Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Just before we were to leave for the airport and were waiting for the car to pick us up, I went on the terrace. I don’t know why I did that, there was no reason. There was nothing I wanted to say goodbye to, and no last glimpses I wanted to catch. My thoughts were all concentrated on the coming journey and whether to take airsickness pills or not. The sky from up on the terrace looked as immense as ever, the city as small. It was evening and the light was just fading and the sky wasn’t any definite color now: it was sort of translucent like a pearl but not an earthly pearl. I thought of the story the little saintly old woman had told about Krishna’s mother and how she saw the sun and the moon and world upon world in his mouth. I liked that phrase so much—world upon world—I imagined them spinning around each other like glass spheres in eternity and everything as shining and translucent as the sky I saw above me. I went down and told Henry I wasn’t going with him. When he realized—and this took some time—that I was serious, he knew I was mad. At first he was very patient and gentle with me, then he got in a frenzy. The car had already arrived to take us. Henry yelled at me, he grabbed my arm and began to pull me to the door. I resisted with all my strength and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. Henry continued to pull and now he was pulling me along with the chair as if on a sleigh. I clung to it as hard as I could but I felt terribly weak and was afraid I would let myself be pulled away. I begged him to leave me. I cried and wept with fear—fear that he would take me, fear that he would leave me.

  Ramu came to my aid. He said it’s all right Sahib, I’ll look after her. He told Henry that I was too weak to travel after my illness but later, when I was better, he would take me to the airport and put me on a plane. Henry hesitated. It was getting very late, and if he didn’t go, he too would miss the plane. Ramu assured him that all would be well and Henry need not worry at all. At last Henry took my papers and ticket out of his inner pocket. He gave me instructions how I was to go to the air company and make a new booking. He hesitated a moment longer—how sweet he looked all dressed up in a suit and tie ready for traveling, just like the day we got married—but the car was hooting furiously downstairs and he had to go. I held on hard to the chair. I was afraid if I didn’t I might get up and run after him. So I clung to the chair, trembling and crying. Ramu was quite happily dusting the remaining chair. He said we would have to get some more furniture. I think he was glad that I had stayed and he still had somewhere to work and live and didn’t have to go tramping around looking for another place. He had quite a big family to support.

  I sold the ticket Henry left with me but I didn’t buy any new furniture with it. I stayed in the empty rooms by myself and very rarely went out. When Ramu cooked anything for me, I ate it, but sometimes he forgot or didn’t have time because he was busy looking for another job. I didn’t like living like that but I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid to go out: everything I had once liked so much—people, places, crowds, smells—I now feared and hated. I would go running back to be by myself in the empty apartment. I felt people looked at me in a strange way in the streets; and perhaps I was strange now from the way I was living and not caring about what I looked like anymore; I think I talked aloud to myself sometimes—once or twice I heard myself doing it. I spent a lot of the money I got from the air ticket on books. I went to the bookshops and came hurrying back carrying armfuls of them. Many of them I never read, and even those I did read, I didn’t understand very much. I hadn’t had much experience in reading these sort of books—like the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras—but I liked the sound of the words and I liked the feeling they gave out. It was as if I were all by myself on an immensely high plateau breathing in great lungfuls of very sharp, pure air. Sometimes the landlord came to see what I was doing. He went around all the rooms, peering suspiciously into corners, testing the fittings. He kept asking how much longer I was going to stay; I said till the three months’ rent was up. He brought prospective tenants to see the apartment, but when they saw me squatting on the floor in the empty rooms, sometimes with a bowl of half-eaten food that Ramu had neglected to clear away, they got nervous and went away again rather quickly. After a time the electricity got cut off because I hadn’t paid the bill. It was very hot without the fan and I filled the tub with cold water and sat in it all day. But then the water got cut off too. The landlord came up twice, three times a day now. He said if I didn’t clear out the day the rent was finished he would call the police to evict me. I said it’s all right, don’t worry, I shall go. Like the landlord, I too was counting the days still left to me. I was afraid what would happen to me.

