Company of Women

by Khushwant Singh

  We reached Haridwar before noon and drove straight to his ashram. He had his room opened. The only furniture it boasted was a charpoy, a chair and a table. The ceiling fan hung precariously in the the middle of the room, and some distance from it dangled a naked bulb. The lavatory was Indian style. A bucket under a tap and a lota on a stool were the only items in the bathroom. ‘What more do I need?’ Father said when I remarked that the arrangement was a little too basic. ‘I bring my own bedding roll and soap. I use keekar twigs to brush my teeth.’

  ‘They serve good vegetarian food,’ he went on. ‘There is katha and keertan every evening. Scholars and pundits expound the teachings of our holy books and people from all parts of the country come to listen to them. And there is Mother Ganga herself, descending from the tresses of Lord Shiva in Gangotri high up in the Himalayas.’

  We had our afternoon meal with many other ashram regulars, sitting cross-legged on the ground, served by men wearing nothing besides their sacred threads and flimsy dhotis. I had lost the art of eating with my hands and spilt quite a bit of the daal and vegetables on my shirt. My father retired for his afternoon siesta. I went out to take a look at the city and find something that would make me feel less out of place.

  All the streets in Haridwar ran off from the main road and led to the river bank. I had to dodge a succession of paandas wanting to tell me vital facts about my ancestors or armed with receipt books asking for donations for gaushalas (cow pens) orphanages and temples. I came to the Ganga. A bridge took one across to an island with an ugly white clock tower standing in the middle of it. I stood on the bridge to take in the scene. To the north was a range of hills covered with thick forests. To the east, low hillocks. To the south, the plains through which the river ran. To the west was a mountain wall overlooking the city. And under the bridge flowed a very fast-moving river. Along the banks was an endless stretch of nondescript temples of no architectural merit. Well-fed, good-looking cows roamed along the ghats looking for pilgrims offering them bananas. Every few yards there were conclaves of ash-smeared sadhus sitting around smouldering fires and smoking chillums. There was nothing very sacred about the river front except the clear blue water of the Ganga sparkling in the sunshine.

  I returned to the ashram to fetch my father. He was waiting for me. We walked back to the ghat. A large crowd had gathered at the ghat called Har Ki Pauri, Steps of the Lord. ‘We will get a better view from the clock tower,’ said my father. We crossed the bridge to the island and took our places on the tower facing Har Ki Pauri. The sun went over the western range. A deep shadow spread over the ghat. The scene changed dramatically. From temples along the banks emerged priests bearing huge candelabras of lamps. They came down the steps of Har Ki Pauri, as if in a majestic procession. The huge wicks soaked in ghee produced fierce, tall flames. The heat must have been intense, for some priests had what looked like white gloves covering their hands and forearms. As they waved their candelabras over the river, touching the bases to the water, tracing the sacred ‘Om’ with the bright flames in the night air, they intoned a hymn in praise of Mother Ganga. All at once the temple bells started clanging. Pilgrims placed leaf-boats with flowers and lit oil lamps in them on the stream. They floated away bobbing up and down. The dark river reflected a myriad quivering lights. I stood entranced by the magical scene spread before my eyes. My father joined the palms of his hands above his head and loudly sang the hymn of praise to the holy river:

  Om! Victory to thee, holy Mother Ganga!

  Victory ever be thine.

  Anyone who worships thee

  A true worshipper is he;

  What his heart desires

  You grant without fail.

  Om! Mother Ganga, hail, hail, hail.

  The spectacle ended as abruptly as it had begun. The temple bells fell silent. The priests disappeared into their temples, carrying their candelabras with them. The leaf-boats with oil lamps floated away out of sight. I joined a group of Bengali pilgrims and raised a full-throated cry: Jai Ganga Mata—victory to thee, Mother Ganga.

  As we were leaving the ghat, a half-moon rose in a clear blue sky. And beside it the evening star, Hesperus, sacred to lovers. The part moon and the star were reflected in the calm river.

  The scene haunted me all night. It was to recur in my dreams for the rest of my life.

