by Ira Pande
‘It seemed the wretched buffalo had been primed to torture Mai by the old hag—it was so frisky that day that Mai was run off her feet. Finally, the creature stood grazing at the edge of a ravine that rose in a sheer precipice from the raging waters of the Kali Ganga in the valley. If anyone toppled over not even a fragment of bone would survive. Mai was really angry that day, child, angry at her hunger, angry at the old hag, angry at her drunkard husband and decide to take it all out on that buffalo. She gave it one heave and down it plunged—sailing over the precipice like a blade of grass.
‘Then Mai went home weeping and the old hag asked, What happened? Where is the buffalo, you wretch?
‘In the jungle, saas-jyu. Come I’ll show you, said Mai.
‘Her cursing, screaming mother-in-law followed Mai to the jungle to the same ravine. The old woman was a thin, fragile creature and Mai a strapping young woman…
‘Where is my precious buffalo, she screeched.
‘There, said Mai, and pushed the old bag of bones over the edge. She went like a blade of grass, child, like a blade of grass…
‘When Mai reached home, a furious Aan Singh was waiting for her with an axe in his hands. Drunk out of his mind, his eyes burning like coals.
‘Where were you, whore, he yelled, how dare you come home alone? When you know a leopard roams that jungle, why did you take my mother there? Mai was livid: the bastard could think of his mother and his wretched buffalo, had he ever spared a thought for Mai?
‘Your mother fell down a gorge, Mai wailed. Come quickly with me, she is hanging from a tree, we may be able to rescue her yet…
‘Aan Singh ran to the spot. He swiped a blow across Mai’s cheek saying, What have you done to my mother? Where is she, you whore?
‘There, said Mai, and shoved him down the sharp precipice to the raging Kali Ganga below. Mai never returned home after that, child, never. She went to a cave where a Nepali Guru maharaj lived, fell at his feet and confessed her crimes. Guru maharaj accepted her as his disciple and said, Go Mai, from now on roam the land and eat and wear what others give you. This is the penance you must perform for what you have done. From now on, remember, God alone will look after you, He is your only support…’
The Vaishnavi picked up her tongs and bag, dusted herself and stood up laughing. ‘God bless you, child, Mai has to leave now…’
Before I could say anything or call my sister, she had descended the steps of the courtyard and vanished.
I used this masculine Vaishnavi as a character in two stories: ‘Lati’ and ‘Dhuan’. Later, she made a sort of guest appearance in my novel Chaudah Phere. Her extraordinary story continues to haunt me till today. In one day, this woman had snuffed not one but three lives—a buffalo, a mother-in-law and a husband. And yet can anyone deny that she did not have a reason? No court heard of this triple murder, no lawmaker pronounced a judgement on her and no jailor kept her in prison. She became her own jailor and the chains on her feet were clamped there by her own conscience. But what fascinated me the most was the fourth murder she committed but never spoke of: when she stood at the edge of the precipice and decided to hurl her youth, her dreams and desires forever into the raging torrents of the Kali Ganga. They floated down that ravine like a blade of grass and left a celibate Vaishnavi where a young girl once stood.
Did any law court ever pronounce a more terrible punishment?
And now, another prisoner of conscience stands before my eyes.
I first met Rajula under the same walnut tree where the Vaishnavi had planted her tongs. Rajula carried a small tambourine in her hand and sang the Riturain songs of spring in a high, sweet voice. In the Almora of my childhood, bands of professional folk singers would arrive in March at the start of spring, and go from one prominent home to another to entertain them with the traditional folk songs of the season at Chaitra baithaks, or private spring concerts. Unlike professional singing girls, there was no trace of the bazaar about these women. They wore velvet ghagras trimmed with lace and their faces were discreetly veiled with odhnis. Their tinkling laughter rang through dull courtyards and lit up the lives of these stern Brahmin havelis.
