The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  My marriage was arranged in a manner similar to Shabnam’s. I had met a girl in Moscow who was studying in Paris. She was very talented, an intellectual and a brilliant writer. We ‘fell’ for one another in a big way. We were attuned to each other mentally, spiritually and artistically. She came to Mumbai after completing her studies in Paris. We continued seeing each other and there was a tacit understanding between us that we would get married. But Dad’s old friends came into the picture again—Chetan Anand-ji, Dev Saheb, Goldie-ji. Dad said I should marry into their family. We came from similar backgrounds and would get along well. I liked Aruna, the youngest daughter of Dev Saheb’s older sister, but for all the wrong reasons: (a) because she looked Russian and (b) because she reminded me of Natasha, the heroine in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. But I was still in two minds.

  And then a pundit appeared out of the blue one day and said he had come to tell me something very important. I was not too keen to talk to him, but the man was insistent. He said he had been sent by one of Dad’s associates to offer me help. I allowed him in. After sitting down in the middle of the drawing room, he looked at me with huge persuasive eyes, consulted charts, examined my face and scanned my hands with a magnifying glass, mumbling Vedic mantras as he did so. He appeared to be passionate and sincere. After mumbling and some more mumbo jumbo, he finally declared that in order to be inspired and hear the voice of the great goddess he needed some sura. I didn’t know what he was referring to till he told me he needed something to drink. I brought him a glass of water, but he shook his head and said he wanted something stronger. He pointed to a bottle of Russian vodka on the shelf and said that would do and that I should bring two metal cups along with the bottle. He then made a small fire on the floor in an iron receptacle, poured out a katori full of vodka and held it in three fingers of his right hand. He suggested I do the same and I would then clearly hear the voice of the great goddess. Drinking vodka neat is what I had done in Moscow during winter, but I didn’t know that it was advisable to do this in the heat of Mumbai. However, he chanted some mantras and downed the vodka in one gulp. I think he heard the voice of the great goddess quite clearly because his face lit up and his eyes bulged out of their sockets. ‘Your mother wants you to marry Aruna,’ he said.

  Mummy had said nothing about this to me so I told him he was wrong. ‘I am not talking about your present mother. I am talking about your real mother, Mrs Damayanti Sahni,’ he said, filling his katori and mine again. ‘She has been dead for almost four decades,’ I told him. ‘How the hell is she connected with this?’ ‘It is your mother Damayanti-ji’s wish that you marry Aruna because she had promised this to her best friend, Behen-ji, Aruna’s mother.’

  I was sure the man was lying. After he left, burping and swaying from side to side, I asked Dad if what he had said was true. ‘Yes,’ Dad replied, ‘Dammo knew Behen-ji very well and in fact, they were the best of friends. It was Dammo’s wish that you should marry Aruna when you grew up’.

  The Pundit had done his homework well—I couldn’t go against my mother’s wishes.

  Our marriage was no less grandiose than Shabnam’s. Once again, shamianas were erected, shehnai players engaged and Ikraam was once again decked up. The entire film fraternity was invited again.

  By now, my first film, Anokhi Raat, had been released and become a big hit. I had come into my own and was in demand as an actor, although this was something I was not prepared for, having been trained as a director, editor and screenplay writer. Besides, as I have said earlier, I was thoroughly Russianized and that threatened to create serious problems in my life and other people’s as well. And sure enough, these problems did surface.

  But for now, things were on an even keel at Ikraam. Dad was happy and life was going along famously for both of us.

  And then the monster began to rear its ugly head. Ikraam began to show its true colours. It was as if it had assumed an identity of its own and was the real master in control of all those who inhabited it. The joy and laughter, the congeniality between the family members were all teasers, designed to lull us into a false sense of security. The centripetal forces that had united the family and provided solidarity stopped working and centrifugal forces took over, moving its members apart. My earlier misgivings began to resurface. And as I found out later, I was not alone in my apprehensions.

