An American Brat

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  Khutlibai affectionately stroked the grubby jacket covering his arm, saying only, “Live long, son.” Then, gathering all the servants in the orbit of her tragic gaze, she commented, “You know how it is. It is not good policy to visit a son-in-law’s house too often. It is better for all concerned this way. Our elders knew what they were about when they made such traditions. May God never show us the day when we might need to depend on our married daughters and son-in-laws.”

  The servants murmured agreement and deferentially touched their foreheads. The blast of a musical horn from a passing minibus on the road appeared to further salute the wisdom of her utterance. Zareen looked away, prim and remote.

  Khutlibai reached into her handbag and, licking the tips of thumb and forefinger to separate the crisp fifty-rupee notes, distributed them among the servants. The blue-eyed Pathan chauffeur, who had the fierce loyalty and light skin of the tribes in the northern areas, shepherded his charge into the car, lifted her shawl clear of the door, and shut it.

  The servants hung around to wave good-bye. Zareen stood a little apart, unsmiling, and, as soon as the car began to move, strode inside.

  Cyrus’s car turned into the drive almost immediately after. The cook opened the Volkswagen door, salaamed, and took the briefcase from him.

  Cyrus located his wife in the bedroom. “Old lady’s been visiting?” he inquired, removing his jacket and tie.

  “Umm.”

  “Had a bit of an accident I think … Her blue-eyed boy knocked down a cyclist. I heard him swearing.”

  Zareen glanced at him briefly to indicate her interest.

  “Don’t think he was hurt,” Cyrus assured her.

  Zareen stopped paying attention and picked up his jacket.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Cyrus remarked. “What’s the old woman been up to?”

  “What can she be ‘up to’?” Zareen’s tart voice expressed her displeasure.

  “From the grins on the servants’ faces, Queen Victoria’s been dispensing largess.”

  “You can’t grudge them the odd tip.”

  “I don’t grudge them anything. It’s just that every time she comes and goes, there’s a minor insurrection. Last time the sweeper asked for a raise. Before then the cook demanded a new stove. God knows what it’ll be today. The gardener will probably ask for more manure.”

  “Poor thing, she hardly comes because this is how you talk!”

  “You know I’m always polite to her. Next time I won’t rush about trying to make her comfortable if this is your reaction to the effort I make.”

  “You think she doesn’t know how you talk behind her back? She’s more sensitive than you think.”

  “Sensitive!” On his way to slipping into his pajamas, Cyrus briefly flashed his bottom at his spouse to express his opinion of his mother-in-law’s sensitivity. He resumed his seat on the bed, darkly saying, “This house is chock-full of her spies!”

  “Look, I’m not interested in your paranoia!” Zareen shouted. Banging the dressing room door shut, she darted into the bathroom and occupied her all-purpose perch.

  ~

  Khutlibai phoned the next morning. Could Zareen visit her? She would have come, but it wasn’t proper to visit a married daughter day after day.

  “Mumma,” Zareen said. “Nobody cares about such things anymore.”

  “Whether they do or do not, I will do what is right.”

  “You know Cyrus loves to see you,” Zareen said warmly. “We don’t care much for old-fashioned thinking; you know that.”

  “Yes, yes. You and your Ping-Pong are the only modern ones in the whole world … We are all stupids.”

  Zareen was relieved. Her mother had recovered from her heart-rending docility of the day before.

  But when Zareen drove to the sprawling old colonial brick house on Punj-Mahal Road the next afternoon, Khutlibai greeted her on the whitewashed veranda in a subdued and chastened manner. Although she had grown up in the old bungalow, Zareen did not feel comfortable in it anymore. In fact she could not bear to be in the narrow room with the tall walls that had been hers for so many years; it had been completely repossessed by a gloomy battalion of Khutlibai’s old cupboards.

  Khutlibai and Sorabji Junglewalla had moved into the house, which was brand-new and considered modern then, straight from their honeymoon in Kashmir in 1940. The house had been completely renovated in two phases, once during Sorabji’s last years and once after his death, when a portion of the dining room roof, with its parallel rafters, came crashing down on a summer’s night.

