by Meira Chand
*
Behind the screen, straightening the covers on her husband’s bed, Rekha listened to the quarrelling in the room beyond. Even as children, Meena and Sham always fought. Money, money, money. The word passed again and again through the screen. Before that long ago, terrible flight to Bombay, the word held little meaning for her. It was something taken for granted, like the glass of milk, thick and frothing, fresh from their own cow, that as a child had always waited with her breakfast. Now the word produced in her a leaden feeling, lived with like a chronic illness. The pain never left her and had drawn lines of suffering and resignation in her face. Sometimes now, catching sight of herself in a mirror, she stared at the elderly, white-haired woman, cheeks pouched and soft, eyes drooping sadly, and wondered at the change.
Kishin gave a groan, indicating the need to turn on his side. She put her arms about him, pulling the slack, bony weight of him forwards until he was comfortable. His body felt to her now like those chickens, plucked and bare, that the school cook had flung down, one after another, on to the kitchen table in preparation for lunch at Sind Model High School. They lay in an anaemic pile of flesh, all stringy muscle and poking bones beneath a thin, loose layer of skin. And this was now her Kishin.
Their marriage had not been arranged. She had loved him from the beginning, and stood fast through all opposition. The suitability of a match between their families had never been questioned. Both were from Sukkur, both intellectual Amil peoples of equivalent and substantial financial standing; marriages between the families had been made before.
Kishin was teaching in a college when she met him. She was a student in his class; her father believed in the education of women. Kishin’s wife of two years had recently killed herself and their new baby, in a bout of insanity. For all the brilliance of his lecturing, he had a haggard, haunted look. She found herself drawn immediately to him. Soon, their mutual feelings were apparent to everyone. The fourteen-year age gap was insurmountable, said the elders, but more than this, it was certain that a man whose wife had hung herself must have a curse upon him. He would blight any life he touched. No one would consider the match. They were forced to elope, and lived their first year together in scandalous disgrace. Then Kishin’s father died, principal of Sind Model High School, and willed the premises to his son. They had moved in, already with a first child, and things went smoothly from then on.
She remembered the sound of the bell echoing across the school compound, and the rush of boys to their lunch; always hungry, always noisy, always with grazed knees or splinters in their fingers. She smiled at the memory, at the happiness then that had filled her days, between the boys, between her own babies, between the tending and the teaching and the instructing of servants.
Then, and later, there seemed to be always a baby on the way. She bore them easily and they never thought to stop them. ‘Children are from God,’ Kishin always said. Later, she wondered how to stop them. It was said to be possible by modern ways, but the process appeared mysterious, its knowledge removed from her reach. And Kishin still said, ‘Children are from God,’ even without food to feed them.
She had given birth to Anu, her fifth child, on a refugee train out of Karachi. They left the school quietly one night. It had already been closed some weeks, because of the tense situation. Everyone was leaving, and they did not wish to flee in terror before a mob as Lokumal had. At that time they felt sure of soon returning, to open the school again. Their children marched in a crocodile, as if off to a picnic, each with a satchel on its back. At the bend in the road she had turned to look back at the school. The white walls were strangely luminous in the moonlight, and the old carved chair before their quarters lustrous on the verandah. Her mind made a quick inventory of their spacious, well furnished rooms; the covers on the bed she had twitched neatly into place before leaving, the silver bowls and trays hidden in bins of grain, the tea set of English bone china, recently bought from Mr Watumal, that she had stacked in a chest and pushed into a cupboard beneath the stairs. Soon she would return to retrieve these things. She tried not to notice, as she turned away, the heaviness of her heart. She placed a hand on her swollen belly and blamed the child for such feelings.
They were forced to go further than intended, to think of distances and trains. She had given thanks then for a talent of easy birthing, holding Anu in her arms, in a swaying railway carriage. In another coach a woman died as her child emerged feet first. Their journey had eventually ended in Bombay on the advice of Lokumal, whom they had met again in a soup kitchen queue in Delhi. They had arrived in Bombay without their eldest son, eight-year-old Haresh, who had died of a fever as they reached Nasik. Even now that memory brought tears. Rekha bit her lips and wiped a damp cloth over Kishin’s brow.
