Married Woman (18 page)

‘What is there to show? These two rooms.’

‘And where Ajay didn’t grow up.’

Mrs Trivedi shot a glance at her son-in-law, who was careful to look as bland and harmless as possible. ‘My son stayed at the hostel‚’ she said. ‘It was better, he could participate more in the activities, and of course he came every day.’

‘For fifteen minutes‚’ said Pipee.

‘And every weekend.’

‘Just to eat.’

‘Pipee thinks he should have stayed with me like she did‚’ went on Mrs Trivedi. ‘She doesn’t realise boys need to be with their own kind. He had a housemaster who was like a father to him. And I had Pipee.’

Pipee pressed her cheek against her mother’s, ‘And now you have Jazu.’

Jazu looked charming.

‘Indeed‚’ said Mrs Trivedi.

They spent ten days at Shiksha Kendra. Pipee took Aijaz over the entire campus, the banyan tree, the rocks they had to climb, the place where they watched the sun rise every morning, the art, music and dance rooms, the playgrounds, the senior school, the library, the lab where she had sat for her exams.

‘It’s a whole world in itself, isn’t it?’ wondered Aijaz.

‘Some parents are not happy about how cut off it is, they think their children will not be able to survive outside. But look at me. I’ve survived perfectly well.’

‘Indeed you have‚’ said Aijaz kissing her. ‘A perfectly untouched specimen.’

Pipee was right, once Mrs Trivedi came to know Aijaz, she loved him. They had been in Delhi two weeks when Pipee said triumphantly, ‘Well Ma, what do you have to say about Muslims now?’

‘He is a very good boy, beta‚’ responded Mrs Trivedi.

‘Then?’ said Pipee sharply for she knew what was coming.

‘I am sure his family like you equally‚’ said Mrs Trivedi smoothly.

‘They will when we go to meet them in the holidays. They are a very large family, and his mother is old and cannot travel easily‚’ said Pipee, with a guile to match her mother’s.

Later to Aijaz, ‘I’ve told her that we are going to meet your family in the holidays.’

‘What was the need to do that?’

‘She happens to think the lack of your family presence in our marriage very strange. Don’t mind, she is just an old worry pot.’

Aijaz said nothing. Pipee felt a pang of guilt. What did it matter about his family anyway? Let them think whatever they wanted, she should not make it more of an issue than he did. Besides Aijaz had been so sweet to her mother, coaxing her from her prejudice, never seeming to mind her oblique references to Muslims, four wives, large families, instant divorce, inter-community marriages, the religion of babies from such unions. The more she relaxed with him the more she wanted to know.

‘There is a limit to your questions‚’ Pipee shouted one day. ‘Is he your son-in-law or the whole Muslim community dating from Babur’s time to now?’

‘It’s all right‚’ said Aijaz soothingly. ‘Let her ask. After all I am the first Muslim she has had anything much to do with.’

‘Still.’

‘I’m used to this. She is not alone.’

Such gentleness deserved to be rewarded by total belief. Pipee vowed that she would never mention Aijaz’s family unless he himself brought them up.

After Mrs Trivedi left, the young couple settled into the joys of living on their own.

Pipee’s hours were flexible, and she tried to be home by the time Aijaz arrived. This was usually not difficult. After a morning of teaching Aijaz was often at college rehearsals, or working out programmes with The Street Theatre Group. And, thought Pipee indignantly, everybody imagines academics to have nothing but free time.

Ujjala was by now in the process of establishing a community centre at another basti. This second place had a greater number of facilities. It had sewing machines for women to acquire a skill to increase their earning potential, it had a library, toys, and art and craft supplies for the fifteen to twenty children who came every afternoon from three to five.

Soon they extended their activities by organising trips outside Delhi. The results were encouraging. Girls, helpers and administrators bonded, and the girls’ sense of themselves strengthened. Each of them wrote a piece on how she had experienced the trip, what she had felt being away from home with others from the basti, for the first time not part of a family structure. Pipee put these together in a series of booklets called
Yatra
aur
Vichar
that she spent many hours over. She was filled with a sense of achievement, all day with Ujjala, every other moment with Aijaz, she thought life could have no more to offer.

It was almost a year after their marriage that Aijaz made a casual announcement. ‘We have to go to Shahjehanpur. They want to see you.’

Pipee, lounging on the cushions of the cane double-seater they had recently bought, looked up, astonished. In all this time Aijaz’s family had shown no signs of her existence.

‘That’s nice‚’ she said carefully.

Aijaz stared moodily at the balcony. Pipee gazed at him, and for the thousandth time thought how she loved the way
he looked. His wavy grey hair, his clean brown colour, his sharp nose, his warm eyes. ‘You know my mother also had her reservations‚’ went on Pipee encouragingly.

‘Mine would have too, had she known‚’ muttered Aijaz.

‘What? What did you say?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Do you mean your mother – family – didn’t know we were getting married.’

‘Something like that.’

‘You didn’t tell them?’

‘How could I tell them?’ demanded Aijaz. ‘You knew the problems.’

‘ Still, you could have
told
them. They must be feeling awful now, much worse than if you had
told
them.’

‘For God sakes, Pip, stop going on.’

‘You hide things from them, from me, and you accuse me of going on‚’ shouted Pipee. ‘How do you think I feel?’

‘You have to take me as I am‚’ shouted Aijaz back. ‘Me, alone. If I didn’t tell them it was to spare them pain, and you trouble.’

Pipee tried to tell herself that Aijaz was an exemplary human being, socially committed, personally tender, but this palliative irritated her further. He had no moral right to behave in a way that didn’t add up.

All the things her mother used to say about Hindu-Muslim marriages came unpleasantly to her mind. For a moment she stared at him with revulsion. What was the use of him looking like a dream if he could behave like a nightmare?