  Zareen followed her mother inside. Khutlibai was being hospitable and was treating her daughter with the consideration she reserved for friends and acquaintances. She was also wearing her dentures, something she often neglected to do if only her daughter was visiting.

  Khutlibai bustled about in her velvet slippers, fetching and slicing the cottage cheese she had made from buffalo’s milk that very morning, opening cabinet drawers to pick out the best silver and the daintiest napkins. Ordering her ancient cook, Kalay Khan, who looked like a butler left over from the Raj in his white tunic and red cummerbund, to bring tea and onion pakoras, Khutlibai ushered her daughter into what she preferred to call the drawing room.

  The walls of the drawing room were decorated with dour portraits of dead ancestors, and the massive round-topped gold frames were hung with fragrant jasmine garlands. As always Zareen stopped before the arresting portrait of her great-grand-mother Putlibai.

  The life-size face tipped forward almost at the level of Zareen’s eye. The photographer had caught the yellow eyes in the gaunt, high-cheekboned face in a miraculous shaft of light, and the magnified irises glowed as if alive. The piercing eyes dominated the portrait, the room, and the aged house with their eerie amber luminosity.

  Zareen respectfully touched her bowed head to the icon. Raising her eyes, she saluted also her arrestingly handsome and noble-looking great-grandfather Faredoon Junglewalla, whose larger portrait hung above Putlibai’s, safeguarding her in death as he had in life.

  Both figures were enshrined in family legend. The pioneering couple, accompanied by Putlibai’s mother, Jerbanoo (a remarkably tempestuous lady whom Khutlibai was said to take after), had traveled from their ancestral village in Central India to Lahore by bullock cart at the turn of the century. The family business, a provision and wine store, was founded by Faredoon Junglewalla during the British Raj, its fortune vastly augmented by his son, Behram. Zareen muttered a short prayer for the benefit of all her ancestors’ souls.

  When the two women were comfortably ensconced on the drawing room sofa before their TV trays, Khutlibai again broached the subject that occupied all her thoughts: when was Feroza going to America?

  “Next Friday,” Zareen said, giving her mother a stealthy sideways look. She was sure Khutlibai already had all the information she required from Feroza. She must also know how eager Feroza was to go, and how excited. Zareen waited for her mother to direct the dialogue to suit her sense of occasion.

  “And where will she stay? Who’ll look after her? I’m so worried: a raw, unmarried girl traveling so far by herself. Have you made proper arrangements? Will she stay in a good, safe hotel?”

  “Of course not.” Raising supercilious eyebrows to mark her irritation, Zareen looked away deliberately. “Why should she stay in a hotel when she can stay with her uncle? She will stay with Manek. I have talked to him. He will come to New York to receive her. He’ll take good care of her. Now don’t worry.”

  Zareen was aware, at the periphery of her vision, of the slowly dawning creases of astonishment beginning to wreathe her mother’s mobile features. She braced herself.

  “Manek?” Khutlibai sounded astounded. “You’re going to leave her care to Manek? God help the child!”

  And Khutlibai brought her considerable histrionic abilities to bear as well on what she said next. “Don’t you remember how he chased her all over the neighborhood with a shotgun? Luckily she wasn’
t seriously injured. And how he made her run round and round the compound, cracking that hunter’s whip of his? Ask me how many times I’ve had to save her from being maimed. I didn’t tell you this, but one time he helped her up a tree and began sawing off the branch she was sitting on! I’ll tell you how he will look after her. He’ll push her into the nearest well!”

  “I doubt there are any wells in America,” Zareen said dryly. She was already beginning to feel battle-weary.

  But Khutlibai was in full throttle. “With no one to look out for her, he will bully her to his heart’s content. No,” she switched to emphatic English, “I will not permit it to happen. I will put my foot down!” Khutlibai raised a leaden leg and clumsily thudded it down. The flimsy TV table tipped precariously. Zareen and Khutlibai both reached out to prevent the dishes from crashing.

  “It’s all right, Mumma, I’ll get it.” Zareen said, bending swiftly to retrieve the teaspoons, forks, and spilled pakoras from the carpet.

