Cracking India (14 page)

Gandhijee visits Lahore. I'm surprised he exists. I almost thought he was a mythic figure. Someone we'd only hear about and never see. Mother takes my hand. We walk past the Birdwood Barracks' sepoy to the Queens Road end of Warris Road, and enter the gates of the last house.

We walk deep into a winding, eucalyptus-shaded drive: so far in do we go that I fear we may land up in some private recess of the zoo and come face to face with the lion. I drag back on Mother's arm, vocalizing my fear, and at last Mother hauls me up some steps and into Gandhijee's presence. He is knitting. Sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a palatial veranda, he is surrounded by women. He is small, dark, shriveled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled, disgusted and irritable look, and no one'd dare pull off his dhoti! He wears only the loincloth and his black and thin torso is naked.

Gandhijee certainly is ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world.

Mother and I sit in a circle with Gita and the women from Daulatram's house. A pink-satin bow dangling from the tip of her stout braid, Gita looks ethereal and content—as if washed of all desire. I notice the same look on the faces of the other women. Whatever his physical shortcomings, Gandhijee must have some concealed attractions to inspire such purified expressions.

Lean young women flank Gandhijee. They look different from Lahori women and are obviously a part of his entourage. The pleasantly plump Punjabi women, in shalwar-kamizes and saris, shuffle from spot to spot. Barely standing up, they hold their veils so that the edges don't slip off their heads as they go to and from Gandhijee. The women are subdued, receptive; as when one sits with mourners.

Someone takes Mother's hand, and hand in hand we go to Gandhijee. Butter wouldn't melt in our mouths. Gandhijee politely puts aside his knitting and increases his disgruntled scowl; and with an irrelevance I find alarming, says softly, “Sluggish stomachs are the scourge of the Punjabis... too much rich food and too little exercise. The cause of India's ailments lies in our clogged alimentary canals. The hungry stomach is the scourge of the poor and the full stomach of the rich.”

Beneath her blue-tinted and rimless glasses Mother's eyes are downcast, her head bowed, her bobbed hair—and what I assume is her consternation—concealed beneath her sari. But when Gandhijee pauses, she gives him a sidelong look of rapt and reverent interest. And two minutes later, not the least bit alarmed, she earnestly furnishes him with the odor, consistency, time and frequency of her bowel movements. When she is finished she bows her head again, and Gandhijee passes his hand over her head: and then, absently, as if it were a tiresome afterthought, over mine.

“Flush your system with an enema, daughter,” says Gandhijee, directing his sage counsel at my mother. “Use plain, lukewarm water. Do it for thirty days... every morning. You will feel like a new woman.

“Look at these girls,” says Gandhijee, indicating the lean
women flanking him. “I give them enemas myself—there is no shame in it—I am like their mother. You can see how smooth and moist their skin is. Look at their shining eyes!”

The enema-emaciated women have faint shadows beneath their limpid eyes and, moist-skinned or not, they are much too pale, their brown skins tinged by a clayish pallor.

Gandhijee reaches out and suddenly seizes my arm in a startling vise. “What a sickly-looking child,” he announces, avoiding my eye. “Flush her stomach! Her skin will bloom like roses.”

Considering he has not looked my way even once, I am enraged by his observation. “An enema a day keeps the doctor away,” he crows feebly, chortling in an elderly and ghoulish way, his slight body twitching with glee, his eyes riveted upon my mother.

I consider all this talk about enemas and clogged intestines in shocking taste, and I take a dim and bitter view of his concern for my health and welfare. Turning up my nose and looking down severely at this improbable toss-up between a clown and a demon, I am puzzled why he's so famous—and suddenly his eyes turn to me. My brain, heart and stomach melt. The pure shaft of humor, compassion, tolerance and understanding he directs at me fuses me to everything that is feminine, funny, gentle, loving. He is a man who loves women. And lame children. And the untouchable sweeper—so he will love the untouchable sweeper's constipated girl-child best. I know just where to look for such a child. He touches my face, and in a burst of shyness I lower my eyes. This is the first time I have lowered my eyes before man.

