Cracking India (28 page)

“Where are the Hindus?” a man shouts.

“There are no Hindus here! You
nimak-haram
dogs' penises ... There are no Hindus here!”

“There are Hindu nameplates on the gates ... Shankar and Sethi!”

“The Shankars took off long ago ... They were Hindu. The Sethis are Parsee. I serve them. Sethi is a Parsee name too, you ignorant bastards!”

The men look disappointed and shedding a little of their surety and arrogance look at Imam Din as at an elder. Imam Din's manner changes. He descends among them, bowl and fork in hand, a Mussulman among Muslims. Imam Din's voice is low, conversational. He goes into the kitchen and brings out a large pan of
water with ice cubes floating in it. He and Yousaf hand out the water in frosted aluminum glasses.

“Where's Hari, the gardener?” someone from the back shouts.

“Hari-the-gardener has become Himat Ali!” says Imam Din, roaring genially and glancing at the gardener.

Himat Ali's resigned, dusky face begins to twitch nervously as some men move towards him.

“Let's make sure,” a man says, hitching up his lungi, his swaggering gait bent on mischief. “Undo your shalwar, Himat Ali. Let's see if you're a proper Muslim.” He is young and very handsome.

“He's Ramzana-the-butcher's brother,” says Papoo, nudging me excitedly.

I notice the resemblance to the butcher. And then the men are no longer just fragmented parts of a procession: they become individual personalities whose faces I study, seeking friends.

Imam Din is standing in front of the gardener, his arms outstretched. “Get away! I vouch for him. Why don't you ask the barber ? He circumcised him.”

Someone yells in loud Punjabi:
“O yay
,
nai!
Did you circumcise the gardener here?”

From out on the road, transmitted by a chain of raucous voices, comes the reply: “I did a good job on him ... I'll vouch for Himat Ali!”

The handsome youth, cheated out of his bit of fun, tries to lunge past Imam Din.

“Tell him to recite the
Kalma,”
someone shouts.

“Oye! You! Recite the
Kalma,”
says the youth.

“La Ilaha Illallah, Mohammad ur Rasulullah.”
(There is no God but God, and Mohammad is His prophet.) Astonishingly, Himat Ali injects into the Arabic verse the cadence and intonation of Hindu chants.

The men let it pass.

“Where is the sweeper? Where's Moti?” shouts a hoarse Punjabi voice. It sounds familiar but I can't place it.

“He's here,” says Yousaf, putting an arm round Moti. “He's become a believer... A Christian. Behold... Mister David Masih!”

The men smile and joke: “O ho! He's become a black-faced gen-tle-man! Mister
sweeper
David Masih! Next he'll be sailing off to Eng-a-land and marrying a memsahib!”

 

And then someone asks, “Where's the Hindu woman? The ayah!”

There is a split second's silence before Imam Din's reassuring voice calmly says: “She's gone.”

“She's gone nowhere! Where is she?”

“I told you. She left Lahore.”

“When? ”

“Yesterday.”

“He's lying,” says the familiar voice again. “Oye, Imam Din, why are you lying?”

I recognize the voice. It is Butcher.

“Oye, Baray Mian!
Don't disgrace your venerable beard!”

“For shame, old man! And you so close to meeting your Maker!”

“Lying does not become your years, you old goat.”

The raucous voices are turning ugly.

“Call upon Allah to witness your oath,” someone says.

“Oye! Badmash! Don't take Allah's name! You defile it with your tongue!” says Imam Din, losing his geniality.

“Ha! So you won't take an oath before Allah! You're a black-faced liar!”

“Mind your tongue, you dog!” shouts Imam Din.

Other voices join in the attack and, suddenly, very clearly, I hear him say:
“Allah-ki-kasam,
she's gone.”

I study the men's faces in the silence that follows. Some of them still don't believe him. Some turn away, or look at the ground. It is an oath a Muslim will not take lightly.

Something strange happened then. The whole disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face. The face, amber-eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring, blotting out the ugly frightening crowd. Ice-candy-man's versatile face transformed into a savior's in our hour of need.

