Sacred Games (137 page)

‘Okay,' Aisha said. She'd finished the article, and was ready to go on to the next. But she couldn't let Zoya Mirza go without a last admiring, ‘I tell you, she's so smart.'

Sharmeen held her tongue, and they settled into a long perusal of an article about Anil Kapoor's career, and then an analysis of older heroes. Sharmeen watched films only at Aisha's, on DVD, and so her knowledge of heroes and heroines and their histories wasn't as wide and deep as Aisha's, but she had an astute sense of what was going to be a hit and
what wasn't, and she could remember entire songs after hearing them only once. Of the black-and-white heroes, from long before either she or Aisha had been born, Sharmeen liked Dev Anand. After that she had a partiality to Amitabh Bachchan. Aisha was quite agreeable about these two preferences, it was only over Chandrachur Singh that they parted company. Sharmeen had often wondered why it was that modern times divided them more than olden times. Now they agreed about Feroz Khan – both thumbs down – but disagreed about Fardeen, whose first film hadn't been released yet but whose photographs were suddenly everywhere, who Aisha thought was cool but Sharmeen pronounced a dork. ‘Dork' was one of Sharmeen's new words.

‘Sharmeen,' came the call. ‘Beta?'

They had plenty of warning. When Ammi opened the door, the
Stardust
was safely deep under the bed, and Sharmeen and Aisha were seated in the middle of the bed, facing each other. Looking, Sharmeen hoped, like two obedient girls having a respectable discussion about something suitable.

‘Salaam alaikum, Khaala-jaan,' Aisha said. She was adept at these sudden transformations. She suddenly had her hair tucked behind her ears, her arms wrapped around her knees, and she looked as sweetly innocent as one of those forties heroines simpering at an approving elder.

And Ammi did approve. ‘Waleikum as salaam, Aisha,' she said, dabbing at her mouth with the end of her chunni. ‘Are you well?'

‘Yes, Khaala-jaan, very well.' Aisha did a little side-to-side nod of the head that she brought on when she was being good for aunties and uncles. ‘You look very pink. The cold weather brings out your cheeks.'

The flattery wasn't strictly necessary. Ammi had been at first surprised and then charmed by Aisha's good Urdu and modest manners. She didn't approve of Aisha's family, but was quite comfortable with letting the sweet girl into her own house and being her daughter's sweet friend. Aisha was quite safe, but she never missed a chance to lay on the butter. Ammi smiled, and succumbed once again to Aisha's acting. ‘It is just the heat in the kitchen,' she said. ‘Sharmeen, go and watch Daddi for a while. I can't keep running up there.'

‘Now, Ammi?'

‘No, next year.'

‘Ammi, we were just talking about exams.'

‘So go and talk up there. That poor old woman is not going to stop you.'

Sharmeen couldn't tell Ammi that she hated the musty smell of that
room, that it scared her to be in the presence of that supine, wizened body that had once been her Daddi. She made a face, and then winced as Aisha pinched her toe.

‘We'll just go, Khalla,' Aisha said. ‘Two minutes.'

Ammi left, but not without a warning glare at Sharmeen. Aisha gathered up her things, and herded Sharmeen through the kitchen and up the stairs to the back room. Even the heavy smell of Ammi's cooking couldn't hide the grim reek of old age, that shut-off closeness which smelt of camphor and bitter medicine and however slightly – this is what made Sharmeen gag – of urine. Though the room was warm, from the heating ducts and the kitchen just down the stairs, Daddi lay under a thick covering of quilt and blankets. Sharmeen sat on the chair next to the door, and tried to breathe very lightly. Aisha marched up to the bed, and plonked herself down on the couch next to it. Even though Daddi was by now little more than a lump under the blankets, Aisha professed an interest in her. She said Daddi changed every time she visited the house, got smaller and more creased and pickled. Sharmeen thought this was true, that what was left in this room was not the tall, loud, sarcastic woman with huge dark eyes that she remembered vaguely from early childhood, but she preferred not to look. She would prefer to leave this smelly body alone, at the back of the house.

‘She's got two more hairs on her chin,' Aisha said. She leant in, closer. And then, in her hip-hop voice, whispered, ‘Hey, Dadds, how you doin'?'

She jumped back.

‘What?' Sharmeen said.

‘She spoke.'