  Khutlibai looked on, flustered and contrite.

  Quick to grab the unexpected advantage she had suddenly gained and in the same warm tone of voice and reassuring manner, Zareen said, “Mumma, I wish you could have heard Manek yourself; if only it weren’t so difficult to get through to America. I could tell he’s changed! He sounded quite responsible and dependable. I think he has matured!”

  Zareen’s liberal and impressive use of English words, and the conviction vibrant in her voice, communicated to her mother some part of the excitement and awe she had felt after her conversation with Manek.

  “I think he’s going to surprise us all,” Zareen said, surprised by the emotional charge in her voice. Simultaneously her eyes filled with tears of relief and thankfulness at the thought of the alteration America had wrought in her brother.

  The new subtleties Zareen had detected in the modulation of Manek’s voice had indicated self-reliance, a novel consideration for her anxieties and feelings, and an even less-expected ability to actually reassure her and convince her of the sincerity of his intent to look after Feroza. These nuances in the inflection of his vocal cords had been absorbed by Zareen’s eager ears as promising signs of the evolution that a stay in the mind-broadening and character-building horizons abroad was meant to confer upon the unrefined native sensibility.

  All this was quite apart from the blooming of genius an expensive education (in Manek’s case at M.I.T.) was expected to ensure. All Parsee boys, by virtue of their demanding roles as men, were presumed to be geniuses until they proved themselves nincompoops. And since the community’s understanding of genius was inextricably knit with the facility to make money and acquire a certain standing — even if only within the community — the men generally measured up. The community bristled with financial, business, engineering, doctoring, accounting, stockbrokering, computing, and researching geniuses.

  Not being burdened with similar expectations, the girls were not required to study abroad. If they persisted, and if the family could afford it, they might be affectionately indulged. It was also expedient sometimes to send them to finishing schools in Europe, either to prepare them for or divert them from marriage.

  Chapter 4

  They had phoned Manek with the flight details two weeks before Feroza was due to leave. Manek assured them he would be at Kennedy Airport when she arrived and would take good care of her. He instructed Feroza to do her duty-free shopping at Dubai Airport, since it was the cheapest. He did not require much persuasion to disclose what he would like, namely a cassette player and a camera. He gave her the brand names and particulars of each.

  Like most Parsees, who know very little about their religion, Feroza had a comfortable relationship with the faith she was born into; she accepted it as she did the color of her eyes or the length of her limbs. The day before her departure, Feroza drove their blue Volkswagen to the trendy new agyari in the Parsee colony. She visited the fire temple about four or five times a year: on the three New Years the Parsees celebrate according to different calendars; on Pateti, which is the last day of the year; and on special occasions, like her impending voyage.

  Zareen could not accompany her because she was having her period; her presence would pollute the temple.

  The atash — the consecrated fire in the agyari that is never permitted to go out — had been lovingly tended for eighty years by mobed Antia and his son, who was also a mobed. The holy fire had been moved about two years ago, with due reverence and ceremony, to be housed in the new agyari near the fashionable Liberty Market in Gulberg. The old location behind the Small-Causes Court had become congested, and the traffic of tongas, bullock carts, and lorries that jammed the narrow lanes made the approach difficult.

  Feroza honked to alert the priest of her presence. He lived in special quarters built right next to the temple. As she walked past, Feroza noticed the large padlock on his door and was disappointed.

  Feroza liked to hear the priest chant her family’s names during the Tandarosti prayer for good health. He recited the prayer slowly and with a solemn majesty that caused each word to resonate with sacred significance beneath the dome of the inner sanctum and the soaring vault of the hall.

  Feroza also liked to watch the priest, luminous in a froth of starched white robes, decorously feed the fire with offerings of sandalwood from a long-handled silver ladle.

  The narrow side door of the agyari was open. Feroza covered her head with a scarf, daubed her eyes with water from a silver jar, and performed her kusti in the lobby. As she unwound the sacred thread girdling her waist and retied the knots in the front and the back, she asked Ahura Mazda’s forgiveness for every ignoble thought, word, and deed she was guilty of and prayed that she might have the good thoughts, the eloquent tongue, and the strength to perform the deeds that would advance His Divine Plan. Having thus girded her loins in the service of the Lord, she entered the circular hall fragrant with sandalwood smoke and frankincense.

