Requiem in Raga Janki

by Neelum Saran Gaur

  After a gap of three years a recording session again, this time at Lucknow. But by now she had grown demanding and it was hard for companies to meet all her demands. But though there were fewer recordings now, her old numbers were constantly being reissued. She did a few sessions for new songs in Lucknow after 1928 for Robert Edward Beckett of GTL, now HMV, this time by the new electric method which had replaced the earlier acoustical method. And again in late 1928 for Arthur James Twine at Delhi. GTL, by 1931, had moved from Sealdah to Dum Dum and merged with the Columbia Gramophone Company. It had also introduced subsidiaries like Twin Records. Thousands of Janki’s records flooded the market, produced by HMV and Twin.

  For Janki the ten years that Bachcha stayed were like some harvest of recompense for the long drought of years. The ordinary rhythm of days of blessed sameness and concerns of homely existence took up her time, although music persisted alongside like a faithful tributary. Later she would be left to wonder which was the perennial stream and which the seasonal.

  But she immersed herself in the planning of meals and lavish hospitality. In the careful choice of tutors for Bachcha. In Bachcha’s influenza or typhoid and what the English civil surgeon from the Bailey Hospital had to advise about the pain that kept the child whining all night and thrashing about in bed. She engaged a maulvi to teach Bachcha Islam and a sais to take him out riding in the Company Bagh on the pony she bought for him. She rejoiced when Haq Sahib accompanied them to Agra on a family vacation and rejoiced more when she saw him pick up Bachcha’s history book and read to him of Ashok, Akbar or Aurangzeb. Or when he made Bachcha recite multiplication tables in a monotonous chant whenever he happened to come in in the mornings. The child’s piping treble, chirping out chains of numbers and their multiples in the sweet lisp of infant syllables fell on Janki’s ears like some tranquillizing balm. Bachcha’s chant was like a magic riyaz, the best music in the world spelling the restful acquisition of a hard-earned concord so late in life.

  But Bachcha, whatever his fetching attractions as a child, betrayed no evidence of any aptitude for his lessons, though he was a fine critic of Janki’s cooking and pickling and preserving and sweet making. For, out of the reserves of memory she’d retrieved recipes from the old mithai shop of her childhood in Benaras, often sending samples of her preparations to the Mehdauri household too. In later years, when it was all over and done with, it seemed to her cruelly confessional mind to have been a willed tableau, another composition or performance, this make-believe delusional family life, as she tried measuring up to longed-for conventions of happy domesticity.

  She believed what she hankered to believe—Haq Sahib’s growing attachment to Bachcha and the return of humour and vitality to her husband’s life. When he spoilt Bachcha with trips to the fairs of the city, with money to buy sweets, toys and fruits and vegetables made of clay, with kites and rubber balls and kulfi out of earthen pots and jalebi and kachoris at the local eateries, she loved it as proof of her husband’s fondness for this child of their old age.

  But when, some years down the line, this daily practice, the fatherly dole of pocket money for the day, began making her vaguely uncomfortable because of its sinister sense of secrecy and mystery, she began to wonder at what had seemed an innocent thing. Where earlier Bachcha had eagerly displayed what he’d bought or eaten in the bazaar, he now appeared to avoid catching her eye. When she asked anything he answered in curt monosyllables. There was something about his shifty-eyed expression that made her immediately think of brothels—her own past made the idea of them leap into her head, and she lectured him on the evils of ‘houses of ill fame’, as she now delicately referred to them.

  Then she realized that he was sleeping late into the mornings, that his books stayed untouched and his maulvi sahib grown exasperated. She conferred with his maulvi sahib about activities that were ungodly and forbidden and that fell within the maulvi sahib’s authority to counsel against and prohibit. But the maulvi sahib’s scruples forbade discussion of such unseemly subjects with a lady.

  She conferred with Haq Sahib.

  ‘Bachcha is not himself, Vakil Sahib, or haven’t you noticed?’ she said. ‘Have you seen how he keeps to himself and seems never to be at his books?’

  ‘A boy will grow up, begum,’ he remarked mildly.

  ‘But he is grown deaf–mute. As though he hasn’t a tongue in his head.’

  ‘Who can boast of a tongue in his head, begum, when you let loose your own?’ This said in husbandly good humour.