‘So what? She does sometimes. She thinks she's in Rawalpindi. Talking to the butcher.'

‘No, idiot. She spoke in English. She said, “I am very well, thank you.”'

‘She must have heard it somewhere. Come
here
.'

But Aisha pulled the couch closer to the bed, and turned her face sideways to look into the opening in the quilt. Sharmeen had seen her get this way before – when Aisha got obsessed with something, she focused so hard that she really couldn't hear somebody trying to talk to her from two feet away. It was very annoying, and if she got fixated on Daddi they would have to come up here every day for the next week. Sharmeen got up, went around the bottom of the bed and put a hand on Aisha's back. ‘A-isha,' she said.

‘Quiet, na. She's talking.'

‘She jabbers all the time.' Daddi muttered away morning, noon and night, she spoke to the walls of her room and told stories and occasionally cursed, which made Ammi laugh and Abba frown. All this frightened Sharmeen, these purblind eyes, this stringy white hair and the flaky flesh underneath. She could hear a voice under the quilt, reedy and brittle. She wished she was somewhere else, outside in the crisp American frost.

‘It's English,' Aisha said.

‘Don't be silly. Daddi doesn't know English. And Dadda couldn't even read anything. They didn't speak English, that's certain.' Daddi's husband had been illiterate, and Daddi could read Urdu, everyone in the family knew this. But Daddi had sacrificed and scrimped to educate Abba, she had said her youngest son was going to be a professional man, not a tempo-driver like his father. And Dadda's first wife and her children had laughed at her, and thrown her out of the house right after Dadda's early death. Daddi had been out on the street, with three children and no money, nothing, and she had still managed. She had managed to make Abba something other than a tempo-driver. All this was the family history, which Sharmeen had known ever since she could remember, but through her own life nobody had ever mentioned Daddi speaking English. That was just absurd.

‘Come here,' Aisha said, and reached behind and pulled Sharmeen down. ‘Listen!'

Sharmeen found herself face to face with Daddi. The pale skin was blotchy now, disfigured by spots, but Sharmeen knew that once it had been legendarily glorious and resplendent. Dadda had married Daddi because he had been dazzled by her Punjabi beauty, and his first wife had despised her, had called Daddi a prostitute, had hated having her in the same house, had fought against it. Dadda used to call Daddi a rose, a zannat ki hoor. Looking at Daddi, this was hard to believe, but this is what everyone said. Daddi's breath was now rank, like old adhesive. Sharmeen was sure that she would never ever let herself become so repulsive. She would rather die first. Sharmeen made a face. ‘That's not English.'

‘Now it's not. Now she's saying something in Punjabi. What is it?'

What Daddi was saying had the cadence of a chant, a prayer, but it was unfamiliar. ‘I don't know,' Sharmeen said. ‘Let's
go
.'

‘I've heard it somewhere. It's a song.'

‘Yes, yes, now she's singing some Daler Mehendi song for you.'

Aisha wasn't about to rise to Sharmeen's weak sarcasm, not while she
had this new mystery to investigate. She had her head cocked close to Daddi's. ‘She stopped.'

‘Good. So come over here. Then after five minutes we can leave.'

But Aisha insisted on sitting next to Daddi and waiting for her to speak again. There was no budging her. She watched Daddi intently. Sharmeen turned away from that wet, wrinkly mouth, and tried to talk to Aisha, to get back to some other subject, anything. She tried Chandrachur Singh, Brad Pitt, school, strict teachers. Aisha remained distracted, and answered only in haans and naas. Sharmeen, as hard as she tried, couldn't quite push away the chip-chip sound that Daddi made with her lips every few seconds. Finally she fell silent, and they both waited for Daddi to say something.

Sharmeen jumped when she did, even though she knew it was coming. This time Daddi's voice was louder, stronger, but it still sounded as if it was coming from somewhere else, from somewhere far away. It was the chant again, ‘
Nanak dukhiya sab sansaar
,' and this time it was familiar to Sharmeen too. ‘What is it?' she whispered.

‘I don't know,' Aisha said.

Daddi broke off. In that terse silence the Punjabi words fell together in Sharmeen's head and she knew what they were. She didn't want to react, but she stiffened against Aisha's side and Aisha instantly knew that she knew.

‘What is it?' Aisha said.

Sharmeen didn't want to say. None of it made any sense. She shrugged. ‘It's Punjabi.'

