Difficult Daughters (4 page)

Every night Suraj Prakash would inform Kasturi about progress on the building. ‘The children won’t be able to get into mischief there‚’ she frequently remarked after he finished. Expenditures were always more acceptable if children were involved.

Lajwanti overheard and burned. How like Kasturi to take advantage of her situation even in this. She herself had never used her children as means to any end. But her day would come, and then, after almost twenty years, she would be able to draw her breath in peace.

*

Knowing that the pattern of their communal life was going to change soon, the three women took care to preserve the norms of peace that had existed in the early days of their joint-family household. The great-aunt was the saddest to leave the old house. She had been living with her brother since he had taken her away from her in-laws’ house after she had become a widow at the age of fourteen. He had educated her, entrusted her with his charitable works, and introduced her to the concepts of Dayanand Saraswatiji. One of the rooms in the new house was to be kept exclusively for her. Lala Diwan Chand’s only stipulation to his younger son had been that his sister stay with him, where she would receive the dignity and respect that was her due.

Suraj Prakash, Kasturi, their eleven children, and the great-aunt shifted within a year of the doctor’s recommendation. Lajwanti refused to go with them. She didn’t want to deprive her sister-in-law of any space, she would wait till her own humble dwelling was ready. Of course, she missed her nieces and nephews terribly, but Fate was always so cruel to her, what could she do? That is why she took the tonga out every evening and went over to visit them in Lepel Griffin Road. Before leaving, she would take a tour of the house going up next door. She questioned the workmen extensively, and complained about everything to Suraj Prakash. It was just to help him, she said. She knew how busy he was, how little time he had, and how unfortunate it was that her own husband’s ill health did not allow him to contribute more. Her helpfulness grew so great that Suraj Prakash wrote to Somnath in Lahore to take a more active hand in the building. What with running the business, looking after the construction, and trying to meet Lajwanti’s expectations, he began to feel that some of the responsibility should go to the eldest male of the next generation. He was tired and could do no more.

Somnath was used to shuttling between Amritsar and Lahore. He refused to marry until he was established in some profession, though what that profession was going to be, he kept secret. The clearest thing about his future was that he rejected the family jewellery business. His mother often pointed out that it was his duty to see that her old age would not be spent in darkness and loneliness. He at least should settle down. Shakuntala’s refusal to marry had caused her enough heartache. Her son owed her grandchildren. At this Somnath would laugh and look handsome. He wore rings on his fingers, a hint of kaajal in his eyes, perfume made of attar of roses, and silk pyjama-kurtas with Patiala jootis. His mother, looking at him, would regret that so much beauty was being wasted, but despite all the pressure, nothing would induce Somnath to change his mind about marriage. Maybe he would go in for the Indian Civil Services. Everybody knew how few Indians were chosen for the ICS and how much concentrated studying the entrance exams required. He could not be disturbed. His mother’s sole consolation was that there was an age limit to the ICS.

*

Somnath agreed at once to Suraj Prakash’s request. ‘I have been so selfish – relying upon you to look after everybody.’

Suraj Prakash wondered how much debt Somnath had got into in Lahore, that he should acquiesce so easily. Whatever it was, he could only be glad. He had turned fifty and now thought of himself as an old man. His health wasn’t good and his growing weight bothered him, though his family were pleased with how healthy he was becoming at last, after a lifetime of leanness.

Somnath, meantime, was looking forward to the change. His mother’s lenience meant there had been enough money while he was studying to enable him to frequent clubs, parks, shops, theatres, and dancing girls and boys. Five years of this kind of life had brought with it a certain kind of boredom, a certain kind of financial obligation towards friends and shopkeepers that he thought would intrude with less troublesome regularity in Amritsar.

*

Once Somnath shifted to Amritsar, Lajwanti found that his way of building a house was very different from her brother-in-law’s. Not only did he refuse to count the number of bricks used every day, and stand in the hot sun while the workers did their work, or go to the gullies of the wholesale markets to get the cheapest materials unless she nagged him a hundred times, but he also had ideas of grandeur of which she did not know what to make. She listened to him indulgently till she saw he intended to put theory into practice, the day he brought home a marble bust of Caesar picked up from an old Italian marble-seller on Mall Road. The fellow was having a sale before leaving Lahore for Italy, he explained to his mother.

