Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  Club facilities are only open to members’ children above the age of 12, of course, and if accompanied by an adult. As for the memsahibs, the club has been open to women since the Suffragette Movement gave the dear things the vote. Ladies just prefer to use the facilities during daylight hours, and mostly for tennis or bridge or high tea in the lounge rather than, say, drinks at the bar or supper in the dining room.

  About fifty Indian families have joined the Punjab Club since the offer was first made to Feroze Damania. These families circulate at the club at least twice a month to parade their continued membership. So when Karan escorts his sister, his future mother-in-law and future bride into the club, Mrs Khosla immediately spots women of her acquaintance.

  She simply has to greet them. Not all these acquaintances are friends, which makes it even more delicious to have her future son-in-law in tow.

  About to enter the card room for a rubber or two of bridge, Mrs Kaul, Mrs Sinha, Mrs Bakshi and Mrs Malhotra stop on seeing the family party.

  “Look who’s here,” says Mrs Kaul, baring her teeth. “Sharada, you’re looking too lovely, and Nimita beta, very nice. You’re not going to play tennis? The sun is so strong, you’ll lose your beautiful colour.”

  “The court is quite shady I think, Kamla,” says Mrs Khosla. “You know Nimita’s friend Roshna? And her brother Karan?” She gains full marks for not saying “my future son-in-law”, neatly showing that she feels no great need to show off her daughter’s catch. Quite unlike Mrs Kaul, who paraded her Archana’s doctor fiancé, now husband, around the club earlier this year.

  “But what will you do, Sharadaji, play with the young ones? Come join us,” says Mrs Bakshi. Sensible of the great debt her husband owes to the Sachdevs, she has always been fond of Karan and Roshna and is prepared to like Nimita.

  “No, no, me and bridge,” lies Sharada, who can spend four hours on the game but is also concerned about leaving her daughter and future son-in-law alone.

  “Look who’s talking! You won last time we played. You have to give me a chance to win that back,” says Mrs Malhotra.

  “Don’t worry about the children, Karan will look after Roshna and Nimita, won’t you beta?” says Mrs Bakshi.

  “Yes, Pam-Auntyji,” mumbles Karan, who has grown up calling Pramila Bakshi by this name.

  “See? Nothing to worry about,” says Mrs Bakshi. “Tell you what, rather than go into that stuffy bridge room, let’s get the waiter to set up a table at the spectators’ lounge here. Whoever is sitting out can relax and watch the children play.”

  By noon in the summer months in Lahore, the air is a sheet of fire drawn slowly, shallowly into tender lungs. The already volatile temperaments of Lahorias reach boiling point.

  The rest of India simmers too.

  While the British battle the Japanese forces entrenched in Malaya and Rangoon, they also battle a guerilla war on Indian soil: the Quit India Movement. In August 1942, key Indian politicians uttered a single slogan “Do or Die!” and were immediately imprisoned for anti-wartime activity. Though the movement has no head, a thousand arms act independently. Saboteurs blow up railway lines, cut telegraph wires or organise morchas in the streets. As the forces of law head in one direction to quell the disarray, another rabble rises hundreds of kilometres away.

  Only Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League cohorts openly pledge wartime support to the British. While Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of the rival Congress Party are locked up, Jinnah roams free, reminding voters of a cause greater than freedom from British rule.

  This is the cause of Pakistan, the pure state, the separate free state for Muslims. India will not achieve independence without the creation of this state, Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, tells students at Forman Christian College in Lahore.

  “Having Hindus and Muslims live together will be absolutely fatal,” he says, speaking for the benefit of the reporter from the Dawn newspaper also in the audience.

  “The creation of Pakistan is not just for the protection of Muslims. It will mean freedom for both Hindus and Muslims,” Jinnah adds.

  Many of the students stiffen, conscious of their friends looking in from the back of the hall: Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and even two Jews.

  One does not back-talk an elder in the Punjab. So the students listen, quietly applaud and later stream sheepishly out of the hall, ignoring three of their fellows who stand blocking the exit: Virendra Tiwana, Jagan Malhotra and Sandy Pereira.

