Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  Roshna is glad for the support of Nimmy-Didi’s hand. Perhaps it is the heat or the excitement but her legs are buckling beneath her.

  Didi squeezes her hand. “Don’t be scared. Nothing will happen.”

  Roshna almost believes it until they reach the lounge and see Pam-Auntyji and Sharada-Auntyji and the other two aunties discussing something with the waiter.

  “But what exactly—” Pam-Auntyji stops speaking on seeing Roshna. “Here you are. What happened to you?”

  “Nothing, Auntyji, I just tripped.”

  “Poor thing, sit here. Have a fresh lime and soda. One fresh lime and soda—no, wait, make it three? Three fresh limes and sodas.”

  Roshna sits next to Pam-Auntyji, Bhaiya on her other side. Nimmy-Didi goes around the table to her mother.

  “I was just saying,” Pam-Auntyji says, “why don’t we all have lunch here.”

  Nothing unusual in her words. When the aunties play bridge, it’s a three- or four-hour game and they usually break for lunch or tea, depending on when they started. But the cards on the table appear to have been thrown down, not carefully put away for a lunch break. Roshna is beginning to feel frightened again.

  “I think that’s a very good idea, Pam-Auntyji. Shall I ask for menus?” Bhaiya says.

  “Please do,” says Auntyji.

  Nimmy-Didi is telling her mother something. Sharada-Auntyji’s face goes absolutely still and she lifts her hand to stroke Didi’s hair.

  “What did you hear?” Roshna asks, unable to stop herself. “What was that?”

  Pam-Auntyji looks at Bhaiya. “You could hear it from the court?”

  “Hear what, Auntyji?” Roshna asks, irritated now because no one will tell her anything.

  “Beta, the waiter was saying that we should sit for a while and have lunch because there’s some shouting on the streets outside. Some trouble at the railway station and some local goondas making a scene.”

  “It’s because we’re near Mozang, the low-class area,” says Kaul-Auntyji. “It’s full of those people.” She doesn’t say the M-word but everyone can hear it. Muslim.

  Pam-Auntyji clucks her tongue. “It’s never been a problem before, who knew this sort of thing could happen?”

  “But what happened?”

  Pam-Auntyji inhales, and Roshna can tell she’s about to change the topic. “Please, Auntyji, what happened?”

  “Nothing, beta.” She is definitely lying. “Just some trouble at the railway station. Some fight, those people are always fighting.” She looks at Bhaiya. “Did you hear anything?”

  Bhaiya doesn’t speak for a while and Roshna knows it’s because he hates to lie. “Just the usual things. ‘Inquilaab Zindabaad,’ I think. That sort of thing.”

  Pam-Auntyji relaxes. “One of those Quit India marches again? It’ll be over in an hour and then we can all go home. Now, let’s get some menus.”

  Roshna leans back behind Pam-Auntyji’s back and tries to get Bhaiya to look her in the eye. He looks everywhere but at her, first raising his hand for the waiter and then asking all the ladies what they would like to eat. As the only man, it’s his duty to play host.

  Roshna knows he is deliberately avoiding her eye contact because she will ask him why he was lying earlier. It wasn’t “Inquilaab Zindabaad”, long live the revolution, she heard on the court. The word she heard, which is impossible to mix up with its opposite, was “murdabad”. Down with. Die.

  The word before it, however, was hard to make out. Was it “Pakistan”? Or “Hindustan”? Why would anyone scream “Hindustan Murdabad”, down with India?

  Roshna cannot think of a comforting truth to explain this. She wishes she could believe Bhaiya’s lie.

  5.

  Mrs Bakshi has her car and driver and will drop Mrs Kaul and Mrs Malhotra home from the club. “Roshna can come with me, beta, so you can take Mrs Khosla home,” she tells Karan.

  “Thank you, Auntyji,” Karan says. “Please tell Mummy I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  When the valet brings the Ford to the club entrance, Karan holds the back door open for Mrs Khosla. He sees her carefully arranged before closing it and repeating this service for Nimita, who takes the front seat, next to him.

  Nimita is not used to sitting in front with anyone but Mummy in the driver’s seat. She smooths her salwar kameez silently while Karan gets in and fastens his seatbelt.

