Cracking India

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  At about this time I become aware of a secondhand Morris Minor in our midst. It has a crank up front to start the engine, a radiator that consumes countless kettles of boiling water, and a five-manpower crew to push-start the eight-horsepower motor.

  The snap of the crank now features as one of the regular noises of the morning. Together with the lion’s roar, the bustle of domestic activity to provide Father with his newspaper and cups of tea—and the battle Muccho wages with Papoo—it awakens me. In my nightsuit, barefoot, I go to the veranda. The crank changes hands every five minutes. Imam Din is at it. One hand on the car hood, a duster wrapped round the handle for a firm grip, he lurches mightily and the engine burps. He straightens and presses the small of his back.

  Hari takes over. Stooping before the handle like a frisky terrier he energetically turns the crank with both hands.

  Adi bursts out of the dining room door in his pyjamas, holding his toothbrush, followed by Ayah’s shouts and then by Ayah. He too has a crack at the crank.

  I help Ayah pry him loose and Moti takes over.

  I go to greet Father. He is in the bathroom, enthroned on the commode. With a great rustling of newspaper, preoccupied and mute, he sits me on his bare thigh.

  Father is in a good mood. So, Mother too is in a good mood. She gives me a hug. She puts toothpaste on Father’s toothbrush. She tells me to take Father’s empty cup and saucer to the pantry. But Father latches on to me with such a show of speechless anguish and consternation at the thought of being parted from me that Mother says, “Let it be. Yousaf will take them.”

  She smiles indulgently: as if she could cross my father if she had a mind to.

  Father has a twenty-minute nap after lunch. Not nineteen, not twenty-one, precisely twenty. He knots a kerchief tightly round his eyes and lies down flat on the bed with his sandals on. Mother removes his sandals, his socks if he is wearing socks, blows tenderly between his toes, and with cooing noises caresses his feet.

  With a stern finger on her lips she hushes the household, until Father’s internal alarm clock causes him to jump out of bed, and within four minutes on to his bicycle.

  After lunch on a luminous November Saturday I’m idling on my cot, filling my tedium with dreams, when a hushed rush of sound comes from my parents’ bedroom. Not the harsh angry sounds that still me with dreadful apprehension, but the kind of noises signifying Father’s frolicsome mood. Father takes a longer break some Saturdays.

  I leap from my bed and burst into their room.

  Mother and Father are standing at the opposite ends of their joined beds. “Janoo! Don’t tease me like this ... I know you’ve got it: I saw it!”

  Mother’s voice teeters between amusement and a wheedling whine. She is a virtuoso at juggling the range of her voice and achieving the exact balance with which to handle Father. Father has the knack of extracting the most talented performances from us all—and from all those who work for him.

  “Jana!” Mother says in throaty exasperation,“you know I’m going to get you!” and she lunges around the bed.

  Father, limber in his striped cotton nightsuit and maroon dressing gown, maintains a strategic distance. “Don’t be foolish,” he says with fake and sotto-voce irritability. Conscious of the servants, my parents squabble in low voices and, being a more private person, Father is more particular. Outside their window Yousaf is shaving the leaves from the trees with a scythe, assisting the half-hearted Lahori fall to complete its task.

  Mother clutches the headboard and tries to dodge, taking a step this way and that. Then, climbing on their bed, she scrambles across the mattress on all fours.

  Father skips away easily. “Stop pestering me,” he says, “I’m getting late for work.”

  “I won’t let you go, Jana,” says Mother in a voice so tearfully childish that it cannot possibly present a threat to Father’s authority. Turning appealingly to me, her bosom heaving, she enlists my support.

  “Lenny, catch him.”

  “Stop acting like a child,” Father says disgustedly. He spreads his hands to show that he is not concealing anything.

  But Mother, an expert at reading his face, says, “I know you are smiling under your moustache, Jana. I love it when you are this way.” And attuned to the nuance underlying his disgusted voice, she knows she can persist. “I’ll get my hands on the money, or my name isn’t Bunty.”

  I run round the bed, exaggerating my modified limp, and grab hold of Father’s leg.

  “One minute. One minute,” he coaxes, loosening my grip and misleading me. The instant I release his leg he vaults through the curtains into the narrow study, and, swiftly shutting the doors, draws the bolt.