  Feroza lit an oil lamp and saluted the enormous framed portraits of departed Lahori Parsees and, removing her shoes, knelt before the marble threshold of the inner sanctum. The walls and dome of the small, round room imbued the space with a mystic aura and provided an appropriate foil for the atash as the manifestation of God’s energy.

  Feroza lay her forehead on the cool marble and requested the Almighty to protect her during her long journey overseas and to make her visit to America happy and successful. Then she solicited His blessings for herself and for all members of her family. Taking a pinch of ash from a ladle placed on the marble step, Feroza daubed her forehead with it; she already felt as if she had shed all impure thoughts.

  Feroza took a few steps backwards and, holding her palms together, raised her eyes to the atash. The holy fire glowed serenely on its bed of pale ashes in a round tray on top of the fire altar. The altar was like a gigantic, long-stemmed silver egg-cup with a turned-out lip. The embers of the larger logs gleamed through a latticework of freshly arranged sticks of sandalwood at the level of her eye. Someone had made an offering, Feroza thought; the priest must have left just before she came.

  Feroza whispered her prayers and gazed devoutly at the small flames licking the crisscross of sandalwood, and, suddenly, she felt the spiritual power of the fire reach out from its divine depths to encompass her with its pure energy. She was at once buoyant, fearless, secure in her humanity. And as the lucid flame of the holy vision illumed her mind and was absorbed into her heart, she felt herself being suffused with God’s presence. She felt He was speaking to her, acknowledging her prayers.

  Feroza’s spirits leapt with exultation. Bowing her head in gratitude, she moved to a side window and, pressing her radiant face to the polished brass bars, chanted the happy little Jasa-me-avanghe Mazda prayer. Although she recited it in the hallowed Avastan language of the Gathas, she knew its meaning from the English translation in her prayer book:

  Come to my help, O Ahura-Mazda!

  Give me victory, power, and the joy of life.

 
~

  Seven cars drove up the cemented drive to the welcoming portals of the Ginwalla residence at approximately eleven o’clock the following morning. Set deep in its carved frame, the door had been painstakingly transported a couple of years ago from the neglected haveli of bygone nawabs to grace the Ginwallas’ new residence. Zareen had hung her prized possession with strings of white roses and decorated the entrance with festive designs of fish and flowers pressed from small perforated tin trays containing powdered chalk.

  Since it was Friday, the Muslim sabbath, Cyrus was home. Debonair in an ivory raw silk shalwar-kamiz and matching woolen waistcoat, Cyrus led the guests — mostly relatives, Parsee friends, and a sprinkling of close Muslim friends from their nightly round of parties — into the front lawn, boxed in by thick gardenia and rose hedges. The farewell was an almost ceremonial occasion and, as such, an essentially Parsee affair.

  Feroza sat amidst her well-wishers, too excited to touch the food on the plate on her lap. Behind her the white roses, their velvet petals still cradling dew, gleamed against the bottle-green hedges as if fashioned from mother-of-pearl. Her younger cousins, particularly the girls, gaped at her in awe — when they were not running around noisily — made bashful by her sudden importance.

  Feroza’s voluble aunts looked proud and exhilarated, as if they had a share in the adventure she was embarked upon. Their loud, cheerful voices drowned out the clamor of the scooter-rickshaws and minibuses and the cries of the hawkers and of men brawling on the street. The Ginwalla bungalow was just off the enormous roundabout of the Gulberg Main Market.

  A formation of parrots streaked overhead in a chutney-green flurry and disappeared in the thick foliage of a mango tree next door. A couple of crows hopped on the garden wall, alertly turning their heads this way and that, their beady eyes on the food table. They cawed raucously, and two other crows joined the party on the wall. Between them they set up such a racket, spreading news of the banquet to sundry other crows, that Cyrus, withdrawing from his pocket a large cambric handkerchief and waving it, loped to the wall shouting, “Shoo, shoo!”