Requiem in Raga Janki

by Neelum Saran Gaur

  He proved extremely touchy. ‘Am I to be a procurer of mullahs now, madam?’ was his sarcastic query. ‘To make you read the kalma?’ But she thought she saw a fleeting flash of pleasure in his eye before being subdued to its customary crabbed grimness.

  He did what was required, even arranged for the quick ceremony to be held in his house, stood by as she repeated that there was no God except Allah and that Muhammad was His Prophet and, on her request, arranged for a maulvi, Janab Reza Ali Shah of the Sambhal district of Moradabad, to visit her house every other day to groom her in the faith. And when it was over he awkwardly gifted her an elegant prayer mat and a Benaras stole of green brocade.

  Her voice was unsteady but she quipped, ‘Honestly, Hashmat Ullah Sahib, you look as though you expect that you and I are likely to stand beneath this stole soon. Let me advise you to entertain no such rash thought.’

  That eased the solemnity of the occasion. ‘Baiji thinks too highly of herself, if I may make bold to say. And far too poorly of my intelligence, that she should imagine me capable of such complete folly.’ He turned away, irritable.

  When she entered her house, carrying the prayer mat, with Samina bringing up the rear of the little procession of staff and accompanists, a dark silence lay upon the courtyard. Manki sat on a cot, her eyes fixed on the door. She stared at Janki, she stared at the rolled-up prayer mat and she buried her face in her hands and sat very still. That evening she set up a separate kitchen for herself and Beni. But while she cooked for Beni, she herself went on a rigorous fast, denying herself even a drop of water, until after twenty-four hours, she lay wan and enfeebled in bed with her face to the wall. Janki had striven to ignore this protest initially but as the hours passed she grew anxious. At last she plucked up courage to force her entry into her mother’s room, carrying a glass of sugared water. She strove to make light of it all: ‘What on earth is all this, Amma? Or have you turned Mussalman too, like me, and plunged yourself straight into a Ramzan fast?’

  There was no reply. She made place for herself beside Manki on the bed and held the glass of water to her mother’s lips.

  ‘You will make yourself ill. Come, sip some water, do.’

  Manki shuddered. She knocked the brass glass out of Janki’s hand. ‘Don’t ever,’ she whispered fiercely, and brought up the next word in a vicious hiss: ‘you mallichhchha!’ Mlechhchha—the filthy, the ultimate word of insult in Manki’s vocabulary.

  Janki sprang to her feet: ‘So that is how it is going to be? I seem to remember that you had no objections to eating the food cooked in Naseeban’s mallichhchha kitchen not so very long ago!’ She quit the room, shut herself up in her own, to deal with herself.

  She failed to understand what had happened to Manki. Ever so liberal, so accommodating, so actively sharing in the little ceremonies of faith that were observed by the other residents of the house, her recent inflexibility shocked Janki to the core. Beni was quiet but he undertook to pacify their mother, coax her to eat. He made no mention of her change of faith and for that she was grateful.

  She thought she would abstain from all lavish food, clothes, social visits, even music, and give herself up to understanding her new faith. She prayed five times a day, facing west, and immersed herself in the Book, copying verses from it as a spiritual discipline, as medieval emperors had done to earn their pocket money. She read the Seeratun Nabi and the Sahih-al-Bukhari under the supervision of Maulvi Reza Ali Shah. And as the days passed she felt a large peace descend on her, a quiet fulfilment in the certitude of belonging to a sacred fellowship and soul-simplified. Oddly, she felt that her Islam had only extended her original Hindu self, added something while uprooting nothing, that there was nothing antithetical in her successive registers of belief, only a fulsome continuity. It was another matter that Maulvi Reza Ali Shah was a devout Sunni Muslim and made his disapproval of her Shia leanings only too obvious, grooming her slowly and surely away from them. If there were certain simmerings in the household, a line drawn between her domestics and the maulvi, his overpowering personality and intensive theological force masterfully dominated her pliant heart.

  It was Maulvi Reza Ali Shah too who administered a jolt when one day he cleared his throat and said ever so gently: ‘Bibi, this is something I have been meaning to speak to you about and it is serious. These pictures of Hindu worship, this Krishna and Rama and Hanuman and Ganesh and whatnot that you retain in your house must go.’

