Western Lane: Planning a Home-to-Court Essay

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Western Lane — Chapter 1

By Chetna Maroo

[1] Much later, Khush would say that that night was really the start of it, of Pa’s thinking about what he would do with us. It wasn’t Aunt Ranjan. It was Uncle Pavan talking about the past. But I think Pa told us himself what moved him. He sat beside us one morning on the bench outside the squash court and said, “I want you to become interested in something you can do your whole life.”

[2] AUNT RANJAN HAD orange juice and pancakes with lemon and sugar ready on the table for us in the morning. She said nothing about Pa and Uncle Pavan sitting out drinking and smoking all night. She made them coffee and stood near them so she could refill their cups. Pa spoke kindly to her. Outside in the driveway when Uncle Pavan was closing the door of the car boot over our luggage, Aunt Ranjan asked Pa to think about what she had suggested, and he said he would. She said that she and Uncle Pavan would come to our house next year. We will know how things are by then, she said.

[3] PA BEGAN OUR regime as soon as we returned home from Edinburgh. During the week, he drove us to Western Lane before school, and we got the bus there after school. On weekends, if Pa had work we rode our bikes and he joined us when he was done. We needed rest days at first because everything hurt so much: arms, legs, shoulders. Everything. Pa told us we would get used to it, and we did. Before long we could hardly remember when we used to play only once or twice a week as if it was for fun.

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Western Lane — Chapter 4

By Chetna Maroo

[1] She crossed to the sink. She ran the hot water tap until it was steaming and began washing up. Then suddenly she stopped. She turned around and said, “I’ve taken a job.”

[2] Pa switched his radio off then.

[3] Mona dried her hands carefully, sat down opposite him and said she was going to start helping out at one of the hair salons on Leagrave Road. She would be washing hair, sweeping floors, cleaning windows, or whatever needed doing. Under Pa’s gaze, she lowered hers and said she needed something to occupy her. She didn’t mention what she would be earning, or anything to do with money. There was a silence, and then Pa said he would talk to the manager of the salon. Mona looked at him curiously. She asked why, and he said he wanted to know who she would be working for. Something about this pleased Mona, I think. She made Pa promise that if he had to call the manager then he would do so the following day and he would not say anything to embarrass her. Pa kept his word, and he must have been satisfied because from then on, every Thursday evening and Saturday morning, Mona left Khush with lists of chores and went out to work.

[4] A few times, Mona had to look after the tills at the hair salon because two of the staff kept getting sick. She talked to the manager about his finances. Because he saw she was honest and clever with money, the manager gave her the bookkeeping to do, and he told the owners of the three-storey pet shop and the garden centre across the road. Before long, Mona was bringing home the paperwork from all these places and working on it at night.

[5] One evening, she started trying to talk to Pa about my training.

[6] “I read that she shouldn’t lift weights too close to the event,” she said. It was one of those weeks when she had headaches and her mood wouldn’t settle. Pa just looked at her, because I wasn’t lifting weights at all.

[7] She looked back at him, and then she said casually that maybe we would go and get me a new racket.

[8] I stared at her, and at the glass of chaas in front of me. Pa mixed his dal into his rice. He glanced at me.

[9] “Is that what you want?” he asked.

[10] I concentrated on my glass and thought of Maqsud’s white Dunlop racket with its big teardrop head. Pa held his spoonful of rice in midair, and I heard myself say, “Yes.”

[11] I held my breath. Mona made a small noise as if to encourage Pa to say something.

[12] “Very well,” Pa said.

[13] Mona waited, but there was no more.

[14] She said she would pay for the racket out of her wages.

[15] “We have to get it soon,” she said. “She has to get used to it before the tournament.”

[16] Pa finished his rice, put his plate in the sink and went into the living room.

[17] Mona followed him with her eyes, and then looked at me.

[18] “I’d really like a racket,” I said.

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Western Lane — Chapter 8

By Chetna Maroo

[1] At twenty minutes and thirty minutes I was meeting Alexandra shot for shot, and at forty the audience was murmuring because no one had anticipated this. Pa’s expression only grew darker and more tense. At forty-five minutes, something changed. Alexandra began hitting fewer lengths and when she did hit a length, she placed the ball high on the front wall. I looked at Pa and we understood at the same moment what was happening: Alexandra was trying to give herself more time. She was tired.

