When She Was Queen

by M G Vassanji

  MADHU

  September 1983

  Tell me this was not a dream I dreamt and let me follow you, beckon to me again from that door, say “come,” once more … “there’s a safe place I’ll take you to where there’s no strife … a place far away from madmen whose lust for blood will never be satisfied….” Perhaps your lot turned out better after all, wherever you are. In this Punjab you left behind we yearn for peace once more. Do you know what is happening in your old city? Blood flows again, terror stalks the streets. A wedding party robbed and murdered the other day, a bus stopped and passengers butchered. The army patrols the street, Darbar Sahab, the Golden Temple, is surrounded on all sides. From the terrace of the old house you can see the jawans with guns at the ready pointed at the temple. There are frequent searches in the streets. But in our coppersmiths’ alley the soldier-jawans are the heroes. It is said the Golden Temple is full of weapons, but Indira Gandhi is afraid to send the soldiers in. We don’t have Sikh friends anymore, there is no trust left. Some of our friends have left the state, and our Lakshmi and Mohan are in America from where they may never return. I will never know my grandchildren.

  Iman-se, as you might say, Lakshmi looks just like you—what a twist of fate! And when I saw you in that dream, perhaps it was because I had been staring at her photo and was reminded of you. One day when she was twelve or so, she asked me, Bi-ji, do you know anyone on the other side? Then I told her about you and where you had lived. I don’t know for sure if she is on the other side, I said. Then Bi-ji, she told me, Mohan simply can’t be allowed to bomb Pakistan, can he? This was at a time when my son had the ambition to become an air force pilot and serve the country. Come over, Ma, she says in her last letter. We’ve been to America two times now but our heart always yearns for home—and when we are here in beloved Punjab, the crown of Hindustan as our poet Waris Shah said, we live in terror and long to see the grandchildren.

  Lakshmi lives in San Francisco, in California, where she is married to an engineer. IIT graduate and working with computers. They have two daughters, Kantala and Indira, six and four years old. Our son Mohan lives in Dallas. He is a professor of English. He is married to an American and has one son, Varun. Perhaps you have seen Dallas on television, in that show that goes by that name. When you see it, please think of me.

  May 1991

  Ah happiness, laughter! I weep tears of joy. How can I explain, who would understand? I catch myself singing! Finally Ganesh-face said, Mohan’s mother, you were not as happy even at your son’s wedding!

  She looks not the least bit like you, yet your light was shining in her eyes! I could see you in her face. I weep as I think of you, dear Khatija—you didn’t write, you didn’t come, but finally you sent this lovely angel to bring us together again! O the glory of the gods! O Lord, can this be true, I whisper, that I held her flesh and blood in my arms—let her be my daughter, Khati. I am asking this of you, and I have written to her father, your brother.

  All this time, for tens of years, you were right next door, in Lahore! I could have come to you on ox cart or train or car, the skies that brought you rain showered on us also, and daily we saw the same moon smiling upon us here as it did on you there … every day we could hear Lahore on radio and see its wonderful shairs reciting their Urdu ghazals on television. I don’t have your address, Khati—the girl didn’t have it with her and she had no idea anyone such as I existed, who knew her grandfather’s family so closely and was attached to her phupi since childhood! And let me tell you this, Khati, the girl also wept—why would she cry, she who was not even born in this country? Because of the cloud of grief that hangs over us.

  In a few months I will go to California and I will write to you from there and I will telephone you also. A crow can fly from your place to mine, yet we could not shout to each other across the border. This is what’s become of us who would spend nights huddled in bed together exchanging secrets and dreams.

  FATIMA

  Toronto

  3 April 1992

  Dear Lakshmi,

  It was so good to speak to you on the phone and also to your mother. She did sound rather dispirited compared to when I saw her last year. I was sorry to learn your father passed away—that must have been quite a blow to her. He seemed so gentle and devoted to her when I met them.

  Our meeting was the most heart-wrenching and of course at the same time a happy occasion. And what a fortunate one! One reads so much about the Partition of India, and yet to come face to face with it, in one’s own life and so close! In a strange way that I cannot quite explain, I too feel a victim of the Partition.

  My father never went back to Amritsar, though he visited India many times, from East Africa, where I was born. But a few years ago Dad (whom I never thought of as nostalgic) got it into him that he wanted a photograph of the house he was born in, or even of the site, in case the house had been destroyed. When a certain Sikh professor from Guru Nanak University came to Toronto on a lecture tour, Dad went to meet him and asked him if upon his return to Amritsar he could take a photo of the old house or neighbourhood and send it to him. The professor duly did so—the house stood there, but in ruins. Then last year when I told my father I was planning to visit his hometown with my family during our trip to India, he gave me Professor Hardev’s name and address. The rest you know. We visited the coppersmiths’ alley in the old city (which is such a maze of narrow streets, we couldn’t have found our way inside without our guide Professor Hardev); we saw my grandfather’s house, then stopped to inquire at the shop across the street, which turned out to belong to your uncle! We had tea at his house and telephoned your mother, who we learned from your uncle had been my aunt Khati’s dearest friend as a child. When I spoke to your mum on the phone, we both broke down. How cruel, fate—and yet surely a touch of kindness there? I had a feeling that I was reaching out to a long-lost and very dear relation; of course your mother broke down first, but still. Not only had I not met her yet, I had not (and have not) met my aunt (though I had heard about her).