‘
He
Bhagwan!’ exclaimed Lajwanti when she saw two coolies nearly falling under the large, bland shape of Caesar. ‘Don’t I have enough troubles?’

‘The best places in Lahore have them,’ said Somnath by way of explanation. ‘We will put it in the veranda. Everybody will love it.’

‘Those children will break it, and then you will see what good is your love! They cannot leave anything alone.’

And then the fountain arrived, double basins, with a little statue on top. ‘Are we building a Taj Mahal?’ demanded Lajwanti.

‘
Arre
, where is the harm in these decorative things? Just think how it will soothe to look at a fountain splashing in the summer while sitting in the garden,’ replied her son.

‘But where is the need?’ Lajwanti thought her son had gone berserk. How could one spend money on such ostentation? God willing, soon the construction would be over and this madness would stop.

The fountain was followed by a cartload of green tiles with pink embossed roses on them. ‘For the kitchen‚’ elaborated Somnath.

‘The kitchen? But who will see the kitchen?’ wailed his mother.

‘You will‚’ he said firmly.

He bought green and yellow chandeliers for the two main front rooms, chandeliers with glass roses rising in graceful arcs from the little bowls containing them.

He bought tables of Burma teak and marble, he bought dressing-tables decorated with tiles and mirrors, he bought chairs and cupboards of carved rosewood.

Lajwanti found solace in reflecting that should real trouble come, she could always fall back on her father-in-law. And maybe if her son spent so much time and effort on the house, it meant he would settle down in it, and marry. Give up the nonsense of not doing the jewellery business.

*

Finally everything was completed and the family finances severely strained. Chander Prakash, Lajwanti and Somnath moved in. A separate room was designated for the use of the absent Shakuntala.

Inside her wonderful house, Lajwanti felt lost. The silence and emptiness seemed eerie. In the comfortable pokyness of the old city home, there was no possibility of feeling alone. The family and servants could always be heard against the sounds of the street coming up through the windows. But here hedge, garden and separate units made her feel abandoned. There were no nephews and nieces to shout at, nobody to scold. Her status had gone.

She started going more often to Kasturi’s, but then she couldn’t live there. She began to get even more hysterical about her children’s not marrying until Somnath in his careless, lordly way invited a tenant without consulting his mother.

‘Social service. We don’t use all the rooms. And what is the harm in helping others?’

With anybody else, Lajwanti would have lashed out. With her wayward son, she had to be careful.

‘How can we hire out part of our home? It is a humiliation.’

‘Even the best families in Lahore take tenants. From good families. Students.’

‘
Bas,
bas
. Enough.’

‘And this is a professor. They can stay in the three rooms in the back. They can enter from there. You need never see them.’

‘
Bap
re!
Not see who is living with me! Are you mad?’

‘And it will be a little extra income …’

‘Humph!’

‘And you so alone, with only Baoji. It will be some company, some kindness, some money.’

‘Who all?’ asked Lajwanti tersely.

‘Only the mother, father, little baby, sister, grandmother.’

‘That’s not so few.’

‘He’s England returned. He has just come to Amritsar from Waltair because his mother wants to stay with him, and the south is too far.’

‘That’s no reason for them to stay here. Am I running a dharamshala?’

‘At least meet them. No harm in that.’

Lajwanti consented by grumbling that from now on she could see she would be nothing in her own house.

*

They appeared in the afternoon. Lajwanti saw a handsome family, the man tall, wearing a starched dhoti-kurta, his hair brushed back over a wide forehead, tortoiseshell spectacles framing bright, intelligent eyes. Not many touches of the foreign returned about him, she noted with approval. The wife fair, face like the moon, short, round, plump, with her sari covering her head, and falling below the waist.

This Professor – anybody who taught at Arya Sabha College was a professor – had returned from Oxford two years before, and had landed in Amritsar at the request of a friend’s father, who was on the board of trustees. The college had long been looking for a good English teacher, for such an important subject they wanted someone with impeccable credentials. They couldn’t afford an actual foreigner, nor did it suit their policy to hire one. Theirs was a Hindu college and they intended to keep it that way. An Indian with a British degree was ideal, and Harish Chandra was enticed by a salary of two hundred and thirty rupees; twenty rupees more than he was getting at the college in Waltair. Harish Chandra had a family, and he came to Amritsar without a second thought.

