City Improbable- Writings on Delhi

by Khuswant Singh

  By nine o’clock everyone who is still in the house is busy doing something. Shobha is washing clothes. Bhabiji has settled down on a cot with a huge pile of spinach, which she methodically cleans and chops up. Madhu, her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, who attends school only in the afternoons, is washing down the sitting room floor. Madhu’s mother is a teacher in a primary school in Delhi, and earns a pittance of Rs 150 a month. Her husband went to England ten years ago, and never returned; he does not send any money home.

  Madhu is made attractive by the gravity of her countenance. She is always thoughtful, reflective; seldom speaks, smiles rarely (but looks very pretty when she does). I wonder what she thinks about as she scrubs floors, prepares meals with Bhabiji, washes dishes and even finds a few hard-pressed moments for her school work. She is the Cinderella of the house. Not that she has to put up with anything like a cruel stepmother. Madhu is Bhabiji’s favourite. She has made herself so useful that she is above all reproach. Apart from that, there is a certain measure of aloofness about her—she does not get involved in domestic squabbles—and this is foreign to a household in which everyone has something to say for himself or herself. Her two young brothers are constantly being reprimanded, but no one says anything to Madhu. Only yesterday morning, when clothes were being washed and Madhu was scrubbing the floor, the following dialogue took place.

  Madhu’s mother (picking up a school book left in the courtyard): ‘Where’s that boy Popat? See how careless he is with his books! Popat! He’s run off. Just wait till he gets back. I’ll give him a good beating.’

  Vinod’s mother: ‘It’s not Popat’s book. It’s Vinod’s. Where’s Vinod?’

  Vinod (grumpily): ‘It’s Madhu’s book.’

  Silence for a minute or two. Madhu continues scrubbing the floor; she does not bother to look up. Vinod picks up the book and takes it indoors. The women return to their chores.

  Manju, daughter of Shiv and sister of Vinod, is averse to housework and, as a result, is always being scolded—by her parents, grandmother, uncles and aunts.

  Now, she is engaged in the unwelcome chore of sweeping the front yard. She does this with a sulky look, ignoring my cheerful remarks. I have been sitting under the guava tree, but Manju soon sweeps me away from this spot. She creates a drifting cloud of dust, and seems satisfied only when the dust settles on the clothes that have just been hung up to dry. Manju is a sensuous creature and, like most sensuous people, is lazy by nature. She does not like sweeping because the boy next door can see her at it, and she wants to appear before him in a more glamorous light. Her first action every morning is to turn to the cinema advertisements in the newspaper. Bombay’s movie moguls cater for girls like Manju who long to be tragic heroines. Life is so very dull for middle-class teenagers in Delhi that it is only natural that they should lean so heavily on escapist entertainment. Every residential area has a cinema. But there is not a single bookshop in this particular suburb, although it has a population of over twenty thousand literate people. Few children read books but they are adept at swotting up examination ‘guides’, and students of, say, Hardy or Dickens read the guides and not the novels.

  Bhabiji is now grinding onions and chillies in a mortar. Her eyes are watering but she is in a good mood. Shobha sits quietly in the kitchen. A little while ago she was complaining to me of a backache. I am the only one who lends a sympathetic ear to complaints of aches and pains. But since last night, my sympathies have been under severe strain. When I got into bed at about ten o’clock, I found the sheets wet. Apparently Shobha had put her baby to sleep in my bed during the afternoon.

  While the housework is still in progress, cousin Kishore arrives. He is an itinerant musician who makes a living by arranging performances at marriages. He visits Bhabiji’s house frequently and at odd hours, often a little tipsy, always brimming over with goodwill and grandiose plans for the future. It was once his ambition to be a film producer, and some years back he lost a lot of Bhabiji’s money in producing a film that was never completed. He still talks of finishing it.

  ‘Brother,’ he says, taking me into his confidence for the hundredth time, ‘do you know anyone who has a movie camera?’

  ‘No,’ I say, knowing only too well how these admissions can lead me into a morass of complicated manoeuvres. But Kishore is not easily put off, especially when he has been fortified with country liquor.

  ‘But you knew someone with a movie camera?’ he asks.

  ‘That was long ago.’