  ‘This is not a matter for jesting, Vakil Sahib. I fear he has fallen into . . . into bad company.’

  ‘Bad company?’ he mimicked her pious tones. ‘What company does the poor lad have save yours and mine and while I would hesitate to call us paragons of righteousness, surely we are not as fallen as you suggest? Well, he has his sais and his maulvi sahib and his angrezi and mathematics tutors, not counting the boys of the lane with whom he plays gulli-danda or flies kites and they all seem to me fairly measuring up to your high standards of virtue, if I may say.’

  She ignored his lame sallies at wit. ‘I don’t know where he spends all his money,’ she fretted.

  ‘Well, for that matter, I do not know where I spend all of mine,’ he quipped.

  She decided to express the misgiving in her mind. ‘Vakil Sahib, I notice how generous a father you are and how you keep Bachcha well provided, but should you not display the least interest in what your son does with the money?’

  He always flinched involuntarily when she said ‘your son’ as though the words continued to shock and dismay him.

  ‘Begum,’ he said, ‘a growing boy will not always spend his money on kites and mud pies.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m afraid he may be spending it in the wrong places. Do you think, Vakil Sahib, that it’s time we got him married?’

  He looked closely at her as though the unfamiliarity of the idea with its implicit suggestion of safely monitored sexuality took time to register, before he burst out laughing. Somewhat too contemptuously, she felt.

  ‘You women can think of nothing else save the pull of the boudoir and the bordello. Madam, may I venture to suggest to your fond matronly instincts that there are other temptations that may draw a young man?’

  ‘Bachcha is not a young man,’ she protested. ‘He is still a child.’

  ‘Believe what you will then, begum.’ He shrugged with what she thought was an enigmatic smile.

  Exasperated with him, she approached Zahid, the sais she had engaged to take Bachcha riding. But Zahid said that there was nothing unusual about Abdul Aziz Sahib’s activities except that lately he seemed to prefer a bicycle to a horse.

  ‘A bicycle? Where does he get one to ride?’

  ‘He borrows mine. He says—Zahid, you take a round of the Company Bagh while I cycle down to Katra Market and back.’

  ‘And you do so?’ She could feel her temper rising.

  He stood with bowed head.

  ‘What to do, begum sahiba?’

  ‘Why has it not occurred to you that you should go along with him to Katra?’

  ‘A horse and a bicycle cannot ride together, begum sahiba.’

  ‘And why have you not thought fit to mention this to me till I asked?’

  ‘Bachcha Sahib said not to tell. But Vakil Sahib knows . . .’

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘About Bachcha Sahib.’

  Her head was spinning. ‘Vakil Sahib knows about Bachcha Sahib? Listen, you cur, you son of a swine, will you speak plainly or shall I thrash you with my shoe?’

  Her voice had risen to its highest amplitude. Her hand shot out and dealt the young man a stinging blow on the cheek.

  Earlier she was apt to hit out at her accompanists when they went wrong with a note or a beat. It always filled her with embarrassment and deep repentance and she made much of the young percussionist or sarangi player, calling herself his elder sister, etc. But Zahid the sais provoked no such regret in her. If anything, he aroused an
other sort of regret of a practical nature in her mind. For he bowed his head, though his eyes flashed, and said in a surly voice, ‘Begum sahiba, I have not joined your service to endure insults and blows. By your leave, I beg permission to quit.’

  ‘Allah! What is this world come to when minions dare to make reply! You have my permission, you betrayer of my salt!’ she shouted. ‘Remove yourself from my sight or I shall not hold myself responsible for anything I do!’

  The regret she experienced was that she had lost the chance of extracting information from the sais whose words ‘Vakil Sahib knows about Bachcha Sahib’ now filled her with terrible foreboding.

  In desperation she sought out the old faithful Jallu Mian.

  ‘Jallu Mian,’ she broached the subject in humble candour, ‘in all this world there is only you I can entrust this delicate task to. I want you to keep watch on Bachcha Sahib. I fear for him and I fear the worst. I need to know where he goes, what he does, who he meets. This is urgent, Jallu Mian.’

