House of the Sun

by Meira Chand

  Mrs Watumal nodded. ‘I have also one son. Eldest child,’ she replied.

  ‘All must be married?’ questioned the woman. Mrs Watumal frowned.

  ‘Not yet,’ she answered and looked away.

  ‘Why are they not married?’ the woman insisted. ‘They are so old.’ Sunita and Lata lowered their heads.

  Mrs Watumal gave a moan, and called upon God. ‘It is these modern times. They have been shown so many boys of good family but always, one is too fat, one his voice is too high, another his trousers are too baggy. Nowadays, they like smart boys who wear imported jeans.’

  The Parsi woman observed the girls through thick lenses. ‘But your son, he of course is married?’ she encouraged.

  Mrs Watumal shook her head, disinclined to elaborate. The state of non-alliance in her children’s lives was like a permanent hole within her which, at this moment, was filled with such fury that she had been driven to seek, upon a friend’s advice, the services of Burmawalla.

  ‘Very sorry indeed,’ the woman commiserated. Mrs Watumal accepted her condolence with a nod. ‘Both my daughters are married,’ the woman continued in a smug tone. ‘Now only this Sonny Jim is left and he is still young.’

  ‘You are lucky,’ Mrs Watumal answered. Her daughters lowered their heads further, the waiting room listened.

  ‘For my son it was almost arranged. Soon we would have had the engagement,’ Mrs Watumal burst out in sudden distress, unable to contain herself. ‘We took him to the Sea Lounge of the Taj Mahal Hotel, to see the girl. She had been brought there to meet us by her parents. You have been to the Sea Lounge? It is very expensive. Only for an English sandwich without any taste and bread so thin there is nothing there, you must pay so many rupees. Anyway, for everything we paid happily, only to get Mohan married. And the girl was good; fair skinned and with a B.A. in domestic science. But suddenly, for no reason, we hear the family is not satisfied. They are stopping arrangements. This is not normal, someone is against us in this matter. Therefore, I have come here for consultation.’ Mrs Watumal nodded in the direction of the other room. ‘She is good?’

  ‘She is good. She knows everything,’ the Parsi woman answered.

  An old man shuffled out of Burmawalla’s room. With sudden alacrity Mrs Watumal stood up and presented herself at the swing door. The ayah appeared too late to prevent her entering. ‘We too are waiting,’ came the cries from behind. Mrs Watumal took no notice. Sunita and Lata followed their mother sheepishly.

  Burmawalla sat behind a large desk at one end of a small, bare room. She was an immense, ebony-skinned woman with a long, greasy plait and a turned-up nose, fleshy as dough. The whites of her eyes were clearly visible above and below the irises, and gave an unpleasant intensity to her stare.

  Mrs Watumal sat down before the desk, her daughters stood behind her. She cleared her throat. Burmawalla’s eyes reminded her of two hardboiled eggs, she was unable to look away. She began to explain about Mohan, and the events in the Sea Lounge of the Taj Mahal Hotel. Burmawalla nodded.

  ‘Horoscope,’ she demanded. Mrs Watumal turned to Sunita, who unwrapped the red booklet from a paper bag. Burmawalla shut her eyes, and held the book to her breast before she opened it. Upon a small slate she wrote in pink chalk the day, date and hour of Mohan’s birth in astrological shorthand. Mrs Watumal shifted nervously, unsettled by the intensity and the silence. She looked inquiringly at her daughters.

  ‘Why should I speak until I have words?’ Burmawalla said suddenly, as if answering Mrs Watumal’s unspoken question. Mrs Watumal drew back with a frightened gasp, opened her mouth, then shut it.

  ‘L.S.H.B.’ Burmawalla announced. ‘These are the initials of people against you.’ Her voice was powerful, Mrs Watumal began to tremble. Suddenly Burmawalla’s hand shot across the desk top and imprisoned her wrist. Mrs Watumal drew back, breathing hard.

  ‘Hold still,’ Burmawalla growled in a deep, resonant tone. Mrs Watumal obeyed, unable to move in her grasp. A great throb seemed to ripple through her at the woman’s touch.

  ‘In you also there is magic. I can feel it,’ Burmawalla hissed, her eyes closed in concentration.

  ‘What to do?’ Mrs Watumal whispered in terror.

