House of the Sun

by Meira Chand

  8

  Mrs Hathiramani gripped Raju’s ankles as he balanced precariously, high above her, upon a tower of chairs in the corridor before her front door.

  ‘Memsahib, I will fall,’ moaned Raju.

  ‘Donkey, am I not holding you?’ Mrs Hathiramani scolded. ‘You have only to take one thing down and put up another in its place.’

  ‘I was not trained as an acrobat and beneath me the chairs are swaying. Oh, oh.’ Raju gave an elaborate sob.

  ‘Don’t play with me,’ Mrs Hathiramani ordered. ‘You climb those trees across the road quicker than a monkey. Take down the old lime and put up the new one, or I’ll slap your cheeks like chapati.’ Mrs Hathiramani handed up a string upon which were threaded several red and green chillies, and a small lime.

  ‘Memsahib, you are hurting my ankles,’ Raju said, taking the string from Mrs Hathiramani, who immediately let go of his legs. Raju gave the chairs another wobble, then reached up to the fanlight above the front door to detach an identical talisman from a time of previous ill fortune, now shrivelled and hard as stone. The fresh chillies and lime were hung in its place, and Raju climbed down to stand beside Mrs Hathiramani. Together they observed the spot of colour in the corridor. There were few doors in Sadhbela that did not have the same talismans, in varying states of mummification, hanging up before them. Mrs Hathiramani nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘Now no evil is passing through this door.’ She lumbered back inside, to the kitchen. With a clatter Raju dismantled the construction of chairs, carried them in, and then ran to join Mrs Hathiramani. She had already placed a frying pan on a low flame, and emptied into it a further supply of red chillies from the second of Mataji’s newspaper parcels.

  ‘They must burn slowly, until they are dry,’ she instructed. ‘And then we shall see.’ Raju nodded and straightened to attention before the pan. He was small for his age and stood several inches short of Mrs Hathiramani’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you run off to smoke with your friends,’ she ordered.

  She returned at intervals to the kitchen with a single query. ‘Anything yet?’ Each time Raju put his nose near the frying pan, sniffed, then shook his head. Upon each visit to the kitchen Mrs Hathiramani grew increasingly agitated. She too put her nose to the pan, inhaled and shook her head, looking meaningfully at Raju.

  Towards evening, she instructed him to light up some coals in a small clay vessel upon the balcony. When the fire was glowing she dropped into it a lump of grey alum, from the last of Mataji’s parcels.

  ‘Tonight no playing downstairs with your friends,’ she ordered. ‘Tonight you sit and fan this fire. While you eat, I will take over.’

  ‘Memsahib …’ wailed Raju. ‘Tonight there is a servants’ cricket match downstairs. I am in the team.’

  ‘What is cricket to this work?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked. ‘You go down there, and I’ll see you don’t come up again.’ Raju stuck his tongue out at her back as she turned.

  *

  In the morning, as soon as she awoke, Mrs Hathiramani went out on to the balcony and squatted down to extract from the cold ash of the fire the lump of alum. She squinted at it in her palm; the metal had been softened and reshaped in the heat. Mrs Hathiramani turned it this way and that in her hand, frowning in concentration. Finally, she let out a gasp of excitement, and rushed back into the bedroom to shake Mr Hathiramani awake.

  ‘All is true,’ she hissed. Her husband looked up at her uncomprehendingly, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

  ‘Oh ho, only sleeping. Always sleeping,’ she complained, and thrust beneath his nose a cup of tea Raju had appeared with. ‘Now wake up, Husband, and listen to me.’ Mr Hathiramani pulled himself up upon his pillow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘Yesterday I went to Mataji,’ Mrs Hathiramani informed him. ‘I have burned chillies as she told me, and there is no smell. Who has heard of chillies that do not catch your nose like a wasp inside it, if you burn them in a pan? This proves the evil eye is upon us. But how to prove who is doing this to us? For this purpose Mataji gave a piece of alum, I cooked it in a pot of coal. Just now I have taken it from the ash. It has cooled and changed, and taken the shape of the person who is against us.’

  ‘What? What?’ Mr Hathiramani frowned and took a gulp of tea. He peered, still bleary-eyed, at the dirty stone in his wife’s sooty palm. ‘What further nonsense is this now? Where will your ignorance lead you?’

