Nimita's Place

  Nimita does not think she can eat. She is a Matric (Pass) topper and the best student at Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore. She is always first to answer questions in the English literature class taught by the principal herself. It is still a fearful thing to be called in to Mrs Dalhousie’s office during final exams for the first-year BA cohort.

  Mrs Dalhousie is Anglo-Indian and her skin is the soft cream of her Scottish father’s. Her grey eyes, however, are from her Afghani grandfather, who joined the British army in the war that ousted Maharaja Ranjit Singh from Lahore.

  When the door to the principal’s office opens, Nimita jumps to her feet and stands straight. Mrs Dalhousie’s eyes soften but Nimita’s are fixed on the pursed lips.

  “Come in,” the principal says.

  “Yes, ma’am. You wanted to see me, ma’am.” Nimita enters the office she has only seen twice before. Once to receive a commendation for winning the tennis trophy against Khalsa College for Girls, another time to receive a commendation for her speech on the right of all women to vote, which won the college-wide debating contest.

  Mrs Dalhousie nods at the chairs in front of her table. “Sit.”

  Nimita sits. She looks down at her lap, unable to meet her God’s eyes.

  “Happy birthday, Nimita,” Mrs Dalhousie says, so gently that Nimita is surprised into looking up and smiling.

  “Thank you, ma’am!” Her stiff shoulders relax. So that was why she was called in?

  “You are seventeen now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “A good age to think about your future,” says Mrs Dalhousie.

  The principal has had long and painful experience with other promising 17-year-olds. It is usually at this age that their parents come to her office to explain that their girls—so smart, so proud they are of their exam results!—their girls have passed the greatest test of all with flying colours and superb distinction. They have won eligible grooms.

  The parents fall over themselves to reassure Mrs Dalhousie that this glorious matrimonial future is, of course, because their daughters first distinguished themselves by gaining entrance into the prestigious BA programme of Kinnaird.

  Now that a shining career as society wife awaits them, if ma’am will please authorise the BA (Fail) certificate so they can send it with their daughter to the matrimonial home?

  Mrs Dalhousie has before told some of these promising 17-year-olds what she is about to tell Nimita. Perhaps this child will be one of the rare few on whom her words will work.

  “Have you thought about your future? Do you want to study further?”

  “I think so,” Nimita says.

  “Good,” says Mrs Dalhousie and sits back in her chair.

  “You’re a good student, Nimita,” she says after a while. “You are good at your studies. Many of the young girls look up to you. You are captain of the tennis team and the hockey team.”

  Nimita blushes.

  “Are your studies here challenging for you?”

  “No,” Nimita says automatically, then claps a hand over her mouth.

  Mrs Dalhousie nods. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Ma’am, I like my studies. I like English literature and reading and writing—”

  “Yes,” says Mrs Dalhousie, thinking of the library record sheet in Nimita’s file. “You love books. Agatha Christie. H. Rider Haggard. Adventure stories. I like them too.”

  It is the other books she checks out that interest Mrs Dalhousie, books on natural science and physics. Copies of Radio & Telegraph magazine, though those are hard to come by in wartime, and even an old edition of the bound proceedings of the Royal Academy.

  “What would you like to study? Truly?”

  Nimita exhales. “I want to go to Edinburgh and study medicine.”

  “Why?” asks Mrs Dalhousie.

  “Because…” Nimita doesn’t have a satisfactory answer. Because the Punjab needs doctors? Because Edinburgh has taken Indian women medical students before? Because medicine is an acceptable career for a woman?

  “I am asking you this because I think you would make a good engineer.”

  Nimita sits back in her chair. Engineer? Like the men who…who repair cars and radios? No, those are mechanics. Build houses? Those are architects.

  “You like radios. You’re always repairing the little one in the staff room, I hear.”

  “I like radios,” Nimita says.

  “Well then.” Mrs Dalhousie pulls out a small notebook and flips through it. “Hmm. Bombay and Pune might be too far for your family to consider. Pity, they have very good colleges and accept women students. There is a new university in Chandigarh but—no, that’s not a very progressive area. Ah, how about this? The Thomason College of Civil Engineering.” She begins writing the address down on a loose leaf of paper. “An old friend, a distant cousin of my husband’s, teaches there. It’s in Roorkee, a very nice cantonment area. Your uncle is in Simla, isn’t he? Hardly any distance by train.”

