by Anuradha Roy
Over time, I came to hear the many stories about the singer, Akhtari Bai, as she was known until she married a barrister about a decade later and came to be called Begum Akhtar. It was well known that a poet in Lucknow, who had gone mad for her beauty and her voice, had roamed the city robbed of every word other than her name, writing it on the walls in chalk, wandering dementedly until one day he was found dead in the street. It was said that the Nawab of Rampur was so infatuated by her that he wrapped her in gold, swore her smile was brighter than the sparkle of diamonds, and worshipped her every whisper. She grew tired of the gilded cage. She devised ingenious ways to infuriate him to her heart’s content, then ran away, taking with her all the jewelry he had draped her with.
The day before the concert at Dinu’s, Akhtari Bai turned melancholic and she dredged up old stories about false promises, broken hearts, and dark conspiracies to my mother, who spent the entire day in her room, emerging in the evening smelling of cigarette smoke and rum, oddly bright-eyed, tired and so distracted she talked of nothing else at dinner. Akhtari Bai was convinced a rival was trying to feed her herbs that would permanently ruin her voice, she could feel her voice going and the world crashing down. She had been poisoned once as a child and her sister had died of it, but she had lived and swore she knew how poison slithered through your blood to suck your veins dry. Between her spells of grief and suspicion she burst into uncontrollable, loud laughter. She laughed until her stomach ached, but she could not stop. My mother listened and sympathized and Brijen Chacha sent in bottle after bottle of rum and packs of Capstan cigarettes to her room while his brother fumed.
“Sometimes you simply have to have something. You feel something pulling you towards it. You can’t fight it,” my mother had said to my father once. It occurred to me much later that she was talking about herself. When was it that the thought of leaving first crossed her mind? I have so often tried to work it out. Did she start dreaming of escape soon after she met Mr. Spies and Beryl? Did it happen on the train ride down from our mountain holiday? Perhaps it was after she met the singer that it became inescapable—the sense that she too was made for a different life.
I speculate about what Akhtari Bai told her in that room over the hours they spent together, when they shared stories of lost opportunities and rash chance-taking. A young, beautiful singer living as she pleased, loving as her fancy took her, throwing tantrums, earning fame and money from her own gifts. In my mind’s eye I have often seen my mother trying one of Akhtari Bai’s Capstans, then her first sip of rum. When we played our hunting games, my grandfather called his sips of whisky doses of Dutch courage. I think Akhtari Bai was my mother’s dose of Dutch courage. The days with the singer gave her the final push towards a decision.
The evening of the concert, gaslights buzzed with insects in the front verandah, where a spotless white cloth had been spread over a big carpet. Bolsters and cushions covered with snowy white linen had been laid there for the singer and her troupe. This was to be the stage. Everything shone in the brilliance of the new lights. The rest of the garden was in darkness but for the flickering of a hundred earthen lamps. Incense sticks had been lit to perfume the evening and drive away mosquitoes. There was an air of throbbing excitement in the people streaming in for the concert: nobody could believe that a singer of this eminence, notoriety, and allure was in our staid neighborhood.
A quarter of an hour before the concert, I saw shadowy figures scurrying around searching for Akhtari Bai, and when Brijen Chacha cross-examined one of the accompanists, the man confessed that nobody knew where the singer was; she had not been seen for the past hour or more. Brijen Chacha roared at the watchman, Kharak Singh, who had put a dented pair of binoculars to his eyes and was peering over the wall in search of the singer. “Are you watching birds with that thing? Where is she?”
On the other side of the house, you could hear the guests chatter while we fanned out as a search party. Some went to the roof, others scoured the front garden, one determined enthusiast who seemed experienced in the ways of tracking down lost maestros walked through the rooms of the house checking the beds and shaking out the curtains as if nothing could be put past singers afflicted by gloom. But there was nobody in the house, only Dinu’s mother, grandmother, and aunts, who had been warned against stepping out, huddled listlessly together. In the end it was Rikki who spotted her, and barked the way she did when she was half-afraid: soft, tentative woofs.
