All the Lives We Never Lived

by Anuradha Roy

  With much love,

  Gay

  13th Sept. 1941

  My dear Lis,

  My birthday. You would have arrived with an iced cake & being impractical, 31 candles—which we would never have got lit all together—& that would have driven NC mad. The extravagance, the childishness, the needless frivolity. Would Mukti Devi have a birthday cake, ever? Never! Tch tch, the very thought. He’d have let himself out of the back gate & not come back till he thought the coast was clear. Brijen would have sung an extra song for me and brought the creamiest kulfi from the street, tasting of salt and sugar and saffron. When I was a child, nobody did anything for my birthday, it was not important. You were the first to make it so. Every year without you, I’ve tried to imagine you here, have done something festive even if alone.

  Well, this time I was not alone on my birthday. I had a visitor. It was very unexpected—it was a Mr. Kimura from Den Pasar, which is the next town. I had never met him, but I had heard the name—he is a Japanese diplomat or official of some sort. Anyway, I was working on WS’s verandah at that time—I’ve taken to doing that because it overlooks the stone pond & it has a cool red cement floor on which I stand barefoot while I paint. I was actually sitting on the floor cross-legged at that time & painting designs onto a few pots, all wrapped up in my work, so I jumped in alarm when he appeared. I tried to smooth my hair—it was such a mess & it became worse because I managed to smear it with my clayey paint.

  Mr. Kimura was impeccable in a black suit, white shirt, a well-behaved & smiling Penguin with perfect English, bowing exactly as the Japanese are said to do—though I had never seen it before. He said he had heard there was a famous Indian painter here (Famous? I?!) in Tjampuhan & as he was passing through he wanted to see for himself. Rabindranath Tagore had once been to Japan, did I know that? He offered his deepest condolences on the Poet’s recent death—oh, I had not known of his death? Then his sympathies and sadness at being the bringer of bad news. It had happened last month—perhaps the newspaper had not reached me.

  After this he sat down & told me to continue, he had come all this way to see me at work, he said, I was not to stop. I sat on the floor again, as I had been sitting, but now it felt very awkward, with him watching from the broad sofa which is set against one of the walls, tapping his long fingers on the armrest. I couldn’t keep my eyes on my paint nor on my pot, kept being distracted by the magenta bootlaces on his gleaming black shoes. Anyway, I tried to paint & he did not take his eyes off me & then for no reason that I could see, he went to Indah & picked her up, placed her beside him & sat again. She was restless & trying to wriggle away, but he had one hand firmly gripping her neck & one hand stroking her back.

  That bony, ragged back. Lis, a shiver went down my spine, I couldn’t hold my brush still. I thought he would break her neck, just squeeze so hard it would break. I told him Indah likes to be on the floor, maybe he could let her go, but he said, “She seems comfortable. Please do not worry yourself. Please continue.” There was something menacing about him—I cannot pin it down to any specific thing he did—despite his polite manner. I dropped one of the raw bowls on the floor & it cracked & he said nothing. I applied myself to the remaining bowls. Tried to stick to swirls & whirls & bamboo stalks. He murmured about tenmoku & celadon glazes & straw brushes & bamboo brushes—bamboo best for painting those bamboo stalks, he kept repeating.

  After this had gone on for a while, Ni Wayan brought us some lemon barley on a tray. One of the glasses was chipped, there were no biscuits or anything to eat with it. I apologized for our slovenly service. Mr. Kimura did not seem interested in the drink anyway, but this broke the spell & to my relief, he took his hands off Indah—she slunk off at once. Mr K then stood up & said, “Beautiful dog, even if old. Should you be wishing to leave Bali for your country in the near future, I would be more than happy & willing to adopt her.”

