Their Language of Love (14 page)

‘… and looping the necklace round his daughter’s neck Pir Khurkain said to her: “Daughter, you can build a larger and more splendid mansion than the King’s palace with a single gem from this necklace. But don’t ever forget we owe our happiness to the Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad. Remember to invoke their names in your prayers every Friday and distribute three pice worth of chickpeas to whoever you meet that day.”

‘And so the woodcutter goes away to Mecca to perform Haj.’

‘Yes ji yes.’

The woodcutter’s wife and daughter built a mansion that was larger than the King’s palace. They gave lavish parties. The odours of grilling meats mingled with the fragrance of flowers and the house resounded with the sound of laughter and the chatter of new friends. But they did not invoke the names of the angels as promised.

One day it so happened that when the woodcutter’s daughter went to the bath-house she found that someone was already bathing inside and the doors were closed. She asked the maid who was waiting outside, ‘Who’s in there
that you won’t allow me in the bath-house? I’ve never been stopped from entering before.’

The maid told her that the Princess was at her bath.

When the Princess overheard their conversation, she called to the woodcutter’s daughter and said, ‘Let us bathe together. After all, you are a woman and I am a woman, so what does it matter?’

When they came out of the bath, the Princess sent for silver platters of pilaf and sweets and invited the wood-cutter’s daughter to eat with her.

Pir Khurkain’s daughter wondered how she could repay the royal hospitality. She removed a diamond from her necklace and gave it to the Princess.

‘Yes ji yes.’

When she returned to the palace the princess showed the diamond to the King and exclaimed: ‘Father, you are a King, and yet you don’t have a single gem among your treasures to compare with the lustre of this diamond given to me by a woodcutter’s daughter.’

The King said, ‘Daughter, God has not made all things equal. Some men wear crowns and sit on thrones, some toil and yet exist in poverty. Some live by honour and some by pride, and some have strength and some ill health. One man’s fate is not the same as another’s.’

Then the Princess and the woodcutter’s daughter became best friends.

‘Yes ji yes.’

At this point Mother interrupts the narrative to say, in that childishly unctuous tone she invariably acquires: ‘Even if the woodcutter’s daughter forgot to invoke you, O Trouble-Easer, I will never forget to remember you.’ She then arranges more sandalwood on the fire, which has almost become ashes, and joining her hands and bowing her head, asks for blessings on her house. When she passes her hands over her face, I sit up. The interval is over, the story will continue.

One afternoon the woodcutter’s daughter and the Princess came upon a lake in the forest. The Princess said, ‘How cool and inviting the water looks. Come, let’s swim.’

‘It is my misfortune that I don’t know how to swim,’ the woodcutter’s daughter replied. ‘But I’ll sit by the lake while you enjoy your swim.’

The Princess removed her clothes and, last of all, the diamond necklace that the King had given her. She placed the necklace carefully in a fork between the lower branches of a mango tree, and telling her friend to mind her belongings, slid into the water.

Then Mushkail-Asaan came in the guise of a crow and slipping through the foliage, carried the diamond necklace away in his beak.

When the Princess came out of the water and put on her clothes, she discovered that her necklace was missing.

‘Yes ji yes.’

They shook the branches of the tree and searched the underbrush and the ground all around them, but they could not find the necklace.

Then the Princess cried: ‘There was no one here but us
… I told you to mind the necklace and now we cannot find it. You say you don’t have it, but how can that be … You must have stolen it.’

The Princess took her complaint to the King. The King questioned the woodcutter’s daughter and the King’s Vazir questioned her too, but the woodcutter’s daughter wept and cried: ‘I have not stolen the necklace.’

The King then cast the girl into prison.

‘Yes ji yes.’

When she heard that her daughter was in prison, Pir Khurkain’s wife ran to the palace gates, crying, ‘O King! How can I let my unmarried and chaste daughter stay all alone in prison? Put me in with her!’

So the King cast the woodcutter’s wife also into prison. He confiscated their property and all their possessions in lieu of the necklace.

‘Yes ji yes.’

On his way back from the pilgrimage to Mecca, the woodcutter was robbed by bandits.

When he arrived at his house he found it in complete darkness and gloom.

The woodcutter ran to his neighbours’ houses and knocked on their doors to find out what had happened. His neighbours told him that his daughter had stolen the Princess’s necklace, and that the King had cast both his wife and daughter into prison.

Pir Khurkain then ran all the way to the palace and standing before the palace gates, cried: ‘O, King! What manner of justice is this? That I, a man, should sit at home,
free, while my wife and daughter are in prison?’