  “Should we go to the courts first, Auntyji?” Karan asks.

  Mummy shakes her head. “I don’t want to bother Him at this time. Just take us home.”

  “Of course,” says Karan, engaging the first gear.

  Nimita looks out of the window. There is no one on the road, no errand boys, no servant women, no goats or cows. Even the shops they pass are shuttered.

  Only when they reach the undeveloped land separating Model Town from central Lahore does she see signs of life. As usual, labourers sleep under the scarce shade of a few trees.

  “They’ve called the army in,” Karan says.

  “Why should they call the army in?” Nimita asks but no one replies. The car picks up speed.

  When Karan drives up the road to the Khosla bungalow, everything seems absolutely normal. Ghanshyam runs to open the gate. Kanta-Bibi stands at the door to welcome them and asks: “Have you eaten? Lunch is ready. Some lassi, some nimbu paani?”

  Karan folds his hands. “Auntyji, please don’t mind but I should go home. Mummy will worry.”

  Sharada is torn between hospitality and understanding. “But beta, such a long drive here and back again. Have something.”

  “Nothing, Auntyji, thank you, I really must reach home. Roshna and Praji and Mummy will be waiting.”

  “Thank you for lunch,” Nimita says suddenly.

  Karan’s attention focuses on her.

  She spoke up because she felt left out of the conversation. Now with his eyes on hers, the hot summer air closes her throat and scalds her lungs. Each breath cracks like a tonga whip.

  “You didn’t eat much,” Karan says, then drops his eyes. “I mean, you’re welcome.”

  “No, I ate. It was a nice lunch,” Nimita says, feeling stupid.

  Karan coughs. “Well. Thank you.”

  He shifts his feet a little before saying: “Thank you for the game.”

  “You’re welcome,” Nimita says.

  “You play very well. Very well.”

  “Thank you.” She is breathless, probably remembering the exercise.

  “We,” he looks at his feet, “maybe we could…play again?”

  Nimita is silent. Karan looks at her, then at her mother and bobs his head. “Bye, Auntyji.” He heads out the door.

  Nimita watches him go, a strange feeling in her chest as though a bag of stones is evenly redistributing itself through her veins.

  Mummy speaks. “Don’t just stand there in the hall, Nimmy. Go change your clothes and wash your face and hands. I’m going to call your Daddy.”

  In India in 1944, roughly eighty thousand phone lines serve about fifty times that number of people. To own a phone line is a greater status symbol than land and wealth.

  The Khosla household rates a connection by virtue of Prem Khosla’s status as a barrister.

  The Sachdevs, a big business family, are still waiting for their home line. The factory has a telephone, of course, for business matters and urgent calls. The Sachdevs exchange news the usual way, through letters and telegraphs or by getting the errand boy to run over.

  When Mrs Khosla wishes to talk to her brother Charan in Simla, she picks up the receiver and listens for a dial tone. She sets her finger in the slot for zero and rotates the circle anticlockwise, releasing it to allow the phone to connect to an operator. “Trunk call to Simla please,” she says, following with her brother’s home number.

  It can take up to half an hour for the operator to ring back with the call. The operator first has to call the receiving party and check that they are willing to bear the extra phone charges.


  Dialling her husband’s legal office is much easier. Mrs Khosla knows the direct dialling code and can often get through without an operator. But today, when she picks up the receiver, the line hisses and crackles. Something has happened to agitate the telephone line. Maybe there is a storm somewhere, or the labourers completing the newer blocks have dug up the telephone wires again to sell on the black market.

  Nimita comes down from her room, washed and wearing a white cotton salwar kameez with silver circles in the weave. “Beta, will you try?” Sharada says, putting down the receiver and moving away from the phone.

  Sometimes only Nimita can get the phone to work. A line that hisses and spits and crackles for Sharada will miraculously quiet down when Nimmy fiddles with the apparatus. Perhaps it is her name, which means the inevitable, the fixed. If Nimita is meant to make a call, nothing, not even thunderstorms can stop her.

  Nimita is from “nimitta”, the ordained. As Brij Sahi said when her patri was read: “What is written for her will happen.” So strong is her destiny.

  Conversely, it will be equally difficult for her to change her destiny.

