by Bapsi Sidhwa
“What’s it to us if Jinnah, Nehru and Patel fight? They are not fighting our fight,” says Ayah, lightly.
“That may be true,” says Sharbat Khan thoughtfully, “but they are stirring up trouble for us all.”
Sharbat Khan shifts forward, his aspect that of a man about to confess a secret. Ayah leans closer to him and I slide into her lap.
He glances at me dubiously, but at a reassuring nod from Ayah, says, “Funny things are happening inside the old city ... Stabbings ... Either the police can’t do anything—or they don’t want to. A body was stuffed into a manhole in my locality ... It was discovered this morning because of the smell: a young, good-looking man. Several bodies have been found in the gutters and gullies of the Kashmiri, Lahori and Bhatti Gates and Shalmi ... They must have been dumped there from different neighborhoods because no one knows who they are.”
“Are they Hindus?” asks Ayah, her carefree mood dispelled.
“Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. One can tell they are from prosperous, eating-drinking households... ”
“There have also been one or two fires ... I don’t like it ... ”
We fall into a pensive silence.
Ayah sighs, “Arrey Bhagwan.” She pushes me off her lap and unties a knot in her sari that serves as her wallet. She holds out a small bundle of tightly folded notes. “Look,” she says, shaking her head to dispel the somber mood. “I’ve saved my whole salary this month ... forty rupees!”
Sharbat Khan takes the money from her and, removing his turban, tucks it inside its rancid-smelling interior. His hair, matted to his head, is brown and falls from a center parting to his ears.
Sharbat Khan loans money as a side business like most Pathans. He carries out transactions on Ayah’s behalf and gives her the profits. Often he wears a gun. There are few defaulters.
I listen as Sharbat Khan talks to Ayah of the crops and sparse orchards in his mountain village. Now it is the apple season and the season for apricots. It is also time to cash the rice crop, the maize crop, and hoe the potatoes ... He is going to his tribal village for a month or so to help his folk wrest the harvest from the gritty, unyielding soil of his land. There are leopards in the granite ravines and stony summits surrounding his village. He has encountered them on mountain trails, their eyes gleaming emerald by night, their spots camouflaged by the filtered sunlight dappling the underbrush by day.
“Hai Ram!” exclaims Ayah, her lips trembling with concern. “Don’t they attack?”
“Only if they’re shown disrespect,” says Sharbat Khan. “We mountain folk know what to do. We touch our foreheads and courteously say ”Salaam-alekum mamajee [uncle]” and they let us alone.”
“I’d never have the nerve to say that!” says Ayah. “I’d faint right away!”
“Then he’d think you very rude and eat you up!”
“Arrey baba, I’d never go to your village,” says Ayah firmly.
Sharbat Khan grins, his eyes shining with love. “Then I must bring the mountains to you! What would you like?” he asks Ayah. “Almonds? Pistachios? Walnuts? Dried apricots?” Sharbat Khan wears silver rings on his fingers roughly embedded with turquoise and uncut rubies. “Ah, the taste of those nuts!” he sighs, raising his fingers to his lips and smacking them, and sliding his warm tiger-eyes in a way that leaves Ayah so short of breath that she can barely say, “Bring me pistachios.”
Sharbat Khan leans forward. “What?” he asks, aware of his effect on her. “I didn’t hear you.”
Ayah shuffles her bare feet and fidgets with her sari. Her eyes are shy, full of messages. “Bring me pistachios,” she says again. “And almonds: they are good for the brain.”
“And what are pistachios good for?” asks Sharbat Khan knowingly, and Ayah lowers her head and fiddles with the scarlet rose anchored to the tight knot in her hair and says, “How should I know?” And Sharbat Khan sighs again, and his eyes turn so radiant they shine like amber between his bushy lashes.
Something happens within me. Though outwardly I remain as thin as ever, I can feel my stomach muscles retract to create a warm hollow. “Take me for a ride—take me for a ride,” I beg and Sharbat Khan, tearing away his eyes from Ayah, places me on the cycle shaft. He gives me a turn round the backyard, grazing past the buffalo, the servants’ quarters and the Shankars’ veranda. He smells of tobacco, burnt whetstone and sweat. He brings me back and offers Ayah a ride.
“Sit in front: it’s safer,” he says.
