Rajmahal (45 page)

The family clings together, and Surjeet Shona is pushed to stay as close as possible to Mumtaz. She looks long at his eyes behind which his loss spreads like the waters of the ocean, into which she feels she can plunge dangerously any moment. The eyes return her look when they are open, but without recollection of that essential period. “Will I lose this last, this best love once and for ever?” Can anything, should anything, be “once and forever,” when the world so consistently denies permanence? Is it of any use to try and pass back into him the currents of their new love, willing him to forget one way and remember another? Or fall in love again? If he, and she with him, knowing its surreal wastefulness, can traverse that terrible terrain of anguish . . . again? Either way lies their salvation, and their tragedy. If Mumtaz's memory comes back, the cruelty of that repeated grief in a time warp will haunt him. And if he falls in love with Surjeet Shona again, there will be that gap, that forgotten period . . . And they will both feel forever uneasy, both betrayed and guilty.

 

Surjeet Shona can't keep away from the hospital. But should she confuse Mumtaz, while he wonders, “Why, why is SS waving her face in front of me with such persistence? What is she to me . . . ?”

Should she not free him, let him go back to his Lalitha? And his ugly, grief?

Isn't association with her, Surjeet Shona, preordained to end unhappily?!

Does she have the right to engage him in this fierce tug-of-war?!

But then, should she wish him back to Lalitha, back to the dead?!!

Can
she wish that on him and such a sacrifice on herself?!!

Ask no more,
Surjeet Shona,
lest thy head fall off!!!!

Trussed up with the cutting rope of this tug-of-war, she strains to break free. While the love that surrounds Mumtaz waits, with its breath held.

And then one day, Mumtaz opens his eyes and smiles.

“SS. Is it you? You look so tired. What has happened?”

His gaze drifts about the white hospital room.

“Mother!” he exclaims. “Father!”

Saira and Ali come tentatively up to him. Afraid. Will those eyes start their wild staring, their dangerous rolling again?

The eyes are quiet, normal, and one by one they let go their breaths. Held for so long.

“Darling,” says Saira, then stops as Ali darts her a warning look. The parents embrace their son gently and are surprised at the firmness of his return embrace.

Junior bustles out of the room after directing meaningful looks at them. They wait. Mumtaz has closed his eyes again. Was it a temporary break? No one speaks.

The doctor comes in with Junior and approaches Mumtaz.

Ali holds Saira who is silently sobbing. She starts coughing and Ali ferries her to the back of the room, where Surjeet Shona stands alone, tears streaking her face. Ali pats her on the shoulder, he has two women to comfort.

Then they hear Mumtaz talking in a normal voice. Surjeet Shona suddenly grows younger. She becomes the recognizable, the younger Surjeet Shona.

“Doctor! What's wrong with me?” the voice of the cheerful, normal Mumtaz.

And then, wonder of wonders. “SS,” he says softly, “SS. Have I been giving you a rough time? What happened? Did anyone get hurt?”

Surjeet Shona comes up to him. The tears still mark her face, but there is a spring in her step. She speaks as softly as Mumtaz. “ You,” she says. “You were the one hurt.” She can't stop her hands from trembling and Mumtaz catches them and puts them to his lips. He looks deep into her eyes. Surjeet Shona feels dizzy. She is certain sorrow doesn't exist, never existed, never will exist. There is a fireworks display in her head. She stoops to touch his lips with hers, gently places her cheek against his scarred healed face.

Then he says, “Jainab. Jainab's gone isn't he?” His expression droops and there are gasps all around the room.

“Ali, Ali, he's relapsing,” cries Saira in a panic.

“Oh I'm all right. Don't worry Mother!” Mumtaz makes to get out of bed and is stopped by the doctor.

“Just a minute young man!”

“Young man? I'm in a time warp, am I?!”

The doctor ignores the question and examines him. The others look at one another acknowledging the irony of Mumtaz's words.

The doctor tells them Mumtaz will be well and ready to leave soon. He tells them Mumtaz's memory has possibly been restored fully. Except for the period between the injury and now. It has been neatly sliced out.

“And if he remembers later?” asks Saira.

The doctor smiles at them. “Does it matter?” he asks. “He is quite strong already. He will cope.”

Suddenly, all the conundrums cease to exist, never were. The period now cut out of Mumtaz's memory has no importance. Even if he remembers his grief in a time warp, his repeated anguish. Even if his heart twinges for Lalitha occasionally.

“How can we ever thank you enough?” Saira sobs happily.

