by Ira Pande
He was sunk in silence.
I went forward and held his hand and it was as if that touch led to a dam burst. I had never seen him cry, let alone sob. Who had hurt him today, I wondered. ‘Is all well, Hamid Bhai? What happened?’ I asked.
‘What can I say, child? There were just two homes that I thought were mine—yours and Chachi’s. Today I was turned away from there—Chachi told me very clearly, I don’t think you should come here in this condition, Hamid.’
His favourite cousin had recently written to him that she didn’t think it was wise for him to visit her in Aligarh any more. What if something happened to him while on a train? And even if you were to come here, I don’t think I can look after you, she had written. You know how busy I am with my medical practice—I just can’t think of handling another sick person.
‘There you are, so now my sister thinks of me not as a brother but as a potential patient!’ he laughed and quoted: ‘The minute the walls of my humble home fell, / People rushed in to make it a thoroughfare.’
The Pakistani Foreign Minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan was his first cousin. One day, I told him, ‘How similar your faces are, Hamid Bhai!’ ‘That’s all that’s alike, my dear,’ he replied sadly. ‘Our destinies were very different.’
The minute I mentioned that I would be travelling out of Lucknow, his face would fall. ‘When you are away, I feel so lonely, child. Suppose I die when you are not here, who will take me to my grave?’
‘Go on, Hamid Bhai,’ I laughed, ‘I can only take you to the cremation ground. How can you forget that you are a Muslim and I a Hindu?’
He flashed me a look of such anger that my smile died on my lips. ‘Stop this nonsense! I am not a Muslim nor are you a Hindu—I don’t believe in your temple and you don’t believe in my mosque. Just remember one truth, child, you are my sister and I am your brother. This relationship will always endure.’
And he remained my brother to the end of his life. He came to every daughter’s wedding. Each of my sons-in-law touched his feet. And when my daughter-in-law’s mother sent him an expensive pullover as a gift, his eyes filled up with tears.
This March when he came to see me, I noticed his feet were swollen. He was almost incoherent and would lapse into the past. As he was leaving, he said, ‘Child, this is our last meeting. I will never see you again.’ Then he took my hand in his swollen fingers and touched it to his forehead. My throat was so tight that I could not speak, then I swallowed my tears and said, ‘How can you say this, Hamid Bhai? I will come a day before Eid for my Eidi.’
But I reached too late to get that Eidi. He had once told me, ‘Never fear Death. Look at me, both my feet are in the grave and the minute I hear Allah Mian, I’ll jump right into it. Remember that Death only tortures cowards—the mouse fears the cat, so the cat loves to torture it before it kills it. Those who don’t fear Death are borne triumphantly on its shoulders.’
And that is how he went. God knows in which lane of Lucknow he sleeps now. One day, I swear, I will find it out and tell the Angel of Death that here lies a man who said that nothing was dearer to him than our relationship—he was my brother and I his sister. Nothing else endured.
9
* * *
Ramrati
If there was one grace that Diddi lacked, it was accepting help from anyone—even her children. Any hint of pity, a note of compassion in someone’s voice made her curl up her lip and bare her fangs. This often pushed those whom she loved the most very far from her. Worse, in her last years, when she wanted someone to take her in, warts and all, she only succeeded in pushing them away. Diddi had always been fiercely independent, so, like Ama, she chose to live alone rather than seek help or a shelter from those she could not live comfortably with. Eventually, this independence developed into an almost destructive streak. Despite many pleas from all of us to wind up her Lucknow house and move in with one of us, Diddi refused to budge from her crumbling flat in Gulistan Colony. Life had taught her never to trust anyone but herself and her fragile sense of dignity was quick to take offence. She also knew that she could not inflict her laws on her children, and that she could not submit to a lifestyle that did not have her sanction. So her final years were spent in Lucknow, and her flat there became a retreat in the same way that Kasoon had become one for Ama. She became Ama—a lonely matriarch trapped in a deserted home. Lear had his Fool, Ama had Tara Didi, and Diddi had Ramrati.
