Mukhtar became grave. ‘Look Sharda, we are standing on the top of a volcano. I assure you – and you should believe it – that no woman will ever come into my life except you. I swear that I will remain yours for the rest of my life. My love will be steadfast. Do you also make the same promise?’ Sharda raised her eyes. ‘My love is true.’ Mukhtar threw his arms around her and squeezed her to his chest. ‘Live, but only for me, for my love. By God, Sharda, if you had not returned my love, I would have killed myself. You are in my arms and I feel that every blessing of the world, every happiness, is in my lap. I am so fortunate.’
Sharda rested her head on Mukhtar’s shoulder. ‘You know how to talk; I cannot bring to my lips what is in my heart.’ They were together for a long time, absorbed in one another. When Mukhtar left, his spirits were imbued with a new and delicious pleasure. He kept thinking all night and the next day he left for Calcutta, where his father ran a business. He returned after eight days. Sharda came for her crochet hour. They did not speak but he felt her eyes asking him, ‘Where have you been all these days? Never said a word to me and left for Calcutta? What happened to those claims of love? I am not going to speak to you. Don’t look at me. What do you want to say to me now?’ There was much Mukhtar wanted to say to her but they could not find themselves alone. He wanted to talk to her for a long, long time. Two days passed. But their eyes talked whenever they ran into each other. On the third day, with Roop Kaur and her husband, Lala Kalu Mal, again out of the house, Sharda called him.
She met him on the stairs and, when Mukhtar tried to embrace her, she wrested herself free and ran upstairs. She was annoyed. Mukhtar said to her, ‘Sweetheart, come sit with me. I have important things to talk to you about, things which concern us both.’ She sat next to him on a bed. ‘Don’t try to talk yourself out of it. Why did you go to Calcutta without telling me? Really, I wept so much.’ Mukhtar kissed her eyes. ‘That day when I went home, I kept thinking all night. After what took place that day, I had to think. We were like man and wife. I erred and you let yourself go. In one leap, we covered such vast distances. We never thought about the direction we should take. You understand, Sharda.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘Yes.’ ‘I went to Calcutta to talk to my father and you will be happy to know that I have his blessings.’ Mukhtar’s eyes had lit up with joy. He took Sharda’s hands in his and said, ‘A weight has lifted from my heart; I can marry you now.’ ‘Marriage!’ she said in a low voice. ‘Yes, marriage.’ Sharda asked, ‘How can we marry?’ Mukhtar smiled, ‘Where is the difficulty? You become a Muslim.’ Sharda was startled. ‘Muslim!’ Mukhtar replied calmly, ‘Yes, yes, what else can it be? I know your family will be up in arms, but I have made arrangements. We will go to Calcutta. My father will do the rest. The day we arrive, he will send for a cleric who will make you a Muslim and we will get married right away.’ Sharda clenched her lips, as if they were sewn up. Mukhtar looked at her. ‘Why have you become quiet?’ She said nothing. ‘Sharda, tell me what is it?’ Mukhtar asked in a worried voice.
With great difficulty, Sharda replied, ‘You become a Hindu.’ ‘I become a Hindu?’ he asked in an astonished voice. Then he laughed. ‘How can I become a Hindu?’ ‘And how can I become a Muslim?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘Why can’t you become a Muslim…I mean you love me. And Islam is the best of religions. The Hindu religion is no religion. Hindus drink cow urine; they worship idols. I mean it is all right in its place, but it cannot compare with Islam. If you become a Muslim, everything will fall in place.’ Sharda’s copper face had gone white. ‘You won’t become a Hindu?’ Mukhtar laughed, ‘Are you mad!’ Sharda’s face had blanched. ‘You should leave. They will be coming about now.’ She rose from the bed. Mukhtar couldn’t understand. ‘But Sharda…’ ‘No, no, please leave, go quickly or they will be here,’ she said in a cold, uncaring voice. Mukhtar’s throat had gone dry but with great difficulty he said, ‘We love each other, Sharda why are you upset?’ ‘Go, go away, our Hindu religion is very bad; you Muslims are the good ones.’ There was hatred in her voice. She went into the other room and shut the door. Mukhtar, his Islam tucked inside his chest, left the house.