Above the bed there hung a photo of Kishin, taken soon after reaching Bombay. He stood proud and tall, in spite of recent trauma, hope for the future still at full tide. But soon Kishin no longer looked as in the photograph. Gradually flesh was whittled away, his shoulders stooped, his expression changed and his plump cheeks vanished, throwing his nose into greater prominence.
‘Ssh,’ Rekha soothed, patting his back as he moaned again. Once more Meena’s loud voice disturbed her thoughts. Anger rose suddenly in her and she pushed back the screen, tears welling into her eyes again.
‘Why please are you disturbing your father with quarrels? Brothers and sisters should love, not quarrel.’
Meena drew back sulkily before her mother’s anger. Sham sat with his head in his hands. Rekha stared at him sadly. She had already cried out her disappointment; she had forgiven him. Of shame and facing neighbours she had a lifetime of experience. Things passed; soon a new scandal appeared to take precedence and people forgot. So it would be with Sham. He would find work eventually. He was back with them safely; nothing else mattered. She went into the kitchen and returned with a plate of rice and a bowl of thin watery dal.
‘Eat, son, eat now.’ She put the plate before him. ‘It is late; you are hungry. Meena, bring that mango chutney Mrs Hathiramani has made for us. Give some to your brother.’
Meena glared at her mother but said nothing and fetched the chutney, banging the jar down on the table before Sham.
‘Why are you so angry, daughter?’ Rekha asked. ‘He must eat. We must keep him strong. He will find work, he will give us money soon.’
‘He knows only how to bring shame upon us. I cannot face my husband’s family.’ Meena drew herself up, thrusting out ample breasts. ‘You know how they are in that house, how I suffer.’ Her eyes flashed, the hoops of her earrings swung about.
‘Hush,’ said Rekha, her eyes wet again. The end of her cotton sari seemed permanently damp from wiping tears. ‘Shall I make a paratha for you, son? A little pure ghee is left.’
‘The last ghee our Ama will give to you,’ Meena screamed. ‘What a mother’s heart is for her son. Not for a daughter would she give the last ghee.’
‘Be quiet. Hold your tongue.’ Rekha raised her voice, but Meena would not be stopped.
‘From Japan he did not send me even one electrical appliance.’ Meena gave a sob, remembering the derision of her husband’s family, when the modern gadgets she had boasted her brother would send from Japan never came. Even a single such prestigious, foreign-made acquisition would have made all the difference to her life amongst the women of the family.
Rekha disappeared again behind the screen. Meena sat down and ignored her brother. Her children returned to their five-stones.
Lakshmi resumed massaging Chachi’s legs, and watched Padma and Veena begin to collect up papads, laid out that morning in a patch of sun, to rid them of mould and pests. The girls brushed each wafer with a cloth before putting them back in a box. Old Chachi’s legs, misshapen by arthritis, had the feel of knotty twigs below the swollen knees, and slack lumpy pillows above. Lakshmi’s fingertips gripped the line of Chachi’s shin, pressing and releasing in a steady rhythm, just as the old woman liked. The worn striped cotto
n of Chachi’s pyjama was frayed at the hem, the texture of her chiffon scarf had thickened with many washings, and aged to the same indeterminate colour as her long loose tunic, shapeless over shapeless breasts. She groaned with pleasure on her string bed, under Lakshmi’s fingers.
Lakshmi could not remember a time without Chachi, who had lived with them in Sadhbela long before she was born. Chachi’s husband had died of pneumonia on the platform of a Karachi railway station, during the flight from Sukkur. She had heard many times how Chachi and her two grown daughters, and Ama and Papa and their small children, had all camped about the invalid on the platform, missing trains to freedom, unable to move him or leave him. Passing doctors, transient refugees themselves, came to look and give opinions, but medicines were unavailable. Soon he died, and when at last they chugged onwards, not knowing if Muslim mobs would stop the train and knife them, Ama had given birth on the floor of the carriage to Anu. And before reaching Bombay had lost her eldest son, Haresh. Birth and death had overshadowed the journey, but without the violence most expected at that time.