  It is worth quoting Bhisham-ji here: ‘The sprawling house was built on the principle of personal privacy. A huge bedroom with attached bathroom was allotted to each member of the family. Once a person withdrew into his or her room, he or she would be completely cut off from the rest of the family. During the midday siesta, an awful silence would fall over the house, with each room being like a huge box completely unconnected with the other. Such structures increase one’s loneliness and tend to make a person more and more exclusive. Whenever a visitor entered the house, he had the feeling that he was entering a mausoleum.’

  Granny’s room was at one end of the house. She had been in a wheelchair for as long as I can remember. Her legs had been fractured in an accident during one of our family’s regular visits to Srinagar and had never healed. However, her limitation did not prevent her from doing what she loved doing best—even if she had to wheel herself to the kitchen—cooking for the family; at least the chapattis if not the entire meal. That had been her main interest in life and that was what sustained her through the severe limitations imposed on her by her disability.

  But now there were three people in the kitchen to look after the family meals. Narsia was the main chef, Narain was his helper (and also Dad’s personal servant) and a girl of 16 called Ophelia was the maid in charge.

  Then one day Mummy asked Granny to stop going to the kitchen as it disturbed the kitchen staff. This came as a rude shock to Granny. Thereafter, there was nothing else for her to do but sit in her large room, read the Gita and count the beads on her rosary. Grandad had died a few years ago and she was now a widow. Life became irksome and boring for her and she blamed the bahu of the house for her predicament. Dad remained neutral in this power struggle and Granny resented this very much. She sank into a dreary apathy, and most of us failed to recognize the tragic path she was setting on.

  Unlike Dad, who was by nature a gregarious person, Mummy, a talented artist and writer, was an introvert, spoke little and kept busy with her writing (writing beautiful short stories which were regularly published). She was an intellectual, read a lot and was deep into classical Indian music.

  She had an ustad and a tabalchi who came to train her every evening and usually practised in the drawing room, and from about six till eight the house rang with her melodious voice. I had learnt how to play the tabla in school and often accompanied her, enjoying it very much. With the pompous conceit of youth, I was sure I was on my way to becoming another Ahmad Jaan Thirakwa (the legendary tabla player).

  But any kind of classical music was anathema to Dad. Mummy also loved European classical music, which he had no ear for either. I have a sneaky suspicion that he almost resented her being busy with her music lesson when he came back from shooting at about seven every day. He wanted company; someone to talk to after his busy day. Shabnam had been very close to him, but she was now married and lived in Jamshedpur. He felt her absence acutely. Even I was now married and busy with my own shooting schedule.

  Sanober was the darling of the family—of the immediate family and the broader family based in all parts of India—and she still is. A lovable girl, she spent a lot of time with Dad and was and has always been the most sensible member of our clan. She, incidentally, was an excellent piano player and also had a teacher who came regularly, if I remember correctly, to train her. Her room was adjacent to Dad’s. I think of all the classical music, it was her piano playing that Dad enjoyed the most. After Shabnam’s marriage, she was the closest person to him, particularly because his social life had gradually slowed down.

  Slowly but surely, fissures and cracks began to appear in the family. Under the best o
f circumstances, it is difficult for grown-ups with different mentalities to live under one roof. In our case, lacking the background of a cohesive family and disjointed by our varying temperaments, there were major problems of adjustment. A silent territorial war of sorts was going on between Mummy and Granny, and we were all drifting apart. Ikraam became the sole master, assuming the last word. Rumours about this house had run rampant in the family and even outside. One of my cousins said she had heard it had been a British graveyard. Someone else said that the house had belonged to an old woman who had had been forcibly evicted; she had placed a curse on all those that would replace her.

  And then the tragedies began, one after the other, and my own nightmare about the house began to come true. Somewhere amidst all that rambling space, even the sound of joy and laughter was drowned by an underlying sense of pending doom. All the grandeur of the place, situated right near the beach, was overwhelmed and negated by the tragedies that took place there.

  These incidents, taking place one after the other, would have made even a sceptic believe in superstition. What spell had been cast on this house? There was no answer. The members of the family continued to drift apart.