  It took Jallu Mian just a couple of days to get to the bottom of things. He looked grave when he gave Janki the facts. ‘I have very disturbing news for you, begum sahiba,’ he told her. ‘Bachcha Sahib frequents a ganja den in Katra. He has been a regular visitor there for many months now. He is, in fact, one of their important customers . . .’

  Her head swam. She gazed at Jallu Mian in horror. ‘So that is what it is,’ she whispered. ‘And does Vakil Sahib know any of this?’

  Jallu Mian shook his head. ‘I cannot say, begum sahiba.’

  Why did the thought come into her head that Jallu Mian was holding something back? He paused and appeared to be pondering something, hesitating. Then he decided to speak: ‘Begum sahiba, the dealer at the shop that Bachcha Sahib frequents said that someone once came and deposited a sum of money in advance—lest Bachcha Sahib ever lacked money to pay for his cannabis . . .’

  This detail so disconcerted her that she sank into the nearest armchair and buried her distraught head in her hands. ‘Whatever can this mean, Jallu Mian? You tell me. My tired brain cannot think.’

  He lowered his eyes and studied his shoes for a long moment. Then he said gently, ‘Begum sahiba has brains enough for ten, whatever she may say or feel. It is not for me to venture anything without proof.’

  He paused, then added, ‘But whatever lies ahead, it is within my power to promise that we, your musicians, are with you.’

  She felt the smart of sudden tears in her eyes. ‘It is your kindness. And Allah’s blessing on me,’ she whispered and turned away.

  She decided to speak to Haq Sahib.

  ‘Vakil Sahib,’ she accosted him, ‘I want to know what you meant when you said there are temptations other than boudoirs and bordellos for a young man.’

  He looked up from his file. ‘Did I say that? Ah, so it would seem.’

  ‘Please do not speak in circles, Haq Sahib. Are you aware that our son Bachcha is a ganja addict now?’

  He looked maddeningly composed.

  ‘That would explain it all,’ he observed casually.

  She saw red. ‘Do you even begin to realize the seriousness of this, Vakil Sahib? A cannabis addict at sixteen!’

  ‘Oh well, he might have done worse. Cannabis isn’t all that bad. It can even be a cure for many ills, so I have heard. A man’s got to sow his wild oats, begum. It’s a part of growing up.’ He spoke in a tone of playful mockery.

  ‘Do not provoke me, I beg you,’ she said, bristling. ‘And allow me to remind you that your responsibility as a father lies in taking control of your son, not in indulging or explaining away his vices.’

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘it is a responsibility I neither invited nor acknowledge.’

  She stared at him incredulously, the truth of the situation sinking in in all its starkness. ‘I did not realize this,’ she said slowly. ‘Bachcha is henceforth my responsibility and I shall do what I can about this problem. The least you can do, Vakil Sahib, is refrain from supplying him with money the way you do.’

  He nodded absently and turned his attention to the file he had been reading. But the ordinary circumstance of Haq Sahib handing generous amounts of cash to Bachcha that had so far seemed simply proof of his fondness for the boy now took on a murkier possibility that filled her mind with the weirdest misgivings.

  She confronted Bachcha in a fit of rage. Henceforth he was to get no pocket money and was to keep to the house, sleep all day, if necessary, but never, on pain of the worst possible hammering at her hands, dare to leave the house. Bachcha looked at her in stony passivity, his bulbous eyes blank, registering no response to her violent tirade. For a few days he complied.

  Then one afternoon he vanished. The same afternoon Ghaseete came, bashfully confessing that he had been unable to refuse Bachcha Sahib, that he had had to lend him money for the day.

  ‘I do not understand you, Ghaseete,’ she rebuked him.

  ‘I was in no position to refuse him,’ stammered Ghaseete.

  ‘Tell me, is it my brain that is muddled by demons or the brains of every member of this cursed household? You were in no position to refuse, you say?’

  ‘I was not present when Bachcha Sahib took the money from my shervani pocket.’

  ‘When did you and your shervani part company, Ghaseete?’ she lashed out in impatience.

  ‘I was in the gusal-khana, begum sahiba. My shervani hung from a peg in the wall outside . . .’

  Aghast, she scorched him with her gaze. ‘You are telling me that Bachcha Sahib stole money from your pocket?’

  He cringed, terrified.