  Later my family and I visited Jallianwala Bagh (the site of the 1919 massacre and a walking distance from my grandfather’s old home) which, with bullet holes and all, impressed my son no end and turned him into an ardent anti-imperialist; and we went to the Darbar Sahab, or Golden Temple, with its memories of a more recent bloodshed. The Temple is visible from my grandfather’s house, from the terrace, over all the neighbouring houses. Then, in the afternoon, we went to see your parents.

  I cannot forget how she (your mum) cupped my face in her hands and stared at me. She recalled everyone in my father’s family and asked about them. And how she laughed when I told her my Khati Phupi has twelve children!

  Khati Phupi is at present in Dubai with one of her numerous children. Did your mum get to speak to her on the phone? Perhaps we can get the two ladies to meet when Khati Phupi goes to Phoenix to see her daughter (who is a doctor).

  I will call your mother before she leaves. And now that the two of us have established contact, we should remain in touch. Please accept my heartfelt best wishes for you and your family.

  Yours sincerely,

  Fatima

  LAKSHMI

  San Francisco

  5 August 1992

  Dear Fatima:

  Yes, they met finally. It was not what one would expect—but what can we expect! As if such reunions happened every day!

  We did not know that your Khatija Phupi was recovering from an eye operation. She stayed two nights, at our place—we insisted. But her son Latif had come with his family and put up in a hotel.

  And now the details.

  Khatija was dropped off at the door by Latif, who said he would stay longer when he came to pick his mother up. She was big—wide and tall—and wore a light cardigan over the shalwar kameez. She walked slowly, has problems with her knees and is contemplating surgery. I simply couldn’t help staring at her as she came, you see I had heard about her even as a child. I had always imagined her as
beautiful as a screen actress, and what I was seeing now was a much older, yet very striking, woman. Her face had the kind of irritated, pained look that the elderly tend to have, through which she gave a shy, uncertain smile, and her eyes quickly swept through the room. My mother was in the kitchen and before I called out she made her entrance. Briefly the two women stood and watched each other across the distance, then without a word uttered they started walking toward each other—slowly at first, then in a hurry. They embraced, quietly, wiped tears from their eyes—but not too many. They sat down on a couch, next to each other. Khatija was the first to speak. “You look well,” she said. “But you were the pretty one.”

  “How are you, Khati?” my mother asked, in a tremulous voice.

  “Almost blind in one eye, but inshallah another operation has been scheduled.”

  They spoke quietly, one voice softer than the other; quite a contrast, the two of them, as they must always have been. I kept out of their way for some time, making the tea and so on, and fetching the kids from school. It was the strangest feeling for me—I wished I could read their minds. In that first hour they spoke only of their lives now—like two strangers—and then there would be some “inside” remark like “you would always …” or “like that Shahniji’s son….”

  Over the next two days they spoke a little about the past, about their experiences since they parted that morning in Amritsar. Khati and her family arrived in Bombay with nothing—their train had been so crowded, they had to give away the only suitcase they had between them, to be placed in storage and make room for one more passenger, and they never saw it again. Fortunately they knew people in Bombay. In August 1947 they took a ship to Karachi. Your father was already in East Africa, having left two years before. The following year Khati was given in marriage to a man from Lahore. Her husband, Ashfaq, was a dealer in carpets, which is what Latif Bhai does in Phoenix.

  What else? They were solicitous about each other, spoke (boasted!) about their children, exchanged notes on their medications—but they could not completely break out of that formality. It’s been forty-five years since they last saw each other! Toward the end, though, there was one precious moment of closeness, and I’ll tell you about it. On the last day, when they sat down cross-legged on my kitchen floor to sort out and label my daals, Khati Phupi pointed and said to Mother, “Your right knee always came higher than your left when you sat—and your Bi-ji would scold you.”

  Mother broke into a giggle and Khati Phupi smiled. But I could also see the tears in my mother’s eyes, immediately after that; Khati Phupi must have seen them too. She’s a tough woman, Fatima, there’s no telling what she’s been through. She has a dry sense of humour, and she does not easily show her emotion. That afternoon it was time for her to go. Did I detect a tremor in her voice as she bid my mother goodbye? They parted knowing they’ll probably never see each other again.

  Mother was depressed after that.

  Two weeks later your uncle Kassam came from Vancouver with his wife and he was a lot of fun. He joked around and made fun of Mother, calling her “Madhu Didi,” and she laughed a lot.

  Now Mother is back in Amritsar. She is going to be lonely there, but she insisted. Anyway, she has an open ticket to come here whenever she feels like it.

  Let’s stay in touch, Fatima. Do come to SF and bring your family. My husband goes to Montreal on business sometimes—maybe one of these days we’ll all come together. I’ve heard so much about Toronto.

  My regards to you and your family.

