by Bapsi Sidhwa
“I’ve told the tongawallah to take care of that.”
“Oh? What will he do? Diaper the horse?”
Mini Aunty continues placidly to unwrap her sari, and turning mildly pleading eyes to Godmother says, “The tongawallah said the poor horse really had to get some water or he’d collapse.”
We hear the tongaman cluck his tongue and lead his horse and tonga to the trough at the back.
“You’d better remember to sprinkle the evaporated puddle with rose water before we sit out,” says Godmother sarcastically, but in a softer tone, thereby conceding Mini Aunty a reprieve on compassionate grounds.
“I’ve arranged for the tonga to take you to—” In deference to my youthful presence Mini Aunty abruptly checks herself. She ends by enigmatically saying, “You-know-where, at two o’clock.”
“Then you’d better set about getting lunch ready,” says Godmother.
Godmother’s fingers are slightly trembling. Not with the tremor of age but with nervous concentration as she drapes her sari, with its finely embroidered floral border, before a slender half-mirror embedded in the cupboard. Her concentration is a tribute to the six yards of heavy gray silk, and to the occasion for which it is being worn. Normally, not bothered with their appearance, both she and Slavesister wrap their saris without the aid of mirrors. Unlike Mother, who pivots fastidiously in high heels in front of a full-length mirror to adjust the hem of her sari and precisely arrange the dainty fall of her pleats. It wouldn’t be fitting if Mother dressed with less circumspection. In her case I feel adorning and embellishing her person is an obligatory rite and not a vanity.
Godmother moves closer to the mirror. As she carefully begins to pin the border to her hair, Mini Aunty, looking as if she has arrived at a decision, suddenly and gravely declares: “I think I’d better come with you. You’ll need my support!”
Her teeth clamped on a tangle of U-shaped hairpins Godmother turns abruptly. Facing Slavesister she says: “Since when have I started needing your support in such matters?”
“You can’t go there alone, Roda. You must have someone with you.”
Notice the unembellished Roda? Mini Aunty uses this form of address to sidle into a more dominant role. This has been occurring with alarming frequency of late: and the slave gets away with it—and the meager Roda—with alarming frequency.
“Oh, all right! If it makes you feel any better, I’ll take Lenny along,” says Godmother, attempting to appear reasonable but only managing to sound devious.
“You can’t be serious!” exclaims Mini Aunty.
“Why not? She won’t be contaminated—if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“How can you even dream of taking the child there!” says Mini Aunty, her eyes brimming with reproach, the chubby disk of her cheeks lengthening in solemn consternation.
“I’m not taking her there,” says Godmother. “We are only visiting a simple housewife in her simple house. The house merely happens to be there.”
“But what will her mother say?”
“That’s between me and her mother. You know perfectly well she trusts my judgment... Not like some ungrateful brats I could name!”
“I know you...,” says Slavesister, pale and hangdog. “The more I say the more stubborn you become. One can’t tell you anything. Have your way...”
“Have I ever done otherwise?”
“Oh, I know! You always have your way... ”
“Then why are you wasting my time?”
“But have you given a thought to what people might say?”
“That I’ve become a dancing-girl? With bells on my ankles? Or worse?”
It is too much for Slavesister. Blinking tears she goes into the kitchen and commences mumbling.
Come to think of it, I’m hearing her mumbles after a long time.
At two o’clock the tongaman taps on the door with the bamboo end of his whip and shouts: “I’ve arrived, jee. I’m parked by the gate.”
Godmother quickly compresses her lips and daubs her face with talcum powder. She peers at me through the chalk storm and, almost shyly, winks into my awed and smitten countenance. She looks grand. Her noble ghost-white face and generous mouth set off to advantage by the slate-gray sari and its pretty border. She is my very own whale—and her great love for me is plain in her shining eyes.
“We are going. Lock the door,” Godmother calls, and hand in hand we step into the abrasive heat.
The increasing congestion and uproar in the streets as we pass Data Sahib’s tomb and approach the Badshahi mosque barely registers as leaning against Godmother I fall into a stupor induced by the heat and glare and the jolting rhythm of the tonga.
