by M G Vassanji
Now here comes Bi-ji.
June 7, 1947
It had to happen and it happened, the most awful thing. First little Pintu went missing. It was four in the afternoon, his mother had not seen him since noon. She went hither and thither in the street asking about Pintu. Where is my Pintu, have you seen my Pintu, arré where is my little boy …? Wasn’t he just here, they told her, he was playing, he must be about somewhere. But a mother knows, they say, deep inside her body she knows. She was frantic and she got others worried. She’s bad luck only, Bau-ji grumbled to Bi-ji in exasperation, she carries darkness around her wherever she goes. Then finally someone came to the shop and brought news to Bau-ji. Bau-ji came inside to the back, stood for a few moments at the threshold, silently watched us women in the yard, and then he announced, He’s been found. Before Bau-ji had quite finished adding, He’s dead, Anasuya had rushed to the outside door and uttered such a piercing cry in the alley … it cut through my entrails, Khati. Poor Pintu’s head was discovered on a pole outside the Darbar Sahab.
Anasuya did not get to see her Pintu again. She sat whimpering in the yard, outside the kitchen, her mind quite gone. The boy’s head had been removed by the police and his body found in a ditch. But now everyone knew she was a Muslim. What could we do? She spent the night here, but people came to see Bau-ji in the evening, in the shop, and I could hear the murmurs from where I lay trying to sleep. This morning two policemen and a third man came and demanded to take away Anasuya. Bau-ji said all right, though he was not happy. Anasuya left, pulled roughly by the man who was not a policeman. One of the men in uniform turned and gave first Bau-ji, then the others who had gathered, an obscene grin with his dirty teeth, saying, “We’ll take care of her, don’t worry.”
O Khatija, let this nightmare end.
These three are from your book, Khatija—
Passion burns inside and wastes me away
Know you the object of my inner desire
What gives you that stately glow?
No passion from a thousand lovers
could steal me from my father’s home
O innocence my happy playmate
remain a child with me always.
And yet night creeps steadily upon me
smothering everything else in its shadow,
there’s only the heart’s voice to listen to,
and I don’t know anything else in the world.
July 1, 1947
To the unwary, everything looks normal. Children are playing in the yard, from the empty store down the street comes the sound of boys playing cricket. Really, it is as if nothing untoward happened, except there are holes in our vision where people and sounds are absent. You are absent; your store is locked up and silent. But otherwise business proceeds apace; the sound of hammer on metal tells us so. Two vendors came by today, mountain women, selling apricots and apples. What a treat.
This morning I went to the Darbar Sahab to help with the langar. It had rained earlier and the mist was lifting, and the golden temple shone so brilliantly, it had to make you happy. At the gates two men were polishing the silver doors which you told me your grandfather had worked on. The food was bhindi and baingan, and the halwa had almonds in it. It seems as if we are determined to be happy despite all that has happened.
After we had cut the vegetables and cleaned the rice, and when we sat down for the food and tasted it and praised it, the women of our group suddenly fell silent. Then a girl called Joya started crying, silent tears; and then we all were crying, silently. There was another group of people who were refugees from Pakistan, who had lost much, including family, and they too were silent. After a while one of them came to us, an older woman named Nandini, and comforted us. Mahabharata has happened, she said. The gods have played their game. Now we must go on. We must not insult the temple food. And so we ate.
August 17, 1947
We heard Pandit Nehru’s speech on the radio. The reception was bad and he spoke in English, but people said it was a most stirring speech. And they have been echoing his words, “The hour of midnight….” We are now, apparently, in independent Hindustan. The English no longer lord over us. But what does the future hold? In spite of the celebrations in the streets and people handing out sweets, there are still reports of violence, and sometimes it feels like a short interlude in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Are you on the other side, Khati—in Pakistan? There is no chitthi from you, which must mean that either you are dead, or you are angry with me. But what could I have done, my dearest friend, except grieve, which I have done night and day? Are you my enemy, pyari, because others tell you you are? Must we become what we are told to, my darling, I cannot bear the thought of my heart turning cold toward you, or yours toward mine. Must it all end, Khatija … this freedom of our country has quite destroyed me.
March 20, 1948
He is a most tender man.
And I see your face among the shadows by the door, next to the almirah, tilted just so, as it always did with mischief, with that puckered smile on your lips, the dimples on your cheeks … the stud on your nose aglint in the dawn’s first light…. At least put that dupatta over your head, in a man’s presence!
Are you married, now?…
He is not a prince, a nawab, or a raja, and he’s not a dashing actor, not a handsome army officer. He’s a government babu in the office for resettlement of refugees. The family is from Jullundur, father a teacher; not rich, but his job is good. His name—But I dare not utter it! Let us say the first sound is the same as that of Sita’s husband, and it ends in sh. That should do, you know that for me he must always be “he.” He is not very tall, two finger-widths more than me, but he’s very fair, and he has a wide face with pointed chin, large nose, and big ears—a little like an elephant! Go on, laugh all you will at Madhu’s choice! Yes, his name does rhyme with Ganesh.
