by M G Vassanji
The drought was unending and food scarce. Most of the single young men had gone away to the city to become roadside hawkers; one or two young women too had gone away, though this was mentioned with greater embarrassment. There was one functioning well in the village, used by all to tend the tiny patches that fed the people. At dusk the houses turned quiet, huddled into their shadows; a few oil lamps flickered outside, with men gathered on a porch to chat or play cards. The women might stand at their doorways to watch or talk quietly with a neighbour. Only the insects and the children seemed oblivious to the hopelessness about; the insects chirping cheerily away in the night, the children with their games of hide-and-seek and tag in the dark, and cricket with cloth balls in the daytime. In the mornings, twice a week, they could be heard in their classroom reciting the alphabet after their teacher Amin, reciting the times tables, or singing the national anthem or a song in praise of Gandhi-ji.
Over the days and weeks the visitor came to believe in his authority and inspiration. How many were there, after all, who could claim to have brought such comfort and hope to their own people? There was the prophecy about the return of a native. And there was that incident in the city with the snake god. He felt a deeper empathy with the village; he was its saviour.
A child was born and he was asked to name it; and then another. An old man asked to be blessed before he died.
One morning as he sat down under the tree with a banana, as he was about to peel it, a hand reached out from behind and snatched it from him. The creature bounded away from his reach and, brazenly standing in front of him, finished peeling the fruit and ate it with all the time in the world. It was a female monkey. A band of monkeys had recently started invading the nearby mango tree; Nagji’s first reaction to these invaders was to see them as pests and thieves. He kept a stick to ward them off, but the banana thief made it a practice to pay him a visit every afternoon, sitting some distance away, grooming herself and minding her babies, watching him curiously. He became used to her, called her Kanta Behn, after a querulous neighbour back home. Sometimes he gave her food, which she accepted with dignity and shared with her brood. He began to talk to her and it seemed to him, and to the others who watched him, that he could communicate with the monkey.
One day Kanta Behn and a friend performed a virtuoso thieving feat that left the guru gaping. Chappatis were being prepared by a maid in the kitchen of the Big House. First, Kanta Behn’s friend started showing her face at the window of the kitchen, shoving her arms through the bars, and making a lot of threatening noises. The maid finally went out to chase away the monkey, and in that short time Kanta Behn, who had been lurking on the other side of the door, dashed in and came away with the prize. When the maid raced after Kanta Behn, the friend loped into the kitchen in a few big strides and came out also with a fresh chappati. Kanta Behn stood before the amused Nagji, utterly composed, ready to eat her chappati. But then she tore it in two and presented one half to a grateful Nagji.
Nagji knew now that he utterly belonged. Not only the snake god but also the monkey god had accepted him.
A village couple had invited him for dinner and to bless their childless home. The hovel was no worse than most he had seen by now, but it had a pile of rubble in one corner that let off a dank, unpleasant odour. A supply of cement had apparently been ordered but not arrived. The meal was village fare, which he ate with the man, Raju, while he delivered his usual homilies about struggle and faith. Raju’s wife served them when required, otherwise stood by in the shadows. She was not much older than him, Nagji observed in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp, as she bent over them to serve, and her face was flushed. She was in sari, the threadbare blouse stretched tight across her breasts. Her husband Raju sat up straight, legs crossed, watching an uncomfortable but hungry guest eat; he was tall and rather sombre-looking, with a long unshaven face and an almost bald head.
After they had eaten, the two men went to sit outside in darkness for a while, and between awkward silences Nagji learned that Raju went every day to hawk plastic jewellery on the highway from a cart that he rented. His wife came from a group of five villages, a day’s bus ride away. He had relations in the city of Rajkot.
When finally Nagji asked permission to leave, Raju said, “I want one more favour from you, guru-ji.”
“If I can do it, it’s yours,” the guru told him. He was touched by the man’s quiet dignity, preserved amidst such extremely humble circumstances.
“I would like you to bless my wife’s womb, if you will, please.”
The young guru was not prepared for this, whatever it meant. “I will bless both you and your wife,” he said after a pause, “may you have—”
“Come, guru-ji,” Raju said, standing up, and the two men went inside, where the wife sat beside the lamp, whose wick had been lowered to give the barest illumination. Raju muttered something to her and left, and Nagji unexpectedly found himself alone with the woman, his heart beating insistently inside him. She was on a sleeping mat, one leg folded under her, the other partly stretched forward. She had been combing her hair. Some stale flowers were spread out on a small pillow; there was the odour of hair oil, a whiff of burning incense.
