Cracking India (27 page)

At the end of the month when Ayah conducts her biyearly search for nits on our heads, she discovers we have each sprung one white hair!

I'm surprised our hair hasn't all turned white.

Himat Ali holds my school satchel, and I hold his finger, as we walk down Warris Road to Mrs. Pen's.

At the Salvation Army wall I tug on Hari-alias-Himat-Ali's finger to cross the road. I have become increasingly fearful of the tall brick wall with its wire-veined eyes. Today the slit vents emanate a steely reek that sets my teeth on edge—and fills me with a superstitious dread.

Himat Ali, too, is uneasy. He pulls back saying: “Stay here. There is something on the other side.”

But my fear of the wall and my congenital curiosity prevail. It is only a bulging gunnysack. We cross the road.

 

The swollen gunnysack lies directly in our path. Hari pushes it with his foot. The sack slowly topples over and Masseur spills out—half on the dusty sidewalk, half on the gritty tarmac—dispelling the stiletto reek of violence with the smell of fresh roses.

He was lying on one side, the upper part of his velvet body bare, a brown and white checked lungi knotted on his hips, and his feet in the sack. I never knew Masseur was so fair inside, creamy, and his arms smooth and distended with muscles and his forearms lined with pale brown hair. A wide wedge of flesh was neatly hacked to further trim his slender waist, and his spine, in a velvet trough, dipped into his lungi.

The minute I touched his shoulder, thinking he might open his eyes, I knew he was dead. But there was too much vigor about him still ... and his knowing tapering fingers with their white
crescents and trimmed nails appeared pliant and ready to assert their consummate skill.

Himat Ali, trembling, suddenly buckles and squats by Masseur as if settling to a long vigil by a sick friend. He removes his puggaree, revealing his shaven bodhi-less head, and placing it on his knee wipes a smudge of dust from Masseur's shoulder.

“Oye,
pahialwan.
Oye, my friend,” he whispers. “What have they done to you?” And he strokes Masseur's arm with his trembling hand as if he is massaging Masseur.

Faces bob around us now. Some concerned, some curious. But they look at Masseur as if he is not a person.

He isn't. He has been reduced to a body. A thing. One side of his handsome face already buried in the dusty sidewalk.

Beadon Road, bereft of the colorful turbans, hairy bodies, yellow shorts, tight pajamas, and glittering religious arsenal of the Sikhs, looks like any other populous street. Lahore is suddenly emptied of yet another hoary dimension: there are no Brahmins with castemarks—or Hindus in dhoties with
bodhis.
Only hordes of Muslim refugees.

Every bit of scrap that can be used has been salvaged from the gutted shops and tenements of Shalmi and Gowalmandi. The palatial bungalows of Hindus in Model Town and the other affluent neighborhoods have been thoroughly scavenged. The first wave of looters, in mobs and processions, has carried away furniture, carpets, utensils, mattresses, clothes. Succeeding waves of marauders, riding in rickety carts, have systematically stripped the houses of doors, windows, bathroom fittings, ceiling fans and rafters. Casual passersby, urchins and dogs now stray into the houses to scavenge amidst spiders' webs and deep layers of dust, hoping to pick up old newspapers and cardboard boxes, or any other leavings that have escaped the eye and desire of the preceding wave of
goondas.

In Rosy-Peter's compound, and in the gaunt looted houses opposite ours, untended gardenia hedges sprawl grotesquely and the lawns and flower beds are overrun with weeds. There are patches of parched cracked clay in which nothing grows. Even the mango and banyan trees look monstrous, stalking the unkempt premises with their shadows.

We still wander through the Singhs' annex but the main bungalow, the Hindu doctor's abandoned house behind theirs, and parallel to ours, shows surreptitious signs of occupation. A window boarded with newspaper, a tattered curtain, a shadow of someone passing and the murmur of strangers' voices keep us away.

Months pass before we see our new neighbors. Frightened,
dispossessed, they are coping with grief over dead kin and kidnapped womenfolk. Grateful for the roof over their heads and the shelter of walls, our neighbors dwell in shadowed interiors, quietly going about the business of surviving, terrified of being again evicted.

Rosy-Peter's house and the house opposite still remain unoccupied. These are to be allotted to refugees who can prove they have left equally valuable properties behind.

 

It is astonishing how rapidly an uninhabited house decays. There are cracks in the cement floor of the Singhs' annex and big patches of damp on the walls. Clouds of mosquitoes rise in dark comers and lizards cleave to the ceilings. It looks like a house pining for its departed—haunted—like Ayah's eyes are by memories of Masseur. She secretly cries. Often I catch her wiping tears.

The glossy chocolate bloom in her skin is losing its sheen.

Ayah has stopped receiving visitors. Her closest friends have fled Lahore. She trusts no one. And Masseur's death has left in her the great empty ache I know sometimes when the muscles of my stomach retract around hungry spaces within me ... but I know there is an added dimension to her loss I cannot comprehend. I know at least that my lover lives somewhere in the distant and possible future: I have hope.

