Requiem in Raga Janki

by Neelum Saran Gaur

  No one more terrified and disturbed than Subuhi. Beni heard her gasp and, turning quickly round, was surprised to see her face twisted, sobs retching up her throat. It frightened him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Let’s go!’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t bear this!’

  Later, sitting in the tonga, her tears wouldn’t stop. ‘It was just a doll,’ Beni reasoned. ‘A wood and cloth and paper thing. It’s just a custom.’

  The shudders were beyond control. ‘Their faces!’ Subuhi shivered. ‘The way they . . . they attacked the poor little thing. As though . . . As though they wanted to believe it was alive. As though . . . As though they made themselves into beasts because . . . because they were allowed to . . .’

  He was not a man of strong imagination by any means but he had some glimmerings of what had agitated her. Beneath the hood of the tonga, he put his arm round her shaking shoulders and held her close. The support unnerved rather than fortified. She wept all the harder.

  ‘I thought . . . I thought for a moment . . . if that was me, alone, lying there where the poor gudiya was . . . and dozens of men pounding away at me, cruel as devils . . .’

  ‘That won’t ever happen,’ he said with strange surety in his voice. ‘You forget whose gudiya you are.’

  She lifted her tear-sodden face to look wonderingly at him. His face was shining with unaccustomed elation and his voice, when he spoke, held a tremble. ‘You are . . . and always will be . . . my doll and nobody, nobody, will be able to hurt you.’

  In the shade of the tonga and the dusk, they clung to one another like children huddled together, tasting some filched delight. Her veil flew over his flushed face, her lips flittered open as his mouth took hers in an overpowering clench. They closed their eyes. It was only a second, though it felt like an age, before the tonga-wallah clicked his horse and said something to it and they sprang apart.

  He took her to see the tonga and ekka race but both were stricken dumb, moving stiffly as puppets. During the return ride back to the kotha they sat primly side by side, saying nothing.

  Janki opened the back door and let them in. She was busy at her practice and had no time to waste. But through the corner of her eye, on her way up the staircase, she saw them pause at Subuhi’s door. She saw Subuhi draw Beni in. And the door close behind him. She knew that Subuhi’s roommate was away at a wedding performance. She went up the staircase, shrugging. It was none of her business and this was no place for squeamish disapproval. Still, he was her brother and she hoped he knew what he was about. And if it was love he’d found, she wished him well, she who knew, or thought she knew, all there was to know about love. She’d been well mentored by her music, the old compositions she sang that charted the changing map of a woman’s mind, the grammar and notation of love, all its coded desires and the complex prosody of its plaints:

  ‘Tu mat ja, gori, paniya bharan ko.

  Prem ko jaal lagaaya hai.

  Shyam Sunder ko marrhwa garaya hai . . .’

  Maid, go not to draw water from the well.

  A love-net has been cast for thee.

  Comely Krishna has pitched his tent-post there . . .

  Janki had for months sung her chants to love as her daily riyaz:

  ‘Pun gun ke din chaar, sakhiri,

  Apnon balam mohey mehngu,

  Dher pun gun sona main dungi rupaiya,

  Moti anmola,

  Jo kuchh mangey sabhi kuchh dungi,

  Balam na dungi udhar, sakhiri . . .’

  The days for charity and merit are but four, my friend,

  And my lover, he’s costly to me.

  Heaps of gold shall I give thee,

  Money shall I give thee,

  Priceless pearls aplenty,

  Whatever thou asketh that shall I give thee

  Sure,

  But never shall I my lover lend,

  For the days of love are numbered

  But four,

  My friend.

