Cracking India (7 page)

“Order! Order!” says Mr. Bankwalla. And Colonel Bharucha clears his throat so effectively that the questions, answers and wisecracks subside.

“I'll tell you a story,” the colonel says, and susceptible to stories the congregation and I sit still in our seats.

“When we were kicked out of Persia by the Arabs thirteen hundred years ago, what did we do? Did we shout and argue? No!” roars the colonel, and hastily provides his own answer before anyone can interrupt. “We got into boats and sailed to India!”

“Why to India?” a totally new wit sitting at the end of my bench enquires. “If they had to go some place, why not Greece? Why not to France? Prettier scenery... ”

“They didn't kick us hard enough,” says Dr. Mody, with hearty regret. “If only they'd kicked us all the way to California ... Prettier women!”

There is an eruption of comments and suggestions. The meeting is turning out to be much more lively than I'd anticipated. Godmother's brother-in-law restores order with his built-in
microphone. “Shut up!” he bellows, startling us with the velocity of his voice.

Colonel Bharucha continues as if he's not been interrupted at all.

“Do you think it was easy to be accepted into a new country? No!” he booms. “Our forefathers were not given permission even to disembark!”

“What about our foremothers?” someone enquires.

“And our foreskins?” an invisible voice pipes up from the back.

“Mind! There are ladies here!” says the colonel sternly. There is a long pause no one dares interrupt. Satisfied by our silence, the colonel continues: “Our forefathers and foremothers waited for four days, not knowing what was to become of them. Then, at last, the Grand
Vazir
appeared on deck with a glass of milk filled to the brim.” He looks intently at our faces. “Do you know what it meant?”

Knowledgeable heads nod wisely.

“It was a polite message from the Indian Prince, meaning: ‘No, you are not welcome. My land is full and prosperous and we don't want outsiders with a different religion and alien ways to disturb the harmony!' He thought we were missionaries.

“Do you know what the Zarathushtis did? God rest their souls?”

Knowing heads nod, and among them I spy Cousin's. I feel annoyed. I am not privy to information that is rapidly being revealed as my birthright. Even if Godmother, Mother, Slavesister and Electric-aunt did not tell me, Cousin ought to have!

Colonel Bharucha, again answering his own question, continues: “Our forefathers carefully stirred a teaspoon of sugar into the milk and sent it back.

“The Prince understood what that meant. The refugees would get absorbed into his country like the sugar in the milk... And with their decency and industry sweeten the lives of his subjects.

“The Indian Prince thought: what a smart and civilized
people! And he gave our ancestors permission to live in his kingdom!”

“Shabash!
Well done!” say the Parsees, regarding each other with admiration and congratulatory self-regard.

“But as you see, we have to move with the times,” roars the colonel, his oratorical capacities in full form. “Time stands still for no one!”

“Hear hear! Hear hear!”

Even I applauded on cue.

“Time and tide wait for no man!”

Thunderous applause.

“Let whoever wishes rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian! We will abide by the rules of their land!”

A polite smattering of Hear hears! The congregation, wafted on self-esteem and British proverbs, does not want to be brought back to earth.

“As long as we do not interfere we have nothing to fear! As long as we respect the customs of our rulers—as we always have—we'll be all right! Ahura Mazda has looked after us for thirteen hundred years: he will look after us for another thirteen hundred!”

Like English proverbs, Ahura Mazda's name elicits enthusiasm.

“We will cast our lot with whoever rules Lahore!” continues the colonel.

“If the Muslims should rule Lahore wouldn't we be safer going to Bombay where most Parsees live?” asks a tremulous voice weakened by a thirteen-hundred-year-old memory of conversions by the Arab sword.

A slight nervousness stirs amidst the timorous. There is much turning of heads, shifting on seats and whispering.

“We prospered under the Muslim Moguls didn't we?” scolds Colonel Bharucha. “Emperor Akbar invited Zarathushti scholars to his
darbar
: he said he'd become a Parsee if he could ... but we gave our oath to the Hindu Prince that we wouldn't proselytize—and the Parsees don't break faith! Of course,” he says, “those cockerels who wish to go to Bombay may go.”

“Again Bombay?” says the man sitting at the end of my bench
who had objected to our coming to India in the first place. “If we must pack off, let's go to London at least. We are the English king's subjects aren't we? So, we are English!”

The suggestion causes an uproar: drowned, eventually, by Dr. Manek Mody's remarkable voice. “And what do we do,” he asks, “when the English king's
Vazir
stands before us with a glass full of milk? Tell him we are brown Englishmen, come to sweeten their lives with a dash of color?”

Mr. Bankwalla, precise as the crisp new rupee notes he handles at the bank, says, “Yes. Tell him, we came across on a coal steamer ... and drop a small lump of coal in the milk. That will convey the unspoken message of love and harmony.”

“As long as we conduct our lives quietly, as long as we present no threat to anybody, we will prosper right here,” roars the colonel over the mike.

“Yes,” says the banker. “But don't try to prosper immoderately. And, remember: don't ever try to exercise real power.”

The wag at the back, who's been champing at the bit to butt in, stands up and irrelevantly shouts: “Those who want four wives say aye! Those who want vegetarian bhats and farts say nay!”

There is a raucous medley of ayes and nays. There is nothing like a good dose of bathroom humor to put us Parsees in a fine mood. It is impossible to conduct the meeting after this.

 

We emerge into the sun's brassy blast and our faces crinkle in self-defense. Mother reminds us to rub the ash from our foreheads. Ayah looks as if she is melting. The tongaman removes the horse's feed sack and we pile into the tonga.

