by Ira Pande
I have no one now to tell me what to do or eat. I come back in the burning heat of the afternoon and there is no Ramrati ready with chilled water in a shining glass, saying lovingly, ‘Here, cool down first.’ Lucknow is notorious for its sudden power cuts but as soon as the fan stopped whirring, there was Ramrati with a handfan that her frail wrists moved ceaselessly until the power came back. Of course, there was no point in telling her to stop.
When I came back from Delhi after receiving the Padma Shri, Ramrati greeted me with a garland of red roses. Then came a plate of laddoos that she lovingly stuffed into my mouth. God knows where she had scrounged the money to buy them. My eyes filled up: my own literary community had forgotten to congratulate me but this simple, unlettered woman had probably blown her weekly allowance to show me how happy my award had made her. A few weeks later, I developed a sudden, shooting pain in my right arm. I couldn’t even hold a pen. Dharmayug had sent frantic telegrams to say they needed the next episode of my serial then being published. But try as I might, I couldn’t lift pen to paper. ‘I don’t think I can write any more, Ramrati,’ I told her.
‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly. ‘I know what has happened— it’s the evil eye that has cast its jealous spell on your success after the Padma Shri. I’ll fix it this Sunday.’
That Sunday, I had some important visitors. ‘Psst, Diddi,’ she beckoned me from the door. ‘Don’t say anything, I’m taking off that nazar.’ One hand held a plate of burning coals, the other had red chillies, lime and god knows what else. She waved all this seven times round my head and shoved the lot on to the burning coals. Acrid fumes from the burning chillies filled the house and my visitors nearly died coughing. ‘Looks like something’s burning in the kitchen,’ spluttered one politely. I nodded weakly. How could I tell them that they had to suffer this for the sake of my painful arm?
What Ramrati loved above all to do was travel and bum around. She was just ten when she was married off. Had a stepmother-in-law and a hopeless alcoholic as a husband. Then came a string of girls—all this aged her before her time. She started working in people’s homes, on construction sites as a daily labourer, sold headloads of grass—in short, did whatever she could to feed her family. In addition to all this was the daily thrashing she received from her husband. ‘When my grandmother heard that Phalane [she never took her husband’s name, so she called him Phalane, which means “that one”] treated me badly, she handed me a bundle of money and said, Leave the man, Ratiya, and come back to me. We will find you someone else.’
‘Don’t you dare say this again,’ Ramrati told her. ‘He is my husband, he held my hand as I left this house, how can you ask me to leave him? He can leave me if he wants—I won’t.’ In this age, how many hands can claim to have such loyal holders, I wonder.
Often her husband would blow his entire salary in some hooch shop and come home on unsteady legs with empty pockets. Occasionally one would hear that he was lying drunk in some gutter. Whenever she heard that, Ramrati ran to find him, loaded him on to a rickshaw and washed his vomit-smeared clothes and face. Then she would quietly put a thali of food in front of him. In return, he would shower her with vile abuses and kick the food away. Sometimes, she would come sobbing to me: ‘Diddi, Phalane is “dawn” again today. Someone flicked the money from his pocket and now he is cursing all my sisters and mother’s family with words I can’t even utter.’
‘And this is the man you worship!’ I exploded. ‘Go, lick his feet.’ I had actually seen her drink the water after she had washed his feet. Yet perhaps it was such wifely devotion that later turned Phalane into her devoted slave. He gave up drinking altogether and, in his old age, he showered her with all the love he should have given her in her youth. Ramrati took full advantage of this altered power structure. The minute she reached her quarter after finishing my work, she would begin ordering her husband around. ‘Phalane, make my bed and get some cold water while you are at it. I want to stretch out a bit.’ Then one day I saw she was doing her own work once more. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t I hear you ordering your Phalane any more?’
‘What to do, Diddi,’ she replied. ‘Ammaji [that is how she referred to my mother] was standing on the terrace the other day and saw Phalane putting my petticoat to dry on the line. She was furious. How dare you sit around while your husband does the housework, she yelled from there. I swore then that I wouldn’t make Phalane do my work any more.’ But that did not stop her from throwing her weight around whenever she could. ‘I know who has made you so bossy,’ I heard him mutter one day, and I knew who he meant.
