Sen spent the next morning going round the local bookshops and coffee houses. The weekend followed. On Sunday morning, when his mother was at prayer, he rang up the director at his home to explain his return and ask for permission to resume work. ‘My mother has been keeping indifferent health and I did not want to leave her alone for too long.’ He knew this line of approach would win both sympathy and approval. The director expressed concern and spoke warmly of a Hindu son’s sacred duty towards his widowed mother. ‘And we must celebrate your wedding and meet your wife . . . as soon as your mother is better.’
‘Yes, sir. As soon as she is up to the mark, we will invite you over.’
The mother being ‘a bit under the weather’ and ‘not quite up to the mark’ became Sen’s explanation for cancelling his leave and not having a party. It even silenced Santa Singh who had planned a lot of ribaldry at Sen’s expense.
Days went by—and then weeks. Kalyani came over with her mother a couple of times to fetch her things. She came when her husband was in the office and only met her mother-in-law. It was conveyed to Sunny Sen that, under the circumstances, it was for the husband to go and fetch his wife from her home. Sen put off doing so for some time—and then had to go away on a tour of inspection to southern India. It was a fortnight after his return that his parents-in-law learnt that he was back in town. The relations between the two families became very strained. Nothing was said directly but talk about the Sen’s being dowry-seekers and Sen’s mother being a difficult woman started going round. Then Sunny got a letter from his father-in-law. It was polite but distinctly cold. From the contents it was obvious that it had been drafted and written on the advice of a lawyer with a carbon copy made for use if necessary. It referred to the advertisement in the matrimonial columns and the negotiations preceding the marriage, the money given on betrothal and in the dowry, the wedding and its consummation in the forest rest-house on the Ganges. Sen was asked to state his intentions.
For the first time, Sen realized how serious the situation had become. He turned to his mother. A new bond was forged between the mother and son. ‘It is a matter of great shame,’ she said firmly. ‘We must not let this business go too far. You must fetch her. I will go away to my brother at Dehra Dun for a few days.’
‘No, Ma, I will not have anyone making insinuations against you,’ he replied, and pleaded, ‘in any case you must not leave me.’
‘No one has made any insinuations and I am not leaving you. This will always be my home; where else can I live except with my own flesh and blood. But you must get your wife. Let her take over the running of the house and become its mistress as is her right. Then I will come back and live without worrying my head with servants and cooking and shopping.’
Sen flopped back in his chair like one exhausted. His mother came over behind him and took his head between her hands, ‘Don’t let it worry you too much. I will write to my brother to come over to fetch me. He will go to your father-in-law’s and bring over your wife. Before we leave, I will show her everything, give her the keys and tell the servants to take orders from her. When you come back from the office you will find everything running smoothly.’ She kissed her son’s half. ‘And do be nice to her, she is only a child. You know how much I am looking forward to having a grandson to fondle in my lap!’
Sen found the whole thing very distasteful. He felt angry with himself for allowing things to come to such a pass. And he felt angrier with his wife for humiliating his mother and driving her out of her home. He would have nothing to do with her unless she accepted his mother. He instructed his cook-bearer about the arrangements of the bedrooms. If the new mistress asked any questions, he was to say that those were his master’s orders.
On Monday morning, when the bearer brought him his morning tea, he told him not to expect him for lunch and to tell his wife not to wait for him for dinner as he might be working late in the office. He had breakfast with his mother and uncle. He promised to write to his mother every day to tell her how things were going. ‘You must try and understand her point of view,’ admonished his mother. ‘She has been brought up in a different world. But love and patience conquer all.’
Sen was the last to leave his office. He drove straight to the Gymkhana Club. For an hour he sat by the bathing pool, drinking ice-cold lager and watching the bathers. There were European women from the diplomatic corps with their children; there were pretty Punjabi girls in their pony tails and bikinis; there were swarthy young college students showing off their Tarzan—like torsos as they leapt from the diving board. This surely was where he belonged—where the east and the west met in a sort of minestrone soup of human limbs of many pigments, black, brown, pink and white. Why couldn’t he have married one of these girls, taught her proper English instead of the Americanized chi-chi which they thought was smart talk.
The bathers went home. Sen got up with a sigh and went to the bar. He was greeted by several old friends. ‘Hi, Sunny, you old bastard. What’s this one hears about you?’
Sunny smiled. ‘I don’t have to proclaim everything I do from the housetops, do I?’
‘Like hell you do. You stand drinks all round or we’ll debag you and throw you out in front of all the women.’ Three of them advanced towards him.
‘Lay off, chaps. Bearer, give these B.F.s what they want. What’s the poison?’
They sat on the high stools and downed their drinks with ‘Cheers’, ‘here’s mud in your eye’ and ‘bottoms up’.
‘Where is your wife?’ asked one. ‘Don’t tell me you are going to keep her in the seclusion of the purdah like a native!’
‘No ruddy fears,’ answered Sen. ‘She’s gone to her mother’s. Would you chaps like another?’
