No Full Stops in India

by Mark Tully

  The next stage in the wedding was the evening feast. In most Indian communities the bride's party has to feed the barat before they themselves can start eating. In Chandre's biradari it was a free-for-all. Outside caterers had cooked chana (chick-peas) and potatoes, the sabzi or vegetable was loki – a kind of marrow. For a dessert there were laddoos – sweets made from gram-flour and sugar. Food was served on paper plates instead of the traditional dried leaves. Chandre did not change for dinner.

  After dinner, the party started again. Fireworks added to the excitement. The air was thick with the acrid smell of biris or cheap cigarettes, the smoke from the fireworks and the fumes of the barat's generator. The members of the barat breathed the sour smell of cheap country liquor, but I saw only one young man who was obviously drunk. He was led away by his friends, presumably to rest and sober up. There was no disorderliness, no fighting.

  I saw Mahipal and two other young men making their way through the chaos with charpais on their head. Sensing that they were meant for us, I went over and asked where they were going. Mahipal said he was taking the charpais to the temple on the embankment, about a quarter of a mile away, where arrangements had been made for us to sleep. I persuaded Mahipal that we would be quite happy sleeping in the courtyard, and so he took the charpais back. We went to bed under the night sky outside Chandre's house. That was a decision I was to regret.

  It wasn't until the fireworks, music and dancing ended at five o'clock in the morning that I managed to get any sleep. The respite didn't last long – I was soon awakened by loud snoring. At first I thought I had been woken by my own snoring – that has happened. But then I came to my senses and realized that the offender must be someone else, because the snoring had not stopped. I looked across to the charpais where Gilly and Avrille were sleeping peacefully, with their mouths shut. Neither of them was the culprit. The snoring was unusually loud but very regular and seemed to be coming from almost under my charpai, but when I leant over the edge of the bed I could see nothing. I gave up, covered my head with my sheet and somehow managed to get to sleep again. At first light I was woken up by a young girl removing a large log of wood from a hole in the mud wall just by my charpai. There was a great deal of grunting and snuffling and a huge black sow crawled through the hole on bended knees. A long, thin snout, fangs and a comb of bristles along her back showed that the blood of a wild boar ran in her veins, so it would probably not have been a good thing if I had tried to stop her snoring. Wild or not, however, the sow had a very good relationship with the young girl, who drove her past my charpai and out towards the fields, crying ‘Harrrrr, Harrrrr, Harrrrr!’

  A few minutes later we were brought steel mugs full of steaming sweet tea, and Chandre's relatives enquired solicitously about the next of the day's problems – what they called ‘lavatory’. I lacked the dexterity to perform my morning offices squatting in the fields and so gladly accepted the offer of the facilities in the hostel of the nearby temple. Gilly and Avrille disappeared with Chandre's sister-in-law for their ablutions, which were more thorough than mine. They had full-scale bucket-baths, dousing themselves with water from a huge brass pot while hidden from the other guests by a mud wall built as a screen to one side of the courtyard in Chandre's sister-in-law's house. My ablutions did little for my appearance, which was by now beginning to resemble Chandre's on the night before, but after their baths Avrille and Gilly looked as though they had spent the night in a luxury hotel. I wanted for breakfast, while they went off to see Rani.

  We had been told that the auspicious time for the wedding ceremony had been set for the early morning, but Rani had still not bathed or put on her wedding finery. She was sitting in the room beside the courtyard where the wedding was to take place, attended by her female relatives. She stared at the floor and wouldn't speak – wedding nerves had got the better of her. Eventually she admitted that she hadn't slept all night. For most of the time she had stayed inside the room, but occasionally she had gone out into the courtyard to serve water to her guests. ‘Poor child,’ said Chandre's sister-in-law. ‘At times like this a girl should have her mother near her. We are doing what we can, but a mother is something special for a girl.’ As Gilly and Avrille left, they heard the sister-in-law offering motherly advice to the young bride. ‘Respect your mother and father-in-law. Live with them in peace and listen to what they tell you. Look after your husband. Above all, don't fight with anyone in your new home.’

