by Bapsi Sidhwa
Table of Contents
Praise
Praise
Praise
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Ranna’s Story
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgements
About the Author
More Fiction from Milkweed Editions
Milkweed Editions
Join Us
Copyright Page
Praise for Bapsi Sidhwa
“Pakistan’s finest English-language novelist.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Pakistan’s leading female author.”
—Washington Post
“A powerful and dramatic novelist.”
—London Times,
Praise for Cracking India
“In reducing the Partition to the perceptions of a polio-ridden child, a girl who tries to wrench out her tongue because it is unable to lie, Bapsi Sidhwa has given us a memorable book, one that confirms her reputation as Pakistan’s finest English language novelist.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Sidhwa ... is a rarity even in swiftly-changing Asia—a candid, forthright, balanced woman novelist. Her twentieth century view of Indian life can only be compared to V S. Naipaul’s.”
—Bloomsbury Review
“Much has been written about the holocaust that followed the Partition of India in 1947, but seldom has that story been told as touchingly, as convincingly, or as horrifyingly as it has been by novelist Bapsi Sidhwa.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“A lively, compelling novel, ambitiously conceived, skillfully plotted and beautifully written.”
—New York Newsday
“A historical tragedy comes alive, yielding insight into both the past and the subcontinent’s turbulent present.”
—USA Today
“A multifaceted jewel of a novel.”
—Houston Chronicle
“A mysterious and wonderful novel.”
—Washington Post Book World
Praise for The Crow Eaters
“A delightful and perceptive view of a Parsee family’s rise from rags to riches.... A most intelligent and enjoyable novel.”
—Seattle Times
“[Bapsi Sidhwa’s] roguish hero is a genuine charmer, and her book is as warm and vital as it is funny.”
—Miami Herald
“Fascinating.... The descriptions of Parsee customs and of life in Lahore, Bombay and London are rich in color, sound and aroma.”
—Kansas City Star
“Completely charming and very funny.”
—New York Newsday
“A picaresque, comic tale ... [that] recalls the past in charming detail.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Wonderfully comic.... Lively and entertaining.”
—Washington Post
“An entirely refreshing, spicy and satirical book.”
—Plain Dealer
“A charming visit to India in the early 1900s. The wit is sparkling. The fragrances, sounds, and tactile aspects of Lahore are more entrancing than any travel brochure.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
Praise for An American Brat
“Sidhwa’s writing is brisk and funny, her characters painted so vividly you can almost hear them bickering.”
—New York Times Book Review
“The pluses and minuses of the prevailing American culture of individualism (and aversion to traditional ways) are given intelligent attention ... and the novel takes a long, affectionate look at the exotic world of the modern Parsee community and its ancient Zoroastrian faith.”
—Economist
“An exceptional novel.... A remarkable sketch of American society as seen and experienced by modern immigrants.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Sidhwa writes with cunning knowledge of modern Lahore and its Parsee community.”
—New York Newsday
“Affecting, amusing, and profoundly enjoyable.”
− Washington Post Book World
For the Kermanis
Zerses, Cambayses and Behram
Baku and Koko
And Deepa Mehta
Chapter 1
Shall I hear the lament of the nightingale, submissively lending my ear?
Am I the rose to suffer its cry in silence year after year?
The fire of verse gives me courage and bids me no more to be faint.
With dust in my mouth, I am abject: to God I make my complaint.
Sometimes You favor our rivals then sometimes with us You are free,
I am sorry to say it so boldly. You are no less fickle than we.
—Iqbal: “Complaint to God”
My world is compressed. Warris Road, lined with rain gutters, lies between Queens Road and Jail Road: both wide, clean, orderly streets at the affluent fringes of Lahore.
Rounding the right-hand corner of Warris Road and continuing on Jail Road is the hushed Salvation Army wall. Set high, at eight-foot intervals, are the wall’s dingy eyes. My child’s mind is blocked by the gloom emanating from the wire mesh screening the oblong ventilation slits. I feel such sadness for the dumb creature I imagine lurking behind the wall. I know it is dumb because I have listened to its silence, my ear to the wall.
Jail Road also harbors my energetic Electric-aunt and her adenoidal son... large, slow, inexorable. Their house is adjacent to the den of the Salvation Army.
Opposite it, down a bumpy, dusty, earth-packed drive, is the one-and-a-half-room abode of my godmother. With her dwell her docile old husband and her slavesister. This is my haven. My refuge from the perplexing unrealities of my home on Warris Road.
A few furlongs away Jail Road vanishes into the dense bazaars of Mozang Chungi. At the other end a distant canal cuts the road at the periphery of my world.