Translated by Khalid Hasan
The Patch
WHEN A SUPPURATED boil appeared on Gopal’s thigh, he was terrified.
It was summer and mangoes were in season and plentiful: in bazaars, streets, shops and even with street vendors. Wherever you looked, you saw mangoes. They came in all colours: red, yellow, green, multi-hued. Heaps upon heaps of them – and in all varieties – were on sale in the fruit and vegetable market at throwaway prices. The shortage experienced a year earlier had been more than made up for.
Outside the school, Gopal had had his fill of them at fruitseller Chootu Ram’s stand. All the money he had saved during the month he had spent on those mangoes, saturated as they were with juice and honey. After school closed that day, Gopal, the taste of mangoes still in his mouth, had decided to stop by at Ganda Ram, the sweetmeat seller’s, for a glass of buttermilk. He had asked him to prepare the drink but the man had refused, saying, ‘Babu Gopal, settle the old account first and you can have fresh credit, not otherwise.’
Had Gopal not gorged himself on mangoes or had he had any money on him, he would have settled Ganda Ram’s account there and then. He would then have paid for his glass of buttermilk which had in fact been prepared by Ganda Ram, and a piece of ice could be seen floating about in it. This sweetmeat seller had made a face and put the glass behind his back on a round iron dish. There was little Gopal could do and then, on the fourth day precisely, this big boil had appeared on his thigh. It had kept growing for the next three to four days. This had made Gopal very nervous, not quite knowing what to do. The boil itself did not bother him as much as the pain it was beginning to cause. What made things worse was that with each passing day the boil was getting redder and redder and some of the skin that covered it had begun to come off. At times Gopal felt as if under all that red there was a pot on the boil and whatever was in it wanted to burst out all in one go. So big had it become that once he felt as if one of his glass marbles had jumped out of his pocket and lodged itself in his thigh.
Gopal said nothing about the boil to anyone at home. He knew that if his father found out, all the anger that he felt over his fly-infested police station would be taken out on him. It was also possible that he might thrash him with the stick that the lawyer Girdhari Lal’s assistant had brought for him from Wazirabad the other day. His mother was no less hot-tempered. Had she chosen not to punish him for eating all those mangoes, she would have boxed his ears red for having wolfed them down all by himself. The principle his mother had laid down was, ‘Gopal, even if it is poison that you want to take, you should do so at home.’ Gopal knew what was behind this: her wish to sample the same delights that he was enjoying.
Be that as it may, the fact was that this boil was destined to appear on Gopal’s thigh and it had done so. As far as he could work it out, it was the mangoes he had eaten that had caused this boil to appear. He had made no mention of it to anyone at home, because he still remembered the dressing-down he had got from his father, Lala Prashotam Das, police inspector, as he sat under the big municipal tap wearing only a loincloth, with the water gushing over his bald head and his big belly jutting forth. He was sucking mango after mango through the filter of his moustache. A dozen mangoes lay in front of him in a pail that he had taken from a street fruitseller in return for tearing up the ticket he had earlier given him. Gopal was rubbing his father’s back, peeling away layers of dirt from it. When he had dipped a clean hand into the pail to quietly pull out a mango, Lalaji had prised the tiny fruit from his hand and put it in his own mouth, along with his moustache, and said, ‘How shameless! When will you learn to be respectful of your elders?’
And when with a weepy face Gopal had replied, ‘Father, I too want to eat mangoes,’ the Inspector sahib, chucking away the stone in an open drain that ran
in the street, said, ‘Gopu mangoes are just too hot for you, but if you want boils and carbuncles, then you are most welcome to them. Let it rain three or four times and then you can eat them to your heart’s content. I will ask your mother to make you some buttermilk. Now get back to rubbing my back.’ Gopal, having run into this roadblock, quietly resumed his assigned chore. The very thought of the mango’s sour taste had made his mouth water and he kept swallowing it for a long time.
The very next day he gorged himself on those mangoes and four days later a boil appeared on his thigh. What his father had said had come true. Now, had Gopal mentioned his boil to anyone at home, he would have received a good beating, which was why he had kept quiet, while all the time thinking of some way of stopping the boil from growing any further.
