English Lessons and Other Stories

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  And yet my mother’s brothers had all wandered far. Sukhi-mama, the uncle I knew least of all, lived in Montreal, where there is no monsoon, and had returned to be married to someone my grandfather had decreed acceptable. My parents and I would fly to Bangkok for the wedding.

  Dropadi Ma wanted to be there too, I felt it, for Sukhimama was the eldest boy, the one she had taught most. But Dropadi Ma was, at the end of it all, only a servant, and we all knew the question would not arise. So instead she oversaw every detail of the packing, holding his wedding uchkan close to her face so she could see that every gold button was threaded with gold thread, not lemon-coloured, and placing one of her own gold bangles with the jewellery our family was to give to the bride’s family.

  But even in the few days since Sukhimama had returned, we both felt there was more than monsoon pressure in the house. My grandfather’s roar was louder, and he would come to the long dinner table at the gong and would correct my table manners all through dinner, over my mother’s gentle protests. I hid in closets a lot, just to read, and heard Sukhimama talking to my grandfather.

  “I tell you, she may be a very nice girl, but I do not know her. It is not 1945 anymore, Darji, it is 1966.”

  My grandfather’s voice came low like the growl of a tiger reaching the end of its patience. “What will come of knowing her, may I ask? And if, after this ‘knowing her,’ you think you do not want her, what will we do then? By then her reputation will be ruined and I will have to pay her parents to find a lesser match. Did they addle your brain in Canada? You should have stayed in England, sir. The English understand these things.”

  I was all ready to run for refuge from the wrath that would follow any reply to so logical an argument, but I heard Sukhimama sigh and I knew the storm was averted. Dropadi Ma would be glad.

  But when I told her, I could not tell if she was glad. She fell silent for a long time, so I entered into the silence with her and we thought our separate thoughts together, cross-legged on the kitchen floor. She took a few handfuls of dal seeds and began to pick them over on a metal tray, looking for tiny stones that could grit in our mouths. Her eyes were right close to the tray and it took her a long time to find a few. I began to believe she had moved on to thinking about other things. But then her leathery brown face with the big mole on the nose came around to mine and her eyes behind her Coke-bottle glasses looked into mine, and she pointed to her wrist and said, “Go. Bring my bangle back to me.”

  My heart started to pound. “Maji, what if I am caught?”

  “You will tell them you were obeying Dropadi Ma. Have I no rights in this house? It is my bangle, and I would have it back. Go and reclaim it for me, but quietly.”

  I walked out of the cool dark kitchen into rooms of covered furniture and trunks half-filled for the month-long celebration in Bangkok. I had seen my grandmother place the bangle in the big silver-coloured trunk. Two minutes of breath-held scrabbling inside and it was in my hand. I fled back to Dropadi Ma. Her hand closed over it, but she did not place it back on her wrist. Instead, she lifted her chunni and slipped it between her comfortable breasts.

  “Tell Sukhiji I would like to speak with him when he can find the time.” It was a command.

  “Dropadi Ma meant right now, Uncle. When she says, ‘When You Can Find The Time,’ she means, ‘Now, If You Love Me,’ Uncle. Come quick. Maybe she is sick — she never commands us.”

  He came quickly, filling the doorway of the kitchen where she sat with her head covered, his big hands folded and his turbaned head dropped to ask her blessing. I wondered if they ask a blessing from their elders in Canada, for he had not forgotten how. His laugh boomed in the small kitchen as he crouched to give her a hug and then sat on the floor next to us. “Yes, Maji?” There was a little Canadian accent in his Yes, I thought. I pretended to be invisible; they thought I was too small to understand.

  Soon the gold bangle appeared and passed from her hands to his two cupped hands. Her right hand rested briefly on his shoulder and I heard her say, “Jeeo, Beta.” Live, my son. And then, “Khushi Raho.” May you be happy.

  A few days later, when all the trunks were locked and marigold garlands of farewell lay ready for preflight ceremonies in the rose-grey dawn, there was a shout and then a woman, my grandmother maybe, cried out, “We are ruined!”