Lordly, lounging in my briskly rolling pram, immersed in dreams, my private world is rudely popped by the sudden appearance of an English gnome wagging a leathery finger in my ayah’s face. But for keen reflexes that enable her to pull the carriage up short there might have been an accident, and blood spilled on Warris Road. Wagging his finger over my head into Ayah’s alarmed face, he tut-tuts: “Let her walk. Shame, shame! Such a big girl in a pram! She’s at least four!”
He smiles down at me, his brown eyes twinkling intolerance.
I look at him politely, concealing my complacence. The Englishman is short, leathery, middle-aged, pointy-eared. I like him.
“Come on. Up, up!” he says, crooking a beckoning finger.
“She not walk much... she get tired,” drawls Ayah. And simultaneously I raise my trouser cuff to reveal the leather straps and wicked steel calipers harnessing my right boot.
Confronted by Ayah’s liquid eyes and prim gloating, and the triumphant revelation of my calipers, the Englishman withers.
But back he bounces, bobbing up and down
. “So what?” he says, resurrecting his smile. “Get up and walk! Walk! You need the exercise more than other children! How will she become strong, sprawled out like that in her pram? Now, you listen to me... ” He lectures Ayah, and prancing before the carriage which has again started to roll says, “I want you to tell her mother... ”
Ayah and I hold our eyes away, effectively dampening his good-Samaritan exuberance... and wagging his head and turning about, the Englishman quietly dissolves up the driveway from which he had so enthusiastically sprung.
The covetous glances Ayah draws educate me. Up and down, they look at her. Stub-handed twisted beggars and dusty old beggars on crutches drop their poses and stare at her with hard, alert eyes. Holy men, masked in piety, shove aside their pretenses to ogle her with lust. Hawkers, cart-drivers, cooks, coolies and cyclists turn their heads as she passes, pushing my pram with the unconcern of the Hindu goddess she worships.
Ayah is chocolate-brown and short. Everything about her is eighteen years old and round and plump. Even her face. Full-blown cheeks, pouting mouth and smooth forehead curve to form a circle with her head. Her hair is pulled back in a tight knot.
And, as if her looks were not stunning enough, she has a rolling bouncy walk that agitates the globules of her buttocks under her cheap colorful saris and the half-spheres beneath her short sari-blouses. The Englishman no doubt had noticed.
We cross Jail Road and enter Godmother’s compound. Walking backwards, the buffalo-hide water-pouch slung from his back, the waterman is spraying the driveway to settle the dust for evening visitors. Godmother is already fitted into the bulging hammock of her easy chair and Slavesister squats on a low cane stool facing the road. Their faces brighten as I scramble out of the pram and run towards them. Smiling like roguish children, softly clapping hands they chant, “Langer deen! Paisay ke teen! Tamba mota, pag mahin!” Freely translated, “Lame Lenny! Three for a penny! Fluffy pants and fine fanny!”
Flying forward I fling myself at Godmother and she lifts me onto her lap and gathers me to her bosom. I kiss her, insatiably, excessively, and she hugs me. She is childless. The bond that ties her strength to my weakness, my fierce demands to her nurturing, my trust to her capacity to contain that trust—and my loneliness to her compassion—is stronger than the bond of motherhood. More satisfying than the ties between men and women.
I cannot be in her room long without in some way touching her. Some nights, clinging to her broad white back like a bug, I sleep with her. She wears only white khaddar saris and white khaddar blouses beneath which is her coarse bandage-tight bodice. In all the years I never saw the natural shape of her breasts.
Somewhere in the uncharted wastes of space beyond, is Mayo Hospital. We are on a quiet wide veranda running the length of the first floor. The cement floor is shining clean.
Colonel Bharucha, awesome, bald, as pink-skinned as an Englishman, approaches swiftly along the corridor. My mother springs up from the bench on which we’ve been waiting.
He kneels before me. Gently he lifts the plaster cast on my dangling right leg and suddenly looks into my eyes. His eyes are a complex hazel. They are direct as an animal’s. He can read my mind.
Colonel Bharucha is cloaked in thunder. The terrifying aura of his renown and competence are with him even when he is without his posse of house surgeons and head nurses. His thunder is reflected in my mother’s on-your-mark attentiveness. If he bends, she bends swifter. When he reaches for the saw on the bench she reaches it first and hands it to him with touching alacrity. It is a frightening arm’s-length saw. It belongs in a woodshed. He withdraws from his pockets a mallet, a hammer and a chisel.
