their heads off, even the youngest of them who couldn’t have been more than three or four. Like, what kind of a mother would let a child of that age out on his own? When one of the older boys spilt some of my beer over me, I’d had enough and I asked Rahel to send them away but Eoin butted in and said they were fine and then made the mistake of giving one of them some of his nan bread. Of course there was no getting rid of them after that.  And though we must have given them half if not more of what we’d ordered that didn’t stop one of them stealing Eoin’s good lighter as he discovered this morning when he went looking for it in his jacket pocket. Ungrateful little thing! I told Eoin we should get Rahel to go around to where they live and demand it back but Eoin said to let it go. To be honest, I was a little surprised to see Aisha hanging around outside our hotel this morning and not exactly pleased for I’d a splitting headache. I guess I must have drunk too much last night. And when the poor little thing ran up and kissed me before I’d a chance to stop her I nearly died. In the cold light of day she looked way dirtier than she had last night! To think I had her sitting on lap, stroking my hair! Eoin had gone to the beach by then so I was kind of at a loose end which is why I thought it might be fun to pass an hour or two dolling her up. I’d say the snooty manager was disgusted when he spotted me going up the stairs with her in tow. But, like, who cares? I’m on my holidays after all! Anyway, once we’d got to the room, I made her take off the raggy thing she’d on – it might have started out life as a dress but you certainly couldn’t call it that now. Then I put her into the shower. God, the dirt! You wouldn’t believe it. She must have been under the water for a good twenty minutes before it ran clear! After drying her off I put an old flowery pink t-shirt of mine on her and wrapped a big red scarf around her waist as a skirt. I’d bought the scarf as a present for my mother but what the hell! Too generous, that’s me. When I tied her hair up with a ribbon she looked so pretty that I told her I’d just have to bundle her into my bag and take her away with me and I’d swear she almost knew what I was saying for she looked towards the window and spanned her arms out like the wings of a plane and then threw herself at me and started hugging me again. Eoin arrived back just then so I got him to take some photos of the two of us, me and my little Indian beggar girl. Eoin wanted to go and see a temple a few miles out from the town so we left her outside the hotel and headed off. To be honest the temple was little more than a ruin and it was a complete waste of time going to see it. Then, on our way back in the car, it started to lash and when the driver we’d hired told us the rain was set to continue for days because the monsoon was retreating well, that decided us for there’s really not much point in hanging around a beach town in wet weather, especially one as dead as this. By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we’d made up our minds to head to Madras and make arrangements from there to travel onto Goa. Of course the driver was more than happy to take us whenever we wanted. I’m sure he was only delighted with the fare. I’d say he’d have driven us all the way to Goa if we’d asked him even if it would take him a couple of days. When we pulled up at the hotel, Aisha was hanging about again. This time she’d the two most unfortunate girls I’ve ever seen in my life with her: one had a horribly disfigured ear, all burnt and withered; the other had a head of wild, matted hair. Ugh! Now that she was clean I let Aisha kiss me, but not the other two. Well, would you? Then her two friends began touching Aisha’s new clothes with their wrinkly little hands and stroking her clean hair whilst looking up at me the whole time. Suddenly it dawned on me what they were after. Like, who did they think I was – Mother Teresa? Did they expect me to dress up every beggar in India? “See you in Rahel’s later O.K,” I said to Aisha, then kissed her and shooed them all away. There was no point in telling her we’d be leaving in a couple of hours; she would only have been disappointed.   * * *   Laden down with luggage on it’s roof and two happy holidaymakers in the backseat reading up on Goa, the car moves slowly along the dirt road passing three little girls at the side of the road. Seeing it, the girls stop and stare. Long after the car is out of sight, they remain motionless. The other two draw in close to Aisha, put their arms around her neck and cry with her. For pretty Aisha, because her chance is gone. For themselves, though they never really believed they had a chance.   Back to Other Writing