Home To India (15 page)

A few fields ahead we could see Tej on the tractor going back and forth across a plot being readied for wheat sowing. An acre beyond that Dilraj Kaur was supervising the transplanting of the paddy plants from the nursery to the fields. She was a black-umbrella dot on the landscape. Scores of
chumaries
, ill-clad, barefoot Harijan women from our village, bent to their task in the calf-deep, muddy water, while she cajoled, bullied, and rallied them on. She stood locked together with them in this cliché of rural backwardness and oppression. The
chumaries'
aching backs went into the food we ate, the clothes we wore. Their sweat earned us our livelihood. This apparent exploitation was one of the issues Tej and I could never resolve between us. It was the subject, on one occasion, of one of our most furious fights. He ended up saying I didn't understand the system because I hadn't been brought up in it.

Pitaji, seeing me rush out of our room crying that day, called me to him with a wild gesture of alarm. “What is it,
beti?”
He cried. It was the first time he had seen me like this, and his voice was full of concern. “Don't feel troubled,
beti,”
he said. “Tej sometimes takes things too far. He's rash. Stubborn. Difficult. But a wonderful boy, really.” His voice trailed off. Pitaji was a big man, strongly built, with a military bearing. At the same time, there was an expression of such gentleness in his eyes at that moment that I felt reassured and comforted. “Remember, Mataji and I are here to look after you,” he said. “Think of us as parents, not as in-laws.”

I had no words to reply before he went on. “We Punjabis are like that. Ready to fight, always taking offence. It's our nature. It's because we're fighters, have seen so much bloodshed. Our villages have been turned into battlefields time and again. It has made us tough. And we quarrel a lot too, don't we? Well, we've seen too much: babies torn from their mothers' arms. Women and young girls carried off. All the young men and boys killed; as recently as three years ago, in some villages.”

“I know. I understand,” I said. And I suppose I did, to a certain extent. But understanding is not the same thing as condoning, and I explained to Pitaji what Tej and I had been arguing about.

“In a world free of imperfections,” he said, returning now to his usual pontifical tone of voice, “those who have would sit down with those who do not. But …”

I had to admit, if only to myself, that so far the attempt had never worked out on a sustained, large scale anywhere in the world, in spite of goodwill, bright intentions, and honest efforts.

“In the meantime,” Pitaji continued, “we provide jobs, they earn their living, partake of feasts on our family birthdays, and enjoy the celebrations with the rest of us when the harvest is over.”

“What are you thinking about, Bhabi?” Rano's voice interrupted my rerun of the event that had taken place more than a week ago.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Or rather, I was still thinking about that woman in Bikaner. What is she like?”

“I don't know much. Mataji says she lives separately from Uncle's family. In another part of his village. And everyone agrees that's a good thing. She has a little land, you know, but no munshi, no one to oversee it. Uncle goes to see her every day, almost. Spends lots of time with her. Lots of money on her and the little girl, too. Maybe she's poor,” Rano added, trying for some rationale.

“Maybe she's beautiful,” I said.

“Who knows?” Rano said. “Mataji hasn't even seen her. Everybody says she's young, though. Too young for Uncle.”

“That appears to be the big objection,” I said.

“Bhabiji says that nothing too horrible can be said about such a woman,” Rano went on.

“What do
you
say?” I asked her.

She looked at me, trying to discover my views from the expression on my face. She had the same straight-at-you look Tej had and a forthrightness about her that the adults in the family continually sought to tone down. A door was opening in her mind, into a corridor she hadn't been down. “I don't know what to think,” she said finally. “And you?”

“I don't know, either,” I said. And I didn't. A pouting creature in harem-pants, seated on a pile of silk cushions, kept coming to mind. A Persian carpet, jugs of wine, and plates of sweetmeats. Gauzy curtains, hovering servants. She would be spoiled, demanding, and unreasonable. But she kept Uncle spellbound. I had lived in Majra long enough to know all this was not a likely portrait of Uncle's concubine, but what was? Was she beautiful? Attentive? Understanding? Aunt Gursharan Kaur was—or had been—all of these things, by all accounts. Perhaps it
was
black magic,
kala jadoo
, that was behind that girl's power over Uncle. Who could tell, I asked myself, as I watched the black umbrella in the distance move across the field of paddy being sown. Suppose there were such a thing? The black umbrella was joined by a streak of red against the mud color of the watery paddy field.

