by Preti Taneja
—The two lamented, Sita says, each sorrowing for the other. The honeybee said they should fall at God’s feet, and make their prayers to Him.
Here Papa pauses to catch his breath. He does not look at Sita. His face is turned to the concrete wall. Sita presses his arm, presses him onwards. She voices the story’s refrain:
—Lo, I am thy honeybee, a poor winged creature of the forest.
Papa looks as if he wants to hear more. Now comes the part about the honeybee, who went from hill to hill to collect her flower-nectar, becoming possessed of many children. Sita floats her spare hand like the bee, she clenches her fist, to tell of how a bear came, to crush the bee – may ruin seize that ruthless bear, for it was he that drove me to the forests! He destroyed my little ones! Then the farmer’s wife asked the bee why God sent no pity to her, only to get this reply—
—Lo I am thy honeybee, a poor winged creature of the forest.
If Papa trembles and begins to sigh, Sita thinks it is because he is beginning to let the words seep down inside, to smooth the stiffness of his joints. She carries on with the story, helping him to take small steps, matching her pace to his. But now comes the part she used to hide under the covers for, while Gargi made her scary face, or Radha tickled her until she cried, or Jeet gave his clever smile and twisted his limbs into toes-up-your-nose. This is the part where the bee tells the farmer’s wife how she fled from the forest, pursued by a bear, how she alighted at the farmer’s house and was promised peace and comfort.
—Nothing so bad in that, Papa, no? she says.
No. He nods, sweetly, waiting for the rest. Sita must keep walking, keep telling – see, said the honeybee, what the farmer did: he made a hive for me to abide in, and rubbed it over with fresh butter. It became a prison of death for me. With a sickle he cut off my honeycombs and was cursed with the guilt of countless murders. But, said the bee, it was my fate that brought me to the farmer’s house, and that fate was humiliation.
Now Sita cannot ignore Papa’s trembling. She knows he might break down. But what about the poor, flightless honeybee? She must continue with the next part – where the honeybee asks the farmer’s wife to share what happened to her. The farmer’s wife speaks strange words, a spell that Sita has never deciphered, she loved instead to savour their strangeness and was glad not to understand.
—Each soul must dree its weird: endure, submit, practice and perpetrate its own strange destiny. There is a place below to which we must descend. Lo I am a farmer’s wife! We came not to this world as an abiding place.
Papaji pauses by the small window. He grips Sita’s arm.
—Have you seen your Grandfather’s land, in the meadows of the valley? Flowers and bees. Burned, gone, he says.
Sita tries to look outside with him but the angle is wrong. They begin to walk back towards the bed-chair and Sita takes up the story, speaking as the farmer’s wife, telling of the spring. Spring – when the tax gatherers came to the farmers to fill their bellies, and trap the farmers as if in a net. In the autumn the tax gatherers forgot all their kindness. They came and beat the farmers.
—The farmers! says Papaji. He starts and then seems to stumble. The look he gives Sita almost stops her words, but she continues, softly:
—Lo, I am thy farmer’s wife. We came not to this world as an abiding place.
Now she must tell of how the farmer’s wife managed, by sowing crops in the welcoming earth, which sprung up and ripened. She collected and piled them on the threshing floor, hundreds of kharawars in weight. She went around from village to village. And in each one the headman and the accountant came to weigh the goods. Each time, she lamented:
—Lo I am thy farmer’s wife. We came not to this world as an abiding place.
—Enough, Papa says. Khatam.
—Just one part more, she says. How can she finish now? The end of the story is the hardest to tell, but she would never sleep until it was done. This is the part where the poor and needy came as beggars, holding out their lap cloths to the farmer’s wife. And she filled and filled their skirts, believing that in doing so she was giving them the assurance of salvation while securing her own rewards in heaven.
—Lo, I am thy farmer’s wife. We came not to this world as an abiding place.
And this is how it ends. Papa seems to have lost his fight. Sita lowers him into his chair. She stands and watches him hide his face to weep. The darkness is gradual, soft, it smudges the room’s shapes. She sits on the floor crossed-legged; she rests her head against Papa’s leg. She can feel his bones, where before she could not.
