A Sahib's Daughter

by Harkness, Nina

  Decrepit cows with protruding ribs scrounged scraps discarded by the roadside tea shops and vegetable stalls. Mangy pariah dogs scuffled and scratched in the dusty laneways. It was almost as though all the business of the day was conducted on the streets and sidewalks. A dentist set up his practice, cross-legged on a coir mat, subjecting his patients to an assortment of instruments with little regard for hygiene or the pain he was inflicting. Hunkered close by was a man selling knives displayed on a piece of fabric with his sharpening tools beside them.

  The children paused to watch, enthralled, a monkey man with his distinctive rattling drum and cast of three monkeys, a mother, father and baby. The monkeys danced and performed a hilarious wedding ceremony where the female in a red veil pursued the male with her baby in tow. Mark giggled as the monkeys ran around collecting coins from the spectators in their tiny humanlike hands.

  When they arrived at the shop where Ramona bought her dry provisions, the owner, seeing the children, announced that he had Coca-Cola. He sat cross-legged on a white, padded platform in the middle of the store, presiding over the piles of grain. There was a smell of turmeric and gunny sacks. One of the associates handed chilled bottles of Coca-Cola to the children, while another weighed Ramona’s order under her watchful eye. Samira guzzled hers down in a few seconds, gasping as the bubbles went up her nose. She watched covertly as Mark sipped at his, knowing that he could never finish the bottle.

  “Tell her to stop watching me,” he whined to his mother. He knew what Samira was waiting for and was determined to finish the Coca-Cola to the last drop.

  “I’m not!” Samira protested.

  “There’s no hurry, darling,” said Ramona. She paid for the food, and the packages were placed in a basket in ready for the coolie to transport to the car. They all waited and watched as Mark struggled to finish as much of the Coke as he could, a brave soldier with a rifle over his shoulder and monkey under his arm. The pressure was too much for him. All pleasure in the drink dissipated and with lower lip quivering, he conceded defeat.

  “I don’t like it,” he lied, feebly, holding out the bottle to his mother. What was left of the Coke was handed to Samira, who seized it triumphantly and gulped it down.

  That night, the children had to wait until after dinner before Charles would allow them to play with the fireworks. The house looked beautiful with the electric lights switched off, lit only by the flickering oil lamps. Samira and Mark ran into the garden, a safe distance from the house and watched in fascination as Charles and Jetha let off Catherine wheels, fountains and rockets. They were given sparklers and tore around the garden shrieking and waving them in circles until they fizzled out.

  In the distance, the laborers beat their drums, a sound that reverberated through the plantation until the early hours every night during the Diwali season. The throbbing of the drums became louder and louder until they realized it came from just outside the compound. A group of laborers stood by the gate waiting to be invited in.

  “Jetha, let the coolies in,” Charles said, in Hindi.

  Ramona and the children retreated up the steps to the verandah, while Charles went to greet the visitors, several men and women obviously in a state of inebriation. They had come to dance for the Sahib and his family, they said. Samira shivered in fear, seeing the whites of their eyes roll in the light of the oil lamps. The women, whose eyes were heavily lined with kohl, wore coral and gold necklets and earrings that were so heavy that their lobes were grotesquely stretched. Mark ran into the house and clung to Didi in terror.

  The dancers formed three rows one behind the other with their arms around each other’s waists and chanted loudly to the beat of the drums. They ran forward with their heads facing the ground and then backwards with faces to the sky, back and forth, back and forth in a terrifying and never-ending dance. Finally, unable to take any more, Ramona signaled to Charles to make them stop.

  “Shabash! Shabash!” Charles praised them, not wanting to cause offence. He presented the leader with the bottle of rum Jetha had fetched from the liquor cabinet. It was accepted joyfully, and the group made their way out of the compound, laughing and talking as they vanished into the dark.

  Samira had run indoors for fear of being put on display. Sometimes, the coolies asked to look at the children up close, fascinated by their light skin and eyes.

  “Can they possibly be real?” they asked each other in wonder, gazing at the children who were so different from theirs. Ramona would smile and indulge them, but Samira would pout, hating the attention, and Mark’s eyes would well up.