  ‘I will give a potion. It is to be drunk. This magic must pass out. It cannot be vomited up.’ Burmawalla called to the ayah who appeared with a small bottle of clear liquid. Burmawalla held it near her lips, muttering and blowing fiercely into it. Then she corked the bottle and handed it to Mrs Watumal.

  ‘It is only water,’ she said, ‘but now the spell is within it. Give it to the boy. When it is empty, you too will be empty.’ Burmawalla gave a nod to indicate the termination of the consultation. Mrs Watumal backed quickly from the room.

  *

  Mr Watumal scratched his chest and stretched upon the sofa. A smell of frying came from the kitchen. Through the open door he watched Lata turn potato patties in a pan. She wore a faded flowered kurta and loose, matching trousers. The angle of the light made her double chin even more pronounced than usual. She was twenty-nine and looked middle-aged; she was the younger of his daughters.

  Sunita lay on the floor at his feet, absorbed in a magazine; next week she would be thirty-one. A sudden panic filled him, as it did often nowadays when he thought of his daughters. Soon both girls would have no choice but to marry widowers, or divorcees. Mr Watumal passed a hand over his brow in distress. If there had been money for plentiful dowries, both girls would have been married already. They were good natured; they knew how to cook and sew. They should be thickening with children and contentment, instead they swelled with frustration. They tended to fussiness in the selection of husbands, and fussiness was not possible for plain girls without substantial dowries. Mr Watumal sighed, his heart bled when he looked at them both.

  Things had been good in the beginning; Mr Watumal had done well at first in Bombay. His wife had dreamed of dowries then, and diamonds and opulent interiors, and indulged herself as she could. In Sukkur Mr Watumal had been an importer of glass and chinaware, sold from a small shop above which he lived with his family. When business was slow he left the shop to his brother, loaded a cart with boxes behind a horse, and travelled the area about Rohri and Sukkur, selling from door to door. In his younger days he was a tall, fleshily handsome man, who joked familiarly with the women before whom he spread his wares; bone china from England, Irish crystal, painted glass from Italy and France.

  Warehouses of fine goods all over Sind were left to looters at the time of Partition, but Mr Watumal had been lucky. As a travelling salesman he had an ear to the ground, and profitable entry into both Hindu and Muslim homes. He became aware early on of the approaching cataclysm, sold out to a Muslim colleague, and was one of the first to leave Sukkur. He had always wanted to go to Bombay. Many laughed in his face. Lokumal Devnani refused to believe Mr Watumal’s warnings, and even bought a smallholding of land from him, certain Partition would never come. Mr Watumal had time to wire his money to Bombay, and follow it there with his family. He suffered none of the distress that accompanied other departures.

  In Bombay, Mr Watumal decided to enter industry. The title Industrialist had a ring to it that the common term Trader could not match. He invested his money in a pen nib factory, and prospered quickly from the start. Hoardings for his pen nibs appeared on bus shelters and bridges in Bombay. He also invested in a home in Sadhbela, happy to settle amongst his old acquaintances. His only disappointment was to discover that the people before whom he had once spread his chinaware still thought of him as a trader. They refused to show the appropriate respect, and this cut Mrs Watumal deeply.

  It was difficult to say when or why things deteriorated. As blight hits a fine crop, it hit Mr Watumal’s factory. No doctoring or blood-letting could slow its decline. On the sofa, waiting now for his lunch, Mr Watumal sighed and scratched his chest. He watched Lata dish out some rice in the kitchen; the potato cakes were piled on a plate. To lose a fortune to the ravages of war seeme
d a more bearable destiny to Mr Watumal than shameful obliteration by bad luck. He sighed again and turned his head to observe his son Mohan, crouching beneath the glass-topped table, immersed in a work of repair. He blamed himself sometimes for his son’s lethargy; the boy might feel stimulated if business was thriving. Instead, it was difficult to coax him to the factory. A deep shame overwhelmed Mr Watumal. His own bad luck had erased bright futures for his daughters, and a career for his son. The weight of these thoughts sat heavily upon him, as he waited for his lunch.

  Mohan crawled out from beneath the dining table. ‘I think it will hold now,’ he said, standing up to view a long crack in the glass top that he had strengthened with a wide strip of pink Elastoplast.

