by Amrit Chima
He needed to make a statement of perseverance, of longevity and durability. A vision of a new and distinguished house came to him. It would be two stories supported by blue pine brought from the base of the Himalayas. It would have high ceilings, cement floors, a fireplace for crisp winter nights, corrugated iron gates to partition the livestock and waste away from the house, a room for the boys, another for Prem, one for him and Sada Kaur, and one to store foodstuffs. There would be an elegant archway at the entrance, a balcony above for sleeping on hot nights, a row of charpoys comfortably arranged where they would be able to feel the cool breezes. The exterior was the most critical detail: lime-washed outer walls, bright like sunlight, easily identifiable from afar, washing its own reflected miracles over the flatlands. He would need that. He would need to be able to find it.
Khushwant lightly touched his shoulder, and Baba Singh raised his head, disoriented. Glancing around, he saw that the service was over. Worshippers were already standing and filing out of the temple. He watched them go as the world continued to yawn, its maw growing wider, beckoning to him. He would build his house, something solid and able to endure, and then he would leave again.
It did not matter where.
~ ~ ~
Barapind’s pond was muddy. The potter had been there to collect clay while they were in Amritsar, stirring up the sediments, clouding the water into a brown soup. Baba Singh kicked at the surface with his sandaled foot, watching it ripple and stir, briskly wiping his eyes. Dr. Bansal’s letter was still in his hand.
“Just open it, Baba,” Khushwant said.
Baba Singh closed his fist harder around the paper. “Onkar is talking of going to Fiji,” he said, remembering the last time he spoke with his neighbor, the two of them squatting under the rosewood across the lane from the Toor’s mud hut. Onkar had been subdued, his knees pressed into his armpits, arms lazily dangling monkey-like to the ground as he traced patterns in the dust with his two forefingers.
“My son married a Singapore lady,” the old farmer had confessed. Despite his poverty, he was a very clean man when not out in the fields, his white turban always starched, his simple clothing unwrinkled. When he spoke, even to relay his own misfortune, it was always with dignity. “He never sent much money. Now he refuses to send any. He says everything has its limit.” There had been a grey look about him then, his eyes losing focus.
Khushwant shook his head, picking off a sliver of bark from a nearby tree. He was irritated now, his once boundless tolerance no longer boundless. “If you go, you will take it all with you, all these problems of yours.”
“Fiji is full of Indians, more Indians than Fijians, they say. The possibilities are enormous.”
Khushwant grimly regarded his brother. Baba Singh felt as though he was shrinking, melting into the mud beneath his feet, but he narrowed his eyes in feigned anger to disguise his doubt.
They heard the sound of a military-issue motorcycle engine, a quiet rumble in the distance. Manmohan was arriving.
Khushwant tossed away the bark shaving and pushed his way through the trees to the lane. “You have not seen him for months,” he said, iron in his voice. “Say something to him.”
Baba Singh followed, glancing in the direction of the motorcycle. “He has never listened. What is left to say?”
“The British chose only five out of three thousand to do his job,” his brother replied as they walked home. “It did not surprise me when he was selected. I have never seen a young man work so hard to be just like his father. Be thankful that he was stationed here, with you.”
The rumble of the motorcycle grew into a roar that echoed across the farmland as Manmohan finally pulled around the corner, meeting his uncle and father in front of the mud hut. He cut the engine, leaving behind a vacuum of quiet.
“Sat sri akal, Bapu, Chacha,” he said, removing his helmet, swinging his leg over the seat, and stomping his booted feet to remove the excess dust.
“Successful run?” Khushwant asked him.
Manmohan grinned. He had just been out delivering sensitive government messages across the Punjab, a nineteen-year-old boy gone for months on end in an abyss of hostile land where the possibilities of adventure were endless. “Always,” he said, slapping clean his uniform, which was much like the one Baba Sing had once worn as a police officer. He then sat on one of the sun-bleached chairs to unlace his boots.
“Good man,” Khushwant smiled. “I will be waiting to hear about it inside.” Pushing aside the curtain, he greeted Sada Kaur and Prem.
As Manmohan pulled off his boots Baba Singh approached the motorcycle and gripped one of the handles, imagining the rushing air, the speed that was far more intense than riding a train to Amritsar. Touching the leather seat, he had the urge to climb on, to pretend that he was flying through the countryside. There would be no thoughts of Dr. Bansal, of whatever painful kindnesses were undoubtedly written in his letter, of betrayal, of the excruciating, deep-down ache of missing his friend who had uselessly sacrificed everything to save him. No complications, no one else, just the wind and the growl of the engine.
“It is loud,” he finally said, impressed.
Manmohan clapped the bottoms of his boots together. “I will walk it through next time,” he said, misunderstanding, smiling with a forced politeness before disappearing inside the mud hut.
~ ~ ~
The shape of Baba Singh’s new house wavered ghostlike before him in the space where he would build it. He knew now that he had always had the heart of an artist, but he had been stunted by the events of his life. Now he would change this. Just as he had once carved an elephant from a block of wood, he would sculpt his new house.
