DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES (25 page)

While Bhabiji, Shobha and Madhu are preparing lunch, Bhabiji engages in one of her favourite subjects of conversation, Kamal’s marriage, which she hopes she will be able to arrange in the near future. She freely acknowledges that she made grave blunders in selecting wives for her other sons—this is meant to be heard by Shobha—and promises not to repeat her mistakes. According to Bhabiji, Kamal’s bride should be both educated and domesticated; and, of course, she must be fair.

‘What if he likes a dark girl?’ I ask teasingly.

Bhabiji looks horrified. ‘He cannot marry a dark girl,’ she declares.

‘But dark girls are beautiful,’ I tell her.

‘Impossible!’

‘Do you want him to marry a European girl?’

‘No foreigners! I know them, they’ll take my son away. He shall have a good Punjabi girl, with a complexion the colour of wheat.’

Noon. The shadows shift and cross the road. I sit beneath the guava tree and watch the women at work. They will not let me do anything, but they like talking to me and they love to hear my broken Punjabi. Sparrows flit about at their feet, snapping up the gram that runs away from their busy fingers. A crow looks speculatively at the empty kitchen, sidles towards the open door; but Bhabiji has only to glance up and the experienced crow flies away. He knows he will not be able to make off with anything from this house.

One by one the children come home, demanding food. Now it is Madhu’s turn to go to school. Her younger brother Popat, an intelligent but undersized boy of thirteen, appears in the doorway and asks for lunch.

‘Be off!’ says Bhabiji. ‘It isn’t ready yet.’

Actually the food is ready and only the chapattis remain to be made. Shobha will attend to them. Bhabiji lies down on her cot in the sun, complaining of a pain in her back and ringing noises in her ears.

‘I’ll press your back,’ says Popat. He has been out of Bhabiji’s favour lately, and is looking for an opportunity to be rehabilitated.

Barefooted, he stands on Bhabiji’s back and treads her weary flesh and bones with a gentle walking-in-one-spot movement. Bhabiji grunts with relief. Every day she has new pains in new places. Her age, and the daily business of feeding the family and running everyone’s affairs, are beginning to tell on her. But she would sooner die than give up her position of dominance in the house. Her working sons still hand over their pay to her, and she dispenses the money as she sees fit.

The pummelling she gets from Popat puts her in a better mood, and she holds forth on another favourite subject, the respective merits of various dowries. Shiv’s wife (according to Bhabiji) brought nothing with her but a string cot; Kishore’s wife brought only a sharp and clever tongue; Shobha brought a wonderful steel cupboard, fully expecting that it would do all the housework for her.

This last observation upsets Shobha, and a little later I find her under the guava tree weeping profusely. I give her the comforting words she obviously expects, but it is her husband Arun who will have to bear the brunt of her outraged feelings when he comes home this evening. He is rather nervous of his wife. Last night he wanted to eat out, at a restaurant, but did not want to be accused of wasting money; so he stuffed fifteen rupees into my pocket and asked me to invite both him and Shobha to dinner, which I did. We had a good dinner. Such unexpected hospitality on my part has further improved my standing with Shobha. Now, in spite of other chores, she sees that I get cups of tea and coffee at odd hours of the day.

Bhabiji knows Arun is soft with his wife, and taunts him about it. She was saying this morning that whenever there is any work to be done, Shobha retires to bed with a headache (partly true). She says even Manju does more housework (not true). Bhabiji has certain talents as an actress, and does a good take-off of Shobha sulking and grumbling at having too much to do.

While Bhabiji talks, Popat sneaks off and goes for a ride on the bicycle. It is a very old bicycle and is constantly undergoing repairs. ‘The soul has gone out of it,’ says Vinod philosophically and makes his way on to the roof, where he keeps a store of pornographic literature. Up there, he cannot be seen and cannot be remembered, and so avoids being sent out on errands.

One of the boys is bathing at the hand pump. Manju, who should have gone to school with Madhu, is stretched out on a cot, complaining of fever. But she will be up in time to attend the marriage party …

Towards evening, as the birds return to roost in the guava tree, their chatter is challenged by the tumult of people in the house getting ready for the marriage party.