  “Jana! Let me in, Jana,” Mother cries, shaking the door and rattling the loose iron bolt. I bang on it. Yousaf and his scythe have moved to shave another tree and the wintry sun shines through its bared branches.

  “You will break the door, stupid twit!” cries Father in a harsh, hushed voice. Uncomfortably aware of the ubiquitous servants, he pulls the bolt and opens the door.

  Mother and I rush him excitedly. Expecting the charge, Father staggers back and plonks down on the settee with Mother and me on top of him. Mother’s searching hands move all over his dressing gown, and beneath it, probing his pockets, crotch and other crannies.

  Knowing now I’m looking for money, I also stroke and pat his clothes.

  “You’ve hidden it, Janoo,” cries Mother in dismay. “But I’ll find it! I’m not about to give up!”

  Heaving herself off Father, determinedly and methodically Mother opens and shuts drawers in a rickety old desk and in a steel filing cabinet. Father lounges on the settee looking smug. But when Mother strides towards the large teak cupboard at the far end of the room he bounds forward and, spreading his hands, stands before it. The heavy panels on the top half of the almirah conceal a neat array of narrow drawers, and the lower half is composed of two sets of deeper drawers.

  We fling ourselves at Father. My wiry Father is strong, but Mother has the advantage of her voluptuous weight. In the tug of war that ensues we manage to open the door panels—and to keep them open—despite Father’s desperate efforts to dislodge us.

  Mother, breathing heavily, plunges her hands here and there and with a triumphant cry sprints out of the room, her stubby fingers closed on a large wad of notes.

  “Oye, uloo!” Father says, rushing after her. “It’s not my money, you crazy! I’ll bring you your housekeeping money from the office.”

  “I’ll take only what I have to,” Mother shouts, locking herself into the bathroom. “I haven’t even paid Lenny’s physiotherapist yet... I’ve to buy the children’s clothes for Christmas and New Year.” (Christmas, Easter, Eid, Divali. We celebrate them all.)

  “Oye, madwoman,” hisses Father through the door, ostensibly mindful of the servants’ ears. “Show some sense. I owe the money. I have to return it on my way to the office. Give it back at once.”

  “I’ll give it after I’ve taken what I need, Jana,” Mother warbles and suddenly opening the door shoves the bundle at my father.

  Before she’s had time to move to her cupboard Father has flicked through the notes and counted them. “Arrey! You’ve taken far too much!” he exclaims as if shaken to the core and bankrupted by the banditry. But I am also schooled to read between the lines of my father’s face. His heart is not in his anguish. Mother must have withdrawn a very meager and reasonable sum indeed!

  “She’s bent on destroying us,” Father grumbles, striking his forehead again and again. “Money Money Money Money! From morning to night. Money Money Money Money! I’m fed up.”

  But Mother, with dew in her eyes and a misty smile, blows him kisses. And, having locked the money in her cupboard, she goes about her business of picking up Father’s clothes and tidying the beds and getting dressed.

  Chapter 9

  To our left is the Singhs’ large bungalow. The compound wall we share is partially broken by the sloping trunk of a eucalyp
tus tree near our kitchen. This is where Rosy, Peter, Adi and I, and sometimes Cousin, gather to discuss world affairs, human relationships, Mr. and Mrs. Singh’s uncut hair and Rosy’s sister’s impending baby.

  “I’ll tell you how babies come,” says Rosy.

  “Oh, we know,” I say, “Ayah’s already told us.”

  “How?” challenges Rosy. “The stork brings them?”

  Rosy sighs, rolling her eyes. “I’ll tell you how they are made,” she persists; “my sister’s told me everything.”

  Rosy is obnoxiously smug and swollen these days. She may walk about with a grown-up air—but her cotton knickers, I notice, remain wet. Her big sister unquestionably pumps her with questionable knowledge.

  “If your sister knows so much, how come she could not even pass her Matric exam?” I ask.

  Rosy has picked up a reasonable way of talking which gives me goose bumps. “Passing Matric exams has nothing to do with having babies,” she explains sweetly. “She has a husband who she loves—and who loves her... ”

  “She’s got to have a husband, stupid! She’s married isn’t she?” Adi butts in, “and married people have babies! That’s all there is to it!”

  “You’re much too young to understand such things,” says Rosy.