It almost made him want to stay.
But there was time yet. A house of this magnitude would take at least a year, perhaps longer, to construct with his own two hands, with the seasons dictating his progress. He decided to relish the slow process, to appreciate each detail as a prolonged farewell in which every second was precious, every spread of mortar a part of what he would one day return to when he properly deserved this place.
Not everyone, however, understood the need for this sudden change, and there was a sort of restrained, non-confrontational dissent within the household ranks. His plan to first tear down the mud hut’s second room in order to make space for the house’s frame—squeezing them all into one room—followed by a period in which they would all be required to live under the tarp-roofed frame of the partially-built structure while Baba Singh pieced the entirety of it together, was not received well. The boys nodded bravely at the idea of losing their childhood home, smiling joylessly, clearly pained. Prem pointedly mentioned his age and how the onset of so much turmoil would only further aggravate his back, which was slowly bending him over into a permanent slouch. And Sada Kaur remained bleakly silent, suspicious of his plans at the conclusion of the endeavor. Baba Singh had known she would not be fooled, and this he regretted very much because they had finally reached a tentative understanding after years of uncertainty.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Because I need to see the results of the life I have worked for.”
“Is that all?”
He touched her hair, something he had not done since before going away to China. “I am only trying to make peace.”
The mood was further soured when, once they had torn down the mud hut’s second room and crammed the livestock into the small courtyard where Sada Kaur did her cooking—all in an effort to clear space for the building’s frame—there was very little time for construction. It was the fall planting season, and Baba Singh was forced to spend most of his days in the fields. The others could not, or would not, contribute: Prem was in no condition for physical labor, Satnam and Vikram were both in school in Amarpur and not inclined to help when they got home in the afternoons, Manmohan was often on duty delivering military messages, and Khushwant was far too busy running the blacksmith shop. Negotiations with the carpenter in Amarpur were also
proving lengthy. It took several months to obtain cement mix and wood to be delivered by train from Amritsar. And just as Baba Singh had finally managed to lay the foundation, winter arrived, forcing them all into the tight space of the hut’s remaining room for warmth.
The monsoons of 1935 were brutal and frigid. The project was entirely halted, and the pile of blue pine Baba Singh had purchased seeped up moisture from beneath tarps that did little to protect it. The family suffered through an uncomfortable several months, during which time they huddled together in the hut’s confining quarters. Baba Singh dreaded every inescapable, empty moment of this period, alone with the doctor’s still-sealed letter that dredged up the sludge of anguish, sharpening his nightmares and making him sweat under his covers when he slept. He also dreaded the forced nearness of his family, which amplified all the things unsaid among them, the hostility, and the defensive anger lurking beneath the surface. They should be grateful for this house, he often thought whenever his dreams and the cold nights woke him.
“It will be better,” he once told the family as they clutched mugs of hot tea before bed.
“We know, Bapu,” Manmohan replied. “Thank you.”
But he was quickly rebuked by a sharp look from Satnam.
“Can’t you imagine it?” Baba Singh asked his son. “It is more than any of us has ever had.” But he could see that for Satnam—for all of them—it was not true.
Sada Kaur began to unroll the boys’ mats.
“What could be wrong with wanting to give you a new house?” he asked her.
“There is nothing wrong with it,” she said. “I am sure it will be lovely. We simply did not need it.”
When the ice began to thaw and flowers forced their green shoots through the saturated soil, Baba Singh freed himself from the hut. He was eager to begin again, to shake off the thick blankets and shawls and his family’s unwarranted indignation that had been suffocating him.
His plans to begin the moment he had seeded the fields, however, were again postponed when an old friend of Yashbir’s approached him to propose a marriage between his granddaughter and Manmohan.
“Yashbir spoke of you,” the man said to Baba Singh. “I cannot imagine a better life for my granddaughter than one with a family he loved as his own.”
“It is a good match,” Baba Singh told Manmohan.
“If you think so, I am happy to marry her, Bapu,” his son replied.
“Yashji was a good man.”
“I remember,” Manmohan replied, which discomfited Baba Singh. He had forgotten that his children had once called the blacksmith their grandfather.
The girl’s name was Jai, a tiny and demure sixteen-year-old creature, pretty in a plain and industrious way, her features square yet soft. She had dark, smoothly matted skin, the only mark on her face a small mole on her chin.
The wedding was scheduled for May, and after another month of preparations—during which time the foundation of the new house remained untouched—Jai and Manmohan were married in Amarpur’s gurdwara. After she had moved into the mud hut, Baba Singh discovered that, despite her petite size, his son’s new wife was surprisingly tough. She brought water in large clay pots from the well in the village center, seemingly without any effort at all, her breath as even as it had been when she left with the pot empty. She lifted heavy spice bins and carried them out back where she could more easily mix masala for curries, never asking for help. And her smallness more easily allowed her to maneuver the crowded hut that now housed seven people, lifting and leaning charpoys along the wall to create space for sitting, cooking, and weaving.
