by Kapur, Manju
Kasturi never forgot that evening. Over the sound of beds being dragged into the centre of the angan for the night, and the clatter of poles being inserted for mosquito nets, Praji, his eyes on the children’s kites that were darkening against the red evening sky, told her that soon she would soar like those very kites. Once she had gained a proper education, she would be on her way to becoming one of the finest flowers of Hindu womanhood.
So the school came about, and Kasturi became the first girl in her family to postpone the arrival of the wedding guests by a tentative assault on learning. Her father, uncle and teacher made sure that this step into modernity was prudent and innocuous. Her head remained modestly bent over her work. No questions, no assertion. She learned reading, writing, balancing household accounts and sewing. Above all, the school ground the rituals of Arya Samaj havan, sandhya and meditation so deeply within her that for the rest of her life she had to start and end the day with them. After five years of this education, it was considered that Kasturi had acquired all that it was ever going to be useful for her to know. She appeared for her first and last outside exam, performed creditably, and graduated at the age of twelve, to stay at home until she married.
*
During Kasturi’s formal schooling it was never forgotten that marriage was her destiny. After she graduated, her education continued in the home. Her mother tried to ensure her future happiness by the impeccable nature of her daughter’s qualifications. She was going to please her in-laws.
How?
Let me count the ways.
With all the breads she could make, puris with spicy gram inside, luchis big as plates, kulchas, white and long, tandoori rotis, layers of flaky flour, paranthas, crisp and stuffed. With morrabas, never soggy, and dripping juicy sweet. With seasonal pickles of lemon, mango, carrot, cauliflower, turnip, red chillies, dates, ginger, and raisins. With sherbets of khas, roses, and almonds, with hot and cold spiced milk, with sour black carrot kanji, with lassi, thin, cool and salty, or thick and sweet. With barfis made of nuts and grains soaked overnight, and ground fine between two heavy stones. With sweets made of thickened milk. With papad, the sweet ones made out of ripe mango, the sour ones with raw mango, the ones to be fried with dal and potato. With thread spun, with cloth woven, with durries, small stitched carpets, and phulkaris, with pyjama kurtas, shirts, and salwar kameezes.
With all these accomplishments under her belt, Kasturi spent her free time sewing. If she wasn’t doing the family stitching, she was working on the phulkaris for her trousseau. The phulkari stitch was a simple one, it allowed room for her to indulge in hopes (shy), fears (suppressed), speculations (of the unacknowledged), and the bright colours she used, magenta, orange, green, yellow and white, became linked with the desire she secretly felt for her unknown groom.
With her needlework, Kasturi held back worries about the behaviour of an unmarried, educated seventeen-year-old. Her father, in particular, loved watching her. Such gentleness and tranquillity, beauty and modesty were sure to be rewarded by a good husband, he felt, as with her threads and needle Kasturi joined the ranks of women who have stitched hours of waiting into intricate patterns. Her clandestine activity was reading, which she protected from comments about self-absorption by gratifying it at night.
*
The glimpse that decided the union of Kasturi and Suraj Prakash, the young and enterprising advertiser, came in August, when the weather was hot and humid. His advertisement answered, his background investigated, his presence called for, he arrived at the dry-fruit shop in the forenoon, looking crisp despite the heat, having washed and changed at the station.
Yes, he would do, Kasturi’s parents decided late that night. They had both talked to Suraj Prakash, they had talked to Praji. Should the couple meet? Kasturi’s mother was against this. It was highly unlikely that they could have anything to say to each other, and it just created space for whims and fancies to operate.
‘Well,’ reasoned Lala Jivan Das, ‘he has come all the way. He will want to see as well as be seen.’
‘See her? He can see her from the window if he is that keen,’ said the mother. ‘But there is no need for anything else.’
‘These are modern times,’ Lala Jivan Das tried again. ‘Swamiji has said that young people should not get married without knowing each other. The young man has come, and we have been able to judge him for ourselves. Let him also meet Kasturi, it is only natural.’
The mother thought this a strange idea. After all, their girl was not for display.
