Kahani

by Aamer Hussein

  Why does Baba fob her off with a smile instead of answering her question? There was definitely no such thing as a loft there. If there was none, then … then what kind of a house would it be? And how would all their belongings find a home? Thinking and struggling to draw answers from within herself, the days went by, one by one, and swallowing her tears she went on with packing. Then one day they all stood on the platform waiting for the train to carry them from the foreign land to their own country, and after a long journey of two days and two nights, she was standing on this huge platform.

  The coolies had started their jostling. Bade Bhaiyya, in a responsible manner, was helping the orderly to get the luggage organized. It wasn’t as if they were travelling light. Amma appeared to have carried the whole house with her. The luggage finally collected, their little cavalcade was ready to start. But she was freezing. The chill December wind had turned her feet to stone and it was difficult for her to take two steps.

  ‘Bade Bhaiyya, please hire a rickshaw, I can’t walk.’

  ‘Where would one find a rickshaw here, Bibi? A tum-tum is available though,’ a coolie said in passing.

  ‘So let’s take a taxi. What do you think, Bade Bhaiyya?’ She didn’t fancy a tum-tum.

  ‘Really, child! There isn’t even a rickshaw here and you’re asking for a taxi.’ The orderly had been listening to her conversation.

  ‘Then how will I walk? My feet are numb.’ She looked helplessly at Bade Bhaiyya.

  ‘Come, little one, I’ll pick you up,’ he said, gathering her in his arms.

  ‘Hush. Do you think I’m a child?’ She wiggled out of Bade Bhaiyya’s arms.

  Ever since her eldest sister had been married she had become very conscious of her years. Whenever someone dismissed her as a child, her reaction would be extreme and she would try to impress her adult status on them.

  ‘Then, child, I suggest you take quicker strides. See – like I do. Then you won’t feel cold.’ The orderly walked past her rapidly. Bade Bhaiyya followed suit. Trying to keep up, she also quickened her pace and stepped off the platform onto a gravel road. Its crunch underfoot jolted her. Why had Baba lied? He had said that the roads here were so lovely and shining that a person could even see their face in them. How was she to know that love transmutes dirt into gold and transforms a stone into a mirror? How Baba loved this soil … but this was something she was not aware of till much later. She had contented herself then with the observation that Baba could also lie on occasion and this revelation had been chalked up to experience and nothing else. Hurrying down the road she had loved its gravelly sensation. That frost-wrapped winter morning still glowed in the recesses of her memory. What new experiences she’d had that morning! Walking on the road had brought a strange sense of freedom. In her village they were carried about in a palanquin and there was not the claustrophobic rush of rickshaws here either. Going down the gravel road that morning she had experienced a rush of happiness, timeless in quality, that was still alive within her. The gentle mist, the damp smell of earth, the feel of dew on the feet and the slippery crunch of gravel underfoot. All of this was completely new for her and full of exciting smells, and when, her heart welling with happiness, she had arrived at the place where their small cavalcade had stopped and the coolies were laying down their loads, she had seen Baba. All wrapped up in a Kashmiri shawl, his tall presence loomed magnetically before her.

  ‘Baba, it’s me!’ She clung to him.

  ‘My daughter!’ Baba bent to kiss her. ‘Where have you left Amma and your other brothers and sisters?’

  ‘They’re all behind. Only I ran to reach you.’ She panted happily, looking all around. Baba got busy talking to Bade Bhaiyya and issuing instructions to the orderly about the luggage.

  She examined the house she was standing in front of carefully. This was a new type of house. Tall and with a large compound, it was surrounded by verandahs in front and at the back and had nothing like a courtyard around. The entire compound had been enclosed with a prickly-barbed wire fence.

  This was their house! How different it was from their haveli. There their haveli had an immense courtyard and in it had stood neem and peepal trees, and such lovely guava trees as well, and here … here along with the sturdy mango, jaman and jack fruit, the tall coconut and beetlenut trees swayed overhead. The damp fragrance of earth pervaded the humid air as she looked, in the shivering electric light, at the house which was now her abode. That was a haveli, and this … this was bungalow no. T/80! She took a deep breath and her mind filled with the familiar scent of harsinghar.