When Godmother gently shakes me awake we are already parked beneath a straggling sheesham, its small leaves brittle with the heat and dust, in front of a narrow alley. The tongaman has placed the feed sack in front of his horse and is tying the reins to the shaft. The sweat-darkened animal just stands there, its neck hanging, too exhausted to feed. Preceded by the tongaman we walk into the blessed shade of the constricted gullies of the old city.
Godmother is nervous. I can tell from the pressure of her grip. After the clamor of the streets the silence in the alleys is vaguely discomforting. There are few people about and too few children. The naked babies tottering about the drains and doorsteps whimper listlessly and are scolded by irritable mothers from inside who sound as if it’s dawn instead of three in the afternoon.
We emerge on a broader lane which has the appearance of a bazaar with rows of shops at the ground level and living quarters with frail arched windows and decaying wooden balconies teetering above. Still half asleep and drugged by the oppressive humidity and heat, I look for a tin can, or anything else to kick as I walk, but there is hardly any litter.
We walk past two young women, yawning and stretching in front of a stall overflowing with garlands of scarlet roses, jasmine and mounds of marigolds. The owner, wearing only a lungi, is perched like a contented and contemptuous deity amidst his wares.
Coming suddenly upon the fragrance of sprinkled flowers and the blaze of colors freshens my senses. The women chatting with the flower-man look tousled, as if they have just awakened and are still loitering in the shalwar-kamizes they have slept in. Except for the betel-leaf and cigarette stalls and a few eating places where meat and pakoras are being fried, there is very little sign of commerce. The ancient, roughly carved doors are shut for the most part. And the few that are open reveal steep flights of narrow steps or twilit interiors I cannot see into.
My previous excursions inside the old city had been enlivened by the cries of shopkeepers and hawkers and the bawling and shrieking of urchins; the lanes teeming with men and burka-veiled women and littered with the discarded newspaper bags used by vendors. I miss the mounds of rotting fruit and vegetables and the bones picked clean by the kites, their enormous wings stirring in the garbage: and the sudden yelp of kicked mongrels and raucous flights of crows and scraps of cardboard and rusted iron and the other debris even the poor have no use for.
Godmother pinches her sari austerely beneath her chin and maintaining her eyes straight in front of her marches regally behind the tongaman. Her sari, catching the breeze the cunningly structured alleys miraculously generate in an otherwise windless city, billows grayly about her shoulders and back. None of the women here is veiled. The bold girls, with short, permed hair, showing traces of stale makeup, stare at us as if we are freaks. They whisper and burst into giggles when we pass and bury their faces in each other’s shoulders and necks. Their crumpled kamizes are too short and the pencha-bottoms of their shalwars too wide. Even I can tell they are not well brought up. I have never seen women of this class with cropped and frizzed hair: nor using the broad and comfortable gestures of men. The few men, in singlets and faded lungis, scratch their carelessly bared stomachs as they loiter in the lane, or pause to joke with the girls. Some have their hands inside their lungis and are cleaning themselves after urinating as pres
cribed, unconsciously indulging in what I’ve heard snidely described as “the national pastime.”
Our tongaman halts before a weathered door with deep grooves. I glimpse the chain holding the panels closed from inside. “This is the address, Baijee,” he says, and at a nod from Godmother, batters the door with his hand.
There is an instant shout: “Coming!” followed by the lightfooted patter of a lightweight poet hastening down the steps. The door opens and the poet blinks his kohl-rimmed eyes in the glare. Ice-candy-man looks subdued, flustered, honored. Displaying the exquisite courtesy of Mogul courtiers, spouting snatches of felicitous verse, picking me up with one hand and supporting Godmother with the other as we slowly mount the steps—Godmother pausing to catch her breath—Ice-candy-man ushers us into the sitting room. Guiding Godmother to a sofa covered in glossy green velvet, he adjusts the cushions behind her and draws a peg table conveniently close. Then he breathlessly says: “I’ll fetch Mumtaz,” and disappears behind the pink and white checked curtains.
“So!” whispers Godmother, blinking and nodding impishly. “He has christened our ayah Mumtaz!”
“I like the name,” I say.
