Cracking India (13 page)

Mother removes his solar topi and slips off the handkerchief tied round his forehead to keep the sweat from his eyes. She brushes his wet curls back. As I reach up to kiss him Father bends and puts his arm round me. Mother relieves him of the ledgers and taking hold of his other arm winds it about herself, making little moaning sounds as if his touch fills her with exquisite relief. With me clinging to his waist and Mother hanging on to his arm, Father labors up the veranda steps.

Making affectionate sounds we accompany Father to the bathroom. He washes his hands and empties his bladder and we accompany him to the dining table.

Mother and I sit with him. Mother talks while he chomps wordlessly on his food and looks at her out of the assessing and disconcerting eyes of a theater critic. Mother chatters about friends and supplies political tidbits filtered through their consciousnesses: Colonel Bharucha says that Jinnah said... And Nehru said that... And oh, how I laughed when Mehrabai (that's the mirthsome Mrs. Bankwalla) said this about Patel... and that about...

Unflagging, she gives a resume of the anxious letters from sisters and sisters-in-law in Bombay and Karachi, who have heard all sorts of rumors about the situation in the Punjab and are exhorting us to come to them.

A little later, mention of Adi's hostile antics causes Father to scowl. Leaning forward to shovel a forkful of curried rice into his mouth he crumples his forehead up, and out of sharp and judgmental eyes gazes acutely at Mother.

Switching the bulletin immediately, Mother recounts some observations of mine as if I've spent the entire morning mouthing extraordinarily brilliant, saccharinely sweet and fetchingly naive remarks. “Jana, you know what Lenny told me this morning? She said: ‘Poor Daddy works so hard for us. When I grow up, I will work in the office and he can read his newspaper all day!' ”

Peals of laughter from Mother. A smile from Father.

And when Mother pauses, on cue, I repeat any remarks I'm supposed to have made: and ham up the performance with further innocently insightful observations.

Father rewards me with solemn nods, champing smiles, and monosyllables.

And as the years advance, my sense of inadequacy and un-worth advances. I have to think faster—on my toes as it were... offering lengthier and lengthier chatter to fill up the infernal time of Father's mute meals.

Is that when I learn to tell tales?

Instead of school I go to Mrs. Pen's. Her house is next to Godmother's on Jail Road—opposite Electric-aunt's—and I walk there with Ayah or with Hari. Channi, her slight but stately sweeper, takes out a small table and two chairs and we sit in the garden under bare February trees and lukewarm sunshine. Mr. Pen lounges on the veranda in an easy chair.

A parrot might relish reciting tables. I do not.

By the time I reach the five-times table I am resting my head on my arms stretched flat out on the table, peering sideways at Mrs. Pen. My jaws ache—my mind wanders—I hear Mr. Pen snore...

He is much darker than Mrs. Pen. He is Anglo-Indian.

Mrs. Pen is fair, soft, plump, English.

I have a trick. My voice drones on, my mind clicks off. I take time out to educate myself. I watch the trees shed their leaves and sprout new buds... and the predatory kites swoop on pigeons. And the crows, in ungainly clusters, attack the kites...

And I sniff a whiff off Mrs. Pen as it drifts up from under the table, its moldy reality percolating the dusting of cheap talcum powder.

Despite her efforts to clutter my brain with the trivia and trappings of scholarship, I slip in a good bit of learning. The whiff off Mrs. Pen enlightens me. It teaches me the biology of spent cells and aging bodies—and insinuates history into my subconscious...
of things past and of the British Raj... of human frailties and vulnerabilities—of spent passion and lingering yearnings. Whereas a whiff off Ayah carries the dark purity of creation, Mrs. Pen smells of memories.

Mrs. Pen reads aloud prosaic English history.

I turn my head the other way. I observe Mr. Pen's fingers. They are long, fat and large. His legs are huge tubes encased in flannels and beneath them, visible through a hole in his socks, plops his mordant toe. I feel sorry for Mrs. Pen. I can't imagine his fingers working the subtle artistry of Masseur's fingers—or his sluggish toe conveying the dashing impulses of Ice-candy-man's toes.

 

After Mrs. Pen's I go to Godmother's.

Godmother rents rooms in the back of a bungalow. She has a large room, and a small room with a kerosene stove and a dangerous Primus stove. The small room serves as kitchen/pantry. And off it, a bathroom with three commodes.

I go straight to the kitchen. Slavesister, short and squat, is slaving over the kerosene stove. I follow her as she walks on painful bunions to the water trough at the back of the compound and watch her scour the heavy pans and brass utensils with ash and mud. I help her carry them back .

Every now and then Slavesister serves Godmother strong half-cups of steaming tea which Godmother pours into her saucer and slurps. I too take an occasional and guilty sip. Drinking tea, I am told, makes one darker. I'm dark enough. Everyone says, “It's a pity Adi's fair and Lenny so dark. He's a boy. Anyone will marry him.”

Yesterday I carried a gleaming image of the jars in my mind. Something darker lurks in their stead today—fear and guilt.

The three jars are in my possession.

I glance about the room. There is not a single hiding place when I want one. When I don't need them they abound, secreting away things.

I tuck the jars in an old pair of felt slippers beneath a tangle of neglected toys in the bottom drawer of our dresser.

Adi breezes in and makes a beeline for the dresser. He opens and closes drawers, running among the wrecked cars, trains, nursery books, gutless badminton rackets, and celluloid dolls. He grabs the deflated football he's looking for and I let my breath go. I need a safer hiding place.