  Nimita comes to the phone, picks up the receiver, holds it in the air for a second, then puts it down hard. She pokes and pulls at the wire connections for a while.

  The next time she picks up the receiver and puts it to her ear, she smiles. She dials her father’s office number, which she knows by heart, slowly, lovingly, her finger gently turning the spring-loaded rotary dial and releasing it four times. Sharada waits, watching her daughter.

  Nimmy would make such a good engineer, she thinks suddenly. A phone engineer. They exist, don’t they? Telecommunications engineers, like Mrs Sehgal’s husband, who ensured the Sehgals got a phone even though no one they know has one, apart from the Khoslas.

  Suddenly, Sharada is convinced her daughter’s destiny could be greater than even she has imagined. What if we don’t marry her off? What if we send her to engineering college? But the world is a dark and terrible jungle for innocent young girls. To send Nimmy away, unmarried, is impossible.

  “It’s ringing,” Nimita says, breaking her mother out of the daydream.

  Sharada waits in the silence, Nimita’s expression telling her exactly what is happening. Ten rings and then it disconnects. There is no one in Prem’s office to pick up the phone. Is that good news or bad? Does that mean court is going on as usual or that He is on His way home?

  “I’ll try again,” Nimita says and her mother holds up a hand.

  “Never mind, beta. Let’s just wait for a while.”

  “Shall I turn on the radio?”

  Sharada hesitates. “If there’s some classical music then all right, otherwise let’s sit quietly.”

  Nimita fiddles with the tuning knob for a while. The volume jumps before she can control it. “…contrary to reports of the Bluff and Bluster Corporation, our valiant Indian National Army still holds Imphal…”

  “How do you always get that station?” Sharada asks. The Azad Hind Fauj broadcasting from God knows where.

  “I don’t know,” Nimita says, turning the knob quickly. They hear a sitar playing and then a soft female voice announces: “Your afternoon hour of classical music on All India Radio.”

  The sitar and tablas play counterpoint to the women’s thoughts as they sit on separate cushioned sofas, watching the sunlight stream in through the windows, greenish through the filter of the trees outside.

  Sharada worries that her husband will not return home in time for curfew.

  Nimita admits to herself that she is beginning to not-quite-dislike Karan Sachdev. He can’t play tennis, but she knows they shared a special moment today as they both stood near the wall of the tennis court and heard the shouts of “Pakistan Murdabad” and “Hindu Dharma Murdabad”. She replays in her mind how they had looked at each other, recognised each other’s fear and come to the silent understanding that Roshna, the baby, would have to be protected.

  The fact that they shared a secret seemed to create an invisible bond between them.

  But mixed with Nimita’s near-liking for Karan is the dismal realisation that Roorkee and adventure are farther away than ever. She does not have the energy to fight her parents and upset this rishtaa and demand to be sent away to study. Not now.

  Tyres scrape and Nimita turns her head in sync with Sharada. “Daddy has come,” they both say and get up to go to the door.

  “You’re home,” Sharada says as Prem enters, handing his briefcase to Bibi. “What is the news? Is there curfew?”

  “How did you know?” Prem says.

  “We were at the Punjab Club this morning. Roshna came and insisted on a game of tennis.”

  “My God,” Prem says, rubbing his chin. “Let me wash my hands first.”

  Prem interrogates Sharada and Nimita on their morning’s activities while scraping the bottom of a bowl of yogurt. He relaxes on hearing that Karan brought them home.

  “Very good. Good boy,” Prem says, his eyes twinkling as he looks at his daughter. “What a good brother to take his sister out for tennis on a Friday morning.”

  Nimita looks at the table.

  “Now you tell us, ji, what have you heard?” Sharada asks.

  Prem loses his smile. “Let me wash my hands again.” He does and returns to the table.

  “Something…very bad happened,” he says finally. “There were some boys, stupid young men, who decided to make a tamasha at the railway station.” His voice trails off and he shakes his head.

  “Very stupid boys. But who can say who was to blame? Apparently that Jinnah came to Forman Christian College and said, you know what he always says, about Pakistan and how Hindus and Muslims can’t live together. Apparently some of the students were very insulted and they went to the railway station to tell him that. Very stupid.”