  The way he said it, I felt a sudden chill, as though he was trying to tell me something. He was saying I ought to leave. Is that not so? Was he warning me about an imminent Japanese invasion? Everyone talks about it and nobody thinks it will happen, or if it does we think that it will not touch us here in Tjampuhan. Am I just imagining things? I wiped my hands on my cloth & got up from the floor & made some polite noises—wouldn’t he please have some lemonade—lemon from our own trees etc. But he ignored all that & picked up his neatly furled umbrella from the corner & waved me away when I started to accompany him out of the verandah & up the stairs cut into the hillside. “Please, madam. You are not fit enough to come out into the sun. You have jaundice, it is clear from your eyes,” he said. If I wanted a doctor, there was one in Den Pasar he knew, not Dutch but Japanese, who knew tropical diseases well.

  Ni Wayan was scornful when I told her Mr. Kimura was trying to tell us something important. What difference does it make to us if the Japanese come? We are ruled by the Dutch now. Later we’ll be ruled by Japanese, she said.

  No friend here. It is hard to know what to do. If only I had someone to talk to.

  I’ve been examining my eyes & fingernails ever since he left—for yellowishness. Isn’t that what jaundice is supposed to do? Make you yellow like turmeric? I feel weak sometimes, it is true, but that has been for a while, ever since the fevers started. It passes. I’m as slim & trim now as I was when I was sixteen—I can’t eat too much—at last! Maybe now’s the time to wear one of your dresses & feel young & pretty.

  No news from WS. I miss him. I miss the sound of his piano & his mad fervor for beetles.

  The Bring Home Myshkin Fund—it never took off at all. I wonder when/if I will ever see WS or Myshkin again. Is this how partings happen? No word, no preparation, it is over and you didn’t even know it. Will I ever see Beryl again? She’s in England now, in the middle of the war. No news from any of you either.

  The newspaper comes weeks late or not at all & mostly they are in Dutch. I listen to the radio sometimes & then turn it off because the news is so grim. Better not to know. What good has it done me to know that Rabi Babu is dead? It is as if one last beautiful part of my childhood is gone. Everything feels emptier now. I would rather be the fool who lives in her imagined paradise.

  I should post this letter. I started it on my birthday, but now it’s more than a week later. I write it when I have energy, put it away & sleep when I’m tired. The life of a lady of leisure. Sipping lemonade spiked with the last of the gin. Once the gin goes there will be arak in plenty!

  Much love to you & to my Myshkin (Will you tell him please that I am well and coming home soon?)

  Gay

  October 3rd 1941

  Dear Lis,

  I sent you a long letter only two weeks ago. This just to say—nothing to be alarmed about, but I do feel rather more unwell. Have decided to be practical & will go to Surabaya—to Lokumull’s house, rest and get better—& from there back home. I am sure he will find a passage for me to Singapore, war or no war, once I am well enough to travel further. He has friends in Singapore—they will put me on a ship to Ceylon & so on & on & on until I reach you like a parcel passed from one to another.

  I am taking Indah with me. I cannot bear to leave her behind, she’s my only friend left here & she’s old & helpless & half blind. I will eventually turn up in Madras + Kintamani dog. You will come & meet me there, won’t you, so we can plot & plan my future? Bring Myshkin with you for sure, I long to see him, my eyes are starving for him.

  I am running ahead of myself. I haven’t even left Tjampuhan yet.

  I feel all vomity. My stomach’s gone—you would hate the details, I’ll spare you them. I have a fever. I burn up with it, my skin goes as dry as a dead leaf & I babble nonsense when it comes. Maybe I babble in Hindi or Bengali. I do hope so—what if I’m saying scandalous things? I’m a mean old woman now, Lis, shriveled up with rage. How could it have ended this way? Just when my life was turning a curve and what lay ahead was beautiful. How could a war thousands of miles away have done this to me? I am furiou
s about everything. If they gave me a gun, I’d kill.

  They’ve brought me some medicine, but it smells so peculiar I don’t dare. Ni Wayan has sacrificed a rooster to make me well and nailed its carcass near the entrance door by its wing. Gruesome. I tried to stop her, how could killing something make me better? She said I don’t know how these things work.

  I think it’s typhoid, will pass. Am trying to remember what my father-in-law used to prescribe for typhoid. Can’t. My head’s addled. Do you remember? How will you tell me?

