by Meira Chand
‘Donkey,’ Mrs Hathiramani roared at Raju, to alleviate anxiety about her husband. ‘That cloth is full of ants. You are only putting back into the bottles with your wiping all the ants I am taking out. Go and wash the cloth.’
Raju shrugged. ‘Half the ants, Memsahib, you are anyway always leaving inside. You cannot see them properly.’
Mrs Hathiramani turned upon him, but Raju ran off down the corridor. Mrs Hathiramani resumed her work, her sapphire gleaming on her hand. She had set the stone in a ring, its contact with her flesh was constant. She had continued to feed the cow. Within a few weeks Saturn would move out of the House of the Sun, and leave her in safety at last.
Once more the lift approached. Mr Hathiramani did not raise his head until it stopped outside his door. Mrs Samtani emerged and, without ringing the bell or polite hesitation, marched up the corridor and into the living room to stand before Mrs Hathiramani.
Mrs Samtani sat stiffly upon a couch of red rexine, and fixed Mrs Hathiramani with a cold stare. ‘You are to blame for the present situation. We trusted your judgement of Lakshmi, and this is the result,’ Mrs Samtani said. ‘You have ruined Hari’s life.’
‘Raju. O, Raju. Bring one Thums Up drink and cashew nut sweet,’ Mrs Hathiramani yelled down the corridor to the kitchen.
‘I will not take food or drink in this house,’ Mrs Samtani insisted coldly. A blue plastic handbag with a pink flower at the clasp was settled upon her knees. ‘Responsibility is yours. We want the thing finished. We have been tricked, and now we have learned from the doctor that she can never have children. It will be no problem for us to get a divorce. Go and tell her family.’
‘Raju. O, Raju. Hurry up, donkey,’ Mrs Hathiramani implored.
‘You fixed it up, and now you must unfix it,’ Mrs Samtani spoke grimly.
‘Oh ho,’ moaned Mrs Hathiramani, unexpectedly lost for words. Raju appeared with the cold drink.
Mrs Hathiramani clasped plump hands and rubbed her sapphire. ‘She is a good girl, before she was born we knew her parents in Sind. So much money and respect they had there.’
‘They are no longer in Sind. Here they have neither respect nor money. Had you told us this clearly we should not have proceeded with the match. My son cannot waste his life for this girl,’ Mrs Samtani retorted.
‘Oh ho,’ Mrs Hathiramani moaned softly again. ‘Drink. Eat,’ she urged. She instructed Raju to call Mrs Bhagwandas. Mrs Samtani pursed her lips and ignored the refreshment before her.
‘You saw the girl, the decision was yours,’ Mrs Bhagwandas said at once in a combative voice, when seated before Mrs Samtani. ‘Our job was only to give a suggestion. We cannot be blamed for what has occurred.’
Mrs Hathiramani nodded, feeling new strength now that Mrs Bhagwandas had arrived. ‘That is correct,’ she agreed.
Mrs Samtani grew brilliant with anger. ‘In the law court I will tell how you misled us, and ruined my son’s life. Did the family give you money to arrange things?’ Mrs Samtani yelled. Mrs Hathiramani clapped a hand to her mouth, Mrs Bhagwandas leaned back, stunned. They exchanged an anxious glance.
‘Let us seek the advice of Dada Lokumal,’ Mrs Bhagwandas suggested in sudden inspiration.
‘Just now I have seen Tunda Maharaj go up. Let us see what he has to say,’ Mrs Hathiramani added, seizing upon Mrs Bhagwandas’ idea with relief.
‘There is nothing to seek advice about. You must tell the family to take Lakshmi back, and we shall proceed with the divorce,’ Mrs Samtani retorted. ‘Holy men can do nothing in this matter.’ She stood up and turned towards the door. Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas hurried after her.
‘Only give a little more time,’ Mrs Bhagwandas pleaded.
‘We will speak to the family once more. From somewhere they will get money,’ Mrs Hathiramani promised.
Mrs Samtani gave a curt nod of goodbye, and stepped into the lift. Gopal slammed the bars shut behind her with a grimace, and propelled her away down the shaft. Mrs Bhagwandas and Mrs Hathiramani exchanged a meaningful look and began to climb the stairs to the seventh floor, already full of words to throw at Rekha.
