Gurpal said, ‘But look. You won’t have to put up with the airs and graces of casual labour any more. You’ve got your own serving girl now. Set her to the grindstone, make her draw the water – whatever you like. I’m not obligated to her. I’ve brought you a bahu.’
All Sangrao was filled with bahus. But no one sang wedding songs to the beat of drums. Nor did the dancing-girls make bawdy jokes or swing their hips and make fun. No one oiled my dust-stiffened hair, nor did any matron groom me. I became a bride but my hands were not decorated with henna, nor was my parting dressed with bridal red. No palanquin came to take me away.
Bari Ma listened to Gurpal, looking at me as if I was a burden that her grandson had picked up somewhere. Then she went inside again with the lamp and no one bothered about me. What a welcome for a bahu!
From that day to this, I’m Sita. I’m enduring exile and I’m a prisoner in Sangrao. Uprooting their swings and swigging bidis, the swing-men are mucking about with each other. They dump their wares so roughly on the donkeys, you’d think the animals were made of wood. The bullock carts of the Ram-Leela performers are standing to one side and the acting-boys eat creamy kulfi and pakoras with chutney, unmindful of their shiny clothes. The stains look like dung marks on their colourful clothes. Munni stands gaping at them. She doesn’t realize she could get lost. What difference does awareness make? If someone’s to be lost, they can disappear from a full house.
Gurpal is tugging her; and both the boys, tired, crying, demand something from every vendor they see. Is this a fair?
Mothers are pushed around in the crowd, nonchalant about their children, and get detached from them. Small children, staring into each face, cry loudly and walk on. Tell me, do people separated in fairgrounds ever meet again? The separation becomes a barrier between the generations. Our eyes are never graced with the faces we long to see just once more. Our paths close up behind us like patterns on the weft and woof of cloth. We cannot retrace our footsteps on the road we have walked. Nothing comes back. And the crowd at the fair moves forward, always forward.
Time never returns. Bhai used to say, ‘Bibi, the moment that’s passed is erased. It turns to dust.’ I wouldn’t pay attention, getting engrossed, instead, in playing with my doll’s house with my friends as soon as I came back from school. Bhaiyya tried to counsel me.
My father had bought me that doll’s house. He’d bought it from an exhibition. Munni tenderly clutches a largish cloth doll. Gurpal watches the crowd above. And Munni bends again and again to look at her doll. Both the boys are carrying idols of Ravana and gaping at every passing face with astonished expressions. Munni’s eyes hold so much love for her doll. Its nose and eyes are defined in crude stitches on its wide cloth face. There’s a ring in its nose. Its gold-edged mantle is tacked to her head as she clutches her long skirt. It makes her look like a dancing-girl. Now she’ll dance. Our route to Sangrao runs past the shores of Lake Uchal. Life’s caravan moves on, through twisted paths and straight ones, and tangled foot tracks, even if we reach our goal along the way – we must keep walking. For ever, for ever, even if our feet are wounded and there’s nothing in our hearts.
The blue dusk descends further. I don’t know why, the evenings make me indescribably unhappy. One star is leaping, throbbing, shuddering like the wick of a lamp in its blue, empty sea; its isolation reminds me of my exile. In my isolation, I’m like a lone tree which neither fruits nor flowers. This star reminds me of the ship on which Bhai went to sea. As he prepared to go abroad, surrounded with piles of baggage, Amma’s voice was drenched in tears but she packed calmly for him and prayed. Outside Baba was involved in all kinds of arrangements and Bhaiyya was despondent. Apa paced up and down the inner courtyard with silent footsteps. I pranced around the house, chirping – who feels the severity of pain before being wounded?
We had all gone to see him off at the harbour. Bhaiyya went off to sort out the paperwork for Bhai’s luggage. I bent over the rail watching the brackish water and asked Bhai, ‘Why is this water like this? Why is it oil-stained? Why do they have lifeboats here? What is the paddle for? Why the anchor? Doesn’t it scare you to see the boats bobbing up and down on the waves?’ Pestered by the questions, Bhai was saying, ‘When you grow up you’ll known all the answers automatically, Bibi.’
And today, I do know. The ship that doesn’t have an oar, drowns. Boats can even drown at the shoreline. A single wave is enough to drown them. Now that I’ve grown up and discovered the answers, Bhai isn’t here any more.