[2] You can think it out, but in the end you don’t know what is going to happen until you go through it. I had thought Alexandra would certainly beat me, because it had not occurred to me that if I stayed with her long enough I might simply outlast her. I played a backhand, bringing my shoulder round and swinging my racket as if the wall did not exist. Alexandra played a forehand and when I played another backhand, she followed, and then I was leading. At forty-eight minutes Alexandra was still following, and Pa’s hands were fists.

[3] Then I began to flag and lost my first point since taking the lead.

[4] Pa rose to his feet. He took half a step forward. I lost another point, and another. Pa looked hopelessly towards the door of the badminton hall. That man who was eaten by rats. Mona’s phrase hovered in my mind but I kept hitting. All I had to do, I thought, was follow Alexandra until I got my second wind, and Pa would see that she had nothing left in her, whereas I did. I stayed close to Alexandra. I hit deep, safe shots. Alexandra played to my backhand because she thought it was weaker and maybe it was. It didn’t matter. I won back the serve and this time I didn’t lose it.

[5] At fifty-six minutes when I had match point, I glanced out and saw that everything was dark and watery again. I hesitated. I felt my racket arm drop. Ged and Uncle Pavan replied by stepping forward as one, and for a beat I saw them as clearly as if they were standing in front of me, telling me to hold steady. Then they stepped aside, and I let my racket fly.

[6] The serve was good.

[7] Alexandra returned with a drive to my backhand. As I met the ball, I sensed her moving in front of the T because she’d guessed what I was going to do. I did it anyway. I hit a volley drop, soft and controlled – and the ball rolled sweetly, miraculously, out of the nick, and Alexandra didn’t even try to get to it. Everyone in the badminton hall stood up.

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Western Lane — Chapter 8

By Chetna Maroo

[1] At home, Uncle Pavan warmed cocoa and we drank it in the kitchen. When Aunt Ranjan came downstairs, she looked exactly as she had looked when we left, and this startled us. Aunt Ranjan asked about our journey. We said it was fine. I showed her my Prince bag. She smiled wearily. She said it was late and I should go to bed.

[2] But she and my uncle stood outside under the balcony of my bedroom until much later, and I knelt above them with my blanket around me. The three of us looked out at the black shapes of the rose arbour, the trees, the railway track. Stars appeared and disappeared. My knees began to ache. Below me, Aunt Ranjan wanted badly to ask Uncle Pavan how things stood now and Uncle Pavan wanted to tell her, but she wasn’t sure how to ask and he wasn’t sure how to begin. Soon, I thought, it would be morning, and night, and morning again, and it wouldn’t matter, except to someone watching from so far off that they couldn’t know yet.

[3] Uncle Pavan began slowly. Since he did not know how to make what he had to say mean something to Aunt Ranjan, he described everything. He described it all as if it had happened long ago, as if we had leapt forward in time, and decades had passed since we had stood with Pa on the bridge with the lights blinking, remembering Jahangir Khan and Gogi Alauddin and Qamar Zaman. As if, when it came to squash, it was already no longer all about the Pakistanis, but the Egyptians playing inside a glass court at the foot of the Pyramids.

[4] Taking his time, Uncle Pavan spoke of Pa, and I felt Pa’s presence strongly. He spoke of Ged, and very softly my palm trembled. In his own way, my uncle hunted for markers, looked for beginnings and progressions, things for the mind to snag on. He was careful, always, when it came to the subject of Ma, and Aunt Ranjan was grateful because it was for both brothers, not only Pa but Uncle Pavan too, that Ma had come first. For Uncle Pavan it was a deep love that he could not place, the love for a sister, or a friend to his soul, why should he have to say? For my aunt, this part was difficult. It seemed to my aunt impossible for her to come close to Ma in anything. And so, Uncle Pavan trod with care, and Aunt Ranjan felt it, and understood that this care itself was love. Once or twice, Pa looked up from the electric heater or the television he was mending for one neighbour or another, as if he knew that four hundred miles away Uncle Pavan’s subject was Ma and he wanted to be part of it, but he lowered his head quickly because he understood this was not about him. My father stood to one side, and back and forth between my aunt and uncle the days went, and for a time, for how long I don’t remember, something glowed very faintly beyond the trees. It glowed and disappeared. Then, because he was tired, my uncle’s voice began to drift, and his breath froze, and I stood up.

