Nimita's Place

  It is Nimita who goes to the wall and turns on the radio, tuning the RCA Victor to All India Radio. Classical hour is ending, film-song hour about to begin.

  “Roshna, Mummyji loved to hear you sing,” she says. “You know this song, don’t you? I think Mummyji would still like to hear you sing.”

  5.

  “I’m banning newspapers from this house. Give that to me.” Nimita grabs at the day’s issue of the Tribune. Karan is reading over tea on the lawn, the date of the paper, 16 September 1946, partly in the shade of the giant wedding shamiana. He leans back to avoid her fingers and plants a kiss on Urmila-Baby’s cheek. She laughs and claps her hands. Eight months old and already her father’s heart.

  Torn between affection and putting the paper with its inauspicious front page away, Nimita calls for Najma.

  “Take Baby, please,” she tells the woman who comes out of the house. Free of her child, Nimita’s next grab for the paper is successful. She folds it the wrong way so nobody can see the headlines: “Calcutta Bloodbath Continues / Hundreds Killed since Direct Action Day”.

  Below that is a smaller news article on the Muslim Khaksar and Hindu RSS being separated by the police during rival marches, and the formation of the all-Sikh Akal Sena to “protect the rights of the Sikhs in Lahore”.

  Within weeks of the Congress and Muslim League shaking hands in Simla and agreeing on the handover of power from Britain to India, both parties are fighting their bloodiest battle yet.

  It starts in Calcutta. Three years after the famine that had Hindu and Muslim corpses burning atop the same pyres—placed there by British officers trying to clear the streets of the dead—bands of paid thugs wearing green armbands smash the shopfronts of Hindu businesses.

  Within hours, the Hindus retaliate, grabbing sticks and kerosene lamps and knives and attacking, not the bands of raiding thugs, but the homes of their Muslim neighbours. News of this spreads. Bombay province explodes, then Hyderabad, then Bihar, every city where people who call God by one name encounter those who use another. Even neighbours are not safe from each other. Reports of atrocities pile up day by day, like the corpses in the streets.

  Nimita is sick of the headlines. “Put this paper away,” she tells Najma, sparing a grateful thought that the woman can’t read English.

  A distant call from inside the house. “Haanji,” Nimita shouts back. Roshna is probably not yet awake and it is almost time for her ceremonial bath. There are the guests to be fed and entertained, baskets of mithai and dried fruit and saris to be counted, all Roshna’s packing to be reassessed. The hired cooks must be supervised, the workers must be told to freshen the garlands of flowers with water. It is still summer-hot and the decorations shouldn’t wilt before the evening.

  Nimita runs through the guest list in her mind while walking quickly back to the house, Najma following her with Urmila-Baby in her arms. Thank God for Najma.

  Who would have thought that quiet, dark sweeper woman would be such a help and treasure? In the last eight months, she has become Urmila-Baby’s minder and Nimita’s right hand, to the great disgust of Shukla-Bibi. But Najma can amuse Urmila-Baby for hours with songs and games. When Nimita tells her to do something, she relays instructions clearly and stands with hands folded until the work is done.

  Shukla-Bibi gets upset but Nimita can’t deny Najma trips to Anarkali Bazaar to buy thread or needles, or get the shoes repaired, or take delivery of the clothes bought by the dhobi. Little things that Shukla-Bibi doesn’t have time to handle and that Najma can do without upsetting the purity/pollution taboos too much.

  Najma still cooks separately in her new brick room, which she shares with Shabbo and Kabir but tonight, she, like Radheshyam and Shukla-Bibi, will eat from the communal feast. Tonight every important family in Lahore is coming for Roshna’s wedding. The Kauls, the Malhotras, the Bakshis, the Chopras, the Sinhas, the Qureshis, the Damanias, the Batliwalas, the Khans. Even Dr Gopi Chand Bhargava of the Congress Party, who is probably going to be chief minister of Punjab one day. Roshna is marrying into the family of his distant cousin.

  Again, Nimita tallies the number of garlands that must be prepared for the honoured guests, goes through the list of gifts that must be handed over, the keys of the household jingling at her waist. For the last year she has carried them in place of Shanti-Bhabhi. This began when Urmila-Mummyji passed away and Bhabhi was too busy with Dilip-Praji’s health. Dilip-Praji is somewhat better now, but Bhabhi is content to let someone else hold the keys. She took them back for the first three months of Urmila-Baby’s life, but when Nimita was better and adjusted to the baby, Bhabhi quietly handed the keys to Nimita again.