“Come,” Kulsum said in a quivering voice, taking his hand, and the young guru went along with her guidance, all defences vanquished, hostage to his virility and a child in her arms. He went to bless her womb two more times, after which it was understood he was no longer required, and he was racked with guilt and confusion. He was chosen, but surely not to bestow blessings in such a carnal manner; to be the recipient of such a trust from simple men and women seemed extravagant and wrong. He had actually enjoyed himself, melting into that dark body with its odour of musty spice and just plain flesh; looking forward to the next day, and the next. And the woman had received him with evident pleasure. He had only once coupled with a woman before, had hardly been aware of what transpired. Now, initiated, could he ever look upon the women with innocence, as a teacher, a saviour?
He convinced himself that the episode had been preordained: as a test and a warning to him to beware of temptation. He had after all not chosen to be what he had become.
A year had passed since he first arrived. His skin had darkened from exposure, his beard and hair had grown. A few sparse but welcome rains had fed the parched earth and were duly attributed to his blessed arrival. Raju and his wife had a baby son whom the guru named Rahim. He was required to visit several of the nearby villages now, to which he was taken by the teacher Amin on the motorbike. But the condition of the people remained what it had always been.
One morning at about eleven a taxi arrived, an elegant cream-coloured Ambassador with blue curtains in the side windows to keep the sun out. From it emerged a fat middle-aged man wearing a shirt suit of the same colour as the car, and sunglasses. His name was Alijadavji and he came from Africa. He was accorded the same welcome as the young guru had received a year before. This was reported to the guru by his relation Jivraj as he sat under his tamarind tree. Over the months Jivraj had, unasked, assumed the role of an usher, while also ministering to Nagji’s needs. Thus Jivraj had acquired some prestige in the village. Nagji now told him he was tired, to answer Jivraj’s concern regarding the new arrival, though he was actually also worried. Jivraj fetched a cup of tea for him from the Big House before he left.
That afternoon a large group of men came by to see him. In the middle and prominent among them by his size and evident well-being was the new visitor. The gate to the enclosure was opened and the men came through and stood some ten feet away from the guru. Most of them joined hands respectfully, but the visitor in the shirt suit, uncomfortable and sweaty, declined to do so, sizing him up sceptically instead.
“May I know your good name, Brother,” Ali Jadavji asked.
“I have shed my name and the world with it,” the guru replied astutely. But he could barely keep his voice steady. For he recognized the man as a prominent trader from his hometown.
&nbs
p; “Guru Nameless then,” Ali Jadavji smiled grimly, and after a moment’s hesitation he turned around to leave. The entourage left with him.
The man knew him, of that Nagji had hardly a doubt. But how? Had he been recognized so easily, almost instantly, behind his beard and hair and emaciated frame? Nagji now recalled a scene from the past, when he used to be one of the ragamuffins who would play marbles in the grounds of the town mosque in Dar es Salaam every evening, until they were dispersed at prayer time. Ali Jadavji had been one of the men sitting outside on the stone benches, watching the dusty-kneed boys getting chased toward the water taps, and commenting on their worthless pedigrees.
Nagji realized that afternoon that his calling, or dream, or charade—what was it?—was now over.
That evening as he emerged from the village prayer hall—alone, for Mr. Jadavji had gathered around him all the attention, with his authority and bearing and signs of wealth—Jivraj fell into step beside him and told him: “This Jadavji, whoever he is, has called you a nobody from Dar es Salaam and a fake, and Hirani the mukhi and others are paying attention to him … and that Raju is saying really bad shameless things about you—”
Early the next morning Nagji begged a ride from the teacher Amin and headed for the nearest bus stop.
