Home To India (20 page)

A ride on a bullock cart was a good time to sort things out, come to grips, find out what was happening. I caught up on what had been going on within the family all those months I was napping. It was during a shopping trip to Ladopur.

Mataji, Rano, Goodi, Nikku, and I were on our way home. We sat at an angle on the slanting wooden cart that was hitched up to the bullock so that the front was higher than the back. The only sensible thing was to ride facing backwards while hanging onto the wooden poles at the sides to keep from slipping down. There was a dhurrie underneath us to make things less splintery, but it didn't do anything to make the road less choppy or the bumps easier to take. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn the wheels were square instead of round. Yet the beauty of it was that we went along so slowly that everything by the side of the road was accessible and touchable, even, as we drove by. I got out and walked from time to time over the three miles to stretch my legs, and rest my aching bones.

The sun still went down early in late winter, and we were riding toward it. It filtered through the diaphanous dupatta that Goodi was wearing. Dust from the bullock's hooves was thrown up all around and created an enchanting haze through which the dying sun glimmered. As we plunged along on the dirt track, rutted and ground to a powder, I remembered the village shopkeeper's wife who only the week before had given birth to a baby on a bullock cart on the way to the Mission Hospital. Mataji perhaps recalled the same incident as we went over a particularly bad bump, for she put her arms around me to brace me against the shock and said, “Are you all right,
beti?”

“Yes,” I answered, glad for the support and at the same time wondering how it would feel to go into labor on a bullock cart.

Mataji shouted at Gian to slow down. He'd been called away from his work around the house to drive the cart that day.
“Hauli chalo. Hauli,”
she said in a voice louder than usual.

Rano, who was sitting solidly on the other side of me, prevented further jostlings. “I hope you're not finding it too bumpy a ride, Bhabi,” she said.

Goodi had been pouting the entire way home, and sat to one side, not saying a word. Nikku had asked her a load of questions which she hadn't chosen to answer.

“What's the matter with you?” Mataji said to her. “The child's asking you something. Why are you ignoring the poor little fellow?”

“I don't feel like talking,” Goodi said.

“Don't feel like talking!” Mataji repeated. “What about the child? What do you think
he
feels?”

“I don't know why you brought me along,” Goodi said, flaring up. “I don't know why I was not left at home with Bhabiji. She was alone and had so much work to do. I could have helped. As it is, all I did was tag along after all of you, while you shopped and shopped and shopped. You bought Rano Didi cloth for a new salwar-kameez and Bhabi some new shoes, and Hari.…”

“Be quiet!” Mataji said in a tone that would have discouraged a lesser person than Goodi.

“Well, it's true,” she went on. “You didn't buy me a single thing.”

“Why do you have to keep accounts like that?” Rano said. “So what if you missed out today? Next time it will be your turn. You already have three more outfits than I do, and all made of more expensive material, just because you fussed with Mataji about it.”

“You also be quiet, Rano!” Mataji said. “This is stupid talk. I don't want to hear any more.” She called up a Punjabi saying to the effect that everyone gets a fair share in due time. It just takes patience.

Thereafter, we rode along in silence. Mataji's arm still steadied me. The friction in the air subsided as fast as it had started, and before long Rano and Goodi were planning their next joint embroidery project, some floral design on a kameez of Goodi's, while Nikku turned to Mataji for the answers to his unending questions.

I got out once more to walk along beside the cart and think my own thoughts. The baby on the way certainly made a difference, I concluded. If Mataji had looked upon me earlier as a temporary and unreliable inhabitant of her world, the fact that I was now carrying on the family line had caused a change in her behavior toward me. Perhaps she believed I would stay. Perhaps the piece of paper from the District Commissioner's office in Ambala saying Tej and I were married was seen to be valid, after all. Whatever the case, Mataji was making sure that I ate for two. There were extras now: dried dates and preparations fortified with powdered ginger; large dollops of butter in the dal, and omelettes with breakfast parathas. Lots of buttermilk. Almonds. Coconut.

