Cracking India (16 page)

Suddenly he springs up. Thumping his noisy trident on the ground, performing a curious jumping dance, he shouts: “Wah Allah! Wah Allah!” so loudly that several people who have been watching the goings-on from afar, hastily get up and scamper over. Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims form a thick circle round us. I notice my little Sikh friend. I can tell from the reverent faces around me that they believe they are in the presence of a holyman crazed by his love of God. And the madder the mystic, the greater his power.

“Wah, Allah!” shouts Ice-candy-man. “There is no limit to your munificence! To you, king and beggar are the same! To you, this son-less woman is queen! Ah! the intoxication of your love! The depth of your compassion! The ocean of your generosity! Ah! the miracles of your cosmos!” he shouts, working himself into a state. And, just as suddenly as he leapt up to dance before, he now drops to the ground in a stony trance. Our ears still ringing from his shouts, we assume his soul is in communion with God.

The woman in the burka, believing that the holyman has interceded successfully on her behalf, bows her body in gratitude and starts weeping. The bearded man fumbles in the gathers of his
trousers and places two silver rupees bearing King George's image at the holyman's entranced toes.

 

Holding the holyman's pious finger, feeling privileged, I return to our group.

“
Aiiay jee, aiiay
! Sit, Sufi Sahib; sit! We are honored!” exclaim the men in half-awed, half-mocking welcome, making room for Ice-candy-man between the Government House gardener and Masseur. Laying his trident aside, lighting a cigarette and assuming his customary, slouching pose on the grass, the holyman becomes Ice-candy-man.

The Government House gardener places his hand affectionately on Ice-candy-man's thigh, and says, “Sufijee, have you heard the latest about the Lucknow Muslims?” In his quiet way, he is getting his own back for Butcher's wisecracks about the levitating vegetarian Hindus.

The overly polite Lucknow Muslims are notorious for endlessly saying: “After you, sir,” and “No, sir, after you!” My attention is riveted. The Government House gardener relates his joke.

Two Muslim gentlemen arrive at a public toilet at the same time.

One insists, “After you, sir.”

“No, sir, you first! After you!” insists the other.

Until, eventually, one of them resignedly says: “You might as well go first, sir... I've been.”

Ayah becomes breathless laughing and almost rolls on the grass. Her sari slips off her shoulders and her admirers relish the brown gleam of her convulsed belly beneath her skimpy blouse, and the firm joggle of her rotund bosoms.

A clutch of Hindu children with caste-marks on their foreheads, curious at the burst of laughter, run up timidly and suddenly yell: “Parsee Parsee, crow eaters! Crow eaters! Crow eaters!”

“We don't! We don't! We don't!” I scream.

The gardener, threatening to get up, throws his turban at them and they scamper in squealing disarray.

“Why do they say that?” I ask fiercely.

“Because y‘all do ‘kaan! kaan!' at the top of your voices like a rowdy flock of crows,” says Ayah.

Ice-candy-man tucks his green shift between his legs as if he's wearing a dhoti, and acting like a timid Banya, declaims:

It is so apt to the occasion that my anger vanishes.

I have heard this couplet before. A glimpse of four Sikhs, Muslims or Parsees is supposed to send a mob of Banyas scurrying.

A strange black box makes its appearance in my parents' bathroom.

It is Saturday and Cousin is visiting for the day. Mother, the indefatigably mirthsome Mrs. Bankwalla, Mrs. Singh and Maggie Phailbus, the schoolteacher who also lives on Warris Road, are sitting on the veranda. Having drawn their chairs close to the marble-topped coffee table they talk in hushed voices that fade into silence when we pass. Even Mrs. Bankwalla's explosive conviviality is subdued. I've noticed a lot of hushed talk recently. In bazaars, restaurants and littered alleys men huddle round bicycles or squat against walls in whispering groups.

We are playing kick-the-can in the garden. Cousin, Adi and Peter form one team and Rosy, Ayah, Papoo-with-babe-on-hip and I the other. It's girls versus boys, and having Papoo on our side compensates for Rosy's erratic play.