Did Harish Chandra ever think he would fall in love with the Punjab? Had this been predicted, he would have laughed. His heart he had left in England, returning to India reluctantly, and only because of his mother’s insistent demands. Harish knew he was his mother’s life. An only son, his specialness had tinged the milk he drank and the air he breathed from the moment he had been born. Her death would be on his head if he did not come back. Five years she kept waiting, it’s five years since I have seen my son. It had also been five years since he had seen his wife, but his wife had been in no position to enforce her claims. She couldn’t write, and besides she hardly knew him.

Harish returned to India, his house, mother and wife, bringing back as much of England as he could. Her art, music and literature followed him in heavy, black, metal sea-chests. First to his home in the United Provinces, and then to Lajwanti’s home on Lepel Griffin Road.

It is December, and time for Virmati’s final FA exams. This time she absolutely must pass. The books spread on a charpai in the side garden of her family’s new house on Lepel Griffin Road show how conscientiously she has been trying to study. Near the books is a large kitchen knife. Scattered around are the leafy tops of carrots, white and red radishes, and a small thali crusted with lemon juice, salt and chilli powder. Virmati has been raiding the garden, and her brothers and sisters have been raiding her. The youngest, Paro, a little under two years old, runs between Vidyavati, her four-year-old sister, and Virmati, her eighteen-year-old sister. From time to time they have fought over who has had the greater share, and Virmati has energetically scolded and kissed, and sent for more carrots and radishes. It is fun doing all this, she feels alive. But her books call, and at last she has been very firm, and told them not to bother her with any more eating.

‘I don’t want to eat any more gaajjar-mooli, anyway, Pehnji. Look, I’ve made all these drawings,’ said Vidyavati, pushing three crumpled sheets at her, which Paro tried to snatch away.

‘She’ll dirty them!’ shouted Vidya, pulling them back. Virmati quickly put salt and lemon on a radish and gave it to Paro, to distract her, before turning her attention to the artwork clutched possessively in Vidya’s equally grubby hand.

While Virmati tried to do justice to the drawings, she noticed the woman next door, gesturing and smiling at the two younger girls. She was carrying a bucket full of washed clothes. It was Taiji’s tenant. ‘She’s calling you two, Vidu. Go, and take Paro.’

Paro was slowly chewing through her white radish and did not move.

Virmati became irritated. ‘Hurry up now,’ she said, roughly dabbing at Paro’s grimy face.

Five minutes later they returned, triumphantly clutching two huge mathris in their hands, carefully balancing dark-green mango-pickle pieces on top of them.

‘Pehnji! Look what she gave us! I’ve never seen such big mathri, have you?’

No, Virmati hadn’t. ‘Give,’ she said.

Vidya gave her a piece of Paro’s mathri. ‘I told her my sister is studying, and she said people who study need lots of food to nourish the brain.’

Virmati smiled. In that house, at least, study was given full recognition. She took a bite of the crisp, flaky mathri with a small piece of the pickle to complement its bland taste. ‘This pickle is really good,’ she told her sisters. ‘How dry it is! I wonder how they make it with no oil.’

‘She said she brought this from her home.’

‘We must give her something too. Vidu, pick some carrots and radishes for her. The poor lady probably doesn’t get to eat any straight from the garden like we do.’

And so it started with the exchange of food. Neighbourliness demanded this much and these people were so much closer than neighbours, tenants in what was practically their own house. The woman hospitably opened the doors of her kitchen to them. She loved to cook, she loved to see people enjoying the food she made. Bhabhi – sister-in-law – they called her, following her own little daughter’s example. But it was Virmati who came most often, followed by Paro, her shadow. The woman noticed how much she liked her husband’s music when it was on, and how she would listen, still and lost. Once, when there was nobody in the main room with her husband, she coaxed Virmati in there.

‘The oldest girl from next door, and her youngest sister,’ she said by way of introduction.

The Professor smiled indulgently at them. ‘You like the music?’ he inquired, gesturing to the side table, where the gramophone lay with its lid open, its shiny metal arm bobbing up and down over a record. Lots of red, white and blue dust jackets lay on either side.

Virmati nodded. She was too shy to say anything. The Professor put on his sweetest Bach and was rewarded by the look on Virmati’s face. This girl has potential, he found himself thinking, while Virmati listened and dreamed more intensely than she ever had of her fiancé, that shadowy figure waiting in the wings to marry her.

*

‘Don’t you ever go out?’ Virmati asked the woman. They were quite friendly now.