How did the proposal arrive? He came strolling into our alley one day and stopped by at the shop to chat with Bau-ji. He had just been to your mosque, which is now a temporary shelter for refugees, and he asked about the mukhi’s house—none other than yours. He had just sat down to eat with Bau-ji and Raj when I returned from college. I was told to fetch water, which I did. I knew I was being watched. Our guest asked Bau-ji what I studied and Bau-ji told me to speak. The guest asked me something in English, which I answered in my broken way! There was one more visit, two weeks later, and then he brought his proposal himself!
They are not rich but are from the high-and-mighty ones. I expect to hear no end from my mother-in-law about this caste difference. Thank God we will not be staying with my in-laws. We have been given a flat opposite the cricket grounds.
Did I tell you he is very educated—he must be, to work as an inspector for the government. He holds a degree from Lahore College and recites Urdu poetry. A man for your own heart! But he’s mine.
I would have wanted you to put mehndi with me and sing me those sweet-silly, oh happy! songs of marriage and whisper things in my ear to make me blush. I would have wanted you to be among my family and friends as I went round the fire knotted to him, the pandits reciting the holy shlokas; and as I bade farewell to our alley and all my family and friends, we would have embraced and wept with sorrow and joy; and before I took my first steps away toward my new life, instructed by my father never to look back or come back without my husband by my side, I would have turned and given you one more look and the tightest embrace. I would have liked someone from my old life to share my secrets with, my troubles and joys as a man’s wife, ignorant and alone in a new home. Who else but you?
I do not know what the future holds, who knows? On this my first night with him, my lord sleeps peacefully beside me, having satisfied himself as a man does upon his bride. He was tender and loving and not a wild beast. I pray you be as fortunate.
Jullundur, Punjab
April 1949
Today I grieve for my dead child … how the gods tempt us with gifts and then snatch them away; they t
ease us. I fed him laddoos and butter and fresh milk and halwa, even when I knew he no longer lived inside me. I knew it was a boy from the shape of my belly. My husband’s joy knew no bounds. He couldn’t wait.
It happened at my in-laws’, where I came to give birth. Ganesh-face must have guessed what had befallen, but that witch his mother knew for certain, threw evil eyes and taunts at me, made me cook and toil even in my condition. I truly think she wished me to die with my infant. When I brought him out I insisted on having a look at him, even when they told me that would bring bad luck. My first-born, dead. Strangled himself in the womb. Will I have others, healthy and living? Sometimes I think of that Anasuya and her little Pintu—what lot, a poor mother’s. Are these thoughts about you that are evil, has my love for you brought down the Goddess’s wrath upon me? No, no. Pray for me Khati that I have one son at least.
LAKSHMI
I never once saw her writing in it; I never even knew she had it. Fifty years. All I’d seen her write were notes to school when Mohan or I had stayed away due to illness, and shopping lists for Bau-ji. When did she find the time, in her busy life, to pour her heart out into a book? There was no end to a woman’s work; and not much has changed, though we are all educated and modern and know the right words. In the morning she and Bau-ji were up at the crack of dawn, he to shave and do stuff, she to prepare breakfast. She made the parantha herself, the maid relegated to the curry—if that was on the menu—and tea. During lunch, though she sat with us, she was always on edge, one eye turned toward the kitchen, in case she was needed or had to get up to get the maid to bustle up with the chappatis. Bau-ji hated to wait once he was at the table. After school Mother helped us with our lessons. And at night she attended to the needs of Bau-ji. His head, his feet, his frustrations in the bureaucratic workplace.
And yet she herself has no complaint to make, in her private book. Her husband and her family were her duty and joy, so we all like to believe of our mothers. Now I am old enough to know that a woman is more than that; even a traditional woman. Didn’t she want to confide something about her marriage to her pyari Khati? Perhaps it was too risky. Perhaps that was why, too, she didn’t write as frequently in her book. Bau-ji rarely became angry at home or shouted at her, but once I saw him truly furious. I don’t know what happened, but he was suddenly shouting at her, and when I went to look, they were outside their bedroom, and he gave her a slap. I think she had said something about his mother and sisters. A husband’s rage is a wife’s burden. I have never been able to shake that incident out of my head.
After that last entry of 1949, her letters, or thoughts, to Khatija become occasional. She attempts to fill the pages with household accounts (apparently she tried to save money from her grocery allowance), but not for long. Bau-ji went on official tours for his government department, and she wrote down his itinerary. And there are attempts to write to Khatija that for some reason were aborted; perhaps the children came home from school, or Bau-ji arrived home from work, tired and hungry. Housework always beckoned.
MADHU
Amritsar, Punjab
April 1958
I have two, how many have you?
Tell me why I remember you in the first place, when you have not bothered all these eleven years. Only, I was walking by the Darbar Sahab yesterday and I saw a woman enter and I swore it was you. I thought you must have returned, at least for a visit, now that it is safe.