Then the ship’s whistles sounded and Baba embraced Bhai and ran his hand over his head and said, ‘Well then, son, I hand you to God.’ Bhaiyya hugged Bhai and soft-hearted Apa cried at everything. Seeing her hiccuping sobs, Bhai said, ‘Look at Bibi, how happy she looks. What’s there to cry about? I’ll be back in two years. It’s not as if I’m leaving for ever.’ Then he hugged me to his heart and said, ‘Bibi, I’ll bring you gifts from Paris. Just keep writing to me.’ I nodded vigorously. The last whistle sounded and he walked away, easily, nonchalantly, as if he was just going round the corner. We waved our handkerchiefs as long as we could see the ship, and in the evening haze, the reflected lights of the entire harbour swayed in the water. The light of the ship trembled like a lone star and then vanished. After that, all the lights around me drowned for ever. The waves yielded no light.
How loudly I’d shrieked, clinging to Amma. Someone in my heart was saying: You’ll never glimpse this face again. You’ll never manage to see Bhai again. My heart was shuddering like that lone star in the west trembling above the blue dusk in fear.
Far in the gardens, the darkness of night is spreading its wings. Gurpal has hoisted the two boys on his shoulders and they walk ahead of us on footpaths that look like white lines. And Munni walks slowly. By leaping over the ripe crops they will get ahead of us by ten fields, and wait. Gurpal is telling the boys the tale of Ravana. How can he know that I am Sita, following him, and that he himself is Ravana?
Munni says to me, ‘Ma, Saroop’s uncle gave her some lovely, colourful clothes. They’re silk. They’re lovely to touch. Ma, don’t you have a brother who could send me nice things? Ma, why won’t you say anything? You didn’t like the fair, did you? Are you tired?’
‘Yes, Munni, I’m tired. I’ve grown old. I’ve had to walk too far.’
‘You’re not old at all,’ Munni says to me with confidence. ‘You’re like an icon of the goddess, Ma. Bari Ma says so too.’
How should Munni know how much I’ve had to walk? How great the distance is between one life and another? And when we petrify, there’s no hope left in our hearts. That’s when we become fit to worship. My eyes have turned to stone, watching, waiting for those separated on the path to Sangrao. My heart is empty. They call me Lakshmi, goddess of fortune, but still the shackles of pain are so unbreakable – profound and strong, they continue to cling.
Munni’s asking again, ‘Ma, don’t you have a brother – a Mama for me?’ What can I say to her?
How shall I reply? I stand at the fork, reflecting.
I adored Bhaiyya but I was quite scared of him. When he entered the house, my dupatta seemed to place itself on my head of its own accord, I walked more sedately, I contained my hilarity. When I stood beside him, I felt he was the tallest person in the world. My brother with his careful walk, his gracious speech, his beautiful script. He wrote in straight, clean lines, no scribbles in the margin, no ink-stained hands. He’d say to me, ‘Bibi, when you grow up, you’ll write like this too.’ What would my straight-lined, stainless brother think if he were to see me today? There’s so much ink in the scrolls of my destiny that there’s not a straight line to be seen on the entire page. I never did learn to write neatly.
In those days, as I arranged the doll’s house, I thought we could live in it. Amma and Baba and I; Bhaiyya and Bhai and Apa too. We’ll just live in here. Life is a sweet song, we don’t need anything, there’s no shortage. When Bhaiyya married, I said our home is paradise, a complete and
blissful paradise. When I raised my hands to pray in those days, I couldn’t think what to ask for. Then, as now, I asked God for nothing. Pain and joy occupy the same point in the circle of life.
Bhai crossed the ocean and my dreams of paradise were shattered. All the pieces of my life have spread here and there, and like glass fragments, their jagged edges wound those who pass. Everyone’s feet are wounded, there’s no one left to cross to the other side. The road sleeps as if it is passing through a cremation ground. There’s no one for miles. Who hears Sita’s yearning in that other land? How hard it is, the pain of loneliness – and life. Gurpal is calling me from afar. Calling Munni. We walk slowly. Only sticks remain standing in the cotton fields. People gather up the laughing flowers, take them away. The hairs haven’t burst forth yet, nor have the grains formed. Gusts of wind force the tender, flexible plants to bend. You have to bend before the wind. Everyone bends, everyone bows.
