From behind her darted another form out of the dark. It was a child wearing a turban sizes too big for him. The occasion for breaking the impasse had presented itself. I bent down to chuck him under the chin. He slipped away, to hide behind his mother. By the time I straightened up, Dilraj Kaur had turned to order one of the servants to bring us tea, and everybody had started talking at once.
5
By the time Uncle Gurnam Singh arrived from Bikaner in the first week of July—in a jeep, with all his retinue, out of a whirl of dust and confusion, filling the village with excitement and wonder—the heat of the premonsoon summer had taken possession of our very flesh and bones.
The dry winds that whipped through the dun-colored landscape in May and June had given way to a relentless, moisture-laden, yellow dust-haze that not even the smallest breeze disturbed. There was a breathless suspension of sound, except for the drugged hum of crickets in the hibiscus hedgerows. And all conversations centered on when the rains would come. The monsoon had been drenching and flooding the streets of Bombay for over a month and was moving north in its own time. Pitaji, like farmers everywhere and always, scanned the skies morning and evening, looking for clues.
Everything was ready to pop, and the uneasy relationship that had grown between Dilraj Kaur and me since my arrival six weeks earlier, was, like the heat, locked in with the lid on. In the beginning we sometimes caught ourselves studying one another, she perhaps wondering if my pubic hair was the same color as the pale blond of my head; I trying to figure out if she shaved hers, as I had heard Indian women do. Surely she plucked her eyebrows, though; those straight lines seemed too neat to be true, too classic to be achieved without some help. Classic. Statuelike. Greek goddess-like. She was, in fact, a reminder that Alexander’s soldiers had done more than fight in Punjab. They had left a veritable Juno behind in the form of this twentieth century descendant. The broad brow, the straight nose, the full jaw, the grey eyes testified to that.
She lived her life within the family occupying a couple of rooms set aside for her and Nikku. I lived mine with Tej, whose attention I shared with the sitar, farm work, the overseeing of the new house for the family going up on the village outskirts, and with all the people, friends and family, who naturally gravitated into his magnetic field.
Tej’s space and mine was the mud-walled room at one end of the compound. Mataji had installed us there together from the start, in what we took to be a triumph of logic over social taboo. Tej was, after all, my only link to the new world around me. It made sense for us to be together. Our room had two small windows with heavy wooden shutters that kept out both heat and light. On the packed earthen floor was spread a Persian carpet, a possession from pre-Partition days and one of the few belongings the family had salvaged when they made the move to east Punjab in 1947. Pitaji, back from tank warfare in the North African desert, had just retired as a Major in the Indian Army, and instead of being able to settle in his home village southwest of Lahore on the Pakistan side of the border, had to start all over again in Majra, where the government had allotted him some land in compensation for the farm he’d lost in the upheaval.
The carpet, then, was a constant reminder of the past; the mud floor, present reality. And my present reality was life amongst the resettled family that was soon to become mine. Even after two months, there were the extravagant presences outside the door of our room, the watchful eyes from behind the bamboo screens in the veranda, the cautious scrutiny at close range. I was still a novelty, an exotic, potentially dangerous—and therefore beguiling—creature from another world. In the presence of others, Tej needed to make it seem that I was not (as they may have feared) yet another disruptive force dropped down in their midst, that I was not going to make everything fall apart. He was still his own man, his own boss, their son, and not my plaything. Alone with me, he insisted on taking responsibility for the whole of India, minus its splendor, and for all its mass of people. For every fly on every item of food in the bazaars, for every peanut shell littering a train compartment, there was the look in his eyes that took personal blame for it all. It belied the take-it-or-leave-it attitude he wore like a suit of armor. I wanted to tell him that all this was not his fault. That it didn’t matter anyway. But I didn’t know how.
On the day of Uncle Gurnam’s arrival, then, lunch had been finished, and everyone was ready to draw curtains, bolt the doors and the wooden shutters, and settle down for another afternoon, amongst a whole summer of afternoons, without electricity.