My Mohan is five and Lakshmi three. Yesterday was Mohan’s birthday. I have never been so happy, in so many ages…. It is true I have tried to forget you. After that stillborn, for three years I could not hold a child in my womb. The doctors told me my blood was too bitter to nourish a child within me. It is said that bitterness kills bitterness. So I ate karela and grapefruit in quantities, even chewed quinine and Aspirin in secret. I removed your three photos from my album and I put away your green dupatta with the gold spots and your notebook. (Good thing I did not burn them.) You see, at the temple I vowed to sacrifice my love for you for the blessing of children. What excuse do you have for forgetting me? Ganesh-face says that you can’t be in Hindustan or you would have contacted me, you must have found yourself in Pakistan. Wherever you are, I hope you are as blessed as I am. When I look at Lakshmi sometimes playing with her dolls, I smile, she reminds me so much of you. You see, even though I vowed to forget you, thoughts of you would steal into my mind like robbers in the night…. Mohan was born weak and we constantly worried about him. He would eat little, he could not digest ghee, and put on very little weight. Now he is much better….
But what is this?—I think of me only, what about you, what’s happened, where are you? Are you, by any chance—married? How many children?
My mother died and Bau-ji retired. The shop is now in the hands of Raj Bhaiya. Kishore has a travel agency at the location where the old Munshi—who was killed during Partition—had his bookstore. He is doing well but we don’t meet much. The house next to yours is demolished. Your house has never found a steady occupant, it’s always been one family then another, and no one with small children. It always looks forlorn and neglected. Bau-ji says its fate too is demolition. We were by your old mosque the other day, when Ganesh-face and I went with the children to that Victoria Restaurant—since changed to Anand Restaurant. Anand was your father’s name, wasn’t it? The mosque is now a clothing warehouse. I saw some boys coming down with bales of cotton and my heart broke.
I remembered your brother Kassam, who was so handsome.
No one noticed.
LAKSHMI
When Mohan and I were little, sometimes at bedtime when we worked up a fit of the giggles or started fighting with each other instead of closing our eyes and going to sleep—we shared a room then—Mother would scare us by saying, “If you don’t behave, the Pakistani jawans will take you away! Shall I call them? Subedar Khan—over here!” We would get frightened, hide under the bedclothes, trembling but comforted by the knowledge that she was in the room, and finally fall asleep. I don’t think I got over those frights. Now I wonder what must have gone through her mind when she said those things. Why say them when they made the sleeping process so terrible. Pakistan was never a threatening spectre for us, except for a week or so during the ’65 war: we heard fighter planes in the distance; the flutter of a blackout curtain made the heart leap; every sharp sound could be a bullet. Was she trying to convince herself of her own loyalty, when she made the Pakistanis seem so threatening? Or was it for the benefit of Bau-ji? Or perhaps an old fear lingered from the Partition days when killers ruled the streets, the highways, and the railways?
MADHU
Amritsar
November 1965
Sometimes there’s the crack of a gunshot far away in the night, the heart races, and then I sense that he too is awake, beside me, and lying still, waiting. The border is some twenty miles away, all sorts of visions about terrible, violent happenings come to spook the mind. But then the insects begin their clamorous music again, as though a throng of little people were banging on their pots and pans (you taught me this), and nothing has happened to threaten our lives. The fighting has stayed away from us so far. But we hear Ambala was bombed, and Adampur.
War! Our two countries are now at war!
Why do I speak of two countries—is this not your city, Amritsar, couldn’t you find my home from your old home in the coppersmiths’ alley even blindfolded? The children sing songs of patriotism and bring back flags, the radio plays “vande mataram” no end. The streets are full of soldier-jawans and people say let the war go on a few more days and we will be in Lahore drinking chai in Anarkali Bazaar. I tremble at the thought and I pray it will happen and that I will come over there in Ganesh-face’s car and see you there, but please don’t hide behind a burqa when it happens. Lahore is Lahore, they say, the unfortunate who has not set eyes on Lahore has not seen the world … you were my world, Khati, where are you now?
But your Pakistani army is not full of weaklings either, they are o
ur same Punjabi jawans after all! India may be big, but the Tamils and Malayalis are not going to come over and defend us, Ganesh-face says, and forget about the Bengalis, who would talk away Hindustan! God preserve my Lakshmi and Mohan and also you and yours, from bombs dropped from aeroplanes, from atom bombs, and from marauding soldiers and cutthroats, and let all our shame and modesty be preserved, we who have seen too much in the past.
LAKSHMI
My mother wrote to me regularly when I was in college, first in Chandigarh, then, after I got married, when I was with my husband in Boston. We returned from the United States in 1979 with a baby girl. Not long afterwards Punjab was in the midst of another conflict, this time with the Sikhs demanding an independent homeland. We left to live in Los Angeles. Mother’s letters were now longer, reflective and confessional, and I recall wondering at this talent of hers, which had lain hidden for so long, when she seemed to have time for nothing but her family’s welfare. Now I know she had perfected that gift on someone else, who had some earlier.
She never forgot about her friend, pyari Khatija, how could she. She did not write in the book because duty always called; and it must often have seemed futile and risky. The girlish habit of confiding in a private book was no longer compelling. I recall her muttering to herself in frustration, as mothers do; but I must be right when I imagine her speaking not just to herself but also to that other, perhaps more intimate presence in her life. And then, after a long respite, unable to resist, Madhu would pick up her pen and book and address her at length; tell her what she told no one else.