  There is a reason for this that neither Nimita nor Karan like to think about. Dilip-Praji is increasingly weak and pale, sleeping more through the days and waking fitfully at night. Dr Iqbal had said last year only that a Delhi specialist was their best hope. Shanti-Bhabhi is from Delhi, her brother a doctor. It is obvious that Dilip-Praji and she must go to Delhi but no one wants to ask when they will return—or if they even will.

  “Do you know how thankful I am that you came to our house?” Shanti-Bhabhi told Nimita one day while Dilip-Praji was fiddling with the radio, trying to adjust the internal antenna according to instructions in the latest Radio & Telegraph. Praji spends the most time with the radio nowadays. Nimita has other things to fix, such as the day’s menu, the servants’ fights, the buttons that keep bursting off Karan’s cuffs because he rolls his sleeves up so energetically when thinking.

  Even Roshna’s marriage comes from the Khosla side, Karan and Praji relieved to turn responsibility over to Sharada Khosla. Roshna never really got into her BA at Kinnaird. Maybe they should have listened to her childish demand to study music but Urmila-Mummyji had said: “Will you be a radio singer? No, no, a BA is the thing.” No one can go against the wishes of a dead mother, not even Roshna, who sits at the feet of the RCA Victor during film-song hour as if it were her guru.

  Pam-Auntyji next door has two sons, but how could Roshna marry into a family whose grandfather once served hers?

  When Mrs Malhotra came to see Urmila-Baby after she was born, she spent lunch and the afternoon talking about her eldest son and daughter-in-law, who are moving back to Hong Kong with their daughter. The younger boy, Jagan, will probably go there, too, to work with his brother and now they are looking for a suitable match for him.

  Next came Mrs Tiwana, who mentioned that her Virendra is finishing his BA at Saint Stephen’s College in Delhi and will go into business with his uncle, so now they are looking for a suitable match for him.

  While Jagan is a good boy, all Lahore remembers he spent those nights in jail after the railway station incident and no one wants Roshna to spend the rest of her life in Hong Kong. And Virendra? “All Lahore knows what he did the last time. That is not what we want for our little sister,” Shanti-Bhabhi said to Dilip-Praji and Nimita and Karan. They agreed. Roshna was not in the room.

  What a blessing that Nimita’s Charan-Mamaji was sent to Bombay in February. There, he met an old friend from academy, Lalit Bhargava, now a doctor and a full colonel with an eligible bachelor son named Anand.

  Bombay, where all the Hindi movies are made, such a centre for film music and culture that even Zohra Sehgal, that beautiful Muslim actress from the Punjab, has moved there with her Hindu husband. Roshna fell in love with the idea of moving to Bombay even before seeing the photo of Anand, a tall, fair boy with a shy smile. Doing his medical too and a very modern boy from a very modern family. No mention of dowry at all, only “let her come to us in her clothes”.

  Very properly said but the past five months have been an agony of shopping and sewing. Bombay people are not as fashion-conscious as Lahorias but Roshna’s wedding will be done properly so nobody says the sisters-in-law took advantage of a motherless girl.

  Nimita finds herself in the strange position of dividing up Urmila-Mummyji’s jewellery. Shanti-Bhabhi and Roshna insist she would know best what Mummy
ji would have wanted to go to whom. In desperation Nimita calls in her own mother.

  Mummy insists that she favour the other two women in the division of assets. “So no one can say anything later,” she explains. Roshna may now hang on Nimita’s neck and cry, saying she wants nothing of her mother’s jewellery, anything Bhabhi says is fine, but some day she will have daughters too and must not think she was badly used.

  Poor sensitive Roshna, alternately laughing in joy, anticipating her new life, and then in the next moment crying, swearing she can never leave this house where she grew up, where Mummyji died. Roshna, the only other real tennis player in the family. Who will play with Nimita after she leaves?

  Roshna, who came dressed like a pink-and-yellow butterfly when Nimita had her hands filled with mehendi and who now sleeps in her room with limbs covered in dark, beautiful flowers and squares neatly filled in by Reheza Sheikh.