They were all fond of Jai, particularly her poised and unruffled gentleness in the face of Prem’s constant diatribes about the delicacy of his age and condition and the disrespect of being forced to live in such uncomfortable circumstances. She was quiet and unassuming, but provided strong and certain reassurance, her presence easing tensions that had long ago affixed themselves to the heart of the family.
By the time she settled in, spring was well underway, and although the season was warm and fresh, they had only until June before the monsoons arrived again, which did not allow much time to work on the new house. Row upon row of crops needed harvesting, after which the ground needed to be plowed and seeded. Baba Singh made small steps in the evenings by the light of hurricane lamps. By the end of spring he had managed to tear down the mud hut’s last remaining room, lay the rest of the foundation, and finish erecting the house’s frame.
“What will happen after this?” Sada Kaur asked him as he secured a tarp over the roof.
“We will have a house,” Baba Singh said as he climbed down.
“It is too big. We will be separated by all these rooms.”
He sat on one of the charpoys Jai had set near the future pantry. “It will be beautiful.”
“You can stop any time,” she told him. She spoke softly, tapering her usually stern tone.
He gestured around him. “We cannot live like this.”
“There has never been a problem with the way we live.”
“This is not what I want for you,” he replied, lying down, exhausted.
She lit a flame under her cooking pot. “Do you know what I want?”
But he had already turned over, pretending to be half asleep because he was not able to answer her.
By 1936, the house, supported by beams of blue pine, had finally developed flesh of Punjabi mud brick and mortar. Several months later, at the turn of another year, Baba Singh finally gave the house a roof and doors and filled it with furniture. He used his wife’s old spinning wheel as a decorative piece in the main sitting room and bought Sada Kaur and Jai an imported sewing machine for their needlework. Opposite the spinning wheel was an empty trunk carved ornately with panels of Sikh battle stories, reminding Baba Singh of his many losses, but also suggesting a glorious future victory. Sada Kaur and Jai spread several chairs across the main sitting room for receiving guests, including a comfortable, cushioned reed one for Prem outside his ground-floor bedroom, above which hung his tattered, old picture of the ten gurus.
Vessels filled with flour and spices flanked the door leading to the foodstuffs pantry where there was a large, loose pile of red maize flour on the floor and stacked burlap sacks of rice along the walls. The kitchen had ample counter space and open shelves for plates and cooking utensils that led to an enclosed courtyard in the back where Sada Kaur made flatbread in her new clay tandoor. In the center of the courtyard Manmohan planted a mango tree and a garden of jasmine, chilies, and herbs.
Upstairs the two sleeping quarters were furnished with cotton mattresses in lieu of charpoys, both leading to an expansive balcony that overlooked the entire northern side of Barapind, the ring of mud huts thick around the center, the hint of the well beyond the neem trees.
Baba Singh stood on the balcony facing his village, his clothes splattered with paint, his hands calloused, his nails broken and frayed, like this land that was still being ravaged by the British, by their mongrel moneylenders, their recruiters, their soldiers who soaked the soil in so much death and anguish. He was sorry for all of it because he loved his village so much.
The sun struck the newly lime-washed house with brilliant force, and his face felt hot as he gazed out into the distant fields, knowing that when he was out there he would never lose his way back.
Satisfied, he went inside to the room he shared with Sada Kaur. He was alone. Lal’s old chest was shoved to the corner, still covered with a dhurrie rug. He threw the rug off, thinking that he might look inside. But seeing it now, he realized he had no desire to sift through the items within. It was enough to possess them, to have them here with him.
He removed the doctor’s letter from his pocket. It was still sealed, but the envelope had been softened over the years, the edges torn, the paper thinned.
“Is the elephant in that chest?” Satnam asked his father from the bedroom doorway. “Is that where you keep it?”
Baba Singh
turned and saw his son—that poor, subdued young man too soft and meek to survive this village—and a mighty wave of resignation, like the giant stormy swells breaking against the Hong Kong ports, flooded his bones. He had the compulsion to speak candidly to Satnam, to confess something important. “How did you know I kept that one?”
“Desa Bhua told me about it.”
“It was never supposed to be yours. It was not hers to give.”
Satnam hesitated, and then he said in a timid voice that he no doubt intended to sound brave, “What happened to your sisters?”
“I would rather not talk about them,” Baba Singh replied, folding the letter and again putting it in his pocket. He could not start at the beginning. Instead, he gestured that Satnam join him on the balcony and pointed at one of the village huts. “A girl is interested in you. Her father would like to have us over for tea.”
Eyes set uneasily on the potato crop beyond the village, Satnam stepped close to the balcony’s rail and rested his forearms on the warm wood.
“Kuldeep’s daughter, Priya,” Baba Singh told him. “She likes you, and Kuldeep seems to think that you like her.”
“I am not sure about marriage.”
“Marriage was my best chance to start over.”
“Did it work?”
Baba Singh thoughtfully pulled on his lower lip, suddenly wary, now worried that he might betray too much. “For a time it did,” he said. He regarded the view, the sky a hazy blue, patches of clouds on the horizon. “But now I think it is time again for something else.”