  Early next morning, while it was still dark, Father woke me up and said, ‘Get up. We must go to Har Ki Pauri before it gets too crowded. From there we’ll drive on to Delhi. Put your things in the car.’

  I quickly brushed my teeth, shaved and washed my face with tap water. Though the water came from the Ganga, it was not considered holy. We drove through dimly lit streets past a stream of men and women going towards the ghat. We left the car on the main road and pushed our way through towards the river. Har Ki Pauri was beginning to get crowded. We muscled our way through the crowd, left our clothes in the care of a paanda and went down the steps. The sun was just coming up over the eastern hills when we stepped into the water. It was icy cold. Undaunted, my father went in till the water came up to his chest. I followed him. He scooped some water in his cupped hands and offered it to the rising sun, mumbling some kind of prayer as he did so. He ducked into the river several times and ordered me to do the same. As I dipped myself into the chilly water I thought of Yasmeen humping me and mocking me about the pious Hindu’s faith in the cleansing properties of the waters of the Ganga.

  We stepped out of the water to dry ourselves. Father reassured me, ‘Now we are cleansed of all our sins. Ganga Mata has washed them away and will drown them in the sea.’ So he thought. As I rubbed myself with a towel, my eyes fell on other bathers, mainly women with big breasts and bigger buttocks, their wet saris clinging to their bodies and displaying their voluptuous contours. The waters of the Ganga had done nothing to cleanse my mind of libidinous desires.

  On our drive back to Delhi we passed scores of men carrying water-pots slung on either end of poles balanced on their shoulders. My father explained to me that they were carrying water from Har Ki Pauri to their villages to offer as prasad to others. ‘These pots must never touch the ground, if they do the holy water loses its purity. Ganga Jal is sacred. Drops are put into the mouths of new born babies as well as the dying. Idols are bathed in it before they are worshipped. Some wealthy Hindus get tanks full for their daily baths …’ He went on in this fashion till I could not take it anymore. This was as good an opportunity as any I would get to let my father know that not everything he said and did agreed with me. But when I spoke I did so gently. ‘Pitaji, this is bharam (superstition). The waters of the Ganga are no more sacred than those of the Yamuna, Ravi, Narmada, Kaveri, Krishna or the Brahmaputra. Or for that matter the Thames, Rhine, Danube, Volga, Seine or the Mississippi. Now most of the rivers in the West are polluted with industrial effluents as ours are with garbage, human excreta and half-burnt corpses. At Haridwar the Ganga is clean because it descends from snow-clad mountains. But see it after it has run past Allahabad, Varanasi and Patna and you would hesitate to put your foot in it. By the time it becomes the Hooghly in Bengal, it stinks like a sewer.’

  My father snubbed me: ‘Don’t talk like that! I don’t know about other rivers but scientists have analysed the water of the Ganga and found unique healing properties in it. No other river in the world can match it. It is not for nothing that our ancients declared it holy, our sages lived in caves along its course and meditated on its banks. You have been contaminated by Western materialism.’

  There was no point arguing with a man so set in his ideas. With the years my father had turned into a religious zealot. He was a good, caring and kindly man who never hurt anyone nor ever said an unkind word against another human being. But he had become a bigot. It was too late to change him. We did not exchange many words during the rest of our journey.

  Father rang up Rai Bahadur Lala Achint Ram and told him of our return from Haridwar. ‘When would it be convenient for us to call on you and pay our
respects? Or would you honour us with a visit to our humble abode? We live in a small DDA flat.’ His tone was very obsequious. Achint Ram invited us to come for tea the following day.

  This time my father did not ask his rich Sikh friend to lend him his Mercedes Benz. ‘I don’t want to give them a false impression of ourselves. We will go in a taxi.’