Servants had always played a very important role in Diddi’s life just as they had in Ama’s. The servants in Diddi’s home, as in Ama’s, were never taught to serve tea correctly or picked for their skills in household matters. They were chosen because they were one of a kind and encouraged to be sassy and exit with perfect lines from a room. In our childhood, almost all the servants who worked with us were children of Ama’s old servants and, since they had seen us grow up, they participated in our lives as equals. They stayed on for years and when they died or retired, their children came to take their place. Ramrati, my mother’s maid of many years, was celebrated with an article on her when she died and her daughter Kiran and her children were my mother’s constant companions till her death. They ate with her, slept in the other bedroom and called her Diddi or Nani, just as we did. Fittingly, it was Kiran’s face that was displayed in all Diddi’s last pictures because she sat cradling my mother’s head on her lap before they took her away. When a pesky photographer was contorting his body to get the most poignant picture of Diddi at her funeral, Kiran told me, ‘When Amritlal Nagar died, I went with Diddi. A photographer toppled off and almost fell on Nagarji’s body. Diddi asked him loudly, “Kyon bhai, Nagarji ke sath upar jaane ka iraada hai?”’ (Do you wish to go up there with Nagarji?) Then, trained perfectly by my mother, Kiran walked up to the photographer and said, ‘Abaap jaiyey.’ (Please leave now.)
The house that Diddi and Ramrati lived in was like no other that I know of. For one, there was complete democracy in Diddi’s house. Master and servant had the same rights and were equal in every respect. Ramrati’s family became Diddi’s loyal band of helpers and this clan grew into an army of some twentyodd people. Ramrati’s married daughters came every weekend with their children to meet Diddi. They brought her tales from their lives and Diddi was deeply involved in the politics of their homes. Prema’s husband was a drunkard and beat her. ‘Slap him back,’ Diddi advised the weeping Prema and then summoned him one morning to give him a piece of her mind. She got Prema trained as a midwife and once Prema became independent of him, she regained her courage to take him on. I think she even slapped him, much to Diddi’s delight. Another faithful weekend visitor was Misrilal, the dhobi. A thin, wiry man who cycled some 15 miles to come every week, Misrilal was a comical figure who wore khaki shorts that flapped in the breeze as he cycled. ‘He used to come,’ my son says, ‘to spend the day with Nani.’ The minute Misrilal came, he was greeted warmly by the kitchen staff and given a refreshing drink and told to rest in the veranda. Often he dozed for a couple of hours before he went into the house. Then he came into Diddi’s room and squatted on the floor as he narrated his woes: his only son had gone away to Bombay to join the film world and his daughter-in-law was a shrew who tortured poor Misrilal. The saga of Misrilal’s domestic woes were related like a weekly TV soap to Diddi, who listened intently to every detail and offered advice or solace.
Then, suddenly, Misrilal stopped coming and no one knew what had happened. Diddi was left without a dhobi and the absence began to show. On a visit to Lucknow, I found the bedsheets so grubby that I asked her why she did not consider finding a replacement for Misrilal. ‘There are no dhobis in Lucknow any more,’ Diddi replied.
‘How can that be?’ I asked. ‘There are at least a dozen in the colony, aren’t there?’
‘There were, you mean,’ Diddi smiled. ‘Now they’ve all become ministers.’
This is when Mayawati, the great champion of the lower castes, had been elected chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the first time and presided over a
strange cabinet of ministers who she had chosen not for their aptitude but their caste. Diddi had no belief in politically correct language and freely aired her views to her appreciative audience. On another occasion, someone came to her to unveil a statue of the great champion of the lower castes Dr Ambedkar. Anyone who has seen any statue of the venerable nationalist will remember that he is always depicted as wearing trousers that stop at his ankles. Diddi excused herself from the honour: ‘I am not well nowadays,’ she lied. ‘My doctors have forbidden me to travel. But do me a favour, will you?’ she asked the supplicant. ‘Take some money from me and just add two inches to his trouser length before you get someone to unveil the poor man’s statue.’
