A Delhi Obsession

by M G Vassanji

  Then that Saturday; it had become late. It had rained and now hail was falling, and there was not a soul on the floor. He said, We might have to spend the night here. We were eating pakodas, there was chai from a Thermos, and then reaching out for the Thermos from behind me he pressed against me, hard. Hard. I froze. I squirmed, shouted—why didn’t I scream?—he wouldn’t release me. His mistake was to put his hand to my mouth and I bit it so hard, blood streamed out. He screamed. Bitch. Whore. Teasing me! And I ran out so fast, leaving him there licking his hand. Don’t expect to pass, whore! See where this gets you!

  Whom to tell? Who would believe me? I was his fave. I used to glow under his attention. I told Aarti, swore her to secrecy. But she must have told Ma, for the pressure to marry started then.

  I failed Henry James, and protested. A bright student, said the comment in the report, but she cannot see through the complexities of her chosen texts. She should have chosen a local author. Bau-ji pulled strings, went to see Call-Me and finally I got a B—below-average—and my MA. But Call-Me’s hand was permanently scarred, Aarti told me. Should I be proud? He has a trophy.

  * * *

  —

  The proposals came, and I picked Ravi from Delhi, a junior officer in the IPS, with a bright future. Was it so bad? A trainload of his people came on the Kalka Mail from Delhi and Rajasthan for the wedding. Bau-ji and his relations went to greet them in Kalka and brought them in two buses to Shimla. Many of them were villagers; a trip to exotic Shimla was a treat for them. How fair she is, they said, Shimla girls are truly beautiful. But I am from Delhi, I wanted to shout, and more accurately, I am from Sargodha. Don’t be silly, Ma told me. Simla carries prestige; the viceroys lived here, and Gandhi, Nehru, and that fellow Jinnah came to discuss the fate of India right here. Delhi girls are cheap and come by the dozens, and who knows Sargodha?

  Which you missed for so long, Ma? But after Bau-ji retired they moved back to Delhi to be close to the grandkids. There is no permanent home for refugees.

  We had our honeymoon at the luxurious Cecil, and that is where he told me he had had eyes on me since I was much younger, when he came to visit our town. I never believed him. I felt I had lost something. My bright future. I would have loved to travel, go abroad. Which he was able to do, eventually, arranging security for prime ministers.

  If I had not bitten that lecher so hard, perhaps squeezed myself out of his grip…he wouldn’t have raped me, didn’t have the guts…then would I have been like Suniti Gopal, entertaining Americans and Europeans at DRC, travelling abroad? But I’m a Simla girl, I have principles and dignity.

  Munir

  THE DELHI RECREATION CLUB had bestowed upon him its coveted membership. When he applied, on the day he departed the previous time, he was advised that he might have to wait a long time for that hallowed status. There was a long list of applicants, some of whom had waited years. It took Munir four months to be approved; perhaps the recommendation of the Indian consul in Toronto helped, and the fact that he would pay a premium for his overseas membership. He could now stay longer, in one of the apartments in a new extension towards the back. His reservation was for six weeks, because he planned to take a few trips outside Delhi this time. And because.

  Having checked in early in the morning, he slept a few hours, had his breakfast, and went downstairs to sit on the patio to wait for her. The sun was brilliant, but not excessively hot. The gardens and lawns were being sprinkled, and the pavements were being hosed. A conference was about to kick off in the hall opposite the library, where a crowd had gathered to register. Cars were steadily arriving. It was a pleasant scene.

  He saw her approach from the driveway, where Bahadur had dropped her off. Across distance and time she had seemed to recede behind a gauze curtain in his mind, though very much there, and constantly; but seeing her in the flesh, those wide eyes, the little sparkle on the forehead, hurrying towards him, his heart filled up. She was real. Not a pen pal, not a fantasy, not the past but someone intensely special who had come for him.

  By this time there was no formality to their greeting, he stood up as she said, “You are here,” adding, “let’s go to the cafeteria,” and shying away when his fingers touched hers, ever so lightly, with “there are people here.” As they walked to the cafeteria, now beside each other, she said, “I had to cancel my class. Just for you.”