  “Ma’am. Ma’am.” Nimita feels her head spinning. “Ma’am, I, my BA? My marks are not good enough for second-year BA?”

  “I’m sure your marks will be very good.” Mrs Dalhousie offers Nimita the piece of paper. “But are good marks good enough for you?”

  The address of the engineering college seems to burn in Nimita’s hand as she descends the stairs. Pausing one flight above the girls waiting for her, she folds it, begins to tuck it into her bag but then instead tucks it under her brassiere strap. It feels warm and strange.

  Aruna is the first to spot her. “Oh my God, what did the Housie want?”

  Neeta shrieks and claps a hand over Aruna’s mouth. “Sssh!”

  The girls giggle. Shefali shakes her head. “If Nimita is going to fail in exams, there is no hope for me at all.”

  Aruna tosses her head and dislodges Neeta’s fingers. “What does it matter? You won’t be staying here very long anyway.”

  “Neither will you,” says Shefali. Nimita knows that both are spoken for, the news of their engagements nearly trumping her exam fears with unspoken worry—what if Mummy and Daddy also—?

  But exams have come and gone and there have been no visitors at home. Not even someone she was sure would come: Mrs Tiwana, whose son Virendra also plays tennis at the club. He is often in the next court when Nimita and her best friend Roshna play. “Good shot,” he said once, when Nimita trounced Roshna 6–2. He has also retrieved stray balls for them, under the watchful eye of the matrons seated in the spectators’ lounge.

  “Was it very bad, Nimmy?” Neeta puts a consoling arm around Nimita’s shoulders. “Never mind. That one question on The Tempest was too much, na?”

  “No,” Nimita starts to explain, then realises she can’t. These giggling girls shared her past but their future will be so different from hers.

  Hers will be a future of adventure, of travel—Roorkee!—of a career like the heroines in Agatha Christie’s novels. Not even Agatha Christie has written about a woman engineer. Maybe when Nimita becomes one, Mrs Christie will want to write a book about her?

  “Ma’am wished me a happy birthday,” is all Nimita says.

  Aruna tosses her head again. “Unbelievable,” she says, not very kindly. “We should have known, na? Such a teacher’s darling Nimmy is that even the Housie wishes her happy birthday.”

  A war is going on somewhere in the world, but Faletti’s Hotel still provides proper English tea service every afternoon until 4.30pm. Nimita and her friends eat drop scones, fresh cucumber sandwiches and a slice of heavy, eggless cake to celebrate Nimita’s 17th birthday. Under the benevolent eye of Nimita’s mother, Sharada, her friends talk about the exams, the teachers and whether drop scones are better with Punjab-style white butter or English-style cream.

  By 4.30pm, mothers arrive to take their daughters home.

  “Can I drop you somewhere?” asks Sharada Khosla, the only woman among her circle who has not only a driving licence but her husband’s licence to use it.


  Mrs Dalal and Mrs Rana shake their heads. They have chauffeurs.

  Mrs Sehgal says: “It will be out of your way, Sharada.” The Khoslas live in the new suburb of Model Town, miles from the centre of town.

  “No, no, I’m planning to go to Anarkali Bazaar,” Sharada says. “Let me drop you off on the way.”

  There is a war going on somewhere in the world, but Anarkali Bazaar still provides Lahorias in the know with anything they need. Even items that the British authorities tightly control for fear of treasonous use, such as German Agfa cameras or wireless radio sets from Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company.

  The technology that Sharada has her eye on today, however, is the highly fashionable, extra-safe pressure saucepan from National Presto Industries in faraway America. There are only a few hundred units available in India because the company stopped making the saucepan after 1942. All of America’s iron and steel have been diverted to the war effort against Japan and Germany.

