Cracking India (9 page)

A particularly pale bottom arrests Imam Din's attention. The skin is pink, still fresh and tingling from cold mountain winds.

“So. We have a new Pathan in town!” he muses aloud.

At that moment the mountain man turns his head. He does not like the expression on our faces. Full of fury he snarls and spits at us.

“Welcome to Lahore, brother,” Imam Din calls.

Months later I recognize the face when I see Sharbat Khan, still touchy and bewildered, bent intently over his whirring machine as he sharpens knives in the Mozang Chawk bazaar.

 

The sun is up, dispelling the mist. Filthy with dust, exhausted, we roll into Wagah, a village halfway to Amritsar. We have covered sixteen miles. I've stopped talking. Imam Din is breathing so hard I'm afraid he really will have a heart attack. He pedals slowly down the rutted bazaar lane and, letting the cycle tilt to one side, stops at a tea stall.

After a breakfast of fried
parathas
and eggs we get a ride atop a stack of hay in a bullock-cart. Imam Din stretches an arm across his bicycle, and lulled by the creaking rhythm of wooden wheels, we fall asleep. Two miles short of Pir Pindo the cart driver prods us awake with his whip.

We rattle along a path running between irrigation ditches and mustard fields. As we cut through a cornfield a small boy, followed by three barking dogs, hurtles out of the deepening light gathered in the stalks. He chases us, shouting, “Oye! Who are you? Oye! What're you up to? Oye! Corn thief! Corn thief!”

The cycle wobbles dangerously. Cursing, Imam Din kicks out. A ribby pup yelps and backs away. Imam Din roars: “Oye, turd of Dost Mohammad! Don't you recognize your great-grandfather?”

Ranna stops short, peering at us out of small, wide-set eyes. He bends to scrape some clay from the track and throws it at the dogs, shooing them away. He approaches us gingerly, awkwardly. He is a little taller than me. His skin is almost black in the dusk. He already has small muscles on his arms and shoulders. A well-proportioned body. But what attracts me most is his belly button. It protrudes an inch from his stomach, like a truncated and cheeky finger. (Later, when he sees me walk, I can tell he is equally taken by my limp.)

As soon as Ranna is within range Imam Din ministers two quick spanks to his head; and, the punishment dispensed, introduces us. “Say salaam to your guest, oye, mannerless fellow!”

Ranna stares at me, his mouth slack. His teeth are very white, and a little crowded in front.

“Haven't you seen a city girl before?” Imam Din raps Ranna's head lightly. Ranna flinches. “Why aren't you wearing a shirt, oye? Shameless bugger... Go tell your mother we are here. We want supper. Tell Dost Mohammad we're here.” Both Dost Mohammad and Chidda are Imam Din's grandchildren. Muslim communities like to keep their girls in the family; so marriages between first cousins are common.

Ranna appears to fly in his skimpy drawers, the pale soles of his feet kicking up dust as he dissolves down the path.

 

In Ranna's village we dwell close to the earth. Sitting on the floor we eat off clay plates, with our fingers, and sleep on mats spread on the ground, breathing the earth's odor.

The next morning Ranna and I romp in the fields, and Ranna, fascinated, copies my limp. I know, then, that like Papoo, he really cares for me. I let him limp without comment. In return, he shows me how to mold a replica of his village with dung. And, looking generously and intently into my eyes, he permits me to feel his belly button. It even feels like a finger.

His sisters, Khatija and Parveen, barely two or three years older than us, already wear the responsible expressions of much older women. Like the other girls in the village, they affect the mannerisms and tone of their mother and adults. They are pretty girls, with large, serene eyes and a skin inclined to flush. Painfully shy of me, they are distressed—and perplexed—by the display of my twig-like legs beneath my short dress. (I don't wear my calipers as much now.) They don't know what to make of my cropped hair either. Busy with chores, baskets of grain stuck to their tiny hips, they scuttle about importantly.