  ‘How long ago?’ (I have got him going now.)

  ‘About five years back.’

  ‘Only five years? Find him, find him!’

  ‘It’s no use. He doesn’t have the movie camera any more. He sold it.’

  ‘Sold it!’ Kishore looks at me as though I have done him an injury. ‘But why didn’t you buy it? All we need is a movie camera, and our fortune is made. I will produce the film, I will direct it, I will write the music. Two in one, Charlie Chaplin and Raj Kapoor. Why didn’t you buy the camera?’

  ‘Because I didn’t have the money.’

  ‘But we could have borrowed the money.’

  ‘If you are in a position to borrow money, you can go out and buy another movie camera.’

  ‘We could have borrowed the camera. Do you know anyone else who has one?’

  ‘Not a soul.’ I am firm this time; I will not be led into another maze.

  ‘Very sad, very sad,’ mutters Kishore. And with a dejected, hangdog expression designed to make me feel that I am responsible for all his failures, he moves off.

  Bhabiji had expressed some annoyance at his arrival, but he softens her up by leaving behind an invitation to a marriage party this evening. No one in the house knows the bride’s or bridegroom’s family, but that does not matter; knowing one of the musicians is just as good. Almost everyone will go.

  While Bhabiji, Shobha and Madhu are preparing lunch, Bhabiji engages in one of her favourite subjects of conversation, Kamal’s marriage, which she hopes she will be able to arrange in the near future. She freely acknowledges that she made grave blunders in selecting wives for her other sons—this is meant to be heard by Shobha—and promises not to repeat her mistakes. According to Bhabiji, Kamal’s bride should be both educated and domesticated, and of course she must be fair.

  ‘What if he likes a dark girl?’ I ask teasingly.

  Bhabiji looks horrified. ‘He cannot marry a dark girl,’ she declares.

  ‘But dark girls are beautiful,’ I tell her.

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Do you want him to marry a European girl?’

  ‘No foreigners! I know them, they’ll take my son away. He shall have a good Punjabi girl, with a complexion the colour of wheat.’

  Noon. The shadows shift and cross the road. I sit beneath the guava tree and watch the women at work. They will not let me do anything, but they like talking to me and they love to hear my broken Punjabi. Sparrows flit about at their feet, snapping up the gram that runs away from their busy fingers. A crow looks speculatively at the empty kitchen, sidles towards the open door; but Bhabiji has only to glance up and the experienced crow flies away. He knows he will not be able to make off with anything from this house.

  One by one the children come home, demanding food. Now it is Madhu’s turn to go to school. Her younger brother Popat, an intelligent but undersized boy of thirteen, appears in the doorway and asks for lunch.

  ‘Be off!’ says Bhabiji. ‘It isn’t ready yet.’

  Actually the food is ready and only the chapatis remain to be made. Shobha will attend to them. Bhabiji lies down on her cot in the sun, complaining of a pain in her back and ringing noises in her ears.

  ‘I’ll press your back,’ says Popat. He has been out of Bhabiji’s favour lately, and is looking for an opportunity to be rehabilitated.

  Barefooted he stands on Bhabiji’s back and treads her weary flesh and bones with a gentle walking-in-one-spot movement. Bhabiji grunts with relief. Every day she
has new pains in new places. Her age, and the daily business of feeding the family and running everyone’s affairs, are beginning to tell on her. But she would sooner die than give up her position of dominance in the house. Her working sons still hand over their pay to her, and she dispenses the money as she sees fit.

  The pummelling she gets from Popat puts her in a better mood, and she holds forth on another favourite subject, the respective merits of various dowries. Shiv’s wife (according to Bhabiji) brought nothing with her but a string cot; Kishore’s wife brought only a sharp and clever tongue; Shobha brought a wonderful steel cupboard, fully expecting that it would do all the housework for her.

  This last observation upsets Shobha, and a little later I find her under the guava tree, weeping profusely. I give her the comforting words she obviously expects, but it is her husband Arun who will have to bear the brunt of her outraged feelings when he comes home this evening. He is rather nervous of his wife. Last night he wanted to eat out, at a restaurant, but did not want to be accused of wasting money. So he stuffed fifteen rupees into my pocket and asked me to invite both him and Shobha to dinner, which I did. We had a good dinner. Such unexpected hospitality on my part has further improved my standing with Shobha. Now, in spite of other chores, she sees that I get cups of tea and coffee at odd hours of the day.