—Good girl, he says. Thank you.
He puts his hand on her head. She closes her eyes, feeling the weight of it. He strokes her hair. His hand makes a whispering sound: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
The next two days pass with strange monotony. November mists fall around the house and do not lift, except for a few hours around noon. The cold invades through every crack in the concrete and wood. Sita has been furnished with a kangri, she takes to nursing it like a mother with a fevered child. A bell chimes: Papa is calling her. How she loves him every morning and hates him by bedtime. Sometimes she does want to be skiing down the mountains in reflective goggles and a fur-lined ski-suit, going faster than anyone else. Coming to the end in a plume of fresh snow, needing nothing and nobody to know her. Could she live as Sita Devraj, with all her pearls and diamonds?
Lost tourists pass her window in lemon and fuchsia fleece jackets, like fantastic dip-dyed sheep. They wear brand new Adidas and Nikes; the pigtailed bachche have Barbie backpacks and high-waisted jeans. Across the hilltops lights from the Oberoi, the Lalit, the India Company Srinagar hotels wink at each other. Her sisters are probably there already, eating snacks, drinking first flush Assam and whispering bad things about new money. They think she is an ungrateful girl who left them over nothing. She does not need anyone to tell her she has been a bad daughter. She knows. That is why she has come back – and why she stays.
Sita walks to the end of the street after lunch, wondering about those boys in the corner house. She loiters. If she takes a step, will a door open behind her? No sound comes; it is just a cold, fresh autumn day – a day like the next, and the next. She takes a taxi to the jetties in the afternoons, and buys herself solitary shikara rides across the Dal. The boats bear her gently through the backwaters, until they reach the ghost town.
She cannot speak of what happened here. The wooden houses are charred wrecks, the corrugated roofs held down with bricks. There was once grandeur – she can see it in the lattices and stone-work, the skeletons of turrets, oversized birdcages swinging in the sky. Here she could get out, and search for the house where her grandfather lived – where they died. She wouldn’t know it, if she saw it. Every place is rotting, and sweet, stray dogs have taken over; sometimes they come to the steps by the river and watch her, as if she is the vision, not them.
Now a small child waves at her from the crumbling steps. Sita catches the eye of a woman with bare feet, waiting until she passes to empty her slops and pull her child back into the broken house.
The English newspaper announces that across the Zero Bridge, banners have appeared proclaiming ‘Happy Diwali!’. This is the first time in so many years that the festival will be celebrated in the streets. It will fall on a Wednesday, and that is auspicious for businessmen. People will decorate the Hanuman temple with flowers, and diyas with four wicks for luck, and adorn all statues of Kali, goddess of time and of change. For is she not also redeemer of the universe? It is time they had fireworks of the best kind in this city.
But the local newspapers report on the hotel, voicing the anger that many local people feel. Some say there is risk of unrest – extra military and police will be deployed in the city. Some say a curfew will be imposed – there will be no Diwali or any going out while the opening of the hotel goes on – that the people of the city have suffered enough of such lockdowns.
A few interviewees say they think money is go
od, however it comes to the Valley.
Under every skin Sita sees here, there is a history of violence. She wonders through the daily city, trying, trying to read it.
In the evenings when the birds become a thousand-piece orchestra tuning in the sky, she wraps herself in a quilt and takes her notebook to the garden. The house is unadorned, but someone has planted outside. Palms mix with pine trees that frame the sloping grass, shedding needles and filling the air with their scent. She wonders if she will still be here in late winter, when the dark purple shrubs will trumpet tiny pink flowers. Himalayan fingerprints, called so for their fleshy petals – she cannot remember their real names.
She curls in a plastic chair, sipping lemon tea. Kritik Uncle appears from the gloom around the house; a man carries his chair, another his shawl, another waits to take his order for snacks. He sits next to her, the shawl on his knees. When the snacks arrive – fresh fried finger chips, salt and peppered in a plastic bowl – they come with imli chutney and homemade ketchup.