*
Mr Hathiramani had lowered his head to his work before the shrill voices in the outer room. He felt at one with his hero King Chanesar, in the tribulations endured by men at the universal foolishness of women. He pressed his pen to the paper, intent on translation of Latif’s ‘The Song of the Necklace’. As the sparring voices in the next room faded, he was back once more in Chanesar’s palace, with its immense rooms of marble and fine draperies, its gardens of flowers and singing birds. He saw King Chanesar, splendid in silks and jewels, distraught at the discovery that his beloved Queen Lila had sold a night in his bed to the Princess Kaunru, for a diamond necklace. Mr Hathiramani reached for a glass of water from the nearby table.
The room about him smelled of stale food, a heavy, slightly rotten odour that he had come to associate with his wife. Beyond the bed stood a glass-topped sideboard, upon which Mrs Hathiramani kept a variety of vessels, each covered by a netted fly hood. Milk stood here to cool after boiling, until the first thick cream had clotted and could be ladled off. Sweetmeats and leftovers not accommodated in the refrigerators, each gave their odour to the room. At night Mrs Hathiramani, never happy far from food, could raise her head and take comfort from the moonlight’s glow upon her hooded bowls. Mr Hathiramani felt suddenly nauseous at the pungent smell. He took another gulp of water. In the outer room there was silence; the women had departed. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
In the beginning he had not perceived the immensity of his work. After ‘The Song of the Necklace’ there was ‘The Song of the Lake’, ‘The Song of the Desert’, ‘The Song of Songs’, ‘The Song of Battle’ and more to be translated. The titles of Shah Abdul Latif’s Rasalo stretched before him, filling him with sudden dread, like the sound of marching feet. He looked about the room, at the stacks of mildewing books, the piles of magazines and yellowing newspapers emanating musty fumes, the battered covers of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Encyclopedia Britannica. They seemed to press in upon him, shutting out all air. Two flabby-jawed politicians clasped hands and bared their teeth, staring at him from their frozen moment in time, on the cover of a magazine. A film star waved, a child implored from a drought-stricken village. Mr Hathiramani shrank back in his bed before the pressure of emotions rotting in their paper corpses. Paper rose like a relentless fungus about the walls of the room. He began to feel dizzy, and his breath seemed to stop in his throat. The words of his diary rose up from their page like gritty stones against his eyes. He let out a shout and dived under the sheet. And there, in the darkness, he felt the room vomit its mass of stacked words upon him. He tried to scream and could not. A black weight settled upon his eyes.
*
‘Raju. O, Raju,’ Mrs Hathiramani yelled on her return from the seventh floor and a firm talk with Rekha, who had done little more than press a hand to her mouth and sob further tears. ‘Donkey. Look at this. Where have you been?’ She stood before the chutney jars, left forgotten upon the table at Mrs Samtani’s sudden appearance. A vein of moving ants stretched across the floor and up the table leg, to spread blackly over the jars. Mrs Hathiramani sat down in defeat before the seething table. In the next room her husband appeared to be asleep.
At last all the jars were wiped clean and the two open bottles, blackened now with ants like seeds within, had been given to the sweeper whose lack of fastidiousness in such things was well known. Mrs Hathiramani heaved a tired sigh and turned to the bedroom, to see about the pans of milk, boiled up in the morning and left to cool upon the sideboard.
‘Raju. O, Raju. Here, take the milk, remove the cream. Don’t flap that dirty cloth around, still there are ants upon it. Just see, now ants from the chutney have dropped into the milk.’
‘These are not ants, Memsahib.’ Raju peered closely at the milk. ‘I think this is cockroach shit.’
‘Get out,’ Mrs Hathiraman
i roared and turned towards the bed and her husband. He had done nothing to help her that day; all he cared about was writing and sleeping. She bent to shake him awake, but he would not rouse. She called to him loudly in sudden agitation. When he groaned at the vigour of her shaking she was angry he had forced her, in the course of several seconds, to assess the grim state of widowhood.
*
As soon as her husband appeared recovered, Mrs Hathiramani hurried down to the second floor, to consult once more with Bhai Sahib. He was disappointed to see Mrs Hathiramani carried none of her cashew-nut sweets; she rarely came to him empty-handed.