‘I know, too,’ she shot back. ‘Just try and bully me again and see what Diddi will write in the papers about you.’ How they worshipped me! Ramrati would follow me like a shadow but never once did her husband complain of her shameless neglect. I had snatched his wife away from him, but he never once objected. As a matter of fact, I would occasionally tell her, ‘Ramrati, you stay here all day, even after your poor husband comes back tired from work. Go sit with him and cheer him up.’
‘Why?’ she retorted. Then she sighed. ‘When we could have sat and laughed together he never as much as smiled my way. Now we have only nasty barbs to exchange.’ Truly, they could not spend a pleasant moment together.
‘Can’t stand each other, but can’t do without each other either: that is what the two of you are about. Why don’t you at least keep your mouth shut, Ramrati?’ I told her once.
‘What is a dal without some tempering, Diddi? Unless a man and his wife exchange a nasty word or two, life together will be so bland.’
What a perfect critique of a happy marriage that was! ‘Can you imagine constantly hanging round each other’s neck?’ she went on. ‘I have been beaten black and blue by this man, Diddi, but that is also why he cares so much for me now.’ And yet, for all the fireworks that flew between them, they were devoted to each other.
Her right wrist had a tattoo on it—a rose in a pot, Radha Krishna in a classic pose and on top of it all her husband’s name: Phikkulal. With time, the purple colour of the tattoo became even richer and I wondered whether the darkening colour was an indication of their deepening love.
‘What is it like to fly in a plane, Diddi?’ she asked me one day.
‘Have you ever sat in a carousel? Landing in a plane is a little like that,’ I told her.
‘Of course, I have,’ she retorted. ‘That’s where I first saw Phalane.’ And then she told me the story of their strange courtship. I wish I could write as graphically as she spoke. I may call myself a writer, but my Ramrati was a born storyteller. ‘It was the Gudiya ka mela, Diddi,’ she started. ‘I must have been some ten years old or so. I insisted, as children do, on being taken there.’
Then came a description of her getting ready: ‘I had bangles on my arms up to the elbows, a flowered sari with a wide border, a tikli on my forehead, kajal in my eyes, missi between my teeth to make them shine brighter, silver anklets and bells on my toes. I had a mouth stuffed with paan, and never realized for a moment that Phalane was in the chair just above mine and watching me.’
‘Then?’ I asked, hardly able to contain my curiosity at the development of the plot.
‘The carousel started to move and then,’ a dramatic pause here, ‘Phalane dropped his scented handkerchief on me. I was livid! Who is this bastard who’s dropped this on my lap, I thundered. May I dance at his funeral, God knows where this goon came from! My mother jabbed me and said, Keep your mouth shut, don’t you know this is the man we are trying to get you married to? Then three days later, I went to the well to fill water and who do I see? Phalane, standing there twirling his scented kerchief again! Hey there, you girl, he said. Get me some water to drink. Why, I flashed back. Am I your father’s servant or something? Not yet, he said mysteriously, but one day you will be my slave. And then, Diddi, when the time came for that, he made me slave so hard that I can’t even begin to tell you!’
Another passion of hers was going to the mov
ies. Her favourite stars were Dharmendar and Amitabh Bachchan and she had named them Dharmendaruwa and Amitabhuwa. A few years ago, I had to go to Bombay. That was the time when Amitabh Bachchan was hanging between life and death and Ramrati was distracted with grief. She had been to every pir and temple to pray for him. ‘Ai, Diddi,’ she asked me. ‘Will you meet Amitabhuwa there?’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘My Diddi,’ she pleaded, ‘just tell him, Bachuwa, Ramrati sends you her love.’