  Bhabiji knows Arun is soft with his wife, and taunts him about it. She was saying this morning that whenever there is any work to be done Shobha retires to bed with a headache (partly true). She says even Manju does more housework (not true). Bhabiji has certain talents as an actress, and does a good take-off of Shobha sulking and grumbling at having too much to do.

  While Bhabiji talks, Popat sneaks off and goes for a ride on the bicycle. It is a very old bicycle and is constantly undergoing repairs. ‘The soul has gone out of it,’ says Vinod philosophically and makes his way on to the roof, where he keeps a store of pornographic literature. Up there, he cannot be seen and cannot be remembered, and so avoids being sent out on errands.

  One of the boys is bathing at the hand-pump. Manju, who should have gone to school with Madhu, is stretched out on a cot, complaining of fever. But she will be up in time to attend the marriage party …

  Towards evening, as the birds return to roost in the guava tree, their chatter is challenged by the tumult of people in the house getting ready for the marriage party.

  Manju presses her tight pyjamas but neglects to darn them. She wears a loose-fitting, diaphanous shirt. She keeps flitting in and out of the front room so that I can admire the way she glitters. Shobha has used too much powder and lipstick in an effort to look like the femme fatale which she indubitably is not. Shiv’s more conservative wife floats around in loose, old-fashioned pyjamas. Bhabiji is sober and austere in a white sari. Madhu looks neat. The men wear their suits.

  Popat is holding up a mirror for his Uncle Kishore, who is combing his long hair. (Kishore kept his hair long, like a court musician at the time of Akbar, before the hippies had been heard of.) He is nodding benevolently, having fortified himself from a bottle labelled ‘Som Ras’ (Nectar of the Gods), obtained cheaply from an illicit still.

  Kishore: ‘Don’t shake the mirror, boy!’

  Popat: ‘Uncle, it’s your head that’s shaking.’

  Shobha is happy. She loves going out, especially to marriages, and she always takes her two small boys with her, although they invariably spoil the carpets.

  Only Kamal, Popat and I remain behind. I have had more than my share of marriage parties.

  The house is strangely quiet. It does not seem so small now, with only three people left in it. The kitchen has been locked (Bhabiji will not leave it open while Popat is still in the house), so we visit the dhaba, the wayside restaurant near the main road, and this time I pay the bill with my own money. We have kababs and chicken curry.

  Yesterday Kamal and I took our lunch on the grass of the Buddha Jayanti Gardens (Buddha’s Birthday Gardens). There was no college for Kamal, as the majority of Delhi’s students had hijacked a number of corporation buses and headed for the Pakistan High Commission, with every intention of levelling it to the ground if possible, as a protest against the hijacking of an Indian plane from Srinagar to Lahore. The students were met by the Delhi police in full strength, and a pitched battle took place, in which stones from the students and tear gas shells from the police were the favoured missiles. There were two shells fired every minute, according to a newspaper report. And this went on all day. A number of students and policemen were injured, but by some miracle no one was killed. The police held their ground, and the Pakistan High Commission remained inviolate. But the Australian High Commission, situated to the rear of the student brigade, received most of the tear gas shells, and had to close down for the day.

  Kamal and I attended the siege for about an hour, before retiring to the Gardens with our ham sandwiches. A couple of friendly squirrels came up to investigate, and were soon taking bread from our hands. We could hear the chanting of the students in the distance. I lay back on the grass and opened my copy of Barchester Towers. Whenever life in Delhi, or in Bhabiji’s house (or anywhere, for that matter) becomes too tumultuous, I turn to Trollope. Nothing could be further removed from the turmoil of our times than an English cathedral town in the nineteenth century. But I think Jane Austen would have appreciated life in Bhabiji’s house.

  By ten o’clock, everyone is back from the marriage. (They had gone for the feast, and not for the ceremonies, which continue into the early hours of the morning.) Shobha is full of praise for the bridegroom’s good looks and fair complexion. She describes him as being ‘gorachitta’—very white! She does not have a high opinion of the bride.

