Free House of the Sun by Meira Chand Page B

had recently lost the last of his teeth, but he could not get used to his dentures and put them in only to eat. Mohan was no help to him. Lata observed her brother bitterly as he picked up a potato patty: he was happy to be supported. He spent much of his day with friends, discussing impossible business schemes. Lata felt the weight of them all upon her father. And she felt in herself a separate weight.
    ‘Daddy, please look at this.’ She unfolded a newspaper cutting. ‘Telephone operator and receptionist required by prestigious hotel. Training on premises, applications invited,’ she read out to him as he fumbled for his spectacles.
    ‘What is this?’ Mr Watumal asked, peering at her over his glasses, uncomprehending.
    ‘When girls reach my age and are not yet married, they are usually working,’ Lata said in a low voice.‘Let me apply to the hotel. Why must you support us at this age?’
    ‘But that is a father’s duty,’ Mr Watumal replied, pulling back his shoulders in a dignified way. ‘God has given me enough to support you all.’
    ‘I want to do something. I will meet people if I work. Maybe I will even meet someone who—’
    A terrible wail from Mrs Watumal interrupted her. ‘Is it not enough already that we face? Oh God, give me strength for this new shame.’
    ‘Be quiet, wife,’ Mr Watumal ordered in a flat, exhausted tone. Mohan and Sunita stopped eating. ‘If you do these things, daughter, who will help your mother at home?’ he reasoned.
    ‘Sunita is able to do everything. It will be good for her to help,’ Lata replied.
    ‘Why are you always thinking of what is good for me?’ Sunita shouted. She had a vision of her sister behind the reception desk of the Taj Mahal Hotel, talking to a handsome man. Her heart began to pound. ‘And who will you meet in a hotel?’ she asked. ‘Men in hotels want only one thing from a girl. And it isn’t marriage.’
    ‘Boys of good family are not working in hotels,’ Mrs Watumal agreed. ‘And how will you marry before your sister? People will say there is something wrong with her, that the younger is marrying before the elder. And why this need to work? People will say your father cannot afford to keep you at home. And then who will marry you?’ Mrs Watumal shook her head.
    Lata began to tremble with fury. ‘And if Sunita never marries, am I just to sit here like this, rotting all my life?’ she burst out.
    ‘Rotting?’ Mrs Watumal screamed. ‘How ungrateful are modern children? Everything we are doing for you, everything we are giving you. Oh God, it will kill me soon.’
    Sunita began to sob. ‘That is a sister’s love,’ she cried. ‘She wishes me never to marry.’ She stood up and ran from the room, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
    ‘The evil eye is upon this whole family,’ Mrs Watumal muttered, and hobbled from the room after Sunita.
    ‘See what you’ve done,’ Mohan remarked.
    ‘If you worked with Daddy properly, as other sons do, everything would be different,’ Lata replied. ‘All you do is take his money, and drink coffee with your friends in the Taj, and dream of business deals that never happen.’
    ‘Is it my fault the unions give trouble, and the market is dull?’ Mohan shouted back. He called a servant to clear his plate and left the table sullenly; Lata was alone with her father.
    Mr Watumal looked down at the strip of Elastoplast before him, and at his knees through the glass table top, and sighed. ‘It is natural you feel as you do. It is not easy to see all your friends married, and still to be waiting. But your mother is also right, people will talk; already they say too much. And then who will marry you?’
    ‘What is the harm of work in a hotel? It is a good job, not a low-class one,’ Lata persisted.
    ‘Already it has been explained to you; say no more about it. Already your mother is ill with worry.’ Mr Watumal lapsed into silence. They sat side by side for some time, engrossed in their