Cracking India (15 page)

There is much disturbing talk. India is going to be broken. Can one break a country? And what happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further up on Warris Road? How will I ever get to Godmother's then?

I ask Cousin.

“Rubbish,” he says, “no one's going to break India. It's not made of glass!”

I ask Ayah.

“They'll dig a canal...,” she ventures. “This side for Hindustan and this side for Pakistan. If they want two countries, that's what they'll have to do—crack India with a long, long canal.”

Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Iqbal, Tara Singh, Mountbatten are names I hear.

And I become aware of religious differences.

It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all-encompassing Ayah—she is also a token. A Hindu. Carried away by a renewed devotional fervor she expends a small fortune in joss-sticks, flowers and sweets on the gods and goddesses in the temples.

Imam Din and Yousaf, turning into religious zealots, warn Mother they will take Friday afternoons off for the Jumha prayers. On Fridays they set about preparing themselves ostentatiously. Squatting atop the cement wall of the garden tank they hold their feet out beneath the tap and diligently scrub between their toes.
They wash their heads, arms, necks and ears and noisily clear their throats and noses. All in white check prayer scarves thrown over their shoulders, stepping uncomfortably in stiff black Bata shoes worn without socks, they walk out of the gates to the small mosque at the back of Queens Road. Sometimes, at odd hours of the day, they spread their mats on the front lawn and pray when the muezzin calls. Crammed into a narrow religious slot they too are diminished, as are Jinnah and Iqbal, Ice-candy-man and Masseur.

Hari and Moti-the-sweeper and his wife Muccho, and their untouchable daughter Papoo, become ever more untouchable as they are entrenched deeper in their low Hindu caste. While the Sharmas and the Daulatrams, Brahmins like Nehru, are dehumanized by their lofty caste and caste-marks.

The Rogers of Birdwood Barracks, Queen Victoria and King George are English Christians: they look down their noses upon the Pens who are Anglo-Indian, who look down theirs on the Phailbuses who are Indian-Christian, who look down upon all non-Christians.

Godmother, Slavesister, Electric-aunt and my nuclear family are reduced to irrelevant nomenclatures—we are Parsee.

What is God?

All morning we hear Muccho screeching at Papoo. “I turn my back; the bitch slacks off! I say something; she becomes a deaf-mute. I'll thrash the wickedness out of you!”

“I don't know what jinn's gotten into that woman,” says Ayah. “She can't leave the girl alone!”

I have made several trips to the back, hanging around the quarters on some pretext or other, and with my presence protecting Papoo.

Papoo hardly ever plays with me now. She is forever slapping the dough into chapatties, or washing, or collecting dung from the
road and plastering it on the walls of their quarters. The dried dung cakes provide fuel.

In the evening she sweeps our compound with a stiff reed
jharoo,
spending an hour in a little cloud of dust, an infant stuck to her hip like a growth.

Though she looks more ragged—and thin—her face and hands splotched with pale dry patches and her lips cracked, she is as cheeky as ever with her mother. And forever smiling her handsome roguish smile at us.

Late that evening Ayah tells me that Muccho is arranging Papoo's marriage.

I am seven now, so Papoo must be eleven.

 

My perception of people has changed.

I still see through to their hearts and minds, but their exteriors superimpose a new set of distracting impressions.

The tuft of
bodhi-
hair rising like a tail from Hari's shaven head suddenly appears fiendish and ludicrous.

“Why do you shave your head like that?” I say disparagingly.

“Because we've always done so, Lenny baby, from the time of my grandfather's grandfathers... it's the way of our caste.”

I'm not satisfied with his answer.

When Cousin visits that evening I tell him what I think. “Just because his grandfathers shaved their heads and grew stupid tails is no reason why Hari should.”

“Not as stupid as you think,” says Cousin. “It keeps his head cool and his brain fresh.”

“If that's so,” I say, challenging him, “why don't you shave your head? Why don't Mother and Father and Godmother and Electric-aunt and...”

Cousin stops my mouth with his hand and as I try to bite his fingers and wiggle free, he shouts into my ears and tells me about the Sikhs.

I stop wiggling. He has informed me that the Sikhs become mentally deficient at noon. My mouth grows slack under his palm.
He carefully removes his hand from my gaping mouth and, resuming his normal speaking voice, further informs me: “All that hair not only drains away their gray matter, it also warms their heads like a tea cozy. And at twelve o'clock, when the heat from the sun is at its craziest, it addles their brains!”

It is some hours before I can close my gaping mouth. Immediately I rush to Imam Din and ask if what Cousin says is true.

“Sure,” he says, pushing his hookah away and standing up to rake the ashes.

“Just the other day Mr. Singh milked his cow without a bucket. He didn't even notice the puddle of milk on the ground ...It was exactly two seconds past twelve!”

Cousin erupts with a fresh crop of Sikh jokes.

And there are Hindu, Muslim, Parsee and Christian jokes.

I can't seem to put my finger on it—but there is a subtle change in the Queen's Garden. Sitting on Ayah's crossed legs, leaning against her chocolate softness, again the unease at the back of my mind surfaces.

I fidget restlessly on Ayah's lap and she asks: “What is it, Lenny? You want to do soo-soo?”

I nod, for want of a better explanation.