“Aiiii-yo!” she says in a long-drawn way, as if he has made an improper suggestion, and turning her face away covers her head with her sari.
Sharbat Khan coaxes her again, and with a great show of alarm Ayah wiggles on to the shaft in front and Sharbat Khan takes her off on a circuit of the backyard. He pretends to lose his balance: and as the front wheel swings wildly, “Hai, I’ll die!” cries Ayah. The inhabitants of the servants’ quarters pop out to watch the tamasha and applaud. Adi laughs and claps. Laughing, Sharbat Khan releases Ayah back under the trees.
He gives Adi a ride, and depositing him outside the kitchen, cycles down the drive like a mountain receding.
I hear the metallic peal of Father’s cycle bell and rush out to welcome him. Mother rushes out of another door. It is almost three in the afternoon: Father is late for lunch. Together we slobber all over him as Father, with a phony frown and a tight little twist of a smile beneath his moustache, places the cycle on its stand and removes the ledgers clamped to the carrier.
Mother removes his solar topi and slips off the handkerchief tied round his forehead to keep the sweat from his eyes. She brushes his wet curls back. As I reach up to kiss him Father bends and puts his arm round me. Mother relieves him of the ledgers and taking hold of his other arm winds it about herself, making little moaning sounds as if his touch fills her with exquisite relief. With me clinging to his waist and Mother hanging on to his arm, Father labors up the veranda steps.
Making affectionate sounds we accompany Father to the bathroom. He washes his hands and empties his bladder and we accompany him to the dining table.
Mother and I sit with him. Mother talks while he chomps wordlessly on his food and looks at her out of the assessing and disconcerting eyes of a theater critic. Mother chatters about friends and supplies political tidbits filtered through their consciousnesses: Colonel Bharucha says that Jinnah said... And Nehru said that... And oh, how I laughed when Mehrabai (that’s the mirthsome Mrs. Bankwalla) said this about Patel... and that about...
Unflagging, she gives a resume of the anxious letters from sisters and sisters-in-law in Bombay and Karachi, who have heard all sorts of rumors about the situation in the Punjab and are exhorting us to come to them.
A little later, mention of Adi’s hostile antics causes Father to scowl. Leaning forward to shovel a forkful of curried rice into his mouth he crumples his forehead up, and out of sharp and judgmental eyes gazes acutely at Mother.
Switching the bulletin immediately, Mother recounts some observations of mine as if I’ve spent the entire morning mouthing extraordinarily brilliant, saccharinely sweet and fetchingly naive remarks. “Jana, you know what Lenny told me this morning? She said: ‘Poor Daddy works so hard for us. When I grow up, I will work in the office and he can read his newspaper all day!’ ”
Peals of laughter from Mother. A smile from Father.
And when Mother pauses, on cue, I repeat any remarks I’m supposed to have made: and ham up the performance with further innocently insightful observations.
Father rewards me with solemn nods, champing smiles, and monosyllables.
And as the years advance, my sense of inadequacy and un-worth advances. I have to think faster—on my toes as it were... offering lengthier and lengthier chatter to fill up the infernal time of Father’s mute meals.
Is that when I learn to tell tales?
Chapter 10
Instead of school I go to Mrs. Pen’s. Her house is next to Godmother’s on Jail Road—opposite Electric-aunt’s—and I walk t
here with Ayah or with Hari. Channi, her slight but stately sweeper, takes out a small table and two chairs and we sit in the garden under bare February trees and lukewarm sunshine. Mr. Pen lounges on the veranda in an easy chair.
A parrot might relish reciting tables. I do not.
“Two twos are four
Two threes are six
Two fours are eight
Etc., etc.”
By the time I reach the five-times table I am resting my head on my arms stretched flat out on the table, peering sideways at Mrs. Pen. My jaws ache—my mind wanders—I hear Mr. Pen snore...
He is much darker than Mrs. Pen. He is Anglo-Indian.
Mrs. Pen is fair, soft, plump, English.
I have a trick. My voice drones on, my mind clicks off. I take time out to educate myself. I watch the trees shed their leaves and sprout new buds... and the predatory kites swoop on pigeons. And the crows, in ungainly clusters, attack the kites...
And I sniff a whiff off Mrs. Pen as it drifts up from under the table, its moldy reality percolating the dusting of cheap talcum powder.