‘
Arre
, where to go? He is busy and there is so much to do in the house.’

Virmati nodded. That she could see. There was much the woman was constantly doing, especially in the kitchen.

‘What about Darbar Sahib and the Company Bagh? If you live in Amritsar you have to visit these places.’

‘When he gets the time …’

‘I’ll take you,’ said Virmati impulsively.

The woman smiled politely and said, ‘No, no.’

‘I will drag you away. You can say I kidnapped you,’ laughed Virmati.

They went in Virmati’s father’s tonga. In the Company Bagh, Virmati mentioned the names of the trees she knew, and she knew practically all of them. They had been part of her nature-study course in school.

‘It’s good the girls of today know so much,’ remarked the woman wistfully. Out of her kitchen, out of her house, the kinds of knowledge she had left her ill-equipped even in a garden.

‘My mother, my masi, all studied. It is the rivaz in our family,’ said Virmati proudly. ‘Even now my father keeps getting my mother books and magazines to read.’

‘She is lucky,’ sighed the woman. ‘For him, too, studies are very important. He even tried to teach me. But I am too old,’ she giggled uncertainly.

Virmati thought it very noble of the Professor to try and teach his wife. It showed he really cared for women’s education, just like her grandfather.

The woman thought back to the many times her husband had tried to teach her. In the beginning he was patient, it was an impossible situation that his wife should be illiterate. He had decided to start with Hindi; when she had mastered that, she could graduate to English, read the books he liked, become his companion. But the woman found it difficult to learn letters.

‘Here‚’ her husband would say, going over them once, twice. ‘Now you read them on your own. Copy them down in this notebook afterwards, that will help you memorize them. We’ll do the next lesson tomorrow.’

The woman copied down the letters carefully, but when it came to her husband’s daily test, she found she had forgotten which sound went with which letter. Then they would do the whole thing over again, adding a few more letters, because the husband didn’t have all the time in the world, and he wanted his wife to become a companion quickly. Meanwhile the life of the house flowed around them. Women were sewing, knitting or preparing food, amidst ripples of talk, while children played in the angan. The younger girls would peep slyly inside the room and titter at seeing her trying to study. She could hear her daughter’s baby voice amongst them.

The woman’s own mother had never read, nor ever felt the need. She had taught the woman everything she knew. By the time she was ready to leave for her husband’s house at the age of twelve, she had mastered the basic items of a pure vegetarian diet. She was quick and inventive with the embroidery and knitting needle, as well as with the sewing-machine. After her marriage, her mother-in-law made sure that she learned the ways of her in-laws’ household from the moment of her arrival. All this was part of growing up, she knew, but how was she ever to dream that without the desire to read and write, she was going defenceless into union with a man so unlike the others she knew, who didn’t seem to care about her household skills at all? Yet he was impatient and angry when the food was badly cooked, and the house carelessly managed. The woman sighed, and turned her attention back to Virmati still chattering on about trees and their names.

‘It’s good you know all this‚’ she repeated. ‘My Chhotti, too, will know‚’ referring to her daughter, about Vidya’s age. ‘She has already started looking at books. Her father is so keen. She tries to show me.’

Virmati looked startled. That seemed to be against the natural order of things. She couldn’t imagine learning anything from any of her sisters. Maybe things were different in the United Provinces where the woman had come from. Hadn’t her grandfather always said the women of the Punjab were among the most advanced in the country?

‘Chhotti teaches you?’ she asked.

‘Sometimes. When I have the time. If God wills, I will learn.’

She said nothing about her efforts to meet her husband’s standards, her pain when she remained uncomprehending despite his lessons. Her hope now lay in her daughter.

Vaguely Virmati began to feel sorry, she was not sure for whom. It was strange that the Professor’s wife couldn’t read. She turned the conversation to herself. ‘Mati doesn’t want me to study further. I have just done my FA exams, you know.’

‘And?’ inquired the woman.

‘Well …’ blushed Virmati. ‘My family found …’

‘Ah‚’ said the woman, understanding completely.

‘I agreed and in fact I would have been married by now, but then my grandmother, great-aunt really, died. I think she never liked it here after we moved, you know. My grandfather was most upset. Now we have to wait a year and in the meantime I will go on studying. I want to go to Lahore like Shakuntala Pehnji, but I don’t know …’

‘Some things come before studies‚’ smiled the woman. ‘It is the right time.’