  “Well, thank you. But that’s a small gesture compared to mine,” he quibbled, as they stepped through the outer doors, past the little bake shop and into the lounge. A table against the left wall was empty and they went towards it.

  “How, a small gesture?”

  “I came all the way from Canada.”

  She smiled, let out a deep breath and sat down. Watching her across from him, he felt immensely, idiotically happy.

  “I’m really happy to be here,” he said lamely. “You can’t know how much.”

  “I do, because I’m as happy.”

  They ordered.

  “I’ve brought a mobile for you with a new SIM card.” She pushed the cell forward on the table.

  He guessed why.

  “It’s in a friend’s name,” she said. “She’s called Jayanti.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Very busy. Asha has her exams coming and we are onto the fourth tutor for her. He’s called Amit. I’m convinced that my daughter is a dolt.”

  “No, she’s not. Maybe her interests lie elsewhere, in other subjects.”

  “Well they’re not what she told me they were. She chose science, and that’s what she’s got. I’m in such despair about her.” She suddenly put both her hands to her face for a moment, then looked up. “And you? Tell me about you.”

  He told her about Razia’s visit at Christmas, how she had sprung a surprise on him at the neighbourhood party. And, once again, about his grandson Joshua. He went on, and when he stopped she said, “I’m jealous of you.” She said she had accompanied her husband to Gujarat recently, and he wondered if she wanted to make him jealous in turn.

  “I had such a terrible dream about you a while ago.” She told him how in that dream he had spurned her when she came to Toronto. He gave an uncharacteristically explosive laugh and a few tables looked up.

  They got up to go. “I’ve got to go home and make dinner now for Asha and me.”

  “And Ravi?”

  “He rushed away last night. They captured eight terror suspects in Bhopal.”

  They became silent. Then he said, “I’ve brought a present for you. It’s in my room…apartment…shall I go and bring it?…would you like to pick it up?”

  She gave him an arch look, and they walked out.

  “I’ll go by the front,” she said almost inaudibly, pointing towards the driveway. “You go by the main stairs and I’ll see you there. Room number?”

  He told her.

  After a tight embrace and words of endearment that reacquainted them physically and reassured them emotionally, they came back down. He’d given her the present he’d brought, a bottle of perfume. He had been forbidden to bring any piece of clothing because she wouldn’t have been able to wear it without questions. About the perfume, she said, “I’ll keep it at my mother’s.” He looked up, surprised. “It’s the bottle—that blue is too conspicuous.”

  They went to sit on the patio. Soon three young men clad in white appeared and sat down not far from them.

  Munir raised an eyebrow. “Them?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Jetha Lal’s gang. Do you eat beef?” she asked, out of nowhere it seemed to him.

  “Very occasionally, and it’s not important, just one of the choices. What about it?”

  “Last week a Muslim man was lynched by a mob that accused him of keeping beef in his home. He was found hanged. Cow protection groups are springing up everywhere. According to a prominent guru, the next world war will start because of beef. S
o you watch out. We don’t want a war.”

  “And was there beef in this man’s home?”

  “I don’t know. But you should have seen these Purifiers here. I could have sworn they were celebrating.”

  They became silent.

  “Just be careful, don’t walk into crowded areas. Even without a beard you look a Muslim from a mile off!”

  What did a Muslim look like to Indians, he mused, as Mohini walked away.

  * * *

  —

  On the lawn, under the yellow globe lights, a few people sat on chairs by themselves or in small groups, chatting. It was a balmy evening, as peaceful as one could imagine. After Mohini left, he had napped, and now after a shower and a walk felt wide awake as he sat inside the bar with a snack and a drink, at the same table where they had first met. He had paid a quick visit to the library, where he’d reserved a few books to consult. They were waiting for him at a carrel. He couldn’t wait to start.