Another, rather less attractive, tradition of those days also comes to my mind. Several older men from the high-born Brahmin families in Kumaon had installed a singing girl as a mistress in their homes. A ‘Ram’ was prefixed to the name of the singing girl to make it ‘kosher’ so that it was possible to meet a Ramkatori, Rampriya or Rampyari at an uncle’s house. Naturally, the most lively Chaitra baithaks were organized in homes where one of their own lived as the mistress of the householder. Unfortunately, no one in our neighbourhood had such a patroness but that did not stop us from running to the window whenever we heard a band of them go singing their way to a baithak.
One day, I went across to a granduncle’s house to borrow their newspaper. I barged into his private sitting area and will never forget what I saw. My granduncle, cigar in hand, was reclining on a bolster surrounded by giggling apsaras. My eyes were dazzled by the colours of their bright clothes and the scent of their bodies. It seemed as if someone had sprinkled a dozen bottles of perfume in the room. For a moment, the old man was nonplussed at the sight of his grandniece but recovered his composure quickly. With remarkable aplomb, considering his posture and surroundings, he asked me kindly, ‘What brings you here, child?’
‘I wanted to borrow the Statesman,’ I stammered.
‘Oh, is this your granddaughter, Lalla? We must sing the first song of Chaitra for her, in that case,’ one apsara smiled. And before my granduncle or I could say anything, I was surrounded, like a queen bee by her worker bees, by their honey-sweet voices:
May this auspicious day
Come a thousand times
In the lives of our daughters…
I was touched, caressed and smothered with those hands and voices. Unused to such loving touches on my body, I was nearly reduced to tears with embarrassment. Sensing my discomfiture, my granduncle said sharply, ‘What is all this? Go child,’ he said gently to me, ‘the paper is lying there. Pick it up and take it home.’
The old man was a widower and childless to boot. Perhaps his mistress, longing for a child to fuss over, was responsible for that episode. Years later, Maupassant’s ‘Madame Tellier’s Establishment’ reminded me strongly of that day. Maupassant’s story is about the madame who runs an eponymous brothel, Madame Tellier’s, and who takes her lively, giggling band of prostitutes to attend a niece’s baptism. He describes brilliantly the havoc that ensues in the Catholic home of her brother as this exotic band of Parisian butterflies descends on a simple village.
My ears still ring with the sweet Riturain song, set to Raga Desh, that they sang for me that day.
May this auspicious day
Come a thousand times
In the lives of our daughters…
So when Rajula came with her tambourine to our courtyard singing the same song, I was stunned. She was dark and her eyes were deep pools of sadness. Her sweet voice had an attractive break and rose with a nasal twang, like the plaintive wail of a shehnai. I now realize that she was probably syphilitic for her nose had collapsed and that is probably why her voice had that unique timbre.
‘What shall I sing for you, lalli?’ she asked me. ‘Riturain, Pari Chanchari or Ramola…?’
She came almost every day and her fund of folksongs had all of us eating out of her hands. She generously shared her treasure trove with me and I eagerly learnt as many as I could to take back to Santiniketan. Kanika Devi, Jyotishdev Burman and Suchitra Mitra were my contemporaries and we often used these lovely Pahari tunes in our impromptu concerts. Tilak Kamod, Desh and Durga—these were the three ragas that gave life to the folksongs of Kumaon. Rajula had learnt them from her mother and given them a flavour all her own. She was born to sing and when I hear the Malwa folksongs of Kumar Gandharva, I remember her artless and unselfconscious singing with new respect. She took a note to the highest pitch and left it there to float
in silence—then after a pause she would pick it up from the base and play with it as if it were a kite.
She had no accompaniments, just a small battered tambourine. Often she lit a flame to warm its sagging skin and bring it to life. Then, she would shut her eyes, place a hand on her ear and sing. When she sang Beru pako bara masa… that famous Kumaoni folksong that everyone has heard, I swear even the walnuts on our tree turned red with passion.
‘Rajula, where did you learn to sing like this?’ I asked her once.
‘From Him,’ she closed her eyes and pointed heavenwards.
No human being could have given her that voice, so Rajula was right: her voice had to be a divine gift. She sang all the Riturain songs—Bhagnaula, Ramola, the lot—but when she sang a hymn called Kariye chhima, she was scintillating.
What I have said, or left unsaid
What I heard, or did not hear
What I did, or left undone
Forgive me for all that, my Lord!