  While the girls were away, Chandre came to keep me company. I asked him what he had done all night. ‘Nothing,’ he said with surprise. ‘Come on, Chandre,’ I said. ‘Did you talk to people?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I asked them, “Is everything all right?” They said, “Yes, it's fine.” But everyone wanted to know about you. They said the best thing about the wedding was that you, my sahib, had come.’

  Seeing my embarrassment and disbelief, Chandre said, ‘Honestly. It's true.’

  I hurriedly changed the subject to Chandre's still unkempt appearance. ‘You really can't go to Rani's wedding ceremony in those clothes,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I have got some new clothes. You'll be surprised when you see them, but I have still got a lot of work to do.’

  ‘What work?’ I asked. ‘Surely it's nearly time for the marriage to take place. You said it would be early in the morning because that was the auspicious time.’

  ‘Well, if we aren't ready, it can't be,’ said Chandre with his customary logic.

  ‘But what is this work?’ I insisted.

  ‘Well, I've got to cook your breakfast, haven't I?’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘We can go without that if necessary. Why don't you go and get changed so that the marriage can start?’

  But Chandre could not be budged. All I could achieve was to persuade him that he should start cooking breakfast at once.

  After breakfast we hung around watching cooks kneading a mound of atta into dough for chapattis, to be baked in a tandoor or oven they had dug in the ground. This was the start of the preparations for the main feast. The members of the barat were waking up and straggling bleary-eyed into the fields for their lavatory.

  We wandered around aimlessly until a miraculously transformed Chandre reappeared to take us to the ceremony. His hair was neatly brushed, he was closely shaved and he was wearing an immaculately pressed, cream silk kurta with matching trousers. I had never seen him look so smart.

  The wedding took place in the small courtyard of the house where Rani was staying. We were very touched to see that she was wearing the pink sari we had given her. The edge of her sari was drawn over her face. Manoj was sitting next to her, wearing a smart suit buttoned up to the collar and a pink turban topped with a crown made of silver and gold paper covered with flowers. The couple were sitting on the ground under a conical thatch supported by three upturned ploughs. A stick stood in the middle of this mandap or platform with mango leaves and earthen pots tied to it. Women sat in one corner of the courtyard singing songs of rejoicing. Relatives filed past Manoj and Rani, touching her feet and smearing tilaks on his forehead, and putting money into a steel tray by the fire. No Brahmin priest was involved in the ceremony, but the elderly chaudhuri who had supervised the business transactions the night before squatted by the fire reciting mantras and dropping herbs into the flames.

  Eventually the chaudhuri told the couple to stand up. He tied Manoj's scarf to a white cotton shawl which Rani was wearing and gave them a gentle shove towards the fire. Manoj led his bride around the flames seven times – a marriage is said to be a bond which lasts seven lifetimes. Some of the bridegroom's party let off fireworks, but this was soon stopped by the elders from Chandre's side. The couple then went inside the house to be ‘worshipped’ by the guests. Rani, according to tradition, should not have lifted her veil until she reached her in-laws' house, but happily for all of us she did show her pretty face, now smiling shyly. She wore a heavy gold
ring through her nose, and a pendant on her forehead hung from a gold chain pinned to her parting.

  Chandre had slipped out before the ceremony ended – he had received a message that the cooks were refusing to start baking the chapattis until they were given a bottle of liquor, and he had gone to find them one. He was back and waiting for us when we came out of the house after paying our respects to the couple. ‘Come quickly,’ he said – ‘I want you to see the pigs.’ There they were in the open space in front of the basti – two monsters, trussed up in the back of a three-wheeled minitruck. As they were being lowered to the ground, Chandre said to me with pride, ‘One weighs more than a quintal [a hundredweight].’ I was relieved that the pigs had come from outside and that my friend of the previous night was not to be sacrificed.

  None of us wanted to watch the slaughter, but Chandre insisted. Mahipal came forward with a long iron spike, knelt beside the larger of the two pigs and stabbed it through the heart. Then we knew what to squeal like a pig means. After the pigs’ bristles had been singed off with burning straw, Mahipal washed off the black, charred hair under the pump and started to cut the carcasses up into small pieces for the curry. The meat was cooked in huge, black metal pans, stirred with bamboo sticks.