One day on returning home from the police station, his father called out Gopal’s mother and announced, as he handed her a packet, ‘This Bombay balm is something of great value, one remedy that equals a hundred remedies. This is the time of year when boils and carbuncles are common, so all you need to be rid of them is just one single application. That’s all. This is something special from Bombay, so tuck it away somewhere safe.’
Gopal was playing cricket in the courtyard with his sister, Nirmala. It just happened that, when the Inspector sahib was busy explaining to his wife something about the balm he had given her, Nirmala lobbed the ball towards him and since Gopal was trying to listen to his father the ball hit him precisely on the spot where his boil was. The pain was excruciating but he said not a word as he was used to bearing pain in silence. He had become used to being caned at school by his teacher, Hari Ram. Pain was nothing new to him. Just as the ball landed on his boil, he heard his father say, ‘Just apply a little balm on the boil and all will be well in a jiffy. Like this!’ As he snapped his fingers, something clicked in Gopal’s mind. Now he knew how to be rid of his pain.
His mother placed the balm in her sewing basket, where Gopal knew she kept all things she considered valuable. The most carefully guarded thing in that basket was a pair of tweezers, which she used every ten or fifteen days to pull out hair over her forehead to make it appear broader than it was. The white ash she used to apply afterwards at the spots from where she had pulled out the hair was also kept in this basket. However, to be absolutely certain, Gopal lobbed the ball under the bed and while retrieving it made sure that the balm had been duly placed in the sewing basket.
In the afternoon, with Nirmala in tow, he went to the rooftop, where sacks of coal used to be stored under a rain shelter, armed with the small pair of scissors with which his father used to clip his nails, the balm and a bit of cotton cloth that his mother has saved to finish the sewing of his father’s loose pyjamas. They sat down on the floor next to the sacks of coal. Nirmala produced the piece of cotton and spread it out on her thigh, over the sleek, silken surface of her shalwar. When Gopal looked at her with his dancing eyes, it seemed as if this eleven-year-old girl, who was lissome as a reed growing on a river bank, was readying herself for a great task. Her little heart, which used to beat in fear of her parents’ admonitions and her dolls getting soiled, was now all aflutter with the thought that she was about to view the boil on her brother’s thigh. Her ear lobes had gone red and they felt warm.
Gopal, who had not whispered a word about his boil to anyone, had told her his secret and how he had eaten all those mangoes without letting anyone know, how he had not been able to drink any buttermilk after and how this boil as big as a coin had appeared on his thigh. After he had told her his story, he said to her in a confidential voice, ‘Look, Nirmala, no one at home is to know this.’ A serious look appeared on Nirmala’s face. ‘I am not mad.’ Gopal, being sure that Nirmala would keep the confidence, rolled up his trouser over one leg and showed her the boil, which she touched lightly with her finger, keeping herself at as much distance as she could. She trembled involuntarily, made a whistling noise, looked at the quite red boil and said, ‘How red it is!’ ‘It is going to get even redder,’ Gopal bragged with manly courage. ‘Really?’ Nirmala exclaimed with astonishment. ‘This is nothing, the boil I saw on Charanji was much bigger and redder than this,’ Gopal replied, while running two of his fingers across the boil. ‘So, is it going to grow in size?’ Nirmala asked, slipping closer. ‘Who knows, it’s still growing,’ Gopal answered, pulling out the balm from his pocket. Nirmala was scared. ‘Will this balm make it right?’ Gopal uncovered the balm by peeling away the paper that covered it and shook his head affirmatively. ‘One application and it will burst open.’ ‘Burst open!’ Nirmala felt as if a balloon had just popped next to her ear. Her heart was beating fast. ‘And whatever is in there will gush out,’ Gopal said, dabbing his finger with balm.