  He was gone. A 2:00 a.m. Air Canada flight, I heard. Direct to Montreal. Then an argument. You can’t fly direct to Montreal. Perhaps Air Canada will stop in London and we can call a relative to talk to him there. Who has a relative there? Call him, call him! Tell him to talk to Sukhi at the airport. Remind him of his duty. Tell him how much money we will have to pay the girl’s family. Hai, book a call to Bangkok, to the girl’s father! They will be expecting us on the plane, today. We are ruined.

  I ran to find Dropadi Ma, barefoot as I was. But she was not in the servant’s quarter on her charpai as usual. She was already on her corner of the kitchen floor, and she was wearing yesterday’s clothes. Her glasses lay on the floor beside her and she held one knee as she dozed. I shook her a little.

  “Dropadi Ma — Sukhimama has taken a flight to Canada last night. There can be no wedding!”

  Her toothless smile was wide and joyous. “Come, little one. Ma will tell you a story.”

  Family Ties

  Everyone says Inder is the smart one and I the steady one. I know steady means boring but it doesn’t matter; he’s my brother. He’s the thin one, and I’m the one Mummy calls Fatty. He’s the one with laughter and he always asks why. “Why?” is a question Mummy takes as a personal affront, but Inder asks it over and over. Why can’t we live in Indore with Dad? Or in Darjeeling with old Bibiji and Nana? Why can’t we play Gulli Danda with the big-eyed, bandy-legged jhuggi children? Why doesn’t Mummy allow him to sing like Rajesh Khanna in the films — winking at girls, with his right hand twirling in time to the music?

  I am ten and he is fourteen and he challenges me to play mental chess through the mosquito nets separating our beds, and I hear him whisper “check” by my fifth move. And every night he tells me stories. There is his favourite — the one about the sons of Guru Gobind Singh who were interred alive in a brick wall but who did not convert to Islam. Then there is my favourite — the one about Guru Nanak falling asleep with his feet pointing towards Mecca. I make Inder tell me how the qazis came upon him and tried to move his feet to a more respectful place, and how the Ka’aba spun till Guru Nanak awoke and suggested they try pointing his feet at any place where God is not. Most nights, the chucka-chucka-chuck of the three-armed overhead fan lulls me to sleep and leaves him to finish his stories alone.

  When winter comes, Mummy buys a TV from Nancy and Pierre, her Canadian diplomat friends. Inder and I sit on the threadbare oriental carpet, watching clips of old Hindi films and the endless agricultural shows, huddled together with our knees propping up the warm tent of a bulbous silk razzai. I gaze enthralled at the blue-grey glow for the news while Inder imitates the pompous, stilted voices of the announcers trying so hard to sound like the BBC: “THIS is the news. Today the government announced that President Mujib Rehman has asked for the support of the Indian Army’s brave jawans in defence of the Muktibahini in Bangladesh.” Now the nightly stories have Dad attired as Guru Gobind Singh from two hundred years ago, wearing a saffron turban, wielding a huge kirpan — and leading the 61st Cavalry.

  Mummy orders Dad’s old driver, Nand Singh, to paint the upper half of the headlights of our Ambassador black, in preparation for blackouts. And Dad comes home the night we hear the first sirens wail their warning.

  Dad doesn’t wear a saffron turban or carry a big kirpan. He isn’t even as large as I remembered, and he looks a little worn. Mummy and he use a servant as their messenger when they need to talk — or me, because I can say the English name of Dad’s department in the government as he speculates about his next posting. And all the time Inder asks, “Aren’t you going to be in the war?”

  “No,” Dad replies. “I l
ost enough in ’47.”

  It’s true, I know, because Nand Singh has told me the story of Partition. He has told me how Dad and my Dada and my Dadi locked their haveli near Rawalpindi before the Muslims came and how they fled on a death train and only twenty-one-year-old Dad arrived in the new India because Nand Singh and he used their turbans to rope themselves to the belly of the railcar and hid beneath it with a revolver as their only weapon while Dada and Dadi’s screams filled the mad swirling darkness. I know Dad is thinking of his parents when he wanders off to a quiet spot, takes off his shoes, sits cross-legged before the Granth Sahib and says the words of the Gurus, chanting low. I stand behind him keeping the flies away with his special silver-handled yak’s-hair tail, white and rough as my Dada’s beard might have been, and when he nods I turn the pages of the tome for him.