  While the guests were waiting for their feast, they were kept amused by a magic-wallah and three young men who specialized in dances appropriate for a day when fertility was very much on people's minds. Two of them were young and slim; they were dressed in saris with false breasts filling out their blouses. The third was slightly older, his teeth were stained by pan, or betel-leaf, and he looked thoroughly dissipated. He was dressed like a monkey with a large tail and a larger penis, which he used to good effect to entertain the guests and arouse the young dancers. They wiggled their hips and wobbled their false breasts seductively to the music of bagpipes – not instruments I would have associated with this sort of entertainment. Eventually one of the young ‘women’ fell to the ground in ecstasy and the ‘monkey’ leapt on top of her to shouts of approval from the audience.

  We were never to know what other entertainments lay in store for the guests, because Chandre came to call us for our lunch – chicken curry, which had been specially prepared for us because pork is one thing I won't eat in India.

  As we had to get back to Delhi that night, Chandre excused us from waiting for the barat to move off and take Rani to her new home. The whole wedding party seemed to surround our little red van to see us off, but we eventually completed our goodbyes and were allowed to leave accompanied by our dhobi and his wife.

  As we drove away, I thought how removed I had been from the wedding itself. I had been treated like royalty: the guests were honoured by my presence, but they kept their distance. I wondered whether I had been at fault – whether I should have made more effort to talk to members of the barat. Perhaps I should have stayed up all night. On many occasions I still have difficulty in knowing how to be a foreigner in India, but at the wedding I don't think it was entirely a problem of being a foreigner – I was Chandre's sahib, and the members of Chandre's biradari don't expect to be on intimate terms with their employer. Then again, the wedding was also very much an affair of Chandre's biradari, and I think that anyone from outside that tight-knit community would have felt a stranger. I have talked to Chandre about this since the wedding, and he has assured me that I did exactly what was right. I am still not sure: I would feel more comfortable if I had taken more part in the wedding, but that would have meant forcing myself on the guests, which can be just as condescending as standing slightly aloof – and incidentally a lot more embarrassing for everyone.

  Within a year of the wedding in Molanpur, Rani had given birth to a son in hospital in Delhi. When Chandre first saw him he burst into tears, because the baby's left foot was twisted at a right angle to his leg. Rani, more sensibly, accepted the doctor's assurance that this could be put right by six months in plaster.

  When Rani returned from hospital, Gilly and Avrille took her aside and explained how putting off her next child would help her to look after herself and her baby's health, and would mean that the family would be better off. Her husband, Manoj, was unemployed. They suggested an IUD and told her it would not harm her or her baby, or prevent her having children later on. It transpired that Rani already knew all about family planning from friends and television – all she needed was some help in going about it. So the next day she went off happily with Gilly to the local Marie Stopes clinic. Manoj put up some opposition, but Rani handled him efficiently and he was won over. Unfortunately, the women of his village were not amenable to persuasion. When the baby's foot had been straightened and Rani returned to her in-laws’ home, the women there insisted she have the IUD removed – they thought she had been immoral to interfere with herself.

  Chandre was much exercised about getting a job for his son-in-law. Avrille sent Manoj and Rani for an interview as domestic servants for an executive of a Middle East airline. When they came back, Chandre came to me with a long face and said, ‘I don't know whether I should let Rani live in the house of a habshi.’ ‘Habshi’ means ‘Negro’.

  I told Chandre rather pompously that there was nothing wrong with Africans, and anyhow this man was an Arab. Chandre replied, ‘That's all right, but Rani says that the habshi wants her to cook beef.’

  ‘Well, you sometimes cook buffalo here.’

  ‘That's true. But these people, they eat too much meat.’ I couldn't budge Chandre, but Rani herself overruled his objections and the couple went off to work for the airline executive. Unfortunately Manoj didn't take to domestic service – it was nothing to do with the beef, it was just that he didn't like the work – so he's now back in his village waiting for me to find him a more congenial job.