She would go into a trance, her eyes streaming with tears as she asked Him for forgiveness. I have seen her move her audience to tears when she sang her special song.
‘Why do you have to beg when you have such a voice, Rajula?’ I asked once. By now, she and I had a special bond that grew from our shared love for music. Rajula became silent.
‘Don’t ask, lalli. By the grace of people such as yourself, Rajula earned so much that she could have built ten such palaces for herself by now,’ she replied, pointing to our haveli. For a moment, something like pride lit up the pools of darkness in her eyes.
‘So,’ I prompted her, ‘where did all that money go?’
‘Into the river,’ she said as she dropped the tambourine into her lap.
‘Don’t joke, Rajula.’ I held her hands as I begged her.’ Tell me where that money went.’
‘What is the use of that, lalli?’ she asked sadly. ‘You come from a high-born Brahmin home, lalli, your touch can wash away the sins of a fallen woman like me. But you are my Gangajal, my holy water, lalli, I cannot hold your hand and lie. I threw away forty tolas of gold…’
‘Forty tolas of gold?’ I gasped.
‘Yes, lalli,’ she nodded tonelessly.
‘Not just that,’ she went on. ‘Four thousand silver coins with “Vittoria’s” face on them, I threw those into the Bhagirathi as well.’
‘But why did you do such an insane thing, Rajula? You have to beg for your food now, why, when you had so much, did you…?’
‘There was a reason, lalli, I had sinned. Committed a heinous crime. I was just not caught, that’s all. God must have shut His eyes that day,’ she said and gave a wan smile. Then her pale face went paler and she muttered, ‘I killed someone, lalli.’
I held my breath.
‘I killed my own son.’
I peered into her face but her eyes were dry; perhaps she had used up all her tears.
‘Why,’ I whispered, ‘why did you do such a thing, Rajula?’
‘Because he was the spitting image of his father, lalli. When I could see his father’s features on his face from the minute he was born, just imagine what would happen when he grew up and went out in the world? Everyone would know whose child he was.’ She took a deep breath and went on in a steady voice, ‘So I took him to the river, shut my eyes and held him there until he drowned.’
What a strange woman this was! Most mothers would consider it a badge of pride to give birth to a son who resembled his father and here was Rajula who had killed hers for this reason.
‘You won’t understand, lalli,’ she answered my unspoken question as she patted me kindly. ‘My whole village used to worship his father and, after all, I was not even his wedded wife. I was a lowly singing girl, God’s handmaiden, the fallen scarlet woman of the village. How could I let his name be tarnished? I ran away from the village that night and dropped all my worldly goods in the Bhagirathi. Don’t ask me what I suffered and where I went after that, lalli. May God forgive us all!’ She touched her hands reverently to her forehead.
‘God punished me for that crime: I lost my voice, dreadful sores broke out all over my body, lalli. I was like a leper who people shunned and moved away from. Occasionally a kind soul would toss a few coins my way as I lay under a tree. And the nightmares!’ She shuddered as she recalled them. ‘I dreamt my clothes were drenched with the milk from my breasts, I wanted to scream but no sound came from my throat any more. Then one day, I sang Kariye chhima, the song you love. And a miracle took place. My voice came back! The voice I had lost. Now I walk from home to home and sing Kariye chhima, lalli. This is the penance God has decided I must perform and I bow to His will.’
Rajula must have died singing that song by now but her tambourine and the tinkle of her voice come back ever so often to me. Years later, Rajula became the heroine of my novella Kariye Chhima, and I felt as if I had finally been able to repay the woman who taught me more beautiful music than I ever heard.
Rajula and the Vaishnavi opened my eyes to a truth that I have grappled with ever since. That there is no jail on earth that can shackle a free spirit and no spirit so free that its feet cannot be bound in chains we cannot see.
2
* * *
Ama
Diddi’s vivid childhood memories are as deeply frustrating as they are compelling. The wall she erected around her inner life and fears is impenetrable and guards a kingdom where she will grant entry very reluctantly, if at all.