I sit on the small wooden stool and Ayah's soapy hands move all over me. Water from the tap fills the bucket. Ayah, squatting before me, rubs between my toes. I'm ticklish. Deliberately she rubs the soles of my feet and, screaming, I fall off the stool and wiggle on the slippery floor. She pins me to the cement with her foot and douses me with water from the tin bucket. By the time I'm dried, powdered and lifted to the bed Ayah is drenched.

Now it is Mother's turn. Ayah calls her and she appears: willing, conscientious, devout, her head covered by a gauzy white scarf and smelling of sandalwood. She has been praying.

Ever since Colonel Bharucha tugged at my tendon and pressed my heel down in the Fire Temple, Mother massages my leg. I lie diagonally on the bed, my small raised foot between her breasts. She leans forward and pushes back the ball of my foot. She applies all her fragile strength to stretch the stubborn tendon. Her flesh, like satin, shifts under my foot. I gaze at her. Shaded by the scarf her features acquire sharper definition. The tipped chin curves deep to meet the lower lip. The lips, full, firm, taper form a lavish “M” in wide wings, their outline etched with the clarity of cut rubies. Her nose is slender, slightly bumped: and the taut curve of her cheekbones is framed by a jaw as delicately oval as an egg. The hint of coldness, common to such chiseled beauty, is overwhelmed by the exuberant quality of her innocence. I feel she is beautiful beyond bearing.

Her firm strokes, her healing touch. The motherliness of Mother. It reaches from her bending body and cocoons me. My thighs twitch, relaxed.

Her motherliness. How can I describe it? While it is there it is all-encompassing, voluptuous. Hurt, heartache and fear vanish. I swim, rise, tumble, float, and bloat with bliss. The world is
wonderful, wondrous—and I a perfect fit in it. But it switches off, this motherliness. I open my heart to it. I welcome it. Again. And again. I begin to understand its on-off pattern. It is treacherous.

Mother's motherliness has a universal reach. Like her involuntary female magnetism it cannot be harnessed. She showers material delight on all and sundry. I resent this largesse. As Father does her unconscious and indiscriminate sex appeal. It is a prostitution of my concept of childhood rights and parental loyalties. She is my mother—flesh of my flesh—and Adi's. She must love only us! Other children have their own mothers who love them ... Their mothers don't go around loving me, do they?

A portion of our house at the back is lent to the Shankars. They are newly married, fat and loving. She is lighter skinned than him and has a stout braid that snuggles down her back and culminates in a large satin bow, red, blue or white. At about five every evening Shankar returns from work. He trudges up the drive, up along the side of our house, and somewhere in the vicinity of our bathroom lets loose a mating call.

“Darling! Darling! I've come!”

No matter where we are, Ayah, Adi and I rush to the windows and peer out of the wire netting.

“My life! My Lord! You've come!” rejoices Gita, as if his return is a totally unexpected delight.

At his mate's answering call Shankar puffs out, and further diminishing a slender leather briefcase he carries under his arm, breaks into a thudding trot.

Because theirs is an arranged marriage, they are now steamily in love. I drop in on Gita quite often. She is always cooking something and mixed up with the fumes of vegetables and lentils is the steam of their night-long ecstasy. It is very like the dark fragrance Masseur's skillful fingers generate beneath Ayah's sari. Gita is always smiling, bubbling with gladness. She is full of stories. She tells me the story of Heer and Ranjah, of Romeo and Juliet.

Ayah, too, knows stories. Sitting on the lawn in front of the house she stretches her legs and dreamily chews on a blade of grass. Hari the gardener, squatting in his skimpy loincloth, is digging the soil around some rosebushes. He moves on to trim the gardenia hedge by the kitchen. It is the middle of the day in mid-February.

Pansies, roses, butterflies and fragrances—the buzz of bees and flies and of voices drifting from the kitchen. The occasional clipclop of tonga horses on Warris Road, and bicycle bells and car horns. Hawks wheeling and distantly shrieking beneath a massive blue sky. I think of God, I pick up a dandelion and blow. “He loves me—he loves me not. He loves me—he loves me not ... ”

Ayah hums. I recognize the tune.

“Tell me the story of Sohni and Mahiwal,” I say.

Ayah's hum becomes louder and she half croons, half speaks the Punjabi folktale immortalized in verse. We drift to rural Punjab—to a breeze stirring in wheat stalks and yellow mustard fields. To village belles weaving through the fields to wells.

Ayah's eyes are large and eloquent, rimmed with kohl, soft with dreams. “Beautiful Sohni—handsome Mahiwal... ”

Their love is defiant, daring, touching. Their families bitter enemies. Sohni is not allowed to meet Mahiwal.

The wide Chenab flows between their villages, separating the lovers. But late one night, slipping furtively from her village, risking treacherous currents and fierce reprisal, Sohni floats across on an inflated buffalo hide to her lover.

Mahiwal's delight is boundless. He celebrates in rapturous outbursts of verse. But he is distraught when he discovers he has nothing in the house to feed his Sohni.

It is too late to send for sweets—the bazaar is closed. “But such is the strength of his passion—the tenderness of his love,” says Ayah lowering her lids over her faraway and dreamy eyes, “that he cuts a hank of flesh from his thigh, and barbecuing it on skewers, offers his beloved kebabs!”

Ayah cannot speak any more. Her voice is choked, her eyes streaming, her nose blocked.

“Does she eat it?” I enquire, astonished.

“She gobbles it up!” says Ayah, sobbing. “Poor thing, she doesn't know what the kebabs are made of... ”

In the end the doomed lovers die.