  Shortly after Manoj gave up domestic service, Gilly and I returned to Molanpur. When I started to write Chandre's story, I realized that I needed to know more about his village. With Chandre as guide, we managed to get lost within a mile of the village – which didn't seem to surprise any of his biradari. It was a cool winter afternoon. There was a cloudless, bright-blue sky – the sort of sky that welcomed me when I first came to Delhi in 1965, though a foul, throat-rasping smog now characterizes winter in the Indian capital. Without a wedding to motivate it, Molanpur was looking a little shabby. The thatched roof of one of the houses had collapsed, and the paintings on the walls had faded. There were piles of dried cow-dung where we had stood to welcome the barat.

  The first thing I wanted to do was to see the field from which Chandre had run away to Delhi. Chandre said he would send some chokras – young boys – with us. He never bothers to visit his own fields, which are cultivated for him by a member of the Yadav farming caste. On the outskirts of Molanpur, some Yadav farmers were crushing sugar cane to make gur or jaggery – coarse brown sugar. A pair of bullocks yoked to a shaft walked round and round in a circle. The shaft turned two drums, between which the cane was crushed. A young boy walked behind the bullocks, clicking his tongue, flicking their tails and occasionally thwacking them with a stick of sugar cane to make sure their monotonous task didn't send them to sleep. Nearby, the glutinous green juice squeezed out of the cane simmered in an open black pan at least five feet in diameter. The pan was heated by an oven dug into the ground and fuelled by crushed cane and eucalyptus leaves. Even the water used to wash out the pan after each boiling was not wasted – it was given to the cattle to drink. The farmers told me that this was the only industry in the area, and it was very much a seasonal affair. Molanpur had done quite good business in hand-sewn shoes, but the cobblers had lost out to nasty, cheap plastic products.

  We crossed the bandh or embankment which protects Molanpur from the Ganges and walked towards the sacred river. The mud path was baked hard by the sun. A sea of yellow stretched away into the distance on both sides – the bright yellow of mustard and the lighter yellow of ripening wheat. The boys didn't know exactly which of the small fields belonged to Chandre, but they assured us that s
ome of them did. Clumps of sainta grass fifteen-feet tall hid the Ganges from us. We asked the boys how far the river was, and when they said a mile or so we decided to walk on.

  Indian villagers are notoriously bad measurers of distance, but fortunately these boys were not too far out. When we reached the sacred river, the sun was going down behind broken clouds. It was what is known in the villages of northern India as a ‘partridge-feather’ sky. The setting sun cast a glittering golden band across the waters of the Ganges. The ragged banks and islands of sand testified to the river's wanderlust – the Ganges knows no boundaries. A man stood waist-deep in the water, praying with his face turned towards the fast-setting sun. It was one of those many moments when I think, ‘I can never leave this country.’

  As we walked back to Molanpur, villagers were returning home – on their heads, bundles of the long grass which is used for thatching and making furniture. Fires were glowing beside the tube-wells where farmers were settling down to keep watch on the pumps which would irrigate their fields throughout the night. The boys asked me to get them jobs in Delhi. I tried to persuade them that I didn't have any influence with the government, but I don't think they were convinced.

  That night we again sat down inside the basti where we had waited for the wedding to start. Chandre's relatives gathered around us. Tau, who had never contributed to Rani's wedding expenses, brought out his hookah. Chandre's nephew Kamal said, ‘Most of us smoke biris or cigarettes now.’

  Hari Singh, the Yadav farmer who worked Chandre's land, sat on the edge of a charpai. If most of what I'd read about caste in Indian newspapers had been true, he should never have allowed himself to be seen in a Harijan basti. I had once asked Chandre how he could trust a man outside his biradari to farm his land for him – especially when that man came from a higher caste, and a caste which was notorious for brutalities against Harijans. Chandre replied, ‘We went to the embankment and he swore by the baba [Hindu holy man] of the temple that he would not cheat me. I don't think he has. In fact he is a friend. When his wife was ill, he brought her to Delhi and he stayed with me while his wife was in hospital.’