  I am determined to be well enough to reach Madras. And I will. Once I have seen Myshkin & you again, I don’t care what happens next.

  Make a wish on the evening star as you used to, Lis, that we will be together again before too long.

  With much love,

  Gay

  26

  BY THE TIME I finished reading my mother’s letters, it was that hour between night and morning when the crows are about to start scraping a croak from their gray throats. My eyes were tired, my neck ached, I knew I would not be able to sleep now. I folded the letters back into their envelope and rose to make myself some tea. As always I dithered between Assam and Darjeeling, then settled on Darjeeling, the best kind, fresh and grassy, which comes from a remote estate that few people know about. The manager sends it to me now and then in gratitude for the gardens and orchards I created for him two decades ago when he bought a piece of hill near the tea estate. His ten acres included a natural spring and during the months I was there, I would sit by its side at the end of each day’s work, drinking tea brewed in springwater on a wood fire that I lit on the bank. It was one of the few things that did not taste bitter at a time when my own life felt like a shirt that did not fit, it never had, it never would. But that dark interval passed as inexplicably as it had come. I returned to my work, my old town, and my outbuilding as if to an alien civilization in which I had to find my bearings again slowly, relearn the language and the rules.

  My water was boiling. I took my cup from its place on the shelf. I am careful with it. It is a tall, simple cup, narrow at the base, slightly flared in the waist, and then it narrows again smoothly, like a just-opened tulip. No embellishments. Pure white porcelain, handmade, and the maker’s signature is stamped on the base in Chinese characters. Ila’s daughter—my niece who is a daughter to me as well—brought me this cup a few weeks ago, from one of her trips abroad. She put it down on my table along with a copy of an old book I had asked her for, saying with a gleam in her eyes, “There, Myshkin Unc, the two most exciting things a man’s life could have: a cup for tea and a tatty old gardening book.”

  After that she had thrown her head back and laughed, running her fingers through her long hair. The stack of silver bangles on her arms rang together. “Come on, there’s still time! Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy! Do something new.”

  Like everyone else, she thinks me inconsequential. A pedant who says the names of trees in Latin. A man who chose neither pen nor sword but a trowel.

  Her view of the world is not unusual. My father too was appalled by my choice of work when I first told him about it. “A horticulturist? You mean you want to be a gardener?” He had swept his newspaper off his table, his glasses along with it, he needed so badly to express his fury. “When there are a thousand things to be done? Interesting work, important work, relevant work! When you are nineteen and our country is not even a year old?” He urged me to open my eyes. Could I really not see what a gigantic project there was ahead for every young, patriotic Indian? Was I blind? Did I have no sense of the Higher Purpose? Horticulture! When our just-freed country had to be pulled out of poverty, hunger, violence, illiteracy—what I wanted to do was grow flowers? Perhaps the cause of his fury was a fear that I was turning out as whimsical as my misguided mother was thought to be.

  If I talked about my work on visits home, he would change the subject or pointedly walk away. I told him once about my days on the outskirts of Delhi with a group of city planners, mapping out sun-hardened thorn fields that were to become resettlement areas for the millions who were homeless overnight after Partition: they could not remain in refugee shanties forever, I said, they needed places to live. Around the city was dry, rocky land that had to be swiftly transformed into dwelling areas. The houses would need to be grouped around parks and avenues, and even as the foundations were being laid we would start our work by planting several thousand trees.

  My father frowned distractedly at the corner of the verandah and said, “I’m sure I left my umbrella there and now it’s gone.”

  I soldiered on with increasing desperation, describing the scale of it—beyond imagining. The feeling of helplessness when you saw the anthills of refugee tents teeming with people who had lost their homes.

  My father cut in: “Yes, there are engineers and planners. There are refugees who have lost everything. And what are you doing there, can you tell me? Growing dahlias?”