  First it was Ophelia, the sixteen-year-old maid. I don’t know what happened to her. She looked a happy and a cheerful girl as she went about her work. Her pleasing personality endeared her to us all, particularly me. One early morning, we had barely stirred from our rooms, when news arrived from her home that she had committed suicide by swallowing TIK-20, a very strong pesticide. It came as a rude shock to our family. I had a particularly difficult time absorbing this fact and kept hoping that the news was false and I had had a bad nightmare. But nothing could alter the fact that she was dead. I don’t know if the cause of the tragedy was ascertained or even investigated by the police. But we thought it must have been triggered by a fight in her family.

  We had hardly got used to her absence than another tragedy followed soon after. As I have mentioned, Granny had lost a sense of purpose after she was barred from the kitchen. She had nothing to do but sit in her room and look out of the window. Her resentment and bitterness consumed her and she became more and more depressed by the day. She started wheeling herself around aimlessly in the forlorn corridors of the house and often parked herself at the door to the garden, sitting there alone for hours as she gazed outside with a vacant look.

  I joined her there once in a while, pulling up a mooda and sitting down next to her. She had brought me up since I was six months old and was very fond of me. She often opened her heart to me, confessing that she resented being ordered to stay out of the kitchen. Not knowing how I could help her, I asked her one day to speak to Dad about it. She looked at me for a long while and said to me in Punjabi, the only language she knew, ‘Balraj khota ve!,’ which literally translated as ‘Balraj is a jackass!’ Dad was not aware of the power struggle going on between the two senior women in the house and she resented that very much.

  Granny began slowly cracking up. With no one to share her feeling with, devoid of a sense of direction or meaning, she was gradually losing her identity. She would yell and scream in the night. The doctor was called. He said she was suffering from a nervous breakdown resulting from stress. Medicines were prescribed, but to no effect; the raving and the ranting became worse. In those days, psychological issues were not diagnosed easily, leave alone treated. In hindsight, it is easy to see what was ailing her, but at that time, words such as depression, loneliness and rejection were alien to us and we were unable to find a means to release her from the prison of her desperation, which had assumed an identity larger than herself.

  Dad was at his wits’ end. He did not know what to do. I would sit with Granny sometimes whenever I had a break from shooting. At such times, she would calm down. If I asked her what the matter was she became fairly lucid and would repeat the same phrase again, ‘Balraj is a jackass.’ Then one day, apparently out of nowhere, she said, ‘There is something wrong with this house!’ I was reminded of the nightmare I had had about the house and a cold sweat trickled down my back.

  Quelling my own sense of unease, I listened to her attentively. She paused for a while and then continued, ‘I am banned from everything. I can’t cook for my family. I am banned from going into the kitchen!’ I kept quiet. And then out of the blue she said something that gave me a start. ‘Do me a favour’, she said. ‘Sure Grandma!’ I came closer to her as she whispered, ‘Take me up to the roof and throw me down. Put an end to me. I am fed up of life!’ I was stunned when she said this. Not knowing how to respond, I remained quiet. I felt ill-equipped to handle her odd behaviour, so making an excuse, I escaped. I was sure she was raving again!

  But her condition worsened. I think she had a death wish. She stopped going around in her wheelchair. She stopped joining us for meals at the table, confined herself to her room and took to her bed. She stopped eating altogether and became weaker and weaker.

  Dad was busy with his work at the studios and was often on location away from Bombay. I was confused and disorientated. I had producers lining up to sign me up. But I was not a happy man and did some atrocious films. My heart was not in my job and I would return home in a bad mood. And the mood always became worse when I saw what was going on in the house. We were all worried about Granny, most of all Dad. But none of us knew what to do about her condition. Not that we discussed any options as a family. We simply relied on what the doctors said and hoped that the prescribed medications would turn her around. But they had no effect; I think she had made up her mind to die and had willed her condition not to improve. And then one day, she went into a sort of coma. The doctor was called, but he said there was nothing more to be done. In the early hours of the morning, Granny passed away.