  Today the landlord evicted Ramu out of the servant quarter. That was when Ramu came up to ask for money and said all those things. Afterward I went up on the terrace to watch him leave. It was such a sad procession. Each member of the family carried some part of their wretched household stock, none of which looked worth taking. Ramu had a bed with tattered strings balanced on his head. In two days’ time I too will have to go with my bundle and my bedding. I’ve done this so often before—traveled here and there without any real destination—and been so happy doing it; but now it’s different. That time I had a great sense of freedom and adventure. Now I feel compelled, that I have to do this whether I want to or not. And partly I don’t want to, I feel afraid. Yet it’s still like an adventure, and that’s why besides being afraid I’m also excited, and most of the time I don’t know why my heart is beating fast, is it in fear or in excitement, wondering what will happen to me now that I’m going traveling again.

  THE HOUSEWIFE

  She had her music lesson very early in the morning before anyone else was awake. She had it up on the roof of the house so no one was disturbed. By the time the others were up, she had already cooked the morning meal and was supervising the cleaning of the house. She spent the rest of the day in seeing to the family and doing whatever had to be done, so no one could say that her music in any way interfered with her household duties. Her husband certainly had no complaints. He wasn’t interested in her singing but indulged her in it because he knew it gave her pleasure. When his old aunt, Phuphiji, who lived with them, hinted that it wasn’t seemly for a housewife, a matron like Shakuntala, to take singing lessons, he ignored her. He was good at ignoring female relatives, he had had a lot of practice at it. But he never ignored Shakuntala. They had been married for twenty-five years and he loved her more year by year.

  It wasn’t because of anything Phuphiji said but because of him, who said nothing, that Shakuntala sometimes felt guilty. And because of her daughter and her little grandson. She loved all of them, but she could not deny to herself that her singing meant even more to her than her feelings as wife and mother and grandmother. She was unable to explain this, she tried not to think of it. But it was true that with her music she lived in a region where she felt most truly, most deeply herself. No, not herself, something more and higher than that. By contrast with her singing, the rest of her day, indeed of her life, seemed insignificant. She felt this to be wrong but there was no point in trying to struggle against it. Without her hour’s practice in the morning, she was as if deprived of food and water and air.

  One day her teacher did not come. She went on the roof and practiced by herself but it was not the same thing. By herself she felt weak and faltering. She was weak and faltering, but when he was there it didn’t matter so much because he had such strength. Later, when her husband had gone to his place of work (he was a building contractor) and she had arranged everything for the day’s meals and left Phuphiji entertaining some friends from the neighborhood with tea, she went to find out what had happened. She took her servant boy with her to show her the way, for although she often sent messages to her teacher’s house, she had not been there before. The house was old and in a narrow old alley. There was some sort of workshop downstairs and she had to step over straw and bits of packing cases; on the first floor was a music school consisting of a long room in which several people sat on the floor playing on d
rums. Her teacher lived on the second story. He had only one room and everything was in great disorder. There was practically no furniture but a great many discarded clothes were hung up on hooks and on a line strung across the room. A bedraggled, cross woman sat on the floor, turning the handle of a sewing machine. The teacher himself lay on a mat in a corner, tossing and groaning; when Shakuntala, full of concern, bent over him, he opened his eyes and said “I’m going now.” He wore a red cloth tied around his brow and this gave him a rather gruesome appearance.

  Shakuntala tried to rally him, but the more she did so, the sicker he became. “No,” he insisted, “I’m going.” Then he added, “I’m not afraid to die.”

  His wife, turning the handle of her sewing machine, snorted derisively. This did rally him; he gathered sufficient strength to prop himself up on one elbow. “There’s no food,” he said to Shakuntala, making pathetic gestures toward his mouth to show how he lacked sustenance to put into it. “She doesn’t know how to cook for a sick person.”

