Rajmahal

by Kamalini Sengupta

  The respectful care given to Guliani’s old mother was paralleled by the house’s attitude to all its older inhabitants. The Stracheys death had caused it great upset, but it was also relieved they were out of their misery. Maudie created a sentimental stirring in its bricks with her return, and it felt remorseful at its earlier carelessness. It was pleased that she so longed to return to its embrace, even if it was to that aberration on the driveway. Her heavy boozing and the watchman’s complicity were of some concern though, and it wondered how Hindu middle-class morality, the Islamic taboo, and Junior’s zealous eye could be juggled with her weakness. “This will be interesting,” thought the Rajmahal. “Which side should I take in a confrontation?”

  The matron and doctor at the Retreat had come down heavily on Maudie’s addiction, and this had forced her to take flight. When she left, they advised her against the move to blunt the indecent haste with which they actually helped arrange for her departure. Dipsomaniacs were a constant threat to their routine and sanity and this was an old folks’ home, not a prison. After this they did their duty by informing Junior and the committee and then kept very quiet.

  Maudie led pleasantly unrestricted days as she eased her way back into her twenty-four-hour alcoholic haze. When Junior asked her, in his rough way, if she wouldn’t be better off at the home, her skin tautened over her cheek bones giving her the skeletal look, that overtook her in a crisis, as if she was about to snap apart into bony fragments. Junior gave up the direct approach. He would have to think of other stratagems.

  “He can easily have me carried off,” confided Maudie tremblingly to Rawat. “What’s to stop him?”

  “Who can dare to do such a thing when I am here!” the watchman growled, puffing out his burly chest. He wanted Maudie here, pleased at the prospect of bleeding her of some of her precious riches. He would have lost his cheer if he had known Maudie’s “riches” extended only to the small residue of money released to her by the Retreat’s matron. After all, how much do a few bottles of gin cost? The watchman was the only one who truly wanted Maudie, and that too under mistaken assumptions.

  The experienced Rawat recognized the familiar glazed look on Maudie’s face. Preempting her he said, “Here, Memsahib. I have put everything out here, the gin-sharab, the water, the lemon. I go now? Okay?”

  Maudie’s diminishing world was exemplified by her ever-diminishing room space. From a grand apartment with her grand private bedroom to just that bedroom split into a multipurpose apartment to this godown. Here, Maudie’s dressing table, cupboard, and bed left cramped space for just two chairs and a table.

  She took to strolling about the narrow strip skirting the drive, between the row of palms and the peripheral wall, the area highlighted by Pir Tasleem Ahmed’s tomb. Junior had especially planned this corridor, and with the care of the gardeners it had turned paradisial. A secret garden with an illusory spaciousness, its green carpeting made mysterious with inlets and recesses. Negotiating a cunning maze of hedges the visitor would come suddenly on the open space holding the tomb. A small pavilion had been built over it, with columns holding up a curving Bengal style roof and it was kept pristine with whitewashing. Everyday, after supervising the cleaning, Rawat would spread a fresh grave cloth over the tombstone and light the lamps in the niche behind it. Maudie looked forward to the varying brightly-colored and glittering raiment, the fresh flower petals strewn on the tomb every morning, the flaming lamps. She spent time here, lost in daydreaming under the trees and surrounded by the green of hedges and creepers. A semul tree had burst into waxy red flowers brilliant against bare branches, attracting squirrels which nibbled at the huge buds held in their minute hands. She most loved watching the sun birds, shimmering blue-black and pale yellow-green, weightless enough to sit on the petals without bending them and dipping their needle-beaks into the cups of the flowers. So tiny and perfect were these birds, that they appeared like normal-sized birds diminished by great distance, yet another illusion of space. Hoopoes knocked at the row of perfectly matched palms marching down the drive, tok-tok, riddling them with holes and highlighting the vista. Crows, flocks of parrots, doves, pigeons, bulbuls, mynahs, sparrows, seven sisters whirled and skirled, scolding and singing around Maudie who had found a perch on a ledge. Here she would sit leaning against the wall, her face tilted up in the sun, sometimes to be distracted by the devotees who came by to salute the tomb or light a candle. They would greet the strange white apparition in a dress and have small chats with her, about the weather, her health, and the grace of God. Most of them were the servants of the Rajmahal but there were many outsiders who had attached their sentiments to Pir Tasleem Ahmed’s sacred remains.