  “They just want to look at you. They’ve never seen children like you before,” said Ramona, who identified with their curiosity. “Try to be nice.”

  Samira and Mark were stealing peas in the vegetable garden. Ramona and Charles were taking their afternoon nap, and Ramchand had gone home for lunch. Didi didn’t know where they were and was too hot to care. There was nothing as delicious as fresh peas, but they were bad for their tummies, and they weren’t allowed to pick them. There were rows of cauliflower, cabbage, carrots and beetroot. The peas and tomatoes were in the back corner, supported by canes. There was also a pineapple grove, but the children didn’t like to play there because the fronds were prickly and scratched their legs.

  Samira announced to Mark that she knew how to make babies. A girl in her class, Nilofer Sharma, had told her.

  “You don’t!” said Mark in disbelief, although quite liking the idea of having one.

  “I do so! It’s easy. She said a boy and a girl just have to rub their bottoms against each other, and they’ll have a baby.”

  “But where would it come from?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It just appears like magic. That’s what she said. Shall we try it?”

  “I don’t know.” He grew wary. “What would we do with a baby?”

  “We could play with it, of course. Didi would feed it and take it out in the pram. It’ll be fun! Now stand behind me and rub your bottom against mine.”

  They stood back-to-back in the vegetable garden and rubbed their bottoms together. Even to their innocent minds, there seemed to be something illicit about the business of making babies. They stepped apart and waited, looking all around.

  “I don’t see one,” said Mark.

  “Maybe we have to wait a little while.”

  “Are you sure you got it right?” he asked, suspiciously, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Maybe we should ask Mummy.”

  “No, silly. I heard her tell Daddy she doesn’t want any more babies. Let’s come back later and check. I know! Let’s go catch tadpoles!”

  They sped off to their new adventure, any thought of babies already forgotten.

  Chapter 6

  Dooars, 1966-1968

  “Daddy, look at my report card,” Mark ran up to him, as he arrived home for lunch. “I got an A in sums.”

  While there was no doubt in his mind that he loved his children, Charles, whose own father was a dim memory, and someone who’d had little or nothing to do with his offspring, had no role model to emulate in his relationship with them. He did not feel a strong connection with either child and showed a cursory interest in their activities apart from a vague sense of obligation to be something of a disciplinarian.

  “Well done, son. I’ll look at it in a minute.” He was hot and tired and preferred to read the newspaper. Ramona gave him a dark look. She wanted the children to do well in school and pored over their reports with intense interest. Samira’s teacher had said that she was doing better in class but “tends to think she knows everything.” Mark’s teacher said that he needed to be more assertive and participate in class discussion.

  She read fairy tales to the children, filling their minds with vivid impressions of princesses, knights and wicked stepmothers which combined to build impressions in the children’s minds that were completely unrelated to actual life. Ramona found it tedious to bathe or dress the children. Didi had alway
s done those things except when they were babies. Prava had sent Didi to them by bus from Darjeeling shortly after Samira was born. It was Didi who took them for long walks to the river in the afternoons, pushed them on the swing in the garden and put them to bed at night. She could not read to the children but told stories about Tibetan warriors, ferocious yetis and yaks. She taught them to sing the Nepalese songs that she sang them to sleep with each night.

  There was a small, shallow swimming pool in the compound of the Burra Bungalow that Greg said they were welcome to use whenever they liked. One day, Samira refused to step into the pool, seeing the reflection of the sky in it. She was somehow convinced that she would sink into the depths of the sky reflected in the pool. Didi had coaxed and cajoled her, demonstrating the shallowness of the pool by stepping in it and disturbing the reflection. But even with her feet planted firmly on the bottom, Samira had not been able to fully comprehend why she didn’t sink to the depths reflected in the water, as high as the clouds in the sky.