  Through his years in jail he had acquired a new truculence and venom. Now he wanted not only to stab with his words, he also twisted the knife. On my first holiday after I started working, in a pathetic effort to impress him I had brought along the framed photograph of a letter addressed to Mr. Percy-Lancaster.

  “I wish to convey my appreciation and gratitude,” the letter said, “for the excellent floral arrangements and decorations that had been made at your instance at the time of Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral and for the special train conveying his ashes to Allahabad. The personal interest you took in these arrangements no doubt led to their success.”

  The letter was dated February 1948, it was signed Jawaharlal Nehru and was addressed to Mr. Percy-Lancaster, whose chief assistant I had been for the funeral arrangements. I told my father this, hoping that a letter from the prime minister of India would make him less skeptical about the nature of my work.

  In 1948, on the brink of turning twenty, I went to Delhi to start work, imagining I would discover new species, create hybrids that would be named after me. Instead, only two weeks into my new life, Mr Percy-Lancaster summoned me late one evening to give me the news: the Mahatma had been shot dead by a Hindu fanatic. What this meant for the country and for the world was for the world and the country to work out; did I know what it meant for the office of the Superintendent of Horticulture? We had just one day to find the flowers for a funeral at least a million people would attend. An army truck was to be turned into a floral chariot to carry the Mahatma’s body to the banks of the Yamuna, enough flowers were needed for air force planes to scatter petals all along the five-mile route to the river, sandalwood logs would be needed for the pyre, flowers would be needed to decorate the train that would carry the ashes to Allahabad. As I described each stage of the funeral to my father—the restless ocean of mourners, the stray dog which ambled across the road holding up the cortège, the constant fear of violence, the sickly scent of ghee and tuberoses—I saw that for all his devotion to the Mahatma, he seemed irritable.

  “So the flower arrangements at my funeral will be impeccable,” he said when I had finished. “How very reassuring.”

  Two years later, when my father died, I was in Delhi working with Mr. Percy-Lancaster to lay out the Sunder Nursery. It was to be the city’s main nursery on a hundred acres of land, with a somber backdrop, the grand desolation of the Mughal emperor Humayan’s tomb. After the news of my father’s death came through a long-distance call on the only phone in the office, I returned the heavy black receiver to its cradle and left the room with no words of explanation even though Mr. Percy-Lancaster’s eyes followed me in questioning silence. I walked for long hours among the crumbling Mughal monuments that shrouded the area. Dusk drew the trees closer. I sat against a peepal thinking that by now someone must have set a flaming torch to my father’s pyre. What Hindus considered a son’s sacred duty. I would not reach Muntazir in time to light the flame, I had told Ila on the phone with calm practicality. They were not to wait for me. Bodies decay swiftly in the humid heat of August.


  The gardening book Ila’s daughter brought for me, certainly both tatty and old, was written by the man who designed the garden for Government House in Karachi. I opened it after I sat down with my tea. A fine line of dust rested within the seams of each page, making me sneeze. Every chapter appeared to begin with a quotation from a poet called Patience Strong rhapsodizing about plants and trees. I have never been able to understand why men who wrote books on gardens in India were so susceptible to gush. Mr. Percy-Lancaster too, despite his crusty exterior, was given to quoting verses nauseating for their piety. Give me Gopal the foulmouthed park gardener any day.

  As I turned the pages, impatiently flipping over sections about how a part of the garden had to be demarcated as the lady’s boudoir and another as the dining room, I came upon a passage which made me think Mr. Grindal had a vein of ruthlessness that made his mush appear more sinister than sentimental.

  Where field rats are the only trouble, they may be exterminated in a simpler way by blowing smoke down their runs. For temporary use, all that is required is an earthen pot and a pair of country bellows. A hole to fit the nozzle of the bellows is made on the side of the pot which is filled with combustible material, green neem leaves, and a sprinkling of sulfur powder. The material is first ignited and, when burning well, the pot is inverted with its mouth over the entrance to the run. The smoke is forced through the runs by vigorous use of the bellows and either drives out the rats in a stupefied condition, when they are easily dealt with, or suffocates them in their burrows.