At first the voice only lapped at the edges of our ears. It was a quiet voice, trying itself out, cracks at its edges. There were pauses for coughs; the clearing of a hoarse throat; fresh starts. By degrees the voice gathered power until it spilled from the back of the garden to where we stood. Who knows why your very name fills my eyes with tears today, she sang, and the darkness around the trees brimmed over with anguish. The air was laden with the powerful scent of Raat-ki-rani, the night jasmine that flowered in a great big bush at the edges, beyond the tree. Akhtari Bai was sitting in front of the perfumed shrub, eyes closed, lost to the world, one hand on an ear to shut out all other sound as she sang, dupatta off her head, nosepin sparkling in the light of our lanterns.
What is it about the evening that fills my eyes with tears today?
She was in shimmering white clothes and a pearl-and-gold tikli covered one side of her forehead. We could see Beryl de Zoete sitting beside her, back very straight, eyes never leaving the singer’s face. Next to them stood my mother, leaning against a tree. She wore a soft white muslin sari and no jewelry other than her usual gold earrings and a chain of twisted gold around her neck. Her hair was up in a bun that had loosened in all her running around. It was studded with crimson champa flowers. She saw us and came to me to whisper, “Quiet—tell Rikki to be quiet.” But at that moment, Rikki, ever obliging, let out a shrill volley of barks.
Akhtari Bai stopped and stumbled to her feet. She put her dupatta back on her head and shook out the folds of her clothes. “Don’t get up, please,” Brijen implored her. “You must sing wherever you want, whenever you want. We will come and listen wherever you choose to sing.” He turned and, with a dramatic change in tone, yelled ferociously at nobody in particular, “Gag that bloody cur!”
My mother stroked Rikki and said to Brijen, “Please don’t lose your temper. I’ll take her away.”
“Stay where you are,” he growled. “You are not to go anywhere.”
Akhtari Bai was not smiling when she turned to him. “Why won’t the dog bark? I’m no more than the village cockerel imitating a koel, the dog knows that. But this Englishwoman says she has spent one whole month here in this town and heard nothing worth listening to.” Her eyes glowed in the dark. “I told Gayatri, let me show the memsahib what real music is! The scent of these flowers, this sky cut with lightning, a head crammed with memories, and suddenly this ghazal came to me and filled me. The funny thing is that for once I was singing just for two women, not a roomful of men.” She broke into a merry laugh. “Women are nicer to sing to, Brijen Bhai! They are listening, not looking.”
Her voice rich with the liquids she had been drinking, she took a few steps towards the front garden. She swayed. Maybe she could not see in the half-dark, and she was very likely a little drunk. She reached out for Beryl de Zoete and held her elbow as she stumbled over clods of earth and tufts of grass. There was something tender and moving about the way a woman so small and unsteady placed her trust in a stranger from another country who towered over her. Beryl’s sweeping black dress was getting tangled underfoot, the feather she had stuck into a jeweled band around her head floated away, but she did not let go of the singer’s hand, propelling her slowly to safety.
When she reached the front garden, Akhtari Bai turned her face to the sky. Rapid lines of lightning shot across it, disappeared, returned. A low rumble came towards us through the trees. “Who knows if this is the end of the summer or the start of the rains? Who knows if anything is the end or the beginning?” she said with a wide general smile. Her li
ps were dark red, her eyes thickly lined with kajal.
“Well, your singer appears to have recovered her spirits,” my father said to Brijen Chacha. “With the help of a barrelful, no doubt.”
We progressed towards the verandah, and an immense wind came, blowing out the lamps and tugging bedsheets away to the corner of the garden in unruly bundles, sending some people fleeing for cover while others turned their faces up to the sky to feel the first rain of the monsoon. The shower set free the scents stored in the dry, hot earth and Akhtari Bai took a deep breath and cried, “Now I will sing!” She let go of Beryl and ran across the garden and into the verandah calling out, “Come, come, we will all sit on the verandah. I’ll sing a monsoon song.” Everyone stumbled towards the verandah to find places to sit, etiquette thrown to the gusty winds.
