Difficult Daughters
Page 29
‘For those in distress‚’ murmured Virmati.
*
I was born.
‘Bharati‚’ suggested Virmati as a name.
‘No‚’ said Harish.
‘No? But why? I thought with the birth of our country …’
‘I don’t wish our daughter to be tainted with the birth of our country. What birth is this? With so much hatred? We haven’t been born. We have moved back into the dark ages. Fighting, killing over religion. Religion of all things. Even the educated. This is madness, not freedom. And I never ever wish to be reminded of it.’
Harish’s voice rose hysterically, and the girl was named Ida.
‘But what does it mean?’ asked Virmati doubtfully. ‘People might think it is a Persian name.’
‘This is the very attitude that has led to Partition‚’ said Harish irritably. ‘Let anybody think what they like. For us it means a new slate, and a blank beginning.’
*
Virmati was left alone with the baby, while Harish worked for a while with the newly formed Kashmir Sahayak Sabha, to help combat the fires burning there.
For a while he went to Kashmir and then came back, dispirited and sick at heart.
‘Is there no end to this needless violence and stabbing?’ he asked. Was this price necessary for freedom?
But there was no time to ask these questions, or think out the answers. The deed was done, they would just have to go on living.
XXVII Epilogue
Ganga’s leaving home, in the pressures and tensions of the moment, was meant to be a temporary affair. However, she could never return. She wept, begged, and stormed indirectly through her mother-in-law, but circumstances did not favour her. After Independence, Harish was offered a principalship in one of the new colleges of Delhi University. Amritsar had become a place to leave, rather than stay in, and the couple moved to Delhi and a much smaller house.
Virmati had just one child, Ida. Harish told her that three was a large enough family, his resources were already strained beyond his means. Giridhar and Chhotti came to live with them when their schooling demanded it. Harish carried on with his love of learning and made education an issue with each of his children. They didn’t care for the whole process as much as he did, and each found a way to rebel.
Giridhar decided to go into business. He opened a small chemist’s shop in Karol Bagh and married one of his customers. Both the families objected.
Chhotti, who craved her father’s attention, did excel in studies, but she refused to do anything with the humanities, books or music. She joined the IAS, mainly for the cheap government accommodation that would enable her mother and grandmother to live with her. While Harish was alive, the relationship between the two houses was perpetually uneasy.
Chhotti never married. Her father thought no man good enough, and her mother dared not cross him in this respect.
Her husband continued to be Ganga’s public statement of selfhood. Her bindi and her bangles, her toe rings and her man-galsutra, all managed to suggest that he was still her god.
Ida refused to show any signs of intellectual brightness.
‘There are other things in life‚’ she told her mother.
‘Like what?’ asked Virmati.
‘Like living.’
‘You mean living only for yourself. You are disappointing your father.’
‘Why is it so important to please him?’ Ida protested to her mother. She wanted to please herself sometimes, though by the time she grew up she was not sure what self she had to please.
Later, she tried to bridge the contradictions in her life by marrying a man who was also an academic. Virmati could only guess at the basis of their relationship, but she did not think it comprised the higher things in life.
I grew up struggling to be the model daughter. Pressure, pressure to perform day and night. My father liked me looking pretty, neat, and well-dressed, with kaajal and a little touch of oil in my sleeked-back hair. But the right appearance was not enough. I had to do well in school, learn classical music, take dance lessons so that I could convert my clumsiness into grace, read all the classics of literature, discuss them intelligently with him, and then exhibit my accomplishments graciously before his assembled guests at parties.
My mother tightened her reins on me as I grew older, she said it was for my own good. As a result, I am constantly looking for escape routes.
*
Of course I made a disastrous marriage. My mother spent the period after my divorce coating the air I breathed with sadness and disapproval. ‘What will happen to you after I am gone?’ was her favourite lament. I was nothing, husbandless, childless. I felt myself hovering like a pencil notation on the margins of society.
For long periods I was engulfed by melancholy, depression, and despair. I would lie in bed for hours, unable to sleep, pitying myself for all I didn’t have, blaming my mother, myself. Now her shadow no longer threatens me. Without the hindrance of her presence, I can sink into her past and make it mine. In searching for a woman I could know, I have pieced together material from memories that were muddled, partial and contradictory. The places I visited, the stuff I read tantalized me with fragments that I knew I would not be able fully to reconstruct. Instead, I imagined histories, rejecting the material that didn’t fit, moulding ruthlessly the material that did. All through, I felt the excitement of discovery, the pleasure of fitting narratives into a discernible inheritance. This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama, and leave me be. Do not haunt me any more.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Teen Murti for allowing me access to the microfilm copies of the Tribune (Lahore).
