Rajmahal (37 page)

 

When she returned to Calcutta, the other Rajmahal families took over the therapeutic role. “Don't worry, dear SS. Gurdeep will come back to you.” And using the same words as Sardar Bahadur Ohri's ghost, they would say, “It will blow over.” Behind their solicitude was the background of Surjeet Shona's cratered life, with which they were all familiar, and the anxiety and puzzlement of the mansion.

In time, as the separatist movement subsided in an uncomfortable trail of violence and the uncertainty receded, Gurdeep allowed Surjeet Shona communication rights again. The next step was his return to his normal student life. Surjeet Shona kept her fingers crossed when he at last came home on a visit and talked of his studies and girlfriends like a normal person of his age. He laughed away his earlier madness as a phase, at the same time justifying it as caused by extreme provocation. “But I can balance things in my mind now, Mother. I'm sorry. I know what you have been through.” When he hugged her Surjeet Shona couldn't stop her tears of relief. Gurdeep had taken a quantum leap into adulthood.

When he became a proper adult, he allowed his elitist upbringing to come home and married a WASP from Seattle. Surjeet Shona went to the US for a prolonged stay to join the flurry of a normal wedding, brushing aside concerns that a further hybridization had taken place. The reconciliation was complete and Gurdeep was back on course. With a wife and family responsibilities it would be difficult for him to lurch out so wildly again.

THE MALLIKS WERE GROWING OLD. AND RELUCTANTLY, ALI MALLIK found himself turning his gaze on himself and Saira, reluctantly because he was afraid to invite bad luck. Saira, his wife since the beginning of time and in at least the last six lives. Saira of the unsurpassable tall nobility, nose stone nestling by nostril, cigarette quivering in jet holder, gliding and swishing in exquisite saris . . . Perhaps that is what one always searched for, the other, the missing half. Were they lucky, the tenderhearted Saira and himself? Was he lucky, once he had her, not to have found it necessary to go on that restless search? Was that the ruby in the serpent's head, the nectar in the ocean of milk? Were they especially blessed, especially evolved, approaching nirvana? As if to mock at him, the man with the knife appeared again, and he was a wooden doll, with a key in his back instead of a knife, a wind-up toy walking stiffly down the road, trying to run beyond his mechanism's scope, and falling flat on his face just before the van reached him and swooped him up with a vice. “Bleeding Hindus!” imploded the hemorrhaging Ali, realizing that nirvana would recede for the next twenty lives for the expression of that sentiment alone. “Nirvana!” he scoffed. “Me a Muslim and thinking of nirvana and past and future lives!” He worried again about the unexpected prejudices manifesting in him unannounced these days. How shaming if he couldn't one day stop himself saying such things out loud? Where did they come from? Was it all a reaction to the Hindus' barely concealed contempt for Muslims? Or was it himself, conditioned deep down by the violence of Partition, by the slaughter of one branch of the family, by overheard sentiments expressed by aunts and uncles, or by the post-conversion generations of his family? What had motivated the first convert to make such a big change? Was it
conviction, based on true faith? Or was it greed, gain, sycophancy while the Muslim dynasties ruled, what? He wished he could get into the head of that first convert and relive his life within him to find out . . .

Why had he married Saira? Had he fallen in love immediately she was presented to him by his parents? Had he even faintly considered marrying a non-Muslim, a Hindu, for instance? Why did he always find himself appointing Muslim employees in the Rajmahal? His drivers, house servants, guards, watchmen were all Muslim, so far. Surely, it wasn't intentional. Wasn't it that word of such vacancies with a Muslim employer would circulate swiftly, engendering a rush from his community? So many would come flocking that Ali could scarcely blink before he had appointed one of them. Was that discrimination? Should he have done them the injustice of disqualifying them
because
they were Muslim? And should he then employ only Hindus, or reserve a certain percentage of jobs for them? Or make it strictly fifty-fifty?

 

Jainab was one of the earliest Mallik employees to join the Rajmahal, starting as odd-job boy and graduating later to the position of lobby guard. He was a stripling of fifteen when he came, but limited to a single seeing eye. In the socket of the other eye, lost through his parents' neglect of an infection, was a glass eye which he kept popping in and out of its socket, reinfecting himself periodically. Jainab spent much of his time lolling in a corner of the Mallik's inner veranda where he was sent to cut vegetables when he first started out. This was where Junior and Mumtaz, just five and two at the time, came on him.

“Who are you?” demanded Junior proudly. “Beggars are not allowed in this house!”

Jainab was dressed in a frayed vest and torn pair of pajamas though the Malliks would soon reclothe him in some style.

“What beggar? I am cook's help!” said Jainab, equally proudly. “Who may you be?”

“The owner's
eldest
son, who else? Everyone knows!”

Jainab crooked his finger at the pestilential child. To get him on his side was an automatic necessity.

“Come here!” he said. He reached out and caught hold of Junior's arm in a strong grip.

“Know what I am?” he whispered.

“Cook's help! You said so yourself !”

“That is just in name. Know what I am really? Know what is a magician?”

Junior swallowed. He had seen a magician once at a birthday party, putting swords through people and pulling rabbits and pigeons out of a hat.

“Magicians are not so dirty!”

“Beware! I am in disguise.”

“Show me your magic then!”

“Oh it is no big thing!”

“You are in my father's house! Show me! Now!”

Jainab lazily focused back on Junior and sighed. “All right, Small One. If you say so! Look here . . . ” He passed a hand in front of his face, and his eye fell dramatically into his palm.

