The depths of Psyche
BOOK EXTRACT
| Later she met her third husband, the cartoonist Abu Abraham. In this book she tells the story of her full and complex life with candour and without flourish or excess. |
| Though the advertising crowd were competitors, they were also all friends and led a fairly riotous social life among themselves where much flirting took place and affairs started. There was also quite a bit of cloak-and-dagger activity when they were all trying to nab the same client. |
| One day, around Christmas time, we were invited to a dinner-and-dance party by an advertising man whom I would best describe as dashing. He had a brilliant smile and deep-throated laugh. |
| Since he smiled and laughed often, he had laughter lines at the corners of his eyes. He had unruly, straight, dark brown hair, which he kept running his fingers through to keep out of his eyes. He was a tremendous flirt but his wife seemed quite resigned to it. |
| They had a very tastefully furnished flat, a good collection of books and music and objets d'art. The music that evening was mostly calypso. One song I remember in particular because, looking back, it seemed both ominous and prophetic. |
| It was 'House built on a weak foundation will not stand, oh no!' Our host asked me to dance with him several times ""I love dancing "" and during one of the dances he told me I was beautiful. |
| Now I'm pretty sure that was the line he must have taken with all the women he flirted with but it was a long time since anyone had ever told me I was beautiful; in fact I'm not sure if anybody ever had. |
| I had never thought of myself as beautiful "" in fact, I had not thought about it at all. Looking at old photographs of myself at that age, I now think I was. I was bowled over by him and he must have realised he'd made a killing. |
| After that evening, he would often drop in at our house on his way to work (he lived on Pali Hill), just to chat "" we didn't have a phone "" or in the middle of the afternoons. |
| Even now, my heart skips a beat when I picture him walking up our garden path holding his jacket over his shoulder with his finger through the loop at the back of the collar. Standard office wear for ad men in those days was suit and tie but usually the jacket was carried, not worn! I fell in love with him. |
| We would talk about making a life together in the south of France and things like that! There was nothing physical in the relationship apart from the odd hug and an almost paternal kiss. |
| He would often invite Jhupu for a game of chess in the evenings or on Sunday mornings and, of course, I would go along too, mostly with the children "" they didn't have any then. And suddenly Jhupu and I found ourselves being invited to all kinds of parties where he had also been invited. |
| What I thought I was up to, I really don't know. There must have been something missing in our marriage for me to have been so willing to succumb to the charms of somebody so obviously (to others) insincere and, since he was a lot older than I, irresponsible. I think I must have been feeling that life had already passed me by. |
| There I was, barely twenty-two years old, four years married and two children under my belt with nothing further to look forward to "" or something like that. But I had also begun to feel that Jhupu was disappointed in me. He was constantly comparing me, unfavourably, with other women he considered achievers. |
| As it was, I had always had an inferiority complex "" firstly because of my broken family background, and secondly, because my classmates at The Grove had all come from upper middle-class families while my family would probably have been classified as nearer lower middle-class... |
| So when someone told me that I was beautiful, if nothing else, then I suppose it was natural for me to be affected. |
| Nevertheless, I was certainly behaving very foolishly, giving not a thought to the consequences of what I might be letting myself in for. I was simply too young and too immature to have taken on the responsibility of marriage and children. |
| FROM KIPPERS TO KARIMEEN: A LIFE Author: Psyche Abraham Publisher: Roli Books PAGES: x + 214 Price Rs 295 |