Difficult Daughters

by Kapur, Manju

  ‘However understanding, he needs a place to sleep in, and he needs the bathroom sometimes,’ remarked Virmati in the middle of the Professor’s thoughts.

  ‘Viru, what’s wrong with you? Why, we had the poet stay with us for two months when we were staying in your aunt’s house, and there was even less space there. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he did. Really, I’m surprised that you are talking like this.’

  So was Virmati. When had actual accommodation ever been a reason for not having a guest over, or making him feel welcome? In the short time since her marriage she had learned to look at space in a new way; to define it and mark it, to think of what was hers and what wasn’t in ways that would have been unthinkable in the fluid areas of her maternal home. She felt contrite.

  ‘Call him,’ she said. Another stranger in the house might even be a relief.

  Harish kissed her lovingly. ‘He will be delighted with you,’ he said. ‘Now I have a partner I can be proud of.’

  ‘A woman’s happiness lies in giving her husband happiness,’ remarked Virmati, in a language she had learned long ago.

  *

  The languid summer drew on. With an acknowledged guest in the house, Virmati found it easier to bear her status as the unacknowledged one. She talked and laughed with the poet, and imagined her voice floating to those ears inside. She ate all those crisp, hot, spicy delicacies that Ganga so excelled in, she drank the thandai and sherbets, khus, rose, almond and kewra, that her hands had prepared. When the poet smacked his lips, she looked complacent along with her husband. Yes, their house was well known for its hospitality and generous feeding of guests. Other friends of Harish’s would drop by in the evening. They would discuss the war, the prices, the fate of Hitler, the Allied invasions, the turning of the economy into war-based efforts for the British. Then they would drift to topics nearer home, the fines the hoarders and adulterers were having to pay in the market-place, the shortages of paper they were all facing, the hilarious advice by the Government that they should use pencils instead of ink and spend endless amounts of time rubbing out what they had written so they could use the paper again. And they would discuss poetry. The poet would say a couplet in Hindi, and in a moment or two, Harish would toss it back to him in English. Then Harish would compose doggerel verse in English, and the poet would translate it into Hindi, and they would try and see whose invention would fail first.

  Virmati was the only woman in these gatherings. It felt strange to be so isolated from women, but then, she told herself, she was taking her place beside her husband in the true sense of the word.

  *

  The tank at Moti Cottage was built along one end of the angan, a raised concrete triangle with a depth of about five feet. Four narrow, high steps led up to it. The broad tube-well pipe from which water gushed forth was balanced on the boundary wall.

  This tank was the centre of the Professor’s summer entertainments. He would fill it as often as possible, and spend the two days it took to fill inviting all his friends to bathe. Mangoes were bought and left to cool overnight. Later his guests would suck them while they swam. For Ganga, all this usually meant additional cooking, but it also resulted in having the Professor much nearer than usual – the tank was within earshot of the kitchen.

  Virmati was the only adult female of the Professor’s family to enter the water, fully dressed in salwar kameez, of course. Any hesitation she might have had about other men seeing her wet was ridiculed by the Professor, who was never tired of pointing out that he expected his wife to be a companion to him. Also, she thought, what else was there for her to do?

  *

  The beginning of July and the coming of the monsoon drove the poet back to Lucknow. It was no longer possible to sit pleasantly together in the garden, it was no longer possible to swim in the tank – and he wanted to be in time for the last of the Lucknow Dussehris. The ones in Amritsar were not as good.

  As Virmati waved goodbye to the poet, she thought how much she was going to miss the distraction he provided. Every day her outsider position was trumpeted in thousands of ways that Harish could not even begin to notice. She was trying to become thick-skinned but she found it difficult.

  That night there was a little too much salt in Virmati’s lassi. She took hers thick, while the Professor took his thin and watery, several glasses to her one. As she drank, she made a face, and poured half a glass of water in it.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the Professor.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said.