In the middle of the shuffling and scurrying and finding of places to sit, I saw my mother. Her hair cascaded to her waist and red flowers were trapped in its strands as if she had walked through a shower of blossoms. Gold glinted at her neck and ears, her sari trailed the grass. Her face was bright in the gaslights. In that split second, I saw a man’s hand reach out and place some fallen flowers into her palm and close it. I saw the hand, and the sleeve of a shirt or kurta, I could not tell which. For an instant her face shone with sweat and rain, then she disappeared into shadow.
This is the most vivid image I have of her in my head.
10
A FEW DAYS AFTER the concert, my mother told me a secret. A secret she and I alone would share, like the song she sang for me on the roof. I had to promise to say not a word to anyone, not even Rikki. She seated me on a chair and knelt before it so that her face was level with mine. When I swung my legs to bang them against the chair, she held my knees. “Don’t do that, be still, I need you to listen.” I stopped with an effort, although my legs started again in a minute, of their own accord.
She held my head between her hands and brought her forehead to mine. This close, her eyes were huge, her breath was warm and moist, her hair tickled my nose, and I went cross-eyed looking at her.
“I’m passing on my thoughts, can you feel them? They are very important thoughts,” she said in a whisper. “Can you keep them for me?” She pinched my nose gently and said, “What a little owl you are in those glasses. Who made you choose round ones?” She pushed my ears back, flat against my head. All this unaccustomed attention—I started to feel wary. Preparations for a visit to the eye doctor?
When she told me what the secret was it didn’t seem so important. The secret had two parts. The first was that she wanted me to come back from school on time the next afternoon. Not a minute late. This was vital, she said.
The second part was that she would take me on a little trip somewhere. A treat, just for me, but on condition that I got home on time and didn’t breathe one word to another soul. Not even Dinu. If I told anyone at all, she would not take me.
Bulbous slate-gray clouds sat in wait the next morning, low enough to touch. When my mother came out to see me off to school, she glanced up at the sky and shut her eyes with a squeal as she was showered by drops of water.
“Last night’s rain is still raining,” she said.
The big trees that shaded the house gleamed and when the wind shook their branches they set off showers from their wet leaves.
“The clouds are so dark, it will be a beautiful day. It’ll pour and pour and when the sun comes out there will be a rainbow right from here to the railway station.” She wiped her face with a corner of her sari. “You’d better hurry off to school, you mustn’t get wet. Are you carrying an extra shirt in your bag? You are not to sit in class soaked to the skin, you’ll get fever.”
I was about to cycle off when she called out, “Wait, get off that bike and come here.”
She hugged me tight for a long minute, kissed me on the top of my head and then on my forehead. I wriggled hard to break free, I was not used to sticky displays of affection from her, it made me awkward and self-conscious. But her touch sent a current of joy through me and I cycled away hoping she saw how fast I was going through the puddles, churning up slush.
“Remember what I said!” she cried out. “Don’t be late.”
“I’ll be back in time,” I shouted. “I’ll cycle fast.”
As the day progressed, my mother’s secret grew bigger inside me as if I were a balloon slowly filling up with air. I could not put my mind to my work in class and had to spend the maths period out in the corridor, standing there as punishment for inattention. After our games period, one of the boys in class, Egbert Samuel, locked the gym master in the equipment room. None of the other teachers knew the gym master was locked up and he had to shout and bang the door for two hours before he was let out. The principal arrived, holding a long cane that he swished in the air. “Stand up, all of you. Which one did this?”
