A Delhi Obsession

by M G Vassanji

  Afterwards he sat at the hotel bar brooding, having shunned two advances, one from a man, the other from a woman. Should he leave Razia a message to say that he was leaving early in the morning? He couldn’t. Part of being a parent is to allow your children to hurt you. But she was not a young child. If she could be a modern, independent daughter, he was a modern father.

  He was packed and downstairs with his luggage when they met at eleven in the lounge. She looked smart in a black office suit and had a briefcase with her.

  “You’re quiet, Dad.”

  “I feel quiet,” he replied with a smile. He looked around, and said, “Everybody seems quiet. It’s a work day.”

  “Did you like Mark?”

  “Yes, very much. He seems a nice young man. I’m sure you’ll be happy.”

  How meaninglessly we speak sometimes. I don’t know the young man. I hardly know my daughter anymore.

  “I neglected you, Dad.”

  He thought for a moment. “Yes, you did.”

  Can’t you just tell a lie? Aileen would have chided.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said that—I was being selfish. I know you have a busy life…a new life—”

  “It won’t happen again, Dad. I promise you.”

  She was in tears.

  Mohini

  IF HE HAD NOT PAUSED to chat outside the DRC bar, she would not be in this quandary. He. She still found it easier to refer to her husband as he. The traditional way, you did not name your husband—in case a spirit overheard it and used it to cast a spell on him. Wives didn’t matter. She often called him by name, Ravi, she was not backward, but there was always just the tiniest of hesitation. She couldn’t help it. It was embarrassing; sometimes her friends caught her short when she said he. But, if he had come inside the bar, instead of gup-shupping outside with those loonies discussing the cow kingdom, they would have shared the table with the stranger. Life would have been different. Would she have wanted that? Yes, please, it was too painful this other way. The tension, the thrill. The risk. Like on a precipice.

  He, speaking of Munir now, had written her a lengthy email from Toronto. She had printed it out, for a keepsake, she’d been so touched, then deleted it from the laptop. She had written back, Thank you for the lovely email, but please, it’s not a good idea. Send a text, but only when I prompt you. Her email account had been set up by Ravi when they purchased the laptop, and she dared not change the password. And he used the account to email common friends, and their daughter Priya in Hyderabad. And so she was reduced to sending texts from the toilet or someplace like that. A couple of times she told Bahadur to park and go buy some vegetables from a street vendor, then quickly texted Munir, and he replied. Both texts she later deleted. He sometimes used her phone too.

  Their texts were silly and embarrassing. Not worth repeating. Who would imagine she was the same person who wrote those smart, provocative columns on the Kingdom of the Cow (which had received a few thousand hate mails), care for the elderly (love mail), Valentine’s Day (love mail from the young), and love jihad (mixed response)? The last one was against the right-wing group that claimed to have collected the names of all Muslim young men in Delhi and warned that they would watch them on Valentine’s Day in case they waylaid Hindu girls. She loved her country, the craziness too, but it was the fanaticism of the Hindu jihadis that was simply unbearable.

  What was it in him that had so unhinged her? Did there have to be a reason? Not loving your husband—let’s admit it, was there ever love?—does not mean you go flying into the arms of another man. A foreigner. One of them. A marriage was forever. Forever? Where was this leading to? What madness had overtaken her? A Punjabi Hindu woman, from an ancient tradition that extolled the wifely virtue of Sita—who would rather that the earth under her feet open and swallow her than her innocence be doubted—and from a respectable conservative family of Partition victims, who had to leave their homes merely because they were Hindus.

  Munir Khan was a good person. But what did that mean? His wife or daughter might have a different story. God, no. Don’t let that be. His daughter Razia had sprung a surprise on him, he’d written. She got married without telling him. It’s their life, their decision, he had glossed, but that must have hurt.