  Only their friend Imtiaz Khan stops to greet them, despite his embarrassment.

  Imtiaz’s father, Rahmatullah Khan, is a police inspector and a good friend of people like Prem Khosla, Manohar Kaul and Vikram Tiwana. Until today, Imtiaz and Virendra were also friends.

  Virendra claps slowly and loudly in response to Imtiaz’s greeting.

  “Very nice,” he says. “Lovely speech.”

  Imtiaz flushes but before he can respond, Professors Saha and Kingsley come forward to separate the youths. They know how these “discussions” go. First, voices are raised, then fists and then it’s torn draperies and rustication and having to stand firm when the honourable, highly placed parents of the students come to plead for “understanding” and reinstatement of the rascals.

  Obedient again today to an elder’s wishes, the disgruntled students leave the college and seek relief at Kesri Drink Shop in Anarkali Bazaar. They order lassi and nurse both their hurt pride and filled tumblers that warm as the sun climbs.

  “He comes to our place and insults us,” Virendra says for the fifth time.

  This is the second blow to his sensitive ego. Some weeks ago, his mother attended a meeting of the Punjabi Hindu Women’s Association, planning to have a word with her good friend Sharada about a match between their two children.

  That same day, Mrs Khosla distributed fresh mithai to celebrate the engagement of her daughter to the second son of the Sachdevs.

  “Never mind, beta,” his mother said on her return from the meeting. “That girl is very smart, of course, but dark with all that tennis playing. I will find a more beautiful daughter-in-law for my darling.”

  Virendra agreed, but secretly thought it very sly of Nimita to smile at him when he returned her tennis balls, when all the while she had known that she was someone else’s property!

  Now Imtiaz had betrayed him too. Not even sweet lassi could rinse the bitter taste from his mouth.

  Imtiaz is elsewhere, probably Bhagwan Das Dairy or that fancy coffee shop near Lawrence Gardens. A true friend would have followed Virendra and bought him a drink.

  “There is a huge parade of them at the railway station now,” says Sandy Pereira. “The youth corps or whatever they call themselves. Out in formation with their green flags to send off their Quaid-e-Azam.”

  “Where is he going?” asks Jagan Malhotra.

  “I’m not his secretary,” says Sandy. “Ask Imtiaz.”

  Virendra slams his tumbler down. “Let’s go give him a sendoff too.”

  His friends look at him.

  “No, let’s go give him a proper sendoff. Or are you afraid?”

  Those are fighting words in the Punjab at any time. Fuelled by lassi, enraged by the heat, the three young men marshal some of their other friends who are also at Kesri’s and set off for the railway station.

  They bear no banners, no flags. Jagan points this out to his friends.

  “So we’ll shout loud enough that they know who we are,” Virendra says.

  “Shout what?”

  “What else? Pakistan Murdabad! Jinnah Murdabad!” Down with Pakistan! Down with Jinnah!

  Their route from Kesri’s to the railway station passes through predominantly Hindu neighbourhoods. The ten young men soon find their numbers doubled, then trebled. Ragged children skip with them, laughing and holding their hands out for alms. Their presence distracts Virendra from the pride-restoring excitement of fifty strangers responding with “Murdabad!” to his call.

  As the band bears down on the railway
station, the men behind him push forward. Virendra wants to slow down but they won’t stop. Hundreds of people are assembled outside the station to either see off the Quaid-e-Azam or watch others do it.

  Virendra slows down. Jagan bumps into him. Sandy cuts off mid-“murdabad” to say “Oy!”

  Directly before the group, ten steps away, is a row of Muslim League youth in drill formation. They wear pure white, with green sashes. Their crisp appearance is such a contrast to the motley gang behind Virendra that it maddens him, almost as much as the taste of his own fear.

  “What happened?” someone behind Virendra asks. He tries to answer but his mouth is dry. Dry because of anger, he tells himself. Not fear.

  He tries to speak again and coughs in the dry heat. He looks around for Imtiaz or other familiar faces but all he can register in the heat shimmer is the sea of green-and-white clothing.