  My father dressed himself in sherwani and churidars and tied a grey turban round his head. I wore a Princeton T-shirt and blue denims. I knew I looked best in casuals. We hired a taxi and told the driver to take us to the address on Prithvi Raj Road. It was among the most expensive residential areas in New Delhi. Our taxi pulled up under the porch of a large double-storeyed house surrounded by a well-kept garden—an open lawn with a marble fountain in the centre, flower beds with large chrysanthemums. A liveried bearer opened the door and let us into the drawing room. Huge sofas and armchairs, ornate black marble tables, two huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, photographs of the President, the Prime Minister and members of the family in silver frames—everything smelt of newly acquired wealth and social status.

  The Rai Bahadur came out of his study and embraced my father. They were about the same age and the same height. But Father was a lean man; Rai Bahadur Lala Achint Ram had quite a paunch and wore thick glasses. I bowed my head as I said ‘Namaste’, and he put his hand on it. He addressed me as ‘Beta’ and asked us to sit down. He called out to the servant to bring tea and tell the rest of the family that the guests had arrived. His three sons came first and shook hands with me, but there was no warmth in their handshakes. They were followed by their wives—all over-made-up, over-dressed and loaded with jewellery. They folded their hands, said namaste and sat down on the sofa furthest from us. They were not expected to open their mouths. They did not. Then came Achint Ram’s wife, a fat woman, also loaded with jewellery. Behind her came her daughter, properly decked up for inspection.

  Tea was served and cakes passed round. The Rai Bahadur took my father aside and the two men went into a huddle. The boys got talking to me. The asked me about my school and college in India and my years abroad. In turn I asked them where they had studied. They had gone to the elitist Modern School and then joined their father’s business. ‘What is the point of getting degrees from colleges?’ said the eldest, ‘they don’t help you in business. For that you need practical experience.’ That gave me an opening to talk to the girl. ‘Do you agree?’ I asked and she snapped back, ‘Of course not. I don’t want to go into any business or work in any office. I did my BA in English literature from Miranda House. Papa would not let me do an MA.’

  Her mother intervened, ‘Sonu is our one and only daughter. No one wants to marry girls who are better educated than they. She is the first in our family to have gone to college. We are very proud of her.’

  Sonu gave a wan smile. I had a good look at her: fair-skinned, slender but with an alarming resemblance to her obese mother. This was evidently the first time she had been subjected to the indignity of an inspection and she did not relish it. She looked sullen and would undoubtedly take it out on her parents as soon we left.

  When it was time for us to leave, everyone stood up. I towered above all of them. I was certainly a lot more presentable than the girl’s brothers. The entire family came to see us off at the porch. The Rai Bahadur saw the waiting taxi and ordered his bearer to pay off the cab driver and send for his car. My father made a mild protest and tried to pay the fare. Rai Bahadur held his hand. ‘No, brother, I will not allow it. My driver will take you home in my car.’ They embraced again. I touched the Rai Bahadur’s and his wife’s feet. ‘Jeetey raho, beta (May you live long, son),’ said the Rai Bahadur. ‘Lammee umar hove puttar (May you have a long life, son),’ said his wife. I shook hands with the boys and said namaste to their wives and to Sonu, who folded her hands in response but said nothing. She looked unsure of herself.

  On the way home my father was in an expansive mood. ‘The Rai Bahadur told me that his daughter will get an equal share of his property with her brothers. That could be several crores. He’s more than willing to make you a business partner. The girl is not bad looking. She’s educated. It may take her some time to adjust to our modest lifestyle, but where would she find a handsomer and better qualified husband than you? I have told the Rai Bahadur that I cannot make a final commitment till I have consulted you. Now it is for you to decide. I have promised to get back to him in two days.’