Manju presses her tight pyjamas but neglects to darn them. She wears a loose-fitting, diaphanous shirt. She keeps flitting in and out of the front room so that I can admire the way she glitters. Shobha has used too much powder and lipstick in an effort to look like the femme fatale which she indubitably is not. Shiv’s more conservative wife floats around in loose, old-fashioned pyjamas. Bhabiji is sober and austere in a white sari. Madhu looks neat. The men wear their suits.

Popat is holding up a mirror for his Uncle Kishore, who is combing his long hair. (Kishore kept his hair long, like a court musician at the time of Akbar, before the hippies had been heard of.) He is nodding benevolently, having fortified himself from a bottle labelled ‘Som Ras’ (‘nectar of the gods’), obtained cheaply from an illicit still.

Kishore: ‘Don’t shake the mirror, boy!’

Popat: ‘Uncle, it’s your head that’s shaking.’

Shobha is happy. She loves going out, especially to marriages, and she always takes her two small boys with her, although they invariably spoil the carpets.

Only Kamal, Popat and I remain behind. I have had more than my share of marriage parties.

The house is strangely quiet. It does not seem so small now, with only three people left in it. The kitchen has been locked (Bhabiji will not leave it open while Popat is still in the house), so we visit the dhaba, the wayside restaurant near the main road, and this time I pay the bill with my own money. We have kababs and chicken curry.

Yesterday, Kamal and I took our lunch on the grass of the Buddha Jayanti Gardens (Buddha’s Birthday Gardens). There was no college for Kamal, as the majority of Delhi’s students had hijacked a number of corporation buses and headed for the Pakistan high commission, with every intention of levelling it to the ground if possible, as a protest against the hijacking of an Indian plane from Srinagar to Lahore. The students were met by the Delhi police in full strength, and a pitched battle took place, in which stones from the students and tear gas shells from the police were the favoured missiles. There were two shells fired every minute, according to a newspaper report. And this went on all day. A number of students and policemen were injured, but by some miracle no one was killed. The police held their ground, and the Pakistan high commission remained inviolate. But the Australian high commission, situated to the rear of the student brigade, received most of the tear gas shells, and had to close down for the day.

Kamal and I attended the siege for about an hour, before retiring to the Gardens with our ham sandwiches. A couple of friendly squirrels came up to investigate, and were soon taking bread from our hands. We could hear the chanting of the students in the distance. I lay back on the grass and opened my copy of
Barchester Towers.
Whenever life in Delhi, or in Bhabiji’s house (or anywhere, for that matter), becomes too tumultuous, I turn to Trollope. Nothing could be further removed from the turmoil of our times than an English cathedral town in the nineteenth century. But I think Jane Austen would have appreciated life in Bhabiji’s house.

By ten o’clock, everyone is back from the marriage. (They had gone for the feast, and not for the ceremonies, which continue into the early hours of the morning.) Shobha is full of praise for the bridegroom’s good looks and fair complexion. She describes him as being
gora chitta
—very white! She does not have a high opinion of the bride.

Shiv, in a happy and reflective mood, extols the qualities of his own wife, referring to her as The Barrel. He tells us how, shortly after their marriage, she had threatened to throw a brick at the next-door girl. This little incident remains fresh in Shiv’s mind, after eighteen years of marriage.

He says: ‘When the neighbours came and complained, I told them, “It is quite possible that my wife will throw a brick at your daughter. She is in the habit of throwing bricks.” The neighbours held their peace.’

I think Shiv is rather proud of his wife’s militancy when it comes to taking on neighbours; recently she vanquished the woman next door (a formidable Sikh lady) after a verbal battle that lasted three hours. But in arguments or quarrels with Bhabiji, Shiv’s wife always loses, because Shiv takes his mother’s side.

Arun, on the other hand, is afraid of both wife and mother, and simply makes himself scarce when a quarrel develops. Or he tells his mother she is right, and then, to placate Shobha, takes her to the pictures.

Kishore turns up just as everyone is about to go to bed. Bhabiji is annoyed at first, because he has been drinking too much; but when he produces a bunch of cinema tickets, she is mollified and asks him to stay the night. Not even Bhabiji likes missing a new picture. Kishore is urging me to write his life story.

‘Your life would make a most interesting story,’ I tell him. ‘But it will be interesting only if I put in everything—your successes and your failures.’