Every short while Ranna suspends play to run to his mother. Chidda is cooking at the clay hearth in their courtyard; she feeds her son and me scraps of chapatti dipped in buttermilk.

Later in the blue winter afternoon a bunch of bearded Sikh peasants, their long hair wrapped in loose turbans or informally
displayed in topknots, visit Pir Pindo. They are from Derra Tek Singh, a neighboring village. The men of Pir Pindo—those who are not out working in the fields—come from their barns and courtyards and sit with the Sikhs in a thick circle beneath a huge
sheesham
in a patch of wild grass.

The rough grass pricks my bottom and thighs. Ranna has sidled into his father's lap. Prompted by Imam Din, he wears a buttonless shirt he has clearly outgrown. I sit between Dost Mohammad and Jagjeet Singh, a plump, smiling bowlegged Sikh priest, a granthi. Khatija and Parveen, looking like miniature women of eight and nine, their heads modestly covered, bring us piles of fragrant cornbread fried in butter and a steaming clay pot of spicy mustard-greens. I see the wisdom of their baggy shalwars and long kamizes as I fidget in the grass, tugging at my dress.

The Sikh
granthi,
gray-bearded and benign, beckons the girls, and, sly eyes lowered, they come to him. He strokes their covered heads and says, in Punjabi, “May the True Guru bless you with long lives.” He draws them to him affectionately. “Every time I see you, you appear to have grown taller! We'll have to think about arranging your marriages soon!” He leans across me and addresses Dost Mohammad. “Don't you think it's time their hands were painted yellow?”

Jagjeet Singh has alluded to the henna-decorated hands of Muslim brides. The sisters duck their heads and hide their mouths in their veils. Ranna finds the suggestion outrageously funny. Slipping from his father's lap, his belly button pointed at them like a jabbing finger. he jumps up and down. “Married women!” he chortles. “Ho! Ho! Married women!”

Already practiced in the conduct they have absorbed from the village women, the girls try not to smile or giggle. They must have heard their mother and aunts (as I have), say: “Hasi to
phasi
! Laugh (and), get laid!” I'm not sure what it means—and I'm sure they don't either but they know that smiling before men can lead to disgrace.

We have eaten and belched. The hookah, stoked with fresh tobacco, is being passed among the Muslim villagers. (Sikhs don't
smoke.) In the sated lull the village mullah clears his throat. “My brothers,” he says. And as our eyes turn to him, running frail fingers through his silky white beard, he says, “I hear there is trouble in the cities ... Hindus are being murdered in Bengal... Muslims, in Bihar. It's strange ... the English Sarkar can't seem to do anything about it.”

Now that he has started the ball rolling, the mullah raises his white eyebrows in a forehead that is almost translucent with age. He looks about him with anxious, questioning eyes.

The village
chaudhry—
sitting by Imam Din and the mullah—says, “I don't think it is because they can't... I think it is because the Sarkar doesn't want to!” He is a large man, as big-bellied and broad-beamed as Imam Din, but at least twenty years younger. He has large, clear black eyes and an imposing cleft in his chin. As he talks, he slowly strokes his thick, up-twirled moustache: without which no village headman can look like a
chaudhry.
“But all that is in the cities,” he continues, as if he has considered the issue for some time. “It won't affect our lives.”

“I've not come all this way without a reason,” says Imam Din. The villagers, who are wondering why he is visiting them, look at him attentively. He rubs his face with both hands; as if it pains him to state the reason. “I don't think you know how serious things are getting in the towns. Sly killings; rioting and baton charges by the police ... long marches by mobs ... The Congresswallahs have started a new stunt... they sit down on the rail tracks—women and children, too. The police lift them off the tracks ... But one of these days the steam engines will run over them ... Once aroused, the English are savages...

“Then there is this Hindu-Muslim trouble,” he says, after a pause. “Ugly trouble ... It is spreading. Sikh-Muslim trouble also...”

The villagers, Sikh and Muslim, erupt in protest.