‘I can hear that also. But your Punjabi is pretty good. What is she
saying
?'

Aisha wasn't going to let it go. Sharmeen whispered, ‘It's some kind of song. Like those sardars sing at their temple or whatever.'

Aisha shook her head. ‘Your daddi is saying a Sikh's prayer?'

Sharmeen nodded. ‘Nanak, that's from the sardars, no?'

‘Yes,' Aisha said. She was holding Sharmeen's hands very tightly, and now she asked the crucial question. ‘But why?'

‘I don't know.' Sharmeen had no idea. Dadda was a Punjabi, and Daddi was a Punjabi refugee from the other side. Her family had all been killed by Hindus. Dadda had rescued her and brought her home. He had married her, and his first wife had raged, and after Dadda died the chudail first wife had thrown her and Abba out. Dadda had loved Daddi, and if he had lived, everything would have been different. But Daddi and
Abba – who was then only a boy – had suffered, and finally Abba had triumphed. Nowhere in all this old history was there any reason for Daddi to say Sikh prayers.

‘Find out.' Aisha was all aflush with the drama of the moment, with the possibilities of the mystery.

‘How?'

‘Ask questions.'

Ask questions. That was easy for Aisha to say. Sharmeen didn't want to ask her parents questions about Sikh prayers. Aisha wouldn't quite understand, but Sharmeen knew in her bones, in her very blood, that asking about this would be a disaster. Abba hated Sikhs only a little less than he hated Hindus. He said the sardars were a barbarous, uncultured people, full of violence and hate. Hindus were worse, of course, they were unscrupulous liars and cowards and idolaters, but Sikhs were half-way to Hindus. Abba had spent his life fighting against both, and had been decorated and promoted for his dedication and his successes. Sharmeen wasn't going to start talking to him about Sikh prayers in his own house. She loved him, but he was an austere, disciplined man with an unforgiving temper. He went to work at the embassy and spent long hours, and the home he returned to had to be clean, quiet and peaceful, and full of godly grace. Sharmeen knew better than to provoke an upset with stupid questions about the mutterings of senile old Daddi. So she finally managed to get Aisha packed off home, and retreated to her own room, and tried to calm herself down. But she was restless, and after lunch she went back to Daddi's room.

Daddi was still curled up in exactly the same position, with her head to the left. Sharmeen knew that Ammi got her up in the mornings and evenings to feed her, and give her medicines, and sometimes Daddi was even carried down by Abba to the drawing room, to sit with everyone. But mostly she spent her whole life here, in this one room, dozing and talking to herself. Sharmeen shuddered, and swore to herself again that she would never be this horribly old, and waited for Daddi to say Sikh stuff again. Daddi was mumbling and muttering now, though, and it was hard to make anything out, and although it was Punjabi, it wasn't any kind of prayer. Sharmeen sat patiently. She had a maths textbook with her, and she made herself comfortable on the low green chair and read. She was curious now herself, not as excitedly as Aisha, but with a strange, uneasy flow of anticipation and dread and nausea through her abdomen. She wanted Daddi to say that thing again, that prayer, but she didn't.

Sharmeen came awake slowly, her cheek against the wooden arm of the chair. A faint smog of snow drifted against the window, and the light had changed to a luminescent slate that reminded Sharmeen of a dream she had once had, of walking across a vast plain, towards high mountains. When had she had that dream? She couldn't remember. She pushed herself up and rubbed her face. There must be a nasty pattern there, from the wood. Sometimes, when she and Aisha napped in the afternoons, they giggled with glee over the impressions left on their faces and arms, and pretended that these were permanent marks, scars. Aisha hated sleeping too long in the afternoons, though. She said that waking up after a long daytime sleep made her feel lost, like she didn't know where she was, or who she was. Sharmeen liked to sleep any time, day or night, and she slept when she felt like it. Although she would never say it to Aisha, she thought that despite all her outrageousness and her risk-taking, Aisha was peculiarly delicate in some ways. She got really nervous about tests and papers, and was afraid of lizards. Sometimes Sharmeen felt like she was protecting Aisha, not the other way around.

Sharmeen started. Daddi was sitting up in bed. The covers had fallen around her waist, and under the white sweater her collarbone was very fragile. She was looking at Sharmeen. ‘Nikki,' she said. ‘Take me home.'