by Ira Pande
In addition to this treasure, our supplies of reading matter came from a unique travelling library. A vendor arrived periodically with a huge trunk of second-hand books carried by a Nepali coolie. No book cost more than eight annas and often, because we were such avid readers, he would add a few for free. However, unlike the home library, his books were not the classics but pulp fiction and worse. I had heard others in the family speak of some famous pornography titles and one that took my fancy was called Kissa Tota-Maina (The tale of a parrot and a mynah). I spotted the forbidden title one day and looked around furtively before burying it among my pile of books. I had barely straightened up, when Lohaniji gave me a resounding slap across my face. My jaw almost dropped off and I heard him say, ‘Have you not heard me tell you never to read such books?’ I still remember that slap: it was almost as bad as the one I got from my mother when she caught me slyly reading Saraswatichandra, a forbidden Gujarati romance in her library.
Life dealt several unkind blows to Lohaniji over the years. He saw the death of my grandfather, whom he worshipped, then the rapid deaths of Chanda our eldest sister, my father and my uncle. Yet he stayed on, bending with each blow like an old banyan tree. The glory of a golden era ended when my father died and my mother was left with a large brood of children to bring up and no money. One by one, she pensioned off our servants. Then it was the turn of the monogrammed silver thalis and vessels to be discreetly hawked. Our carpets, my father’s brocade sherwanis, his Banarasi turbans, his gold cufflinks and diamond buttons—all vanished one by one, leaving gaps and holes all over the house. Finally, my mother was forced to sell off the silver paandaan, with its dainty chains and boxes, which she had brought in her dowry. Lohaniji himself used to take charge of the paan ceremony, which entailed adding all the ingredients to tender betel leaves, and cutting the areca nuts and cloves and cardamoms. He would then string them from silver chains or place them on a silver salver for offering to my grandfather’s guests. With the paandaan went the silver rosewater sprinklers as well. Lohaniji wrapped them all up in old rags one day and took them to the pawnbroker. When he returned, he stood against the wall of the courtyard in such a dejected way that we thought he had heard of a death in the bazaar.
Old age finally caught up with Lohaniji: his eyes became rheumy and clouded and he lost so much weight that his black bandgala coat hung loosely on his frame. This coat that he wore over a white cricket jersey my father had once brought him from England was his signature attire. Now his clothes began to look as if they were rags hung on some scarecrow. The only relic from the past that still ticked away was the pocket watch he wore. Its tick-tock had regulated the heartbeat of our home but now you could hardly hear it. Like so much else, it was slowly winding down.
Our only visitors now were the bearers of bills and bad news and Lohaniji used to scoff:
I’ve seen Pandes, I’ve seen Pants
Before I die, I suppose I have to see these.
The ‘these’ were the poor peasants from our village who came with pathetic offerings from our fields and the Pandes and Pants were other high-born Brahmins.
My mother often pleaded with Lohaniji to retire but he was determined to see my brother Tribhi married and to bring up his children. So naturally, when the time came for that, he was entrusted with the task of going to see the girl my mother had selected for Tribhi. You should have seen how he puffed out his chest and how his lips smiled through his bushy moustache as he made his way to my brother’s fiancee’s home. ‘Who is this young man, then, Lohaniji?’ we teased him as he fussed over his turban and coat.
As soon as we heard he’d returned, we all crowded round him. ‘What is she like, Lohaniji?’
‘Pure gold,’ was his verdict.
We waited for him to elaborate, and then when he showed no signs of breaking the silence, one of us asked, ‘Is she fair or not?’
‘How do I know?’ he countered. ‘I didn’t see her face!’
‘What!’ my sister asked. ‘Then whose face did you go to see? Her mother’s?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘If you choose a girl, you must see her mother. I tell you, she must have a beautiful complexion and as for her manners! They must be perfect as well.’
‘You mean you really did not see her face?’ we persisted.
‘No. I just saw her hands and nails as she sat with her head bowed near her mother.’