  They had laughed together. They had shared stories. Sometimes he had pronounced words the British way, sometimes like an American—or Canadian?—and sometimes like an African. One time he pronounced “liar” for “lawyer,” the good old Punjabi way, and what a laugh they’d had. “See what you’ve done to me,” he’d said ruefully. He liked history, enjoyed finding out about the past, yet he was so free of it himself. It was liberating to know a person without handicaps, yet she had sensed that he felt rootless and sometimes lost. Delhi had given him his history, himself. He’d said, I didn’t realize how Indian I was, even though Aileen kept reminding me. She couldn’t tolerate spicy food. It was her digestive system. Sometimes I would get a craving and go away somewhere and treat myself to a kebab. Or chana. She laughed. But she’d thought—though she didn’t tell him—that Aileen should have tried harder to get used to Indian cuisine. She simply had not been interested.

  So desperately want to come and see you again, he had texted. Why don’t you? she wrote back. Are you sure you want me to come? Yes, I’m sure. The next thing she knew, he’d made a reservation.

  But she wasn’t sure. And she was.

  Munir

  FOR HIS RETURN VISIT to Delhi, Mohini had booked him at the Sheth Rustomji Jamshedji Guest House on Bahadur Shah Zafar Road just outside “his” (as she called it in her email) Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi, and that’s where he proceeded by prepaid taxi from the airport. It was well past midnight, the air warm and thick with mist. The streets were empty but for the odd motor vehicle. It felt different returning to Delhi six months later; this time he had a definite purpose, to see Mohini again. But it had begun to seem like a mad, reckless venture as soon as he boarded his plane.

  Razia was thrilled when he told her of his decision to visit India again. To Delhi, yes.

  “Wow, Dad. I’m so happy for you. Go for it!”

  “It’s a bit complicated.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  “Do you have a photo…of her?”

  “No,” he lied.

  There was a selfie they’d taken at Safdarjung. A daring move. They shouldn’t have, but Mohini had insisted. On his phone. A memento. A piece of evidence.

  “Shall I send her a present, Dad?”

  “It’s too soon, I think.”

  “Go and get her, Dad.”

  It was not a question of going to get her, but just to see her again. Sit next to her, be with her again.

  But more and more this seemed like a terrible mistake, a delusion. He had toyed with this feeling throughout the long flight, but then that face—that last gaze. The promise. The feel of her hand, her hair. Over the past months he had called her twice; each time she had seemed nervous and they had spoken so briefly that he was disheartened. Their emails were short and oblique, as though someone were watching. The last couple had been especially distant. A few times he had visited the Express Times website and read her columns—to feel close to her—but in them she was different, engaged with issues. Are you sure it’s a good idea for me to come? he had asked finally. Yes, you should come. You need to do your research, don’t you?

  On the way, he recalled the people he had become familiar with on the previous visit. The straight-backed Ravi with the dyed crewcut. The husband. The distraction—Munir had simply thought past him in his mind, until now. Who would blame him for taking a hatchet to Munir? Silly Munir, he would only have himself to blame. The servers at the lounge and the dining room, the reception clerks, the uniformed guard who called taxis for him with a smart salute, they’d all beco
me friends of sorts. That unctuous, smiling saviour of Hindu virtue, Jetha Lal, in his clean whites and blue shawl. The Purifier. Always watching, always someone to watch. His young followers buzzing around him.

  The cab driver had to stop and inquire a couple of times before he found the guest house, an old house deep in the shadows behind a large black iron gate. He knocked on the gate, without result, whereupon the driver, who had been watching, came out wearily from the car and obligingly banged loudly enough for the neighbourhood to wake up. There is no concept of too much noise in India, Munir recalled. An old watchman, awakened, appeared from the shadows and the gate opened with a loud groan. A man in pyjamas floated behind like a ghost and spoke to Munir, reproving him for his lateness; he had been expected earlier in the evening and could not very well be fed now. Munir explained that this was the time most flights arrived from abroad and said he did not want to eat. He should have been clearer when he telephoned to confirm his arrival, he apologized. He earned a brief smile. They went in through an open corridor into a dimly lit front hall from where the man took him up a flight of stairs to his room.