Ice-candy-man is crouched before me. “Don't be scared, Lenny baby,” he says. “I'm here.” And putting his arms around me he whispers, so that only I can hear: “I'll protect Ayah with my life! You know I will... I know she's here. Where is she?”

And dredging from some foul truthful depth in me a fragment of overheard conversation that I had not registered at the time, I say: “On the roof—or in one of the godowns ... ”

Ice-candy-man's face undergoes a subtle change before my eyes, and as he slowly uncoils his lank frame into an upright position, I know I have betrayed Ayah.

The news is swiftly transmitted. In a daze I see Mother approach, her face stricken. Adi and Papoo look at me out of stunned faces. There is no judgment in their eyes—no reproach—only stone-faced incredulity.

Imam Din and Yousaf are taking small steps back, their arms spread, as three men try to push past. “Where're you going? You can't go to the back! Our women are there, they observe purdah!” says Imam Din, again futilely lying. The men are not aggressive, their game is at hand. It is only a matter of minutes. And while the three men insouciantly confront Imam Din and Yousaf, other men, eyes averted, slip past them.

I cannot see Butcher. Ice-candy-man too has disappeared.

“No!” I scream. “She's gone to Amritsar!”

I try to run after them but Mother holds me. I butt my head into her, bouncing it off her stomach, and every time I throw my head back, I see Adi and Papoo's stunned faces.

The three men shove past Imam Din and something about their insolent and determined movements affects the proprieties that have restrained the mob so far.

They move forward from all points. They swarm into our bedrooms, search the servants' quarters, climb to the roofs, break locks and enter our godowns and the small storerooms near the bathrooms.

They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her bare feet—that want to move backwards—are forced forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and the
resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead child's screamless mouth. Her violet sari slips off her shoulder, and her breasts strain at her sari-blouse stretching the cloth so that the white stitching at the seams shows. A sleeve tears under her arm.

The men drag her in grotesque strides to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless intimacy, lift her into it. Four men stand pressed against her, propping her body upright, their lips stretched in triumphant grimaces.

I am the monkey-man's performing monkey, the trained circus elephant, the snake-man's charmed cobra, an animal with conditioned reflexes that cannot lie ...

The last thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping, her disheveled hair flying into her kidnappers' faces, staring at us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified eyes.

The evenings resound to the beat of drums. Papoo is getting married. In the wake of my guilt-driven and flagellating grief and pining for Ayah the drums sound mournful, and the preparations for the wedding joyless.

For three days I stand in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my tongue. I hold the vile, truth-infected thing between my fingers and try to wrench it out: but slippery and slick as a fish it slips from my fingers and mocks me with its sharp rapier tip darting as poisonous as a snake. I punish it with rigorous scourings from my prickling toothbrush until it is sore and bleeding. I'm so conscious of its unwelcome presence at all times that it swells uncomfortably in my mouth and gags and chokes me.

I throw up. Constantly.

For three days, as I scour my tongue, families of sweepers, huddled in bunches, in gaudy satins and brocades, drift up our drive, and past the bathroom window. The women shade their dusky faces beneath diaphanous shawls with silver fringes, their glass bangles and silver anklets jingling as they shuffle their feet, the men strutting amidst them like cocks in tall, crisply crested turbans.

At the back, on the servants' verandas, two old crones with missing teeth take turns beating a sausage-shaped drum with both hands and droning ribald ditties. Papoo, cowed by all the unwonted attention, sits glowering in a comer of their quarters like a punished child, her skin glowing from mustard-oil massages and applications of turmeric and Multani mud packs. Sometimes, when I sit listlessly by her holding her hand, smiling politely at the remarks and wisecracks of the women, drawing courage from my fingers Papoo's eyes regain their roguish sparkle and she snaps and lunges at the women, and flinging herself on the dirt floor enacts
tempestuous tantrums of protestation. Infuriated by her daughter's intractable behavior before her kinswomen Muccho lashes out and is withdrawn cursing, while the remaining women, wheedling, cajoling and bribing Papoo with sweets, restore her to a precarious semblance of docility.