  The glass-topped table had been an impractical decision at a time of prosperity years ago. Mrs Watumal had insisted that their home be redecorated in the style of Mrs Murjani, and Mr Watumal had been glad to indulge her. She had secretly ascertained the design of the Murjanis’ furniture, the colour of coverings, and the pattern of their moulded ceilings. She had avoided the expensive place in Churchgate Mrs Murjani patronized, and had found instead a cheap cabinet-maker in Chor Bazaar. His wood was inferior but his effect was good, which had seemed to Mrs Watumal the more important thing.

  Mrs Murjani had not been pleased with this close imitation of her taste, and refused for months to speak to Mrs Watumal. But since that time Mrs Murjani had changed her interiors twice, and had reached such a peak of extravagance with the Maharajah’s crystal chairs that she had placed herself in a league beyond all mimicry. And Mrs Watumal had had no further opportunity to develop her decorative skills. Her husband’s fortunes had swiftly declined. His factory had union troubles, and problems with supplies of steel. Mr Watumal turned to the business of money-lending to provide for his family. Had he had more to lend, he might have done better.

  Mohan had recently discovered the strength and durability of Elastoplast as a home support, in preference to Sellotape, which dried and curled quickly. There was much need of it. Besides the glass dining table, chairs carved in unseasoned wood had cracked, and needed its support. The loose handles of saucepans gained from its use, as did the legs of coffee tables. In the bathroom it held a mirror in place, and small snippets secured to walls and ceilings the green tentacles of the devil’s-tongue plants Lata liked to grow. Through circumstances and Mohan’s dexterity, the Watumals’ residence had come to acquire a forlorn and bandaged look. But things held together, and Mr Watumal was not required to stretch meagre funds to finance unnecessary repairs.

  Mrs Watumal, hobbling painfully, emerged from the bedroom where she had been closeted with Mrs Bhagwandas since her return from Burmawalla. There was a look of suppressed excitement about both women. As Mrs Bhagwandas left, Mrs Watumal collapsed on a chair beside her husband.

  ‘Speak clearly now, wife. You have explained nothing. You are only shutting yourself up with Mrs Bhagwandas and whispering. We are all waiting,’ Mr Watumal demanded.

  ‘First, let us eat,’ Lata insisted. With the help of a servant she had already dished up the meal.

  Mr Watumal pulled his big-boned frame out of the sofa, his flesh hung upon him in a tired way. He wore a loose, checked bush shirt over a dhoti and scratched his crotch as he stood. Beside him Sunita rose awkwardly from the floor; weight made her ungainly. She had once enjoyed tennis and had taken lessons in cookery – now nothing seemed to interest her. She sat about in a housecoat with a box of sweetmeats and a magazine. She no longer helped with the cooking but left everything to Lata.

  ‘Only two days ago we had the same thing,’ she complained, ambling up to her place at the table, surveying the potato patties and steaming bowls of rice and Sindhi curry.

  ‘It was more than a week ago,’ Lata corrected.

  ‘Get up and do something yourself,’ Mohan scolded. ‘You’ve become so fat and lazy.’

  ‘Only quarrelling all the time, like children, when already you should have given us grandchildren.’ Mr Watumal sighed, and took his place at the table. The Elastoplast ran beneath his plate, he stared down at it in silence.

  ‘There would soon have been such grandchildren,’ Mrs Watumal burst out in a strident tone, ‘but for Hathiramani. It is his fault. Mrs Bhagwandas tells me the parents of the girl who was offered to Mohan are distantly related to Mrs Hathiramani. They came to get an opinion of Mohan from Hathiramani. It is after this we heard they are not satisfied. It is all his mischief.’

  ‘Then, Mummy, Burmawalla spoke the truth. She said “H” was one of the initials of the person against us,’ Lata gasped. Mrs Watumal nodded grimly.

  ‘If this is true, I will speak at once with Hathiramani,’ Mr Watumal said.

  ‘Speak,’ Mrs Watumal exclaimed. ‘What good will it do? Hathiramani will deny he has said anything. After all these years, do you not know the man? I remember, even in Sind he had a reputation for twisting words. Magazines were printing articles by him, because they thought so much twisting, until you couldn’t understand any sense, was proof of cleverness. Even in Sukkur we had heard of his word-twisting, over the bridge in Rohri. He was famous for these things.’

  ‘Why drag up the past?’ Mr Watumal sighed. ‘We are no longer in Rohri or Sukkur. It is a simple thing, I am sure. A face-to-face talk sorts everything out. I am always of that opinion. Face to face,’ Mr Watumal said.