  His wife stopped sewing in order to laugh heartily. “Soup!” she laughed. “That’s what he’s asking for. Where has he ever tasted soup? In his father’s house? They thought themselves lucky if they could get a bit of dal with their dry bread. Soup,” she repeated in a shaking voice, her amusement abruptly changing into anger.

  Shakuntala, who had not anticipated being caught in a domestic quarrel, was embarrassed. But she also felt sorry for the teacher. She did not believe him to be very ill but she saw he was very uncomfortable. The room was hot, and dense with various smells, and full of flies; there was thumping from the workshop downstairs, drums and some thin stringed instruments from the music school, and inside the room the angry whirring of the sewing machine. In spite of the heat, the sick man was covered with a sheet under which he tossed and turned—not with pain, Shakuntala saw, but with irritation.

  After that her own home seemed so sweet and orderly to her. They had recently built a new bungalow with shiny woodwork and pink and green terrazzo floors. Their drawing room was furnished with a blue rexine-covered sofa set. She wished she could have brought her teacher here to nurse him; she could have made him so comfortable. All day she was restless, thinking of that. And as always when Shakuntala was restless and her mind turned away from her household affairs, Phuphiji noticed and pursued her through the house and insisted on drawing her attention to various deficiencies, such as the month’s sugar supply running out too quickly or a cooking vessel not having been scoured to shine as it should. Shakuntala had lived with Phuphiji long enough to remain calm and answer her calmly, but Phuphiji had also lived with Shakuntala long enough to know that these answers were desultory and that Shakuntala’s thoughts remained fixed elsewhere. She continued to follow her, to circle her, to fix her with her bright old eyes.

  Later in the day Shakuntala’s daughter, Manju, came with little Baba. Of course Shakuntala was happy to see them and played with and kissed Baba as usual; but, like Phuphiji, Manju noticed her mother’s distraction. Manju became querulous and had many complaints. She said she had a headache every morning, and Baba sometimes was very naughty and woke them all up in the night and wanted to play. For all this she required her mother’s sympathy, and Shakuntala gave it but Manju noticed that she couldn’t give it with all her heart, and that made her more querulous. And Phuphiji joined in, encouraging Manju, pitying her, drawing the subject out more and more and all the time keeping her eyes on Shakuntala to make sure she participated as keenly as she was in duty bound to. Between them, they drove Shakuntala quite crazy; and the worst of it was that she was on their side, she knew that she ought to be absorbed in their problems and blamed herself because she wasn’t.

  It was a relief to her when her husband came home, for he was the one person who was always satisfied with her. Unlike the others, he wasn’t interested in her secret thoughts. For him it was enough that she dressed up nicely before his arrival home and oiled her hair and adorned it with a wreath of jasmine. She was in her early forties but plump and fresh. She loved jewelry and always wore great quantities of it, even in the house. Her arms were full of bangles, she had a diamond nose ring and a gold necklace around her smooth, soft neck. Her husband liked to see all that; and he liked her to stand beside him to serve him his meal, and then to lie next to him on the bed while he slept. That night he fell asleep as usual after eating large helpings of food. He slept fast and sound, breathing loudly, for he was a big man with a lot of weight on him. Sometimes he tossed himself from one side to the other with a grunt. Then Shakuntala gently patted him as if to soothe him; she wanted him to be always entirely comfortable and recognized it to be her mission in life to see that he was. When she fell asleep herself, she slept badly and was disturbed by garbled dreams.