‘No, no,’ argued Lala Jivan Das. ‘Where is the display in this? Send her in with his glass of milk. She is always doing this for her brothers.’
‘Suppose he doesn’t like her? Then another will want to see her, and another, and another, and our daughter will get a bad name for nothing.’
Lala Jivan Das looked at his wife in amazement. He supposed it was the tension. ‘Not like her? Of course he will like her. What is there to dislike in her? He is an educated man, from a respectable Samaj family, where is the room for liking and disliking? Nonsense!’ he exclaimed.
Next morning, Kasturi’s mother handed her daughter a glass of milk, with a small plate of barfi, and told her to give it to her brother’s friend who had come from Amritsar. Throwing her red dupatta over her head, Kasturi walked towards the baithak, where Suraj Prakash was sitting, waiting, wondering.
There she was, young, thin, her dupatta setting off the colour of her skin. Tendrils of hair framed her face. As she offered him the glass of milk, their eyes met and held for a moment. They looked away, and were consumed by the desire to look again, but how could they? There were so many people around. The blush on their faces became a glow. With this one glance, the final link was forged in the chain of events set in motion years before.
*
The wedding was fixed for October. On a formal visit to Amritsar, Kasturi’s brother came to Suraj Prakash in his shop, with a silver bowl of mishri, a gold guinea and a hundred and one rupees. Suraj Prakash ate the mishri, kept the bowl, sold the guinea, gave the money to his father, and set about making clothes for his wedding.
The preparations in Sultanpur began. There would be fifty to sixty people in the barat to house and feed at regular and steady intervals. Some of the barat intended to stay at least a week because they meant to make a holiday of the whole expedition. Lala Jivan Das pored over the menus, consulting for hours with the halwais. He was a wholesale merchant who dealt in spices such as black pepper, cinnamon, and cumin; sherbets of kewra, rose and khas; dry fruit, especially almonds, pista, cashews, walnuts, raisins, figs, and apricots; pickles, mainly mango and lemon; sweet morabbas in huge jars containing carrots, amla, mangoes, apples, pears and peaches preserved in sticky sugar syrup. His godown was now ransacked for the best it had to offer. There were to be at least four varieties of barfi in different colours – green pista, white almond, brown walnut and pink coconut – for the guests to eat as a side dish with every meal. The freshest spices, rose leaves, and saffron were to flavour the daily glasses of milk they would drink. Special feasting things like dhingri and guchchi to put in the rice and paneer were ordered from the Kashmiri agent in Sultanpur. The expenses were going to be considerable, but Lalaji did not care. How else was he to display his love for Kasturi, his sorrow at her leaving, the worthiness of his son-in-law?
Praji was calm. He had done his duty, kept his word. He was aware that the cause for which he had done so much, education in Sultanpur, was talked over in many homes after Suraj Prakash had made his visit and won his bride. It was rumoured that he had a wonderful jewellery business in Amritsar, that he was a sanatak, having graduated from a gurukul in Kangri, that he had no mother, only an old widowed aunt, and of course everyone was aware of how he had come to Sultanpur himself, with no running-after by the girl’s side. If education had started the whole process, there was a lot to be said for it. Already Praji had more people showing an interest in the girl’s school, and more willing promises of
donations than ever before.
Kasturi and her mother spent hours alternately crying and preparing the trousseau. Most of it was taken (along with the big metal trunks) from the trousseaus of Kasturi’s two elder brothers’ wives. Nobody thought of asking them whether they minded or not, such territorial attachments were frowned upon as being contrary to family spirit. Looking at the two sets of bed frames with delicately painted legs, Kasturi felt the twinge of dread in her grow stronger. The initiation into womanhood, intimacy, procreation, all this was going to be hers at last, on home-made sheets of fine Manchester cotton, embroidered pillowcases, brightly woven kheses that her mother had spun in red, yellow, brown and black. The base of the bedding was a strong thick durrie, especially made to order from the Jammu jail. For warmth in the winter months she had six mattresses, stuffed with cotton from her family’s fields. In another trunk, padded with old cloth, were a hundred and one vessels and utensils. There were small, delicately moulded tashtris for snacks; kansa thalis and katoris gleaming their mock silver shine; brass, cone-shaped glasses; huge karhais and patilas to cook in. A small suitcase contained her clothes – six sets of salwar kameezes. A wife was not for show, after all.