  Shiv, in a happy and reflective mood, extols the qualities of his own wife, referring to her as the Barrel. He tells us how, shortly after their marriage, she had threatened to throw a brick at the next-door girl. This little incident remains fresh in Shiv’s mind, after eighteen years of marriage.

  He says: ‘When the neighbours came and complained, I told them, “It is quite possible that my wife will throw a brick at your daughter. She is in the habit of throwing bricks.” The neighbours held their peace.’

  I think Shiv is rather proud of his wife’s militancy when it comes to taking on neighbours; recently she vanquished the woman next door (a formidable Sikh lady) after a verbal battle that lasted three hours. But in arguments or quarrels with Bhabiji, Shiv’s wife always loses, because Shiv takes his mother’s side.

  Arun, on the other hand, is afraid of both wife and mother, and simply makes himself scarce when a quarrel develops. Or he tells his mother she is right, and then, to placate Shobha, takes her to the pictures.

  Kishore turns up just as everyone is about to go to bed. Bhabiji is annoyed at first, because he has been drinking too much, but when he produces a bunch of cinema tickets she is mollified and asks him to stay the night. Not even Bhabiji likes missing a new picture.

  Kishore is urging me to write his life story.

  ‘Your life would make a most interesting story,’ I tell him. ‘But it will be interesting only if I put in everything—your successes and your failures.’

  ‘No, no, only successes,’ exhorts Kishore. ‘I want you to describe me as a popular music director.’

  ‘But you have yet to become popular.’

  ‘I will be popular if you write about me.’

  Fortunately we are interrupted by the cots being brought in. Then Bhabiji and Shiv go into a huddle, discussing plans for building an extra room. After all, Kamal may be married soon.

  One by one, the children get under their quilts. Popat starts massaging Bhabiji’s back. She gives him her favourite blessing: ‘God protect you and give you lots of children.’ If God listens to all Bhabiji’s prayers and blessings, there will never be a fall in the population.

  The lights are off and Bhabiji settles down for the night. She is almost asleep when a small voice pipes up: ‘Bhabiji, tell us a story.’

/>   At first Bhabiji pretends not to hear. Then, when the request is repeated, she says: ‘You’ll keep Aunty Shobha awake, and then she’ll have an excuse for getting up late in the morning.’ But the children know Bhabiji’s one great weakness, and they renew their demand.

  ‘Your grandmother is tired,’ says Arun. ‘Let her sleep.’

  But Bhabiji’s eyes are open. Her mind is going back over the crowded years, and she remembers something very interesting that happened when her younger brother’s wife’s sister married the eldest son of her third cousin …

  Before long, the children are asleep, and I am wondering if I will ever sleep, for Bhabiji’s voice drones on, into the darker reaches of the night.

  Some thirty years have passed since this account was written, but Bhabiji and her family have been very much on my mind of late, for it was just a few days ago that I received news that Kamal had succumbed to a paralytic stroke. He was only fifty-six. Thus ended my last link with Rajouri Gardens. Bhabiji had passed on in the late 1970s, and with her passing this closely-knit joint family began to break up, for she was the bond that held together those very disparate elements. The brothers went their different ways, the grandchildren also being dispersed. There were disputes over property. Popat and his brothers ended up in the UK. Arun and his family moved to another part of Delhi. Kishore died too, without realizing his ambition of becoming a famous musician. In Delhi today it is rare to find large families living together. The younger lot keep in touch by telephone or email. They seldom meet.

  A World of Words

  RENUKA SINGH

  My family used to live in Preet Nagar, situated at the midpoint between Lahore and Amritsar, which was then a vibrant centre of Punjabi culture. My father Pritam Singh worked with Gurbaksh Singh, the editor of a Punjabi literary magazine, Preet Lari. Soon after Partition, my parents along with my elder sister had to abandon their home. They arrived in Delhi as refugees and stayed at the Yog Maya Temple right opposite the Qutub Minar. Within a few months, they moved to the top floor of a yellow mansion nearby. The Muslim family who owned this house—some of them had fled to Pakistan—had so designed the house that there was a panoramic view of the surrounding area of Qutub from our floor. I was born in a room that overlooked the minar.