More than once I caught Dilraj Kaur's bitter scrutiny of my tray of food, loaded with these delicacies, when she thought no one was looking. If Mataji was around, she would drop an especially generous blob of butter on top of my bowl of dal. She had a way of making even this routine gesture disdainful, allowing the butter to fall from a height so that her hand would not come into contact with my eating utensils. More than once I caught her staring at me, willing me indigestion, or worse still, the drying up of the fetus inside.

That day she had stayed at home. Someone had to ensure that dinner was prepared properly, and of late, it had been Dilraj Kaur who was left behind to see to things; I was the one included on outings. It was no accident that Goodi had made a point of it. Even now I could hear the conversation in the bullock cart. It had to do with how Dilraj Kaur had begun fasting once a week.

“On Tuesdays Bhabiji doesn't eat a thing but fruit,” Goodi declared, as if it were news to everyone. In fact, no one could have been unaware of the great ceremony that attended this weekly observance.

“And some milk with it,” Rano put in. “Fasting's a good way to avoid getting fat, and also a good way to get out of work one day a week.”

“That's enough!” Mataji said sternly.

“It's a pious thing to do,” Goodi said. “She spends the time she would be working saying her prayers. She's doing it for Bhaji Tej's long life, she told me.”

“She tells everybody that,” Rano said.

Mataji gave Rano a hard look. “What does that remark mean?” she demanded.

“She also goes to see Veera Bai in the evenings sometimes,” Goodi went on, unwilling to let go of the subject of Dilraj Kaur.

“She
what?
” Mataji exclaimed, turning to Goodi.

Goodi, sensing she had said something wrong, tried to back track “I mean … she went once to Veera Bai's, that's all.”

“Why would she want to go to that sorceress?” Rano asked.

“How should I know?” Goodi replied, wanting desperately to retreat from the conversation she had carried on too long.

“When did she go?” Mataji asked.

“I don't know,” Goodi said.

“Then how do you know she went?” Rano asked.

“She took me with her,” Goodi said, blurting out the secret. “I mean, I asked if I could go with her, and she said yes.”

“No place for a child to go,” Mataji said.

“I'm not a child,” Goodi declared.

“What business would you have there?” Mataji asked. “A place where love-potions are dispensed like medicines, magic chants are whispered, chants powerful enough to destroy enemies; charms to win favors from those who can give them. What would you want with those things?”

“Nothing.”

“Foolish of you to go, then,” Mataji declared.

Nikku asked what a sorceress was. Nobody paid any attention to him. Mataji looked angrily at Rano and Goodi. The girls had resumed their bickering over Dilraj Kaur's fasts and visits to Veera Bai.

“Be quiet, both of you,” she said finally. “If you can't say anything sensible, don't talk.”

“Tell us about Uncle,” Rano said, changing to a subject more likely to appeal to Mataji's interest.

“What about him?” Mataji wanted to know. “You know as much as I do. Your Pitaji received a letter from him two days ago.”

“What news did he have?” Goodi asked.

“Everything is fine,” Mataji said without committing herself to anything further.

“What about that … girl. That young widow? The concubine?” Goodi asked.

“You don't expect him to write anything about her, do you?” Mataji said.

“What's a concubine?” Nikku wanted to know.

“I say, be quiet, all of you!” Mataji said, sharply this time. “You make my head eat circles with your arguing and crazy questions.”

And so we reached home. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the men were back from overseeing the sugarcane harvest. I walked into our room. Tej was already there, having a wash before dinner, tidying his beard, adjusting his turban, changing his kurta, all with the deft, precise movements that set him off from everyone else. I must have looked glad to see him.

“How are you two?” he asked, taking me in his arms as though I had been away for a month instead of an afternoon.

“We're fine,” I said. “Great.”

“I've got some news for you,” he said. “We're going to Delhi.”

“You've got that job!” I exclaimed. “The one at the Bhakra Directorate!”

18

I was wrong. We were, indeed, going to Delhi; but Tej hadn't got the Bhakra job. Instead he was going for an interview for another one.