Bari Ma must be getting restless. An undefined fear for me forces her heart to pound. The path to the land she’s thinking of is tortuous. And after the distance I’ve walked with Gurpal, I have no strength to walk further. After all, how much can one keep on walking, especially if there’s nowhere to go? Where can I take my wounded heart, the unreddened parting in my hair? Munni stands in my way. Munni is a barrier between me and the past. How many distances there are between me and my loved ones. How can I peep beyond her?
The singing-troupes are approaching from behind, singing religious songs. The fair, set up on the shores of Lake Uchal, has disbanded and is strewn into the surrounding pathways. Children cry, men speak in loud voices as they pass Munni and me. Women, wearing their best clothes, holding on to mantles pulled over their foreheads, carry bundles of sweets bought at the fair and clutch their babies at their shoulders, as they walk swiftly by on bare feet. Their shoes, tied in their mantles, swing behind them. There’s a deep affinity between soil and feet. Why create a barrier?
As they grow distant, the people become white stains. A yogi turns into the road to Sangrao behind us, strumming his ektara. How poignant his voice is. He’s right, isn’t he, when he says we yearn for light, even knowing it is so insubstantial? I don’t hear the melody of his strings, just the occasional word from his song.
‘Ma, why are you so quiet? Say something, I’m feeling scared.’
Munni can hardly handle her doll in her attempt to grasp my hand harder. Her voice is drenched in tears. She can’t manage another question.
Munni, too, will realize when she grows up that it’s useless to fear the dark. When its sorcery begins, it’s irresistible. Bhai used to say, ‘Bibi, water contains power, it hews its own path.’ In those days I couldn’t understand his words – where does water get its power? The flow of time hews its own paths. When Bari Ma calls to me, I pat the decorative mark into place on my forehead and gently reply, ‘Ji’. I try to dispense with her chores swiftly to keep busy so that I don’t have time to think and analyse.
When I had the time I didn’t have the perception; now I have that, I have no time. There’s always a shortfall and it never goes. This or that always remains incomplete. Today if I shut my eyes, my heart says, ‘Your brothers will be here in a moment and as soon as Bhaiyya sees me, he’ll say, “Bibi, what’s this disguise? That forehead mark doesn’t suit you at all. Remove it. Throw it away. Look what I have for you. Let go of all this. Come here, to me. Sit. Vacations are short and they pass swiftly. Just don’t go anywhere when I’m visiting.” ’
In the large room, we’d sit, looking at pictures, talk, have tea, warm ourselves on the brazier. When we laughed loudly, Amma would say in a sleepy voice, ‘You’ve got to get up in the morning. Go to sleep, children.’ And Bhaiyya would call out louder, ‘Amma, I live away from home all year, sleeping away my misery, what’s the hurry? We’ll get some sleep eventually, Amma.’ And I would think, ‘These times will turn to dust. The paradise we’ve created from love will be so obliterated by dust and anonymity that we won’t find it again, anywhere.’ Like the pictures, we are a reflection of reality. My heart was always crazy, and thought strange, wayward thoughts.
My heart has always indulged in fantasies and throbs pointlessly. When I reason with it, it responds with the question, ‘What do you lose, Bibi? No one can control fantasy. What’s the harm in dreams if they draw in all those whom you await?’
I reply that all I have left are my rights. My heart says it is a sin to lose hope but what shall I hope for?
Munni grabs my mantle and asks, ‘Ma, tell me why Mama doesn’t come here? Can’t we go there at Diwali? Ma? All the girls are going. My heart’s not in this village any more, Ma. I didn’t really enjoy the fair, either. I’m sad. I want to visit my Mama’s home.’
Who can I petition for the address of her Mama’s house? All the villages outside Sangrao are like doll’s houses to me; without a reality; mere shadows of Sangrao. Everything’s shadow.
Yet my soul keeps wandering, who knows where, looking for things that were nowhere, longing for voices which I’ll never hear again. Why did my heart beat through all the years of heaving baskets on my head, filled with cow dung, milking cows, toasting cow-pats for fuel – every time a sudden scent in the wind brought back the notes of a hundred instruments drawing near? They would carry me far away. Now I know where they all are. And it’s a place beyond my reach. Like the road going to Sangrao, all the roads cut across each other as they pass. What’s the point of searching for this city of fairy tales?
The tremulous light of lamps, burning inside the open doors of flourishing homes, looks like fairyland. Gurpal and the boys, Munni and I walk together now. The satiny heads on the reeds brush my hair. The wind hugs its satin mantle, slowly drifting into slumber. When I disengage myself from my isolation, the road gets easier.