  Somehow, Sharada’s friend Kamla Kaul got her hands on one, probably through her husband Manohar’s political connections. “You can cook dal in just thirty minutes,” she boasted at the last meeting of the Punjabi Hindu Women’s Association. Lunch was makhani dal, rich and buttery as if it had stewed for two hours instead of being put on just as the ladies arrived.

  Sharada has connections too, but rather than ask her brother in the army to find her a pressure saucepan, she sent the house boy straight to Khushboo in Anarkali Bazaar. Khushboo has brothers in the army and brothers-in-law in the navy and it is amazing the “surplus goods” he can provide for long-time customers at special rates.

  Khushboo’s man would have delivered the pressure saucepan home but a trip to Anarkali Bazaar is a special birthday treat for Nimita. She loves wandering the old walled city of Lahore, where every gully is thick with tiny stalls packed with books, toys, shoes, earrings, shawls, bicycle wheels, anything a girl’s heart can desire. She is not allowed to go there alone, though sometimes, groups of classmates from Kinnaird College get their brothers to take them to drink lassi or flavoured milk at Bhagwan Das Dairy. The girls always wait in the tonga or car, peering out of the curtains on the windows, as the men pay and bring back glasses of cool drinks.

  Mrs Sehgal allows herself to be persuaded by Sharada. She and her daughter Aruna settle into the backseats of the Khoslas’ grey Packard 180. Ghanshyam closes the door behind them and jumps onto the running board. When it is just Mummy and Nimita in the car, Ghanshyam sits in the backseat.

  Mummy is very modern. She sees no point in the servant getting dusty and frozen in the winter wind when he can just as well jump out of the car to open the door once they reach the destination.

  Also, Mummy likes to drive fast and you can’t go fast with someone hanging on to the outside of your door.

  The Sehgals are driven home and Sharada refuses to come in for a cup of tea. “No, we will get late.”

  “Tennis tomorrow?” Aruna asks. Nimita nods. It is her favourite game.

  Ghanshyam moves to the backseat. Sharada revs the engine a little.

  “Let me drive a bit, na, Mummy, please?” Nimita says. She wants a driving licence too but her parents keep putting it off.

  Sharada pretends not to hear the plea. “Khushboo’s man came and said we must take the saucepan today or he’ll have to give it to one of the other women.” After Kamla Kaul’s party, demand for the saucepan exceeded supply. Khushboo’s supply routes are choked by British officers. So maybe some of the suppliers send radios meant for the British army in Rangoon to the Azad Hind Fauj of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Malaya, so what? Business is business.

  “Mummy, please na?”

  “Maybe on the way home,” Sharada says, carefully reversing out of the gate as the Sehgals’ watchman salaams.

  At Anarkali Bazaar, Ghanshyam is left to guard the parked car while Sharada and Nimita make their way to Khushboo’s shop. Along the way they pick up a new pair of slippers for Nimita, a dozen reels of thread, a box of cotton wool balls and a dozen oranges wrapped in newspaper.

  Khushboo welcomes them, offers them tea and then with great ceremony, brings out a brown cardboard box, slightly dented from its sojourn in ship, train and truck. He unpacks the silvery treasure with its sleek black handle and shows them its special safety features. “See, Bibiji, it seals and locks and there is even a weight on top that will whistle. You take it off the fire and wait until the whistling stops. When the weight comes off easily, only then open the lid.”

  He promises on his heart that it will cook dal, rice and even chicken or mutton in less than thirty minutes.

  “It will cook mutton so quickly? How is that possible?” Sharada says.

  “It’s a marvel,” Khushboo answers.

  “It’s science, Mummy.” Nimita turns the lid of the saucepan around to understand its construction. The metal is thicker than that of the giant kadais at home which Bibi uses to make jalebis for parties.

  “Water boils at a higher temperature at a higher pressure and so food will cook faster in the saucepan,” Nimita says. “In Simla, Mummy, you always say chai tastes different na? Same thing. It’s because air pressure is lower there so water boils at a lower temperature.”

  “Exactly,” Khushboo says, making a mental note to use this explanation the next time he is asked this question. “Exactly what I was going to say.”

  “Very good, beta,” Sharada says. “How much did you say for this?”