  She left behind a void. I had spent my childhood in her care and I remembered my Pindi days, when her cheerful laughter had rung through the house. A lady with such a dignified presence reduced to such a pathetic state, wasting away into nothingness! This was no way for Grandma to go! Dad and I felt particularly lost, but couldn’t share our grief with each other. Each of us carried our loss close in our hearts, trying to discard the mantle of sorrow somewhere in the gloomy shadows of the dark mansion. With Granny gone and Shabnam married, the house looked and felt empty. An ominous silence settled on it. I remember Dad telling me one day, ‘You were right, Parikshat! We were happier in Stella Villa. Perhaps we should have made Ikraam on the lines of that house—more compact, with a big garden and fewer rooms.’

  He was not as cheerful and loquacious as he used to be. But a semblance of normalcy was maintained and there were regular visitors, although not to the extent we had known in Stella Villa. But it was rarely that the house rang with laughter and merriment.

  One day I came home very late from shooting. It was nearing midnight and the house was steeped in darkness. I was hungry and thought I would wake up the cook and ask him to heat up something for me. But he was not in the servants’ quarters. I entered the house and moved down the corridor, passed the empty guest room and walked into the room that used to be occupied by Granny. I got a shock of my life! On Granny’s bed lay what looked like a corpse wrapped in a white shroud, its head covered. I thought I was dreaming. My hair stood on end. I was frightened out of my wits!

  I gathered up my courage and moved forward to the supine body. It was very still. I uncovered its face, my hand shaking from fright. There lay Narsia, the cook. I noticed that the sheet was bloody in places. I couldn’t make head or tail of what had happened. What was Narsia doing in Granny’s room and where did the blood come from? Was he dead or alive? I got a jolt when he suddenly opened his enormous eyes and looked at me. His face was jet black and his huge eyes seemed to be popping out of his head. This was something straight out of an Ingmar Bergman film! I thought I was dreaming. With a quivering voice, I asked him what the matter was. ‘Operation,’ he said hoarsely.

  Narsia had been operated on for cancer. He didn’t last long. After a short
time, I think he was re-admitted to hospital and we didn’t see or hear about him again. That was the next casualty. Ikraam was hell bent on showing us its true colours!

  The house resumed its normal flow. Two new maids were hired, Hilda and Mary, both in their teens. They were very efficient and life settled down again. But there was an air of dissatisfaction in the air. The vibes in the house remained cold and uninviting.

  I could sense that Aruna, who belonged to a large family (she had three brothers and two older sisters and numerous uncles and aunts), was not too happy in our sparsely populated Ikraam. She was used to a lively and gregarious life in her well-knit joint family. And in Ikraam, the very size and structure tended to isolation. Sanober, the life of the family, got along very well with Aruna, but she was doing a course in Social Sciences at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and was busy. Travelling by buses and trains to and from Chembur at the other end of Mumbai left her little time to mingle with the rest of the family, but she was always smiling and cheerful and full of jokes. She has always been the bravest of us all, ready to face any challenge. I too was busy shooting and Aruna was left alone in the house for long hours. Mummy was a lady of few words and the age difference between them didn’t help. Aruna was used to fun and laughter; she was an unspoiled girl with simple tastes, but even she felt like a fish out of water in this mausoleum-like house. She never complained, but I could sense she was ill at ease.

  I think Dad also realized this. He was very fond of Aruna, whom he had given a pet name, Chandramani. Having lived with the Anand family after moving to Mumbai in the 1950s, he had seen Aruna and her brothers and sisters as children. Aruna’s mother, Dev Saheb’s older sister, was very close to Dammo-ji, my mother, and Dad often told me that the two ladies had already decided, when I was only six or seven years old, to get the two of us married when we came of age. But Aruna was childlike—innocent and unspoilt. She was bored in the house and told Mummy one day that the household jobs should be henceforth delegated to her since she was young and Mummy was getting old and should rest and relax. This, it seems, was misunderstood by Mummy and I think she resented what Aruna had said. She became cold and aloof. She complained about this to Dad who, I think, was upset and saw another tug of war growing between the two women in the house. Aruna was simple and innocent and felt asphyxiated in this atmosphere of cold reserve.