  It took a moment for that to sink in as she cast her glance at the framed prints of Hindu gods hanging on the walls of her veranda. ‘But this is my mother’s house too,’ she said. ‘And, for all you know, these pictures might have been painted by Mussalman artists.’

  ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘There are strayed heretics everywhere. Their presence shall be distracting to your mind. You need to keep your mind pure of forbidden things. Untainted.’

  ‘But what harm are they doing, if my own belief and practice are pure?’

  ‘You will not understand,’ he swept her protest aside. ‘It is written.’

  ‘But, begging your pardon, Maulvi Sahib, is it not written that Allah raised among every people a messenger, preaching in the language of that people and through their own holy books? And did not Allah say: “We sent some messengers whom We have already mentioned and some messengers whom We have not mentioned to thee”? I have read this myself.’

  ‘You may read a million things for a million years, Bibi, but it is possible that you still will not understand,’ he retorted.

  But she would not be silenced. ‘Hazrat Shah Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janan has even suggested that Rama and Krishna might be described as Indian prophets.’

  He rose in his seat, incensed. ‘You are yet new in the faith and hence deserving of concession for your presumption. All I seek to remind you, Bibi, is that there is One God, as you repeated in your kalma. There cannot be several. And that is the first, the fundamental truth you have sworn yourself to. Now, excuse me, there is nothing more for me to say. I shall not come again until you have done as I have advised and you may consider your faith and practice wrong if you entertain things that are patently Kaffir and haram.’

  He had the last word and it left her disturbed. She could find no answering argument in her mind and the more she sought to go round the argument, the more frequently she found herself up against that finality. After a day’s agonizing, she saw no prospect of escaping the issue and steeled her mind to do the unavoidable—to shift the pictures quietly to the tiny room in the corner of the veranda which was their puja nook. If it was done very unobtrusively, preferably while Manki was out in the bazaar or on the terrace, maybe the matter would lie silent between them. With this intent she waited for the hour when Manki drew on her outdoor clothes, summoned the little chokra-boy with his basket, and called for the phaeton.

  As soon as she heard the horses’ hoofs clopping away on the cobbles Janki called Makhdoom Baksh and asked him to fetch a hammer and drive some nails into the walls of the worship room so as to transfer the pictures there. He had hardly begun on the third nail that the phaeton was heard approaching the front door of the kothi. It stopped. Manki had forgotten to carry her purse and had returned to fetch it. She stepped into the courtyard, surprised to hear the sound of hammering coming from the direction of the puja room.

  Then she burst into a loud tirade. ‘What is going on in my puja room? Do you think I don’t understand. Nails being hammered into walls to cast out evil spirits! Are the gods of my puja room evil spirits now to this she-maulana? Who gave you permission to enter my puja room? You have no business there now!’

  Makhdoom stood irresolutely, hammer in hand. He put it down and looked to Janki for succour.

  Janki sped forward and pushed her way in between her mother and Makhdoom.

  ‘You’re mistaken, Amma,’ she said. ‘They are not those sort of nails. We are only trying to hang up your pictures in your puja room.’

  ‘So! My pictures and my puja room only now,
are they? I get it. They are nothing to you now. I am being pushed into a corner in my own house by these Mussalmans. In my own house! No, I forget—it is her house, this she-maulana’s! It is that mullah who comes here these days who is turning her head. Soon she will kill me for a Kaffir. Yes, she will halal me for her Bakhreid and I will have no one to save me from these Mussalmans!’

  Manki had sprung to the pictures on the veranda wall and, running from one to the next, unhooked them from the wall, clasping them to her bosom in a paroxysm of furious tears.

  Janki sought shelter in her own room where the wry Makhdoom followed her.

  ‘It is not my place to advise you, Bai Sahiba, but if I may say a word.’

  She had sunk into her couch. He stood hesitantly in front of her.

  ‘Do,’ she answered, tired and shaken.

  ‘In the way of the faithful there will be obstacles, Bai Sahiba. But you must surmount them to grow in Belief. In the Book Hazrat Nooh says of the idolaters—that they have devised a plot and they have said to each other: Do not renounce your gods. Do not forsake Wadd or Suwa or Yaghuth or Ya uq or Nasr—they have led numerous men astray . . .’