‘That is what they all say‚’ grumbled Virmati, for form’s sake.

‘It is true. You will see later‚’ said the woman.

This argument was endless, with the lines well laid down for each position. Education versus marriage. They amiably continued along the traditional texts as they finished their tour of the Company Bagh and drove into the older part of Amritsar towards Darbar Sahib.

The woman loved Darbar Sahib. It was so clean and spacious, so gold and white. Despite the people, it was serene, even silent. They did a parikrama around the marble courtyard, and then joined the line that snaked through the temple inside. Clutching the hot halwa parshad and laughing, they felt light and gay.

‘Come, let’s buy bangles‚’ suggested Virmati, leading her companion towards the small, dark, paved gully that rose from off one of the corners of the temple.

‘No, no, it’s getting late. What’ll he say?’ hesitated the woman, remembering that she ought not to be away from home for so long. Without him.

‘What’ll he say? Nothing,’ challenged Virmati.

‘No, no, he’ll say nothing,’ agreed the woman. ‘Like that he is very good, but still …’ Her voice trailed off. How could she explain all the different qualities of silence that could thicken the air in a house, and that to someone who was not married? It was impossible. She stood distractedly in front of the bangle-seller Virmati led her to.

‘How about these?’ asked Virmati, pointing to the blue ones, light and dark, rimmed with gold. ‘You are so fair, they will suit you.’

‘He doesn’t like blue,’ explained the woman, shaking her head. ‘I wear nothing blue.’

Virmati looked at the woman. She and her sisters wore whatever colour they pleased except inauspicious black.

‘He must be very particular.’

‘He is.’

‘Shall we go further up?’

‘Oh, no, no. It’s getting late,’ and the woman turned.

‘But you hardly ever come out,’ persisted Virmati.

‘He worries,’ said the woman.

*

The tonga clattered back. The woman sat silently tense, while Virmati wondered at her state. Reaching the back rented portion of the house, the first thing they saw was the Professor Sahib looking restless. As they came towards him, Virmati exclaimed gaily, ‘Here’s the treasure you had loaned me. See, I have brought her back safe and sound!’

For a moment he looked startled. Then, his face softened, and the woman scurried off thankfully to the kitchen.

‘Perhaps I’ll get my tea now‚’ the Professor said to Virmati.

‘The fault is mine‚’ she replied, elegant still.

‘Mine, if you feel blamed.’

Virmati fell silent. She did not know what to say next and turned to go. He called out, ‘Stay and have a cup.’

‘Oh, no. My milk will be waiting for me at home.’

Her milk. So young, he thought.

‘Do please come in‚’ he repeated courteously, putting polite pressure on her. ‘In England they say nothing is so refreshing as a cup of tea. I learnt to like it there.’ He was offering a little bit of himself which both flattered and alarmed Virmati.

‘I like it already‚’ she said brightly, as she remained standing safely on the step. ‘Indumati makes me tea when I’m not feeling well. With milk and honey, tulsi leaves, black pepper and ginger.’

The Professor winced slightly. ‘Ah, I see. The medicinal potion‚’ he said.

The woman emerged from the kitchen, a silver tray in her hands. On it was a white cup and saucer with small pink roses, and faint green leaves. A fine gold line could be seen around the rim. Matching this was a small jug with bits of steam curling out, and a round sugar bowl with a silver spoon standing straight up in it. On one side bulged the starched teacosy, with white flowers embroidered against a whiter background. Seeing her husband still talking to Virmati, the woman hesitated before him, holding the tray. He gestured inside, and turned again to the guest.

‘Are you sure that I have to be so rude as to send you back without anything to eat or drink?’

But the sight of the tea-tray, with its unfamiliar rigmarole, was enough to send Virmati urgently home – really, they are waiting – to the glass of hot milk that she could sip comfortably and slowly while warming her hands around it. When you talked to him, she thought, the Professor Sahib wasn’t formidable. He seemed quite friendly, offering her tea more than once. How was it that the woman was still in awe of him after all those years?

*

‘Pehnji?’

‘Yes, Paro?’ Virmati was lying on her bed, frowning in concentration before an English book. Her lips were moving, and her finger ran along the lines.

‘I got hurt. Look.’ And Paro pointed to her knee smudged with dirt and blood. She had been waiting for Virmati to come home from college and see for herself how hurt she was.