Requiem in Raga Janki

by Neelum Saran Gaur

  She kept the child with her in the nights, sleeping on a couch in her bedchamber. But as the night advanced she heard the girl get up and patter out. She heard the door to the veranda creak open and she felt the river breeze ferret its way in. She rose and followed the child who sat pathetically on the step, her eyes staring into the dark. All of a sudden she felt the weight of a remembered oppression, a pain whose face she knew, and it brought back in a rush a horde of anarchic aches—her wrestler father waiting for his feckless lover, her bitter mother waiting for her vanished father, and now this little unformed heart, timidly turning the first pages of an old, ugly primer of pain, her mind stammering its first alphabets in what would become a heavy tome of unravelling faith. An old, familiar destiny, a refrain her nauseated heart was forced to iterate in varying rhythms of despair.

  The growing pallor of the child’s face deepened her worry. Could this child be pining? Even for a proven cheat? Could this toy heart be sickening for love? Love was a word that provoked her to rage. Her own marriage, she was now reconciled to think, was the biggest error of her life and all her subsequent decades a fervent argument against that error, but when did this child choose to fall in love? For this too she ruefully knew—that love was a choice, a fatal microsecond of willing that loosed all the passion and the pain. She could no longer ignore this pining child, paying with her misery for a misjudgement of others, living under the protection of those who had erred. This was a colossal wrong and no wisdom, no experience could safeguard against life errors such as this. No matter how intensive the riyaz, life was a raga you just couldn’t get right. You thought you had the notes under control but then there came a critical tone or semitone that tripped you up. Don’t worry, don’t worry. She had tired of the falsehood of her own assuring voice. ‘Never mind if he’s gone off somewhere. You can start going to school. If you knew how to read you would have known a pawn ticket when you saw it. Home tutors, then the great University of Allahabad which, I hear, has now opened its gates to girls. What can you not do if you are educated, child? And,’ she added, ‘you can always count on me.’

  But the child grew listless by the day. So she did what her pride would never have allowed her to do—seek counsel from Haq Sahib. She sent for him.

  ‘Bachcha has not returned, Haq Sahib,’ she said.

  ‘What did you expect? To humiliate a young man in the presence of his new bride!’ responded Haq Sahib sarcastically. ‘Sometimes, bibi, you forget that the big world is not your mehfil. To sit in silent awe while your voice commits assault and offence.’

  It was her turn to feel assaulted and offended. ‘What mean you, Vakil Sahib? I was not aware my voice is in this world to assault and offend.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ he said ironically. ‘It is here to sweeten our ears alone, think you, begum sahiba? Then think again and ask those whose ears it has grazed day in and day out. You do your riyaz on our hapless hearts, madam, and I don’t mean music. For you are the very mistress of malefaction when you so desire, and we the poor dumb victims of your frenzy. But the world isn’t made up of strings to strum along to your tune or drums to thump in agreement with your every behest, know you this!’

  She turned away, mortified. She dreamt that night that a whole audience sprang to its feet, shouting, ‘Silence! Enough!’ and covering up its ears. Bachcha never returned. And here was this fourteen-year-old girl beneath her roof, depending on her, looking to her for a future that neither of them had planned and neither knew anything about.