  ‘Baba, Baba.’ She ran to him as he stood, deep in conversation with Amma, his arms around Chote Bhaiyya.

  ‘Baba, look here as well, I mean there’s that lovely scent here too!’ she said happily.

  ‘Yes, child. This is the scent of the harsinghar. Here they also call it sheoli.’

  Sheoli or harsinghar, harsinghar or sheoli, what difference does it make? The story of the journey from harsinghar to sheoli is a long one. She asked her father countless times, ‘Why sheoli? Why not harsinghar?’

  ‘Because, my child, here, in this part of your land, harsinghar is sheoli,’ Bade Bhaiyya chipped in.

  ‘And because you have to live and die in this land, therefore you will have to accustom yourself to calling it sheoli and not harsinghar … That was your past and this is your present and only if you live in the present will you be able to build a promising future for yourself. So, Munni child, my advice to you is to give more importance to your future than to the past.’

  ‘Listen, Bade Bhaiyya, I don’t agree with you. Tell me, how is it possible to build a relationship with the future, or dream dreams of a bright tomorrow, by forgetting the past? When one has no memory of the past, how can one love the present and …?’

  ‘Forget it. Your mind is filled with straw. Actually you’re prejudiced.’

  ‘Bade Bhaiyya, my not speaking Bangla is not such a crime that you should accuse me of prejudice. I just can’t break the habit of speaking my own language.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t understood.’

  ‘I mean, my dear Bade Bhaiyya, that when I can get by through speaking my own language, why should I commit the sin of distorting another perfectly good language by speaking it incorrectly? Don’t you agree, Baba? It’s not in me to speak a language incorrectly …’ She laughed.

  ‘And since when has English become your mother tongue, that you are pursuing it with a vengeance?’ Bade Bhaiyya was peeved. ‘You’re always showing off, even if you don’t know the first thing about it …’

  ‘God forbid that English should be my language, and the only reason I’m pursuing it is that people like you may not brand me as ignorant. And as far as speaking it incorrectly goes, I have no qualms about ruining it. It’s not a sign of our emancipation, but a token of our servitude, and obviously one does not love such tokens. Understood, Bade Bhaiyya?’ She looked at him ironically.

  ‘Not to learn the language of the place one lives in, that’s unfair.’

  ‘Who’s refusing to learn it? I’m just not interested in speaking it like an ignoramus.’

  ‘And why have I started to speak correct Urdu then?’ Pakhi intervened.

  ‘That’s because Urdu is my language,’ chirped Bade Bhaiyya.

  ‘You’re labouring under a misapprehension.’ Pakhi smiled at Bade Bhaiyya.

  ‘Deny, if you can, that Urdu is the language of love.’ Bade Bhaiyya smiled back.

  ‘As far as Munni Bitiya is concerned, is our language even worse than English so that she will pile sins on herself if she speaks it?’ Pakhi had taken her words amiss.

  ‘Oh no, Pakhi. Who said that? Not at all! Your language is the largesse that freedom bestowed on us, otherwise how removed we would have been from it. It’s as dear to us as our own mother tongue …’ She tried to make amends.

  ‘And me …?’

  ‘It’s another matter for you, Pakhi rani. Have I, like you, exchanged vows of lov
e …?’ she laughed.

  ‘This is wrong, Munni child. You don’t praise her for her courage, but turn around and make fun of her.’

  ‘You are there to praise her.’

  The whole business of praise stretched to such lengths that, quite unobtrusively, both pronunciation and language changed: from ‘pakas’ to ‘phirni’ and from ‘phirni’ to ‘firni’. From ‘sharm ata hai’ (the masculine gender) to ‘sharm ati hai’ (the feminine gender). Once when Bade Bhaiyya took her to Patna to show her glimpses from his past he had entertained the entire clan and, according to Pakhi, they had all liked her a lot. She would take great pleasure in saying, ‘In our part of the world’, ‘In my in-laws’ home’, ‘In our Patna’ and ‘When we went to Allahabad we saw the confluence of the Ganga and Jamuna just like the Sheeta Alekha and Deheleshwari embracing each other.’