  Surjeet Shona came on Maudie soon after her arrival, strolling about by the enchanted shrine with a drink in her hand, as if she were at a garden party.

  “Aunty Maudie,” Surjeet Shona gently chided. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh I love all religions, SS. God is one, no?” she said with simple sincerity.

  “But, Aunty Maudie. You know, you can’t do this.”

  “Do what?” the alarmed Maudie asked, fearful her independence was being questioned again.

  Surjeet Shona hesitantly explained the obvious. Drinking alcohol would offend all at this location, not only the spirit of the Pir, but his devotees and the Rajmahal.

  “You should cover your head here too, Aunty Maudie. The same as in a Catholic church. Do you understand?”

  “Watchman never said anything before,” sniffed Maudie. “I don’t remember covering my head.” And she added suspiciously, “You aren’t a Mohammedan are you?”

  “Of course not!” laughed Surjeet Shona. “You know that, Aunty Maudie! But I’d definitely advise you against drinking here.”

  So Maudie’s slide into her incoherence of alcohol-induced states of euphoria or despair was stopped short by this distraction. She circumspectly wore her little Catholic veil when she visited the tomb and cut down on her drink. The house was rigid with uncertain hope. Had Maudie’s break from the known performed the miracle? “Is the Pir at work?” it wondered.

  Left unsaid was the fear of Junior Mallik, the one person Maudie needed to propitiate. And Junior Mallik was observing the issue with keen anxiety.

  “What’s the old cow up to?” he fretted. “Come on, oh Pir,” he pleaded. “Surely you can’t condone her getting away with such blasphemy. And what about my devotion to you all these decades? Does it count for nothing?”

  But the Pir’s ghost, though his vibrations emanated ceaselessly, was inactive. If Junior could read his thoughts he would have suffered a shock.

  “I was old too,” the Pir’s emanation vibrated. “Oh yes. I was old too. And though I was never called an “old cow,” I was called many other things for my great age! What sin is there, in being old, and helpless, and weak after all? Is that not what all humans encounter, or dread? Why does it invite ridicule? Is Allah befooling us? Did I have to wait for the uncovering of my tomb to regain my respect?” And here he sighed a great sigh, which drained the spirit of the tenants for a second. “And the little lady shows me respect with the covering of her head, does she not? And she refrains from drinking in my space. How then can you, in spite of all your service to my remains, please my emanation?” he said to a deaf Junior.

  This same deaf Junior was obsessed with the ouster of Maudie Jessop. Once the obstacle of her squatting was removed he longed to leap at the obstructive godown with iron staves.

  “Even if I can’t get rid of that shifty Hindu watchman, there’s the godown,” he thought. Junior had always been anti-Rawat. But his father’s self-conscious secularity was a block. Ali came on so strong at any hint of prejudice that Junior was always frustrated.

  When Surjeet Shona offered Maudie alternate toilet facilities at her apartment, therefore, Junior’s thoughts became unprintable. “That mindless do-gooding bitch doesn’t realize what a disservice she’s doing Maudie. And me.”

  “Listen,” he s
aid to her with extreme constraint. “That’s a great service you’re doing for Maudie. But don’t you think it’s demeaning for her to live among the servants? That place was the watchman’s godown, for god’s sake!”

  “You listen to me, Junior,” said Surjeet Shona firmly. “I know you want Aunty Maudie out of here. But the godown’s been here forever, and it was empty. Why can’t you let her spend a few happy years?”

  “Oh, you think I’m running a charity do you? A repository for dipsomanic inmates of old people’s homes eh?”

  “What nonsense, Junior!” said Surjeet Shona. “Can’t you be kind to her for a change?”

  “Kind?! Why don’t you try being kind instead of lecturing others?”

