Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  Grumbling, the tonga driver lets the Khosla women in. Sharada folds her hands to the policeman. Nimita copies her.

  “Please don’t embarrass me, Bibiji,” he says.

  Sharada calls Ghanshyam over and hands him two rupees. “The garage will take more,” Ghanshyam says.

  “Tell the garage to put it on Sahib’s account. This is for tea and lunch. Buy him something too,” Sharada says, nodding towards the policeman.

  The tonga sets off on the 16-kilometre journey to Model Town. The helpful policeman, Constable Dil Aziz, accepts a rupee in anna coins from Ghanshyam and retires to the side of the road near the Packard, twirling his moustache. He is conscientiously keeping his word to the bibiji but also hoping that some of his fellow police officers will spot him near this car.

  Lahore has only a couple of hundred private cars on the road. Fewer automobiles are being sold in India these days, with every country turning steel and aluminium towards war machines. The car is the latest model made by Packard, fresh off the assembly line, imported all the way from America. But of greater interest to Lahorias is the female driver often seen behind the wheel. She is much discussed by the people she passes, storekeepers, road sweepers, tonga drivers and also traffic policemen.

  Constable Dil Aziz is looking forward to the many cups of tea his colleagues at the station will buy him now that he has spoken to the famous woman driver. She is a proper bibiji. One rupee is no small amount for a constable who earns 15 rupees a month and must feed a mother, a wife and four small children in wartime.

  In a time when women mostly stay behind curtains and don’t even operate tractors in the fields of the Punjab, a woman driving a luxury car is a sign. Some say it is a sign of the end times, others call it a sign that the rich are indeed different. Some, mostly women, say it is a sign of the Guru Granth Sahib’s injunction to treat men and women equally. It all depends on which Lahoria is talking.

  Lahorias love to argue and they argue about anything and everything. Except religion. Religion just is. You are born Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or even those Parsis or Christians who lick the feet of the British. Born into one religion means you pray five times a day, grow a beard and believe in one God. Born into another religion means you grow a beard, believe in one God and thank God you were born in Lahore, cradle of the Gurus. Born into a third religion means you may or may not grow a beard or believe in many gods, now that the Arya Samaj reform movement is changing the face of India.

  You are born this religion, so you die this religion and that is that.

  Religion comes with its rules. One is that Hindus and Muslims do not share the same table. This is why Ghanshyam gave Dil Aziz the rupee rather than adjourning to a tea stall nearby, as he might have with a Sikh or Hindu policeman.

  Dil Aziz knows and doesn’t mind it. What would he have done if a strange Hindu man offered to share a table with him? Religion is the way it is and always has been, so he only spits on the side of the road before turning to admire his reflection in the windows of the Packard.

  2.

  The week after Nimita’s birthday, Ghanshyam spots a familiar figure coming down the road towards the Khoslas’ bungalow. He runs straight to the kitchen’s backdoor.

  “Kanta-Bibi, she’s coming.”

  “Who ‘she’? Who’s coming? What are you doing here? Lazybones, your lunch will come later. I’m busy now.” Kanta-Bibi adjusts her chunni around her head while making the atta for the day.

  Kanta-Bibi is the top woman in the Khosla household after Khosla-Bibiji and Nimita-Babyji. Kanta-Bibi manages the kitchen and lower-status servants including the sweeper, the woman who washes the pots and pans, the boy who runs errands and Ghanshyam. As the cook and person who serves meals, she is used to the gatekeeper’s many excuses to wheedle treats.

  “No, no, she has come,” says Ghanshyam, hopping on one foot in excitement. “That Reheza-Bibi. The henna-waali Reheza has come.”

  Kanta-Bibi’s heart thumps. Her lips thin. “Why are you telling me? Go tell Bibiji.”

  Ghanshyam runs off and Kanta-Bibi begins picking the semi-dry flour off her hands. She must find the steel tumbler and plate kept aside for that sort of people.

  Even if unwelcome, guests are offered water and food in a Punjabi household. Reheza is not unwelcome but she will be served in a plate and tumbler kept separately from the steel utensils and crockery Kanta-Bibi and Ghanshyam eat off. The special plate and tumbler are not even mixed with the plates used by the sweeper, the woman who washes the pots and pans or the errand boy Chandu. Reheza’s plates are kept separate because she is one of those M people. A Mussulman.