  Nimita listens, trying to picture it. Angry boys her age going to rebuke an elder, even an elder in the wrong, is completely against Punjabi culture. But in their place she would have wanted to do the same.

  “Some policemen tried to—well, I don’t know. Mr Qureshi says they were probably trying to control the situation. Others are saying they took out lathis to beat the boys. So stones were thrown. Naturally it became a huge fight. And one policeman was killed.”

  Sharada gasps. Nimita closes her eyes. She thinks of that policeman with the huge moustache who helped her and Mummy the day the Packard stopped on the middle of Mall Road. He had watched over the car until Chand Mechanic came to repair it, Chand Mechanic who has just been arrested, it was in the papers today, for selling stolen army petrol and adulterating it.

  Not that she knew where the fuel in their Packard came from. She only knows how to drive the car after Daddy gets it filled.

  “They’re saying the boy who threw the stone was a Hindu, you know, the Malhotra’s younger son. The policeman was a Muslim.” Most of the policemen in Lahore, including the man who helped them that day, are Muslim. Most of the army men are Hindu or Sikh, though. It only occurs to Nimita now.

  “What will happen now?” she asks.

  Prem rubs his face. “For now, curfew. Later,” he shrugs. “Mr Malhotra will do something.”

  Sharada gets up. “I’ll see what we have for tomorrow,” she says, hoping they are well-stocked with vegetables. The traders may not come for a few days.

  “Daddy,” Nimita says, “if the policeman had been a Hindu and the boy a Hindu, or both had been Muslim, would there still be curfew?”

  Prem looks at his daughter. He is proud of her intelligence but sometimes she should be quiet rather than forcing him to think about things he would rather not.

  Confusion continues in Lahore for the next two days. Even the market in Model Town is shut on Saturday, unusual for the traders.

  On Sunday, Prem sends Chandu out to a few friends’ homes. On receiving their messages, he disappears for hours, returning home only after Nimita has eaten and is preparing to sleep.

  On Monday morning, her paren
ts tell her to dress nicely. “We have to thank Karan for taking such good care of us,” Mummy says.

  Nimita does not entirely mind. She wears her dark green salwar kameez with the yellow embroidery and plaits her hair back with her own best bobby pins, which have little flowers on the ends. She wears matching bangles and arranges her chunni carefully.

  “Very nice,” Mummy says but her observant eyes are a little sad.

  The drive into central Lahore appears normal. There are people on the streets, a few shops still shuttered but many others are open for business. Roshna comes running out to greet them as the Khoslas’ grey Packard pulls into the Sachdev driveway. Urmila-Auntyji stands in the door behind her.

  “Forgive us for dropping in like this,” Prem says, hands folded, “but I had to come and thank you for taking such good care of my daughter.”

  “What are you saying, Bhai Sahib, isn’t she our daughter too?” Urmila-Auntyji folds her hands in turn and greets Sharada, then enfolds Nimita in an embrace. “Look at this gori-chitti, so beautiful. What a good thing Karan hasn’t left for office yet.”

  Nimita looks at her feet, hating herself for her jumping heart.

  Roshna pulls at Nimita’s hand. “Didi, no Bhabhi, come in, come in.”

  Inside the sitting room, Nimita’s other hand is taken by Shanti-Bhabhi, who gives Tony-Baba to the servant and refuses to let Nimita touch her feet. They sit on diwans, Roshna and Urmila-Auntyji next to Nimita and Sharada. Prem folds his hands before Karan’s Dilip-Praji, who was lying on a diwan in the far corner but sits up with the help of his wife and several cushions.

  The Sachdev house’s bibi brings nimbu paani and fresh guavas from the garden. After the traditional three refusals, Prem and Sharada take a sip. Nimita holds her own glass, glad for something to do as Karan enters the room.

  Prem rises as he does. “Beta, how can I thank you?”

  Karan touches his feet, mumbling incoherently.

  “Bless you, beta. Come sit,” Prem says.

  Karan takes a seat next to his future father-in-law, directly opposite his future wife. Nimita steals one look at him, catches him not looking at her and then wishes the floor would open to swallow her. Or that she could dare to pick the ice chips from her glass and roll them on her burning cheeks.