Ayahless and sore-tongued I drift through the forlorn rooms of my house, and back and forth from the festive quarters. The kitchen has become a depressing hellhole filled with sighs as Imam Din goes about his work spiritlessly. Even Yousaf cracks his smiles less frequently. Mother is out all day. And when she is home she has such a forbidding expression on her exhausted face that Adi and I elect to keep out of her way.

 

With no one to awaken me I sleep late on the morning of Papoo's wedding. It is Saturday: exactly a week from the day Ayah was carried off. Adi tugs my toe so it hurts and says: “Aren't you getting up? The guests have come... the bridegroom's
baraat
will be here soon!”

I quickly slip into a stiffly starched and frothy frock and put on my white socks and buckled shoes and run to the back.

The caterers have already lit log fires beneath two enormous cauldrons and the sultry air is permeated by the aroma of biryani and spicy goat korma. I weave through the male guests squatting like patient sheep outside the scant lemon hedge that demarcates the servants' courtyard. The yard itself is thronged by women in bright satins edged with gold and silver
gota.
The crowd is thick outside the sweeper's quarters and I have to squeeze my way through the knot of women at the door. But even after my eyes get accustomed to the dingy light in the small, square dung-plastered room it takes me a while to realize that the crumpled heap of scarlet and gold clothes flung carelessly in a comer is really Papoo. I squat by her, smiling and awkward, and, lifting her
ghoongat,
peer into her face. She has an enviable quantity of makeup on. Shocking-pink lipstick, white powder, smudged kohl: and she is fast asleep.

There is a stir among the seated women and a sudden air of
excitement. Someone outside shouts: “Tota Ram's
baraat
has come!”

I shake Papoo: “Wake up ... Come on!” Papoo sits up, shoving her
ghoongat
back drowsily, and looks at me with a strange cockeyed grin, as if she is drunk.

I run out with the rest of the immediate kin to receive the
baraat
just as the bridegroom's party enters our gates and the six-man band, in faded red uniforms with tarnished gold braid, bursts into brassy clamor. I glimpse the short bridegroom behind the musicians, bobbing among the men in the entourage. The women, some on foot, some crammed into tongas with their babies, follow. The groom is wearing a purple satin lungi and a long, whitely gleaming satin shirt. His chest is bristling with garlands centered with gold-beribboned cardboard hearts and strung with crisp, new one-rupee notes and flowers. His head is covered by a thick white turban with a gold
kulah
and beneath it hangs the
sehra,
veiling his face with chains of marigolds. Judging by his height, Tota Ram must be Papoo's age—about eleven or twelve. I am confused. The distraught way Muccho carried on when Papoo was off her feed led me to believe that Tota Ram was an important, frightening and grown man.

The groom is led into Hari's quarters, which have been cleared of their meager belongings to receive him. Now the curious women surge to see the
doolha.
I fight my way in with them. He is sitting straight on a high-backed chair, his legs dangling brand-new two-tone shoes.

Something about his gestures disturbs me: the way he shifts in the chair, the manner in which he inserts his hand behind the tickling flowers to scratch his nose. He sneezes—an unexpectedly violent sound—and, snorting wetly, clears his throat. For a moment I wonder if someone older is responsible for the sounds. They don't belong behind the
sehra.
Again the bridegroom sneezes: so mightily that the
sehra
swings out. Then he parts the curtain of flowers hanging from his head and I see his face!

He is no boy! He is a dark, middle-aged man with a pockmark-pitted face and small, brash, kohl-blackened eyes. He has
an insouciant air of insolence about him—as though it is all a tedious business he has been through before. I cannot take my eyes off him as he visualizes the women with assertive, assessing directness. There is a slight cast in the close set of his eyes, and the smirk lurking about his thin, dry lips gives an impression of cruelty. The women in the room become hushed. He shifts his insolent eyes to the ceiling, as if permitting the women to gape upon his unsavory person, and then lowers his
sehra.