But then there came the seldom sound of a car engine, of tires spinning in the dust of the unpaved road into Majra, and as the vehicle approached, the groan of the overloaded chassis. Rano and I climbed up the bamboo ladder to the roof to find out what was going on. Ram Piari was not far behind. Moti and Jim and Lal barked, and Gian, acting on the reasonable assumption that ours was the only house in the village likely to have a visitor who owned a car, flung the gate to our compound open in anticipation. A jeepload of men and boys, laughing and talking loudly, was rounding the bend beyond the Majra pond, passing the abandoned mosque and heading our way.
A moment later, Nikku and Goodi were beside us on the roof, while the yard was filling up fast with the rest of the family.
“It’s Uncle Gurnam Singh!” Goodi cried.
“Who’s with him?” Rano asked.
“I can’t tell from here,” Goodi said.
“I want to see too,” Nikku said, getting in between the girls to have a look.
“I don’t see Aunt Gursharan,” Goodi said. Her voice breathed disappointment.
The Punjabi came too fast for me to follow after that. It had to do with the other occupants of the jeep, names that were unfamiliar to me and relationships too complicated to sort out.
Before we knew it, the jeep had drawn up inside the compound, in front of the main room of the house. Welcoming shouts of “Sat Sri Akal” greeted the newcomers. Mataji and Pitaji came forward as Uncle alighted from behind the steering wheel and lifted a little boy (his youngest son Surinder?) down from the front seat. Rano and Nikku, Goodi and Ram Piari were already down the ladder again, while I struggled to descend the swaying bamboo contraption with some shred of dignity, aware that a misstep would find me sprawling at its base. I would end up being the center of concern, if not laughter. Already, neighbors had crowded the roofs of adjacent houses to find out what was going on. Amongst them was Veera Bai, the girl from the village who swept our yard everyday. A smile hovered on her lips ready to break into a laugh if I were to oblige them all with a spectacle.
Tej and Hari went to receive their bear hugs from Uncle and the others, and Dilraj Kaur, her face modestly veiled by her dupatta, touched Uncle’s feet. By this time Nikku was by his mother’s side and Uncle was patting the top of his head.
It was time for me to step down from the bamboo ladder, and face the questioning glances of the newcomers that asked what Tej’s memsahib was like, what he saw in her; what their daughters would do for husbands if Jat boys should go on marrying foreign girls like this.
I came forward with my palms together in greeting and the demure expression I had perfected when meeting elders for the first time. Tej managed it so that he was at my side as Uncle gave me his blessing. He inquired about the health of my parents, asked how many sisters and brothers I had and registered sincere concern when I told him I had no brother. He wished me prosperity and happiness anyway.
It soon became clear that one of Uncle’s passions, even as a guest, was taking charge and ordering others to get things done. Mataji’s younger brother by two years was at his best at this, making it somehow an honor—a privilege even—to be allowed to do something for him. He issued instructions to the retinue of friends, poor relations, people who wanted favors from him, and servants, who like vassals of a maharaja, accompanied him wherever he went and who were now climbing out of the jeep. I had become familiar with the Indian habit of dispensing with introductions and knew that before long all these indivi
duals who had come along with Uncle would get sorted out, and I would come to know in good time who each one was.
Pitaji, Tej, and Hari, and the cousins from Amritsar, gathered around the recent arrivals while Mataji, the girls, Dilraj Kaur, and I returned to the kitchen to relight stoves, warm up the curries, and make fresh rotis for their lunch. Udmi Ram was already mixing a new batch of flour-and-water dough for them. A dessert was hastily concocted of fried bread slices soaked in cardamom syrup and fresh cream. Furious flies, disturbed from their siesta, buzzed angrily as they searched out new places to settle down in.