  Sandy is shorter than Virendra and wears spectacles, so perhaps he has not registered the possible opposition to their rally. “… Murdabad!” he shouts, swallowing the first word but gaining confidence on the second.

  Cursing himself for not being the first to say it, Virendra repeats the cry and so does his band.

  The crowd turns to look at them.

  Later, there will be varied reports of what exactly happened. It is known that the young Muslim League started to move forward to engage the young Hindu men, but they were a few steps behind the police officers on security duty.

  Some watchers will say policemen with some experience recognised a lit fuse and moved forward to put it out.

  But Jagan Malhotra’s father will tell Inspector Khan: “Our sons were deliberately attacked.”

  It is true that six khaki-clad officers come between the two groups of youths and push back Virendra and his gang. It looks aggressive but it was perhaps for their protection from the larger Muslim horde.

  Three police officers are seen remonstrating with Virendra and his friends. Another three hold their hands out, palms forward, in the direction of the young Muslim League.

  At this point, someone throws a stone.

  Perhaps it is one of the children in Virendra’s train. Perhaps it is one of the nameless men they picked up on their half-hour march towards the station.

  Perhaps it is Jagan, as Virendra will later say.

  The stone lands and the space outside the station explodes in fists, slogans and police lathis wielded without discrimination.

  The Quaid-e-Azam will read all about it in the newspaper, his speech at Forman Christian College relegated to a sidebar alongside the main headline: “Four killed, 16 injured in Rail Stn Riot”.

  Two are trampled in the melee, a third is caught by a police lathi and kicked to death. It is the fourth that results in cavalry officers being called in to enforce curfew. Constable Dil Aziz, one of the six officers on security duty at Lahore Railway Station, is caught in the barrage of stones. He falls facing the Muslim League so it is assumed he is killed from behind by a member of the Hindu brigade. That is the story his enraged brothers-in-law will spread around the Muslim-majority area of Mozang. His widow and the mother of his four children will sit too numb to speak or cry.

  “Serving, love–all,” calls Roshna, deeply thrilled. She thinks it was her idea to invite Nimita-Didi—no, Bhabhi—onto the court and that blushing Karan-Bhaiya had to be dragged along.

  She forgets that it was Karan who repeatedly said she should arrange a game.

  Roshna loves romance. She devours Georgette Heyer’s love stories or the occasional Mills & Boon novel sneaked from Mummy’s bedside table. Mummy and she both enjoy movies and go regularly to Deepak Theatre to watch the new releases, in Punjabi or Urdu or Hindi.

  Dilip-Praji disapproved at first but Mummy said: “Don’t be silly” because Deepak Theatre has a separate balcony with a separate entrance just for ladies, what could be more proper?

  Reel romance is nothing compared to this real-life drama where she, Roshna, has introduced Karan-Bhaiya to the love of his life. It is a match from heaven, one that will make bold, stylish Nimita-Didi part of Roshna’s family, a forever source of gossip and play.

  Often she thinks: “When Nimmy-Didi shares my room, she can have the left half of the almirah for her clothes and maybe she’ll let me borrow some of them.” Then she remembers that it is Nimmy-Bhabhi and her bhabhi who will share the third biggest bedroom with Karan-Bhaiya. Mummy is having the room painted a nice cream colour. Two carpenters are building a new teakwood box-bed with plenty of storage space under the mattress board.

  The wedding will be in December, a year from the first time Karan-Bhaiya saw Nimmy-Didi on the court. The two lovebirds have only ever seen each other twice before the roka and not even once since then, as far as Roshna is aware.

  Both Nimmy-Didi and Karan-Bhaiya must be burning with frustration, even if they are impossible to tease about this. So Roshna has decided to be the trusted friend of the traditional songs and arrange a meeting between lovers.

  “Love–fifteen!” calls Karan-Bhaiya. Roshna needs to concentrate on the game. Running after the ball and trying to hit it, she trips and falls.

  “Are you okay?” calls Bhaiya, completely forgetting to call out the score.

  Roshna is absolutely fine but she makes a big face and gets up slowly. “I think I hurt my foot, Bhaiya.”