  Didi had little privacy when the children were home from school. They were full of curiosity about her. She took her meals squatting on a low stool in the dingy kitchen, holding her plate in one hand while she ate with the other. The children sat beside her, watching her eat with their mouths watering. She made the food look so delicious. She ate with her fingers, deftly rolling the rice into little balls, popping them into her mouth followed by a quick bite into a green chili. She never scattered salt over her food but put it in a heap on one side of the plate. Occasionally, she fed morsels of rice into their open, bird-like mouths. Ramona would have been horrified had she known.

  Samira spotted Didi on the swing in the back garden one afternoon when she was supposed to be taking a nap. Jetha was pushing the swing, and they were both laughing. There was something familiar about the way he touched her that disturbed Samira although she did not understand why. Jetha had a wife and two daughters. She knew because Ramona gave him Samira’s old clothes.

  Samira had learned to keep her thoughts and observations to herself because she always got into trouble if she divulged them to anybody. Mark could not be trusted to keep a secret. Ramona would scold Samira and tell her to mind her own business. Charles would let her speak and say, “Yes, dear. Now run along.” It was obvious that he hadn’t listened to a word she said.

  “What did you do, Samira?” Mark called through the locked door of the box room. When they were naughty they were struck with a hairbrush or a hanger, whichever was handiest. But when they were really bad, Daddy dragged them, kicking and screaming to the dark, scary box room and laid them on one of the shelves. Then the door would be locked.

  “N…n…othing,” sobbed Samira, “I don’t know what I did.”

  Mark understood. It was sometimes hard to fathom adults. It was no use appealing to Mummy. She always took Daddy’s side. Nor to Didi, either. She just whispered to them to be good children and scuttled away to the back verandah lest she incur the Sahib’s and Memsahib’s wrath.

  Mark had been in the box room and knew its horrors. He was close to tears.

  “Shall I get Mummy?” he asked. “Don’t cry, Sammy.”

  Ramona suddenly appeared and swooped down on him.

  “Leave her alone! Go to Didi, Mark Theodore!” she said.

  But for once he was brave, like the soldier he so wanted to be.

  “Let her out! Let her out!” he shouted, his heart aching for his sister. He glared at his mother with tears in his eyes, ready to take off in case Daddy appeared, and he was locked up as well.

  Ramona opened the box room door and released the sobbing Samira. Her face was blotchy with tears. “Go wash your face and brush your hair,” she said. “It’s time for lunch.” Samira ran to the bathroom and looked at her red eyes in the mirror. The tepid water from the tap soothed her skin as she rinsed her face, but inside her a feeling of resentment festered.

  The Chalsa Polo Club was comprised of a large, square building, six grass tennis courts, a children’s playground and a small lawn. It had a white, corrugated tin roof like most of the planters’ bungalows. When it rained, the sound of the rain on the roof was deafening. And during the monsoons, it rained almost every day. The compound was straddled by a nine-hole golf course, bordered by the Murti River. It was years since polo had been played on what was now the first fairway.

  The club was accessed through a low verandah that jutted out onto the lawn. Inside the clubhouse was a ballroom with a stage, card room, two squash courts, a billiard room, library and bar. Over the years, the ballroom floor echoed with the patter of children’s feet, the sound of chairs dragged across it on movie nights and the reverberation of dancing feet. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth took pride of place over the mantelpiece, and pictures of other royals were displayed under the glass tops of the cocktail tables. An ancient piano cowered in a corner, its ivory keys yellowed and split with age and decades of pounding fingers. Within its secret recesses reposed sweet memories of melodies from long ago.

  Like most planter households, the Clarkes looked forward to “club days.” They travelled in the cantankerous Ford V8, laden with two sets of golf clubs, changes of clothes and the sandwich and cake tins containing their tea. As they drove, Mark was singing his version of a Hindi film song in a thin, high-pitched voice that rose in a wailing crescendo.

  “Dil katta dekho, Dil katta dekho,

  Oh Dilly Walla, Oh Dilly Walla.”

  Higher and higher he went, repeating the words over and over, assured of a captive audience.

  “Shut up! You’re singing it all wrong,” said Samira, holding her hands over her ears.

  “Why don’t you sing ‘Muffin Man’?” suggested Charles.