  ‘What, another plot? This house has too many plots circulating in its rooms. But hasn’t Hazrat Nooh also said that because of their sins the idolaters were overwhelmed by the Flood and cast into the Fire. And that not a single unbeliever should be left on the earth for if Allah spares them, they will mislead the Faithful and beget none but sinners and idolaters? So what do you suggest I do with this idolater-mother of mine, Makhdoom? Cast her into the Fire or will you arrange a Flood?’

  He frowned. ‘Bai Sahiba misunderstands me. All I meant to convey is that Bai Sahiba has done well and has my appreciation.’

  ‘What a good Mussalman you are, Makhdoom,’ she replied, shrugging. ‘If only you felt the same way about the harmonium I purchased.’

  He saw that she wished to change the subject. ‘That,’ he responded, expressionless, ‘is another matter.’

  She had done as commanded but she felt far from satisfied. There was still the hardest bit left. She had to dispose of her Saraswati. The pretty, precious white Muse, seated on her swan, with her veena and her book, that she had kept on the shelf in her room for years. She could not see how the presence of that innocuous image could impair her relations with Allah, but she was early in her new faith and direly earnest and it was much too soon to be an excessive interrogator. In Maulvi Reza Ali’s eyes, keeping her Saraswati in her life was a fundamental transgression and so she resolved to immerse the icon in the Ganga. After all, Hindus routinely immersed their clay deities in their holy waterbodies, so it was nothing more than a sacred rite of passage from one state of faith to another, she told herself.

  It would have to be done at dawn, before the household was up and awake. And she had to go alone, unidentified. Manki had barred and bolted herself in her part of the house. Storm clouds hung about the air, the household silent, dining early, retiring to their quarters. She awoke early, offered the dawn prayers, placed the Saraswati icon devoutly in the old puja basket in which her mother carried flowers and worship items to the temple, drew on her dark cloak and veil and stole out into the lane and the street. An early tonga stood at the turn, as though beckoned by some destiny, and she hailed it.

  ‘Take me to the boat jetty on the Yamuna, please,’ she told the tonga driver. ‘Behind the Fort.’

  The sky was a cool pigeon-grey over the twin rivers and a soft breeze blew her veil about as she alighted near the boat jetty behind the Man-Kameshwar Temple on the Yamuna front. It was still early for the pilgrims and the pleasure boats but, like the tonga, a single country boat was ready to sail. Relieved, she hastened towards it, only to find someone else there, arrived just a moment before she did. A young man of about twenty, looking distraught, who wanted to be rowed right across the river to the other bank. ‘The boat ashram of the ascetic-raja of Raebareli,’ he told the boatman.

  ‘Do you mind if I come too?’ she stepped forward. ‘I have to immerse something at the sangam.’

  He agreed, though the boatman said the trip would cost more and they would have to row to the ashram first and on their return route take in the sangam since the sangam ‘had shifted far to the east’. That was no matter, she assured, she would pay. The young man said he would pay, though he hardly had enough to cover the entire distance. She insisted that she would do the paying since her direction was a little removed from his. He insisted that he would contribute his mite since the money for the fare had come to him by mysterious destiny, which made her wonder. Finally the boatman helped them step into the boat, unmoored and swung it around with a few deft heaves at the oars and they floated away, borne on the river tide towards the far bank, a good mile away.

  She questioned the young man about the ascetic-raja of Raebareli who had set up his ashram on the far bank. He told her that the ascetic-raja was a man of rare learning, educated and well travelled, who had chosen to live on a boat and devote himself to meditation and the pursuit of liberation. She was surprised to learn that the young man had never met him, that this was to be his very first meeting with him. This fact, together with the troubled appearance of the youth, perplexed her. For his part he timidly wanted to know her business and she indicated her basket and told him that she had undertaken this river expedition to immerse her Saraswati icon. He nodded. It is proper to immerse our old icons when we get ourselves new ones, he remarked, obviously thinking no more of it.