‘This is what comes of sending an old fuddy-duddy like Lohaniji to see a girl,’ we scolded our mother. ‘Are we talking of a cow or a bride for this house?’ Lohaniji would check an animal’s hooves and decide whether it was fit or not.
‘Quiet!’ my mother thundered. ‘Lohaniji lived with Narad Baba—what he doesn’t know about human nature is not worth knowing!’
Finally, Lohaniji left one day to be with his beloved Bamini saying he wanted to spend his last days with her. We had seen her only rarely and remembered her as a shy, submissive thing. However, at my brother’s wedding, she shocked the women as she sang one bawdy sang after another and danced away with abandon. The piece de resistance was her deadly dance of the seven veils to the accompaniment of a song that had her pleading:
I beg you, O fair Redcoat! Spare my blushes, I am married to a Brahmin!
Just before Lohaniji finally left, he gave me a lesson that I remembered for life. When I came to my mother’s for the first time after getting married, I was miserable. I had never been taught to cook and sew and then was married into a family that was as conservative as ours was free. Lohaniji would often worry about my strange upbringing. He told my mother once, ‘All she can do is read and ride a horse. Which Brahmin home do you imagine will value these arts?’
At home, we always had an army of helpers, so when I reached my father-in-law’s home I was completely unprepared for the kind of work a daughter-in-law was expected to perform. Barbs were directed at my high educational degrees that had not equipped me for housework that even a child could handle.
I tried to hide my misery from my poor mother, who was grappling with so many problems then that this would have been the last straw. But I should have known that even with his failing eyesight, Lohaniji would spot my long face. ‘How is it?’ he asked and I burst into tears.
I sobbed out my miserable tale: how I was made to grind dal in a grinding stone, make complicated alpana patterns on the threshold, knead mountains of dough and then told to cook wearing just a sari and nothing else! All this while I listened to snide comments about my rich and spoilt childhood.
I waited for him to say, didn’t I always warn you to learn some housekeeping? But for once he was silent. Then, he put a loving hand on my head and said, ‘Don’t cry, my child. Tell me, you have a good husband, don’t you? The rest are just floating clouds, they will fly away. Have you ever seen what the Nepali coolies do when they carry huge loads on their backs? They first add a few stones to that load and walk up a hill, then when the worst is over, they shrug off the stones and race up. They never walk straight—always in a zig-zag, varying their pace. Have you seen that? Then learn from them, child. You will never need to weep again.’
~
As I recall my Almora days, two faces from my past seem to shake me and ask, ‘Why haven’t you written about us?’ I can see them as they stand before me: the middle-aged Vaishnavi, her hand rattling a chimta (long iron tongs), and next to her, the emaciated Rajula, a begging bowl in her hand and a nosering shining on her pale face.
The first is the story of a nun, a Vaishnavi, who roamed from place to place—Badrinath, Kedarnath, Banaras, Haridwar, calling, Alakh mai, bhiksha de! In those days, you often came across such mendicants and I can recall several from my childhood, who wore long ropes of rudraksha round their necks and came to seek alms at our door in Almora. No householder ever turned them away. Perhaps people were more generous (read god-fearing) in my childhood. Every Saturday and Tuesday, two Nepali Vaishnavis came to our house, calling, Alakh mai, bhiksha de! Lohaniji would give them a large helping of
rice and lentils in their bowl and they would leave but not before showering blessings on me, ‘May you grow up to marry a prince, lalli. May you bring many brothers to this house—not one or two, but seven tall and strapping ones!’
Today would any house consider a crop of seven sons a blessing? No wonder I hear often harsh voices shoo away mendicants, ‘Why can’t you work? There is nothing wrong with you—get out! I don’t give alms to idlers!’ However, I still can’t turn away such people when I meet them for my ears remember that sweet voice blessing me, ‘May you grow up to marry a prince, lalli. May you bring many brothers to this house—not one or two, but seven tall and strapping ones!’