  The house would have been stately once, with wooden floors, now scuffed, dirt-filled and creaking, high ceilings barely touched by the dim lighting, and arches along the corridors. Old faded prints and photos looked out from the walls, ghosts from the distant, colonial past. The white paint everywhere was faded or peeled. His room was rudimentary but large, the carpet threadbare and ancient, the ceiling damp, from where instead of the former chandelier hung a lone light bulb. There was also a bedside lamp, new and modern, as alien as a UFO in the room. He could set a ghost story here, he mused. What had Mohini been thinking? Had she even been inside this place?

  The next morning, to his great relief, she called, asked how he liked his accommodation. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, perfect for a writer!” He was not going to quibble, it was just lovely to hear her voice again, which was all Munir could respond with. She was busy today, she said—she had to finish a column—it was on a new court ruling that audiences should stand up in the cinemas when the national anthem was played, and she was excited to write her dissenting opinion; and she had to meet Asha’s new tutor, Chetan. She would see him tomorrow. What was the point of him being here, then, he thought to himself, disappointed. She certainly had the time to yammer on about her busy schedule. He smiled at his reaction. And this Wuthering Heights of a place? It was gloomy and depressing. Had her feelings about him changed? It would be only natural for her to have second thoughts or qualms. But then she would not have told him, unequivocally, You should come.

  He went down for breakfast.

  The caretaker from the previous night, white shirt hanging over white pants, eyes bleary, and a few days’ stubble on his unwashed face, came over as Munir took a chair at the oversized dining table and asked him if he would be in for lunch and supper. Munir hesitated, the man’s stare demanding an immediate answer. “The cook has to know,” he explained.

  “I’ll have supper here,” Munir decided. “Lunch I’ll take outside.”

  Almost by instinct, he rolled his head side to side in the Indian way to elicit approval, and the caretaker did likewise, and all was settled. Munir already felt better. By this time there were two other guests at the table, having their breakfasts in silence. A young man in a grey cotton suit that needed pressing, wearing glasses, and a stocky older man in a bush shirt, also in glasses. Munir’s breakfast arrived immediately after the caretaker left, two crisply fried parathas with yogurt, which he found more than satisfying. He refused an omelette to follow that.

  His map discreetly in his hand—he felt reluctant to fetch out his smartphone in the crowds—he came out of the pedestrian entrance beside the front gate into the wide thoroughfare now chocked with screaming traffic. The old city was on the left, the watchman had indicated, ten minutes away, and that’s where Munir headed. Across the street was Gandhi’s memorial, where his ashes were kept. A place to visit, Munir reminded himself. It was already hot and muggy, the sun brilliant and blinding. Munir wrapped his handkerchief under his collar and round his neck to soak up the sweat and started walking. He reached an intersection, watched the traffic whizzing past without let-up. Crossing would be like swimming across a rapid. He stood on the sidewalk, stunned into inaction. Finally he joined two other pedestrians and crossed with them, the traffic running past them as if they were invisible. As they parted on Asaf Ali Road, one of the men turned to give Munir a piece of advice: “When you cross a road, sir, don’t look at the cars—just keep walking, and the cars will take care of themselves.” Easy to say, but Munir thanked him.

  He continued walking on the main road for a while, and then on an impulse he took a side road. The map said Chitli Qabar Bazar. He felt a rising thrill. He was back! Soon he reached the tumultuous Chawri Bazar, which he recognized from his previous visit. Was he actually smiling? So much life, so much humanity. A cart creaked along, pulled by a boy in front and pushed from behind, heaped with paper; another passed carrying paper and plastic decorations. No wedding preparations are complete without a visit to Old Delhi, she’d told him. The second floor of a building was under precarious repair, with banging and shouting. The impulse was to linger on everything, not let it pass away. Crooked alleys led off mysteriously into the gut of this ancient city, enticing.