Through the kitchen door I watched as the baggage was being taken down from the jeep and carried away to the main room of the house. Uncle Gurnam Singh came into view from time to time. Something Tej had said made him laugh. Casual, curiosity-driven neighbors had meanwhile joined the crowd around Uncle, who stood leaning on a walking stick, one foot thrust out in front of the other. His full, dark brown beard was glossy from recent brushing.
In the kitchen it was all orderly confusion. Doing the cooking at floor level while sitting on low stools beside the stoves was a procedure worked out over centuries. It suited the climate, and the tools and equipment at hand; it also operated on the premise that there would be servants to fetch and carry and to hand you things. But to my Western eyes this arrangement created a certain mess and inefficiency. In the midst of it, there was a conversation I felt I was not supposed to understand. Uncle was as usual the subject of it, and his sudden and unannounced presence in our midst added spice.
“It’s a disgrace,” Mataji was saying to whoever had the time to listen.
Dilraj Kaur stopped what she was doing. “What, Mataji?” she said.
Mataji glanced around as if wondering whether to proceed. “It’s Gurnam Singh,” she said with a meaningful glance at Dilraj Kaur, “and that woman in his village.”
Goodi and Rano looked at one another. Dilraj Kaur sat down on a low stool beside Mataji. Udmi Ram almost forgot the dough he was kneading for the tandoori roti, and Chotu dropped a plate he was wiping. The sudden crash of shattered porcelain broke the sudden silence that had overtaken the room and made everybody jump. It was the occasion for Udmi Ram to box the boy’s ears.
“What are you slapping him for?” Mataji shouted to the cook. “He’s a child. He makes mistakes. He just has to be more careful. Don’t let that happen again, beta,” she said to Chotu.
Dilraj Kaur waited for Mataji to go on.
“I have to have it out with Gurnam Singh this time. I hear he sees that woman every day. He keeps her like a concubine,” Mataji continued in a voice meant for only Dilraj Kaur to hear.
Dilraj Kaur made a suitably discreet remark in reply, and glanced briefly in my direction in the abstract way she had come to adopt in recent weeks.
“And that is not all,” Mataji went on. “The woman is a widow with a small child. Can you imagine?”
“Some people are without shame … the woman, I mean,” Dilraj Kaur said, warming up to the conversation and at the same time eager to show where she apportioned blame. “Who can imagine such a creature?”
“It’s all Gurnam Singh’s fault,” Mataji said. “He needs to have some sense put into his head. When I think of what it must be like for Bhabi Gursharan Kaur …” she broke off to wipe her face with her dupatta … “I wonder how she stands it. She has given birth to five children for him, and this is all she gets in return in her old age: a husband old enough to know better, acting like a sixteen-year-old. Who does he think he is!”
Uncle’s age was clearly a factor that made the entire business all the more crass. But other ideas were crowding in. I wasn’t able to string them together; it was more in the way of a feeling that wasn’t quite right. It had to do with the expression on Dilraj Kaur’s classic face when she glanced at me. She who usually had no time for small talk, whose conversation typically consisted of practical matters like, “pass the salt”, or “hand me the ladle”, had found a subject to her liking.
“And that woman,” she said, “how old is she?”
“She must be too young for him, whatever her age is,” Mataji replied with a dismissive gesture that was as much of the Punjabi language as the words she was speaking.
Dilraj Kaur steered around to another point. “She must have cast a spell on him,” she said. “Such women go to any lengths.”
By now their dialogue was being listened to by everybody in the kitchen. Mataji was silent for a moment while she transferred the dessert into a serving bowl.
“But he hasn’t actually taken her into his house, under his roof, has he?” Dilraj Kaur went on.
“I should hope not,” Mataji said.
“That would, of course, be worse,” Dilraj Kaur observed, almost to herself. She allowed a small silence to settle over the room.
When the conversation started up again, it took a philosophical turn and became too abstract for my meager Punjabi vocabulary, tightly confined as it was to a few basic words and close attention to body language. Like a deaf person, wearied of lip reading, I tuned out their talk and took off on my own thoughts of what Uncle’s concubine must be like.