 

It wasn't until some years later—when I realized the full scope and dimension of the massacres—that I comprehended the concealed nature of the ice lurking deep beneath the hypnotic and dynamic femininity of Gandhi's non-violent exterior.

And then, when I raised my head again, the men lowered their eyes.

The April days are lengthening, beginning to get warm. The Queen's Park is packed. Groups of men and women sit in circles on the grass and children run about them. Ice-candy-man, lean as his popsicles and as affable, swarming with children, is going from group to group doing good business.

Masseur, too, is going from group to group; handsome, reserved, competent, assured, massaging balding heads, kneading knotty shoulders and soothing aching limbs.

I lie on the grass, my head on Ayah's lap, basking in—and intercepting—the warm flood of stares directed at Ayah by her circle of admirers. The Faletti's Hotel cook, the Government House gardener, a sleek and arrogant butcher and the zoo attendant, Sher Singh, sit with us.

“She is scared of your lion,” drawls Ayah, playfully tapping my forehead. “She thinks he's let loose at night and he will gobble her up from her bed.”

Sher Singh, wearing an outsize blue turban and a callow beard, sits up. Delighted to be singled out by Ayah, he looks at me earnestly: “Don't worry. I'll hang on to his leash,” he boasts, stammering slightly. “He won't dare eat you!”

I'm not the least bit reassured. On the contrary, I am terrified. This callow youth with a stem-like neck hold the zoo lion?

“What kind of leash?” I ask.

“A-an iron ch-chain!”

It's much worse than I'd imagined. A lion roaring behind bars is bad enough. But a lion straining on a stout leash held by this thin, stuttering Sikh is unthinkable. I burst into tears.

“Now look what you've done,” says Ayah in her usual good-natured manner. Gathering me in her arms and hugging me she rocks back and forth. “Don't be silly,” she tells me. “The lion is
never let out of his cage. The cage is so strong a hundred lions couldn't break it.”

“And,” says Ramzana the butcher, “I give him a juicy goat every day. Why should he want to eat a dried-up stick like you?”

The logic is irrefutable during daylight hours as I sit among friends beneath Queen Victoria's lion-intimidating presence. But alone, at night, the logic will vanish.

Masseur and Ice-candy-man drift over to us and join the circle. Masseur is raking in money. He has invented an oil that will grow hair on bald heads. It is composed of monkey and fish glands, mustard oil, pearl dust and an assortment of herbs. The men listen intently, but Masseur stops short of revealing the secret recipe. He holds up the bottle and Ayah reaches out to touch the oil.

“Careful,” says Masseur, whipping the bottle away. “It'll grow hair on your fingertips.”

“
Hai Ram!”
says Ayah, quickly retracting her fingers, and rolling her eyes from one face to the next with fetching consternation.

We all laugh.

Not to be outdone, Ice-candy-man says he has developed a first-class fertility pill. He knows it will work but he has yet to try it out.

“I'll give it a try,” offers the Government House gardener.

“Your wife's already produced children, hasn't she?”

“Tch! Not for her,
yaar.
For myself. I feel old sometimes,” confesses the graying gardener.

“It is not an aphrodisiac. It's a fertility pill for women,” explains Ice-candy-man. “It's so potent it can impregnate men!”

There is a startled silence.

“You're a joker,
yaar,”
says the butcher.

“No, honestly,” says Ice-candy-man, neglectful of the cigarette butt that is uncoiling wisps of smoke from his fist. He too will rake in money.

Masseur clears his throat and, breaking the spell cast by the fertility pill, enquires of the gardener: “What's the latest from the English
Sarkar's
house?”

The gardener, congenial and hoary, is our prime source of information from the British Empire's local headquarters.

“It is rumored,” he says obligingly, rubbing the patches of black and white stubble on his chin, “that Lat Sahib Wavell did not resign his viceroyship.”