  ‘Yes, just the way you embraced me.’ Bade Bhaiyya laughed and Pakhi blushed. She found Pakhi’s blushes a little strange. In this part of the world even brides are quite assertive. Bade Bhaiyya’s faith that ‘slowly everything will settle down’ turned out to be correct. Sure enough, gradually, everything did settle down. Pakhi had not only married Bade Bhaiyya but his language, his ways, his customs and traditions had become her own.

  Bade Bhaiyya was so lost in Pakhi that he quite forgot himself, and Pakhi, with the greatest of ease, kept adding one person after another to the family numbers.

  Amma and Baba, who had initially had very little interest in her person and had tolerated her membership of the family as an unpleasant duty, were delighted with her astonishing fecundity, and the same house that had been seen as spacious became the epitome of cramped living. Two rooms in bungalow no. T/80 were under the exclusive control of Pakhi, and her little princes and princesses ruled over the remaining three rooms as well. One room had been designated the drawing room, but in name only. Its actual condition was such that a baby’s dummy lay in one place and a bottle of milk in another. Someone would be clutching the divan and reciting the alphabet, because there was nothing else to amuse the young master in that room. Elsewhere, Rani and Baby’s books were being reduced to pulp. When, for his sins, Chote Bhaiyya visited Dhaka in his vacations, his booklets and notebooks would be torn to shreds. At least she felt this way.

  Who was she? A slender, tawny young girl, solitary even while living in the midst of all, loving life and fragrances of all kind, courageous despite her deceptively slim being and with the ability to take on mountains if necessary. But in this house Bade Bhaiyya was no less than a mountain and Pakhi, with her seven little ones, was, as it were, its summit. And she was never able to take them on. She loved Bade Bhaiyya, whose clear and lively intelligence had encouraged her to love life and enjoy its pleasures, who valued the brighter rather than the darker side of life and who, having once understood something, was prepared to lay down his life for it – as he was for Pakhi, who, in turn, had understood that for her salvation lay in creating a safe haven for themselves.

  So she cleaned out a small outhouse in which Amma stored odds and ends for herself, and after days of hard work sat in it weaving together her dreams and thoughts when Pakhi dropped in and, chatting of this and that, suddenly expressed surprise. ‘Don’t you feel suffocated in this dark outhouse, Munni child? Like Bade Bhaiyya she addressed her as ‘Munni child’, although initially Pakhi had been her friend. It was a fact though that the friendship could not have taken on the shape that Pakhi’s friendship with Bade Bhaiyya had assumed. Even now when she looked back she was very conscious of the transformation of Bade Bhaiyya.

  Bengali women are sorceresses. Don’t go to Bengal. From childhood this was the burden of the songs she’d heard and after settling here she had witnessed it: Bade Bhaiyya’s marriage to Pakhi was a successful demonstration of Bengali magic.

  ‘Arrey, Munni beta, lost in a reverie are you? Where have you disappeared to? What have I been asking you?’ Pakhi grabbed her shoulder and shook it.

  She looked at Pakhi inquiringly without answering her.

  ‘Arrey, I’m asking how you don’t suffocate in this humidity.’ She retched.

  What a difference there was between that Pakhi and this Pakhi, she thought, without paying much attention to her. She had spoken in distant tones. To make obeisance and touch feet and now …! Yes, this is the magic that Bengali women know. Then how could this magic not hold sway? She fixed her gaze on Pakhi, who had blossomed as a result of becoming the mother of so many children. The tresses that had reached her waist now hung well below it. With her sari tied in the way Amma tied hers and her head covered with its end, she was another being.

  ‘Oho, Munni child, for whose sake have you renounced the world and taken to this closed, claustrophobic room?’ She shook her by the shoulder again.

  ‘You’ve really learnt to talk a lot, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, why not? After all my children …’ She retched violently. ‘Oh God, this heat! My head is spinning.’

  ‘You mean …’ She looked at Pakhi closely. ‘Really, Pakhi, there’s no end to your fecundity. Now you’re on the eighth. But pay close attention to me. This time I’m not going to vacate the outhouse for you.’