  “She’s using my bathroom isn’t she, and I feed her, don’t I?”

  “Who do you think bloody looked after her when she was ill, who do you think . . . ?!”

  “All right, all right, you did a lot for her. But then, she hated the home! And what about her happiness?”

  “Happiness! All that happiness means to her is drinking. Day in, day out, that’s all she wants. And what about the Pir’s tomb? I suppose you don’t care if there’s no sanctity there and drunken old biddies rollicking about...”

  “Don’t exaggerate!” said Surjeet Shona, shortly again. “Haven’t you seen how she venerates the tomb? She only drinks in her room. And haven’t you noticed that she covers her head and . . . ”

  “The poor Pir must be doing somersaults in his grave!”

  “Now who’s being disrespectful!”

  But Junior didn’t let these circular arguments get in the way of his resolve. Maudie must go.

  She did, but in a way not quite expected.

  Maudie’s earlier hospital stay, enforced circumspection at the home, and the new distraction of the tomb garden had drained her system of alcohol and restored some of her balance. Her anxiety only sharpened when she grappled with her life and the continuous confrontation with Junior. The dead white paint no longer adorned her face.

  “If I’m old and dark, that’s how God wants it,” she reasoned with herself. “Why fight Him?”

  For the first time since her illness, she looked over her bedraggled body in the mirror, and straightened her shoulders. “Mum always told me to stand straight,” she said out aloud. “That’s better. Much better, my girl.” The “my girl” reminded her of both her husband and handsome Robby Rozario, who were merged into one in her mind. “He never got ’round to asking me,” she sniffed when she noticed two little raw patches in the corners of her lips. “It’s some vitamin deficiency,” she said, forgetting Rozario. “That’s what Anthony always said about Mum. Funny how she had the same thing ... Doc, I’ll have to call doc . . . ” She leaned closer to peer at her lips and caught the reflection of a dark metallic object in her open almirah. It was a gun, once her husband’s.

  “My,” she said. “I’d forgotten about that!” She admired it, examined the bullet chamber.

  “It’s some protection at least!” she thought.

  Junior, acting as if a black angel had descended on him, was going about breathing mushroom clouds while he ruthlessly targeted the widow.

  “I’m stopping your money, Maudie!” Junior pronounced, preparing for the final push. “I’m not obliged to do anything, am I, with you cluttering up this place uninvited?”

  “Oh my,” whispered Maudie.

  “And you’d better follow my conditions or I’ll have you thrown out!”

  “What, what conditions?” asked Maudie, too nervous to argue.

  “One. You have to give up drinking completely, because you are living in sacred precincts. Two. You are forbidden from entering the domain of the Pir’s tomb. And three. You are forbidden from entering the main Rajmahal building, except for Surjeet Shona’s apartment on the ground floor, which you may access only by the garden! That is all!”

  Junior quickly marched away before Maudie’s face could take on the stretched skeletal look again.

  The ultimatum had sent a door crashing shut in her face, fracturing her will. She needed badly to drink again, but the source of her money had dried up. She sat wringing her hands, too afraid of the watchman’s reaction if she told him of her penury. She knew that friendly though he was, there was always that little greedy gleam behind his eyes. “He’ll chuck me to the wolves!” she said, and softly keening, she swayed with her hands over her face. That was how Surjeet Shona came on her.

  “Aunty Maudie,” she said. “What is it?”

  “That Junior Mallik,” she sobbed. “That Junior Mallik’s so wicked! He says I can’t go to the tomb any more, or into your apartment except by the garden . . . And no more money, and no more . . . no more . . . you know!”

  “How can anyone have the heart to do this to her?” thought Surjeet Shona.

  “How much do you want, Aunty Maudie?” she asked tentatively, knowing her kindness could destroy the old Anglo-Indian lady.

  So Surjeet Shona lent Maudie the small sums she needed for her deadly addiction. And her kindness was the end of Maudie. For drink was her devil, not Junior. She grew weaker and weaker, hardly eating the tempting food Surjeet Shona set out for her each day. She forgot the Pir, the birds and flowers, the trees and woodpeckers.