She haunts the cypresses and marble terraces of the Shalimar Gardens. She climbs the slender minarets of Jehangir's tomb. We wander past the zoo lion's cage and past the chattering monkeys and stand before the peacock's feathery spread. We sit among the rushes on the banks of the Ravi and float in the flat boats on its muddy waters ... And as Masseur's song, lingering in the rarefied air around the minarets and in the fragrance of gardens, drifts to us in the rustle of the pampas grass, Ayah shivers and whispering croons:

And holding the end of her sari in her hands like a supplicant, she buries her unbearable ache in her hands. I stroke her hair. I kiss her ears, feeling my inadequacy.

 

While Masseur's voice haunts Ayah, it impels Ice-candy-man to climb the steep steps of the minarets after us. He prowls the hills behind the zoo lion's cage and lurks in the tall pampas grass. He follows us everywhere as we walk, hand in hand, two hungry wombs ... Impotent mothers under the skin.

Mother's jaunts in the Morris are becoming less frequent, and fires all over Lahore are subsiding. Or having become so much a part of the smoking skyline they no longer claim our attention.

Does one get used to everything? Anything?

Processions still chant from various distances and varying directions, but they have lost their urgency: sounding more like the cries of merchants hawking wares. Closer, we hear the rumble of carts as horses canter down Queens Road to Mozang Chungi, accompanied by receding cries of
“Allah-o-Akbar!”
and
“Pakistan Zindabad!”

We shrug. They probably have wind of some abandoned house that has not been properly ransacked. These merchant-looters have bypassed our street for some time.

 

And then one morning we again hear the rumble of carts and the roar of men shouting slogans on Warris Road.

From the very first instant I sense danger: we all do. Perhaps it is the speed of their approach, perhaps the aim of their intent buffeting us in threatening waves. There is a heightening in the noise and a shift in the clatter of horseshoes on the tarmac: a slowing
that defines their target. It is either the house in front of ours, or ours. The house opposite, with gaping holes where once there were doors and windows, has nothing left to loot.

Mother comes out and joins Ayah, Adi and me on the veranda. The inhabitants of the servants' quarters run to the front and gather before the kitchen and in the vacant portico. Father has taken the Morris to work. Apparently unperturbed, Imam Din beats eggs in the kitchen.

Mother, voluptuous in a beige chiffon sari, is alert. In charge. A lioness with her cubs. Ayah, with her haunted, nervous eyes, is lioness number two. Our pride on the veranda swells as Moti's wife and five children join us.

There is a stamping and snorting of horses and scraping of wooden wheels on the road as the cart-cavalry comes to a disorderly halt outside our gate. We see the carts milling about in the dust they have raised, the men standing in them. We hear them asking questions; debating; shouting to be heard above the noise.

And, suddenly, the men roar again:
“Allah-o-Akbar!”
And ride into the house opposite ours.

 

Ayah is not on the veranda. She has disappeared.

“Where's Ayah?” I ask. I'm hushed by a hiss of whispers. Mother communicates a quick, secret warning that is reflected on all faces. Ayah is Hindu. The situation with all its implications is clear. She must hide. We all have a part to play. My intelligence and complicity are taken for granted.

Then they are roaring and charging up our drive, wheels creaking, hooves clattering as the whipped horses stretch their scabby necks and knotted hocks to haul the load for the short gallop. Up the drive come the charioteers, feet planted firmly in shallow carts, in singlets and clinging linen lungis, shoulders gleaming in the bright sun. Calculating men, whose ideals and passions have cooled to ice.

They pour into our drive in an endless cavalry and the looters jump off in front of the kitchen as the carts make room for more carts and the portico and drive are filled with men and horses;
some of the horses' noses already in the feed bags around their necks. The men in front are quiet—tike merchants going about their business—but those stalled in the choked drive and on the road chant perfunctorily.

The men's eyes, lined with black antimony, rake us. Note the doors behind us and assess the well-tended premises with its surfeit of pots holding ferns and palm fronds. A hesitancy sparks in their brash eyes when they look at our mother. Flanked by her cubs, her hands resting on our heads, she is the noble embodiment of theatrical motherhood. Undaunted. Endearing. Her cut-crystal lips set in a defiant pucker beneath her tinted glasses and her cropped, waved hair.

Men gather round Yousaf and Hari asking questions, peering here and there. Papoo and I, holding hands, step down into the porch. Mother doesn't stop us.

Still beating eggs, aluminum bowl in hand, Imam Din suddenly fills the open kitchen doorway. He bellows: “What d'you
haramzadas
think you're up to?” There is a lull in the processionists' clamor. Even the men on the road hear him and suspend their desultory chanting. The door snaps shut and Imam Din stands on the kitchen steps looking bomb-bellied and magnificently
goondaish
—the grandfather of all the
goondas
milling about us—with his shaven head, hennaed beard and grimy lungi.