  It took them the better part of an hour to achieve the crossing to the Ganga end and well before they reached the bank the ashram hove in view. It was really a cluster of boats moored to a makeshift jetty. There were bamboo huts on the sandy bank and on a few of the boats wooden cabins had been erected. Flags fluttered on bamboo flagpoles and there were also a couple of mud and straw-thatch shanties behind the jetty and a cowshed. A row of clay hearths lined the frontage of the structure at which, she guessed, the ashram’s cooking was done by the disciples. On the largest boat, before a simple sanctum shaded by a gunny-covered bamboo canopy, the morning discourse was in progress. About a dozen disciples sat around the guru, a man clad not in the customary vestments of religion but in an ordinary white dhoti and bare-bodied save for a white shoulder-cloth. He had a low voice with a hint of song.

  ‘When Krishna vanished, all of a sudden, the gopis, a hundred and ten crore gopis, the Bhagwat tells us, were overcome with longing. Like a herd of cow elephants without a tusker, the Bhagwat describes these milkmaids. Thus, abandoned by their lord, they wandered, unstrung, among the forests, begging the trees—“O aswattha, nyagrodha, chuta, palash, bakula, bilva, kadamba, O have you seen our Krishna?” They gathered on the Yamuna bank and called to him in song. The Gopikagita tells us their plaintive appeal. “Friend,” they addressed him, “you are no son of a milk-woman. You are the sakshin, the inner witness of all beings, born to a milkmaid to bring succour to the world. Friend, grant us the nectar of your lips that banishes from our souls the taste for all other worldly joys.” Krishna heard their plaint of love and reappeared amongst them. They clung to him. One held his sandal-fragrant hand, one clasped his lotus feet in an embrace, one twined his arm round her shoulder, and so they lost themselves in the rasakrida, the dance and sport of love. And such his lila that each one imagined she alone beheld and possessed his loving presence, each one blinded to the one hundred and ten crore Krishnas sporting in their midst, each one believing he was hers alone. So the One became many, and danced the rasakrida in the moonlit night on the banks of the Yamuna. The Bhagwat describes their love dance, the One-in-Many shining like a myriad emeralds strung between nuggets of gold, the gopikas like flashes of lightning in a heap of clouds. Now when Raja Parikshit asked the sage Suka how Krishna, who had come down into the world to renew dharma, could dally thus, the sage replied that when there is no ahankara, no sense of the I, there is no good or evil. It is the lord dallying with himself alone, for in the sport of god there is but a
single player, all else is mithya, illusion. Surrender to the lord is all. “Sarvadharman parityajya mamekam saranam vraja”—Abandoning every other dharma come to me for refuge, the Gita tells us. For the lord shall be by your side whenever you require his presence. Again and again he shall descend to the earth for the protection of humankind. “Sambhavani yuge yuge.” Our mortal eyes may not behold his effulgence, for he is the Param-Atman, the World Soul. All that our human vision can hope to hold is the little butter-thief Krishna with the feather in his hair, the playful dancer, the flute-player of Vrindavan. Om Namo Bhagwate Vasudevaya!’ He lifted his hands and held them before his closed eyes in a devout namaskar, before he announced in a more conversational voice: ‘For this morning’s arati we shall sing a verse from the Swetashvataropanishad.’

  And as the ritual plate bearing the sacred flame was circled before the image of Hanuman, the guru’s voice rose in elated song, with that of the disciples following: ‘Not of Him is there any master in the world. Nor ruler, and verily of Him there is no sign. He is the cause, the creator of all physical lords. And of Him there is neither progenitor nor lord.’

  The discourse had been on Krishna, the hymn was to the Formless but the arati was to neither. Behind the rough cotton hanging stood the vermilion image of Hanuman, divine monkey-warrior, devotee of Rama, scholar, musician, protector. The joss sticks spread a sandalwood ether around the boat, bells rang, the conch blew, then the ritual plate with the sacred fire was brought round to each one. Sandalwood paste applied in a cool upward stroke to the forehead, hands receiving the warmth of the flame and lifted to the head, and this for Janki was the most difficult moment, to resist the call of her former self. She placed a coin in mute offering in the ritual plate but backed away from the sandal tilak and did not circle her palms over the flame or place the warmth to her forehead as the others did. She raised her eyes and saw the guru’s eyes fixed on her. In that instant of wordless withdrawal her abdication was grasped by her and by him. The boy with the flame passed on.