  “Beti.” I am absurdly happy when he looks up and his teeth flash white in the dark cloud of his beard.

  On television they begin in monotones to tell children how to take shelter in concrete pipes placed along the roadsides. Dad smells my fear and jokes that I am a silly little kukri, a hen instead of a Sikhni of our family of whom he can be proud.

  Inder tells me Gnat is a name for a baby fly and also a new Indian aeroplane that Pakistani General Yahya Khan won’t be able to get away from. But now a small bomb has fallen on the outskirts of Delhi and the streets are deserted at midday. Even the street vendor who spins white sugar clouds he calls Old Women’s Hair doesn’t ring his bicycle bell at our gate, although I am home because school is closed for the war. Only the sparrows in our eucalyptus tree are undaunted, so I give them crumbs of the bread that Mummy complains is so expensive.

  Nand Singh takes me to the market with him, opening the back seat door for me as though I were Mummy and shooing away the poor jhuggi boys with their oversized empty coolie baskets. Though he cannot read or write, he knows what the ration cards say and he has such a good memory he never forgets even one item Mummy tells him to buy. We pick our way through shady gullies between the jute-bag-roofed shops of corrugated tin, and the disappointed cries of fishmongers follow us to the stall of the chicken-seller.

  The chicken-seller sits before a stack of metal cages and his brown belly spills over a blood-flecked once-white dhoti. He spits betelnut juice at a gutter at our feet and offers me a red-gummed smile. Nand Singh points to the hens, four to each tiny cage, and says graciously, “Which one would mem-sahib like?” He’s complimenting my judgement in advance, letting me know I have grown up enough to be trusted with some household decisions. The hens all look the same to me — brownish-white with frightened eyes, silly kukris just like me. I look at the closest cage and one steps forward. She holds her head high when she crows, thrusts her breast at the cage and seems unafraid to die, so I say, “That one.” A moment later, her head is severed and Nand Singh throws her in his shopping bag. Although Mummy’s frown at my plate warns that no one will marry a fatty, I eat the curried kukri that night, hoping her courage will nourish mine.

  When Inder says he wants to run away to join the jawans, Dad and Mummy don’t even notice. They’re fighting again over money. Always money. She says Dad should be like every other government employee — take a favour here, a perk there, a bribe here, have a little consideration for his family. Try to get a Delhi posting — she says it’s the only place a government servant can make better money. He says she should not want foreign-made goods; he is working hard so that Indians can make all the things she wants. She says he is making her do without the things he can well afford. I run back and forth with messages until Mummy tells me to tell Dad she agreed to marry him only to save Nana the price of a dowry because Dad had said he didn’t want one. I take that message outside and tell it to my sparrows instead. When I go into my father’s room, he looks at my frightened face and says to tell her all right, she can buy us an air conditioner and pay Nancy and Pierre three thousand rupees.

  When I return, he pats the air with a cupped right hand, so I sink to the floor before him.

  “You have a faint heart, beti, a faint heart that can bring dishonour to those who love you. You are becoming just like my sister.”

  He rises, takes a battered attaché case from his steel almirah, places it carefully beside him and removes a woman’s picture. I crane my neck over his knees to see it.

  The woman in the picture looks kind though she has no smile. A pale chunni covers her head and her face is fair and round as a winter moon. An artist’s brush has retouched the photo so her eyes are gold-flecked brown like mine. I say, “I did not know you had a sister.”

  Inder stands watching at the door, his legs two long cylinders above the bell-bottoms of the imported blue jeans Mummy just bought from Nancy.

  Dad’s lips vanish into his beard as he surveys his son’s attire, but then he says, “Come in.”

  We stand before the open case, our unknown aunt looking up at us.

  “What was her name?” I ask.

  “Whose name?”