  Mrs Hathiramani snorted in glee. ‘You see nothing? You do not understand how much Mataji is helping.’ She thrust her palm up near his face.

  ‘All you do is disappoint me more and more with the extent of your ignorance.’ Mr Hathiramani shook his head, and drank down the rest of his tea.

  ‘You are blind from too much education,’ Mrs Hathiramani retorted. ‘See, here is a nose, and here is an eye.’ She traced the bulges on the stone with her index finger.

  ‘I could see a rabbit if I wished, or a pomegranate,’ Mr Hathiramani shrugged.

  ‘This is no time for your stupid jokes,’ ordered Mrs Hathiramani. ‘This is a face, I tell you. And look here at this lump. Do you know who is having on her face one such lump as this?’ Mr Hathiramani shook his head and yawned.

  ‘Mrs Watumal,’ Mrs Hathiramani disclosed.

  ‘That is a benign cyst,’ Mr Hathiramani reasoned, remembering the tiny protrusion above Mrs Watumal’s left eyebrow.

  ‘It is a lump,’ screamed Mrs Hathiramani. ‘It proves she is against us.’

  ‘And why should that be?’ her husband inquired, taking the newspaper Raju handed him, and looking with interest at the headlines.

  Mrs Hathiramani stamped her foot. ‘All this is only because of you.’ Mr Hathiramani looked at her over the top of the paper. ‘It is because you were saying bad things about Mohan Watumal to my cousins, whose daughter they were going to get him engaged to. The engagement is now broken off,’ Mrs Hathiramani shouted.

  Mr Hathiramani put down the newspaper and looked coldly at his wife. ‘All you say is superstitious nonsense. It is foolish village women’s talk. Nothing can harm us.’ He picked up the newspaper again.

  ‘Soon you will see how strong a thing this magic is. And then only I will be here to save you,’ Mrs Hathiramani muttered as she left the room.

  *

  The managing committee of Sadhbela’s Co-operative Society met once a month in Mr Hathiramani’s garage, at eight o’clock in the evening. At the society’s expense a metal table, chairs and two electric lights had been installed; Mr Hathiramani’s garage had neither cars nor tenants. During meetings the doors of the garage were opened wide for ventilation. Outside a row of servants squatted to listen to proceedings. The distant sound of traffic along Napean Sea Road, and the crash of waves were carried on the night air. Bats glided in and out of trees in a neighbouring garden. Mr Murjani was not at the meeting, but dining with associates in The Rendezvous at the Taj. Knowing this, Lokumal Devnani had come down, to express his opposition to the proposal forwarded by Mr Murjani, to build a penthouse for himself upon the terrace.

  ‘Sadhbela will not take the weight, nor the extra evacuation of water and waste,’ Lokumal protested.

  ‘He says he has checked these details with the contractor, and it can be done,’ Mr Bhagwandas informed them. ‘Here is the report.’

  ‘It will sit upon our heads like a concrete hat,’ Mr Hathiramani predicted.

  ‘I will not have it,’ Lokumal announced. He was possessive about the building, unable to forget it was by his initiative that it stood at all. ‘I do not care what lies he has paid a contractor to tell us, it cannot be done.’

  ‘The building will collapse about us, killing us in our beds,’ Mr Hathiramani agreed.

  ‘At the time of his previous internal renovations,’ Mr Watumal said, ‘his contractor’s reports showed there would be no adverse effect from his changing a kitchen into a bathroom. You remember how much we objected then? It repulsed me even to think of a latrine above our heads, during preparation of ou
r food. It has made us all unclean.’ Mr Watumal lived on the floor below Mr Murjani, all the other kitchens and bathrooms of Sadhbela were vertically aligned.

  ‘That is correct.’ Mr Bhagwandas nodded.

  ‘And just see, already we are poisoned with the filthy leakage of his latrine into our kitchen,’ Mr Watumal continued. ‘My daughters are forced to cook at times upon the balcony to avoid his dirt. It runs down our walls and drips from the ceiling. Our kitchen is rendered useless, and he does nothing.’

  ‘This is too much,’ said Lokumal.

  It was soon agreed the penthouse could not be risked, and that Mr Murjani must repair once more the pipes that troubled Mr Watumal in his kitchen.

  ‘So, that is settled,’ said Lokumal in relief. ‘And now what is this before us, Bhau Hathiramani?’ They looked down at the sheets of paper headed The Hathiramani Newsletter.