XII
Virmati and the Professor, in a room in a friend’s house, a meeting that has been arranged with some difficulty.
Virmati to the Professor, ‘I can’t do it, I simply can’t. We will have to forget about the whole thing. At home they will not listen to any more arguments.’
The Professor turned Virmati towards himself, and cupped her face in his hands. He took off her glasses, then stroked her face, with small, caressing gestures. He kissed her eyes, her nose, her soft, full mouth. All Virmati’s feelings were focused on his touch. As he smoothed the hair back from her forehead, and tucked the untidy strands behind her ears, she sank towards him.
‘Darling Vir,’ said the Professor, leading her to the white-sheeted takht that was against the wall of the room. ‘You must be firm. I know how difficult it is for you, but you must be firm.’
‘I can go on being firm, but the doli will be at the door, and I will leave my house in it,’ said Virmati, choking and hiccuping in a burst of sobs. She threw her dupatta over her head, and rocked back and forth, her arms tight around herself.
The Professor tried to turn her rigid face towards him. Not succeeding, he took her hand and spreading her fingers, pressed his lips to the white spot where they joined. Virmati tried to snatch her hand back, but the Professor laced her fingers with his own so tightly she could feel the blood going from them. Once more she struggled against his grip.
‘Soon things will be all right. Then you will see. We will one day be together,’ said the Professor, holding onto the kissed hand with conviction.
Virmati could not imagine how things were going to become all right, and she noticed that the Professor made no suggestions either.
‘It will never be,’ she muttered desolately to herself. Her situation was hopeless. Even crying was no good. She pulled away her hand and this time he let go, laying it gently in her lap.
‘Good girl,’ said the Professor, as her sobs decreased, and she grew less rigid. He transferred his kisses to her eyes.
‘Smile at me,’ he begged.
With great effort, Virmati twisted the corners of her mouth.
Cycling home, it was clear to her that she could not depend upon the Professor to sort out any domestic situation. It was up to her. At home, everybody assumed that her listlessness had to do with bridal nerves, and treated her with a tact rare in her family. Even Paro and Vidya, wild with excitement, were subdued before their sister’s absent-mindedness.
*
The morning after meeting the Professor, Virmati woke to find the verandas washed with blowing winds of rain. The grounds around the house were swirling with muddy brown waters, little waves lurching against the veranda steps. Inside Virmati kept bumping into one or the other of her brothers and sisters. They were all housebound, no school, no college, no work for any of them today. All of them had something to say to her, all of them wanted her to join in the excitement of the more-than-usual rain. Some of them were dancing about on the veranda, making dashes into the pool below, some of them were darting up and down from the roof. All were wet. Paro came running up to her.
‘Pehnji, come. Mati’s making pakoras in the kitchen!’
It was ideal weather for pakoras, there could be no two opinions about that, thought Virmati sadly. She was sure that the woman would be also frying them for her husband, daughter, mother and sister-in-law.
‘What kind is she making?’ she asked Paro, dully.
‘Oh, the usual. Onion, potato, green chilli, spinach, brinjal and pumpkin.’
Ah, pumpkin, potato, onion, and green chilli pakoras! Sweet, salty and sharp, with the sourness of chutney slathered on their golden crisp shells. But now what was the use of anything?
‘Indu Pehnji and Vidya are in the kitchen, helping Mati. Gopi Praji is there too, trying to finish the pakoras by himself. Come, Pehnji, before they are all gone! I was waiting for you before I ate any!’ Paro tried to make her lagging sister walk faster by pulling her dupatta.
‘I am coming, Paru,’ said Virmati. And she did hurry a little, despite her heaviness of heart.