Interestingly, in her real life she was completely free of all caste biases. Her old sweeper Mohan and his wife, Bahuriya, were valued members of her court and sipped tea with the other servants. Every time Diddi returned to Lucknow, she took the brightest sari and bangles for Bahuriya. Years ago, Diddi had got her a job as a sweeper in the railways but Bahuriya still came every morning to sweep the terrace and have her morning tea with Diddi before she went on her ‘dooty’. Then there was Burho, the old crone who came to massage Diddi. Burho was a childless widow and had found her way into Diddi’s durbar. She ate her meals there and went home only to sleep. My children used to tease Diddi saying that she should be the one massaging Burho, considering how frail Burho was. When Burho died, she had asked that her bier be taken past Diddi’s house and Diddi paid for the funeral as she had promised, showering rose petals on the bier as it went past her house. The scene was not unlike Queen Elizabeth standing outside Buckingham Palace bowing to the funeral cortege of Princess Diana! We used to joke that Diddi, like the Government of India, provided cradle to grave security to her workers. In the last few years, she donated all the award money she received either to Mother Teresa or to one of the workers.
Yet of all the servants, it was Ramrati who remained my mother’s favourite and who served her until she died. After her death, her daughter Kiran became Diddi’s surrogate child and remained with her till the very end. Even now, she never forgets to call us up on our birthdays and anniversaries and rings me up every Sunday. But the person who missed Ramrati the most was her husband, Phainku. After she died, he took on her vigil outside Diddi’s door and wheezed his way painfully up the stairs and followed her like a dog. He was a shell of a man now, wizened and painfully thin, yet he cooked the most amazing meals when we reached Gulistan. Diddi had persuaded him to quit drinking some years ago and now he had the lost look that all reformed alcoholics have. One July, when Diddi was with me in Delhi recovering from a cataract operation, Kiran called up to say that Phainku was so ill that they had shifted him to the hospital. He had sent word that he wanted to see Diddi once before he died. Diddi immediately packed up her bags and left, brushing aside all my pleas that she should not travel so soon after her surgery. As soon as she reached Lucknow, she went straight to the hospital to see him. It was pouring and Diddi was soaked to the skin, but she went to Phainku’s bedside. She held his hand and he opened his eyes, unable to speak because of the oxygen mask. He lifted her hands to his head and then moved his eyes to where Kiran was standing, as if to say, I am leaving my children in your care. Diddi told him, I’m here, Phainku, you won’t die, but he shook his head. She had barely reached her flat when news came that he had died.
‘I know he waited for me,’ she told me on the phone. ‘Now I am truly alone.’ It was as if her last link with Lucknow had snapped.
~
A Woman Called Ramrati
An obituary by Diddi (late 1980s):
‘Once upon a time…’ may be a clichéd way to begin a story but the most beloved tales have just such a beginning. Today, as I sit down to write a tribute to an illiterate but immensely wise woman, her happy, smiling face is right before me. Yet to speak of her in the past tense is as painful as performing her last rites. Believe me, the most difficult pen portraits are the ones that have the cleanest outlines. There is no distinguished ancestry, no brilliant academic record, no prominent names to drop, no noble bloodlines to trace: such a sketch has to be drawn without recourse to imagination or stylistic devices.
Ramrati was painfully thin and no matter how hard we tried to make her put on some flesh, the needle of the weighing machine never moved beyond 29 kilos. But what energy and zip she had! I used to wonder from where she got that bounce but then I could also never understand how such a pure and simple soul had survived the hardships of her life and remained so unfailingly cheerful and happy. When I hired her twentytwo years ago, my husband was not at all happy about the appointment. ‘There are already too many helpers in this house. What’s more, she works in other homes and may well spread their dirt across our threshold. I think our privacy is being invaded.’