The King told him, ‘Your daughter stole the Princess’s necklace; that is why she’s in prison. Your wife did not want her to stay in jail alone, so I put her in too.’

‘The woodcutter pleaded, ‘O King, I beg you to release them, and to lock me up in their stead.’

The King freed both women and cast Pir Khurkain into prison.

That night Mushkail-Asaan appeared before the woodcutter in a dream: ‘I gave you every happiness that your heart desired,’ he said. ‘Yet you could not remember to pray over a few chickpeas and think of me?’

In his dream the woodcutter wept and cried, ‘O Trouble-Easer, forgive me. My daughter is young and heedless. She and my wife have made a terrible mistake.’

And because Pir Khurkain was a truly good man, Trouble-Easer said, ‘When you awaken you will be free of your chains. You will also find three coins on your pillow to the right hand side of your head. Send for the chickpeas and sugar with the money, and think of us; we will once again ease your troubles.’

Another break in the story. Another pinch of incense added to the fire, a folding of hands and bowing of heads.

Mother says: ‘When you ease other peoples’ troubles, O Mushkail-Asaan, ease ours as well.’

Next morning when Pir Khurkain woke up he found the chains that bound his hands and legs had fallen away from him. He looked to the right of where he had laid his head and found the three coins the Trouble-Easer had spoken of. Then Pir Khurkain sat down by the barred prison window
and, saying his prayers, waited for someone to come by.

Presently he saw a man hurry past his window. The woodcutter hastily shouted at him to stop, and pleaded with him to bring him three-pice worth of roasted chickpeas.

The passerby was irritable and brusque: ‘I have no time to spare. My daughter is getting married, and I am too busy in the hustle-bustle of wedding preparations to get you chickpeas.’ Then, saying, ‘I’m on my way to buy clothes for the wedding,’ he rushed away.

The woodcutter was enraged. He muttered: ‘May the news of death replace the hustle and bustle of wedding preparations, and may you need to buy a shroud instead of bridal garments.’

‘The passerby was returning to his house with the new wedding garments when some men rushed up to tell him, ‘Your son-in-law has suddenly taken very ill. He’s unconscious and on the verge of death. You must hurry and buy clothes for the funeral.’

The passerby turned back and went sorrowfully to buy clothes for his son-in-law’s funeral. The woodcutter saw him and again begged him to buy three-pice worth of roasted chickpeas.

Now the grieving passerby went up to the barred window and said, ‘Give me the money brother, and I will get you the chickpeas. Earlier I was on my way to buy wedding clothes; now I have news that my son-in-law is deathly ill, and I’m in no great hurry to get burial clothes.’

The passerby brought the woodcutter the roasted chickpeas.

Then the woodcutter blessed him and said, ‘May your sorrowing house be filled with joy again.’

Once more the men from his house rushed to catch up with the passerby. ‘Your son-in-law has recovered completely,’ they cried. ‘Go quickly and make arrangements for the wedding.’

The woodcutter prayed over his beads, and recalling his meeting with the Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad with gratitude thanked them for the help they had given him. At the same time he handed three peeled chickpeas to whoever passed by his window.

‘Yes ji yes.’

The next day the King and the Princess went for a picnic in the forest. They strolled among the trees and after a while sat down on a large rock to rest. Then lo! The diamond necklace fell into the Princess’s lap right out of the sky.

‘Yes ji yes.’

They looked up and saw a gorgeously plumed peacock fly down from a branch and disappear into the forest. Mushkail-Asaan, in the guise of a peacock, had returned the necklace to the Princess.

The King at once turned to his daughter and thumping her on the back scolded her. ‘You have accused an innocent girl of theft! You have committed a very grave injustice.’

The King was distraught; the repentant and distressed Princess was sorry for ever having doubted her friend.

The very next day Pir Khurkain was released from jail with great pomp and celebration. The King took the woodcutter to the palace and said, ‘Can you forgive us, O Pir Khurkain?
My daughter was mistaken and we have committed a terrible injustice!’

The woodcutter wept and cried: ‘You have dishonoured my family and disgraced my daughter! Who will marry her now?’

Then the King said: ‘Would it please you if I marry her to my son?’

And so it came about that the daughter of a humble woodcutter was married to the King’s son.

Then the King removed his crown and placed it on the woodcutter’s head.

‘Yes ji yes.’

The story ends.

Mother asks blessings for our family: ‘As Pir Khurkain’s troubles eased, as a woodcutter’s daughter married a Prince, as the passerby recovered his sick son-in-law: so help us ease our troubles too, great Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad, and make our wishes also come true. Amen!’