‘What the hell, Aijaz‚’ she said, ‘you have a poor idea of trouble. You have not been fair to your family or to me.’

‘I’m sorry, Pip, I really am, don’t be angry. My family is not like yours. There are so many, and they all want to be part of things, they would never have tolerated a Tees Hazari wedding, we would have had to go there and get married amid five thousand people at least, God it’s enough to put anyone off. And then there might have been fuss about the conversion thing – I didn’t wish to put you through all that.’

‘Or yourself‚’ said Pipee dryly.

‘Whatever‚’ said Aijaz, looking charming.

‘Well, why now?’

‘They heard rumours. Made enquiries.’

‘So I am going to meet them with the guarantee that they will hate me.’

‘They’ll adore you.’

‘With this background?’

‘You don’t know my family. Once they know they can’t change things, they just accept them.’

This time Pipee kept her reservations to herself. ‘When are we going?’ she finally asked.

‘We are on the waiting list. As soon as I can get confirmed bookings.’

‘What about my work? We have a big meeting with the community helpers from both centres next week. Neeraj, the others, won’t like it.’

‘Tell them you are going to visit your Muslim in-laws. They will love it.’

Their reactions were reserved, which was just as I expected, thought Pipee, and shows how little Aijaz knows of families in general.

‘I hope they like me soon‚’ she said to him on their first night in Shahjehanpur.

It was summer, and their beds were spread on the terrace, in deference to their married status, a little separately to one side of a storeroom. As soon as it was late enough they squeezed together in one under a mosquito net.

Aijaz yawned. Pipee poked him. ‘Do you think they will?’ she asked.

‘Give it time, Pip, now let me sleep.’

‘I told you they wouldn’t like me.’

‘They are so glad I’m married, they would have liked anyone.’

‘But they would have preferred a Muslim?’

‘Come on, Pip, be reasonable. After all your mother would have preferred a Hindu. Anyway who has the time to worry about such things?’

‘I suppose‚’ said Pipee forlornly, thinking of his mother and the jewellery box she had pushed in front of her.

‘For my eldest son’s wife‚’ she had said.

‘No‚’ said Pipee, embarrassed, yet dying to look at what was inside.

‘Take‚’ said Ammi, with a trace of reproach, her hands busy with the lid. Pipee gazed at the plump, rounded fingers, studded with gold rings, the short nails which gleamed with clear nail polish, the kurta sleeves long and fitting, and the many bangles that tinkled at her wrists. She looked very sure of herself, unlike her own poor mother, who lived in two rooms at Shiksha Kendra, with no one to boss over except some very small children.

Eventually, since she would not take, she was given a heavy gold necklace, thick gold bangles embossed with flowers, and a set of jhumkas set with pearls and rubies.

She held them, admiring their beauty, marvelling at their heaviness before returning them, I have no locker, I will have to worry about their safety, keep them for me please.

In the days that followed, Pipee realised for the first time she had married a Muslim. Everything was strange, the large haveli, the dishes they ate from, the food they ate, their paan making, the way they dressed, the way they greeted each other, As salamalaikum – Wa Alaikum Assalam, their manner of speaking, the kh’s that made her Hindi tongue seem crude and unsophisticated.

And then there were so many relatives. How many people lived in that house, till the end of her visit she did not know. They were a world complete unto themselves, so different from anything she had known while growing up. Occasionally when eating in the long dining hall, she would gather as many as she could within a single glance and feel a
great longing for the day when she would be completely accepted as one of their own.

It was the year 1989, and bricks were being collected for the Ram Mandir – collected, worshipped, and escorted out of towns, wrapped in silk and saffron, on their way to Ayodhya. If communal disturbances occurred in the wake of these processions, that was not the fault of the bricks, but the fault of the narrow-mindedness of minority communities, who couldn’t bear to feel that their domination in this country was over.

It was in this atmosphere that Aijaz and The Street Theatre Group travelled to Rajpur fifty kilometres outside Delhi to put up a play.

‘I wish you wouldn’t go‚’ said Pipee, ‘Rajpur is a sensitive area. It is not safe.’

‘If I only went to places where it was safe, I would never go anywhere‚’ said Aijaz. ‘Theatre is a limited medium, but what else do people like us have?’

‘Then don’t go‚’ said Pipee, ‘don’t go if it is no use.’

Aijaz looked depressed. ‘One has to do what one has to do‚’ he said. ‘Of course it is so much easier working with people from schools and colleges, they even write the scripts, and do the research.’

‘Well stay here, and go to schools and colleges, instead of dashing out on weekends to some town or mohalla, or factory, god knows where all. Now you are married you have a responsibility to me, to us‚’ said Pipee, and then felt guilty. Here she was sounding like a nagging wife. Would she like it if Aijaz stopped her from going to the bastis? Or decided that her work with Ujjala led her into dangerous situations?

‘What is the use of confining oneself to the middle classes where it is safe – safe and cowardly‚’ went on Aijaz reflectively.

‘At least wait till the whole fuss about the bricks is over‚’ amended Pipee. ‘I will come with you next time. I’ve never
travelled with you. Besides you will be leaving me alone on New Year’s Eve.’

Aijaz looked at her in astonishment, ‘I never knew this day meant anything to you, Pip. It’s just a capitalist device for making money.’

‘If it can keep you home, then I am a committed capitalist.’

‘You are being totally neurotic. When I go somewhere nice, then you come. The mohallas of this township are dirty and crowded, there is nothing much to see or do. I’ll be worrying about you, instead of concentrating on the play and the group.’

‘I can take care of myself‚’ said Pipee with great dignity.

‘So can I‚’ said Aijaz ruffling her hair.