‘She’s not like that at all,’ I insisted, and Ramrati came into our lives. From the first day, she took over my home and life. Years later, when my husband was dying, he confessed, ‘You were right about Ramrati: she will always stand by you.’ I should have felt vindicated but his tone was that of a man who knew he would not live long and who was making sure that I would have a companion after he was gone. Ramrati took over the entire burden of my sorrows after he died. Although I had known for some time that my husband did not have much time, his death robbed me of my very sense of self. Nothing made sense any more and I could see no future that gave me hope. I had always believed in his honesty and admired it, but it meant now that there were no savings, not even an insurance policy to turn to. I tried to write but my pen, like some stubborn mule, refused to move across the sheet of paper in front of me. It was hopeless, nothing was going to work any more, I decided, so I called Ramrati and told her, ‘Ramrati, I can’t afford to keep you any more—find yourself another house to work in.’ After her husband lost his job, I had taken over the care of her entire family: in my present state I felt such a burden was impossible to handle.
‘Listen to her!’ she told an unseen audience, her arms akimbo. ‘Find yourself another job, she tells me! Am I a selfish cat, Diddi, that I will leave you now when the milk and cream have gone?’
So she stayed on. What is more, she refused to take a salary until I got some money from my husband’s pension and gratuity. Mrinal was abroad those days, Ira had a young child and Micky was still at the IIT. My eldest daughter, Veena, stayed with me for three months but she had to join her husband in Hawaii and left as well. The day she left, Ramrati arrived at my flat, holding her bedding under her arm. ‘Here I am, mahtari,’ she announced cheerfully. ‘This is where I will now stay.’ She spread her bedding on the floor next to my bed and posted herself as my night attendant. She stood over me like a mother, watching every morsel I left uneaten, every drop of milk undrunk. If ever a sob escaped my lips, her sharp ears heard it immediately. ‘Want to damage your eyes, now, do you? What do you think, Diddi, that your tears will bring back Saheb?’ she asked.
One day, she handed me a pen and some paper. ‘Here you are, now write,’ she said brusquely. ‘You know, Diddi,’ she said in a gentler tone, ‘when my uncle died in the prime of his youth, my grandmother used to sit up all night grinding wheat. I got up to help her once and she shooed me away. It isn’t wheat that I grind, Ratiya, she told me. I’m grinding away my pain.’
That was the first time that I wrote something and never read it over. I sent the article (‘Bandheesh ne aar mayaar dore’) to Navneet and was flooded with letters from fans. I realized then how I had been given a lesson no one but an illiterate woman like Ramrati could have given me. Grinding the pen across paper did not merely lessen my pain, it helped me reach out to hundreds of fellow-sufferers.
Ramrati never ceased to amaze me with her wisdom. ‘I have never hurt anyone in this life, Ramrati,’ I said to her one day. ‘Then why has God chosen to punish me so?’
She was silent for a while, still as a statue. Then, she said slowly, ‘It is not for the wrongs done in this life that we suffer, D
iddi. We pay the debts of the last life in this one. That tobacco that you chew all the time—all your children have told me, Make her give it up, Ramrati. Hide her box—tobacco causes cancer. Have I succeeded in doing what they say? You keep yelling at me for smoking bidis and burning my lungs. Have you succeeded in making me give it up? Arrey, these are all addictions we carry over from another life. Disease, land and property, lawsuits and cases, the noose, jails, addictions like yours and mine—all these are the interest we have to pay on our past karma. We inherit our fate in this life from an earlier birth and pay for those mistakes now. He is a mean old usurer, that Old Man up there, Diddi. Until He has extracted every last paisa, He won’t let you live in peace.’
I looked at her simple face in consternation—she had read no Veda or Upanishad, but what a complete understanding she had of what the profoundest Vedantic philosophers have said. Ramrati’s simple homespun wisdom was based on a solid knowledge of the aphorisms of Ghagh and Bhaddari, old folk poets of rural India. If the sky was dark with black clouds and I looked for an umbrella before stepping out of the house, she would tell me, ‘Why do you need an umbrella? Go, it won’t rain—black clouds don’t bring rain. It’s the brown ones that pour.’ Her personal met office never let her down. I used to eat a karela (bitter gourd) every day but did not dare to ask her for one in the month of Kuar. Ramrati was fond of saying Kuar karela, Kartik dahi; maribo nahin to paribo sahi. (Eat a karela in Kuar and curds in Kartik: then if you don’t die, you will certainly fall ill.)