  He walked into an alley, then another, following the crooked paths, hopefully keeping course. The little streets were more residential and quiet, though the ground floors were busy with all sorts of industry—hand-printing, sewing, garland-making, metalwork. He could not find his way back to the main road but arrived at the great mosque on another one. All the long roads seemed to converge to this one focal point, where once the entire neighbourhood would have dropped all business to come and pray. Where his grandfather came to kneel one last time to Allah before setting off for Kenya. Since his previous visit to Delhi, Munir had realized that Dada had become an actual presence in his consciousness: he was now a person from a certain place, with a story of his own. The old man in the armchair, wearing a white skullcap, reminiscing with his wife about Dariba Kalan.

  Without thinking, Munir went up the wide steps of the mosque and entered the courtyard, carrying his shoes in one hand; he walked around from side to side, taking quick steps over the hot floor where there was no matting, looking over the walls at the different vistas, then to the fountain in the centre and the prayer hall before it, on the fourth side. People were knelt in prayer, in the midst of curious tourists inspecting the carved calligraphy on the wall. Munir turned and walked to the arcade along one of the sides and sat down to rest on a bench beside a woman, keeping a respectful space between them. The sun was beating down, the open space before him burned like a furnace. The walk had been long, he should have brought a bottle of water, he would buy one as soon as he came out. What had brought him back here? The mosque was like a pole of a magnet, pulling you in. The woman beside him was inspecting him with a mixture of commiseration and amusement. He smiled at her, noticing that her clothes were old and faded, and in several layers, despite the heat; her feet, outside of her worn-out rubber slippers, were cracked and dirty. He noticed the faded henna on her heel arches and the broken toenails.

  He took out his notebook and made some notes. He didn’t like becoming conspicuous, but the alternative was to forget. His clothes betrayed him, anyway, now that he was no longer in the thick of a jostling crowd. And his face. His manner. Having finished, he consulted his map, then gazed around the courtyard, now more crowded with visitors. He felt pleasantly at ease. He had a bond with this city, a historical connection, vague but real. He had to hand it to Mohini, the guest house had drawn him out. And she was his other connection to Delhi.

  I think of you all the time. Sappy but true. He imagined Aileen’s face, if she heard him say it. Her wry expression and acerbic comment with too true an observation, bringing him back to earth.

  H
e hardly knew Mohini. She had a husband and family. A history. The moral dimension to this relationship had not touched him, he was surprised at himself. He had lived a detached, secular life, an individualistic and empirical existence, but with a firm sense of right and wrong. All that high-mindedness had been washed away by this primitive obsession. Heaven sends us habit in place of passion, he had read somewhere. Now he was in the grip of a passion; habit was what he’d had with Aileen.

  He stood up with a nod to the woman next to him, who had not stopped staring at him, and went out and down the wide steps of the mosque and past the police barricades into the street. He walked to Chandni Chowk, the promenade that began opposite the Red Fort, passed the Sis Ganj gurudwara, where a prominent notice proclaimed it to be the site where a Sikh guru had been beheaded by a certain Mughal emperor. A pamphlet appeared in his hand, proclaiming the anniversary of a Sikh massacre in Delhi in 1984. Further along on the sidewalk, in the midst of passing crowds, a mendicant sat before a fat, coiled snake inside a basket, into the open lid of which the occasional passerby dropped a coin. Munir couldn’t resist doing the same. Finally he turned a corner and arrived at the street he was looking for. Dariba Kalan, the glittering jewellery market that was never-never land.

  Today was Saturday and the street was packed with shoppers, many of them well-dressed, well-filled women from the suburbs. He walked up and down the street, then somewhat tentatively entered an alley; at the back sat three women on low stools, in various stages of food preparation, one of them before a fire; they hastily covered their heads and Munir said, “Sorry,” and turned around.

  Looking for a place to eat, he came upon an eatery at a corner, open on two sides and overflowing with people; he was about to pass it when the manager, catching his eye, motioned him to come inside. He made a place for Munir at a small table near the doorway, had it wiped, and without taking his order put a large vegetable paratha before him, with a bowl of yogurt. “Very good,” he added with a nod.