  The next night, again too much salt. This time, she made a face, and left it.

  ‘What is it?’ repeated the Professor.

  ‘Too much salt,’ said Virmati.

  ‘Are you sure?’ In all his experience of Ganga’s cooking, the Professor could not recall such an oversight.

  ‘Taste it.’ Virmati held out her glass to her husband. He took a cautious sip.

  ‘It’s not that much,’ he said. ‘Some people like a little more salt.’

  ‘But I don’t, and it used to be all right,’ she said doubtfully.

  She tried drinking it sweet, but there was a little too much sugar. Fool I was, to expect anything else, she thought.

  She complained to her husband, who finally complained to his mother, who said, ‘Ganga’s work has increased of late, she is doing her best. If people could be understanding it would be easier on her.’

  In the end Virmati gave up drinking lassi, or eating anything that her husband didn’t eat, because hers was always too sweet, too salty, too fried, too soggy, too stale and, if possible, too dirty.

  ‘Why can’t I make my own meals?’ she occasionally, hopelessly asked. She had once tried going into the kitchen, but there had been such weeping and wailing that day, such ritual rinsing of every pot and pan to wash away her polluted touch, that she felt intimidated. It was clear that not an inch of that territory was going to be yielded. If Virmati had the bed, Ganga was going to have the house. Even Harish said, ‘Poor thing, you have me, let her have the kitchen.’ Virmati looked at the domain of her kingdom and was forced to be content.

  ‘So much is happening these days,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you work as a volunteer at one of those agencies? Making socks and packing supplies for our wounded boys?’

  ‘Anything to get me out of the house.’

  ‘No. Anything to make you happy.’

  *

  Virmati did get a job, but not as a volunteer. Opposite AS College was a primary school, housed on the ground floor of an old building. As before, Virmati’s qualifications made her an excellent choice for principal, while marriage added acceptability. Nobody thought much about her youth or beauty now.

  At home, things continued the same. If it rained, her things were never brought in. If the dhobi came while she was in school, her clothes were never given, if she was late coming home, there was never any food kept for her. Whenever she tried to play with any of the children, it was ‘Giridhar, come here. Don’t disturb your new mother.’ Or to Giridhar, when she was with the Professor, ‘Go quietly to your Pitaji. See that you don’t make your new mother angry. She is the one you have to love now.’

  Virmati was reluctant to bring these instances to Harish’s attention, because somehow that never seemed to improve matters, only made them worse. And then some were so minor that talking about them exaggerated everything except the hurt.

  Chhotti particularly carried on the battle. Quick and intelligent, she perceived things in a way that Giridhar never could. She was fiercely protective of her mother.

  ‘Bhabhi, what’s the matter,’ she would say when Virmati was in earshot. ‘Are you feeling sad? I’ll look after you.’ And she would sit in her mother’s lap, and pull her sari palla over her eyes.

  Once she said, ‘See, I’m making you a bride. Then he will marry you.’ That was when Ganga slapped her and told her to go and play with her new mother.

  ‘Why don’t you study with your mo
ther, Chot?’ Harish once suggested to his daughter. ‘She has more time than I do, she will give you better attention.’

  ‘I’ve always read with you. Besides, my mother has too much work,’ Chhotti said meekly.

  ‘Not her. Mummy.’ Virmati was Mummy (which she hated). Her only consolation was that Ganga wasn’t called Ma either, she was Bhabhi.

  Chhotti didn’t dare argue. But when she brought her books to Virmati she stared at her disconcertingly, was restless and inattentive. Thinking they might function better outside the house, Virmati offered to take her to school sometimes. But Ganga would have none of it.

  ‘She’s not happy with taking just one away.’ Virmati heard raised voices in the big room outside, when she was lying down in the afternoon. ‘She’s starting on the children. First Guddi, then Giri, and now Chhotti.’