  During the next three months Beni and Subuhi were mostly locked in, appearing only at mealtimes or on their way to the washrooms and bathhouses. Beni was spotted, sneaking in with jasmine garlands, leaf bowls of jalebis, pakowries and chutney. Which the mischievous girls snatched at, roaring with wicked laughter. They ambushed Beni and put a flowery turban on his head and marched him to Subuhi’s room, beating brass platters with brass ladles and spoons, parodying a wedding procession. They ground up henna leaves and drew patterns on Subuhi’s palms and their own, twittering like a thousand birds. They beat up an unguent of flour and oil and itr and water and plastered Subuhi’s face with it. They strung up jasmines in a groom’s veil and tied it on to Beni’s ducking face, two of them holding his head straight despite his wriggles and pleadings. They mixed up the ceremonies of all the faiths they knew, held a Holy Book over his head as they circled his face in an arati with a lighted diya and a plate of jalebi and sherbet in mock welcome. They swirled their hands round his head and snapped their knuckles against their temples and pronounced him purified of the evil eye. They hid his sandals and wouldn’t let him enter until he’d coughed up rupee and eight-anna bits for his ‘sisters-in-law’. Then they hauled out the blushing Subuhi. Brought garlands of roses and playacted a shaadi. They sat the couple down to a game of grab-the-ring-in-the-platter, presiding over the match like a horde of crowing mothers-in-law and prompting the bride and the groom not to let the ring be snatched up by the other, else complete servitude in marriage would result. And when, by one of those telepathic vibes that connect minds in lightning decisions, neither of the two would grab the ring, offering it in silent surrender to the other, they shouted: ‘Aha! What have we here? A pair of oh-so-nice Lucknow nawabs? You first, sir. Nay, you. Nay, after you, sir. Nay, after YOU! Such love, oh dear, we swoon, such love!’ Then they sprayed rice all over the couple. And when the two had managed to escape and bolted the door on their laughing tormentors, the girls brought a dholak and sat outside the bridal chamber, singing the bawdiest of bridal songs in raucous rejoicing, celebrating the shy, tremulous secrets of new marriage.

  ‘Maza le le, rasiya, nayi jhulni ka!’ A song which would, in later years, become one of Janki’s most popular numbers, its innocuous words camouflaging the wickedest of innuendoes: Enjoy, enjoy the pleasurings of a new swing, oh sensuous one!

  And still naughtier songs, ancient as man and woman and the land:

  Ah, the monsoon-green groom doth come, fresh as new foliage,

  Riding a saucy mare, comes he.

  Oh learn, laddie, learn how mares should be ridden.

  Don’t let her throw you off, young master mine.

  Saddle her well, and ride then, ride,

  Oh, my monsoon-fresh one!

  And Janki sang loudest: ‘Khub khushrang bana hai yeh banna praj ki raat!’

  And the girls chorused:

  ‘Laddoo, peda, balushahi tikia tumhe khilobain,

  Toshak, takia, lal palangiya tumhe sulaubain!’

  There was something heady in the air as the intoxicated girls, drunk on their fantasies, shrieked in celebration, enacting a live dolls’ wedding like grown children. The joke lasted many days and leavened many leisure hours. Even a box camera was arranged for a wedding photograph.

  And that proved the turning point. Beni and Subuhi were herded up against the pillars of the courtyard, arranged in stiff ceremonial solemnity, Subuhi sitting decorous on a stool, Beni standing stalwart behind, baton in hand, like a valiant warrior. There was something in the way the little girl turned a little and leant into the warmth of him, something in the way the ‘bridegroom’s’ protective arm embraced her thin shoulders, something in the look in their eyes that made the jokes turn edgy and the laughter cruel. For everyone knew, with or without a pang, that in the middle of the masquerade and the mischief there was something happening here, something heart-wrenchingly real, and it cut them to the quick.

  Harmless banter changed to simmering contempt. For this couldn’t be allowed. It was an
obscene transgression of the rules of the kotha. As obscene as filling one’s belly with delectable food in full view of a cage-ful of starving captives. Again, in one of those speechless turns of collective decision, a crusade emerged to put an end to the nonsense. They were sick of it. Enough was enough. Subuhi was a stupid creature and no good to anybody, they knew, but Beni, ah, he was a man and they knew too well what men were and how they should be worked on. They knew the extent of their power and were playfully keen to put their skills to the test with this lovesick oaf, this nincompoop Beni. It was the sheer sport of the thing and the smell of blood. And Shaheen the chosen one to execute the plan.