  “Good-bye Maudie,” said the Rajmahal sadly. “Good-bye dear, gracious, sad lady.” And it mimicked what the swadeshi ghost would have said if it had not vanished by then along with all the other ghosts and Petrov—“Ah, why do these Christians do this? It is men who are said to be addicted to such weakening substances.”

  One night, Maudie went ricocheting between the walls of the hedge-maze, scratching herself till she bled. She reached the Pir’s tomb, lovingly took her place on the ledge, and repositioning her little Catholic veil, tilted her head at the familiar angle. The moon shone perfectly round on three of its quarters with the fourth quarter smokily unfinished. It swam swiftly upward in a sky of great luminosity against clouds shining from within, yet edged with blackest density, the unfinished moon swimming, swimming swiftly cometlike with its smoky tail, yet staying within the ambit of her upturned eye. Then a golden star, just one star, gleamed at her from an opening.

  “It’s not twinkling, it’s a planet,” said Maudie. And it reminded her of her lost star-studded golden earrings. “They stole them all. My jewels. My money.” And then, as drunk as she had ever been in her life, she looked again at the mesmerizing bright silver moon riding so triumphant over the evilly circled clouds, and thought, “It’s a sign. Look! So bright, the silvery moon!” And then, as her tongue darted to the sour little sores at the corners of her lips, the moon diminished, slowly grew smaller and smaller, and vanished. And the sky was caste over with deepest black mourning. Against the remaining light in the sky, the semul tree stood out, bare, not a flower to be seen. And then she saw that not only the flowers and the moon, but the golden star, the reminder of her losses, had all vanished. A chilling drop of water fell on her cheek. She felt it as the tear of the world, telling her, “Go Maudie. Do what you have to do.”

  Maudie went weaving back to her room, crushing the bulky semul flowers on the ground with her feet, and staining her white sandals. In her room she picked up the gun, as she had been doing for many nights. Then she raised it to her temple with a trembling hand.

  “Do something!” the Rajmahal exclaimed impotently. “Oh God!”

  Urged by her black cloud of despair, her opposite of hope, Maudie was about to pull the trigger, when the door opened to Junior, furious at hearing she had violated the tomb ban. Her desperation and resolve funneled sharply toward him, such a wicked man, and she turned the gun on him and fired. Junior registered the flash and a scalding streak along the side of his head. And the watchman, who was approaching outside felt the buzzing of an extra strong bee as it whizzed by on a suicide mission and thudded into the pained Rajmahal wall. Maudie’s hand recoiled with the shot and the gun splintered into the beveled glass of her splendid triple-mirrored dressing t
able and dropped from her hand. “Seven years bad luck,” said Maudie, passing out in a dead faint.

  Two

  1

  Surjeet Shona Moves In

  FOR A TIME AFTER THE SARDAR BAHADUR’S MOMENTOUS DEPARTURE, the ground floor Rajmahal apartment acted as a curtailed visiting pad for the Ohris till Surjeet Shona moved in. Much to its delight, for it longed for one of the blooded Ohris to honor its insides permanently. Surjeet Shona was the daughter of the same favorite great grand son, Satinder, who had dared to question the Sardar Bahadur’s last wishes. Surjeet Shona Kaur, daughter of Satinder Singh Ohri, son of Maninder Singh Ohri, son of Rupinder Singh Ohri, son of Sardar Bahadur Surjeet Singh Ohri. So the “Surjeet” was after the progenitor on the Sikh side, and the “Shona” after an illustrious Bengali ancestress, the redeeming feature of course, being that she was from the aristocratic family of Raja Sheetanath himself.

  “See here, ji,” the Sardar Bahadur’s wife had protested. “How are you sitting quietly and saying nothing to this shameful thing?”

  “It had to happen some day, didn’t it? I expected worse when we sent the boy out of the country to study. Aren’t you thankful he hasn’t come back with a mem and the girl is from a Raja’s family, connected to us by this house? And haven’t we lived so happily in this house, in Calcutta, a Bengali city?”