  She finally understood what Amma had meant when she had stepped into her outhouse yesterday and exclaimed in delight, ‘Oh, so you’ve fixed this side room. It can serve a purpose in time of need.’ Now Pakhi’s condition had clearly shown the need. Put up the barricades, she thought, otherwise you’ll be driven from here as well. At that very moment Bade Bhaiyya materialized from somewhere.

  ‘No reason for you to worry, Munni beta,’ he said. ‘The visionaries will populate new communities.’

  ‘How is that, Bade Bhaiyya …?’

  ‘We’re off to Phoolbari. Enough of this place, now the village world will make our acquaintance.’ Bade Bhaiyya announced his decision with composure.

  Amma and Baba were disturbed at the very thought. ‘Where are you going to, sir? Is that any place to live in! It’ll have a bad effect on the children’s studies. There’s not even a proper school there.’

  ‘What are you saying, Baba? There are not one but two high schools there, one for the girls and another for the boys.’

  ‘But, son, the medium of instruction there is Bangla, and that way we’ll lose our …’

  ‘So what, Baba? If we have to live here, we have to mingle with this soil. This will strengthen our roots,’ Bade Bhaiyya interrupted Baba.

  ‘You may think that, son. My experience is that grafting ourselves on this soil will not make a difference. A graft will always be seen for what it is.’

  ‘No, Baba. Your attitude is wrong. You can think this way,’ Chote Bhaiyya intervened. He was visiting Santahar from Dhaka. This was around 1958 or 1959 when arrests were taking place very quietly and he had thought it best to come home with the least amount of fuss. The family would be pleased and at the same time the danger would be averted. Now here he was arguing with Baba with the greatest of ease.

  ‘Has anyone been able to place controls on thinking, sir? If that had been possible would I not have moulded you, who are bent on reducing our traditions to dust, to my way of thinking? Our coming generations will not even know …’

  ‘You have no right to say that, Baba. We did not express any desire to come here, it was your decision. It was you who rebelled against your traditions – now which traditions are you talking about? You tore a sturdy tree up by its roots and tried to transplant it in this soil: why are you now fed up with this world?’

  ‘Why I’m fed up is my personal business. As far as coming here is concerned, I never made a wiser decision in my life. It is my belief that we will never receive salvation in the next world if the children’s future has not been secured. And, son, all of you can see that you have not been losers in this respect. The self-confidence that you find within yourself, and the determination to get your point of view across, is the gift of freedom, a gift of this free society. To be free in name alone is no freedom, sir
. Turn to your past. In the city you left behind, you will find your own brothers, listless and, despite their abilities, cowering in their shells … and then look at all of you, making such fine progress according to your individual talents.’

  ‘You are under a misapprehension. In this time of alienation we cannot speak openly and you … you think this is true freedom?’ Chote Bhaiyya spoke bitterly. ‘This military rule, what’s your opinion of it?’

  ‘Who has told you that it is brave or clever to support this regime? Why don’t you just take over the business of state? Who has stopped all of you?’ Baba was a government servant and not prepared to hear a word against the government of the day.

  ‘What wonderful things you say, Baba! That would be like snatching sugar cane from an elephant. Is all this possible in a system where free speech has been silenced?’

  ‘It is best that you keep out of the debate of what is possible and what is not possible by keeping quiet. It is best for all of us this way,’ Baba said sternly.

  ‘Even if we silence ourselves, don’t you think others will raise their voices about these timely issues? I believe that even if our lips were to be sealed the very walls would speak.’

  ‘But I say you should hold your tongue. Are you getting ready to go back to jail?’ Amma looked at Chote Bhaiyya in terror.

  ‘As far as jail goes, Amma, people are being picked up every day. Only yesterday they took Pakhi’s brother away. Yesterday it was his, today it may be our turn. In these times whoever has the courage to speak the truth will suffer the fate of Mansoor al-Hallaj.’

  ‘There’s no need. I don’t want a Mansoor or a Messiah. Look how you’ve disgraced me, you wretch. No one has ever been to jail in my family. As for Pakhi’s brother, who can say anything about him, he seems to take pleasure in getting himself handcuffed. Where we come from, only hooligans and vagabonds go to jail.’ Like a typical mother-in-law, Mother lacerated the festering boils.