One round followed another till it was time for the bar to close. One of the men invited him home for dinner. Sen accepted without a murmur.
It was almost one a.m. when Sen drove back into his house. He was well fortified with Scotch to gloss over any awkwardness. He switched on the light in the hall and saw trunks piled up against the wall. His wife had obviously come back. There was no light in her bedroom. She must have gone to sleep many hours earlier. He switched off the hall light, tiptoed to his bedroom, switched on the table-lamp, went back and bolted the door from the inside. A few minutes later, he was fast asleep.
The bearer’s persistent knocking woke him up. His head rocked as he got up to unfasten the bolt. What would the bearer think of the Sahib bolting his door against his wife? He couldn’t care less. The throbbing in his head demanded all his attention.
‘Shall I take tea for the Memsahib?’ he asked.
‘She does not have bed-tea,’ replied Sen. ‘Isn’t she up yet?’
‘I don’t know Sahib; she had also bolted her door from the inside.’
Sen felt uneasy. He swallowed a couple of aspirins and gulped down a cup of strong tea. He lay back on his pillow to let the aspirins take effect. His imagination began to run away with him. She couldn’t. No, of course not! Must have waited for him till midnight, was scared of being alone and must have bolted the doors and was sleeping late. But he had been nasty to her and she might be oversensitive. He decided to rid himself of the thought. He got up and knocked at the door. There was no response. He went to the bathroom and then tried her door again There was no sound from the inside. He went to the window and pressed it with both his hands. The two sides flew apart and crashed against the wall. Even that noise did not waken her. He peered in and caught the gleam of her glasses on her nose.
With a loud cry Sen ran back into the house and called for the bearer. The master and servant put their shoulders to the door and battered against it. The bolt gave way and they burst into the room. The woman on the bed didn’t stir. A white fluid trickled from her gaping mouth to the pillow. Her eyes stared fixedly through the thick glasses. Sen put his hand on her forehead. It was the first time he had touched his wife. And she was dead.
On the table beside her bed was an empty tumbler and tw
o envelopes. One bore her mother’s name in Bengali; the other was for him. A haunted smile came on his lips as he read the English address.
‘To,
Mr S. Sen, Esq.’
The Portrait of a Lady
My grandmother, like everybody’s grandmother, was an old woman. She had been old and wrinkled for the twenty years that I had known her. People said that she had once been young and pretty and had even had a husband, but that was hard to believe. My grandfather’s portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing-room. He wore a big turban and loose-fitting clothes. His long white beard covered the best part of his chest and he looked at least a hundred years old. He did not look the sort of person who would have a wife or children. He looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandchildren. As for my grandmother being young and pretty, the thought was almost revolting. She often told us of the games she used to play as a child. That seemed quite absurd and undignified on her part and we treated it like the fables of the Prophets she used to tell us. She had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was a criss-cross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. No, we were certain she had always been as we had known her. Old, so terribly old that she could not have grown older, and had stayed at the same age for twenty years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful. She hobbled about the house in spotless white with one hand resting on her waist to balance her stoop and the other telling the beads of her rosary. Her silver locks were scattered untidily over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in inaudible prayer. Yes, she was beautiful. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of pure white serenity breathing peace and contentment.
My grandmother and I were good friends. My parents left me with her when they went to live in the city and we were constantly together. She used to wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school. She said her morning prayer in a monotonous sing-song while she bathed and dressed me in the hope that I would listen and get to know it by heart. I listened because I loved her voice but never bothered to learn it. Then she would fetch my wooden slate which she had already washed and plastered with yellow chalk, a tiny earthen inkpot and a reed pen, tie them all in a bundle and hand it to me. After a breakfast of a thick, stale chapatti with a little butter and sugar spread on it, we went to school. She carried several stale chapatties with her for the village dogs.
My grandmother always went to school with me because the school was attached to the temple. The priest taught us the alphabet and the morning prayer. While the children sat in rows on either side of the veranda singing the alphabet or the prayer in a chorus, my grandmother sat inside reading the scriptures. When we had both finished, we would walk back together. This time the village dogs would meet us at the temple door. They followed us to our home growling and fighting each other for the chapatties we threw to them.
When my parents were comfortably settled in the city, they sent for us. That was a turning-point in our friendship. Although we shared the same room, my grandmother no longer came to school with me. I used to go to an English school in a motor bus. There were no dogs in the streets and she took to feeding sparrows in the courtyard of our city house.
As the years rolled by we saw less of each other. For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school. When I came back she would ask me what the teacher had taught me. I would tell her English words and little things of Western science and learning, the law of gravity, Archimedes’ principle, the world being round, etc. This made her unhappy. She could not help me with my lessons. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about god and the scriptures. One day I announced that we were being given music lessons. She was very disturbed. To her music had lewd associations. It was the monopoly of harlots and beggar—and not meant for gentle folk. She rarely talked to me after that. When I went up to university, I was given a room of my own. The common link of friendship was snapped. My grandmother accepted her seclusion with resignation. She rarely left her spinning wheel to talk to anyone. From sunrise to sunset she sat by her wheel spinning and reciting prayers. Only in the afternoon she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. While she sat in the veranda breaking the bread into little bits, hundreds of little birds collected round her creating a veritable bedlam of chirrupings. Some came and perched on her legs, others on her shoulders. Some even sat on her head. She smiled but never shooed them away. It used to be the happiest half-hour of the day for her.