  What did I make of the Achint Ram family? They had everything I disliked about upstart Punjabi families. Pots of money but no class. I had seen enough evidence of that in their sitting-room. Black marble floor, white marble walls, chandeliers more appropriate in the lobby of a hotel than a private home. Italian marble tables with silver framed photographs of powerful politicians, but no Gandhi, no Nehru. Despite the large garden there were plastic flowers in ornate vases and crystal bowls with plastic bananas, cherries, apples, grapes and pineapples. I suspected that the chandeliers were not made of cut glass but of plastic. Achint Ram had dyed his hair and walrus moustache, but the white at the roots showed they needed a fresh coat of dye. His black sherwani had gold buttons studded with diamonds. The walking stick he carried even inside the house was of black ebony with an ivory handle carved to resemble a snarling lion. His wife was as fat as him and decorated like a Christmas tree with heavy gold jewellery: earrings, necklaces, bangles and rings. I had expected the sons to be more sophisticated than their parents, but they had turned out to be arrivistes as well. They wore Western clothes but with shiny bright red ties, and red handkerchiefs sticking out of their front pockets. All three had used too much perfume, had gold or platinum rings with precious stones on their fingers, and gold-chained wrist-watches worn with the dials facing inwards. And they kept cracking their fingers—thig, thig, thig. The youngest was the most crude; while talking to me in his loud voice he kept jigging his legs. First he rested one leg on the other which he kept rapidly pushing up and down. Then he changed his style of shaking them by spreading out his thighs and bringing them together—endlessly. How could I have a serious coversation with someone who was fidgeting all the time?

  Achint Ram’s daughters-in-law sat like dumb painted dolls without any expression on their faces. They kept gaping at me as if envying their sister-in-law for having landed a husband who was more handsome and better educated than their own husbands.

  Then there was their Mercedes Benz which brought us home. There was a silver Ganpati on the dashboard and a bottle of perfume beside it. A fluffy gnome dangled on the rear pane.

  It was no use telling my father about the lack of class in this rich family; he would not have understood. I also felt it was not fair to club Sonu with the rest of the family. She was beddable enough and I could teach her about the right style of living and behaviour, the difference between crystal, cut glass and plastic.

  I weighed the pros and cons of marriage. To me sex was the more pressing need than love or companionship. For too long have we been fooled into believing that the basis of a happy man-woman relationship is love. Love is an elusive concept and means different things to different people. There is nothing elusive about lust because it means the same thing to all people: it is the physical expression of liking a person of the opposite sex. Cuddling, kissing and fondling leading to sexual intercourse. Love cannot last very long without lust. Lust has no time-limit and is the true foundation of love and affection.

  In America I had got all the sex I wanted, and without long-term commitments. In India it was not so easy. I did not relish the idea of visiting prostitutes or looking for call girls. Even if I succeeded in persuading a working woman to share my bed, there was no place I could take her to: Indians do not believe in privacy; they are a nosey people and the one thing they will not do is mind their own business. At least marriage would ensure a woman in my bed.

  I also thought over the wisdom of marrying a rich man’s daughter and bringing her out of a large mansion to a pokey little flat. I would
have to find better accommodation and earn enough to keep her in the style she was accustomed to. I did not want to be beholden to her father and be treated as a ghar jamai—the resident son-in-law.

  Then there was Sonu herself: passably fair and undoubtedly looking forward to marriage like all Indian girls of her age do, but a little haughty. She was almost certain to be a virgin and looked the kind who might resent my not being one. During the tea session she was sulking, as if preparing herself for a rejection: if you don’t like me, go to hell and find another girl. If I said yes, she might think that I was swayed more by her father’s wealth and position than her looks.

  Father was obviously looking forward to a matrimonial alliance that would raise his status in society. Lala Achint Ram was keen to have an ‘America-returned’, highly educated boy as his son-in-law to add respectability and sophistication to all the benefits of wealth that he already had. Everything depended on my saying yes.

  Ultimately, it was fantasizing about deflowering Sonu, the haughty little memsahib, and having her in bed whenever I wanted to that made me decide in favour of accepting the offer.

  The next afternoon my father asked me, ‘So, puttar, have you thought over the matter?’

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ I replied, ‘I’m willing. But I don’t think it would be right to bring a girl from that kind of family into a tiny flat like ours. If you agree we can sell this place and get a larger one in a better locality. I think I have enough dollars saved up. We can pool our resources and find something more spacious. At least three bedrooms with bathrooms: one for you, one for ourselves, one for the guests. A sitting-dining room, servant quarters, a garage and perhaps a small garden.’