  Roshna must not see the papers today. She does not need any reminders of last week.

  Thinking of Roopa-Didi’s matter-of-fact chats about marriage and sex, Nimita decided to take Roshna for a movie at Regal Theatre as a prelude to a cosy late night conversation, where she could deal with the questions Roshna must be thinking about.

  The movie she chose was Shahjahan, the romantic love story of the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal for the love of his wife Mumtaz. As the emperor on screen sang of his dream woman, Nimita heard a strange sound beneath the music.

  The lights came on as the projectionist changed reels and the sound became more obvious, warring chants she remembered from two years ago on the tennis court of the Punjab Club, back when Karan was an opponent, not her husband and father of her child.

  The lights flickered off, dots flashed on the giant screen and kept on flashing. The viewers in the lower rows of seats began stamping and clapping as no lovelorn emperor reappeared. Even the women’s balcony erupted, Roshna shouting loudest of all.

  Finally the picture began showing again and the audience quietened. Nimita listened for the sounds from the street but nothing could be heard above the movie dialogue.

  Coming out of the theatre, Nimita and Roshna saw police on the streets and Karan waiting for them with the car. “You came early, Bhaiya?” Roshna asked, and his face changed to that expression Nimita saw once before on the tennis court two years ago. Again he looked at her and she at him but this time Roshna was no longer a child to be protected.

  “There was a riot. Some people marched through the bazaar. No more movies for some time,” he said, a statement, not a request.

  Nimita reached back and clasped Roshna’s cold hand, thinking her sister-in-law had confronted too many realities that night and another would have to do for that bedroom chat. Wondering, did the projectionist deliberately delay the picture to annoy the crowd and drown out the sounds from the street?

  Next day the Tribune reported that a mob tried to attack a theatre in Calcutta and the owner barricaded the doors and was nearly burnt alive before rescuers got him out.

  The memory of that night kept Nimita moving restlessly at night, checking and double-checking the doors, lying awake for hours in her bedroom and forcing herself not to go to the window or the roof and look out.

  She realises now why Urmila-Mummyji took so long to sleep at night, what was the point of those long chats when she asked Nimita the whereabouts of every member of the family. She knows now. It is the instinct to protect what is yours, to gather the loved ones close, barricade the doors and pray the demons outside will not get in.

  Nimita goes up to Roshna’s room but hesitates. Let her sleep. This will be a long day.

  “Nimmy?” Mummy comes towards her. “The guests should be awake now. See if your bhabhis or Meenaji need anything.”

  Nimita takes a deep breath and knocks on the guest-room door. Meena-Maasiji, Urmila-Mummyji’s elder sister has come from Delhi with her colourless husband Prashant-Maasadji, three sons Ronty (Raunak), Shonty (Shaunat), Kuku (Kailash) and their wives Monty (Monita), Sweetie (Sushila) and Kitty (Usha). Nimita calls the men Praji and the women Bhabhi with all the respect tradition demands and none that they have earned themselves. Not their fault, perhaps, Meena-Maasiji keeps the children under her thumb. The sons work in the father’s accounting business, the daughters-in-law compete publicly for their mother-in-law’s favour, though Nimita suspects them of plotting her death in secret.

  After a week of Meena-Maasiji’s orders, she would gladly help them with the murder. “Good morning, beta, just woke up?” Meena-Maasiji says as Nimita enters her room. “Is Roshna still sleeping? Not good, na, time for her to rise and shine.”

  “Roshna is doing puja,” Nimita lies splendidly. A very appropriate thing for a young girl to do on the day of her wedding so Meena-Maasiji finds something else to complain about.

  “Beta, can you get us a hot cup of tea? He,” she prods her silent, cup-holding husband, “can’t have tea unless it’s really hot.”

  “Haanji,” Nimita says, thinking, why don’t you come down to the dining room where breakfast is ready to be served instead of making the servants run up and down on the day your niece is getting married? “Breakfast is ready whenever you like, Maasiji.”

  “Okay, we’ll come down,” Prashant-Maasadji says kindly, then shuts up when his wife gives him a look.

  “We’ll come after tea, haan beta? Hot cup please.”