  So when Shaheen, the same Shaheen who’d earlier been the object of Beni’s devotion, smiled winsomely on Beni and said: ‘Beni, my boy, do bring a hammer and some nails up to my room, will you? The latch on my window won’t close and the window keeps flying open and the other day I was, you know, changing, had just lain my kurti and ghararas aside, when who should I see but a batch of wretched oglers salaaming me from the window across. That window’s got to be fixed or the whole lane will be painting my bosom red!’

  Whether the lane would or could is besides the point, but Beni found himself suddenly blest with unearthly visual imagination.

  Obediently he fixed the latch on the latticed window and was just about to leave when Shaheen lilted across the room: ‘Beni, my boy, and are you as good at hooking up bodices from behind as you’re at hooking up latches?’

  This was the woman who’d turned him down. And she was flirting with him. Pride ignited in Beni’s bruised heart. Sullenly he fixed the hooks on Shaheen’s bodice, noticing the heavy weight of her breasts lifting in answer to the pull on the hooks of the cross-hatched back-straps.

  Subuhi saw less of Beni from that time forth and could not know the reason. Until the laughing kotha girls, of sheer kindness and concern for her well-being, thought fit to tell her.

  ‘We hear, dear child, that your Beni has taken to chewing paan. That too straight from Shaheen’s mouth. But don’t you know? You don’t? Oh really? Oh, we’re so, so sorry. We wouldn’t have dreamt of mentioning it, had we known. Don’t think about it, dear. It’s nothing, really nothing. These things happen, you know. Part of life.’

  ‘We hear, Subuhi-child, that when Shaheen drops her odhni, no man can look away. You’re young, you’re pretty, but Shaheen, ah, Shaheen’s got that extra thing to madden men. And now we hear it’s Hasina too! Three to a bed, your Beni in the middle. Oh men! Everyone knows they carry their brains between their legs, that’s really all they think and feel with. Hearts they lack.’

  In her riyaz Janki sang:

  ‘Kanhaiya naahin morey basko,

  Shri Vrindavan ki kunj gali mein

  Gwaalin sang atko . . .’

  My Kanhaiya is out of control.

  In some bower or lane of Vrindavan

  He’s stuck with some milkmaid lass . . .

  The little girl sobbed into her pillow. Pushed Beni away, vainly tried to slash her wrists. Then Naseeban decided it was time to break up the tableau she’d designed.

  She descended upon the girl, her voluminous silks rustling around her. She towered over the cot on which the little girl lay.

  ‘Get up, this minute!’ she thundered. ‘Get up, I command you!’

  The girl lifted herself feebly, sat up in bed. Naseeban laid hold of her bandaged wrists, turned them up and surveyed them grimly.

  ‘Die, is that what you want, girl? For a worthless, feeble-headed, fickle fool of a man?’

  Subuhi’s tears began to fall. But Naseeban was merciless.

  ‘What did he promise you? That he’d be there for you for life? That he’d look at none other? That you were the most beauteous thing he’d ever beheld? That you were angel, goddess, celestial fairy, queen of his heart?’

  Subuhi hid her face.

  ‘Know this, my child. It’s the same script we’ve all heard, from some man or other. It’s burnt into our bitter hearts. Ask any woman here. It doesn’t mean a thing, believe me. One month in your bed and he’s already looking around. That’s the way, child. Learn it now, rather than later. Learn it early and learn it well.’

  She laid her arm on Subuhi’s tousled head, smoothed back her matted locks.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘As pretty as a diamond in beaten gold. A prize for any king and twelve years old, all your life ahead of you. And you want to die for love, because this first big-lover of your little life has mounted the willing hips of another one? Where is your anger, girl? Where is your spirit? You’re wounded, I understand. Then you go hurt yourself more. See these pretty wrists. But surely you’re not as poor-spirited as this? While you pine away and go mad with grief he’ll go exploring skirt after skirt. Is that fair? Why don’t you return the blow? Let him get it where it hurts the most. His pride. I know what I am about, have faith in me, girl.’