A lectureship at a Delhi engineering college had been advertised, and Tej had applied for it. They'd called him to appear the following morning at eleven o'clock for an interview. He wanted me to go along so that he could show me Delhi. But the letter had taken so long to reach Majra (I thought of the boy on the bicycle pedaling at a leisurely pace and multiplied him by several more boys on bicycles between train stations and post offices here and in Delhi) that it gave Tej and me only a couple of hours to pack. We'd have to catch the train that stopped, for only five minutes, at Abdullapur station at 2.
A.M.
in order to reach Delhi on time. Some heady, anticipatory thoughts that surfaced as I stuffed my Rollei and some doubtful, aged rolls of film into my bag included a break from meals served to me by Dilraj Kaur. Would she, at the behest of the sorceress, include a toad wrapped up in the breakfast paratha one morning? The fights and wranglings and makings-up; the sudden, inexplicable alliances and eventual estrangements—there would be a couple of days to breathe free of these too. And a vision of myself opened up, as mistress of my own house, server of food I had cooked myself, nurturer of my own family, in a place I would not feel like moving away from. Ever. What had seemed like an eccentricity in the Ranikaran Babaji—his never leaving sight of the pool there once he had discovered it—was beginning to make sense. I thought of him that night as we set out for the station. His wild beard, his beatific smile, his wonder at the constancy of things that he tried, but failed to communicate to the Aggarwals and others. His pleasure in giving us all some hot tea, a simple meal, clean beds, a warm pool to bathe in.

This was the first time out of Majra for the two of us since our wedding trip to the hot springs. The air was cold, the night black, and the sky overcast. No stars! We carried as little baggage as possible for the short stay; Tej was reluctant to keep Gian up all night to go to the station to see us off, and the cousins from Amritsar as well as Hari, who would have gladly done us the honor, had gone to attend a wedding in Dhariwal. Some relation on the cousins' mother's side was marrying a girl with a B.A. in economics.

We fought our way onto the crowded Delhi mail train at 2
A.M.
and sat on our baggage the rest of the journey, all the two hundred miles to the city. Once we arrived, there was a hastily bolted-down breakfast at the station, a quick selection of a hotel nearby, and an even quicker bath and change. Tej put on a freshly-starched turban and his best summer suit for the occasion. I was to spend some time shopping while he attended the interview, and we planned to meet at the American Express in Connaught Place at two o'clock. We packed into that morning in Delhi a month's worth of action, Majra time.

“You've got to beware of bottom-pinchers,” he warned as he left me to go to the college. “Don't look anyone in the eye, and don't loiter around. Just keep moving, if you want to window shop, and …”

“… And good luck!” I called after him.

Then I was on my own, for the first time since I disembarked from the
Corfu
. It was like stepping off a cliff and having the good luck to discover you have wings. There was this feeling of lightness: dizzying, exhilarating, frightening. I wanted to laugh, cry, hang on. I had to get reacquainted with my old self, the one that had, now I realized it, been left behind on the ship that day.

Negotiating the sunny corridors of Connaught Circus, I kept seeing myself in shop window reflections: Helen. Very pregnant. A “Western” girl in a sari. Helen, with an old Rollei. It was slung over my shoulder, and a little leather handbag I had bought in San Francisco just before leaving was tucked under one arm. Each new window offered a small shock: a familiar face? More than that; it was
me
. At the same time I needed to keep alert to my surroundings lest I stumble over a pavement hawker or unwittingly bump into a fellow pedestrian.

I don't suppose tourists feel like this, I thought. I met with a few striding purposefully along, wearing sun hats and carrying the latest cameras. On the lookout. For the exotic shot; the unrepeatable moment when the snake charmer's king cobra rises to his full height, spreads his hood and flicks his tongue, while the mongoose sizes him up. Or the one with the supercilious white cow lounging in the middle of the road, stray cars carefully steering around it. These tourist pursuers of souvenir photographs would not have left
their
old selves behind on the P. & O. liner to slip into new identities ashore. More than their pink complexions and pale blue eyes, their intact selves made them stand out from the crowd, and gave them the surefooted gait that got them through the busy, sun-filled verandas bordering the shops of Connaught Circus without stubbing their toes. I would not have been surprised to encounter Edith Ritchie on her return journey from visiting her brother in Penang.