Abruptly Cousin puts his hand on his fly and, awkwardly shuffling his feet, dashes away. The game is suspended.

When Cousin returns we can tell by his studied nonchalance he has something to tell. We gather about him. After sliding his eyes this way and that, he looks at us out of the wide and innocent eyes he displays whenever he has something to hide. He signals with a sly tilt of his head, and Adi, shoving Ayah from the back, rushes her out of the garden. Ayah good-naturedly disappears into the kitchen.

“I have seen something strange,” confides Cousin portentously. “Follow me.”

In a furtive group we move past the portico to the side of the house. Cousin pushes open the bathroom door. We get a whiff of Dettol and, as we crowd the steps, I immediately see the black wooden box. It is heavy-looking, about a foot high, long and
narrow. Like a coffin for a very thin man. Rosy, turning pale, whispers, “Someone is dead.”

We are agreed it is a coffin. It looks sinister enough. But the species of the corpse baffles us. Adi and Peter squat to examine the stays.

“It's locked,” says Cousin, who has already examined the locks. Without a word he attempts to lift the box. I give a hand. Rosy shies away. The box is heavy, and in the constricted space we are only able to lift it a foot or so. We try to shake it and tilt it. There is a very slight, heavy and dull movement.

“Definitely a corpse,” declares Peter.

“As if you can tell,” I say.

“What else can there be in a coffin, stupid!” says Adi.

We hear Mother's voice. Footsteps in the bedroom. We exchange alert glances and scamper into the garden to resume our game.

Cousin kicks the misshapen can distractedly, and our pursuit of him is half-hearted and abstracted.

 

But no one tells us what's in that box.

“A snake? A skeleton? A corpse?”

The servants don't know. The other adults maintain a maddening silence. We are not to be inquisitive: it belongs to Father and it's nobody's business but his.

We wander about with glazed, preoccupied eyes and pinched faces. We waste away.

Electric-aunt has begun to force-feed Cousin. She pinches his nostrils, and when he opens his mouth to breathe, pops in a tablespoon of food. She releases his nostrils only after he swallows the morsel.

Mother begins to sit with us at our small table with the oilcloth and, beguiling us with fairy tales, charming us with her voice, slips spoonfuls into our mouths.

Muccho chases Papoo with a broom shouting: “Hai, my fate! If that accursed slut dies on me, how will I show my face to
Jemadar Tota Ram?”

Tota Ram is Papoo's prospective husband... An almost mythical figure no one's seen.

Even Mrs. Singh has begun to supervise her offspring's feed.

 

Gandhijee too is off his feed, we hear. There is a slaughter of Muslims in Bihar—he does not want it to spread to Bengal.

It doesn't.

Inspired by Gandhijee, we launch a more determined fast.

We turn sallow, hollow-eyed, pot-bellied. Electric-aunt's frenzied anxiety becomes chronic. Mother turns into a prophetess of doom. “Mark my words,” she says eerily, “you'll remain weaklings the rest of your lives!”

Muccho has taken to beating her hollow breasts and crying: “What face will I show Tota Ram?” And Mrs. Singh is moved to wring her hands!

Their strategies change. Cousin is force-fed chocolates and carry-home ice cream by my resourceful aunt. They are easier to force-feed than food. He goes about with stuck nostrils and an open mouth. Mother's fairy tales turn into horror stories and every time we form our lips in an “O” and suck in our horrified breaths, we unwittingly also suck in food. Their American mother is so upset when she sits before Rosy-Peter's hollow cheeks and full plates that she bursts into tears: and Rosy-Peter, astounded by this spectacle of maternal emotion, permit her to pour food into their gaping mouths. Muccho has started sweet-talking and spoon-feeding her stupefied and incredulous daughter.

Colonel Bharucha gives us calcium-and-glucose injections.