  Kanta-Bibi buys vegetables only from the Hindu grocer at N-Block market. Whenever the Khoslas ask for mutton, she takes Chandu with her, so he can stand next to the Muslim kasai and carry home the meat, double-wrapped in newspaper.

  But Kanta-Bibi is quite broad-minded. When the Khoslas first moved to Model Town, the bibi with them then cooked for only one dinner party that included Muslim and Parsi guests before an emergency in her village required her speedy return.

  The man who pays Kanta-Bibi’s salary would be shocked if you told him that his life is governed by religion. No, no, religion is there but what is of greater importance is the school you went to, the books you read, whether you can read and write. If you are literate, do you read and write Urdu or Punjabi or also English? If English, are you a member in good standing of the Punjab Club? The exclusive British and European club which only just started taking local members earlier this year?

  If pressed, Prem Khosla, barrister, might agree that there have been a lot of scuffles between Muslims and Sikhs in recent years but those are all lower-class people in lower-class areas.

  Prem has friends of all religions: Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh. Like him, they support the Punjab Unionist Party and approve of the All India National Congress. All Prem’s friends are very good people, in business, in law, in finance. Some of them he met while reading law in Brasenose College, Oxford, like his fellow barrister, Assad Qureshi, who occupies the bungalow next to his in Model Town. Prem and Assad often meet at the Punjab Club for lunch or dinner or tennis.

  Upper-class Lahorias shun the harsh “r” sound of “religion” for the softer tones of “suh” and “wuh”. Suh-wuh for Swaraj, or self-rule, India’s demand to be left alone with no white overlords. Suh-wuh for Swadesh, or “our own country”, another demand growing louder since the British took so many of India’s young men overseas to fight its wuh-suh wars in Burma and Thailand and Malaya.

  The fall of Singapore in 1942 has shown India that Britain’s power is on the decline, that it is not long before Indians will indeed be free to govern themselves without white overseers. This is cause for rejoicing and for some concern. Assad’s son Sohrab is a staunch supporter of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s call to form a separate state for Muslims after the British leave India.

  “Arrey, religion is not something to divide us,” Assad says. Prem nods in agreement.

  As they lunch at the Punjab Club, Prem and Assad are often joined by their Parsi friend Feroze Damania, the bottle factory owner, or his cousin Rustum the lawyer. The big joke is that Rustum’s surname actually is Batliwala, or “associate of bottles”. “You’re in the wrong industry,” the cousins always tell each other after a couple of drinks. “No, no, in this India today, anyone can be anything,” Prem always says.

  Religion makes no difference to people like them. Even caste will be unheard of in the new India, where anybody can be anything, Prem says as his friends nod.

  Unlike his friend Manohar Kaul, Prem does not care much about the purity/pollution taboos, usually so important in a high-caste Punjabi Khatri household. Maybe this is because Prem’s mother died young and his despairing father sent him off to Bishop Cotton Christian boarding school in Simla and then to Edinburgh, to read law.

  Returning to India after graduation and his father’s death, Prem happily accepted an invitation to stay with an old school friend in
Simla, rather than return to his lonely home in Lahore. That was how he met Colonel Charan Chauhan of King George’s Own Gurkha Rifles. Colonel Chauhan also came from a non-traditional upbringing and was the guardian of his orphaned sister Sharada. Prem and Sharada were matchmade and married.

  The army elite were egalitarian so Sharada happily mingled with Muslim and Parsi friends of the right class as well as the women of the Punjabi Hindu Association.

  All this Hindu-Muslim-Sikh talk is pure politics and jockeying for power, the Khoslas say. You would have to be mental not to see how everyone lives quite happily together in real life.

  Look at the weddings! Everyone is invited to any wedding and if it is a girl’s wedding, Hindu or Muslim or Sikh, neighbours step forward to help the family look their best before the boy’s side. It is a matter of izzat, honour, for the community. The Hindus may bring their own vegetables and their own cooking vessels to the wedding hall to maintain their purity, but they still show up to swell the ranks of the wedding procession and show just how well-regarded the bridal family is.