Junior backed away, staring at the small globe in Jainab's hand, the screwed up and reddened crater of his eye socket. Then he turned and ran while Mumtaz gurgled, undismayed but interested, to watch as Jainab's eye re-appeared magically in its socket. Over the years, Jainab would intrigue the children of the Rajmahal with this amateurish sleight of hand and other tricks, and the children would scream and scatter each time the glistening egg of his eye fell out. As time passed and Jainab's teeth were replaced by shining dentures, it was but natural he should gurgitate and chase succeeding generations of Rajmahal children with his clacking dentures. When he was made a lobby guard it was added magic time for the children. The Rajmahal, which had been startled at first by the eye trick, looked on benevolently at these harmless highjinks. It didn't know the egg resemblance would be drawn to its logical end at a much later date.

 

Ali finally arrived at a solution to his dilemma, which was to appoint a Hindu every time a Muslim vacated a post, and vice versa. He didn't realize a feeling of insecurity would spread among the existing Muslim employees as they were replaced one by one. They saw their elder master as not only a betrayer of their community, but of going dangerously soft in the head. Jainab was by then the seniormost among them, and their leader. Early on, he had managed to inveigle Ali into appointing numbers of his relatives and friends and in time, had become the sole arbiter of employment in the Rajmahal. Naturally, he charged a fee for his good offices. This not only gave him his preeminent position in the house, but added substantially to
his income. Ali's new formula meant an erosion of all this, and Jainab felt denied and resentful. His loyalty to his masters stopped him from drastic action, and he watched the change with frustration.

The resentment mounted when the Rajmahal's Muslim watchman retired. Ali kept to his formula, and appointed a Hindu in his place, Vir Singh Rawat. Against the angry exhortations of Junior, and the pleadings of Jainab, he specifically included the care of
Pir
Tasleem Ahmed's tomb among Rawat's duties. He was inspired by another tomb he had seen in the Punjab, outside a small town, Batala, the tomb of the one locally and lovingly known as
Baba
. Before Partition, the
Baba
's devotees had been Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. After Partition only Hindus and Sikhs remained, yet they continued to venerate the Muslim tomb, their devotions intensifying each time they had a sighting of the ghost of the
Baba
. And the caretaker was a Hindu. Ali couldn't know that the
Baba
's ghost occasionally came thundering across the country on horseback, over the rivers and plains, to honor
Pir
Tasleem Ahmed on his feast day, and that he was especially pleased to find a Hindu watchman, just as his tomb was cared for by a Hindu. The
Baba
's voice had gone unheard at Partition, and
Pir
Tasleem Ahmed's voice too would go unheard one day at the Rajmahal tomb.

Junior suggested the indirect method to Jainab, advising him to approach Saira, who had a soft corner for the amateur magician.

“I have something to say to you, Memsahib,” said Jainab. “Something of great significance.” It was lucky the ghosts had all disappeared by then. Sorting out these contradictory forces would have led them into great turmoil. The house had enough to deal with as it was.

“I have to go out,” said Saira, as if he hadn't spoken. She intuitively understood what was on his mind, and didn't want a confrontation.

“Memsahib!” called Jainab desperately, following her out of the room. “How can you allow a kafir Hindu to look after our
Pir
's tomb? Allah will never forgive such disrespect!”

Saira began coughing and walked hurriedly toward the front door calling, “Come on Ali! We're getting late!”

When Ali appeared, Jainab retreated into familiar deportment, standing by and opening the door for them.

“Where to, Sahib?” he questioned, with the irritating curiosity of an old servant.

“None of your business!” snapped back the mistress of the house. “You just tell
khansama
to get dinner ready!”

Quelled, Jainab popped his glass eye out of its socket.

“Again?” scolded Saira. “How many times have I told you not to do that! Fool!” she added fondly while Jainab flowered.

The Muslims of the Rajmahal felt a thinning of their skins. Not only were they about to be outnumbered in their own stronghold, but here was a Hindu appointed in the most prestigious Rajmahal post. “Allah will never forgive us!” they echoed, ignoring the reasoning voices of Ali and Saira. When either said, “Allah is Allah to everyone. Not just to Muslims.” Or “The
Pir
's tomb is revered by all, including Hindus,” their skins turned thick again, their brains cloudy. Among themselves they murmured and stirred. “It is not right, not right. What will happen to us?”

Their unrest was justified. And Ali, the house, the
Pir
and the
Baba
of Batala, if not Allah Himself, would be deeply mortified that it was the controversial watchman, Vir Singh Rawat, who was to betray their faith.

Rawat's dwelling had been shifted by Ali to a new room built on the roof of the garage to free the narrow approach, which was blocked by his earlier godown, inducing precipitous turns, noisy honking, gear scraping, shouting and backing. Rawat's room and toilet were especially large, and with an eye to added rent, Ali had built a row of smaller rooms and toilets for the chauffeurs alongside. Things went to plan and Rawat unhesitatingly moved into his new room, which he felt matched his prestigious position, followed by the lesser chauffeurs. But here the plan was stalled. Rawat was jealous of his attributes to power, not only as caretaker of the
Pir
's tomb but as possessor of the godown, and he had no intention of letting go of it. He took good care to leave behind the grave cloths, lamps, and other accessories of the tomb, and before moving into his new room placed heavy padlocks on the godown and unattached community toilet. “This godown is a part of the sacred trust of my
Pir
-
ji
,” he sanctimoniously intoned. “And no one has need of the toilet now.” Mischievously, because there was one other user of the toilet, Surjeet Shona's Sikh priest, the
bhaiji.

The watchman was adamant when the
bhaiji
asked for access and even Surjeet Shona's admonitions went unheeded. She was forced to seek redressal, from Junior, since his father had gone into semi-retreat.