Despite her efforts to clutter my brain with the trivia and trappings of scholarship, I slip in a good bit of learning. The whiff off Mrs. Pen enlightens me. It teaches me the biology of spent cells and aging bodies—and insinuates history into my subconscious... of things past and of the British Raj... of human frailties and vulnerabilities—of spent passion and lingering yearnings. Whereas a whiff off Ayah carries the dark purity of creation, Mrs. Pen smells of memories.
Mrs. Pen reads aloud prosaic English history.
I turn my head the other way. I observe Mr. Pen’s fingers. They are long, fat and large. His legs are huge tubes encased in flannels and beneath them, visible through a hole in his socks, plops his mordant toe. I feel sorry for Mrs. Pen. I can’t imagine his fingers working the subtle artistry of Masseur’s fingers—or his sluggish toe conveying the dashing impulses of Ice-candy-man’s toes.
After Mrs. Pen’s I go to Godmother’s.
Godmother rents rooms in the back of a bungalow. She has a large room, and a small room with a kerosene stove and a dangerous Primus stove. The small room serves as kitchen/pantry. And off it, a bathroom with three commodes.
I go straight to the kitchen. Slavesister, short and squat, is slaving over the kerosene stove. I follow her as she walks on painful bunions to the water trough at the back of the compound and watch her scour the heavy pans and brass utensils with ash and mud. I help her carry them back .
Every now and then Slavesister serves Godmother strong half-cups of steaming tea which Godmother pours into her saucer and slurps. I too take an occasional and guilty sip. Drinking tea, I am told, makes one darker. I’m dark enough. Everyone says, “It’s a pity Adi’s fair and Lenny so dark. He’s a boy. Anyone will marry him.”
Yesterday I carried a gleaming image of the jars in my mind. Something darker lurks in their stead today—fear and guilt.
The three jars are in my possession.
I glance about the room. There is not a single hiding place when I want one. When I don’t need them they abound, secreting away things.
I tuck the jars in an old pair of felt slippers beneath a tangle of neglected toys in the bottom drawer of our dresser.
Adi breezes in and makes a beeline for the dresser. He opens and closes drawers, running among the wrecked cars, trains, nursery books, gutless badminton rackets, and celluloid dolls. He grabs the deflated football he’s looking for and I let my breath go. I need a safer hiding place.
Next morning I transport the jars to Mrs. Pen’s, wrapped in toilet paper and tucked in my schoolbag. After my tuition I transport them to Godmother’s. She is propped up on three white pillows that are cement-hard and as heavy. I recline beside her on her cot, propped almost upright.
My eyes wander all over the room. Another string-cot, smaller and sagging, lies in front of the almirah with the three doors. Squeezed between two cupboards, fitting one into the other, are three more cots. Oldhusband sits hunched and still on a bentwood chair before a heavy mahogany desk. Chairs with cane seats, tin trunks and leather suitcases are stacked against the walls. My eyes, like happy roaches, crawl into the abundance of crevices and crannies.
Slavesister goes into the kitchen. When she calls Godmother to light the Primus I quickly slip the jars between two stacks of trunks covered by dhurries.
I hear Godmother pump the spirit stove: koochuck, koochuck, koochuck, koochuck. I see her, white-saried, bent forward in concentration, vulnerable and heroic.
The technology involved in starting the Primus is too complex for Slavesister to handle. Godmother exposes herself to grave risk every time she starts the stove. Like Russian roulette, any one of the pumps might trigger the Primus to blow up in her face.
There is a fierce hissing. It is now safe to peek in. The ring of flame from the Primus is like a fierce blue storm.
I lie back on Godmother’s pillows, absent-mindedly listening to her scold Slavesister. When she approaches I make room for her. She settles in the hollow of the bed and I wind myself about her like a rope.
She calls to Slavesister. Her voice is still stem from the scolding: “I want that Japanese kimono Mehrabai brought me two years back. That red one. I want to give it to Bachamai’s Rutti. Do you remember where it is?”
No answer.
She raps her punkah on the wall to attract her sister’s attention, and raising her voice to accommodate the hissing stove, repeats the text, adding: “Do you hear me?”
Still no answer.
“Oh? We are sulking, are we?”
No comment.