I couldn’t help but laugh at this simple request. She had never seen the man and yet she wanted him to know she was as concerned as his mother. I did pass on her message to Amitabh. She was also a TV junkie in the worst sense of the word. From Krishi Darshan to the last transmission, she avidly watched every programme. And when the serial Ramayan was being telecast, her life came to a standstill. She would drop everything she was doing and sit at the dot of eight in front of the TV, red rose in hand, and prostrate herself before the serial started with a loud Siyavar Ramchandra ki jai! She had been completely floored by Ram’s smile and once told me, ‘You know, Diddi, there are just three people in the world who have that smile: Ramayan’s Ram, Rajiv Bhaiyya [Rajiv Gandhi], and our Radhika bitiya [my granddaughter].’
Whenever Rajiv Gandhi came to Lucknow, his cavalcade had to pass in front of my house as that was the way to the airport. Ramrati would warn me early in the morning: ‘I’m off to see Rajiv Bhaiyya, no work from me today.’ Then, ‘Diddi, which sari shall I wear?’ as if Rajiv Bhaiyya was coming to Lucknow specially to see her sari. I was reminded of a lovely Tagore poem called ‘Rajar Dulal’:
O ma! The prince is going to pass the road in front of our house this morning. Tell me, how can I possibly do any housework today? Tell me, ma, what shall I wear? How shall I braid my hair? Which jewels and sari shall I choose?
Why are you looking at me like that, ma? I will stand in that corner where he won’t even see me. It will be over in the blink of an eye and he will leave for some far-off land. But tell me, when the prince is going to pass our house, how can I not dress up to see him?
My Ramrati would stand in the sun for hours exactly as Tagore’s character did to catch a glimpse of Rajiv Bhaiyya as he whizzed past her in a flash.
She travelled with me whenever it was possible for me to take her—I took her to Bombay, Banaras, Kanpur, Rewa, when the universities there called me for a lecture or to confer an honorary degree. Ramrati would pack a bundle of clothes and jump at the chance. ‘Now remember, Ramrati,’ I warned her, ‘you are not allowed to smoke inside air-conditioned compartments. No smoking there, understand?’ This was a huge punishment and, after a few hours of abstinence, I could sense her restlessness. God knows how hard I tried to make her give up smoking—hid her packet of bidis, yelled and screamed but to no avail.
When she could no longer control the urge to light up, she would whisper pathetically, ‘Ai mahtari, my jaw will fall off yawning if I don’t go. Can I go to the loo and sneak a sutta?’ ‘Go then, I hope you die there!’ I would curse and she would speed off.
Much against her wishes, I sent her daughters to school. One of them, Kiran, became the first girl to graduate in her community. Ramrati was hugely proud of this fact, but it worried her too. ‘Where will I find a boy as educated as her in our community?’ she would ask me.
Kiran was my favourite among her daughters: I had brought her up from the age of seven and Ramrati had declared that I would have to give her away when she married. And that is exactly what I did. Kiran’s kanyadan was the fourth one I performed. The wedding took place in my house and with more fanfare than the weddings of my own three daughters. Halwais were called to make sweets, a shamiana sprang up and, on Ramrati’s special request, revolving coloured lights lit up the facade of my flat. The barat arrived and I almost fainted when I saw the groom riding an elephant. Ramrati was so overawed by the spectacle when she went to perform the arti that her knees were knocking. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that an elephant would stand at her threshold. After we saw the barat off, she fell at my feet, her eyes streaming with tears of pure joy and gratitude. ‘I have now completed all my duties, mahtari,’ she said.
Sadly, she became frailer and frailer after that wedding. ‘What is happening to the two of us, Ramrati?’ I joked. ‘We seem to take turns falling ill nowadays.’
A lovely smile lit up her gaunt face. ‘Know what, Diddi? Both of us need overhauling—all the tubes and tyres need changing now.’
What I did not know then was that she would beat me to the body shop. I had a premonition about her death for a while. When I returned to Lucknow after a long spell at my children’s, she was a bag of bones confined to her bed. She looked like a little girl, a mere skeleton as she lay there. But her lovely smile still irradiated her face as she greeted me. ‘My Diddi has come back. Nothing will happen to me now.’