  She fumed as she paced about the terrace, waiting for Bachcha to return. When he slunk in, she swooped down on him and seized him by the collar, dragging him into the courtyard. He seemed witless, dulled beyond responding. He parried her slaps, turning his tousled head this way and that, but he offered neither a word nor a protest. Her hand fell to her side, helpless.

  ‘Speak, ulloo ke patthe!’ she frothed. ‘Are you bent on bringing qayamat on your life and on me? What is it you lack that you go combing the pockets of our staff to go crawling the dope dens of the city?’ Tears streamed down her face, the courtyard blurred before her eyes and her voice cracked in outrage. ‘Speak, you beggar, before I take the skin off your buttocks! Or have you turned yourself into a Congressman and a Gandhi-wallah that takes the blows of the police and will not hit back or answer?’

  The boy stayed mute. She could not decide whether this was sullen defiance or a dope drowse, whether he resisted her or merely accepted it all as a necessary evil. She dragged him to his room and pushed him in. She bolted the door from without.

  ‘I have shut up Bachcha Sahib in his room,’ she announced to the household. ‘No one is to unbolt the door. I shall carry in his meals myself and escort him to the gusal-khana and the privy myself.’

  It worked for a day or two. Then the boy went wild, flung himself on the door, banging on it with his fists. His silence gave way to fierce howls of entreaty that brought her down from her chambers and made her sink, sobbing, on to the divan in the veranda outside his room. She sat there, weeping silently, as the howls increased and the appeals, until, exhausted, he stopped altogether. Then, as the stillness in the room deepened, as no stirring or sounds of waking issued from the room for hours, fear clutched at her heart and the worst possible thoughts, and she unbolted the door and found it bolted from within. Then it was her turn to beat on the door and hammer on it and cry out in entreaty, and when an hour had passed there was nothing for her but to summon Haq Sahib, Jallu Mian, Ghaseete, Sayyad Ghulam Abbas and all the women staff of the kitchen and the housekeeping. They broke down the door—to find Bachcha sprawled on his charpai, fast asleep. She screamed at him, shook him, boxed his ears, until Haq Sahib stepped up and pulled her away, saying, ‘Enough, begum! Take a hold on yourself!’

  ‘Ya Maula,’ she cried aloud, ‘what does this child lack that he should turn to this? How did all this start and I did not even dream of it?�
�� Then, suddenly, a monstrous thought sprang into her mind and she swung round and faced him. ‘You!’ she exclaimed. ‘It was you who started him on this! I don’t know why. I don’t know what is in your envious mind but you wanted to wreck it all! You hated our little life, you hated the family I was trying to create—because you had lost your children, because you couldn’t bear this . . .’

  He had flushed with anger. ‘You have gone mad, begum. Why should I endure your crazy excesses day after day? You have driven the lad to dope and you will drive me to the madhouse!’

  ‘I have driven the lad to dope? Well said, Vakil Sahib, well said! I, who have never even seen cannabis in my life of forty-five years!’

  ‘Never?’ he asked in his most cutting voice. ‘Never in your nautch-woman days, in your kotha days? Your clients were all goat-milk-bibbers who came sober as sages for the joy of hearing your sublime voice alone?’

  ‘I will not be insulted, Vakil Sahib!’

  ‘Nor I, Baiji!’

  He moved back to his Mehdauri house—as he usually did after their spats. But the idea that he had somehow initiated Bachcha into ganja took hold of her mind and the more she thought of it the more she believed it.

  21

  She called on Hashmat Ullah one day. There had been a coolness between them for a while after her impulsive marriage but it went to Hashmat Ullah’s credit that he had remained suavely professional, obligingly helpful to her at all times.

  ‘Hashmat Ullah Sahib,’ she began, when he had ushered her into his lawyer’s chamber and given her a seat, and sent away his munshi, ‘this is a highly personal matter. I wish to consult you in your capacity as a man of the world which I, who am only a musician and a foolish, sentimental woman, am not. Would my husband, Abdul Haq Sahib, have any interest in the ruin of my adopted son Abdul Aziz’s future? I ask you to be absolutely candid with me.’

  He looked at her a long moment in an appraising sort of way before he answered: ‘I was absolutely candid with you once before, begum sahiba.’