In Bombay, Papa had eventually found husbands for Chachi’s marriageable daughters. It had not been easy. The whispered network by which suitable candidates were found, verified and matched, had been destroyed in the chaos. Papa had to depend upon his own judgement of boys whose families he knew nothing of. Neither marriage in consequence was successful, but Papa was rid of the burden of his nieces, and left only with his widowed sister. Lakshmi revolved the ball of her thumb about the old woman’s ankle. Sham ate silently at the table, eyes on his plate. Meena maintained an icy silence, immersed again in a magazine.
Whatever the reason for his return, Lakshmi was glad Sham was back. She did not care about the shame. He was back and everything now would be all right; he would find a way. Awake at night between Padma and Veena, she listened to Sham’s restless breathing and understood the shame, and his anxiety for the future; a future that must now include all of them in this room.
And sooner or later, whether they wished it or not, she and Padma and Veena would, one by one, weigh heavily amongst those anxieties that disturbed his nights. He would be pressured to think of marriages for them. There was no other way. She had dreamed once of going to college and taking a degree, of being a doctor or a teacher like her father, who said she was the brightest of his many girls. His illness had ended all hope of college, and even the means by which to take a typing course. Straight out of school, she could not work like Meena or Anu or her other sisters, who had attained some basic job qualification. As soon as they could the family would be forced to marry her off, for her own good and theirs.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like in that unknown house of the future, with the unknown man she would call husband. Her heart beat in a confusion of emotion, like the bird she had caught as a child with Sham. She remembered the feel of its claws on her flesh, the bony, feathery movement of it within the cage of her hands, the flutter of its pulse. She must not be fussy like the Watumal girls, for then offers would come and go and pass her by, leaving her a burden on them all. She must accept the first candidate produced, it was what was expected of her. Already, she knew, Ama had mentioned the matter to Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas. Sooner or later they would return with a reply. She must ready herself, thought Lakshmi, it would not be long. Her heart began to beat again. She pressed down hard upon Chachi’s thick knees, the old woman groaned with pleasure.
Sham concentrated on his food, listening to his mother tend his father behind the screen. There was the slop of water in an enamel bowl, and its running back from a squeezed-out cloth. The smell of antiseptic came to him strongly over his rice and pickles. When he had finished eating, he went to sit on his bed, his back to them all.
He lay down, arms crossed behind his head. Above him on the ceiling, mould, grime and grease made a colour of its own. His life had been spent contemplating its peeling patterns and cracks. Once there had been twelve of them crammed into these small rooms, nine children, Chachi and the parents. On the floor and a couple of beds, they had doubled up in sleep each night, head to toe, a roomful of bodies, like an army slain. The close human smell was suffocating under one fan in the hot weather, the small netted windows gave little ventilation. At these times he had dreamed only of getting away; escape from his home was the recurring fantasy of his childhood.
He had slept on this bed first with his brothers. The girls had not been allowed the privilege of the bed unless they were ill; they slept on the floor. The only privacy his parents had was an old sari pegged up on a washing line around their bed. The screen was new and had come in his absence, since his father was ill. The old sari had been no barrier to the noises that so often issued from behind it, that the listening children pretended not to hear. And afterwards had come Lakshmi and Padma and Veena, and two more born before their time. His thoughts were disturbed by his father’s coughing, and resentment flooded him again. Why make children when you could not afford to keep them? Other men after the chaos of Partition had learned to make money again. Why not his father? Why had he settled so quickly for his meagre living, of coaching the children of Sadhbela in their after-school hours? Many who had studied in his school, and in whom once his name drew awe, waited then for his easy sleep and into his open mouth dropped flies, pencil shavings or chillies. He never reproached his charges or their parents, who always paid less than promised on one pretext or another.