  Weddings are the work of Reheza Sheikh and her sister Rukhsana, both educated up to Matric (Fail). Rukhsana’s shop in the tailor’s district is always swamped with orders for embroidery or bridal salwar kameezes.

  Reheza’s job is to stain the palms of giggling girls and thoughtful housewives with henna. She decorates the bride’s arms, hands, feet and legs with twisting vines, birds and chequered patterns carefully chosen to carry blessings for a happy married life.

  There are always weddings in Lahore and part of the reason is Reheza’s skill. On her way home from one assignment, she will stop by another house to pay her respects to the oldest woman there. Over a glass of lassi or water or tea, which any hospitable family is honour-bound to provide, she will casually enquire about the sons or daughters of the house and casually speak of another household with eligible parties of the opposite gender.

  Depending on her hostess’ reaction, Reheza will then return to the first party to begin a long, complicated chain of marital negotiations or suggest alternative prospects.

  Reheza and others of her kind are both welcomed and somewhat feared by households with marriageable sons and daughters. In Hindu and Sikh households, there is a separate set of crockery and cutlery kept for the use of Reheza and those of her religion. The Khosla household’s Kanta-Bibi understands that she will have to serve the Qureshis and Khans on the same plates that Sahib and Sharada-Bibiji use. However, to let Reheza use the same tumbler as Kanta-Bibi may lead to her being suddenly called back to her village, never to return.

  Reheza Sheikh, henna-waali, sits on a low cushioned stool at the feet of Sharada Khosla. A shiny steel tumbler with the Khosla name etched on it is brought out for her, full of hot elaichi chai. Matching plates offer crunchy homemade papad and biscuits from Usmania Bakery.

  Kanta-Bibi bridles at having to serve Reheza, but she knows what Reheza’s appearance means. As do Sharada and Prem, sad and exultant at the inevitable.

  Prem greets Reheza and leaves the sitting room so quickly that he nearly trips over Ghanshyam outside the door. Master and servant look at each other. Neither look back at the women left inside to do the real, important work.

  Prem clears his throat. “Clean the car,” he says. The Packard 180 sits in the driveway, repaired by Chand Mechanic and ready for duty.

  Ghanshyam salutes with his towel and walks away slowly.

  Prem steps towards his briefcase. Clattering footsteps overpower the murmurs from the living room.

  “Daddy!” Nimmy says. “You haven’t left yet? Please, please can you take me to the club? Archana and Shefali and all will be meeting to play tennis.”

  Prem looks at his daughter. Seventeen, captain of the Kinnaird tennis team, champion player and able to recite Shakespeare right from her pre-matriculation days at DAV School for Girls. He notes her grey cardigan worn over a matching salwar kameez, the long hair, shiny with oil, braided and pinned back with bobby pins. He thinks of the bright pink sweaters Sharada had knit for Nimmy when she was only a year old.

  “Only tennis?”

  Nimmy knows what her father is asking. “Only tennis, promise.”

  Three weeks ago, her batchmates at Kinnaird College were spotted coming out of the new Fearless Nadia movie with no teacher or mother or brother in sight. Lahore society is still torn over whether to treat this as a scandal or not. Nimmy defended the girls’ right to move freely around town until her mother began crying out of worry.

  Prem looks towards the living room. “Tell your Mummy and if she says you can, then I’ll take you.”

  Reheza is sipping her tea when Nimmy flies in like a grey butterfly. She greets Reheza, kisses her mother and receives permission to go play tennis.

  Let her be out of the house while she can, thinks Sharada, trying not to worry about Reheza’s assessing gaze.

  As the Packard 180 rumbles out of the driveway, Reheza puts her tumbler down. “I came from Mall Road area,” she says, making Sharada quiver. “Sachdev-Bibiji’s daughter-in-law had her seventh-month function.”

  Sachdev-Bibiji is Urmila Sachdev, widow of Pradeep Sachdev and recently retired head of Sachdev Cottons & Textiles. The family has fields and a mill along Canal Bank Road. Its products are sold from Lahore to Amritsar and exported from Karachi. Indian-grown cotton is much in demand these days. Even the rich have started wearing coarse khadi to show their support for Mahatma Gandhi. Also, the war has made it harder than ever to import fabric. Those Sachdev women are so rich that they wear expensive, mixed synthetic fabrics from abroad—georgettes and chiffon saris, not just cotton.