  “Or ‘Ten Green Bottles’?” said Ramona.

  “Or not sing at all!” Samira cried.

  Mark burst into tears.

  “I don’t want to sing those old songs. I just want to sing ‘Dill katta dekho,” he howled.

  “Okay, darling, you just sing whatever you want to sing,” Ramona said, for the sake of peace. So the singing resumed for the rest of the trip, with no one daring to comment.

  All the children adored Uncle Anil. Any time he visited, he brought them Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut Chocolate bars. The children were excited because they had been invited to his house for Chinese food. They didn’t get invited out to dinner often. Samira wore a yellow dress that stuck out all around her and asked Didi to put her hair up in a pony tail.

  “Not too high in the back, though,” she instructed. Didi brushed the tangles out of her hair. “Wait! Stop!” cried Samira. She spoke in Hindi. “I saw a curl! Didi, I saw a curl in my hair, and you brushed it away!”

  “No, baba. There was no curl.”

  Nor would there ever be. Her hair was straight and glossy down her back, too sleek and stubborn for even a hint of a curl. She didn’t see how it swung as she moved and how it gleamed in the sunlight. All she knew was that her hair had no curl and was too slippery to withstand pretty ribbons, grips or bows.

  Anil swung them high in the air when they arrived at his bungalow.

  “Again!” squealed Mark. “Again, Uncle Anil.”

  “Sammy! What a pretty yellow frock!” he stood back in mock amazement.

  “But look, Uncle Anil, my petticoat’s even prettier.” She lifted her frock in front to show him.

  “Really, Samira! Put your dress down. That’s not ladylike,” Ramona said, crossly.

  A lady they’d never met hurried down the steps to meet them. Charles and Ramona shook hands with her, and Anil said to the children,

  “Say hello to Aunty Sheila.”

  “But where is Aunty Gita?” asked Mark in bewilderment. “I wanted to see Aunty Gita.”

  There was an awkward silence. Anil cleared his throat awkwardly.

  “Aunty Gita went away, now Aunty Sheila lives here.”

  “Run along and play, children,” said Charles.

  It was dark, and they couldn’t go outside. There
was nothing for her and Mark to do while the grown-ups had their drinks in the drawing room. They drank their orange squash in the verandah, and Samira excused herself to go to the bathroom. She loved to see other people’s bathrooms and how she looked in their mirrors. She did not like the way she looked tonight, and the pony tail hurt her head. It was too tight. She untied the yellow ribbon Didi had tied on so tightly it made her eyes bulge, and pulled off the band underneath. That felt much better. But she still wasn’t comfortable. Her can-can petticoat was prickly and scratched her legs. It was very pretty with layers of white lace and little satin bows but very uncomfortable, nevertheless. She slipped it off and stepped out of it, rubbing her legs in relief.

  Just then, Ramona called them to dinner, and she ran to the dining room to join the adults. In the car on the way home, Mark persisted in wanting to know why Uncle Anil had a new Aunty.

  “But why did Aunty Gita go away?” he wanted to know. “I liked Aunty Gita.”

  “Yes, you’ve established that,” said Charles. “May I ask why, exactly?”

  “Well, she had….” he hesitated, blushing.

  “She had what?” Ramona prompted.

  “Big bosoms!” cried Samira triumphantly, smirking at Mark.

  “No! Stop it.” He was embarrassed at being caught out.

  “Mummy, tell her to shut up!” He glared at his sister.

  “He said shut up!” cried Samira.

  “Samira, behave. Mark, you know you’re not allowed to say ‘shut up.’ And Gita left because she had to go somewhere else,” said Ramona.

  “Mummy, you won’t ever have to go somewhere else, will you?” he asked, anxiously.

  “No, darling, I never will ever go anywhere else,” she promised.

  In the morning, the telephone rang just as they were finishing breakfast.

  “Sheila Memsahib,” Jetha announced.

  “I’ll get it,” said Ramona.

  “Hello, Sheila. Yes. This is Ramona.” She spoke into the phone. “Thanks so much for a lovely dinner. Oh? Really, she is so careless!”