  “Your sister’s. My aunt’s.”

  “Chandini Kaur.”

  Moonlight Princess. Of course that should be her name.

  “How old is she in this picture?”

  “She was eighteen in 1947.”

  But Dad is lifting something else from the attaché case — a triangular muslin bundle. He unwraps it slowly before us until a black thing is exposed. A revolver. Sleek, slender-muzzled. Outside, a siren shrieks and then subsides.

  To my brother he says, “Beta, I do not know if you will ever need this. But there is a war now, and I want you to know how to use it to defend this little kukri.”

  Our faces solemn, we follow him upstairs to the sun-swathed concrete terrace, so high the leaves of our eucalyptus tree are close against the parapet. Our eyes never leave the weapon.

  He makes us stand five paces behind him. The bullets clink as he loads them into the chamber. He takes aim and fires.

  Leaves and feathers explode from the eucalyptus. I must not cry.

  “Now you try.” He gives my brother the gun, shows him how to close one eye, take the safety catch off, aim. Fire. When he misses, Dad shrugs, “If you need to use it, you will not miss. Marksmanship is in your blood.”

  We descend to Dad’s room again and help him wrap the weapon away. It is smooth and cool to the touch, as death must be.

  Then, with his hand on my head, he tells my brother, “If the Muslims come and your sister is in danger, you must shoot her rather than let her fall into their hands.”

  My breath comes fast when I hear this, and I feel his hand on my head like the kukri must have felt the chicken-seller’s pudgy gentle hand reaching into her cage. I look to my brother.

  But my brother looks only at my father and he says, “I will.”

  I want to shout at them — I am your daughter. I am your sister. But my tongue has turned slow, slow as a monsoon slug I once saw Inder flick from our scrap of garden into the dust of the street. I look at my aunt Chandini’s miniature face and then at my father’s. The small face of a woman whose name is never mentioned, and the set face of a man who has upheld his family’s honour. A plane roars over the house and, for the first time, I feel no rush of fear; far more is the danger from those within. Dad locks the Moonlight Princess away again in his steel almirah.

  My brother does not look at me again that day. At night, he does not whisper heroic tales of the Gurus to send me to sleep but lies on his other side, face averted. We are rice saplings separated for transplanting. I lie on my creaky string bed gazing at the latent vortex of the ceiling fan and wonder if he will have the courage to kill me to defend me, and where will I find the courage to die as Chandini Kaur must have, soft heart offered at eighteen to her brother’s bullet? My father’s bullet. Is it worse to be caught, converted, killed or raped by Muslims than to be killed by a brother? A brother — my brother — who said “I will” in the voice of his warrior ancestors without once asking his usual everyday everlasting “Why?”


  The Moonlight Princess comes to me in my dreams that night, telling me I can trust no one. Especially if he says he loves me.

  The twenty-five days of war are long, and when school opens again my new teacher is a Muslim — Miss Shafi, who wears a sleeveless sari blouse and ties her petticoat low below her navel so her midriff swivels through the corridors. She asks us to turn to the map of the subcontinent in our geography books and write “Bangladesh” in place of “East Pakistan.”

  Now I am eleven. My brother is sent away to a boarding school because Dad says he needs to be taught some more what it means to be a man. He writes me only one letter to tell me he has fought with the Hindu boys who teased him about his turban, and that the Drama Master made him take the woman’s part in a school play. I think of him, forced to dress as a woman and paraded before an audience without the turban that would protect his waist-length hair, but I can do nothing for him. I stay in Delhi because I have begun to know what pain it means to be a woman. Mummy says I matured so early because she must have fed me too much meat — I am forbidden to eat any more kukris, or to go alone in the car with Nand Singh. She says I complain too much every month and Nancy’s chauffeur delivers a box of imported Kotex after Dad is posted away again, this time to Bangalore.

  I think our eucalyptus must be a girl-tree; it takes too much from the soil and leaves everything around it parched and angry. The sparrows mate and push their young to fly. I wonder if the one Dad shot had a mate, and did he miss her? Did she have a young sparrow?