  “I’ll show you who’s too young,” says Adi, pushing her back and jumping the wall after her and knocking her down and throwing himself upon her. They argue with their limbs and voices, churning dust. How is Rosy to know that just that morning Cousin settled an argument with Adi by shoving him off Skinny-aunt’s veranda saying: “You’re too small to know anything, stupid. Scram!”

  The kitchen door banging shut, Yousaf emerges to investigate the row. He snatches Adi up and Rosy, dragged to her feet by her hair, emits a bloody yell that curdles the milk in Mr. Singh’s buffaloes. Yousaf carries Adi kicking and cursing into the kitchen.

  For the moment at least Adi has knocked the stuffing out of Rosy’s intolerable grown-uppishness. Red-faced, bawling, martyred, wet knicker bottoms caked with mud and arms outstretched, Rosy totters in slow motion towards her veranda.

  Putting on a straight face I jump the wall after Rosy. I place a hypocritical arm protectively round her shoulders and console her all the way up the veranda steps to her room.

  “What is it, Rosy? What is the matter, dear?” warbles Mrs. Singh in her cool-water-in-a-jug American voice from somewhere in the house.

  Rosy bawls something indecipherable and Mrs. Singh, apparently satisfied, asks no more questions.

  The three miniature glass jars wink at me!

  Leaving Rosy to cope with her hurt feelings and bruised flesh, I crouch before them. One by one I lift the fragile jars and remove their tiny crystal stoppers. They gleam, reflecting rainbow hues—insinuating questions ... What is eternity? Why are the stars? Where do cats lay their eggs? And why don’t hospitals have flushing bedpans built into the beds?

  Rosy never even looks at the jars unless I am there. If they were to fall this minute and smash to smithereens she would be sad—the destruction of beauty is depressing—but she wouldn’t miss them among all her little pots and pans and cups and saucers. Would it be stealing then? Taking away something Rosy doesn’t want anyway?

  I cannot bring myself to ask her to give them to me. She might refuse. It’s an unthinkable risk. I know when you want something very much it gives people power over you. I will not give Rosy that power to withhold—or to grant. Too many people have it as it is.

  Silently Rosy gets up and leaving a damp indentation of her dusty bottom on the bedspread goes out of the room.

  My hands feel weak. I cannot stir out of my crouched position. I force my mind to be rational. Hundreds of thousands of people steal...

  Suddenly my brain clicks. My eyes locate the fireplace. My hands spring to life, deft and obedient, and I bury the jars in a bed of ashes. It is almost summer. No one will kindle a fire for months. I can leave the jars there till Rosy forgets they ever existed.

  . Rosy returns bearing a saucer and my heart sinks. On the saucer are small mounds of sugar, rice and red pepper. It is an offering. A maneuver to shore up my shaky allegiance; and a silent testimony of her worth. She knows I love filling the jars, like their enormous counterparts in the kitchen, with sugar and rice.

  There is no help for it. While Rosy fills the toy teapot with water from the bathroom I pry out the jars from the ashes and fill them with rice and sugar.

  I could weep. Any time I maneuver a set of circumstances to suit me this happens. Fate intervenes. There is no other word for it. Fated! Doomed! No wonder I have such a scary-puss of a conscience.

  Ayah has acquired two new admirers: a Chinaman and the Pathan.

  Mother wonders why we are suddenly swamped with such a persistent display of embroidered bosky-silk and linen tea cozies, tray-cloths, trolley sets, tablecloths, counterpanes, pillowcases and bedsheets.

  Twice a week the Chinaman cycles up our drive, rattling and bumping over the stones, a huge khaki bundle strapped to the carrier.

  Our drive is made of packed earth. Every year, worn by traffic and eroded by monsoons, the drive lays bare patches of brick rubble.

  The Chinaman is dapper, thin, brusque and rude. He parks his bicycle in the porch, removes the cycle-clips from his khaki trousers and heaves his bundle to the veranda. “Comeon, comeon, Chinaman come!” he shouts, squatting before his bundle and sorting out his wares for display. “Comeon Memsahib, comeon Ayah. Comeon, comeon, Chinaman come!”

  Mother yells from inside: “Tell him to get out! What is this nonsense? Coming every day! Ayah? Yousaf? Is anyone there?”