  When the first agony of fruitless waiting had passed, she sent for tutors for the child. And books, a radio, a kitten, a pair of chattering parrots, watercolours and paintbrushes, skeins and embroidery frames and pattern books. If not a son, a daughter whom she would school and groom into strength and grace. A new dream began forming in her mind and at the end of a year their lives settled into a semblance of resigned purpose. With wonder she noticed the little girl’s growing affection for her, felt the bond deepening, felt laughter return and she felt herself wake up to a gentle contentment with her lot, never expected or experienced before. Chandni did well at her painting and her embroidery and Janki hired better teachers and displayed the girl’s handiwork with pride. She was also clever with clay and her nimble fingers turned out tiny animals and miniature furniture and painted flowers that were ingenious and beautiful. She sat, quietly absorbed with needle and skeins as Janki did her morning riyaz, and if Janki so much as coughed she found a twig of mulethi instantly proffered or a glass of cardamom-and-ginger tea sent for from the kitchen. She often found her hookah hidden away and had to demand it back in mock aggression that warmed her heart and brought her rest. She sent for her accompanists and started her riyaz again. She began accepting invitations to sing. Her travels took her away from the city but she always returned home with a greater sense of homecoming than ever before. She even began teaching music at home to the bunch of pupils who gathered around her. Among them a young lad named Mahesh Chand Vyas. He’d turned up with a meek request to be tutored by her. He was a university student and a great admirer of her singing. He’d had some initial training too. If Bai Sahiba agreed to give him a few tips two afternoons a week he was prepared to pay whatever she asked. She was amused at his bashful presumption. Whatever she asked—that was a tall order, young man, she’d laughed. Are you sure you can afford my fee? And who may your guardians be? They were landowners, he answered. Be they maharajas, they might be unpleasantly surprised at my rates, she teased the young man. I never would tell them, he said sulkily. They never would allow me. Then how? she wanted to know. I would tell them I have enrolled for a law degree, he faltered. She roared with laughter. Where would this city be without its lawyers, she guffawed. Even if they spend their guardians’ money at a kothawali’s classes! And what would you tell them at the end of the law course? I would say I have failed, said the lad. His keenness disarmed her. All for the love of music? she asked. He nodded. It was decided that he would come to her class straight from the university two afternoons a week. She tied the ganda round his wrist, charged a rupee and 4 annas and said she would charge her fee in bulk at the end of the law course. Mahesh Chand Vyas was to become her favourite pupil, surrogate son, all-purpose assistant, even a confidant in the dark days ahead. But for the present, it was a time of meaning and peace.

  Never since her childhood had such a sense of rewarding quietude warmed her life. To have blundered into this serendipitous sweetness seemed a miracle of mischance, as though a packaged treasure, sealed and stamped and addressed to someone else, had by some unwarranted error landed in her life. The softer, the sweeter for resting on a foundation of unspoken loss that highlighted the unexpected wonder of this gift. The second chance had been granted, not through satisfaction but through failure.

  Chandni took the Middle exam and passed it reasonably well. Her pleasure in her report and mark sheet was Janki’s delight. Janki gave her a kundan set as a gift. The girl uttered a squeal of joy on seeing it, before her face clouded and Janki dared not ask why. It was not hard to imagine the cause for dejection.

  ‘What will I do with this, Ammi Jaan?’ whispered the girl.

  ‘You will wear it at Eid and Bakhreid and at my next performance. And we’ll save it for your marriage.’

  She added that last with caution and sought the girl’s face for a reaction.

  The girl looked shocked.

  ‘My what?’ she asked.

  ‘Your shaadi, bitiya.’

  It was something she had given much thought to, though the prospect brought a pang of unaccountable pain. Chandni had blossomed into a fine young woman and it seemed grossly unfair that she remain a handmaiden and ward all her life. And if the maulvis were unhelpful there was always the Civil Law to undo her wrong marriage and Hashmat Ullah would do his utmost. This time, Janki had sworn, the match would be made with every vigilance and inquiry. Not the way it was when Chandni’s parents handed her over to Bachcha. This was her expiation, this pang of losing this
late-acquired girl child, but she would do a better job of it than had Chandni’s parents.

  To her perplexity, the child’s eyes filled up.

  ‘You are making fun of me, Ammi Jaan,’ she murmured.

  Janki drew her close. ‘You are so wrong, bitiya,’ she soothed.

  ‘You want to get rid of me,’ said Chandni. ‘Why?’

  ‘Never.’ Janki struggled to explain. ‘How can I when you have brought me . . . all this . . . all this?’

  The girl looked baffled. ‘What have I brought you, Ammi? It’s you who gives me nice things and looks after me and teaches me and . . .’

  ‘You can’t understand,’ said Janki. ‘But I have to see to it that you find a young man who is worthy of you, better than my Abdul Aziz, Allah protect him wherever he is.’