  Then the plaintive tone that Virmati had begun to hear in her dreams, ‘Oh, why was I born? Surely I committed a terrible sin in my past life, that this should happen to me? Please God, take me away quickly so this disgrace can end. Then she can have all of them.’

  At this point the children would begin to cry, and Kishori Devi would scold. ‘Why are you talking in this useless manner, Bahu? If you talk of dying, what will these little ones do?’

  Renewed sobs, by which time Virmati invariably started to feel like a murderess. But she didn’t want Harish to think she was indifferent to his children.

  ‘I could take all of them to the Company Bagh. They don’t go out much. Or we could go to Darbar Sahib.’

  What was said to Harish about this, Virmati never got to know, but the next time she suggested taking the three for an outing, he said, ‘When I am free, Viru. Right now, your husband is too enamoured of your company to allow you to go without him.’

  *

  As the post-monsoon heat slowly passed and the beginning of winter came on, life in Moti Cottage became more cloistered. The nights were too chilly to sleep outside. And inside the little dressing-room, family conversations could be heard by an increasingly sensitive Virmati. Her ears would burn scarlet, her chest heave with misery at the implications of some of the things she overheard. There was no escaping them either. She sat with her husband in the drawing-room, but she did not always wish to be there when his friends or his students came.

  The ache in her heart lifted as she sat in the principal’s office in the Yuva Vidyapeeth. The school was something she could call her own, a place where there was harmony in the hierarchy. While she was working she felt herself strong, and when she thought about home, ideas of revenge came into her mind, which she slowly put into practice. Her only weapon was her husband, and she started to use that. She displayed her power over him, needling him about Ganga, so that he would lose his temper with his mother over her. She asked him to get sweets and savouries for her, and then magnanimously made him share them with the others. She would make a show of dressing up to go out with him, and since he loved flowers in her hair, asked him to tuck a sprig of jasmine or a rosebud into her bun, just as they were leaving. She even took care to dress better than she usually did, and smiled seductively at Harish at least once a day in full view of the others.

  From time to time she wondered what was happening to her. But she would not allow herself to feel hurt. She loved everything about Harish, and that included his relatives.

  She had no contact with anybody from her own family except Paro. Her visits she waited for eagerly, but from the initial once a week, they became closer to once a month. Virmati was almost scared to ask her why, and noted this change in herself sadly. She who had bossed her younger siblings around without a moment’s hesitation, now afraid to ask Parvati something. Or was she afraid of the answer? She did not want to think about it. She did not want to think about anything.

  XXIV

  It is 1943, and the strain of being the colony of a warring nation shows. There are shortages and the costs of living are rising. In the market-place, bureaucratic procedures multiply. The government seeks to introduce fixed prices as profiteering spirals. The dark face of control emerges, the black market, hoarding, raids, and punishment. A grain merchant is fined a thousand rupees because he charged two rupees extra for a maund of rice. Even sweetmeats have been divided by Mr L. P. Addison, District Magistrate of Amritsar, into first-class ones, prepared with pure ghee, to be sold at Rs 2 per seer; second-class ones, prepared with vegetable ghee, to be sold at Rs 1–4 per seer; and still lesser khoya and and oil ones, to be sold respectively at Rs 1–12 and Rs 1 a seer. Contravention of this order is punishable under Defence of India Rule 81 (4).

  For a mighty empire fighting for survival, battlefronts proliferate till even the counter of an Amritsari halwai is included.

  *

  It was taking traders time to get used to their shops being part of the battlefront. All the cloth merchants of the Amritsar old city market were suffering. They had to have their cloth inspected and stamped before they could sell it, and on top of that had to pay a fee for having this done. Uncertainty and suspicion hung thick in the narrow lanes. Recently, Ram Das in the textile gully had been arrested for refusing to sell georgette to a decoy sent by Mohammad Iqbal, Chief Inspector of Civil Supplies, Punjab. The same day he (Mohammad Iqbal) had discovered and sealed 90,000 yards of unstamped cloth. Well, why didn’t this Chief Inspector hurry up and stamp all the cloth that the dealers requested him to? The prices of 20,000 varieties of cotton cloth and yarn were still waiting to be fixed.