“Is that Goodi?” I asked Rano.

“Yes. Bringing Bhabiji her lassi,” she said. “Bhabiji likes hers sweet.”

Winter

13

Four months later I sat down to write to Carol Thorpe again. “Dear Carol,” I began. “It's the Christmas season already, and I hardly realized it until the other day when I felt inspired to mass produce these homemade Christmas cards for friends and family—so far away! The urge came in answer to some primeval cry for a celebration of the winter equinox, I guess. I felt Christmasy in my bones, looked at the calendar, and saw the big day was a mere week away.

“I have been wanting to reply to your letter, the one telling about your breakup with the Dante professor. By now you have no doubt decided that everything was for the best. I've often wondered, though, why single men never attract you! Well, no matter. The Right Man will come along one day, and you will know it when he does.

“We're in the midst of winter. It's cold, dusty and dry, with piercing winds that rage all day. The sky is often overcast with blue-grey partridge-feather clouds, and the misty ball of a sun hangs like a frosted Christmas tree ornament in it. The sugarcane is high, the wheat fluorescent green and growing, and the brilliant yellow mustard fields stretch into the distance. During the daytime, the girls and I go gathering wildflowers and brown berries in the fields. At night, we sit around the fire in the new kitchen.

“Yes, we've finally moved into the new house. It was finished just a month ago, and I must describe it to you so that you can picture everything. It's an ‘L'-shaped, two-storyed brick building with broad verandas at ground level. Tej and I have our bedroom and bath on the ground floor, and so has his brother Hari. The living room and a kind of reception center for casual guests, who are not friends of the family, are also on the ground floor. Above us, Tej's two sisters share a room, and Mataji has her room next to theirs. Pitaji's is next. Then there are a couple more rooms upstairs for guests.”

I stopped at this point to look up and across to one of those rooms, the one at the opposite end of the “L” from ours, where Dilraj Kaur and Nikku stayed.

“The kitchen and store are quite separate from the main building,” I continued. “Outside the courtyard beyond a wall are sheds for machines and cattle. I guess it would have been simpler if I'd just drawn a picture. But you remember I'm no good with pencil and paper.

“Anyway, we all have our dinner in the kitchen where it's warm. Chotu helps the cook, Udmi Ram, roll out fresh rotis of cornmeal, and Ram Piari ladles out fresh ginger-flavored, pureed spinach, buttery and hot from the earthen cooking pot.

“It's crowded in the kitchen and smoky from the wood fires, and Ram Piari has to pick her way over our feet and reach across our laps to hand us our trays of food because we're all sitting on low stools as close to the fire as possible. Nobody wants to leave after dinner to go to bed in a cold room, so we stay on, telling stories. The elders remember relatives long gone about whom innumerable legends abound: the grandmother on Pitaji's side who in the seventh month of one of her eleven pregnancies, fell from a horse, got her foot caught in the stirrup, was dragged several feet before being rescued, and delivered the baby at full term, with no complications at all; then there were the family eccentrics, military heroes, a great-grandfather with seven wives, one of the girls a Paharan, a hill girl from the lower Himalayas, who must have been as exotic a creature as I am in this scene.”

I stopped to wonder if I too would be the subject one day of a winter's tale told beside a kitchen fire. Nikku as an old man, Goodi as a grandmother—would they remember the girl from California with the round face, the straw-colored hair, the green eyes like a cat's? What, will they say, became of her?

And then I wanted to pour it all out to Carol. Unload everything. What I had written up to now was true as far as it went, but there was so much more I needed to get rid of.

“Well, I've made everything appear picturesque and full of cheer,” I continued. “But life is not all wildflower gathering and stories by the fireside. If you want to know the absolute truth, I'm as homesick as it is possible to be. I have not received even one letter from Mama since I got married last August. I guess she can't forgive me for not taking her advice, throwing up everything and going back to California. Papa has written a couple of times, but mostly to say how badly off Mama is without me, and how much Nicoletta and Gloria and Julia miss me.