Munni says, ‘Ma, I’m tired, I can’t walk any more.’ The boys cry and their eyes are drooping with sleep. They can’t keep hold of their Ravanas any more and we move off the path onto the low wall of a field. Munni rests her head on my lap. Gurpal is saying, ‘Just look how foolish women are. So many children have gone missing today. They lose their heads at the fair and get so involved with the Ram-Leela performances that they let their children drift off.’
‘Children are separated from their mothers even without fairs,’ I say, stroking Munni’s head without looking at him.
‘Will you ever be able to forget that incident? Those times were different, it’s changed now,’ Gurpal says softly.
How can I convince Gurpal that time is never different and people are condemned to suffer because they can’t forget? In my memory that scene is alive – fire on all sides, the country had become independent, it had been divided. Father and Mother said, ‘All these people are crazy to be flying to another country – can pain touch anyone so close to their dear ones?’ Amma and Baba were so simple – pain always comes from one’s near and dear. How real is this worry over which strangers hold sway? Life has lost its beauty and everyone’s face is masked in a blast of blood. Those who gave charity in the name of Bhagwan or Allah have run swords across each other’s throats. Those who would have died for the honour of their sisters and daughters have forsaken their scruples. The words of brothers and intimates have been cut like the shackles of centuries by independence and partition and ground to dust under the feet of the drifters. Amma had told Baba, ‘We should take the girls and go. I’m frightened – it’s useless to trust anyone.’
And Baba had said with his usual composure, ‘Bibi’s mother, you’re worrying unnecessarily, like everyone else. Tell me, what could go wrong? There had to be a partition. This hue and cry will die down in a few days. Don’t worry, all will be well again.’ In ordinary circumstances, this answer would have reassured Amma, but that day it did not. ‘Our lives and honour are both at stake. We have young girls,’ she said. ‘Listen to me – send me to my brother.’
Baba said, ‘The roads are filled with vagabonds who have strayed out of their villages. They’re smashing u
p vehicles. It’s more dangerous to go out – better you stay quietly at home. God will protect us.’
Baba must have been worried by the situation but he didn’t ask anyone for help except God. Baba’s only fault was to have trusted the old values. So it was that when Gurpal dragged me away as the result of that mistake, I saw Father’s white head lying by the bank of the canal. His body was in the water. He had somehow found the strength to rise above his closed eyes and bloodied head and pray. Was this the time for prayers to be accepted, you tell me? A shining spear had pierced through Amma’s breast and she had fallen where she had prayed to God to protect her life and chastity. Apa’s screams sometimes come to me even today in the sounds of a storm but I am as helpless today as I was then. Gurpal was dragging me away. My dupatta was no longer on my head but then what hope had I of meeting Bhaiyya on those roads? If Bhaiyya had been with me, would anyone have dared touch me? Could anyone have dragged me bareheaded like this, through the paths of my birthplace where every particle was precious to us? Those paths where my father’s blood was spilled. His grey hair was dragged in that dust. And if I could even catch a glimpse of that dust from his head, I’d tell that dust that it was more fortunate than I. I had so many things to say to Baba. How much I had irritated Amma and pestered Bhai. And when I was dragged, without a palanquin, to Sangrao, there was no mother’s child to whom I could have turned to cry and lament that I was losing my parent’s home with no one here to see me off. After suffering, if there’s a longing for peace, and a remote hope, then the burden is lightened. And my journey was never shortened. Shall I remember or forget, Gurpal? You never let me turn my head once to have a last look.
I endured Bari Ma’s beatings, Gurpal’s abuse, the hardship of hunger, my eye fixed on a remote hope, like a flickering lamp, that perhaps Bhai and Bhaiyya would come to Sangrao in search of me and I would smirk at Bari Ma and go off with my brothers, without so much as looking at Gurpal. That day the breeze, playing among the neem leaves, would sing anthems and the whole village would celebrate. Why do we all think ourselves the centre of the universe? Who knows? We blink in search of light until our eyes are inured to darkness and dreams. Hopes, like stray thoughts, revolve around my heart. Munni was born and the chains around my heart loosened. The troop of surrounding hopes was dispersed and I started to wake even in my dreams. Occasionally a word from me resounded in the songs of Sangrao.
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