The room is scented with incense and foggy with smoke. Almost all the golden chickpeas are peeled, their dark husks floating in the silver bowl. Mother gives me three chickpeas and a few jagged bits of crystallized sugar, and pops some chickpeas into her own mouth. She will now distribute them, giving no more than the prescribed three to visitors and members of our household.

My bottom hurts from sitting so long on the hard floor. I feel ennobled—God-blessed.

It didn’t occur to me until many years later to question my mother. How did a Muslim woodcutter, who went for Hajj to Mecca, get tangled up with Zoroastrian angels and Zoroastrian prayers? By now I am aware of the bitter memory, dating from the Arab conquest of Zoroastrian Persia in the seventh century, that still burns in the communal memory.

Mother is taken aback by my question. She looks bewildered and a crease forms between her eyebrows. ‘That is how my grandmothers and aunts told the prayer and that is how I tell it … I have faith in Mushkail-Asaan and Pir Khurkain’s story … Invoking him has eased my troubles … the angels have seen me through some very difficult times,’ she muses aloud, and then her face and eyes acquire a beatific glow. ‘But that is what happens when one lives cheek by jowl with people of other faiths—saints jump boundaries and the barriers of animosity fall.’

Large eyes darting like startled moths, the slender girl in a red sari emerged nervously from the doors at Kennedy Airport. She anxiously scanned the row of waiting faces in the arrivals lounge and, the anticipatory smile on her lips fluttering, felt her eyes begin to smart. The fear that had lurked unacknowledged in her subconscious during the flight now leapt into her mind like a bolting horse: Nav was not there to receive her.

Roshni paused, blinking back tears, and then, yielding to the pressure from behind, self-consciously trundled her heaped cart past the small groups of relatives and friends who were effusively greeting the other passengers arriving from Bombay and Ahmedabad.

Roshni came to a hesitant stop and stood at a short distance from them. She felt intimidated by the vast hall in which she found herself and by the crush of people bustling purposefully on all sides. Nav would expect to find her here: that is, if he turned up at all. An Air India stewardess flashed her a smile of recognition, and checking her brisk passage stopped to ask, ‘Everything all right?’

Roshni nodded, touched by her concern. ‘Yes, thanks.’

The stewardess had been especially kind to her on the flight. She, along with many other people on the plane, had guessed that Roshni was newly married by the Banarasi silk sari and the festive red glass and gold bangles that reached halfway up her forearms.

Roshni leaned against her cart. The stewardess’s concern had comforted her, and despite her anxiety, she began to take in her surroundings. The sheer size of the hall, the illumination from concealed lights that approximated daylight, the glittering expanse of glass, steel and marble soaked into her consciousness. And it suddenly struck her that she was in America, the fabulous country of her fantasies, of
Newsweek
and rock-stars and MTV, the home of her husband! She was overwhelmed by a glorious surge of excitement: the exhilaration that attends the traveller to faraway lands. Her excitement tempered with worry, she willed her wandering mind to provide her with a next step of action.

As the crowd before her thinned, Roshni noticed a block of chairs ahead of her. People were lounging in weary postures, their hand-luggage strewn about their feet.

Realizing she could keep an eye on the arrivals point from there, Roshni pushed her cart towards a dumpy little grey-haired Indian woman sitting in the front row, her slippered feet stretched out to a small bag on her cart.

Smiling timidly, Roshni glanced at the vacant seat next to her. The woman made a small accommodating movement in her chair, and said, ‘Sit, sit. I’m also waiting … For my son. Who’s coming for you?’

‘My husband,’ Roshni said, shifting to Gujrati. She guessed from the woman’s accent and the drape of her sari that she was from her own home province, Gujrat.

But the way Roshni had said ‘
my husband
’, and the rush of blood to her dusky face, caused the woman to lower the dangling heels of her slippers to the floor and turn to her with an indulgent grin. ‘Achaaa,’ she drawled, employing the versatile word to declare her pleased comprehension. ‘So, you’re a brand new bride! How long have you been married?’

‘Almost a month.’

‘Congratulations! Live long. See much-much happiness. Where are you from?’

‘Bulsar.’

‘I’m also from Gujrat,’ the woman announced on a note of triumph, delighted by a coincidence that, given the population explosion of Gujratis all over the planet, was not so surprising. ‘From Ahmedabad. It’s quite close to Bulsar,’ she said, getting specific. ‘What does your husband do?’

‘He’s a computer analyst.’ The crisp English words imbued Roshni’s speech with unintended primness.

‘Aachaaa,’ the woman said dragging the elastic word with a wry but amiable touch of wide-eyed awe. ‘Then he must be verrry clever!’