She really believed that I could stall death and that as long as I was around she would not die. Twice I managed to snatch her back from the edge: once when she vomited blood and I rushed her in an ambulance to the hospital. The second time, when she had what I suspect was her first heart attack. ‘Ai Diddi,’ she called out to me. ‘Save me, I’m scared.’ I saved her once again. By the evening she perked up and told me, ‘I know, mahtari, even that bastard Yama is scared of you…’
She was convinced that I could control Death and that Yama listened (as she thought everyone else did) to me. That is why when I had to go out of Lucknow on some unavoidable business, she began to weep like a child, ‘Don’t leave me, my mother. Mahtari, please stay!’
But I had to leave her, although I had already seen all the signs of her impending death. Water streamed continuously from her left eye, the lobes of her ears had turned the other way, the nose looked crooked and the hair on her head stood up like the quills of a porcupine. I knew then that my devoted companion would not be there when I returned. I sat near her, stroking her scrawny feet as she slept but the moment she awoke she pulled them away. ‘Why are you pushing me to hell now, Diddi, please don’t touch my feet…’
Finally, it was time to say goodbye. With great difficulty she clasped both my hands in her bony hands and lifted them to her head. I will never forget that look—a heart-melting picture of pathetic helplessness, tears streaming down her face. Unable to speak, we just gazed at each other for a long time.
My favourite witch doctor was being vanquished by Death and I watched helplessly. Her healing powers were well known all over the town. Several sick people came to her door to seek help: an infant’s teething problems, a dislocated collarbone, hernia, blood dysentery, earache, toothaches—Ramrati could mend them all with herbs, potions or charms. As for fixing a strained back, she was blessed by birth to heal that problem. ‘I was a breech baby,’ she told me proudly. ‘If I kick a strained back, there is no way the pain won’t go.’ However, the magic worked only on Sundays and Tuesdays. You should have seen the milling crowds outside her house on those days. They would come clutching their backs and Ramrati would give them a resounding kick. ‘Go, run!’ she would proclaim confidently. I have actually seen people bent double with pain depart smiling. One Sunday, she came in very late, perhaps there had been an unprecedented rush. ‘This is getting too much, Ramrati.’ I scolded her. ‘At this rate, you will have to choose between your patients and my home.’
‘Forgive me, Diddi,’ she said, ‘but a real upstart of a thanedar came today. Said, I hear you cure strained backs, will you be able to fix mine? Listen to him, I said. Hundreds have drowned here and a donkey asks if there is enough water? I have handled brigadiers and police inspectors. Who do you think you are? Go, stand there, I told him. Then gave him such a kick, Diddi, that I knocked the wind out of his guts!’
How could I say anything after that? However, my back was the only one she would not kick to fix, no matter how much I begged her to. She bit her tongue and touched her ears in horror. ‘Ram-Ram! Don’t ask me to do this, Diddi. I would rather die t
han hurt you.’
She loved my children more than she loved hers. She had seen them grow up, marry and become mothers. She was my ambassador who took gifts and presents when my grandchildren were born and came back laden with gifts for herself. My youngest daughter had twin boys, who were dearer to her than all the other grandchildren. She spent a month looking after them in Faizabad and reported the experience to me in great detail. ‘Know what, Diddi? I used to take the two angels in a pram and people would stop to ask whose babies they were. And I would tell them, who else can they be in Raja Ram’s kingdom? These are Luv and Kus.’
Over the years, she had acquired a unique collection of English words that she loved to show off. Vice Chancellor became Vice Tantalur, Blitz was Blood Pressure according to her, Fanta became Elephanta and Gorbachev was Karva Chauth. Occasionally, her English proved more effective than ours. A certain pest had once taken to calling me at odd hours of the night. He would ask for Ramrati’s daughters and make lewd comments about them, or tell me to stop writing else he would send terrorists to kill me. We were both fed up with the nightly intrusion. Then, Ramrati decided to take charge. ‘This time, mahtari, don’t pick up the foon when he rings. I’ll take care of this terrorist myself.’
The phone rang at midnight. Ramrati picked it up and the conversation went something like this:
‘Hellooo! Who is it?’
‘Is Shivaniji there?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘What is she doing?’
‘Choosing the flowers to decorate your bier.’
He must have said something after that and Ramrati thundered, ‘Yew bleddy basturr!’