Then one day, a completely new and deep voice called out: Alakh mai, bhiksha de! I peeped out and saw a new Vaishnavi standing in the courtyard. Tall and strapping, with a small ochre bag slung on her shoulder, she was rattling a long pair of tongs in her hands. What arrested my attention was her size and appearance: she looked a man in drag! She stood there imperiously, looking around her for some human contact and finding none, called out, ‘Alakh Niranjan! Mai will eat here today.’ Interestingly, she used the masculine gender when talking of herself and I wondered if she were a woman at all. With her cropped hair she looked like a man, spoke like one and certainly had the voice of one. Her broad chest showed no sign of womanly breasts, and she was taller than any woman I had ever seen. Her flat nose had wide, flared nostrils that looked as if any minute now she would blow smoke out of them like a dragon!
She looked up and spotted me peering from behind a pillar on the veranda above the courtyard. ‘You there, little girl,’ she called to me. ‘Did you hear me? Mai will eat here today, this is the Guru’s wish. Go, tell someone inside.’ Then she planted her tongs in a flower bed and settled down to wait.
I was terrified. We had long finished our morning meal; Lohaniji had locked up the kitchen and was probably asleep in his quarter. Where at this hour would I find food for this dragon?
‘Mai, why don’t you rest here?’ I said politely. ‘We have finished eating but let me ask my sister if she can get some bhiksha for you.’
‘No!’ she thundered and rattled her tongs noisily. ‘Mai told you Mai shall eat here today. Go get Mai some firewood and pots and some besan, curds and chillies. Mai will eat karhi chawal today. Go!’
I was beginning to get a little irritated but there was an air of such authority about her that I found myself asking my sister to come and help me look for the ingredients for Mai’s meal. By the time we reached the courtyard, Mai had once more planted her tongs close by and spread out her huge legs to make herself comfortable under our walnut tree.
‘Come, children,’ she greeted us, ‘have you brought what Mai wants?’ She leaned her bulk against the tree and squinted at us. We put down the lot before her and within minutes she had erected a makeshift stove with two stones, lit a fire and put a pot of karhi to cook. Then she began cleaning the rice and turned to us again.
‘Alakh Guru! Do you want to ask anything? Mai does not come here often. She has come today because Guruji sent her.’
At first we couldn’t understand what she meant; then she took a handful of rice grains and shut her eyes, mumbling some incomprehensible mantra. Both of us were thoroughly scared by now: who was this woman? A witch?
‘What do you want to know? Something about the one you will marry?’ she focussed her red eyes on us and they were glowing like coals.
‘I have decided never to marry,’ my sister said smugly. ‘So I don’t need to ask you anything about my future husband.’ This was true: Jayanti had declared her decision quite firmly to our family a while ago and I think they had accepted it. But obviously, Mai knew something else. ‘You will marry,’ she told my sister firmly. ‘No power on earth will ever stop that from happening.’ She said this with such conviction that I could almost hear the sound of a band and a wedding procession outside our gates.
Then she broke the spell by turning her attention to her cooking and adopted a completely different tone as she started to chat with us. I watched her as she fiddled with the pots and pans: not only did she look like a man, she even had a faint moustache on her upper lip. For a moment the same thought flashed through our heads: was this some wicked man who had come disguised as a woman to kidnap us? As if she could read our thoughts, Mai flashed her teeth at us, ‘Scared you, did I?’ and she suddenly grasped my hand. A shiver of pure horror ran through me: I felt as if a huge, slimy lizard had fallen on my hand. I still cannot describe what her touch was like without shuddering at the memory.
‘Don’t be put off by my face, child,’ she said kindly. She sighed deeply as she ran a hand over her moustache, ‘My name was Laxmi and when I came as a bride, my mother-in-law took one look at me and said to her son, “This is not a Laxmi, my son. This looks like a Laxman Singh.” She and I became mortal enemies from that day on.’ Her deep voice began to sound gruff now, as if she had a bad cold. Our eyes went to the beads around her neck and she introduced each one to us. ‘This was given by the big Guru Maharaj when he accepted me as his disciple. This rosary, by the next Guru for saying my prayers and this one came from a cremation ground. These tulsi beads I picked up when I went for the Kumbh to Prayag.’