  ‘No,’ said the girl stubbornly. ‘He’ll surely be back. And I won’t leave you. Not ever!’

  ‘We are not getting you married just yet, bitiya. You will pass the FA from Crosthwaite College. Then you will go to the Allahabad University. Jha Sahib, the vice chancellor, came to my mehfil at Seth Manmohan Das’s bagiya, and seems to respect me much. I shall discuss your admission with him.’

  The girl began to laugh. ‘No one is going to the university, Maheshji tells me. They’re all boycotting it. Gandhiji has asked them to. They’re sitting outside the gates and the police-wallahs and sowars are chasing them away. What fun. Maybe I’ll become a Gandhi-woman and march in rallies and go to jail and when will I wear all this jewellery? I will spin khaddar cloth and dress in it.’

  ‘You will wear it when the sahibs and mems have gone and you can wear fine clothes again. Then we shall get you a brilliant politician or a university professor or a magistrate sahib or a barrister sahib.’

  ‘Then, Ammi Jaan, I still have about twenty years with you and I’m fine with that. I’ll mind your house while you go sing, and order the servants around and look to your tenants and handle your dates and events and your clothes and your visitors.’

  And there the matter rested. Chandni had summed up her activities right. As the months passed and she prepared to take the FA examination from Crosthwaite College, she minded the house, ordered the servants about, organized Janki’s performance wardrobe and even noted down her appointments. But it could not go on, Janki fretted. Chandni was growing into an alluring presence, even to her visitors, and Janki felt anxious about her safety. When she had to go out of the city on prolonged singing tours, Chandni was left behind to manage the house and Janki didn’t like leaving her unchaperoned. She sought Haq Sahib’s help.

  Haq Sahib now spent most of his time at Mehdauri, visiting Sabzi Mandi only occasionally. He consented to moving in when Janki was out of the city, though he did it with an ill grace.

  ‘So shall I salaam my stars on being invited to begum sahiba’s durbar again or shall I bemoan my lot on my sinking to this position of harem guard?’

  He had taken to speaking in this coarse, abrasive tone lately. A tone Janki thought best to ignore. In recent months she had seen little of him and she found the natural distancing of their two lives an increasing relief. They could, it was a surprise to discover, actually sustain a courteous conversation again for minutes at a stretch. And she was grateful that he could be relied on to step in and help when she needed it.

  ‘You are welcome in any capacity that your fancy thinks fit to adopt, Vakil Sahib,’ she said in her most pacific voice. Who knew with life, the surprises it sprang? They might yet have a more or less quiet old age together, or at least a state of sustained truce, which was not such a bad thing either. Their staying apart for long periods was a most wholesome condition of matrimony, she often thought. And if they were there for each other when practical needs arose, what else was there to hope for in the complexity of a relationship permanently on the rocks?

  The arrangement was not to endure. For one day, as she was about to leave for Jaipur, the girl came up to her and begged: ‘Ammi Jaan, take me with you.’

  ‘Why, what will you do there? Your master sahib will be coming and your exams are round the corner, bitiya. And here you can see that the bawarchi-khana is run right and the parrots fed and Abba Jaan’s hookah filled.’ The girl turned away, sulking.

  When she returned from Jaipur, she learnt that Chandni was sick. She runs out of the haveli and stays in the yard, reported the servants. No, lately she climbs the stairs to the living quarters of the women servants and begs them to let her sleep on the floor, reported others.

  ‘Where is she now?’ asked Janki, a horrific misgiving throwing her mind into a panic.

  She was in old Farida Bi’s attic.

  She saw Janki and burst into a torrent of weeping in an uncontainable fit. She shook her head from side to side and wailed inconsolably, clinging to Janki in a hysterical cinch.

  Janki coaxed the girl down, sent for Davidson, the civil surgeon, who sedated the girl and left her to sleep her paroxysm off. It was forty-eight hours later that Chandni opened her eyes and stared wanly at Janki. Another two hours before she could be induced to speak.