  He felt a strange sense of fulfilment in India, of just-so, of familiarity and ease. Yes, there was the faintest aloofness or dismissal he met sometimes—because he was ultimately a foreigner? A maybe-Muslim, as they saw it? He thought of the recent lynching and other similar violence in the country that he had read about. It was a disturbing feature of this vast and complex country, where hatred and savagery coexisted with sublime thought and heroic nonviolence; where naked ignorance coexisted with the greatest intellectual achievements. India might have been a different proposition, a different place, if she had not come and sat at his table, this table, that night…Wasn’t that India too?—its sweetness. He had been uplifted. With Mohini in his life he could laugh again, pick up his pen again. Was she a genie, and he in some fantastic dream? Did he see his Gujarati mother in her? His Punjabi grandmother? They were but distant memories, and she was just she, that husky voice, the matter-of-fact manner that hid a passion and a joy that was infectious and a pain that needed comforting and sharing.

  This time she had been wearing white pants and a blue kurta—very different from the usual sari. He forgot to tell her he’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed.

  * * *

  —

  The air inside the bar had turned humid; there came a whiff of expensive perfume. A woman loudly discussed the snack menu with the waiter, a conversation in Hindi that Munir barely understood, but she finally ordered fish tikka.

  At a table next to the entrance three men in white kurtas were quietly discussing terrorist bases in Pakistan.

  “We should send our CATs in and take out some of these guys. The way the Americans finished off Bin Laden.”

  “We have the capability.”

  This was followed by a consensual nod round the table. Who could they be?

  “We’ve always been hesitant—the nice guys of the continent, followers of Gandhi and Buddha. We should have gone after their nuclear arsenal while it was still in its infancy. We had the capability. Then bomb one or two cities to ashes, and that would be it. Peace for a century. Look at Japan.”

  “Too late now.”

  “Surgical strikes. They work.”

  A middle-aged couple in Western casuals sat down, apparently a brother and sister back home from the States.

  Munir got up. There was still an hour to go before the library closed.

  * * *

  —

  He read.

  Perhaps the world had not seen such pomp since Caesar brought Cleopatra as a spoil to Rome, or the Mughal emperor Akbar returned from a conquest. On Tuesday, December 12, 1911, a long procession bearing King-Emperor George V snaked its way from Delhi’s Red Fort through the Kashmiri Gate and further north to Coronation Park. As the king sat on his throne, wearing a crown bearing 61,170 sparkling diamonds, as the audience of 100,000 watched and a few more hundred thousand saw from a distance, nawabs, nizams, rajas, and ranas in all their finery came one by one to pay homage, as their predecessors had done to the Mughals and the Turkish sultans.

  But the “hydra of terror,” as Hindi Punch called it, was rearing its head here and there, now and then, and the Empire’s guardians sought to club its head down every time. Almost exactly a year later, Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, decided to make a state entry into Delhi. At the front of the procession, heading towards the Red Fort, was a soldier on horseback, followed by an array of eight to ten soldiers. Behind them rode the Viceroy, on the back of an elephant. On the recently paved Chandni Chowk, ticketed seats had been arranged on both sides for people to watch and cheer; black market prices for those seats ranged from fifty to three hundred rupees. As the Viceroy approached Dariba Kalan, a loud explosion was heard. It was, on first impression, as if an earthquake had occurred. People ran in all directions, screaming and shouting, and the mounted soldiers struggled to control their neighing horses. The Viceroy had been thrown off his elephant, hurt and bleeding; the attendant in front of him had been blown to bits. Lady Hardinge lay unconscious on the ground. A cloud of dust had covered the scene.

  * * *

  —

  Before he left Toronto, Munir had arranged a meeting with his sister Khadija. “Why don’t we go for lunch, Didi. I want to ask you something.”

  “Only to ask me something you take your sister out for lunch,” she said coyly.

  She preferred a Chinese restaurant, and so he picked her up and they went to one on Don Mills Road, not very far from her apartment.

  “Tell me, Didi,” he said, when they were seated at a table and the food had arrived, “Dada used to talk of ‘Dariba’ sometimes. To me it was just another name for Delhi. Do you know anything about it? What did it mean? What brought them to Nairobi? And the name Hardinge—it was important, wasn’t it?”