In the kitchen all was noise and hot frying smells. Big pieces of wood were sticking out of the fire that was crackling under a large heavy kaddhai, half full of foaming oil. Indumati and a dripping Hemavati were cutting vegetables, sitting on wooden pattris on the floor. Gunvati was concentrating on cutting pumpkin pieces to the required thinness, and Vidya, young and inexperienced in the art of fine slicing, was vigorously grating a long, green lauki. Her body swayed back and forth over the grater. Kasturi was standing over the kaddhai, at one end of the kitchen, wielding a long, black-handled ladle. Some children were on the floor, on their pattris, with small tables in front of them, eating, swallowing, gulping, fighting pakoras. Paro quickly took her place, Virmati joined Indu in the cutting.
‘You eat now, Indu,’ she said. ‘You must have cut long enough.’
‘No, no, Pehnji. After all, you are here for only a few days now.’
‘Yes, yes, Pehnji,’ giggled Hema. ‘Let us do some seva for you, for a change.’
Virmati silently sat next to Paro, taking the little girl in her lap. She hugged her tightly, putting her cheek next to her damp hair. Paro, in response, stuck a pakora into her sister’s mouth, carefully smearing it with green tomato chutney first.
‘Nice, no?’ she asked.
‘Yes, darling,’ said Virmati, eating with small, careful chews, for she had no appetite.
‘It will be an auspicious omen if it rains on your wedding, Pehnji,’ said Hemavati.
It seemed to Virmati that her family could talk of nothing else but her wedding. Every word they said had so little relation to her inner life that she felt fraudulent even listening to them, passively, immorally silent. If they knew what she was really like, would they tolerate her? Look upon her lovingly, do seva for her, think of her comfort – even Paro, would she push a pakora into her mouth? Would anyone let her?
XIII
In 1849 the British formally annexed Punjab, completing a process that had begun with the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh ten years earlier. They set about establishing their control in a manner that would persuade the Punjabis that, of all possible political options, British rule was best. From the 1880s they started building canals, twisting the five rivers into courses that would change the demography of the area as well as the dry colour of the earth. Acres and acres of arable land were created in order to provide: gifts in return for the horses and soldiers that the military needed; the revenues that the administration needed; and the picture of a contented peasantry that the Raj morally needed.
The Upper Bari Doab Canal was among the first to be built, harnessing the Ravi at Madhopur Head. Broad, muddy and silent, the river flowed in its straight canal lines to Tibri, where it branched o
ff into three equally straight subdivisions. The Kasoor Branch flowed past the village of Tarsikka where there was a small oil mill which Lala Diwan Chand bought in 1910.
Lala Diwan Chand loved Tarsikka, and he grew ambitious for the place. To the existing mill, which was for extracting mustard and rape-seed oil, he added a gin and a flour unit. And as his grandchildren grew, he kept adding to the place. They needed fresh fruit and vegetables which his six-acre garden would provide. He planted trees of mango, mausambi, cheekoo, jamun, pear, pomegranate, lemon, papaya, malta, loquat, lichi, and mulberry. In winter there were rows of seasonal vegetables. To house his frequently visiting grandchildren, he built a block of four large rooms bordered by a wide veranda in the middle of the garden. The kitchen was on one side with the hand-pump near the entrance. The outhouses were in the back, far from the house, kitchen, vegetables, fruit trees, and everything else. A great boundary wall, with huge, iron-studded gates in the front surrounded the whole property.
Four shops, of cloth, vegetables, dry goods, and freshly made sweets and savouries just inside the mill entrance served basic needs. The shops, the stables for the tongas, the garages for a car and twenty-seater bus, together with Lala Diwan Chand’s small office, formed a square in front. To get to the house, one had to cross a little bridge which spanned the narrow canal inlet that flowed from the main branch into the mill.
This canal stream, deep though narrow, ran through one end of the garden, and was a great attraction for Lala Diwan Chand’s grandchildren. They spent every minute they could in or around it, swimming and eating. The boys would raid the garden for litchis, loquat and mangoes, which they sank in the water in buckets to cool. After everybody had had their fill of fruit, the boys would go to the halwai for pakoras. With spots of grease spreading on the wrapping paper, they would run back, the hot pakoras in their hands, to be pounced upon by the rest and sent back for more.