Such gentleness was no virtue. It was hard not to blame him for their suffering. He aspired to the middle-class standards of his birth; to the rewards of education and good marriages for his daughters, while submitting to squalor and whimpering babies, to a pot of watery rice gruel, to darned handed-down clothes or charitable cast-offs. The list went on and on. Sham swung himself off the bed.
‘Where are you going? To spend money you are hiding from us?’ Meena screeched as he opened the door.
‘You will be back soon, son?’ Rekha asked, peering anxiously round the screen. His father coughed again. Sham slammed the door upon them all, unable to answer.
4
Mrs Watumal was bounced about uncomfortably as the taxi rattled over potholes. ‘You want to shake the teeth from my head?’ she chastised the driver. Her daughters wedged her tightly upon the seat, perspiration flowed between them.
‘It is too far,’ grumbled Lata, the youngest daughter.
‘Now we are near, here is Sion already,’ said Sunita, the elder, looking out of the window. Soon they drew up before a grimy block of flats in a quiet road, lined by dusty trees.
‘Wait,’ Mrs Watumal ordered the taxi. She had fixed the fare for the return journey before they left Sadhbela. She heaved herself out of the vehicle. Sweat plastered her petticoat to the backs of her legs. She pulled it free and rearranged her sari. Her daughters each offered an arm and she hobbled forward on short, rheumaticky legs.
There was no lift. With difficulty Mrs Watumal arrived at last upon the third floor. There was a fetid smell of damp cement, Burmawalla’s door stood open. A plate on the wall outside said, S. D. R. Burmawalla. Horoscope. Clairvoyance. Special powers. Mrs Watumal and her daughters entered.
At the end of a short corridor a lavatory door gaped open. The stench of urine was overpowering. The white tiled floor of the toilet was wet, and covered with muddy footprints. To one side of the corridor was a waiting room, filled with metal chairs. On the walls were pictures of Nehru, Mrs Gandhi, and the King of Burma, adorned with a topknot and gold earrings. Several framed Urdu scripts hung beside them. The room was crowded with people. Two assistants, a small swarthy man in a yellow checked shirt, and a muscular ayah with a pockmarked face, appeared frequently in the waiting room to scrutinize clients. Each time they passed the lavatory they slammed the door shut. It opened again immediately. Since they passed often there was a constant banging noise.
Mrs Watumal hobbled to the swing door of the consulting room. ‘We also are waiting,’ came cries from the other room.
The assistant in the checked shirt appeared at the commotion. The swing doors bulged and released the ayah, who raised a muscular arm. Mrs Watumal retreated before the menacing limb. She did not sit down in the waiting room, but stood defiantly.
‘Who are these people?’ she demanded of Sunita, glaring at the crowd. Only a fat man with a briefcase, a skeletal man in a green suit, and a Parsi mother and son appeared worthy of note.
‘Ssh. Let us sit down,’ Sunita whispered. Lata had already taken a seat and tugged at her mother’s sari.
Mrs Watumal fixed her gaze upon the Parsi couple. The ironed folds were still crisply apparent on the boy’s white shirt, his eyes were earnest above a pubescent moustache. His mother blinked anxiously behind her heavy spectacles. A short, pink, frilly dress revealed her bare arms, and a neck scraggy as a fledgling’s.
‘What are you here for?’ Mrs Watumal demanded. Her daughters exchanged a glance and looked at their feet. They were thickset and no longer young. They had their mother’s protruding eyes, Sunita her father’s heavy jaw and Lata his wide-set teeth. Both had straight, shoulder-length hair. Lata’s was black, but Sunita took pride in the auburn glory of henna.
‘His shadow has become fat,’ the Parsi woman replied in a small, bleating voice, looking at her son. ‘At the same time worms have entered his stomach.’ The boy shifted nervously under Mrs Watumal’s scrutiny. She sat squarely on the chair, her legs wide apart beneath her sari. She clicked her tongue impatiently.
‘How long must we wait?’ she demanded.
‘Both are your daughters?’ the Parsi woman inquired, smiling at Lata and Sunita.