I think it fitting that a courtier’s wife be named after a Mogul queen. And the room, too, is befitting: long and narrow, filled with ornate chairs covered in velvet, sporting little tables with crocheted doilies and thick glass and brass vases crammed with red paper poppies. The arched windows are shaded by reed screens and the walls are a gleaming pink. The room has the gratifying appeal of a cool and delicious tutti-frutti ice cream.
And then Ayah comes: teetering on high heels, tripping on the massive divided skirt of her garara, jangling gold bangles. Her eyes are lowered and her head draped in a gold-fringed and gauzy red ghoongat. A jeweled tika nestles on her forehead and bunches of pearls and gold dangle from her ears. Ice-candy-man guides his rouged and lipsticked bride to sit beside Godmother. Godmother lightly strokes Mumtaz’s covered head and says: “Bless you my daughter... Live long.”
I feel frightfully shy. I had expected to leap on Ayah and hug her to bits. But now that she is here, in the awesome shape of a bride, I can do no more than shift uneasily in my chair and stare at her. I notice the tiny pieces of tinsel glitter stuck on her chin and cheeks.
“Lenny baby, aren’t you going to embrace my bride?” Ice-candy-man asks.
And Ayah raises her eyes to me.
Where have the radiance and the animation gone? Can the soul be extracted from its living body? Her vacant eyes are bigger than ever: wide-opened with what they’ve seen and felt: wider even than the frightening saucers and dinner plates that describe the watchful orbs of the three dogs who guard the wicked Tinder Box witches’ treasures in underground chambers. Colder than the ice that lurks behind the hazel in Ice-candy-man’s beguiling eyes.
At last Ayah casts her lids down: and bowing her head, extends her hennaed hands to me. I move awkwardly into the voluminous skirt of her brocade garara. And through the prickling brocade and silver lame of her kamize at last feel the soft and rounded contours of her diminished flesh. She buries her head in me and buries me in all her finery; and in the dark and musky attar of her perfume.
Leaving Mumtaz to sit awkwardly with us Ice-candy-man goes inside to make the tea.
Godmother moves to the edge of the sofa and tenderly raises Mumtaz’s chin, saying, “Let me have a good look at our bride.”
Ayah’s face, with its demurely lowered lids and tinsel dust, blooms like a dusky rose in Godmother’s hands. The rouge and glitter highlight the sweet contours of her features. She looks achingly lovely: as when she gazed at Masseur and inwardly glowed. But the illusion is dispelled the moment she opens her eyes—not timorously like a bride, but frenziedly, starkly—and says: “I want to go to my family.” Her voice is harsh, gruff: as if someone has mutilated her vocal cords.
Even Godmother can’t bear the look in her eyes. She gently removes her hand, and Ayah’s unsupported face collapses and is again half hidden in the ghoongat. Godmother composes herself with a visible effort. And the look of shock and pity fading, sitting taut on the edge of the sofa, she at last says: “Isn’t he looking after you?”
Mumtaz nods her head slightly.
“What’s happened has happened,” says Godmother. “But you are married to him now. You must make the best of things. He truly cares for you.”
“I will not live with him.” Again that coarse, rasping whisper.
I have moved to my chair across the room but I hear Ayah’s discordant murmurs clearly. (It is not without reason Mini Aunty has designated my talented ears “cricket ears.”)
“Does he mistreat you ... in any way?” Godmother asks with uncharacteristic hesitancy.
“Not now,” says Mumtaz. “But I cannot forget what happened.”
“That was fated, daughter. It can’t be undone. But it can be forgiven... Worse things are forgiven. Life goes on and the business of living buries the debris of our pasts. Hurt, happiness ... all fade impartially ... to make way for fresh joy and new sorrow. That’s the way of life.”
“I am past that,” says Mumtaz. “I’m not alive.”
Godmother leans back and withdraws the large cambric handkerchief tucked into her blouse. She wipes her forehead.
“What if your family won’t take you back?” she asks.
“Whether they want me or not, I will go.”