Next morning I transport the jars to Mrs. Pen's, wrapped in toilet paper and tucked in my schoolbag. After my tuition I transport them to Godmother's. She is propped up on three white pillows that are cement-hard and as heavy. I recline beside her on her cot, propped almost upright.

My eyes wander all over the room. Another string-cot, smaller and sagging, lies in front of the almirah with the three doors. Squeezed between two cupboards, fitting one into the other, are three more cots. Oldhusband sits hunched and still on a bentwood chair before a heavy mahogany desk. Chairs with cane seats, tin trunks and leather suitcases are stacked against the walls. My eyes, like happy roaches, crawl into the abundance of crevices and crannies.

Slavesister goes into the kitchen. When she calls Godmother to light the Primus I quickly slip the jars between two stacks of trunks covered by dhurries.

I hear Godmother pump the spirit stove: koochuck, koochuck, koochuck, koochuck. I see her, white-saried, bent forward in concentration, vulnerable and heroic.

The technology involved in starting the Primus is too complex for Slavesister to handle. Godmother exposes herself to grave risk every time she starts the stove. Like Russian roulette, any one of the pumps might trigger the Primus to blow up in her face.

There is a fierce hissing. It is now safe to peek in. The ring of flame from the Primus is like a fierce blue storm.

I lie back on Godmother's pillows, absent-mindedly listening to her scold Slavesister. When she approaches I make room for her. She settles in the hollow of the bed and I wind myself about her like a rope.

She calls to Slavesister. Her voice is still stem from the scolding: “I want that Japanese kimono Mehrabai brought me two years back. That red one. I want to give it to Bachamai's Rutti. Do you remember where it is?”

No answer.

She raps her punkah on the wall to attract her sister's attention, and raising her voice to accommodate the hissing stove, repeats the text, adding: “Do you hear me?”

Still no answer.

“Oh? We are sulking, are we?”

No comment.

“We are getting all hoity-toity today?”

Godmother blinks exaggeratedly, and makes a haughty, naughty face and holds her long pointed fingers in such a supercilious and dainty manner that I burst into giggles. Godmother shakes with suppressed chuckles.

Catching her breath and sobering up, she says: “Will you look for the kimono—or do I have to get up?”

The bed creaks as Godmother slowly heaves herself up and lowers her feet, and Slavesister comes in flapping her slippers noisily and saying, “I'm coming, I'm coming... Really, Rodabai, you have no patience, have you? I can't cook and look for the kimono at the same time too, can I?”

Godmother caricatures her expression and pantomimes her martyred movements behind her rotund back.

“I know what you're doing. Go ahead: do it in front of the child! As it is she doesn't respect me. I have asked you so often not to. You never consider how you humiliate me, do you?”

Godmother continues her performance, pantomiming Slavesister's gestures, opening and shutting her mouth in a dumb charade.

Godmother nudges me. Slavesister has commenced mumbling.

Godmother sets up an imitative hum. As Slavesister peers into boxes and suitcases looking for the kimono, she mumbles louder and Godmother says, “Some people don't like being scolded. If
they don't like being scolded they shouldn't hover around Primus stoves when I'm pumping them!”

“Mumble—grumble.” A lifting and shutting of trunk lids. A puzzled expression on Slavesister's face, a wad of toilet paper in her hands. “What's this?”

“Careful! It's glass! It's mine,” I say, scampering off the cot.

Balancing her bifocals on the tip of her rubbery and shapeless nose, Slavesister examines the tiny jars admiringly. “Where did you get them?”

“Rosy gave them to me.”

Perhaps I hesitate a fraction too long. Or my body signals contrarily. The moment the sentence is out I can tell Godmother knows I have stolen the jars. I leap back to my original roost, not able to meet her eyes, and hide my face in her sari.

“You have stolen the jars, haven't you?” she asks.

“No,” I say, shaking my head vehemently against her khaddar blouse.

“Don't lie. It doesn't suit you.”

There it is again! Lying doesn't become me. I can't get away with the littlest thing.

“Why not?” I howl. “Why doesn't it suit me? No one says that to Adi, Ayah, Cousin, Imam Din, Mother, Father or Rosy-Peter!”

“Some people can lie and some people can't. Your voice and face give you away,” says Godmother.

“But I can't even curse,” I howl, sitting up.

Adi can swear himself red in the face and look lovable—Rosy can curse steadily for five minutes, going all the way from
“Ullukay-pathay”
to “asshole,” from Punjabi swear words to American, and still look cute. It's okay if Cousin swears—but if I curse or lie I am told it does not suit the shape of my mouth. Or my personality. Or something!

“Everybody in the world lies, steals and curses except me!” I shout, choked with self-pity. “Why can't I act like everybody?”

“Some people can get away with it and some can't,” says
Godmother. “I'm afraid a life of crime is not for you. Not because you aren't sharp, but because you are not suited to it.”

A life sentence? Condemned to honesty? A demon in saint's clothing?

 

I was set firmly and relentlessly on the path to truth the day I broke a Wedgwood plate and, putting a brazen face on my mischief, nobly confessed all before Mother. I was three years old. Mother bent over me, showering me with the radiance of her approval. “I love you. You spoke the truth! What's a broken plate? Break a hundred plates!”

I broke plates, cups, bowls, dishes. I smashed livers, kidneys, hearts, eyes... The path to virtue is strewn with broken people and shattered china.