“Brother,” the Sikh
granthi
says when the tumult subsides, “our villages come from the same racial stock. Muslim or Sikh, we are basically Jats. We are brothers. How can we fight each other?”

“Barey Mian
,” says the
chaudhry,
giving Imam Din his due as a respected elder, “I'm alert to what's happening... I have a radio.
But our relationships with the Hindus are bound by strong ties. The city folk can afford to fight... we can't. We are dependent on each other: bound by our toil; by Mandi prices set by the Banyas—they're our common enemy—those city Hindus. To us villagers, what does it matter if a peasant is a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Sikh?”

Imam Din nods. There is a subtle change in his face; he looks calmer. “As long as our Sikh brothers are with us, what have we to fear?” he says, speaking to the
granthi,
and including the other Sikhs with a glance. “I think you are right, brothers, the madness will not infect the villages.”

“If needs be, we'll protect our Muslim brothers with our lives!” says Jagjeet Singh.

“I am prepared to take an oath on the Holy Koran,” declares the
chaudhry,
“that every man in this village will guard his Sikh brothers with no regard for his own life!”

“We have no need for oaths and such,” says the mullah in a fragile elderly voice. “Brothers don't require oaths to fulfil their duty.”

 

Later, when the mullah's voice calls the evening prayer, and the Sikhs have begun to saunter across the fields to their village, Dost Mohammad carries his son to a small brick mosque with a green dome in the center of Pir Pindo. I stay back with the women.

We are due to leave in an hour. Chidda has awakened early to prepare breakfast. I sit on the floor crosslegged, eating my
paratha
and omelette. Parveen shuffles closer to me. With extreme delicacy, her face flushed and confiding, she whispers into my ear. It takes me a while to realize, she is asking if my hair was cut on account of lice.

“Of course not!” I say. I don't care who hears me. “It's the city fashion.” I glare at her. “Even my mother's hair is short.”

Chidda, squatting by the hearth, summons her daughter.
Rapping her on the head she says: “Who told you to be uncivil? Who told you to ask questions? Haven't I taught you to mind your tongue? Go! Get out of my sight!” she says. Ranna quickly grabs his sister's share of the breakfast.

A bunch of villagers accompanies us for a mile, wheeling Imam Din's bicycle for him as we walk. I leave Pir Pindo with a heavy heart and a guilty conscience.

When I return from Imam Din's village to the elevated world of chairs, tables and toilet seats, Imam Din continues his efforts to keep on the right side of Ayah. She is the greatest involuntary teacher ever. He plies her with beautifully swollen
phulkas
hot off the griddle, slathered with butterfat and sprinkled with brown sugar. He prepares separate and delicious vegetarian dishes for her. In fact he is, to a large extent, responsible for her spherical attractions. Where would she be without his extra servings of butter, yogurt, curry and chapatti? Wouldn't she look like all the other stringy, half-starved women in India whom one looks at only once —and never turns around to look at twice?

He continues to appease Adi and me with dizzying inhalations from his hookah; and chicken giblets and liver, turn by turn, on those occasions when my parents have guests and he cooks chicken.

My parents entertain often: and when guests are expected we are fed early. Adi and I sit across the oilcloth on a small table against the wall, away from the silver cutlery and embroidered dinner cloth. Yousaf folds the starched white napkins into fancy peacocks and stuffs their props into long-stemmed crystal glasses. Flowers blaze in silver vases.

Glitter and glory, but very little food. We know the guests will be served delectable but small portions.

We have already shared the chicken liver, and today it is my turn for the single giblet. I place it on a side plate, saving it for the end when I can chew and suck on it for long uninterrupted moments. I notice the movement of Adi's eyeballs under his lids as they sneak to the corners, peer at the giblet and slip back. This only enhances the quality of my possession. I am at peace—there is honor even among thieves—and the fear of reprisal. I casually place
my left hand above the plate and maneuver it to shield the giblet. I don't wish to put undue strain on Adi's honor.