We hear the clatter of ill-fitted cups and saucers. The curtain bulges and Ice-candy-man comes through, carefully bearing a tray. He pauses in front of the curtain and manifesting an awed and felicitous aspect, sweeping his dramatic eyes from Godmother to the pink walls of his house, recites Ghalib’s famous couplet:“Tis a miracle wondrous that you have come:
Marveling, I look from you to the walls of my house ... ”
He places the tray on a small table near Godmother and, interminably stirring the tea with a spoon to dissolve the sugar, deferentially hands her the cup. “Is it strong enough?” he enquires. “More milk? Sugar?”
Godmother takes a sip. “It’s all right,” she says tersely.
Turning to me, flourishing an autumnal forest of popsicles, Ice-candy-man says, “Look what I have for my Lenny baby.”
I take two sticks. One for each hand.
Ayah refuses her tea with a shake of her lowered head. Ice-candy-man stoops and, holding the cup close to Ayah’s fingers, coaxes, “Have some, meri kasam. Drink it for Baijee’s sake at least ...”
“I don’t want any,” she says harshly. While he passes the pastry with the little dabs of jam, his anxious courtier’s eyes keep alighting on Mumtaz. Assuming the role of the misused lover so dear to Urdu poets, he quotes Mir:“Hai ashiqi ke beech sitam dekhna hi lutf
Mar jana ankhe moond ke kuch hunar nahin.
’Tis nothing... to roll up one’s eyes and die.
I endure my lover’s tyranny wide-eyed.”
Ice-candy-man appears to have sensed the content of the exchange between Godmother and his bride. Maintaining a nervous stream of chatter, quoting snatches of poetry, pressing us to eat and drink, he attempts to conceal his misgiving.
“I’ll get the kebabs,” he says after a while, looking at our faces hesitantly, seeking our approval. “They should be done by now.”
Godmother nods briefly.
Ice-candy-man leaves the room and, slipping to the floor like a floating bundle of crumpled silk, Ayah grasps Godmother’s legs. “Please—I fall at your feet, Baijee—please get me away from him.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” says Godmother, bending to look into her face. “You might regret your decision ... You should think it over.”
“I have thought it over... I want to go to my folk.”
“Let’s see what I can do,” Godmother says gently. “I’ll try my best.”
Ayah is sniffing and rubbing her face on Godmother’s legs.
“Get up, my daughter... Have faith... Have patience,” says Godmother, holding her and trying t
o pull her to the sofa.
Stepping on and getting entangled in her enormous skirts, Mumtaz scrambles to rise just as the poet enters with a fragrant dish of kebabs. He quickly reaches for Ayah and helps her to sit on the sofa.
The poet’s manner is subdued, his face drawn, apprehensive: and his eyes, red with the strain of containing his tears, hover caressingly on Ayah. They flit to Godmother in mute appeal.
Godmother strokes Ayah’s back. Ayah is huddled over, silently weeping, her body trembling. “Have patience, daughter, have faith. Go. Go and wash your face,” says Godmother, helping Ayah to stand up. Gathering her skirt with both hands, Ayah clumsily staggers out of the room on her unnatural heels.
Godmother’s mouth is set. She turns her austere eyes on Ice-candy-man.
“How long has she been like this?”
“Like how?”
“Emptied of life? Despairing?”
In a slow, coiling movement Ice-candy-man squats directly in front of Godmother. “The past is behind her,” he says. Taking the kitchen rag from his shoulder he wipes his face. It is as if he has wiped off all artifice, all pride: his humility and despair are manifest. “I cannot help the past,” he says. “But now she has everything to live for.”
Godmother’s eyes on the poet’s exposed face are dispassionate. Cold. And gliding forward on his haunches Ice-candy-man clasps her hands in both his and places them on his bowed, penitent’s head.
“Please. Please persuade her... explain to her... I will keep her like a queen...like a flower... I’ll make her happy,” he says, and succumbing to the pressure of his pent-up misery starts weeping.
“We shall see,” says Godmother, and in a coldly significant gesture withdraws her hands from Ice-candy-man’s head. He remains like that, stranded, crouched forward, his face hidden by long black strands of falling hair. After what seems like hours he turns to me, swiveling on his haunches, and his beguiling eyes, weighed with insupportable uncertainties, plead his cause.