  Two days later a decked-up, bejewelled Subuhi received her first customer, a forty-five-year-old merchant princeling of the old city, and he swept her off her feet, by Naseeban’s grace and favour. The night was such a success that he bid for Subuhi, paid Naseeban a handsome sum and sent round his phaeton to the kotha.

  As the carriage began moving Subuhi glanced up, dry-eyed, and saw Beni’s expressionless face at an upstairs window.

  He appeared in Naseeban’s chamber as she sat at her hookah.

  ‘Begum sahiba,’ he said, ‘I must talk to you.’

  ‘Do,’ she urged, smiling faintly.

  There was a wild look in his eye, a desperate boil in his voice.

  ‘You planned this,’ he hissed. ‘This is all of your making.’

  ‘What is, boy?’

  ‘You, you married her to me! You’ve sent her away!’ His words fell crumbling at her feet.

  She turned her blazing eye on him. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, boy!’ she spat. ‘That was a game the girls were playing.’

  ‘It was no game!’ he shouted. ‘It was no game for me. Or for her . . .’

  ‘Enough!’ thundered Naseeban. ‘Was there a maulvi? Was there a pandit? Were there any ceremonies? Now be quiet and let’s have no more of this fooling. And anyway,’ she called after him, ‘you a Hindu, an aheer at that, and she a Sayyad Mussalman. How can any marriage be?’

  He swung round to confront her. ‘It was no game for us, this I assure you. And you’ll pay for this, I promise you. We were married, body and soul . . .’

  ‘Oho!’ she sneered. ‘Married body and soul! Where was the soul then when the body lay wallowing in Shaheen’s bed? Or Hasina’s? Go away!’ She rose to her feet. ‘It’s men married body and soul that make our kothas run. I can’t stand them! They make me sick! They make me rich! Let me not see your face, boy, or I might do something I’ll regret.’

  Soon afterwards Beni found a job as a store supervisor in a grain warehouse in a distant quarter of the city.

  ‘If I don’t visit often, Amma, please do not mind,’ he told Manki before leaving.

  Manki inclined her head sadly.

  Janki could say nothing. All this while Hassu Khan had been tutoring her on thumris and the many moods of a woman’s love. Nayika-bhed it was called in the Sanskrit classics. There is the woman adorned in all her finery, waiting for her lover. There is the woman disappointed and yearning in her hour of separation. There is the furious one who will not have anything to do with her lover after a flaming row. And the one blazing with rage when she learns of her man’s infidelity. Then the deep grief of the woman betrayed. The long, sad remembering of a lover far away. The leaping joy of journeying to his side. The knowledge of power when she has subdued and quelled. Love that forgives but forgets nothing. And the ever unrequited lonely thirsting of one without love. The thumris sang of love in its many ragas and rhythms, taught Hassu. Always a woman’s aches. Seldom a man’s. Of love that gives mortal injury, then seeks desperately to heal. Love that is craven and full of lies, forgetful and unfaithful. Love that is penitent and grieves over i
ts fall.

  This thing was not for her, never for her, thought Janki to herself. It had better not be. It was enough to sing of it alone.

  10

  Hassu had special news for Janki and he imparted it with much preamble and ceremony. From the pocket of his shervani he then produced an envelope which held a thick, folded sheet of elegant paper edged in gold with a fine illumination in green and red and embossed with a royal coat of arms.

  ‘His Highness, Maharajadhiraja Bandhresh Shri Maharaja Sir Venkat Raman Ramanuj Prasad Singh Ju Deo Bahadur sends Ustad Hassu Khan his salutations and invites his assistance in this important particular, that Ustad Hassu Khan suggest the name of some songstress of proficiency and personality to sing at His Highness’s Dashera celebrations following the Gaddi Pujan ceremony of the Royal House of Rewa. Every care shall be taken of the artist’s comfort and for that of her accompanists and retainers and suitable remuneration shall be granted, in keeping with His Highness’s pleasure and the performer’s merit. His Highness awaits Ustad Hassu Khan’s answer, well-assured of the quality of his choice and the fineness of his discernment . . .’

  Hassu watched the play of expression on Janki’s face. He saw her catch her breath and lift her gaze in wondering inquiry. He nodded.