  Khushboo demands a price that is double what he had quoted when taking bulk orders from the Punjabi Hindu Women’s Association.

  “What is this? What is this?” Sharada is very upset. “We come here all the time and you are cheating us like this!”

  “Bibiji, you are my best customer but what to do? They stopped the trains from Calcutta so I had to bring the goods in by truck. That’s why it’s taken so long.” Rail services around South Asia are in disarray as British and American troops battle the Japanese-backed Azad Hind Fauj.

  “What do I care about the trains to Calcutta? Ten rupees! Am I made of money?”

  “Bibiji, on my honour, I could bring in only ten pieces and I have kept this for you because you asked. Now you only tell me what I should do?”

  Nimita has lost interest in the bargaining and is playing with a brand-new Bakelite radio on the other end of the counter. It erupts in a loud whine, a shriek and then a clear voice says something in a language she cannot understand.

  Then it switches to English. “This is Azad Hind Radio, the true radio channel, giving all free Indians the real news. Today, our valiant troops—”

  The station tunes off, Khushboo’s hand on the tuning knob. He turns to Sharada Khosla.

  “Bibiji, will you ruin me?”

  Sharada makes a sharp “come here!” movement with her hands. Nimita obeys. “Talk about the pressure saucepan. How much will you take?”

  They settle on seven rupees and two brand-new stainless-steel handis thrown in. Khushboo’s assistant carries the boxes and all the other shopping back to the car where Ghanshyam waits.

  Ghanshyam arranges the parcels and box neatly in the backseat.

  Sharada gets into the driver’s seat. Nimita doesn’t dare ask to change places.

  “Sorry, Mummy,” she says in English as the car moves onto the main road.

  “You mustn’t touch other people’s things, beta, I’ve told you so many times.” But Sharada’s heart is not in the scolding. It’s not Nimmy’s fault. She should have been born a boy, her father says so often, because her heart is with all things electrical. Nimmy can operate the new wireless radio and her father’s old-school valve apparatus. She gets the crystal-clear sound of All India Radio when anyone else’s hand gets only static.

  The car jerks, skittering from wheel to wheel. Sharada works the stick shift and it moves a little smoother.

  “Sorry, Mummy,” Nimita says again.

  “What will sorry do? You have to be more careful, you’re seventeen.” Sev
enteen and taller than Sharada. Seventeen, and doing her bachelor’s degree. My god, when did this little baby grow up?

  The car is jumping again, shuddering, slowing down. It comes to a halt in the middle of the road.

  “Now what has happened?” Sharada tries starting the car again and again but it coughs, groans and fails to move.

  She gets out of the car, Nimita and Ghanshyam following.

  “Bibiji, are we out of petrol?” he asks.

  There is fuel in the tank despite wartime rationing. Like many upper-class families in Lahore, the Khoslas have a little arrangement with the man who supplies the army. In six months’ time, their supplier would be arrested and tried for embezzling military supplies and adulterating them to sell to non-military personnel. For now however, the beautiful grey Packard 180 with its leather interior and fully functional air-conditioning system is being overtaken by horse-drawn tongas.

  A policeman comes up to them. “Bibiji, what happened?”

  “The car won’t start,” Sharada says.

  “You can’t leave it in the middle of the road. You,” he addresses Ghanshyam, “push it to the side.”

  Sharada holds Nimita’s hand so she will not help the two men pushing the car to the side of the road. Seventeen, and sometimes no more sense than a seven-month-old baby.

  “Let’s send Ghanshyam to Chand Garage,” says Nimita. “We can go to the Punjab Club and wait for Daddy.”

  “But all our things are in the car,” Sharada says.

  The returning policeman hears this. “Bibiji, don’t worry. I’m here.” He whistles and stops a tonga. “You can’t stand on the road.”

  Nimita makes Ghanshyam unload their shopping from the Packard and put it into the tonga. “Model Town,” she says and the driver shakes his head.

  “No, no, that’s too far,” he says.

  The policeman slaps the tonga driver’s horse. “What kind of idiot are you? Two women standing on the road and you complain about distance?” He spits for emphasis.