  *

  In his shop, Suraj Rai watched his son driving a hard bargain over a gold transaction. The Muslim customer wasn’t happy with the price he got, but he knew he had no choice. Kailashnath knew that too, and in the token haggle, despair and complacence were more than usually pronounced, because this was wartime, and times were bad, and everybody had better accept that, quick, quick, and not want more money for gold, especially when they had dues already pending.

  As the Muslim left, he spat on the step. Kailashnath noticed, and cursed.

  Suraj Rai said placatingly, ‘He probably needs more money. Times are hard.’

  ‘Let him go to Jinnah, then!’

  When a drowned rat was found in the well behind the house, Kailashnath was sure it was the doing of the Muslim they had lent money to.

  ‘Next time I shall charge an even higher rate of interest. That will show them.’

  ‘But maybe he was not responsible,’ remarked Suraj Rai.

  ‘I do not put anything past these people. Who else would poison a whole well?’

  Suraj Rai stared at that gesture of hate lying inside the bucket, next to the the well everybody was free to use, and didn’t know what to think. Money-lending was part of the jewellery profession, and his rates were fair. Everybody accepted that. If this was any indication of times to come, he didn’t want to live in them. In his personal life, in the life of the community around him, nothing was the same. Identities, loyalties, futures and nations were becoming a matter of choice rather than tradition.

  And Virmati – would he ever get over that loss? Married life will cure her infatuation, the grandfather had said while urging his son to insist on an arranged match. But to force his daughter to marry someone against her will was contrary to the very fibre of his being. What could he have done? After she had been educated, she had gone her own way, changed from the caring, responsible girl she had always been, to a stranger, deaf to reason, threats or pleading. Even now, thinking of her, bewilderment and pain enveloped his heart.

  *

  It is December. The old bazaar area of the city was decorated with arch gates, and unusually crowded. It was the day of the Hindu Mahasabha Silver Jubilee celebrations, and there was to be a procession and speeches. Suraj Prakash was alone in the shop. Judging from the crowds, he could see that the afternoon procession was going to be an elaborate affair. The licence had been granted, the bazaar decorated with bunting and garlands on the main gateways. He thought he might go and hear Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, president
of the Hindu Mahasabha. The man was said to be an excellent orator, and he generally spoke his mind, even against the British.

  Then he heard rumours that the licence had been revoked because there was fear of communal disturbances. Suraj Prakash thought of the dead rat in the well, and knew that revoking a licence would do nothing to prevent communal disturbance, if the will for it was there. He decided to close the shop, in case there was trouble. There was no possibility of business that day anyway.

  As he finished locking up, he heard the sound of volleys in the distance, and people running and shouting. He stepped down from the shop and found himself hustled away from it. By the time he had reached the end of his gully, there was confusion everywhere. He should have locked the shop from the inside and gone up into the old house, he thought, as he now tried to turn and go back. But the lanes were very narrow, and there were people running wildly in all directions. The crowds pressed in upon him. There were people screaming from the balconies.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he shouted at somebody.

  ‘Firing.’

  ‘Tear-gas.’

  ‘Baoji, run. It’s dangerous here.’

  He started running, his eyes darting everywhere.

  Behind him, he could hear firing. Perspiration began to dampen his brow. His heartbeat was hammering in his ears, and he was gasping. Ahead of him, he could see some Angrez soldiers. One of them was shouting through a megaphone. The procession was cancelled. Everybody should disperse quietly without creating trouble. But where was the room to disperse? A noxious gas started to spread. His head began to throb, and he felt sick. He leaned over into the nearby gutter to vomit, when he was hit on the back of the head. He slumped forwards, his body coming to rest over the single step leading into a cloth shop.