“I'm homesick for the Christmas tree lights, the party times, the shopping, the going home for the holidays, all the relatives. I never thought I'd miss them so much: the sound of Italian being spoken, the taking of communion, the going to mass, the candles!

“We've moved into the new house all right, but we've brought along all our problems from the old one. It was not, after all, a case of cramped quarters, mud walls and floors, and a makeshift, outdoor shower room for bathing that brought everything to the point of desperation, but ourselves.”

I wanted to tell Carol about Dilraj Kaur. How street-smart, or village wise, she was. Like the day we were all getting ready to attend a wedding in Ladopur. A big occasion! Excitement!

“I'll help
choti bahu
get dressed,” Dilraj Kaur announces to the household at large. She always refers to me in the third person, and always communicates with me through other persons in Punjabi. I suspect she knows English well enough to do without an interpreter. But it suits her not to speak it.

Well, here is a friendly gesture at last. Surprised and happy, I put myself into her hands. I'm already getting installed in red finery with gold embroidery. The ornate but elegant salwar has extra-wide, fashionable cuffs, and the kameez has a tight-fitting bodice that flares away to a full hem. It's a wedding present given to me by Mataji, and the only outfit I have that would befit the grandeur of the Ladopur wedding we are going to.

“Let me do that,” Dilraj Kaur says, easing the kameez over my thickening waist and midriff. She helps me on with it and is giving the shoulders a little pat to settle the seams straight when she offers to do my hair as well. I hear her whisper something to Goodi about how thick and dry and uncontrollable it is. She stands off and gives me a narrowed-eyed look.

“A little hair oil is needed,” she says. “Get me some, Goodi, from the cupboard over there.”

I watch in the mirror in disbelief. The usually meticulous, sure-handed Dilraj Kaur, who never lets slip a cup or saucer or plate, who never breaks a vase, who never spills even a drop of curry while cooking, fumbles now with the bottle of hair oil as Goodi hands it to her and allows half of it to spill over my lap.

“Oh!” she exclaims, allowing the bottle to slip from her hands. “I'm so sorry! What can be done now?”

Mataji and Rano come running in from the next room, and in the confusion, everyone is talking and exclaiming about what a pity it is. The upshot is that nothing is done, nor can anything help. There are offerings of clothes to borrow. But the close-fitting style is such that one person's salwar-kameez cannot fit anyone else. There is nothing for it except for me to stay home from the wedding and watch from my window as the whole family sets out together. All except Rano, who pleads a headache and says she'd rather stay back. Rano's a good teller of white lies and this one makes me grateful to her. Dilraj Kaur rides with the women in the bullock cart, managing to be in command, even in such a vehicle. The men go on foot.

“She did it on purpose,” I told Tej that night after everyone had returned well fed, and satiated from an afternoon and evening of eating and drinking and socializing.

“How can you say that?” he asked.

“I know it,” I said.

He muttered something about women's intuition and tried to laugh it off.

“That's not funny,” I countered.

“Why would she deliberately spill hair oil on your clothes?” he asked in a tone of voice adults reserve for unreasonable children. “It doesn't make sense.”

And I suppose it didn't to him. But it did to me. And I said so. “It was an ingenious way for her to see that I was cut out of things.”

“You're being childish if you think Dilraj Kaur is interested in ‘cutting you out'.”

“That's no way to look at it,” I said. “You don't solve anything by saying I'm childish, do you? You just don't want to face up to the fact that your Bhabi is devious and mean.”

“Not so mean as you are with your baseless accusations every third day.”

“It's natural for her to resent my being here,” I said, ignoring his last remark and trying to keep my voice at a sensible pitch.

“She may think anything,” Tej said.

“There you are again,” I said. “Not taking account of her. Bringing me onto this scene was wrong—at least in her eyes. You've hurt us both by it. I didn't anticipate this. It's you she should be taking it out on, not me.”