Nirmala’s pink complexion by now was pale like the Bombay balm. With her heart in her mouth, she asked, ‘But why do these boils spring up, brother?’ ‘By eating things with hot properties,’ Gopal replied like an expert physician. Nirmala remembered the two eggs she had eaten two months ago. She began to think. They talked some more and then they got down to the business at hand. With great delicacy, Nirmala cut a perfectly round patch of cloth. It was round like the round roti her mother baked every day. Gopal applied some balm on the round patch, spread it out and examined his boil with great care. Nirmala, bent over Gopal, was watching everything he was doing with great interest. When Gopal placed the patch on his boil, she trembled as if someone had put a piece of ice on her body. ‘Will it get better now?’ Nirmala asked, but half-questioningly. Gopal had not yet answered her when they heard steps, which were their mother’s who was coming up to pick up some coal. Gopal and Nirmala looked at each other at the same time and, without saying a word, hid everything under the box in which their cat Sundri had used to give birth to her kittens. Then without a word, they slunk away.
When Gopal ran down the stairs, his father sent him out on a buying errand. When he returned, he ran into Nirmala on the street. He handed over the cold, sweet drink he had brought for his father to her and went over to Charanji’s house. In the process, he forgot to put back the things he and Nirmala had hidden under that box when they had heard their mother walking up. He was at Charanji’s quite long, playing cards. After they had had their fill, the two left the room, hand in hand. Something that made Charanji laugh highlighted an old mark on his left cheek, which reminded Gopal of his boil and the things he had hidden under the box. Wresting himself free, he ran towards home.
He studied the situation. His mother was sitting in the courtyard, while his father read out the day’s news from the newspaper Milap. They were both laughing over something. Gopal went past them and, though they looked at him, they did not say anything. This reassured Gopal that his mother had not taken a look at her sewing basket yet. Quietly, he walked upstairs to the rooftop. He was about to step out on it when something he saw made him stop.
Nirmala was sitting next to the box. Gopal stepped back so that he could see what was up without being seen. With great concentration, Nirmala, her long, thin fingers delicately working the scissors they held, was cutting a piece of cloth into a round patch. After she was done, she applied a little balm on it, then bending her neck, she unbuttoned her shirt to uncover a protrusion on the right side of her chest, which resembled a half bubble in a faucet.
Nirmala blew on the patch and placed it on that slight protrusion.
Translated by Khalid Hasan
Mummy
HER NAME WAS Stella Jackson, but everyone called her Mummy. A short, active woman in her middle years, whose husband had been killed in the last great war. His pension still came every month.
I had no idea how long she had lived in Poona. The fact was that she was such a fascinating character that after meeting her once, such questions somehow became irrelevant. She herself was all that mattered. To say that she was an integral part of Poona may sound like an exaggeration, but as far as I am concerned all my memories of that city are inextricab
ly linked with her.
I am a very lazy person by nature, yet I do dream about great travels. If you hear me talking, you would think I was about to set out to conquer the Kanchenjunga peak in the Himalayas. It is another matter that once I get there I might decide not to move at all.
I can’t really remember how many years I had been in Bombay when I decided one day to take my wife to Poona. Let me work it out. Our first child had been dead four years and it was another four years since I had moved to Bombay. So, actually, I had been living there for eight years, but not once had I taken the trouble to visit the famous Victoria Gardens or the museum. It was therefore quite unusual for me to get up one morning and take off for Poona. I had recently had a tiff at the film studio where I was employed as a writer. I wanted to get away – a change of scene, if you like. For one thing, Poona was not far and there were a number of my old movie friends living there.
We took a train, arrived, scampered out of the station and realized that the Parbhat Nagar suburb where we planned to stay with friends was quite far. We got into a tonga which turned out to be the slowest thing I had ever been in. I hate slowness, be it in men or animals. However, there was no alternative.
We were in no particular hurry to get to Parbhat Nagar, but I was getting impatient with the absurd conveyance we were in. I had never seen anything more ridiculous since Aligarh, which is notorious for its horse-drawn ikkas. The horse moves forward and the passengers slip backwards. Once or twice, I suggested to my wife that perhaps we should walk the rest of the way, or get hold of a better specimen of tonga, but she quite logically observed that there was nothing to choose from between one tonga and the next and, besides, the sun would be unbearable. Wives.
The Dog of Tithwal Page 21