  Ayah comes to the veranda. “Go, go!” she says in tart English. (Besides Cantonese, the Chinaman speaks only a smattering of English.) “Memsahib no want. Go, Go!”

  But the Chinaman has sprung his trap with cunning. Ayah’s attention is snared by the shimmering colors. Her eyes wander to the silks.

  “Comeon, comeon,” he coaxes, getting up. He reaches for Ayah’s arm and pulls her to his silks. “See?” he says, stroking his free hand over the bosky and then over her arm. “It silky like your skin. See? See?” he says burying her hand in the soft heap.

  Ayah knows well how to handle his bold tilted eyes and his alien rudeness. “Oh-ho,” she says, all singsongy. “I have no munneeey—how I buy?”

  “You sit,” coaxes the Chinaman, pulling Ayah to squat beside him and, retaining his hold, engages her in a staccato and desultory conversation. When Ayah’s restiveness becomes uncontrollable he introduces a bribe: “Now, what I can give you?” he muses. “Let me see ... Sit, sit,” he says and Ayah’s restiveness succumbs to the dual restraints of hand and promises.

  Although Ayah has been allotted quarters, she dwells and sleeps in our house. Soon the tabletops, mantelpieces, sideboards and shelves in our rooms blossom with embroidered, bosky-silk doilies.

  The attentions of Ayah’s Pathan admirer also benefit our household. All our kitchen knives, table knives, Mother’s scissors and paper-knife and Hari’s garden shears and Adi’s blunt penknife suddenly develop glittering razor edges. And it is not only our household the Pathan services. Gita Shankar’s, Rosy-Peter’s, Electric-aunt’s and Godmother’s houses also flash with sharp and efficient cutting implements. Even the worn, stubby knives in the servants’ quarters acquire redoubtable edges, for the Pathan is a knife-sharpener.

  I have often noticed him in the bazaar, plying his trade before streetside shops. He pushes a pedal on his machine and a large and slender wheel turns dizzily round and round. With great dexterity and judgment he brings the knife blades to the wheel, and in the ensuing conflagration of sparks and swift steel-screeches, the knives are honed to jewel edges. He wraps the loose end of his floppy turban about his mouth like a thug—to filter out the fine steel and whetstone dust.

  It is only when I see him in a sidewalk brawl with the restaurant-wrestler, looking bewildered and furious, his face no longer covered like a thug’s, that I recognize th
e face and connect it to the pink and tingly bottom we cycled past on our way to Imam Din’s village.

  The Pathan’s name is Sharbat Khan. He too cycles up our long drive, steel clattering and wheels wobbling over the rubble that sticks out of the mud. The cycle looks like a toy beneath the man from the mountains and involuntarily Adi and I grow tense, expecting the pistol-shot-like report of a punctured tire. It is late in the afternoon and we stand on the veranda, hypnotized by his approach.

  Sharbat Khan wears drawstring pantaloons so baggy they put to shame Masseur’s shalwar—and over them a flared tunic that flaunts ten yards of coarse white homespun. He cycles past our bedroom and Gita Shankar’s rooms to the back of the house. Adi and I scoot after him.

  Sharbat Khan parks his cycle against a tree and squatting by it waits for Ayah.

  Ayah comes.

  Ayah is nervous in his presence, given to sudden movement; her goddess-like calm replaced by breath-stopping shyness. They don’t touch. He leans across his bicycle, talking, and she shifts from foot to foot, smiling, ducking and twisting spherically. She has taken to sticking a flower in her hair, plucked from our garden. They don’t need to touch. His presence radiates a warmth that is different from the dark heat generated by Masseur’s fingers—the lightning strikes of Ice-candy-man’s toes.

  Sharbat Khan tells her of his cousin who has a dry fruit and naswar (mixture of tobacco and opium) lean-to in Gowalmandi. It is a contact point for the many Pathans from his tribe around the Khyber working in Lahore. He gives Ayah news of the meat, vegetable, tea and kebab stall owners and of their families, whose knives he sharpens. He is doing well. And not only at sharpening knives.

  Sharbat Khan cautions Ayah: “These are bad times—Allah knows what’s in store. There is big trouble in Calcutta and Delhi: Hindu-Muslim trouble. The Congresswallahs are after Jinnah’s blood...”