“I'll take her,” offers Masseur, getting up.

Masseur leads me to the Queen's platform. Squatting beneath the English Queen's steely profile, my bottom bared to the evening throng, I relieve myself of a trickle.

“Oye! What are you gaping at?” Masseur shouts at a little Sikh boy who has paused to watch. His long hair, secured in a top-knot, is probably already addling his brain.

Masseur raises his arm threateningly and shouts: “Scram!”

The boy flinches, but returning his eyes to me, stays his ground.

The Sikhs are fearless. They are warriors.

I slide my eyes away and, pretending not to notice him, stand
up and raise my knickers. As Masseur straightens the skirt of my short frock I lean back against his legs and shyly ogle the boy.

Masseur gropes for my hand. But I twist and slip away and run to the boy and he, pretending to be a steam engine, “chookchooking” and glancing my way, leads me romping to his group.

The Sikh women pull me to their laps and ask my name and the name of my religion.

“I'm Parsee,” I say.

“O kee?
What's that?” they ask: scandalized to discover a religion they've never heard of.

 

That's when I realize what has changed. The Sikhs, only their rowdy little boys running about with hair piled in topknots, are keeping mostly to themselves.

Masseur leans into the group and placing a firm hand on my arm drags me away.

We walk past a Muslim family. With their burka-veiled women they too sit apart. I turn to look back. I envy their children. Dressed in satins and high heels, the little Muslim girls wear make-up.

A group of smooth-skinned Brahmins and their pampered male offspring form a tight circle of supercilious exclusivity near ours.

Only the group around Ayah remains unchanged. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsee are, as always, unified around her.

I dive into Ayah's lap.

As soon as I am settled, and Ayah's absorption is back with the group, the butcher continues the interrupted conversation:

“You Hindus eat so much beans and cauliflower I'm not surprised your yogis levitate. They probably fart their way right up to heaven!” He slips his palm beneath his armpit and, flapping his-other arm like a chicken wing, generates a succession of fart-like sounds.

I think he's so funny I laugh until my tummy hurts. But Ayah is not laughing. “Stop it,” she says to me in a harsh somber whisper.

Sher Singh, who had found the rude sounds as amusing,
checks himself abruptly. I notice his covert glance slide in Masseur's direction and, looking a little foolish, he suddenly tries to frown.

I twist on Ayah's lap to look at Masseur. He is staring impassively at the grinning butcher, and Butcher's face, confronted by his stolid disfavor, turns ugly.

But before he can say anything, there is a distraction. A noisy and lunatic holyman—in striking attire—has just entered the Queen's Garden. Thumping a five-foot iron trident with bells tied near its base, the holyman lopes towards us, shouting:
“Ya Allah!”
A straight, green, sleeveless shift reaches to his hairy calves. His wrists and upper arms are covered with steel and bead bangles. And round his neck and chest is coiled a colossal hunk of copper wiring. Even from that distance we can tell it's the Ice-candy-man! I've heard he's become Allah's telephone!

A bearded man, from the group of Muslims I had noticed earlier, goes to him and deferentially conducts him back to his family. As Ice-candy-man hunkers down, I run to watch him.

A woman in a modem, gray silk burka whispers to the bearded man, and the man says, “Sufi Sahib, my wife wants to know if Allah will grant her a son. We have four daughters.”

The four daughters, ranging from two to eight, wear gold high-heeled slippers and prickly brocade shirts over satin trousers. Frightened by Ice-candy-man's ash-smeared face and eccentric manner, they cling to their mother. I notice a protrusion in the lower half of the woman's burka and guess that she is expecting.

His movements assured and elaborate, eyeballs rolled heavenwards, Ice-candy-man becomes mysteriously busy. He unwinds part of the wire from the coil round his neck so that he has an end in each hand. Holding his arms wide, muttering incantations, he brings the two ends slowly together. There is a modest splutter, and a rain of blue sparks. The mad holyman says “Ah!” in a satisfied way, and we know the connection to heaven has been made. The girls, clearly feeling their distrust of him vindicated, lean and wiggle against their mother, kick their feet up, and whimper. Their mother's hand darts out of the burka, and in one smart swipe, she spanks all four. Nervous eyes on Ice-candy-man, the girls stick a finger in their mouths and cower quietly.

Holding the ends of the copper wire in one hand, the holyman stretches the other skywards. Pointing his long index finger, murmuring the mystic numbers “7 8 6,” he twirls an invisible dial. He brings the invisible receiver to his ear and waits. There is a pervasive rumble; as of a tiger purring. We grow tense. Then, startling us with the volume of noise, the muscles of his neck and jaws stretched like cords, the crazed holyman shouts in Punjabi: “Allah? Do You hear me, Allah? This poor woman wants a son! She has four daughters... one, two, three, four! You call this justice?”

I find his familiarity alarming. He addresses God as “tu,” instead of using the more respectful “tusi.” I'm sure if I were the Almighty I'd be offended; no matter how mad the holyman! I distance myself from him mentally, and observe him stern-faced and rebuking.

“Haven't You heard her pray?” Ice-candy-man shouts. Covering the invisible mouthpiece with his hand, in an apologetic aside, he says: “He's been busy of late ... You know; all this Indian independence business.” He brings the receiver to his ear again.