  Then Janki stormed out of the room and roared for the phaeton to be brought round. She rode hell-bent to the chamber that Haq Sahib rented near the kutcherry to meet his clients. She burst into his room, raging like a bull, her splendid voice reeling out of control in a thunderous outcry. While behind her madness, behind the passion of murderous ferocity that swept over her, the cold counterpoint of inner commentary asked—was this rage the scalding music, the high point of her shame, for which her soul was painstakingly training, her throat the beastly foundry for this devastation that scorched all it turned on, melting stone to pith and flesh to blubber? She hurled abuse in every octave, swooping up and down frenzied scales, stumbled shuddering down the pit, charring all to cinders. A roaring raga of destruction in which her throat disgorged venom in sounds no longer human, the booming soul spasm climaxing in the violent jet of spit she hurled at Haq’s flinching face. She turned and fled the scene of her own convulsion, flung herself into the phaeton and tore sobbing down the roads towards her home.

  Next morning she appeared early at Hashmat Ullah’s office.

  ‘I have need to speak plainly with you, Hashmat Ullah Sahib.’

  He looked up, surprised. Then his face composed itself in its usual expression. ‘When have you ever spoken otherwise, madam?’

  ‘Spare me your jesting, I beg you.’

  ‘Allah forbid that I should dare jest with you.’

  Suddenly she swayed on her feet and dropped into the nearest chair. He started, stared, called frantically for water. She gulped it down, mopped her face and fell back into her chair. He fussed about, helpless.

  She mastered herself and smiled weakly. ‘As you see, its time I made my will, Hashmat Ullah Sahib.’

  He raised his hands to heaven. ‘Surely not, sahiba!’

  She pulled herself together. ‘Forgive me,’ she murmured. ‘As you know, I am never like this.’ Drawing a deep breath she let slip the information: ‘Haq Sahib shall now never, never cross my threshold again. This I have sworn.’

  He made no comment, kept a composed face, but could hardly suppress a certain glint. He asked for no details. She supplied none.

  ‘What I want to make sure,’ she went on, ‘is that not a rupee of mine, no, not a fake cowrie, should find its way into Abdul Haq’s pockets. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I understand you, madam, though what you ask is hardly feasible. Speaking as a lawyer, that is.’ His tone was grim.

  ‘You are the only one who is acquainted with the extent of my resources. Were I to will it away to my daughter-in-law . . .’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, madam, but you might only endanger the young lady, as you endangered her husband by adopting him. Pardon me, I speak plainly as you desired. I do not wish to deprecate anyone without reason, least of all your esteemed husband, but Abdul Haq Sahib’s intentions are open to speculation.’

  She looked hard at him
and whispered, ‘What certainty then of my own safety?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re quite safe, madam. You have many working years ahead. Many more songs to record still.’

  She grimaced. ‘What an old cynic you are, Hashmat Ullah Sahib. But if not a will, what then? Have you anything to suggest?’

  He pondered. ‘A trust, perhaps,’ he suggested. He spelt it out. The idea took shape. He remembered her old project and this time it made sense. It grew on her. A fund for girls—education, marriage expenses, contingencies. Yes, she felt the stirrings of an old engagement. ‘I shall be sole custodian, so long as I live. But after me maybe a committee. With members like Janab Maulvi Fazle Rab Sahib, the pensions deputy collector, and Rai Man Mohan Lal Sahib, the special magistrate.’

  Here he thought fit to caution her. ‘Haq Sahib too might stake his claim to trusteeship, madam, which in the absence of a formal termination of your relations—in law, I mean, which of course he shall naturally contest—you shall hardly be in a position to decline. But there shall be three other trustees, including myself, to oppose misuse.’

  ‘And misappropriation. And also,’ she stipulated, ‘no religion please. I’m through with Hindus and Muslims both, so no more. For the Trust’s sake let us have two Hindu trustees and two Muslims. A Shia, a Sunni, and by my wish, a Bengali, a Kayasth.’