My sister got up and signalled to me to come inside as well but I was so enchanted by the stories the Vaishnavi had that I pretended I hadn’t felt her nudge. The Vaishnavi did not see this side show as her attention was on her food. She first made three little morsels for her Gurus and turned to me, ‘Want some?’
To tell you the truth, I was tempted at the sight of that spicy karhi but how could I possibly eat the alms I had given? I shook my head virtuously.
She finished her meal and scrubbed the pots and pans till they glistened, then picked a few embers from the dying fire to light her chillum. She foraged in her shoulder bag for a small red box and snorted some snuff into her huge nostrils. Then took a deep puff of her chillum and really became a dragon with smoke coming out of her nostrils.
‘Vah,’ she declared in a satisfied tone. ‘Mai is very happy with you today, child.’ I was fascinated at the size of her palm—and tried to imagine what a slap from her would mean. Was she a Vaishnavi or a wrestler?
‘Do you really walk all day and night, Mai?’ I asked
Her bloodshot eyes considered my question indulgently.
‘Yes, child. Mai committed a terrible crime once. This is why God has cursed her to walk day and night, and never rest. She plants these tongs wherever her Guru commands her to and when she hears his voice she picks them up, says Alakh, and sets off again. Snowstorms, thunderstorms, raging torrents and streams—she has survived them all. She has sinned, child, so this is now her fate. She does whatever her Guru tells her to, whatever he tells her…’
She touched her hands reverently to her forehead at the mention of her Guru’s name, then took a long puff from her chillum and floated off into a trance.
Guru? Where is he? What kind of Guru was this who she could hear yet I could not see? Was he a magician who whispered his command into her ears and then vanished?
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ the Vaishnavi roared with laughter. ‘Silly child, how can you see Guru maharaj? He comes silently like a breeze and whispers in Mai’s ears alone. He stays with Mai all the time, child. Day and night, wherever she goes, he goes with her and tells her not to be afraid—wherever she goes, whether the cremation ground, or the burning ghats.’
If she visited burning ghats and cremation grounds, how could she be a Vaishnavi, I wondered? Was she some tantric’s disciple? The hair on my neck rose as I remembered something that had happened recently in our neighbourhood. A Vaishnavi came one day to their house, planted her tongs in their courtyard and established herself there. The simple housewife allowed her to stay on. There were rumours that the Vaishnavi offered meat and alcohol when she did her puja and brought terrible times to the host’s family. First, they lost their newborn son, then the head of the family died and finally the lady of
the house lost her mind. Then, as mysteriously as she had come, one day the Vaishnavi vanished. I began to tremble as I wondered whether this Vaishnavi was someone like that.
With her eyes still closed, my Vaishnavi began to speak in a low voice: ‘Mai was ten years old when she got married and sent to her husband’s home after four years. His name was Aan Singh and he ran a flourishing transport company. His lorries ran all over the terai—Tanakpur, Haldwani and Almora. Half the petrol went into the lorries, the other half into his belly. Used to come back drunk and then mother and son took turns to thrash Mai. Go fetch some wood, they would tell her. Or, go to the jungle and cut a bundle of grass for the cattle. Often, they sent her to graze the buffalo in the jungle. No one ever fed her a morsel or gave her even a sip of water. That bloody buffalo was another evil spirit—she would make poor Mai run all over the jungle and exhaust her. If Mai ever asked her mother-inlaw, can I visit my mother, the witch would brand her with hot tongs for her cheeky request.’
At this point, Mai propped her chillum against the tree and rolled up her clothes: her torso was an ugly mass of weals, proof of the abuse she suffered in her husband’s home. So she was a woman, I realized as I glanced furtively at her shrivelled breasts.
‘One day, when Mai was burning with fever, her mother-inlaw ordered her to take the buffalo for grazing to the jungle,’ she went on with her story. ‘Mai wept and pleaded, told her there was a leopard in the jungle too, and she said, “Good! If he eats you up, we’ll get a proper daughter-in-law for this house.”