  Mrs Watumal stood up so suddenly her chair fell over with a crash, her eyes blazed. ‘Never again will I speak with you, if you go near those Hathiramanis. You will only work yourself deeper into their magic. They have put the evil eye upon us. Originally his family is from Hyderabad Sind. Why did he leave there to trouble us here, and in Rohri and Sukkur?’

  She stretched across the table, and deposited Burmawalla’s potion before Mohan. ‘You must drink this.’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. He uncorked the bottle and sniffed. ‘It smells.’

  ‘Drink.’ A hysterical note entered Mrs Watumal’s voice. Mohan hastily drank down the contents of the bottle and gave an exclamation of disgust.

  ‘The magic must pass out, it cannot be vomited up,’ his mother informed him.

  ‘This is crazy. I don’t believe in these things.’ Mohan appealed to his father, who shrugged wearily.

  ‘Sit now,’ Mr Watumal ordered his wife, who unexpectedly obeyed. There was silence then, for they were hungry.

  Lata looked down at her plate and wondered if the moment was right to speak. Her father ate in a concentrated manner, as if to block out all else. She knew his worry for them. She had tried not to be fussy, but the prospective bridegrooms produced by her parents were shifty-eyed or patronizing; one had a facial tic and another a stammer. But, more often than not, it was she who had been rejected first. She was tired of being shown to family after family, watched for the manner in which she chewed or poured a cup of tea, in an endless round of scrutiny and dismissal. She was sick of it all, she would rather not marry. She refused to face another humiliation. The thought made her fierce with anger.

  Sunita had been engaged a few years ago. Sweetmeats were exchanged, great baskets of fruit had been sent to the fiancé’s family and his relatives, all to no avail. She had quickly upset her future mother-in-law by not covering her head before the grandfather of the family, and by telling her fiancé such a custom was backward.

  ‘If already she cannot show us respect, what will she be like after marriage?’ demanded her future mother-in-law. The engagement was called off. The decline in Sunita had been noticeable since then. And Mrs Watumal’s further efforts to find a suitable match were hampered by this past disaster. ‘She cannot bear children,’ was one of the rumours generated by the broken engagement, and that returned to Mrs Watumal and put her to bed with a migraine.

  Lata cleared her throat, and looked at her father. He was already partially blind from glaucoma in one eye. His nose was immense and appeared, as he grew older, to suck up most of his face. He had recently lost the last of his teeth, but he coul
d not get used to his dentures and put them in only to eat. Mohan was no help to him. Lata observed her brother bitterly as he picked up a potato patty: he was happy to be supported. He spent much of his day with friends, discussing impossible business schemes. Lata felt the weight of them all upon her father. And she felt in herself a separate weight.

  ‘Daddy, please look at this.’ She unfolded a newspaper cutting. ‘Telephone operator and receptionist required by prestigious hotel. Training on premises, applications invited,’ she read out to him as he fumbled for his spectacles.

  ‘What is this?’ Mr Watumal asked, peering at her over his glasses, uncomprehending.

  ‘When girls reach my age and are not yet married, they are usually working,’ Lata said in a low voice. ‘Let me apply to the hotel. Why must you support us at this age?’

  ‘But that is a father’s duty,’ Mr Watumal replied, pulling back his shoulders in a dignified way. ‘God has given me enough to support you all.’

  ‘I want to do something. I will meet people if I work. Maybe I will even meet someone who—’

  A terrible wail from Mrs Watumal interrupted her. ‘Is it not enough already that we face? Oh God, give me strength for this new shame.’

  ‘Be quiet, wife,’ Mr Watumal ordered in a flat, exhausted tone. Mohan and Sunita stopped eating. ‘If you do these things, daughter, who will help your mother at home?’ he reasoned.

  ‘Sunita is able to do everything. It will be good for her to help,’ Lata replied.

  ‘Why are you always thinking of what is good for me?’ Sunita shouted. She had a vision of her sister behind the reception desk of the Taj Mahal Hotel, talking to a handsome man. Her heart began to pound. ‘And who will you meet in a hotel?’ she asked. ‘Men in hotels want only one thing from a girl. And it isn’t marriage.’

  ‘Boys of good family are not working in hotels,’ Mrs Watumal agreed. ‘And how will you marry before your sister? People will say there is something wrong with her, that the younger is marrying before the elder. And why this need to work? People will say your father cannot afford to keep you at home. And then who will marry you?’ Mrs Watumal shook her head.