  She reminded him, “They sent you to that English school and you wouldn’t speak our bhasha. Punjabi.”

  “Yes.” Her jowly, spotted pink face beaming kindly at him, he reminded himself again of what a beautiful young woman she had been in Nairobi. “Well?” he asked.

  “Dada used to work for his uncles in Dariba Kalan. I’ve been there, you know, Munir? I’ve seen it. They lived in a gully off this main street. That is where he came from: Dariba Kalan. It is where our roots are.”

  “And what brought them to Nairobi? What about Hardinge?”

  “Laard Hardinge was the governor or something of India. Vice-rai-something. A bomb was thrown at him and he almost died.”

  “Dada was not involved?”

  “No. Bangalis were involved. When the police came chasing after them, this one Bangali ran into our gully. He would have been caught, for sure, but our dada’s chachi-ma, his auntie, was making chapattis in a tava, sitting on a stool behind it. So she told this young man, ‘Come over.’ He did, and she hid this Bangali in her dupatta and calmly went about her work. Don’t ask me how she did it. The police came, looked everywhere, while the women covered their faces. Dada was present during all this, and the police gave him a couple of slaps and took him away. But they had to set him free. He didn’t tell them anything. After what they did to Bahadur Shah, he was not going to help them. He could have been rewarded if he had. Or if they had captured this Bangali in that gully, he could have been hanged. And the women put in prison or sent to work in factories. The Bangali stayed with our family for three days, then he left. Nobody knew his name.”

  Munir stared at his sister. “They told you…and you remembered all this, Didi?”

  “Dadi told me one day. She herself was a niece of Chachi-ma. From Simla.”

  “From Simla?”

  She nodded. “In the mountains. Dadi came from there. Before Dada got any more ideas about freedom-shreedom, he was married to Dadi and they went to stay in Simla. Later they went to Mombasa. Then Nairobi. You know.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  Khadija added, “Dadi told me that while the police were searching for the Bangali
, Chachi-ma managed to flip six chapattis.”

  They both fell into irrepressible, long-forgotten laughter.

  * * *

  —

  Back in his room he tried to read at first, but his mind was distracted. He was flipping through TV channels when a message dinged on his new, Indian phone. It was so WONDERFUL to see you again! He replied with a smiley. Soon after, his Canadian phone gave its own distinctive ring, startling him. It sounded like a wrong number, the person at the other end apparently shouting a lot of filth into it in a raspy Hindi. Munir ended the call and was about to turn the phone off when it rang again. It was Dr. Raj Mohan from Gujarat, reminding him that he had agreed to visit Vadodara in two days’ time for a lecture. Munir said he remembered. Dr. Mohan had sent him a train ticket by email. Munir thanked him, gave him his Indian number and turned the Canadian phone off. He texted his Indian number to Razia.

  He would not be seeing Mohini for a few days, he reminded himself. Four long days of longing. He would be going to Vadodara for a day. They had already discussed this, and she had thought it a good idea for him to see more of the country and meet different Indians. Meanwhile she herself had arranged to take her Ma and Bau-ji to a shrine in Maharashtra. It was Ma’s wish, she said, to start her pilgrimages with this one. Aarti and her family would join them, and Ravi would be going too.

  Mohini

  IT GAVE MOHINI A WARM FEELING inside to have organized her family’s expedition to the shrine. There was something special to such a family venture, such a gesture of piety. You were overcome by a lightness of spirit and a calm anticipation occluding, for the time being, your world’s worries—even if the purpose of the visit was partly, for the women at least, to alleviate those worries. They would be alleviated one way or another, or perhaps not, yet on the way you attained a sense of detachment. You became aware—once again—of what the great gurus had always taught, that nothing in this material world really mattered, nothing was permanent. You were part of an eternal, immovable Existence. Animosities became meaningless, ambitions less urgent. And if you believed, perhaps there was a boon at the end, which you received humbly.