When I decided to go abroad for further studies, I was sure my grandmother would be upset. I would be away for five years, and at her age one could never tell. But my grandmother could. She was not even sentimental. She came to leave me at the railway station but did not talk or show any emotion. Her lips moved in prayer, her mind was lost in prayer. Her fingers were busy telling the beads of her rosary. Silently she kissed my forehead, and when I left I cherished the moist imprint as perhaps the last sign of physical contact between us.
But that was not so. After five years I came back home and was met by her at the station. She did not look a day older. She still had no time for words, and while she clasped me in her arms I could hear her reciting her prayer. Even on the first day of my arrival, her happiest moments were with her sparrows whom she fed longer and with frivolous rebukes.
In the evening a change came over her. She did not pray. She collected the women of the neighbourhood, got an old drum and started to sing. For several hours she thumped the sagging skins of the dilapidated drum and sang of the home-coming of warriors. We had to persuade her to stop to avoid overstraining. That was the first time since I had known her that she did not pray.
The next morning she was taken ill. It was a mild fever and the doctor told us that it would go. But my grandmother thought differently. She told us that her end was near. She said that, since only a few hours before the close of the last chapter of her life she had omitted to pray, she was not going to waste any more time talking to us.
We protested. But she ignored our protests. She lay peacefully in bed praying and telling her beads. Even before we could suspect, her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her lifeless fingers. A peaceful pallor spread on her face and we knew that she was dead.
We lifted her off the bed and, as is customary, laid her on the ground and covered her with a red shroud. After a few hours of mourning we left her alone to make arrangements for her funeral.
In the evening we went to her room with a crude stretcher to take her to be cremated. The sun was setting and had lit her room and veranda with a blaze of golden light. We stopped half-way in the courtyard. All over the veranda and in her room right up to where she lay dead and stiff wrapped in the red shroud, thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor. There was no chirping. We felt sorry for the birds and my mother fetched some bread for them. She broke it into little crumbs, the way my grandmother used to, and threw it to them. The sparrows took no notice of the bread. When we carried my grandmother’s corpse off, they flew away quietly. Next morning the sweeper swept the bread crumbs into the dust bin.
Posthumous
I am in bed with fever. It is not serious. In fact, it is not serious at all, as I have been left alone to look after myself. I wonder what would happen if the temperature suddenly shot up. Perhaps I would die. That would be really hard on my friends. I have so many and am so popular. I wonder what the papers would have to say about it. They couldn’t just ignore me. Perhaps the Tribune would mention it on its front page with a small photograph. The headline would read ‘Sardar Khushwant Singh Dead’—and then in somewhat smaller print:
We regret to announce the sudden death of Sardar Khushwant Singh at 6 p.m. last evening. He leaves behind a young widow, two infant children and a large number of friends and admirers to mourn his loss. It will be recalled that the Sardar came to settle in Lahore some five years ago from his home town, Delhi. Within these year
s he rose to a position of eminence in the Bar and in politics. His loss will be mourned generally throughout the Province.
Amongst those who called at the late Sardar’s residence were the P.A. to the Prime Minister, the P.A. to the chief justice, several ministers and judges of the high court.
In a statement to the press, the Hon’ble Chief Justice said: ‘I feel that the Punjab is poorer by the passing away of this man. The cruel hand of death has cut short the promise of a brilliant career.’
At the bottom of the page would be an announcement:
The funeral will take place at 10 a.m. today.
I feel very sorry for myself and for all my friends. With difficulty I check the tears which want to express sorrow at my own death. But I also feel elated and want people to mourn me. So I decide to die—just for the fun of it as it were. In the evening, giving enough time for the press to hear of my death, I give up the ghost. Having emerged from my corpse, I come down and sit on the cool marble steps at the entrance to wallow in posthumous glory.
In the morning I get the paper before my wife. There is no chance of a squabble over the newspaper as I am downstairs already, and in any case my wife is busy pottering around my corpse. The Tribune lets me down. At the bottom of page three, column one I find myself inserted in little brackets of obituary notices of retired civil servants—and that is all. I feel annoyed. It must be that blighter Shaft, special representative. He never liked me. But I couldn’t imagine he would be so mean as to deny me a little importance when I was dead. However, he couldn’t keep the wave of sorrow which would run over the Province from trickling into his paper. My friends would see to that.
Near the high court the paper is delivered fairly early. In the house of my lawyer friend Qadir it is deposited well before dawn. It isn’t that the Qadirs are early risers. As a matter of fact, hardly anyone stirs in the house before 9 a.m. But Qadir is a great one for principles and he insists that the paper must be available early in the morning even if it is not looked at.
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 33