As the Toronto mukhi, who was also a real estate agent, showed Nagji a house that finally interested him—it was one of those large modern residences that are all the fashion among wealthy immigrants, with imposing facades that remind you of mansions in Beverly Hills, except they all look identical and are densely packed in a development—he observed to himself that Nagji was, like many others he knew, prone to exaggeration if not exactly the tall tale. Nagji’s story did not lack its details, some of them no doubt rendered more colourful with the passage of time. Perhaps Kanta Behn the monkey had acquired a more prominent role now, in memory’s generous version; perhaps she had been named Shanta Behn or Kadak Bai, or given no name at all. And perhaps the guru’s tree was a guava tree, or even something nondescript and small. And the snake?—who could tell, but the nag in Nagji’s name did mean “cobra.” The whole story certainly could be the gist of a humorous novel about India.
Nagji had, a few years after that first visit, returned to Be-raja and fetched his son Rahim, who had grown up in Canada and was now a strapping youth of eighteen, playing basketball and planning to study computers at Waterloo. Seeing him, and especially hearing him speak, you would never place him in a desperate, drought-ridden village in Gujarat.
Ali Jadavji, well known in the Ontario community, lives coincidentally in Waterloo as well and is ailing. He had been a widower when he arrived that fateful day in the Indian village, looking for a wife. Nagji’s father’s tales, back in Dar, of his son’s reception in the ancestral village, had prompted Ali’s interest in the place, and that’s where he went to pick a wife. He came away with a seventeen-year-old girl, whose family no doubt felt privileged at being able to free their daughter from the crushing poverty. That girl, now a woman in her thirties, has left her husband and sponsored her family’s immigration to Canada. Meanwhile the villages outside Jamnagar have prospered from the attentions of all the young people going back to search for their roots. And so the guru perhaps was a blessing of sorts during the years of drought and need.
Her Two Husbands
How ironic for him, she thought, that it began with a phone call, the unravelling of his presence in her life. He had said to her once, “Yasmin, if someone were to sweet-talk to you on the phone and convinced you to do it, you would smother one of your own children.” Not fair, that taunt, it stung. But it was true that she was easy to take advantage of sometimes, because she found it hard to be abrupt with people, was loath to seem cold and rude to them. Once or twice something had got burnt on the stove because of the phone; and how many times had she been wheedled into a purchase or a donation she regretted as soon as she put the receiver down. But now he was dead and it was precisely the phone which had brought to her her new husband, and a new, more love-filled life.
It was almost a year since Aseema at the office had cornered her one day with an invitation, saying, “There’s a mushaira this weekend at Abid Bhai’s—why don’t you come, yaar, it should be a lot of fun.” Yasmin, smiles and apologies, had declined, but Aseema persisted: “Step out of your weeds, sweetheart, come and meet the world; you do have a life to lead, you know.” Yasmin said she would think about it, and Aseema had gone away looking pleased with herself.
Yasmin had no intention of going to the function. It was all right to go unescorted where people knew you well, or even sometimes where they were completely alien. But Pakistanis, Aseema’s people, seemed familiar and yet also alien, and always so very formal and conservative … she would not at all feel comfortable among them.
Aseema herself was far from conservative in her manner; she made herself up with dabs of mascara and other eye stuff and dark purple lipstick spread thickly on her wide lips, and with her open-mouthed smile and half-closed eyes she could turn on a lascivious look to excite even the younger men who worked with her and Yasmin. But she was an exception. She had been to exclusive private schools in Pakistan, with American teachers and all that, a fact she never failed to stress if there was ever the slightest chance of her being taken for a regular “Paki.” The invitation she had brought Yasmin was to a private Urdu poetry recital at her brother Abid’s house. Over the years Aseema had extended several such invitations to Yasmin and Karim; and over the years Karim had pooh-poohed the very idea of an Urdu mushaira in Toronto, and put his wife off it too.
Yasmin had married a grim-natured man. Loving, yes, and passionate, too; but opinionated, for he was a widely read professor, and dark in outlook. Dark was the word; she had gotten used to watching ruefully as that telltale shadow came over his face, from its first appearance as a blank look in the eyes to the flush spreading across the cheeks, when some particularly sensitive issue, political or moral, came up. Regardless of the occasion, you only had to wait for the eruption—the barely controlled statement of opinion, and then gradually the furious torrent. He’d grown darker and angrier with age as he saw the world slip away from him, and himself become an old fogey to a new generation of young professors at work, to the young people he met, to the young women he saw.
What Urdu culture, he’d say scornfully. Do their children even speak Urdu anymore, let alone read or write Urdu poetry? Inviting an Urdu-wallah from Pakistan or India to give a mushaira does not make the growth of Urdu literature in Canada. And how long can one go on hearing about the moth consumed in the flame of love, and the tender-cheeked rose weeping dewdrops at dawn….