‘No, no, only successes,’ exhorts Kishore. ‘I want you to describe me as a popular music director.’

‘But you have yet to become popular.’

‘I will be popular if you write about me.’

Fortunately we are interrupted by the cots being brought in. Then Bhabiji and Shiv go into a huddle, discussing plans for building an extra room. After all, Kamal may be married soon.

One by one, the children get under their quilts. Popat starts massaging Bhabiji’s back. She gives him her favourite blessing: ‘God protect you and give you lots of children.’ If God listens to all Bhabiji’s prayers and blessings, there will never be a fall in the population.

The lights are off and Bhabiji settles down for the night. She is almost asleep when a small voice pipes up: ‘Bhabiji, tell us a story.’

At first Bhabiji pretends not to hear; then, when the request is repeated, she says: ‘You’ll keep Aunty Shobha awake, and then she’ll have an excuse for getting up late in the morning.’ But the children know Bhabiji’s one great weakness, and they renew their demand.

‘Your grandmother is tired,’ says Arun. ‘Let her sleep.’

But Bhabiji’s eyes are open. Her mind is going back over the crowded years, and she remembers something very interesting that happened when her younger brother’s wife’s sister married the eldest son of her third cousin …

Before long, the children are asleep, and I am wondering if I will ever sleep, for Bhabiji’s voice drones on, into the darker reaches of the night.

I
was strolling along the platform, waiting for the arrival of the Amritsar Express, when I saw Mr Khushal, handcuffed to a policeman.

I hadn’t recognized him at first—a paunchy gentleman with a lot of grey in his beard and a certain arrogant amusement in his manner. It was only when I came closer, and we were almost face to face, that I recognized my old Hindi teacher.

Startled, I stopped and stared. And he stared back at me, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. It was over twenty years since I’d last seen him, standing jauntily before the classroom blackboard, and now here he was tethered to a policeman and looking as jaunty as ever …

‘Good—good evening, sir,’ I stammered, in my best public school manner. (You must always respect your teacher, no matter what the circumstances.)

Mr Khushal’s face lit up with pleasure. ‘So you remember me! It’s nice to see you again, my boy.’

Forgetting that his right hand was shackled to the policeman’s left, I made as if to shake hands. Mr Khushal thoughtfully took my right hand in his left and gave it a rough squeeze. A faint odour of cloves and cinnamon reached me, and I remembered how he had always been redolent of spices when standing beside my desk, watching me agonize over my Hindi–English translation.

He had joined the school in 1948, not long after the Partition. Until then there had been no Hindi teacher; we’d been taught Urdu and French. Then came a ruling that Hindi was to be a compulsory subject, and at the age of sixteen I found myself struggling with a new script. When Mr Khushal joined the staff (on the recommendation of a local official), there was no one else in the school who knew Hindi, or who could assess Mr Khushal’s abilities as a teacher …

And now once again he stood before me, only this time he was in the custody of the law.

I was still recovering from the shock when the train drew in, and everyone on the platform began making a rush for the compartment doors. As the policeman elbowed his way through the crowd, I kept close behind him and his charge, and as a result I managed to get into the same third-class compartment. I found a seat right opposite Mr Khushal. He did not seem to be the least bit embarrassed by the handcuffs, or by the stares of his fellow-passengers. Rather, it was the policeman who looked unhappy and ill-at-ease.

As the train got under way, I offered Mr Khushal one of the parathas made for me by my Ferozepur landlady. He accepted it with alacrity. I offered one to the constable as well, but although he looked at it with undisguised longing, he felt duty-bound to decline.

‘Why have they arrested you, sir?’ I asked. ‘Is it very serious?’

‘A trivial matter,’ said Mr Khushal. ‘Nothing to worry about. I shall be at liberty soon.’

‘But what did you
do
?’

Mr Khushal leant forward. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said in a confiding tone. ‘Even a great teacher like Socrates fell foul of the law.’

‘You mean—one of your pupils—made a complaint?’

‘And why should one of my pupils make a complaint?’ Mr Khushal looked offended. ‘They were the beneficiaries—it was for
them
.’ He noticed that I looked mystified, and decided to come straight to the point: ‘It was simply a question of false certificates.’