‘Today is full moon,’ he reminded her, but she appeared not to take the hint. She had disturbed him from his afternoon nap. He had not put on a clean kurta but sat before her in his vest, which rode up to reveal his navel buried in flesh above his dhoti. His hair was askew.
Mrs Hathiramani explained about her husband’s abnormal exhaustion, and the stupor she had thought was death. She voiced her fear that these circumstances were the result of Mrs Watumal’s malevolence, as predicted by Tunda Maharaj. Bhai Sahib yawned, showing stained, brown teeth.
‘There is no black magic from Mrs Watumal,’ he declared. ‘This is the work of Saturn. All these weeks Saturn was quiet because of our precautions.’ He yawned again.
‘All you ordered I have done. Why then is Mr Hathiramani so ill?’ Mrs Hathiramani asked, her face knotted in distress.
‘Soon Saturn will move out of the House of the Sun. Before he leaves he wishes to show his full strength. I will perform another rite, but it will cost,’ Bhai Sahib warned, with a shrewd wag of his head.
Mrs Hathiramani nodded mutely, and left Bhai Sahib’s temple in a state of uncomfortable agitation. She rattled the bars of the lift but received no response, and began to climb the stairs distractedly. Each landing was strewn with somnolent servants, released briefly from work to the mid-afternoon. Mrs Hathiramani passed without finding reasons for reprimand. She appeared not even to notice Raju, squatting with a cigarette outside her front door. He rushed back in behind her.
‘Memsahib, are you all right?’ he asked, alarmed at such docility. Mrs Hathiramani began to cry.
‘I bring you tea?’ Raju offered. ‘Or one Thums Up drink?’ Mrs Hathiramani shook her head and sank down on her rexine sofa. She did not agree with Bhai Sahib that Mrs Watumal had worked no magic, but she realized this too was the evil intent of Saturn, who now controlled her life. The illness of her husband and his obsession with work that boiled up his brains, the terrible business with Lakshmi, for which she and Mrs Bhagwandas now were blamed and that threatened to take them to a court, even Mrs Watumal’s magic, all were the work of Saturn. Raju appeared anxiously beside her.
‘See, Memsahib, I have made tea,’ he said. ‘I will pour it out for you.’ Mrs Hathiramani took the cup Raju offered and drank it gratefully.
*
The monsoon broke early that season. For days the sky darkened with threatening clouds. Mrs Hathiramani played Ludo with Raju on the table where she had cleaned her chutney jars the week before, and from where she could keep an eye on her husband. He listened to no one, and grew more feverish over his work. He refused to shave regularly and sometimes to bath. A grey stubble covered his cheeks. He complained at times he could not see. He did not leave the house.
‘You are also now blinding yourself,’ Mrs Hathiramani had warned, no longer able to hide her distress. ‘Only rest a few weeks, then Saturn will move and we shall be safe.’
‘My glasses need changing, nothing more,’ Mr Hathiramani insisted. Mrs Hathiramani thought of pilgrimages, but was afraid to leave the house for reasons different from her husband. Out in the streets she felt vulnerable to Saturn. She no longer went to Crawford Market on Thursday mornings with Mrs Bhagwandas. Warrens of roads, thousands of eyes, dark bodies, the great arc of the sky and the high odoriferous roof of the market, filled her now with terror. She sat before her refrigerators and took comfort from their contents, handling the fruit and vegetables, poking into the small bowls of leftovers, examining the condition of the butter.
The necklace into vanity slid her;
Now Lila everyone calls the aggressor …
Mr Hathiramani regarded this verse with less despair than previous ones. The disparity between the elegant original and the present translation no longer seemed to matter. The main thing was to get it done, to explain the unchanging psychology of men and women, and their sad plight in the material world. Mr Hathiramani began to write again, beneath this verse, an explanation for his appendix.
‘Once more our immortal poet, Shah Abdul Latif, reveals a masterpiece of feminine mind….’ His pen moved as quickly as he could work it, the area between his thumb and forefinger was sore with constant pressure. He wished he could stop, shut his eyes and sleep and never write again about Lila and Chanesar. But his hand rushed on, his eyes fastened on the flowing patterns of old script. It was as if a mechanism had been set in motion that could not be arrested. Within him one Hathiramani cried out for an end, and another Hathiramani refused him.