—The taste of pre-91, Kritik Uncle says, dipping a chip in tomato sauce. See how far we have come? Remember the first time we bought shares in Heinz to use in the hotels? What days.
Sita was two-years-old in 1991. Maybe Kritik Uncle thinks he is talking to Gargi, those lessons he used to give her on Company history loop-looping in his brain. As he sits with her, the night becomes charged instead of gentle, the palm silhouettes go from sprouting hair tops to fingers grabbing the clouds.
—You like this garden? Kritik Uncle asks her. You know, tulips bloom in the Mughal Gardens: Shalimar, Nishat – I’ll take you in spring.
Online, she has seen pictures of the tulips pouting at the sky in so many hopeful rows. On Sundays, she imagines, families come and picnic, and dress for photographs in traditional costumes, and children splash in the stone sluices that frame each patch of grass.
—In the summer, says Kritik Uncle. Then you will see. How so many shikaras might glide along the Lake. Floating toy shops, floating shoe stalls – so many people come for honeymoon; so many come with families. Bapuji always understood, domestic tourism is our biggest opportunity. People want to experience this thing, some remember it from years back and want to see again with their own eyes. Do you know how much the industry has boomed here in the last five years? Four million people come for Amarnath pilgrimage alone. Not from your strata, but why not? Why shouldn’t everyone enjoy this thing? We will offer a package to get the right class of people here only. Vision, Sita beti, and belief. This is what you need. Just imagine the fun to be had! We should be right at the front of this thing.
He takes a samosa, dips it in tomato sauce, bites off the corner.
—What you mean is that India has grown a big fat middle while the people of this state have struggled under sanctions, Sita says.
—Such a sweet girl! he says.
He finishes the samosa and his hand and chin twist upwards like a novice poet about to recite. He stares into the shadowed garden as if he can hear a beautiful qawwal.
—You will come and develop the Company here, and everyone will thank you. First the faithful Company customers will come, searching for novelty, for skiing, to see saffron picking, and tour inside our shawl weavers’ homes. We will build a private gondola swinging high into the mountains, to avoid the riffraff queuing at Gulmarg; the lame packhorses at Pahalgam. Then those that follow our story will come, wanting to be seen in the same places, and so on, and so forth. The thrill of it will be this place. So life continues.
Sita thinks of the woman with the picture of a boy around her neck. The young men: sitting on the benches by the river in the late afternoon. All the things simply seeing cannot show.
—Do you know how much produce this place can yield? he asks. How much we can benefit from free trade? The land is so fertile; we will sprout money. The West of the East, this place could be. And now is the time for us to come make it good. We will occupy the people with tourism. So what if the old laws prohibit? Time to sweep it away. And you will manage it all.
He talks and talks. There will be daisies and lotus flowers everywhere in spring. There are passionflowers in the summer, and right now, apples – so many apples on the grass, slowly rotting into the earth.
A man slides through the garden to them, bringing a candle and another shawl which she takes before they can tell her she needs it. Behind him stands another man in a dull coloured pheran. Kritik Uncle says,
—Chalo, Isa. Report.
—Sir, Gargi and Radha Madam are not leaving the hotel.
—And?
—Sir, Fortress America ban gaya hain. No one can currently get into the hotel grounds without a pass, we must hand it back when we leave. A respectable man who runs a mid-ranger guesthouse in the Rajbagh area is supplying these passes. His family is being monitored to see what he might require in exchange for making a deal.
—Good. Next?
More men materialise in the garden. Four of them – all standing, waiting for Kritik Uncle’s attention. Sita feels the cold seeping through the layers of her shawls to her skin, veins, muscles; to her bones. They report the details of the hotel opening, now just days away.
—Itna phool! At least five thousand stems are being arranged. Extra power generators have been ordered to keep electricity constant. And servants thought Kashmiri outfits would be called for but Gargi Madam has ordered tailors in Delhi to stitch to some Western design.