  But the next morning the teacher was there again. He wasn’t ill at all anymore, and when she inquired after his health, he shrugged as if he had forgotten there had ever been anything wrong with it. She sang so well that day that even he was satisfied—at least he didn’t make the sour face he usually wore while listening to her. As she sang, her irritation and anxiety dissolved and she felt entirely clear and happy. The sky was translucent with dawn and birds woke up and twittered like fresh gurgling water. No one else was up in the whole neighborhood, only she and the teacher and the birds. She sang and sang, her voice rose high and so did her heart; sometimes she laughed with enjoyment and saw that in response the shadow of a smile flitted over the teacher’s features as well. Then she laughed again and her voice rose—with what ease—to even greater feats. And the joy that filled her at her own achievement and the peace that entered into her with that pure clear dawn, these sensations stayed with her for the rest of the day. She polished all the mirrors and brass fittings with her own hands, and afterward she cooked sweet vermicelli for her husband, which was his favorite dish. Phuphiji, at once aware of her change of mood, was suspicious and followed her around as she had done the previous day and looked at her in the same suspicious way; but today Shakuntala didn’t mind, in fact she even laughed at Phuphiji within herself.

  Her teacher always went away after the early morning lesson, but about this time, after his illness, he began to visit her in the afternoons as well. Shakuntala was glad. Now that she had seen his home, she realized what a relief it must be to him to have a clean and peaceful room to sit in; and she did her best to make him comfortable and served him with tea and little fried delicacies. But he was never keen on these refreshments and often did not touch anything she set before him, simply letting his eyes glance over it with the expression of distaste that was so characteristic of him. Phuphiji was amazed. She thought he was being excessively and unwarrantably honored by having these treats placed before him and could not understand why he did not fall upon them as eagerly as she expected him to. She looked from them to him and back again. Tantalized beyond endurance, she even pushed the dishes toward him, saying “Eat, eat,” as if he were some bizarre animal whose feeding habits she wished to observe. He treated her in the same way as he did the refreshments, ignoring her after a swift contemptuous glance in her direction. But she was fascinated by him. Whenever he came, she hurried and placed herself in a strategic position in order to look her fill into his face. Sometimes as she gazed she shook her head in wonder and murmured to herself and even gave herself incredulous little laughs. He wasn’t bothered by her in the least. He sat there for as long as he felt like it, often in complete silence, and then departed, still in silence.

  Occasionally, however, he talked. His conversation was as arbitrary as his silence; he needed no stimulus to start him off and always ended as abruptly as he had begun. Shakuntala loved listening to him, everything he said was of interest to her. She was especially fascinated when he talked about his own teacher who had been a very great and famous and temperamental musician. He often spoke of him, for a good many years of his life and certainly the most formative part of it had been spent under the old man’s tutelage. All the disciples had live
d with their guru and his family in an old house in Benaras. There had been strict discipline as far as the hours of practice were concerned and all were expected to get up before dawn and spend most of their day in improving their technique; but in between their way of life was entirely without constraint. They ate when they liked, slept when they liked, chewed opium in their betel, loved and formed friendships. When the old man was invited to perform at private or public concerts in other parts of India, most of the disciples traveled with him. They all crammed together into a railway carriage, and when they got to their destination, they stayed together in the quarters allotted to them. Sometimes these were a dingy room in a rest house, other times they were ornate chambers in some maharaja’s palace. They were equally happy wherever it was, sleeping on the floor around the great bed on which their guru snored, and eating their fill of the rich meals provided for them. They were up all night listening to and performing in concerts that never ended before dawn. They were most of them quite unattached and had no ties apart from those they had formed with their guru. Some of them—such as Shakuntala’s teacher—had run away from their parents to be with their guru, others had left their wives and children for his sake. He was a very hard master. He often beat his disciples, and they had to serve him as his servants, doing the most menial tasks for him; he never lifted a finger for himself and got into a terrible rage if some little comfort of his had been neglected. Once Shakuntala’s teacher had forgotten to light his hookah, and for this fault was chased all around the house and at last out into the street, where he had to stay for three days, sitting on the doorstep like a beggar and being fed on scraps till he was forgiven and admitted inside again. Phuphiji was shocked to hear of such treatment and called the guru by many harsh names; but to Shakuntala, as to her teacher, it did not seem so deplorable—on the contrary, she thought it a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of being near so great and blessed a man.