  Nimmy-Didi puts her racket down. “Let’s go back to the lounge.”

  “No, no, I want to play,” Roshna says. She hates to lose, Nimmy-Didi knows this.

  She takes a step and pretends the leg can’t support her. “Ow!”

  “You’re hurt, Roshna,” Nimmy-Didi says, coming around the net.

  “But I want to play! I don’t want to lose.”

  “I’ll let you win then.”

  “No, the score is love–fifteen.”

  “Love–thirty,” Karan-Bhaiya says from behind Roshna. She sags onto him.

  “That’s my worst score.” It really is. Roshna usually gives Nimmy-Didi a better game at the start. “One more point and I would have lost.”

  “But I’m letting you win.”

  “I want to win or lose on my own! Tell her, Bhaiya!”

  “Maybe,” he says, “maybe I could finish the game for Roshna?” Such a slowpoke!

  “Oh, yes!” Roshna claps her hands and skips once. Then, remembering, she sags onto her brother’s chest again. “Ow!”

  Nimmy-Didi taps her left palm with her racquet a few times. “All right,” she says, not looking at Bhaiya or Roshna.

  “Come sit on the side, Roshna,” Karan says, helping her across the court. “By the way,” he adds, as she sits on the bench with his help, “make up your mind about which leg is hurt before we go back to the lounge.”

  Roshna giggles as he heads back onto the court. He’s looking very handsome in his white pants and shirt and visor cap. She wishes she had the Agfa to photograph him like this, so good-looking as he raises his racquet and throws the ball.

  Nimmy-Didi must think so too, because her face is absolutely like stone, like she doesn’t want to show any expression. Roshna knows this is for society and decency’s sake. She wishes her friend could relax in front of her.

  “Serving,” Karan says and the game is on.

  Except it isn’t.

  One thing Roshna has forgotten is that with factory work and all the other work Bhaiya has to do, it has been a very long time since he has played tennis. Nimmy-Didi plays to win, with smash hits and return volleys that have poor Bhaiya running all over the court and sweating.

  Roshna had imagined gentle hits and shy smiles, laughter and coy glances with each bounce of the ball. Instead, Bhaiya is running so hard he can barely breathe. Nimmy-Didi treats the ball like an enemy, smashing it away from her violently.

  She misjudges a return. The ball drops heavily into her side of the court.

  Bhaiya straightens up, panting.

  When neither Bhaiya nor Didi say anything, Roshna calls: “Fifteen–forty.”

 
They turn to look at her and then back at the ball.

  Aren’t you going to pick it up? Roshna is afraid to ask. The silence around them has changed.

  There is a buzzing sound in the air, like a hive of bees coming towards them at full speed, then retreating, then rushing forward again. The sound changes even as Roshna tries to identify it. It is the roar of an audience at the race course, where Karan-Bhaiya took her once, or the roar of the men at Deepak Theatre if the film stops suddenly. Roshna remembers how the reel broke just as the hero was about to die and everyone, even Mummy, hooted and shouted: “What is this?”

  “What is this?” Nimmy-Didi says, walking towards the back of the tennis court. There is a garden between the end of the court and the compound wall of the Punjab Club, so noise from the outside usually does not disturb members. What could be so loud that Roshna can hear it from her bench?

  Bhaiya stands with Nimmy-Didi at the end of the court and Roshna is suddenly afraid for them, afraid that the buzzing from outside will break through the walls of the club and the tennis court and sweep them both away, like a river breaking its banks.

  That’s what it sounds like, a river, she thinks. She thinks this because she has never heard an army on the march.

  Karan-Bhaiya is very good at not showing what he feels. Only those like Roshna, who love him, can read him easily by the tilt of his chin, the look in his eyes. Bhaiya’s face is absolutely smooth now. That is how Roshna knows something is wrong, because even though he tells her everything is fine, he continues to tap his thigh with his racquet.

  She’s opening her mouth to ask: “What did you hear?” when Nimmy-Didi holds out her hand. “It’s very hot. Shall we go in to lunch? We’ll continue the game some other day.”