The surgeon’s pink head, bent in concentration, hides the white cast. I look at my mother. I turn away to look at a cloudless sky. I peer inquisitively at the closed windows screening the large general ward in front of me. The knocks of the hammer and chisel and the sawing have ceased to alarm. I am confident of the doctor’s competence. I am bored. The crunch of the saw biting into plaster continues as the saw is worked to and fro by the surgeon. I look at his bowed head and am arrested by the splotch of blood just visible on my shin through the crack in the plaster.
My boredom vanishes. The blood demands a reaction. “Um...,” I moan dutifully. There is no response. “Um ... Um...,” I moan, determined to draw attention.
The sawing stops. Colonel Bharucha straightens. He looks up at me and his direct eyes bore into my thoughts. He cocks his head, impishly defying me to shed crocodile tears. Caught out I put a brave face on my embarrassment and my nonexistent pain and look away.
It is all so pleasant and painless. The cast is off. My mother’s guilt-driven attention is where it belongs—on the steeply fallen arch of my right foot. The doctor buckles my sandal and helps me from the bench saying, “It didn’t hurt now, did it?” He and my mother talk over my head in cryptic monosyllables, nods and signals. I am too relieved to see my newly released foot and its valuable deformity intact to be interested in their grown-up exclusivity. My mother takes my hand and I limp away happily.
It is a happy interlude. I am sent to school. I play “I sent a letter to my Friend ... ” with other children. My cousin, slow, intense, observant, sits watching.
“Which of you’s sick and is not supposed to run?” asks the teacher: and bound by our telepathic conspiracy, both Cousin and I point to Cousin. He squats, distributing his indolent weight on his sturdy feet and I shout, play, laugh and run on the tips of my toes. I have an overabundance of energy. It can never be wholly released.
The interlude was happy.
I lie on a white wooden table in a small room. I know it is the same hospital. I have been lured unsuspecting to the table but I get a whiff of something frightening. I hate the smell with all my heart, and my heart pounding I try to get off the table. Hands hold me. Colonel Bharucha, in a strange white cap and mask, looks at me coolly and says something to a young and nervous lady doctor. The obnoxious smell grows stronger as a frightening muzzle is brought closer to my mouth and nose. I scream and kick out. The muzzle moves away. Again it attacks and again I twist and wrench, turning my face from side to side. My hands are pinned down. I can’t move my legs. I realize they are strapped. Hands hold my head. “No! No! Help me. Mummy! Mummy, help me!” I shout, panicked. She too is aligned with them. “I’m suffocating,” I scream. “I can’t breathe.” There is an unbearable weight on my chest. I moan and cry.
I am held captive by the brutal smell. It has vaporized into a milky cloud. I float round and round and up and down and fall horrendous distances without landing anywhere, fighting for my life’s breath. I am abandoned in that suffocating cloud. I moan and my ghoulish voice turns me into something despicable and eerie and deserving of the terrible punishment. But where am I? How long will the horror last? Days and years with no end in sight ...
It must have ended.
I switch awake to maddening pain, sitting up in my mother’s bed crying. I must have been crying a long time. I become aware of the new plaster cast on my leg. The shape of the cast is altered from the last time. The toes point up. The pain from my leg radiates all over my small body. “Do something. I’m hurting!”
My mother tells me the story of the little mouse with seven tails.
“The mouse comes home crying.” My mother rubs her knuckles to her eyes and, energetically imitating the mouse, sobs, ‘“Mummy, Mummy, do something. The children at school tease me. They sing: ”Freaky mousey with seven tails! Lousy mousey with seven tails!” ’ So, the little mouse’s mother chops off one tail. The next day the mouse again comes home crying: ‘Mummy, Mummy, the children tease me. ”Lousy mousey with six tails! Freaky mousey with six tails! ” ’ ”
And so on, until one by one the little mouse’s tails are all chopped off and the story winds to its inevitable and dismal end with the baby mouse crying: “Mummy, Mummy, the children tease me. They sing, ‘Freaky mousey with no tail! Lousy mousey with no tail!’ ” And there is no way a tail can be
tacked back on.
The doleful story adds to my misery. But stoically bearing my pain for the duration of the tale, out of pity for my mother’s wan face and my father’s exaggerated attempts to become the tragic mouse, I once again succumb to the pain.
My mother tells my father: “Go next door and phone the doctor to come at once!” It is in the middle of the night. And it is cold. Father puts on his dressing gown and wrapping a scarf round his neck leaves us. My screaming loses its edge of panic. An hour later, exhausted by the pain and no longer able to pander to my mother’s efforts to distract, I abandon myself to hysteria.