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Western Lane — Chapter 2

By Chetna Maroo

[1] PA WROTE TO his childhood friend Bala in Mombasa to tell him about Ma’s passing. Bala wrote back and they began corresponding regularly. On Friday evenings when it was dark out, Pa would sit at the kitchen table under the tube light and write for ninety minutes before addressing an envelope, slipping the pages inside, and leaving it by the door for morning. We would be doing something else, homework, or ironing, or reading, but we were always aware of him sitting there. Pa’s face was alert when he was writing to his friend. He was completely present elsewhere, not in our kitchen with us. Before Diwali, instead of a letter, Pa got a package from Bala, and it was addressed to me and my sisters as well as to him. Pa let me open it. Inside was a video: three hours of Jahangir Khan. The video became part of our training.

[2] In the fortnight running up to Diwali it was freezing outside and we watched the video almost every night with the curtains open and the feeling that there was snow coming. Usually we went to Edinburgh for Diwali, and Uncle Pavan lit fireworks in his garden. We liked Uncle’s display and the big potatoes he baked on his fire. We even liked helping him clear away the spent fireworks and paper debris in his garden the following morning. But this time none of us wanted to go.

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Western Lane — Chapter 6

By Chetna Maroo

[1] THAT NIGHT WE could hear the radiators knocking again. It was cold. My sisters went to bed early and I sat with Pa in the living room watching Bala’s video. Pa was on the comfortable chair at an angle to the TV, opposite Ma’s chair, and I was at the far end of the sofa. He kept glancing at me.

[2] “It is good to have someone with whom you can talk,” he said, eventually.

[3] I kept my eyes on the TV.

[4] “About what?” I said.

[5] I didn’t know if he wanted to talk about me and Ged or himself and Ged’s mother but I didn’t want to talk about either.

[6] Pa turned the TV down.

[7] I felt him waiting for me to look at him, and when I did there must have been something terrible in my expression because some creature, limping and friendly, behind his eyes, seemed to back away.

[8] He looked confused and then he replied.

[9] “It doesn’t always matter what you talk about,” he said.

[10] I felt myself agreeing with him inside. Then I thought of the cold tingle of Ged’s mother’s lemonade in my stomach as Pa stood on the balcony above us telling her about the things that terrorised him.

[11] “But sometimes it does matter?” I said.

[12] I didn’t know, then, that it was to the limping creature behind Pa’s eyes that I should have been paying attention. Instead, I was thinking of the presence whose hold on Pa was slipping away, and the feeling that if it did, then our living room and our house and Western Lane and everything we knew would go with it.

[13] “Do you remember Ma?” I asked.

[14] We could hear water running and doors opening and closing upstairs as my sisters moved between the bathroom and bedroom. Pa’s face became very dark and then pale. He turned the TV up. We watched the game on the screen in silence. My body felt weak, almost wobbly. I suddenly wanted to forget everything and just talk to Pa about the game.

[15] Jahangir Khan was playing Qamar Zaman. Zaman could hit better than anyone.

[16] Before playing Qamar Zaman in the 1975 Open, Geoff Hunt had omitted him from the list of men he considered challengers. After playing him, Geoff Hunt came off the court a beaten man, saying, “I can’t speak.” It had made a headline, which Maqsud had kept in a folder that he showed to me and Ged. On our TV, Jahangir Khan was going to defeat Qamar Zaman in three games.

[17] I turned to Pa, and whatever I was going to say died on my lips. Pa was looking at Ma’s chair. He wasn’t staring. His expression was calm. The dark bruise on his jaw was like a hole in the middle of his face.

[18] “Pa,” I said.

[19] He kept looking at Ma’s chair.

[20] I had asked him if he remembered Ma and again I tried to remember, but all I could see were insignificant things. The height of her. Her arms on the arms of her chair, bent at the elbows. The dust that blackened the soles of her feet.

[21] “I’m going to go up,” I said.

[22] Pa turned his head, not to me, but to the TV. Sometimes, when Qamar Zaman played, his shots were so perfect and unexpected that they could make you forget whatever you had been thinking.

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