“We are getting all hoity-toity today?”
Godmother blinks exaggeratedly, and makes a haughty, naughty face and holds her long pointed fingers in such a supercilious and dainty manner that I burst into giggles. Godmother shakes with suppressed chuckles.
Catching her breath and sobering up, she says: “Will you look for the kimono—or do I have to get up?”
The bed creaks as Godmother slowly heaves herself up and lowers her feet, and Slavesister comes in flapping her slippers noisily and saying, “I’m coming, I’m coming... Really, Rodabai, you have no patience, have you? I can’t cook and look for the kimono at the same time too, can I?”
Godmother caricatures her expression and pantomimes her martyred movements behind her rotund back.
“I know what you’re doing. Go ahead: do it in front of the child! As it is she doesn’t respect me. I have asked you so often not to. You never consider how you humiliate me, do you?”
Godmother continues her performance, pantomiming Slavesister’s gestures, opening and shutting her mouth in a dumb charade.
Godmother nudges me. Slavesister has commenced mumbling.
Godmother sets up an imitative hum. As Slavesister peers into boxes and suitcases looking for the kimono, she mumbles louder and Godmother says, “Some people don’t like being scolded. If they don’t like being scolded they shouldn’t hover around Primus stoves when I’m pumping them!”
“Mumble—grumble.” A lifting and shutting of trunk lids. A puzzled expression on Slavesister’s face, a wad of toilet paper in her hands. “What’s this?”
“Careful! It’s glass! It’s mine,” I say, scampering off the cot.
Balancing her bifocals on the tip of her rubbery and shapeless nose, Slavesister examines the tiny jars admiringly. “Where did you get them?”
“Rosy gave them to me.”
Perhaps I hesitate a fraction too long. Or my body signals contrarily. The moment the sentence is out I can tell Godmother knows I have stolen the jars. I leap back to my original roost, not able to meet her eyes, and hide my face in her sari.
“You have stolen the jars, haven’t you?” she asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head vehemently against her khaddar blouse.
“Don’t lie. It doesn’t suit you.”
There it is again! Lying doesn’t become me. I can’t get away with the litt
lest thing.
“Why not?” I howl. “Why doesn’t it suit me? No one says that to Adi, Ayah, Cousin, Imam Din, Mother, Father or Rosy-Peter!”
“Some people can lie and some people can’t. Your voice and face give you away,” says Godmother.
“But I can’t even curse,” I howl, sitting up.
Adi can swear himself red in the face and look lovable—Rosy can curse steadily for five minutes, going all the way from “Ullukay-pathay” to “asshole,” from Punjabi swear words to American, and still look cute. It’s okay if Cousin swears—but if I curse or lie I am told it does not suit the shape of my mouth. Or my personality. Or something!
“Everybody in the world lies, steals and curses except me!” I shout, choked with self-pity. “Why can’t I act like everybody?”
“Some people can get away with it and some can’t,” says Godmother. “I’m afraid a life of crime is not for you. Not because you aren’t sharp, but because you are not suited to it.”
A life sentence? Condemned to honesty? A demon in saint’s clothing?
I was set firmly and relentlessly on the path to truth the day I broke a Wedgwood plate and, putting a brazen face on my mischief, nobly confessed all before Mother. I was three years old. Mother bent over me, showering me with the radiance of her approval. “I love you. You spoke the truth! What’s a broken plate? Break a hundred plates!”
I broke plates, cups, bowls, dishes. I smashed livers, kidneys, hearts, eyes... The path to virtue is strewn with broken people and shattered china.
Gandhijee visits Lahore. I’m surprised he exists. I almost thought he was a mythic figure. Someone we’d only hear about and never see. Mother takes my hand. We walk past the Birdwood Barracks’ sepoy to the Queens Road end of Warris Road, and enter the gates of the last house.
We walk deep into a winding, eucalyptus-shaded drive: so far in do we go that I fear we may land up in some private recess of the zoo and come face to face with the lion. I drag back on Mother’s arm, vocalizing my fear, and at last Mother hauls me up some steps and into Gandhijee’s presence. He is knitting. Sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a palatial veranda, he is surrounded by women. He is small, dark, shriveled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled, disgusted and irritable look, and no one’d dare pull off his dhoti! He wears only the loincloth and his black and thin torso is naked.