  ‘It is self-explanatory,’ said Mr Hathiramani in a modest tone of voice. ‘But I shall be glad to read it for you.’ He cleared his throat.

  We children of Sind have lost touch with our heritage. It is now the property of a Muslim State. The Hindu heritage of Sind is in exile and disarray, we are verily therefore a people with no unification. Our young are ignorant of their land and history. Here, in India, there are still some of us who remember the place of our birth, and our culture, and upon whom I feel it has blessedly fallen to pass on a knowledge of our past to our children.

  Is there a country in the world where you will not find a Sindhi merchant or trader? How far we Hindu Sindhis have spread and prospered is God’s proof of our abilities. We are often called the modern Phoenicians of the East and the term The Ubiquitous Sindhi is much used in history. But at what cost, my brothers, has this thing happened? If I complain to you about the dwindling knowledge of the past amongst us Sindhis here in India, still surrounded by our spiritual culture, what is the fate of our brothers who have made their lives abroad? Ask them if they know of Shah Abdul Latif, our immortal, poet, Shakespeare of Sind and his Rasalo, best described as Sindhi operas. Ask them if they know of our music, the Dohiara, Vai and the incomparable Kafi, love song of Sind. Do they know it was a Sindhi who wounded Alexander the Great and forced his retreat from our land? Or that the very word Sind derived its name from our perennial river the Sindhu, otherwise called the Indus. The word Hindu is but a disguised form of the word Sindhu …

  ‘Bhau Hathiramani, we also do not know these things,’ Mr Bhagwandas interrupted, trying not to yawn.

  ‘Therefore, I am putting together this newsletter, so that we all may remember our past. Let us not forget.’ Mr Hathiramani’s voice rose in emphasis.

  ‘It is a good thing you are doing,’ Lokumal remarked. ‘Indeed it is a wonderful thing to my mind. You must re-educate our communities here in India, and also abroad.’

  ‘I am presently engaged in writing a short history of Sind, and also in translating into English from our Sindhi language, Shah Abdul Latif’s Rasalo,’ Mr Hathiramani revealed. ‘I have made a start with “The Song of the Necklace” and will go on to all the other songs that form the Rasalo.’

  ‘This is indeed a great thing,’ said Lokumal in delight; he too loved his country’s past, as he loved his religion. ‘You have our gratitude for undertaking this task. Future generations will remember you.’

  Mr Hathiramani smiled modestly. ‘I am only doing my duty in this matter,’ he replied.

  *

  Mr Hathiramani looked up from his diary at the sound of the lift clanking up the shaft. He transferred his attention from his work in Miscellaneous Past to the Arrivals column. He glanced at his watch and recorded the time, keeping his pen poised above the page for a statement of identification. The lift stopped before his own front door, the grille was drawn back and his wife appeared, clutching a watermelon. She was followed closely by Raju, half hidden behind a basket of fruit. Gopal dragged out another basket piled with further purchases. Mr Hathiramani sighed, wrote, ‘Wife and servant Raju’ in the Arrivals column, and under Comments recorded, ‘Return from Crawford Market’. He withdrew again into Miscellaneous Past.

  Once each week, Mrs Hathiramani accompanied Mrs Bhagwandas to Crawford Market. For the rest of the week she shopped from the vendors who circulated in the building. Soon she appeared by Mr Hathiramani’s bed, a guava in hand.

  ‘See these,’ she demanded. ‘For the same price last week I was forced to buy those shrivelled things from our building vegetable man. He is only taking money and giving nothing. Tomorrow I will show him. Next time he must give me a discount.’

  ‘Do as you wish,’ Mr Hathiramani replied, not lifting his eyes from his diary, trying to think of an alternative translation for the word oven, to describe a clay baking pot that was now before him in his work.

  ‘O, Raju. Bring that fish. Show Sahib,’ Mrs. Hathiramani called. Raju appeared, holding the fish by the tail. Mrs Hathiramani pounced angrily upon him.

  ‘Donkey. Is that the way? When will you learn? Can you not bring it on a plate?’ She shook him by the shoulder. Raju gave a howl, and dropped the fish upon the bed beside Mr Hathiramani.

  ‘Rascal,’ yelled Mrs Hathiramani. ‘On purpose you have done this.’

  ‘Get it out of here. And both of you too,’ Mr Hathiramani shouted, his face creased in anger. ‘All you do is disturb my work.’