  At the seventh-month godh bharai Reheza attended, the pregnant daughter-in-law was dressed in Bengali Tussar silk, with gold patterns on a russet background. She glowed with jewellery as the invited women filled her pallu with sweets and wheat, and Reheza decorated her palms with henna flowers and symbols of fertility.

  Afterwards, Urmila took Reheza aside and asked: “You know the daughter of the woman who drives the grey car?”

  Reheza nodded and Urmila smiled.

  “A very good girl, I think. My own Roshna was with her at DAV School. They still play tennis together at the Punjab Club sometimes, enjoying so much and staying so late that her brother has to take the car and bring her back home. I mean Karan, of course, my younger son. Dilip is very busy now,” she nods at her daughter-in-law Shanti, “but Karan is very smart, you know, he manages everything, the factory and the little land that God has been kind enough to give us.”

  It is a lie, of course, a gentle fiction that Dilip can do anything to support his family and widowed mother. All of Lahore knows that the older Sachdev boy suffers from the heart weakness that carried off his father. There are many months when he can only lie in bed and struggle for breath while his limbs swell and lips turn blue. Luckily he was engaged before the worst began and the girl’s family agreed to continue with the rishtaa, continue the fiction that Dilip would one day shake off the weakness and be cured.

  These are acceptable fictions, like the stories told by the Sachdevs’ next-door neighbours, the Bakshis. Mohinder Bakshi likes to pretend that he comes from a well-off family but he bought his land after years in Uganda building the East African railway line for the British. Mohinder’s father was a labourer on land owned by Urmila’s father-in-law. Paramjit-Sahib gave Mohinder a loan to pay for his passage to East Africa.

  Such a good family making an offer for the only daughter of the Khoslas, and that too with immense respect.

  “I think it’s the Khosla daughter you mean, Bibiji?” Reheza said.

  “Yes, that’s right. Her mother is also a member of the Punjabi Hindu Women’s Association. We meet every now and then. Perhaps I should go to her house to pay my respects,” Urmila said.

  “Bibiji, they will come to you!” Reheza said. “Why not, such a good family, such a good boy!”

  “Perhaps you could go see if she would mind a visit?” Urmila said.r />
  “Mind? Why would they mind?” Reheza said, thinking that the Khoslas should be standing on one leg in excitement. Not every future mother-in-law would be so understanding, so ready to welcome a daughter-in-law known for rough-and-tumble sports and fearlessly driving her father’s car on the open streets of Lahore.

  But ten years of managing her husband’s property and factory has taught Urmila the value of modern attitudes over traditional.

  A traditional upbringing ensured that Urmila’s and her husband’s stars were matched by the horoscopes cast by venerable Brahmins. No horoscope warned her of the dark years in what should have been the best part of her married life.

  Pradeep Sachdev was bedridden for years before he finally passed away in 1940. Urmila managed everything, even riding the fields, shotgun in hand with the serving men, when there were rumours that Paramjit-Sahib’s cousin might seize his nephew’s inheritance.

  Karan was giving her a much-needed rest now, thank God, but in the event of a catastrophe in the future, Urmila wanted her sons to be with women who would do as she had done, ride the fields, look the mill workers in the eye and be a fair, respected mistress. Never mind the horoscopes, she wanted a more reliable idea of her future daughter-in-law’s strength.

  Her prayers were answered the day Karan came back from the Punjab Club with Roshna and a strange look on his face. It was on the tennis court that Karan Sachdev saw Nimita Khosla in action for the first time.

  One evening, when he came home from the mill and heard that his sister had not come home yet, he drove the family Ford to the Punjab Club to have a word with the people who let someone else’s daughter stay out until dusk.

  Walking towards the tennis court, he opened his mouth to call his sister. But the sound died in his throat as he saw her opponent laugh, raise her arm high and then smash the tennis ball over the net and beyond Roshna’s reach.

  It was the strength of that smash that caught Karan’s attention, the movement of the arm and the sound of the ball hitting the concrete court. Then another laugh, loud, free, uncaring of who heard it, a laugh of victory and complete happiness.