The Professor’s comments at the Roerich exhibition in Chapter XVI are modelled on the review of the exhibition by Mr Roop Krishna A.R.C.A. (Lond.), Tribune, 17 December 1940.The format and speeches of the Punjab Women’s Conference in Chapter XVIII closely follow the account given in the Tribune, 19 January 1941.
The more general accounts taken from the Tribune are as follows: 30 December 1939 for the account of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru at the first All-India Hindustan Scout Mela held at Malviya Nagar, Amritsar, Chapter XIV; 18 September 1940, account of the tonga strike, Chapter XV; 1 November 1940, account of Bhalla’s Shoe Store, Chapter XVI; 27 December 1943, account of the Hindu Mahasabha procession on 25 December 1943, Chapter XXIV; 2 July 1944, account of the grain dealer fined a thousand rupees, Chapter XXIV; 15 January 1944, the prices on 20,000 varieties of cotton cloth and yarn fixed, Chapter XXIV; 13 November 1945, account of the INA procession, Chapter XXV; 5 June 1945, discussion of the Draft Hindu Code Bill, Chapter XXV; March-April 1946, account of various reactions to the Muslim League, Chapter XXV; Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech, Chapter XXVI, from his Address to the Nation, 15 August 1949.
The poem ‘Love’s Unity’ is by Alfred Austin. The gravestones in Nahan are real.
My grateful thanks to the following people who were so generous with their time and memories: Sneh Lata Sanyal, Shiva Gogia, Autar Singh Kapur, Renu Malhotra, Vimla Kapur, Kaushalya Prakash, Vidyavati Minocha, Vir Sen, Vijay Sen, Laj Sen, Satya Nath, Ravi Sen, Jyoti Grover, Ramesh Grover, Saroj Bhandari, Som Bhagat, Manohar Lal Kapur, Chhote Lal Bharany, Rameshwar Kaushik, Panditji in Nahan, Jagjit Singh Chawla, Mrs Sondhi from Ashiana in Dalhousie, and Padma Bhandari.
My thanks to the following for helping me in my research: Urvashi Butalia, Pratibha Kaushik, Prabha Sen, Gyanendra Pandey and especially Khushwant Singh, and Riaz Khokkar in enabling me to get to Lahore.
Vikram Kaul spent hours helping me transfer my manuscript from floppies to a hard disk, and ironing out the bugs. I am extremely indebted to him.
Edward Jones, Vikram Chandra and Julian Loose made the publication of this book possible. I am very grateful to them.
My writers’ group supported me through the two years it took to get a first draft toge
ther by willingly listening to every chapter as I wrote it, and wanting to hear more. My thanks to Janet Chawla, Neelima Chitkopekar, Anuradha Marwah Roy, Anna Sujatha Mathai and Addison Ullrich.
For critical and editorial comments, I thank Anuradha Marwah Roy, Addison Ullrich, Vasudha Dalmia and Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan. In my wrestle with the final draft, Ramya Sreenivasan, Amy Louise Kazmin, Ira Singh and Maya Bhattacharyya were of invaluable assistance.
My appreciation to my family, Nidhi, Maya, Amba, Katyayani and Agastya.
And lastly, Anuradha, who for nine years never allowed me to lose faith in myself. Who held my hand, and indicated paths.
About the Author
Manju Kapur is the author of four novels. Her first, Difficult Daughters, received tremendous international acclaim, won the Commonwealth Prize for First Novels (Eurasia Section), and was a number one bestseller in India. Her second novel A Married Woman was called ‘fluent and witty’ in the Independent, while her third, Home, was described as ‘engaging, glistening with detail and emotional acuity’ in the Sunday Times. Her most recent novel, The Immigrant, was called ‘intensely readable’ in the Daily Mail and ‘admirable and enjoyable’ by the Guardian. She lives in New Delhi.
Copyright
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© Manju Kapur, 1998
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ISBN 978–0–571–26779–8