  Mrs Hathiramani shrugged sulkily. ‘I will fry the fish with spices. Also I will fry some aubergine, and make some dal,’ she said to soothe herself; thought of food was always calming. ‘Afterwards I will cut up the guava.’

  ‘Everything now is smelling offish. Get this thing off my bed,’ Mr Hathiramani’s voice broke. Raju retrieved the fish and fled the room. Mr Hathiramani took a deep breath. ‘I am in the midst of translation of our Sind’s immortal poet, and I must be disturbed for guavas and fish.’

  ‘For food should I call you? Or do you wish also now to fast for your work?’ his wife retorted.

  ‘Call me,’ Mr Hathiramani barked at her departing back.

  For some time it was impossible to work for the odour of raw fish from the sheets. There was the call of the knife sharpener at the gates of Sadhbela, and the raucous music of a passing wedding procession in the road below. There was also the constant sound of Mrs Hathiramani’s voice. She squatted on a low cane stool before the open doors of the two refrigerators that stood, like sentinels, either side of the rexine sofa in the living room, putting away her purchases. The kitchen was too small to accommodate the refrigerators, and the sight of them in her living room was not only acceptable to Mrs Hathiramani, but a convenience and a comfort; cold drinks and food were always near to hand.

  ‘Raju, hand me the tomatoes. Now the apples. Careful, donkey, you will bruise them. Put the biscuits in that empty jar. Bring a wet rag. Don’t pick your nose and then touch the biscuits. One bottle of Thums Up drink is missing from this fridge. On top of everything, now you are a thief.’

  ‘Memsahib, last night you had indigestion. At one o’clock in the morning you got up and drank it yourself for relief. You woke me up to get you a glass. Don’t you remember, Memsahib?’

  ‘How can I remember what I do when I’m asleep? Now, give me the limes, one by one. Careful. I didn’t employ a juggler.’

  Mr Hathiramani sank his head in his hands. At last the doors of the refrigerators were closed, and there was silence. He heaved a sigh of relief and returned to his translation of Shah Abdul Latif’s ‘The Song of the Necklace’. His work, he had decided, would need an appendix of explanations for ignorant readers. He had a list of chapter headings for this, and dwelt already upon their content and significance. The Moral of the Song. The Psychology of Awakening. Vanity. God. Character is Destiny. The Scene of the Song. The headings flashed through his mind, multiplying until it seemed his appendix might exceed his translation as a work of genius.

  Although he had barely begun the translation he had already written part of the prologue to his book.

  I hope I have laid down a found
ation upon which better and more reliable superstructure will be raised in future by my successors, after I have made an exit from this mortal world. Let this and my future books be an inspiration to my Sindhi brothers, to keep the ball rolling and free themselves from the shackles of ignorance of their past heritage, and ignorance also in this present time, of Eternal Truth and Reality as our Beloved Poet, Shah Abdul Latif, has expressed it to us in his Immortal Songs.

  I have made a start with ‘The Song of the Necklace’, the story of Lila and Chanesar, King and Queen of Sind in the thirteenth century, for reason of its relevance to our lives in today’s world of material values. Our Poet’s teaching in this story is that ignorance and selfish desire and our own actions, are the true causes of human sorrow and suffering.

  Mr Hathiramani re-read the story of Lila and Chanesar as he had written it in precis, and felt satisfied. Later, he would insert more detail and emotion. This, and his appendix, were the kind of writing he enjoyed. The translation itself of ‘The Song of the Necklace’, from Sindhi into English, was already proving more difficult than imagined. The original Sindhi was lyrical, flowing and soaring and yet as disciplined and delicate as was the script that contained it. It sounded unwieldy in English.

  Fain would I fling

  The ornament in the oven,

  The necklace in the ditch.

  With tears she took the camel apace

  And made it sit in porch of palace.

  ‘Let someone tell my beloved king

  That Lila is now migrating.’

  Mr Hathiramani pondered yet again the word ‘oven’. It was the right meaning, yet conjured up not the clay baking pots of tradition, but his wife’s old stove in the kitchen. ‘Baking vessel’ was equally unsuitable.

  ‘Food is ready,’ Mrs Hathiramani said curtly, appearing beside the bed. Mr Hathiramani looked up in annoyance.

  ‘“Oven”,’ he yelled. ‘Tell me another word for “oven”.’