If they want to get Gandhijee to eat the next time he fasts they should send for Muccho and Electric-aunt and Mother and Colonel Bharucha. And even the unformidable Mrs. Singh.

 

As mysteriously as it has appeared, the box disappears.

While I lead the life of a spoilt little brat with pretensions to diet, forty miles east of Lahore, in a Muslim village, Ranna leads the unspoilt life of a village boy shorn of pretensions. While Ayah shovels spoonfuls of chicken into my mouth as I doodle with Plasticine, Chidda, squatting by the clay hearth, feeds her son scraps of chapatti dipped in buttermilk. All day, baked by the sun, Ranna romps in the fields and plays with dung. And—when I close my eyes and I wish to—I see us squatting beneath the buffalo, our mouths open and eyes closed, as Dost Mohammad directs squirts of milk straight from the udder into our mouths—and I can still taste its foddery sweetness.

It is a little over a year since my visit to Ranna's village. Imam Din, who feels that the tension in the cities will spread to the villages, and is concerned for his numerous kin in Pir Pindo, decides to pay them another visit. When I excitedly protest and exclaim that I
will
go with him, he surprises me by agreeing at once, in a preoccupied way, that I can if Mother consents.

Mother consults Father, her friends, Ayah; and finally gives her hesitant permission—provided we go by train. Trains don't go to Pir Pindo, but we can get off at Thokar, and hire a tonga for the two remaining miles.

 

We have been in Pir Pindo for two days. On Baisakhi, the day that celebrates the birth of the Sikh religion and of the wheat harvest, we go to Dera Tek Singh. I ride on Imam Din's shoulders, Ranna on his father's—at the head of a procession of nephews, uncles, cousins, brothers, grandsons and great-grandsons. The women and girls—except for me, because I am insistent, and from the city—stay behind as always. The men go to the Baisakhi Fair every year: before Ranna was bom—before his great-grandfather was born!

Dost Mohammad is walking in front of us. His head wrapped in a crisp white puggaree, his lungi barely clearing the mud behind his squeaky-new curly-toed shoes, a hookah swinging in his right hand, he looks like a prosperous landlord: and, riding atop his
Father's shoulders, Ranna imagined that the other villagers looked at them in awe and said among themselves (as Punjabis—even little ones—are wont to imagine), “Wah! There goes that fine-looking zemindar; walking at the head of his family with his handsome son on his head!”

It is the thirteenth of April. The wheat has been harvested; the spring rains have spent themselves, and the earth is powdery. From on top of Imam Din's head I see the other groups of villagers converging on Dera Tek Singh: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh—as they raise their own majestic trails of dust.

The festival is already in full swing when we arrive. A group of four fierce-looking Sikhs, their hair tied in turbans and wearing calf-length shirts over tight
churidar
pajamas, perform the
Ghadka
before drifting waves of admirers. Wielding long swords and staves, clashing them to the beat of drums, the dancers lunge, parry, and twirl to the accompaniment of folk singers extolling the valor of ancient Sikh warriors. The singers shriek, their voices hoarse from the dust, and the effort to be heard above the uproar. There are several such groups.

Dost Mohammad leads us to the heart of the fair, to the rides and food stalls. Frying onion
pakoras.
A bubbling, spicy stew of chickpeas. Pink and yellow clouds of spun-sugar candy. Helium-filled balloons. Our every step deflected by aromas. The family scatters. Ranna and I spend most of our small allowance on food; stuffing ourselves on syrupy
gulab-jamans
and
jalebis
. We scramble for seats on the creaking Ferris wheel, its six wooden trays swaying from six wooden spokes. Each tray is jammed with children, and the stones that are juggled from one tray to another to balance them. Agile attendants scramble among the spokes like acrobats to turn the wheel with the weight of their bodies. Dost Mohammad lifts us into a tray. I don't trust the shallow railing guarding us; and as we orbit, our delighted limbs cramped, our eyes narrowed against the wind, I cling to Ranna. Holding the rickety edge of the swaying tray with one hand, he supports me with the other.