As lunch was being gotten on I thought about how the presence of a young woman in his life added to his image, at least as I’d received it during the past hour and through family gossip all along. He belonged, surely, to an earlier age when landlords lived their lives in a kind of security that would never be enjoyed again. His youth had been a time of unlimited money, influence, and family lands. He behaved as if all these feudal delights were still at hand and his to savor. Moreover, he was in a perpetual state of activity, finding himself either in the midst of a lawsuit or a village feud, or both. He was a champion of lost causes, and lately he had graduated from local to state politics.
How can anyone so devoid of social consciousness be so charming, I wondered. It didn’t fit. He should be making everyone angry or resentful or envious. My liberal outlook should be offended. My liberal friends in Berkeley would be appalled. Ripped out of context, Uncle wouldn’t do. He’d be an embarrassment, a denial of some of our most precious beliefs about human dignity, a throwback to a feudal age mercifully dead, in most places anyway.
But there was a spot for him here. I thought about it as I watched him hold the company in thrall at lunch (even Tej was upstaged for the time being), and I became convinced it was altogether appropriate that Uncle Gurnam Singh should have a concubine; why not? This would complete the picture. I wondered why Mataji was so exercised over the whole affair.
Even Mama would have liked to have her say, had some magic carpet brought her onto the scene here. “How can you approve of that man?” I could hear her ask. “It’s bad enough for him to slight his wife and keep another woman. But don’t you see anything wrong? I know you better than you know yourself, and I can’t believe you could have grown up in our house, a Graziani, and still think that man’s okay.” For a moment I wondered if all the values I had grown up by had deserted me. Have I changed? I wondered. Was I right then, or am I right now?
At the same time, the vague apprehensions that had been lurking around in my head earlier, trying to take on some coherence, were settling down into an idea I did not want to explore further, since I had a suspicion that where it led, I didn’t want to go. I would get back to it later, and meanwhile get Rano to fill me in on the parts of the conversation I had missed.
As it turned out, Rano’s job as translator picked up as Uncle’s visit progressed. Something was always going on: an outing for everybody at the nearby canal headworks, a shooting party for the men at dawn, a side trip to a city in the next district that the cousins from Amritsar had declared famous for a particular kind of sweet Uncle fancied. There were anecdotes to share; verbal fireworks to listen in on; arguments about almost everything that quickly settled down, as Tej would say, “as fast as the bubbles on a pool of pee.” Even when we didn’t go along, there was always someone of Uncle’s original party who stayed be
hind.
Shiv Kanwar Singh, for instance. He had fought in the Second World War and at the merest prompting would take from the pocket of his saffron-colored kurta a much-worn snapshot of a blonde Italian girl he had once known, the two of them … he in the uniform of the British Indian Army, and she in a tight skirt and peasant blouse, smiling broadly into the camera. She had an uncle in Rappallo who had shot off his trigger finger to avoid conscription into Mussolini’s army. A young fellow, called Brother John because of some private joke, stood or even sat at attention wherever he was, and except when eating, went around with a shotgun resting in the crook of one arm. His grandfather had fought in the Afghan wars, had brought back a tribal woman from the Frontier, and had installed her as his favorite wife. She lived to be ninety.
Their companion was Santji, an allegedly pious old man. His claim to the title of “Sant” was never quite made clear, but his dark blue tunic and carved wooden prayer beads gave him the external bona fides. He had lots of stories to tell, but none about himself or his family, if he had ever had one.
On the fringes of their circle hovered Ramu, a vague, sleepy boy who was Uncle’s servant. We rarely saw Uncle’s driver, Banwari Lal. His services were in perpetual demand as the jeep made repeated trips into town for one thing or another. He was short and wiry and resourceful, and his hair was cut long at the sides and short at the back.
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