A silence. The inquisition. The usual long-winded punishments. The details are mundane, but all of it took so long that by the time I reached my bicycle it was ten minutes to the time my mother had told me to be home. I pushed it off its stand. Barbed wires of white light streaked through the black sky. The birds had gone to their nests, thinking it was night. Berries from a jamun tree came pelting down with the wind and I remembered Ram Saran’s insistence that wind blew rain away. But he also said jamun on the trees meant the clouds were about to burst open, a storm on its way. Which of the two was right?
The rain came like curtains of broken glass. Hailstones came with it, hurtling down and bouncing off the ground as they fell. In a minute, I could no longer see to pedal and had to take shelter under a tree. A tree branch crashed to the earth, the path I was cycling on turned into a stream. Maybe fifteen minutes passed, maybe more, but it felt as long as half a day. After a while I started again, head bent against the steady rain. Close to home, I abandoned my cycle and ran the last stretch. I entered the house soaked to the bone, yelling, “Ma! Ma!”
I ran into the first room, expecting her to be pacing there impatiently. But it was Golak who came out towards me, followed by Rikki. She leaped up at my face to lick it and flung herself onto me again and again to tell me what was clear immediately: my mother was not at home.
“Bibiji left a little while ago,” Golak said. “She kept saying you were going to be here and she was to take you with her. But it got too late and she had to leave. No, she did not tell me where she was going.”
In the evening, when my father returned, my mother had still not come back. My father frowned. “What? Bibiji is not at home? Where is she? She said nothing? Banno? Banno!”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all this time. Not a word. She’s gone off without telling me what to cook, how many are at dinner, what am I to do?”
My father went into his bedroom and stayed there for a long time that evening, only coming out again to the drawing room at dinnertime. His tall and spare form was somehow smaller, perhaps because of the way his shoulders drooped and his back curved. For years afterwards, Banno Didi went on about how he was like a field of wheat flattened by a storm.
When my grandfather came back from the clinic, my father called the two of us into the drawing room and seated us. The formality of it made me contract with fear. My mother had gone away on a trip, he told us, and would not come back for a while. It might be a long while. A trip, my grandfather asked in a bemused tone, where to? Whatever for? Had her mother been taken ill in Delhi?
I do not recall the details of the conversation. My heart slammed against my rib cage. My tongue felt thick and big as if it would explode if I did not use it to speak. Why hadn’t I just pretended to be ill and rushed home? Was this the trip she had promised me? If it was a long trip, did it mean she would not come home for a week? Or a month? A dark, whirling storm of terror and confusion swept through me.
For some time, because of the invisible shield put around me by everyone, I kept thinking I would find my mother when I got home from school, or from the river, or from Dinu’s. It was o
nly after a few weeks, from the servants’ gossip at home and the questions and comments at school, that I digested a new version of what might have happened.
My mother had run away from us. She had gone off with another man.
Mr. Spies.
Mr. Spies, who played the harmonica for us and drew pictures and talked to Rikki in German. Mr. Spies who had become Dada’s closest friend. Mr. Spies and Beryl de Zoete had left with goodbyes and thank-yous to everyone, but not a word that they were taking my mother with them. They had kept it even from my grandfather.
It was a betrayal impossible to forgive. My mother knew when she left that she had poured petrol and set a match to every bridge between herself and her family. After such desertion, what forgiveness? She could never return, not even for me.
At first my father lived as he always had. He pretended—or perhaps he believed—that nothing had changed. As the days passed and my mother did not reappear my father acquired a slight hunch, as if he were trying not to be seen. Maybe he overheard some tittering from among the ranks of students and teachers—all at once he stopped going to work. He did not take to drink, nor did he start smoking. Instead he sat all day on the roof, reading. He stopped his walks in the morning, he stopped going to the Society. There were no more thoughts for the day. On some days he would not get out of bed at all and had to be pleaded with in the afternoon to eat a little. Other days he woke at dawn and sat still on the terrace, eyes shut, back ramrod straight, murmuring a shloka over and over again. This was extraordinary for us. Until then my father’s interest in the spiritual had been that of a philosopher’s—intrigued by different systems of thought but skeptical of them all.