The trapped man within gave a moan. Even when the verses were translated, his appendix flowed on and on, new chapters appearing already in his mind: The Dramatic Excellence of the Song, The Pictorial Excellence of the Song, Source and Time of the Song. He feared he might die now in mid-Song. And still his hand would not rest.
*
In the next room, Mrs Hathiramani lifted her eyes from the Ludo board to check briefly on her husband. Through the bedroom door she could see him hunched over his diary in concentration. The room was darkening now about Mrs Hathiramani. Over the sea the sky was like ink, unruly with thick, jostling clouds. A strong breeze whistled in the ill-fitting windows; the fan still ran full pelt. Mrs Hathiramani’s sari billowed in the flurry, as she sat at the table with Raju. She had to strain her eyes in the dusk to differentiate the colours of the counters upon the Ludo board.
‘Shut the windows, Raju,’ she said, as a newspaper fluttered on a chair like a desperate bird. Raju packed up the Ludo, and Mrs Hathiramani’s thoughts turned to evening prayer. ‘Soon now we will have rain. Maybe it will cool Sahib’s mind,’ she said, rolling a wick of cotton between her palms, to light an oil lamp before a picture of the goddess Durga upon the top of the refrigerator. Raju shook a stick of incense out of a long, pink box.
‘What does Durga do, Memsahib?’ Raju asked, looking at the picture of the goddess astride a lion. He handed Mrs Hathiramani a box of matches with the incense stick.
‘She keeps away bad spirits,’ Mrs Hathiramani answered.
‘Why does she ride on a lion, Memsahib?’ Raju demanded.
Mrs Hathiramani hesitated, then frowned. ‘There were no motor bikes or cars in those days. Each god and goddess was having a favourite animal and riding about upon it.’
‘If I had education, Memsahib, I would learn such things,’ Raju replied. ‘Give me education, Memsahib, please.’
‘Have you no shame? Do I not give you enough that on top of everything you must keep asking me for education?’ Mrs Hathiramani turned angrily upon him. ‘Look at your Sahib. See how sick education makes a man. Be glad you are free of it.’
‘I would be glad, Memsahib, to risk such a disease for the sake of education,’ Raju answered. A loud clap of thunder made them start. The flame in the bowl of oil was tossed by a gust of wind. Its shadow danced behind the refrigerator in the darkening room.
‘Shut up now and say a prayer. You don’t know what you’re asking,’ Mrs Hathiramani replied.
They stood side by side before the refrigerator, heads bowed. Mrs Hathiramani prayed for attention from Durga to her frightful plight. Raju prayed for education.
‘The rain has begun,’ Mr Hathiramani murmured in the next room at the sound of thunder, but did not look up from his writing. A breeze stirred the piles of newspapers stacked against the walls. They rustled like creatures disturbed in their nests. A magazine was ripped open and flung upon th
e floor; curtains lifted and flapped about like wings. There was the sudden lash of rain.
‘Can I have no peace,’ Mr Hathiramani groaned, tugging at his hair. In spite of the cool breeze, the heat of his body consumed him. He reached out for the glass of water beside him, and picked up his pen again. He heard his wife in the outer room instruct Raju to find cloths, to dam up gaps in the warped window frames. The rain battered against the glass, blown mercilessly off the sea upon Sadhbela. Mr Hathiramani returned his attention to his work, shutting out with an effort the voice of his wife, and the sound of activity in the outer room.
O, beloved, do not me discard!
Verily am I vile woman and blackguard!
My longing for thee lodges me aground….
Tears came to his eyes. It was as if he himself was poor Lila, and Chanesar, the magnificent king whom Lila had loved and suffered for so many years, was identified now with some deep longing in himself that no amount of writing eased. The room was dim about him, and the hurrying figures of his wife and Raju in the next room insubstantial and annoying. If he could he would have locked the door against them, for days, for years, like a mountain hermit sitting immured with his immeasurable ecstacy, needing neither food nor water, air or breath, feeding on a radiance that left nothing within him untouched.
I would sweep the dust of his house
With my eyelashes and hold my hands fast at his Feet….
Mr Hathiramani felt a lump in his throat. From the outer room came the loud crash of glass. He applied his pen with renewed urgency to the paper.
My beloved! Lift not thy strong hold from me!