  Yours with affection,

  Lakshmi

  MADHU

  Amritsar, Punjab

  August 1992

  You did not recognize that dupatta I wore, it was yours from so many years ago, but how could you have remembered? I felt like a tortoise. And you? How could we come out from under the weight of fifty years of life and be like we were, relate like we used to?

  I sensed a hurt in you, dear, I can’t tell where from. But I would have broken through that sternness, Khati, found that soft inside, given time. But now we belong to others, and you to many more than I.

  But I will keep your book, I will not return it. How could it have the same value to you as it does to me?

  This is from the book—

  O my friend, to whom shall I tell the

  story of my loss,

  My lover travels far and wide

  and I’m afraid will not return.

  It’s an old doha you used to sing.

  She, with Bill and George

  The tree. Yes it always began with the tree, her memory of that time, that place—a large, knotty jacaranda in bloom, purple bell flowers drooping down from its branches. She was sitting under its shade rather self-consciously one Saturday morning, on a thin carpet of fallen flowers, a diary in her lap, trying to write her thoughts down. She was in her National Service uniform, baggy khaki pants and matching tunic, and the unwieldy black boots. Dreamy, that’s what she was, her feet partly pulled up, occasionally gazing up at the branches, the blue sky, for inspiration. And alone, away from friends, family, community—and Shamshu—in the wilderness outside the small town of Mbeya in the southern highlands where she had been assigned to teach a school. It was a cool region of the country; fruits were abundant—peaches, plums, and apples—the people were nice; sometimes she was terribly lonely, but she also relished being alone, as at times like these.

  There came a soft scratch of feet behind her and then the voice: “Eating the air?—isn’t that what you say?”

  She turned her head, threw an eye sideways up at Bill. He was an American: typical, she liked to think, tall and stringy, casual, too friendly. He wore shredded jeans and a blue shirt tucked in, in accordance with an admonition from the principal, who himself always wore the party shirt suit. Bill Songa, a maths teacher from the Peace Corps; such a funny name. She had told him once that in her language to go out for a breath of fresh air became translated as “to go and eat some air.” They were a threesome, she, Bill Songa, and George Kasore, all strangers to these parts. George was a Masai and as tall as Bill. Unlike the American, he always wore clean and pressed printed shirts and dark pants. The two played basketball, always on opposite sides, with teams consisting of a horde of adulatory boys. She envied them their popularity. And they both liked her, this Indian girl a full head shorter than them, shy and reserved.

  “Hi!” she said to him. “And what are you up to?”

  Nothing, as she well knew, he had come to kill time before the lunch gong.

  He smiled. “George and I are going into town today, would you like to come?”

  Bill had got himself an ancient German car, a DKW, so he could go and paint the town red, as he jokingly put it. One Friday she had taken a ride with him and George so she could go to mosque in Mbeya; on their way back she realized that they’d had a few beers. She found the smell a little revolting. The next time, they promised, they would simply go with her to a restaurant for chai and sarnosas. There had not yet been a next time.

  “No thanks,” she replied.

  “You afraid your fiancé will not approve?” he asked. She nodded and giggled. “Are you really engaged, Farida, or are you putting us on?”

  “Really. His name is Shamshu, as I’ve told you before. And he’s a teacher in Dar.”

  Bill was now leaning back against her tree. It was called “her” tree because practically everyone in the school had come to know that it was her favourite spot. When the gong sounded, they walked to the dining hall together. George joined them at the tables. Lunch was maizemeal and red beans, another reason to go and eat something decent in the town, come weekend. But she had in her room enough supplies of chevdo and gathiya, Indian savouries, to placate taste buds clamouring for spices.

  After lunch she agreed to go with the two guys for a walk. The route was a trail through bush and trees and over a brook into a nearby village. On the way they passed folk who, as always, broke into wide but kindly smiles at seeing an Ind
ian girl in an army uniform. A little boy threw her a salute, then with a few others followed behind in a mock march. At the village was a stall whose owner was always ready to make tea for them, even after he had put his fire out.

  As they returned, she sang for the two men some of the National Service songs she had learned at her military camp earlier that year. One of them went,

  Niko mlimani na Landa

  na ngojea Pijo kupanda.

  I’m up the hill in my Land Rover

  and waiting for the Peugeot to come over.

  It then exhorted youth to tighten their belts and serve the nation. Rain fell, brisk and thin as a curtain, and they scampered through the forest back to the school. By the time they arrived the sun was out and beaming through the clouds. The air was humid. The leaves looked new.

  A typical Saturday in her life, then, a long time ago. Simple, spare, but in a pure, almost mystical sense. Perhaps that was the way of childhood—pure and mystical—seen from afar. And perhaps, too, it was a composite Saturday she recalled, of similarly wonderful weekend days. But the purity couldn’t last, could it?

  On one of their walks, when they had strayed onto a vehicle track running perpendicular to their usual route, an army Land Rover passed them, then stopped abruptly. An officer, sitting next to the driver, shouted, “You, come here!” They all started obediently toward the vehicle. As they approached, the officer snapped, “You!” at Farida. Trembling she went up to him and saluted, and he asked her, “Where is your belt, soldier?” She was actually wearing a civilian belt and he had noticed that. She mumbled that she had lost it, and he told her to find a replacement.