 

Mumtaz is discharged from hospital. He wants most to be with Surjeet Shona. He has no recollection of his regression. No one tells him of it. His children mill around him, his brothers, his parents. They tell him of his precarious condition, of his life teetering on the brink, but nothing of his earlier memory lapse. He listens to all this with Surjeet Shona by his side,
often holding her hand as if holding on to reality. Sometimes he hesitates, seems to frame a question, but doesn't.

He has moved into a bungalow with Surjeet Shona. It has no resemblance to the Rajmahal.

Healing takes place of the many wounds. There is happiness. Even when Mumtaz has headaches, moans, occasionally shouts through his sleep, reliving the sliced out period of his hospitalization at times, and calling as he did then for Lalitha. And Surjeet Shona takes it without fear. Fear has left her. Death has become so familiar, almost like a friend. She sees Mumtaz's nightmares as a subconscious healing, the work going on at night to free him during his waking hours, and maybe, maybe, to free him altogether one day during his lifetime. And hers. Surjeet Shona's spirit is bright and shining, true like the best of metals, forged and tested in the furnace.

Adivasi
indigenous population, the first dwellers

Arrey! Arrey baba!
exclamation of surprise, impatience etc.

Aurora-Ushas
Aurora, the Greek goddess of dawn, Ushas, the Hindu goddess of dawn

Baba
revered person

Bhaiji
Sikh priest

Bhistees
water carriers

Bhapaji
Father (Punjabi)

Bhogoban
God (Bengali)

Bilayatee-pawnee
Anglicization of Vilayati paani (English water), soda

Bobachee-connah
Anglicization of Baawarchi Khaana (Hindi), kitchen

Chanakyan moves
crafty moves. Chanakya, a Brahman expert on statecraft in ancient times, an earlier Machiavelli

Channa
parched gram

Chchi!
exclamation of disgust or dismay

Chik
reed or bamboo screen pulled up by string

Consommah
Anglicization of Khansama, cook

-da
,
dada
respectful suffix, elder brother

Dhuti
length of cloth worn by men from the waist down

Dhuti-punjabi
dhuti with a long white top

Durga puja
the worship of Durga, a huge calendar event

Five Sikh k's
requirments for all male Sikhs: comb, uncut hair, steel bangle, dagger, and undershorts

Ghat
wharf

Gherao
to surround and lock in, besiege

Gurudwara
Sikh temple

Guru Granth Sahib
holy book of the Sikhs

Jai Hind
Victory to India

Ji
suffix of respect (north India)

Jamdani
a particularly delicate, woven sari, usually associated with Begal

Kachcha
undershorts, one of the five Sikh k's

Kanga
comb, one of the five Sikh k's

Karrha
steel bangle, one of the five Sikh k's

Kesh
hair, one of the five Sikh k's

Khalistan
Name given by separatist Sikhs to their “homeland”

Khansama
cook (Urdu)

Khas khas
fragrant reed

Khichri
a stew of rice and lentils

Khilafastis
a movement in British India to help the Caliph of Baghdad after the first world war; became associated with the freedom movement in India

Kirpan
dagger, one of the five Sikh k's

Lungi
length of cloth tied around lower body

Maidan
large, open grounds

Mashi
maternal aunt

Memshaheb
Begali way of saying “memsahib”

Mlechcha
barbarian

Mog
community from northeast India and Bangladesh

Moorri
puffed rice

Mora
wicker stool

Omaboshyo
the last night of the waning moon

Pan
Betel leaf (Bengali, Hindi)

Pandit
title for a Brahman

Pankha
fan (Hindi)

Pir
,
Pir-ji
Muslim saint

Puja
worship

Qui-hai
Anyone there?

rag
classical music scale

Ramjan
fasting month for Muslims, variation of Ramadan

Rasgulla
round Bengali sweet

Rudraksha
Hindu prayer beads

Ryat
peasant

Saheb
Bengali way of saying “sahib”

Salam
greeting

Salami
fee a landlord pays to a tenant when the tenant moves out

Sardarni
wife of sardar

Shabads
Sikh holy songs

Shala
common, mild swear word

Shalwar-kameez
long tunic and loose pants worn by Punjabi women and now worn widely throughout the Indian subcontinent

Sukhasan
putting to rest the holy book of the Sikhs

Swadeshi
indigenous, refers to a pre-Gandhian movement to boycott British goods and exhibit self-sufficiency

Tha'ma
abbreviation of “thakur ma,” paternal grandmother

Unani
Muslim system of medicine

Valmiki
author of the
Ramayana
, patron saint of the sweepers

Wahey Guruji
Praise be to the guru, a Sikh phrase

Writer's Building
seat of government in West Bengal

Zamindar
landlord

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