He was exaggerating, of course, even as he made flowing gestures with his right hand in imitation of Urdu poets, and he knew it. He had perfected damning scorn to a fine art. He was too learned for his own good. The truth was that he had given up on Indian-Pakistani culture as of no significance to his life in the West; to him it was the transplanted variety we had here, superficial and mediocre. Why not give up the game, he would say, and pay attention to what’s authentic and around us?
A day or two after Aseema’s invitation, her brother Abid had called.
“Yasmin,” he said, “you know why I am calling.”
“No … well…” and she gave a little laugh. She had met Abid once when he came to see his sister at work, and she remembered him as an excessively polite and quite handsome man.
“What a pleasant laugh,” he said. “Seriously, you’ve made my day already. Listen, Yasmin, aren’t you interested even a little in Urdu poetry? It’s our culture, after all—”
“I am,” she said hesitantly. Like many people, she enjoyed listening occasionally to ghazals sung to music, she even had a collection on a CD somewhere. But she didn’t know much else about Urdu poetry, except the name of the most famous poet Ghalib, about whom she’d seen a popular Indian film. Aseema had told her about the others, but she couldn’t quite remember their names. Iqbal? Faiz?
>
“I am calling to invite you personally, Yasmin. Gharib Ferangi—yes, his name rhymes with Ghalib, isn’t that funny? And Gharib—yes, that name means ‘poor’!—Ferangi is the most important poet in Urdu today….”
Important according to whom?—she heard her dead husband’s voice at the back of her head, imagined that scornful face behind her, as usual to the point and giving no quarter.
Abid’s voice on the phone was melodious, respectful, and full of humility. If the consensus had ruled that Gharib Ferangi was the most important Urdu or Pakistani poet alive, he wouldn’t be the one to argue the point.
“Only the most select people will be there, I assure you,” he went on, “sophisticated people, not intrusive and not religious—I know that worries you. We all are not fundamentalists, and if you read some of Ferangi’s poetry it will make you blush. He has even had some fatwas issued against him!”
She was trapped, what could she do? As Karim would say, The house may burn down, but you couldn’t say to the person at the other end: lay off; no, I can’t do it; I’m not buying; whatever.
“I really am not sure,” she replied, to Abid.
“It’s only a cultural evening,” Abid insisted, “a party, and we want the most diverse and enlightened group, Yasmin….”
The critical voice in her mind she managed to squeeze out, and she said, “Let me call you back. I’ll have to check with the children and their plans.”
“Please do so,” Abid said. “Of course you should, you are a mother. And thank you. I know you will enjoy yourself.”
You did it again, the voice said. She had tears in her eyes.
Abid was right. When she went to the mushaira-party at his house in Mississauga, she enjoyed herself thoroughly. The poet Ferangi was a short, balding man, wearing white kurta-pyjama and black waistcoat, and what a voice! He was given the place of honour, the wide sofa in the living room, his adulating audience gathered before him on the broad-loomed floor. They were all familiar with his works, having studied them in college back in Pakistan. He would recite from their requests, and frequently they would spontaneously join in, in a happy chorus, and finish the last lines of a poem with him. He was a charming man, funny and profound; at times he stood up to recite, at times he sang, in the traditional posture, his left arm at his waist and his right arm before him performing for the audience. There would be back-and-forth banter, and behind every poem would be a spellbinding story. There was a break for dinner, which was a buffet with an immense variety of meat dishes. The poet was indulged with a glass and a bottle of Glenfiddich placed before him reverently where he sat. No one else drank alcohol. Yasmin was disappointed that Aseema had not come, but she was treated with a lot of respect and affection. The women, mostly sitting close together intimately, were warm in their manner, and looked lovely in saris and shalwar kameez. They listened to Ferangi’s sometimes risqué pronouncements, casually delivered, about his or other poets’ affairs, about genitalia or excrement, with the utmost composure. The poet had apparently picked his themes from his memories of life in the small town in India in which he had grown up. Yasmin made that observation to him and he expounded upon it. I was right to have come, she said both to herself and to the absent Karim. And all Urdu poetry is not about candles and moths, the rose and the early-morning dew, and “gham.”