In contrast to her evocative pictures of Lohaniji, Henry Pant, Alakh Mai and Rajula is Diddi’s stubborn refusal to confront the dark history of her own family, or indeed her own life. Her sharp eyes saw the shadows, yet she resolutely refused to expose the people she loved the most to ridicule or criticism. I think she sincerely hoped she could transform the nature of her past with the power of selective recall and that if she did not remember the unhappiness and doubts of her past, they would simply disappear. So she blotted out the sun by holding up a thumb. How right Edna St Vincent Millay was when she declared that ‘Childhood is a kingdom where…mothers and fathers don’t die.’
In her portrait of Lohaniji, Diddi refers to the sudden death of her father in faraway Bangalore so lightly that it is almost invisible. Her tone does not vary dramatically, nor does the confident voice wobble, as she goes over the time when the proud Kasoon Pandes were reduced to penury. She relates almost matter-of-factly how Ama returned to Almora, a widow at forty with nine children to look after and Kasoon lost its golden sheen. ‘Gaps and holes appeared everywhere as one valuable heirloom after another was sold off,’ she says, and that is all we hear. Significantly, the episode comes in the middle, not the end, of her childhood reminiscences. It was a hint that the resilient spirit of the family refused to be defeated by this tragic turn and yet it troubled me that there was nothing about the indomitable spirit of the Kasoon women until I came to Diddi’s portrait of her mother: Ama to us grandchildren.
Diddi begins her last book, Sone De, with a moving portrait of her mother, a lengthy and loving homage to the strong matriarch who had a profound influence on the lives of all her children. Highly readable and replete with the anecdotes that Diddi knits so deftly into her portraits it is, nevertheless, deafeningly silent on some crucial histories. I have, therefore, included an essay my sister Mrinal wrote on Ama in 1981, soon after Ama’s death, in a journal called Mainstream, to offset the idyllic picture that Diddi paints of her childhood. Mrinal presents a picture free of the romantic clutter that clouded Diddi’s vision and is closer to the spirit of the Ama I remember. She looks at Ama straight in the eye and uncovers her not merely as a heroic, if eccentric, character but as the defining symbol of the Kasoon clan: its Mother Courage.
I strongly believe that all daughters ultimately grow up to be like their mothers and as Diddi grew older, she became another Ama. Outspoken and frank, often brutally and undiplomatically so, she spared no one, herself included. Ama’s most admirable quality had always been her refusal to accept injusti
ce or hypocrisy quietly: a quality she generously passed on to Diddi. This is why they both were such lonely characters in their last years although they remained remarkably free of bitterness and retained their sense of humour to the end. It is perhaps no curious coincidence that Diddi’s life was such a close mirror of her mother’s for if character is destiny, then Diddi’s later life— like Ama’s—was predetermined by her own nature. Ama was widowed at forty, Diddi at fifty. Both struggled hard to survive the loss of money, home and support. Yet they both survived and—even though they were such champions of male supremacy—both chose to come to their daughters when it was time to die.
Obviously, clan histories—like histories of nations—repeat themselves endlessly.
When we were growing up, Ama to us was a figure larger than life. Her house dominated every aspect of our childhood and each one of us twenty-odd grandchildren remember her as an intimidating, often despotic, matriarch who laid the law in Kasoon and was both feared and admired across the town. For a person who broke tradition and gave as good as she got to the snotty Kumaoni Brahmin community, Ama was also responsible for breeding in all those she brought up a respect for tradition and patriarchal laws. She was unashamedly partial to the boys of the family and gave them a latitude that her granddaughters were never allowed. Laughing loudly, whistling and talking out of turn were some no-nos for us girls. However, she was also proud of what her girls achieved and the first to write to us when any of us girls did well. Ama always referred to husbands as ‘malik’ (owner) for that is how she perceived the man-woman relationship in an ideal marriage. So she ordered the universe around her in the image of a morality that she believed had stood the test of time. Any subversion of the traditional domestic hierarchy earned her severe displeasure. Thus, although she was inordinately proud of Diddi, she was equally afraid that her success as a writer would make her more important than her husband and that would never do. Diddi’s need for a strong male presence and a defined boundary within which to operate, I am reasonably sure, had its roots in the laws her mother had taught her to trust.