Roshni smiled and nodded her head in bashful concurrence; and, believing she may have sounded as if she was putting on airs, compensated for it by chattily volunteering more information. ‘He’s just got a job with an American company in upstate New York, in Albany. He’s going to show me around New York for a few days and then we’ll go to the
small town where he’s working. He told me that I would like it. Once we get there he will teach me to drive a car.’

The woman studied the girl. Her gaze lingered on the wide, gold-embroidered sari border, the red bindi on her forehead, the centre parting in her hair that lacked the red powder customary to Hindu brides. ‘You know,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side, ‘at first I thought you were Hindu.’

Roshni flushed. She knew she sounded exactly like a
Gujju.
In fact Roshni, who was dark for a Parsee and self-conscious about it, had decided during her teens to use her small-featured chocolate looks to her advantage the way the south Indian girls did. She took to wearing vividly coloured saris with contrasting borders that complemented her sultry beauty, and coiled her long hair in a silken knot at the back.

Dressing this way had changed the way Roshni saw herself. It also influenced her conduct and attitudes. And her sense of identity with the majority Hindu community had imbued her with a confidence she lacked in the company of her siblings and cousins; brash, lighter-skinned creatures who wore miniskirts and dresses, played the piano and affected Western mannerisms. Roshni had taken to practising classical Indian ragas on the sitar.

Observing the girl’s acute discomfort, the woman shifted ground and made a series of sympathetic clicking noises with her tongue. ‘It’s not right,’ she said pursing her mouth reprovingly. ‘Your husband shouldn’t keep you waiting like this … But he’ll come, don’t worry. One has to drive such
long distances here. If there is a problem, my son and I will help you.’

Roshni looked at her gratefully. After a few minutes of further chatter she asked, ‘Could you mind my luggage while I go to the toilet?’

‘Go, go,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘Freshen up.’ She made a small, kissing sound with her lips.

Roshni had barely returned to her seat when she spotted Nav. She shot up from her chair, and pitching her voice discreetly, called, ‘Nav, Nav.’

Nav’s worried face cleared with relief when he saw her. And as he strolled over to her, Roshni’s heart stilled. He looked so attractively at ease and debonair in his jeans and striped T-shirt. Now that she had the chance to observe him neutrally, without the critical assessment of her relatives and friends who had found him alternately too tongue-tied or too patronizing, too tall or too pale, he looked startlingly handsome. More in his natural element here than he had been in dilapidated and dusty old Bulsar. A happy catch in her lungs stopped her breath.

‘Hello,’ Nav said, and bashful about hugging his wife in public, lightly touched Roshni’s shoulder. Then he placed his hands in a ‘can-do’ businesslike way on the cart.

Roshni glanced at the Gujrati woman with a smile of leave-taking, but the woman, her short legs once again stretched to the cart, was peering at Nav through narrowed and contentious eyes. Clearly she was not about to permit any leave-taking without venting her feelings.

Following the trail of Roshni’s disconcerted gaze, Nav
also looked at the woman. And, lying in wait for him to do just that, the old woman promptly said: ‘Is this good? Your bride comes all the way to America for the first time, and you make her wait like this? It is shameful!’

Nav’s laid-back American pose at once vanished and he became as polite and contrite as was expected of an Indian youth being chastised by an elderly woman.

From the corners of her eyes Roshni observed the change in Nav’s personality as he made his excuses. She was pleased; the man she was married to still cared about what people from their part of the world thought of him.

In the taxi Roshni said: ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

‘You knew I’d come.’

‘I was frightened.’ Roshni sat sullen and huddled in her corner.

‘Don’t be silly. There were hundreds of people around you. This is New York, not Bulsar. You’ve got to learn to be strong-hearted and independent if you want to survive in America.’ He made a disgusted noise. ‘That interfering old Gujju woman got you all worked up.’

‘But I
was
frightened.’ Roshni was emphatic. She looked stonily out of the window. A tear trickled down her cheek.

Nav slid across the seat and diffidently draped an arm around Roshni’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry. I did my best to be on time. I was longing to see you. I put the alarm on for five o’clock to catch the earliest train … I’ve had to come a long way, you know.’

But Roshni turned her face away and became as stiff as a bristly reed-broom in his embrace. She sniffed.

Nav raised his skinny buttocks to awkwardly dig into his jeans pockets. He handed Roshni a tattered tissue. Then, exerting more pressure, he drew her closer.

Roshni maintained her approximation of a rigid reed-broom. But her heart, that Nav had so peremptorily ordered to be strong and independent, fluttered and pounded helplessly.