Sita has seen the layouts. There will be an Empire room, complete with maps and globes and a telescope; old charts and trade documents, a signed print of the Napurthala Instrument of Accession on the walls. There will be a ballroom, a boating lake, a business centre and an outdoor stage, for travelling players to come.
—What about khaana? asks Kritik Uncle. What are the plans for that?
—There will be wazwan. Sixty-four courses. At least fifty lambs are waiting in pens in the old town. They will be killed and cooked in the traditional ways and with some variations also. I believe Western food has been ordered and I have good information Gargi Madam has asked for fish to come from Goa. A chef has come from Japan also. He has brought his own knives.
—What provision has been made for the slaughter?
Sita looks up, she tries to see the first stars. Last year, even before the building was finished, she let Gargi persuade her to help plan a farm on the terraces above the hotel. Reluctantly she did it, as if growing their own fruits and vegetables would make any of it different.
—Sir, in the area behind the orchards there is a concrete cooking-ground with at least five brick ovens, it will all happen there.
So: The streets of Srinagar will wash with blood. The citizens of Srinagar will be locked out of the celebrations, unless they are serving the hotel.
—See, Sita beti? Kritik says, after the men have gone. Details are the most important part of planning any assault.
She stays up late huddled in her shawls in the garden. The moonlight catches the bare branches; they shine like silver hairs tangled in the dark.
The next day she escapes the safe house, the boys on the corner, for the busy avenues again. Some of the shops have Diwali sweets and cards. The window displays are sets of necklace–bangles–rings and golden tikkas to anoint a bride. Sita walks quickly past the mall, the street corner dhaba, crowded with young men and old, sipping tea. She cuts through the tourist complex towards the river, wondering if Kritik Uncle would dare set a watch to follow her. Today, she will bore whoever it is, with her solitary tour.
She chooses a shikara, its posts twined with plastic forget-me-nots and stuck with cheerful toy birds. The deep seat is covered in rugs. She climbs in and sits carefully, not wanting to look a fool. The boatman waits for a moment, to see if more customers will come. A family join her – a mother, a small boy, and an older woman. They greet her with smiles, but at first they talk only amongst themselves.
—Sit Madams, sit, says the boatman, and his pleasure makes her laugh; the sound echoes
over the lake, startling a long-legged bird. It rises, shockingly white against the silver water, wing span wide as it skims the surface and disappears into the reeds.
Standing on the stern, the boatman lights a cigarette and steers towards the tributaries of the lake, into the wild grasses and the reeds, away from the other tourists. Sita inhales his smoke, tasting the dankness of water and air. They float along narrow canals. There are the vegetable gardens, called Rad in Kashmiri; there is a sign for a wild honey shop, closed in winter, and a boat yard where a man wrapped up against the cold is stripping logs to reveal their tender, pale flesh. Through the un-paned windows she catches glimpses of weavers, spinners, stitch-makers singing to a relentless clack-clack.
In the backwaters her boat passes bright green patches where detergents and fertilisers and sewage have caused phytoplankton to bloom. Under the lotus leaves native to this lake, Sita knows there are roots stretching into the water, stronger and thicker than metres of rope. When lotus roots are sliced they reveal rhizomes; they resemble English lace. They are one of the few flowers that can regulate its own temperature, like warm-blooded animals, like humans.
She wants to stop, to collect some samples of the plants and the water, but feels she cannot ask the boatman; she does not want to draw attention to herself. Here almost in the centre of the lake, she feels even more conspicuous.
The boat takes a turn, into another tributary. Shikaras loaded with groceries sidle through the water to her. She ignores the packets of Custard Creams and Scottish Shortbread, the tubes of Pringle crisps. Instead she barters for blood red chillies like dried-up organs, and maroon wisps of saffron sold by weight. She buys cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, turmeric; flavours for food she might one day try and cook – maybe when they get back to Delhi, she will get her own place, alone. She will hold Campaign meetings, and cook for herself. The dishes will begin with this hoard of spices, wrapped in plastic and stapled together. No one else chose them, no one else gave them and no one, but her, thought she should have them.