  “Haanji,” Nimita says, smiling pleasantly. She does not know why Dilip-Praji and Karan and Roshna adore Meena-Maasiji. Even during the mourning period last year, it was the Sachdev household dancing attendance on her, the person who had supposedly come to support the bereaved.

  Besides, Nimita hasn’t forgiven Maasiji for the first thing she said on seeing Urmila-Baby. “Haan, you know, it’s very inauspicious to name a baby after a living person,” she said. Urmila-Mummyji had not even lived to see her granddaughter. When the pundit said on the ninth day that the baby’s auspicious letters were “muh” and “luh”, Nimita suggested they call her “Urmila” and Karan and Dilip-Praji and Roshna had wept with joy.

  Nimita goes down to tell Shukla-Bibi to take the tea up to Maasiji. Najma cannot serve food to these guests.

  The Bhabhis and Prajis are up and seeking breakfast. Nimita tells them to be in the puja room in half an hour and then goes to get Roshna out of bed. Her sister-in-law is awake when she enters the room, dressed in the simple cotton salwar kameez that will be impossible to wear again after the next hour’s liberal application of sandalwood paste. Najma will take the clothes and dye them for her own use.

  Roshna turns and Nimita sees her welling eyes. “Bhabhi,” she says, unable to say more.

  Nimita gathers the younger woman in her arms, presses Roshna’s head against her chest, feels her own throat contract. “You’ll be happy, you’ll be very happy,” she says. “I also felt like that when I was leaving home but you’ll be very happy, I promise you.”

  “Mummy—”

  “Her blessings are always with you. She’s looking at you right now and thinking: ‘How beautiful my daughter is, how proud I am,’” Nimita says, hardly able to speak through her own tears. “You know the best part? She can go with you anywhere now, all the way to Bombay also. She’ll be looking after you and watching over you. That wouldn’t be allowed normally, na?”

  Roshna hiccups and then bursts out laughing. “Bhabhi, you’re so silly.” She snuggles into Nimita’s embrace. “You really think so? Mummy is always with me?”

  “Always.”

  Roshna smiles through her tears, through the river water poured gently over her head by Shanti-Bhabhi. She endures the paste, sobs only a little more on seeing her brothers cover their eyes to hide their tears. Her smile becomes more solid after the second, proper bath in the bathroom, through the putting on of the sari her in-laws sent and the application of make-up. To Nimita’s surprise, Roshna likes the beauty spot Meena-Maasiji insists on and her happiness turns Maasiji from a tigress to a purring cat. She strokes Roshna’s
hair, calls her pet names and orders her daughters-in-law to arrange Roshna-Baby’s pleats properly.

  That leaves Nimita free to rush to the kitchen where Shukla-Bibi and the hired cook are looking at something as though it disgusts them. Najma, white-faced, has her hands outstretched but not touching a stack of plates woven out of leaves.

  “The guests are coming, Shukla-Bibi. The kachoris, Bhai Sahib?”

  The cook does not answer. Shukla-Bibi says: “Almost ready, Bibiji.”

  “Najma, go see the flowers are not drooping. Sprinkle some fresh water on the ones around the pandal,” she says.

  Najma leaves and then Nimita folds her hands and speaks. “Whatever the problem is, please, this is the wedding of the daughter of this house. We will talk later and solve everything.”

  “Bibiji, that woman,” Shukla-Bibi starts.

  “I understand,” Nimita says. “I’ll remind her.” Where is Radheshyam? He and Ramu should take out the plates. Najma can dispose of the used ones later and take care of Urmila-Baby. Plenty for her to do without entering the kitchen.

  “It is too late,” says the hired cook. “If I had known that our food will be served by a Mussulman…”

  “Bhai Sahib, I will listen to your complaints later. Right now this is a girl’s wedding. I fold my hands and ask for your help.” Inside her head, Nimita is screaming in rage. Mummy organised the food and she would certainly have mentioned the household’s helpers. Wouldn’t she? And Najma, who told her to come in and be useful?

  “Shukla-Bibi,” Nimita says, “this is Roshna-Baby’s wedding. What would Urmila-Mummyji have asked you to do?”

  The two cooks bow their heads sullenly. Nimita walks out of the kitchen and finds Najma standing near the door. “I told you to see to the flowers,” she says, then forces herself to speak softly. “Send Ramu and Radheshyam to the kitchen to start serving. After the flowers, please see to the children.”