Sensing that her behaviour reflected her fear and confusion at being so far from home—and entirely dependent on a man she scarcely knew—Nav was swept by a wave of tenderness and sexual excitement. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, surprised at how easily the unaccustomed endearment tripped off his tongue. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude or bossy … Please, forgive me … Please don’t be like this,’ he pleaded until Roshni was reassured and her resistance crumbled. She buried her wet, reproachful face in his bony chest and her travel-exhausted body gradually grew languid and trusting in his arms.

Nav gently stroked Roshni’s back and slender neck. He kissed her forehead and her fragrant hair—all the way to the Catholic Seminary on 108th Street and Broadway, where he had booked a room for their week-long honeymoon in New York.

In the next few days many of Roshni’s fears and misgivings regarding her husband—whom she scarcely knew despite their nervously and ineptly consummated marriage in the small bedroom reeking of whitewash in Bulsar—had been replaced by cautious trust, and a burgeoning passion. And when, in the throes of lovemaking he felt every fibre in him aglow with delight and his blood sing, he would whisper:
‘God, I love you … I will give you the moon and the stars … don’t ever leave me …’ Roshni’s delighted womb, too, would sing, and she would cry out for love. For Nav was as ardent and tender a lover to the exotic girl he had married as he was an instructive and informative guide to her in New York. After all, he had chosen Roshni above all the other girls shown to him in Navsari, Surat and Bulsar.

They visited the Statue of Liberty, the zoo at Central Park and stood braced against the exhilarating gusts that made it difficult for them to hear each other speak atop the Empire State building.

But the bossy aspect of Nav’s personality, which had provoked Roshni in the taxi, kept rearing its aggravating head like a leery squirrel. Roshni became resigned; Nav was a compulsive instructor, and there was little she could do but accept his peculiar brand of benevolence.

Always prepared to enlighten the country bumpkin from Bulsar, which he grandiosely assured Roshni was as removed from worldly ways as it was remote from New York, Nav drew upon a reservoir of experiences and mishaps in the United States to forewarn and forearm his bride.

And if Nav was an indefatigable instructor, his bride was an astute judge of character. Roshni had it within her realistic and sympathetic grasp to intuit the fragility of Nav’s buffeted ego. She registered, almost by osmosis, the assaults it had endured. From her own reactions she gauged the bewildering nature of the culture-shock—the adjustments demanded of newcomers to this opulent land. She grasped that the challenges Nav had already faced shielded her, and
she had the native intelligence to bolster his frail ego in order to strengthen her spouse for their mutual benefit. It was a challenge demanded of the new country. Even though Nav was teaching her to adjust to it, he was also a newcomer to the life outside the university that had sheltered him for four years.

Nav soon discovered within himself a surer strength, and was privately thankful for his unexpectedly diligent and, if not appreciative, at least understanding pupil.

On a bright Saturday afternoon, the fourth day of their honeymoon, Nav proudly paraded his wife, radiant in an emerald shot-silk sari with a plum border, on Madison Avenue. Nav’s chest swelled. Strutting beside her he noted the admiring and approving glances she drew their way. And when Roshni had had her fill of gazing at the captivating window displays, and became restive to go into the stores, Nav tactfully navigated her into a bus instead.

While Roshni excitedly looked out of the window at the deep gorge the immense buildings made of the road and the cosmopolitan carnival of camera-toting tourists, Nav gazed covertly at the amiable stranger, colourful as a tropical butterfly, who had become his wife. In the lottery of fate that allotted wives, he felt he had picked a winner.

The bus took them all the way to Lower Fifth Avenue, and deposited them at the gates of Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Roshni took hold of Nav’s arm as they sauntered through the throng of holidaymakers, surprised
by the range of activities going on, all of them competing for their attention.

They stood before small tables, watching speed chess and backgammon. ‘Why don’t you try?’ Roshni asked, and Nav prudently replied, ‘I’m not good enough.’

His humility took Roshni by surprise. She pressed his arm closer, and the yielding softness of her flesh pulsed through Nav’s blood like feathery threads of happiness as they watched skateboard experts show off by jumping over three trash cans set out in a row, and graceful Frisbee enthusiasts perform amazing feats.

At first they only heard the preacher.

They drifted closer and Roshni spotted, through a shifting screen of other idle drifters, a respectably suited, middle-aged preacher, energetically waving a Bible and belting out God’s Word through a mike attached to two small amplifiers.

‘He’s a Protestant proselytizer,’ the knowledgeable husband informed his wife. ‘Let’s watch him for a bit. They can be quite funny sometimes.’