The turban-wallah: a tale of little India

'Ruby!'

He turned sharply. There was a time when he would have clenched his fists and been menacing because someone called him that, but you got used to anything eventually.

Tara Devi, her school-books under her arm, ran down the road.

Breathless, she gasped as she ran up to him, 'You could have waited for me, Ruby. Why didn't you?'

He shrugged. 'I was thinking,' he said.

'Not about me.'

He laughed. 'Not about you,' he admitted.

They walked on. 'What will you do when the exams are over?' she asked.

'Dunno. Seems no point in bothering until I have to.'

'You're--' she sought for the word--'pragmatic,' she said decisively.

He grunted, wondered whether to reply or not to reply, then said, 'I've got no choice.'

They stopped at the window of the Fairvale Sweet Centre. 'I've some money left over from dinner-time,' Tara said, looking up at him.

He stared at their reflection in the window. Didn't his turban make his head seem misshapen? He stroked his chin and felt the thin growth of hair.

'I'm not short of money myself.' He hesitated. 'Let's go in,' he said. But he was uneasy.

Ajit Singh, who had opened the Sweet Centre only a month earlier, beamed as Rupinder and Tara entered. He gave a knowing glance at the girl and waved his hands vaguely in the air. 'We have a thousand and one delights to tempt love from its hiding place,' he said in exaggerated Punjabi.

'You choose,' Tara told Rupinder and took a seat in a quiet corner as far from the counter and the window as she could get.

Ajit gave another knowing glance, this time at Rupinder, then nodded to the young lad who leant against the wall. While Rupinder chose from the vast, multicoloured array of sweets the lad strode over to the table where Tara sat, wiped it with a damp cloth, and refilled the water jug.

Ajit murmured a few words in his native language, unaware of Rupinder's awkwardness.

'What's he on about now?' Tara asked as Rupinder joined her and placed the little plates on the table.

'Nothing. He's like that Gratiano fella in the Shakespeare play we're supposed to be studying.'

'How?'

'He talks an infinite deal of nothing.'

Tara's smile soon vanished. 'You don't seem your usual self today,' she said seriously.

'Just one of those things. We all have our ups and downs.'

Tara didn't touch the sweets on the plate. 'There's something wrong,' she said, pouring water into the glasses.

Rupinder shrugged. 'Not particularly.'

'Ru-bee--'

'Why d'you call me that? It's irritating.'

'What's the matter? Everyone calls you that.'

'Not everyone. Just--' He broke off. He didn't want to tell her what he had been thinking about. He wished she hadn't called out to him and caught him up. He hated being with her when he was in this kid of a mood. But then, if they were going to be real friends, they had to see each other in all kinds of different moods. He broke a small piece off the sweet. 'This stuff is deadly for fillings,' he said, pretending to grimace.

'Mmmm.' She, too, broke off some of the sweet and popped it into her mouth. 'It is quiet in here today.'

'Nobody's got any money. Those who have will probably be saving it for the school disco tomorrow.'

'Are you going?' Tara asked, avoiding his eye.

'I've got to. Don't forget, I've been lumbered with helping out.' He sipped the water. 'But it's too near the exams to be wasting time at discos.' He added, with a note of contempt, 'They only arrange them to make money, anyway.'

An hour earlier, he would have said 'we'.

Tara wanted to stroke the fluffy beginnings of his beard. Instead, she took another piece of the sweet. 'There's nothing wrong in trying to raise money to replace the school minibus.'

'Nothing wrong with it--just so happens I'd rather spend my time in my own way.' He paused, but again she avoided his eye. 'I mean, it's not as if you'll be there.' Now he'd said it, and he felt stupid.

Tara chuckled for no apparent reason. 'It'll be your big opportunity.'

'For what?'

'You've always had this secret passion for Helen Cartwright.'

Rupinder scowled, but she wouldn't give up. She knew she was irritating him, prising open a vein of irrelevancy, and the teasing rankled.

'Or maybe you're scared that your friend John will thump you if you make a plan in that direction?'

With an effort of the will, he replied lightly, 'He'd be more likely to thank me for taking her off his hands. She's a bit of a hindrance to his football training. You can't keep her out of the changing rooms.

Tara punched his arm. 'It's not true and you'd better not let her hear you say that,' she giggled.

He was no good for her. He realized that. Even if things between Tara and himself started to work out all right, there would be problems with her parents--in particular with her mother, a strange, stand-offish sort of woman he only knew from a distance.

After they parted and he walked on his way, he talked to himself. The conversation was all inside his head, but it was no less real for that.

She'd been happy enough, in her world. She'd shouted to him down the street, run up to him, laughed with him and had sweets with him. All he had succeeded in doing was to bring her down into his depression.

His mother, who spoke almost no English, was screaming at his two younger sisters when he entered the house.

'Where's dad?' he asked in Punjabi.

Instead of giving a straightforward reply, his mother lumped him into the one-sided argument she was having. 'Your father is a hard-working man. He does not spend his entire life being lazy and wasting time in the house.' She rattled on like an express train, oblivious to the fact that Rupinder had stopped listening.

Surjit, who at eleven was waiting to go to the comprehensive school Rupinder himself attended, glanced at the wall. Her eyes ran up the pattern of wavy lines that crossed and re-crossed over each other.

Look at me when I am speaking!' the mother snapped.

Rupinder paid attention again, only to realize that his mother was no longer yelling at him, but had started on Surjit, who stood rigid, an attentive expression on her face.

'Mother,' he said, 'I must have some peace. Quiet. Please. The examinations--'

That shut her up. 'Yes. You must work hard,' she said. Speaking softly, she addressed the two girls. 'We must be quiet,' she agreed, nodding.

Kulvinder, aged nine, nodded, too. She wasn't sure why, but she appreciated the improved atmosphere since her brother had entered.

'I shall go up to my room,' he announced, 'and begin my homework.'

His mother, smiling and nodding, gestured for the girls to get into the kitchen. With an inaudible sigh, Rupinder kicked off his shoes and took the stairs two at a time.

Throwing down his and casting his coat over a chair, he dropped onto the bed and let out a faint, extended whistle.