He pauses, dramatically, as if he's already revealed too much to friends. And then, as if deciding to consecrate discretion to our friendship, he serves up the choice tidbit.

“He was sacked!”

“Oh! Why?” asks Ice-candy-man. We are all excited by a revelation that invites us to share the inside track of the Raj's doings.

“Gandhi, Nehru, Patel... they have much influence even in London,” says the gardener mysteriously, as if acknowledging the arbitrary and mischievous nature of antic gods. “They didn't like the Muslim League's victory in the Punjab elections.”

“The bastards!” says Masseur with histrionic fury that conceals a genuine bitterness. “So they sack Wavell Sahib, a fair man! And send for a new Lat Sahib who will favor the Hindus!”

“With all due respect, malijee,” says Ice-candy-man, surveying the gardener through a blue mist of exhaled smoke, “but aren't you Hindus expert at just this kind of thing? Twisting tails behind the scene... and getting someone else to slaughter your goats?”

“What's the new Lat Sahib like? This Mountbatten Sahib?” asks Ayah.

She, like Mother, is an oil pourer. “I saw his photo. He is handsome! But I don't like his wife,
baba
. She looks a
choorail!”

“Ah, but Jawaharlal Nehru likes her. He likes her
vaaary much!”
says Ice-candy-man, luridly dragging out the last two words of English.

“Nehru and the Mountbattens are like this!” the gardener concurs, holding up two entwined fingers. His expression, an attractive blend of sheepishness and vanity, reinforces the image of a seasoned inside tracker.

“If Nehru and Mountbatten are like this,” says Masseur, “then
who's going to hold our Jinnah Sahib's hand? Master Tara Singh?”

Masseur says this in a way that makes us smile.

“Ah-ha!” says Ice-candy-man as if suddenly enlightened. “So that's who!” He slaps his thigh and beams at us as if Masseur has proposed a brilliant solution. “That's who!” he repeats.

The butcher snorts and aims a contemptuous gob of spit some yards away from us. He has been quiet all this while and as we turn our faces to him he gathers his stylish cotton shawl over one shoulder and says: “That non-violent violence-monger—your precious Gandhijee—first declares the Sikhs
fanatics!
Now suddenly he says: ‘Oh dear, the poor Sikhs cannot live with the Muslims if there is a Pakistan!' What does he think we are—some kind of beast? Aren't they living with us now?”

“He's a politician,
yaar
,” says Masseur soothingly. “It's his business to suit his tongue to the moment.”

“If it was only his tongue I wouldn't mind,” says the butcher. “But the Sikhs are already supporting some trumped-up Muslim party the Congress favors.” He has a deadpan way of speaking which is very effective.

The Government House gardener, his expression wary and sympathetic, gives a loud sigh, and says: “It is the English's mischief... They are past masters at intrigue. It suits them to have us all fight.”

“Just the English?” asks Butcher. “Haven't the Hindus connived with the
Angrez
to ignore the Muslim League, and support a party that didn't win a single seat in the Punjab? It's just the kind of thing we fear. They manipulate one or two Muslims against the interests of the larger community. And now they have manipulated Master Tara Singh and his bleating herd of Sikhs!” He glances at Sher Singh, his handsome, smooth-shaven face almost expressionless.

Sher Singh shifts uncomfortably and, looking as completely innocent of Master Tara Singh's doings as he can, frowns at the grass.

“Arrey,
you foolish Sikh! You fell right into the Hindus' trap!” says Ice-candy-man so facetiously that Sher Singh loses part of his nervousness and smiles back.

The afternoon is drawing to a close. The grass feels damp. Ayah stands up, smoothing the pleats in her limp cotton sari. “If all you talk of is nothing but this Hindu-Muslim business, I'll stop coming to the park,” she says pertly.

“It's just a discussion among friends,” says Ice-candy-man, uncoiling his frame from the grass to sit up. “Such talk helps clear the air... but for your sake, we won't bring it up again.”

The rest of us look at him gratefully.