by M G Vassanji
They decided they were hungry and got up to go. Outside the entrance, at the bus stop, they caught an auto to take them to the Club. The upstairs dining hall was crowded, but as a guest on the premises he had priority, and she was known. They were given a table and they both ordered beer. She was in the mood for lamb pasanda and they ordered that with daal and naan.
A figure drifted over and stopped by them.
“Ah, Mohini-ji, how wonderful to see you!”
It was Jetha Lal with his toothy grin, and they bantered in Hindi for a while. Mohini stopped to introduce her companion: “Jetha Lal-ji, have you met him, this is Munir Aslam Khan, a famous writer from Toronto. And this is the famous Jetha Lal.”
“We met yesterday, on the lawn,” Munir said as he shook hands with the man.
“Indeed, we did,” agreed Jetha Lal. “But you didn’t tell me your name.”
“Now you know.”
Jetha Lal nodded, turned to Mohini. “Did I hear you sing Ghalib yesterday in the cafeteria— ‘Yeh na thi…’ Wah! Wonderful! ‘Some things are not meant to be…’ We must remember that…”
And, after a quick stare at the servings on their table, and a nod, he left, humming the poem’s tune.
“Likely spying on me,” Mohini muttered.
They got up to go. He couldn’t help noticing, on the way out, a few casual stares directed at him, the stranger in the company of a woman they knew. At the driveway, as she waited for her taxi, she asked him if he was comfortable in his room. “I haven’t seen a DRC guest room, actually.”
“Would you like to come and see it?”
She returned a mischievous look and left.
In his room Munir sat in front of the TV and picked a channel showing a cricket match. He had not watched a full game since he left Kenya, though there he had played for the Duke of Gloucester School for Asians. The shorter, more popular form of the game was showing now, and he noted with displeasure that in place of the classic elegant whites of before, the players wore bright, gaudy attire, and they swung wildly at any ball that came their way; cheerleaders in short skirts danced on the sides—in case the game got boring? Not cricket, he murmured to himself. But perhaps I’m getting old. He nodded off, then woke up to a light knocking on the door. He got up and went to open it.
She was standing there, a faint smile on her face. “Can I come in?”
She hurried in, and he shut the door behind her, and as she turned to him he drew her close and crushed her to his chest.
Mohini
NOW, WHENEVER THEY ARGUED, and it seemed they did so frequently, he was likely to come out with a mocking, “And I guess you find that Khan of yours perfect!” Once he said, “Still pining for that Muslim! Don’t forget your parents escaped with their lives, from the other side, his side!” This was not usually like him, he was deliberately provoking her with these cheap communal references, and she had replied sharply, “He’s not my Muslim! He was born in Kenya, his folks are from Delhi! And he is a Canadian.”
“Your Canadian, then.”
Asha would watch and smile in that triumphant smile of the teenager.
But he had stopped short of making the blunt accusation, You are in love with him. He is your lover!. That would mean they had crossed a threshold in their marriage. He would not go there. It would be humiliating, in his position. If he suspected something real, he would not be so flippant about it.
But she had crossed the line. It was like walking into a fire, and there was no turning back. It terrified her when she thought like that.
Could she back out and call this a fling? But it was not a fling, it was a commitment. A longing. A pain. Was she immoral? Was she doomed to come back as a bitch in heat in her next life? That’s what the elders would say of an adulteress. Did she really believe in another life, in karma? Yes, yes, yes.
She had not hurt anybody. Not even Ravi. He was just irritated; he would feel insulted if he knew the full extent of her transgression. No heartache, he was too cold for that. His would be a slow, burning rage. Frightening. Would he kill her? Was he capable? For his honour? And yet she knew he had been with other women. She just knew. From an off-colour joke made by a colleague, a look from a woman…that sweater that she could never have bought for him, just because it didn’t suit him the way she knew him.
And yet. Could any man—Munir—be absolutely trusted? Having given him—what?—more than which she could not give. Her promise, her bond. How old-fashioned she was. She had known of women who had casual affairs, she had seen men flirting with women at public events, she and Ravi had even talked about it, amused. How can people be like that, they’d said…. Suppose one day Munir stopped responding from Toronto. Forgot about her…more realistically, concluded that the trouble was not worth it. Found someone young and free, a divorcee or widow whom he did not have to travel thousands of miles to spend a day or two with.
He just wasn’t like that. She knew. In her bones, in her heart and body. He had found Delhi, he had found her. They must have been bonded in a previous life. The gods made a mistake and separated them, but now they were united.
And yet.
* * *
—
They had gone to see the fortress city of Tughlaqabad. Bahadur dropped her off at DRC. Mohini watched him drive off, out of sight, then she and Munir called for a taxi, which they hired for the day. Tughlaqabad was the most isolated and private it could get, but it was far from romantic. It was forbidding, haunted by its history. The sultan Tughlaq had removed the entire population of Delhi to his new capital in the south, even if they had to be dragged out of their houses and onto the road; then he brought them back. Munir had already been here before, on his previous visit. Now they walked among the grey and brown ruins, over and around sharp, broken rocks and collapsed walls, through the bazar and past dungeons, and headed for the highest point, a flattened tower, and looked around. Down below, the busy Mehrauli Road, further along which was the Qutub Minar, site of the first Muslim sultanate. All school kids studied about it, how Muizzuddin of Afghanistan just managed to defeat the Hindu raja Prithviraj and changed history. Later came the fierce Alauddin, having treacherously murdered his good uncle, exhibiting his head on a spike. This was also the time of the Sufi Nizamuddin, the poet Khusrau, and the historian Barani. Alauddin in his turn was suffocated during an illness by his catamite and chief adviser, the evil Malik Kafur, who had been bought for a thousand dinars as a slave. Soon after came the stern Tughlaq, who died in a miraculous accident after making a vain threat to the life of the Sufi. It calls for a Shakespeare, this history, Munir mused. There is you, meanwhile, she murmured. They watched the little village down below in the lee of this old fortress. What kind of people live there? he asked her. Would they trace their ancestries to those times? I don’t know, she said. They sat and touched fingers. Held hands, like preteens. They looked around, pointing out places they knew. Everything seemed risky yet necessary. This jaunt with Munir was stolen time. Any moment he could come walking up, her husband, having had her followed. She sensed his shadow everywhere, more out of fear and guilt. When did she begin to think this way? Since the start of her sin? Like Lady Macbeth: Out, out…but she hadn’t murdered anyone, she had only loved. For the first time.
And then—but why?—Munir read to her a passage from Barani from his notebook. The Hindus were the worst enemies of God and should be oppressed, said the historian. Why did Munir bring it up? To say that a great historian could be a bigot? To demonstrate the contradictions that could exist in a man? To test their relationship? How naive he could be…there were matters he just couldn’t understand, emotions he couldn’t plumb. He had shown foreignness. She found the passage offensive. It mattered to her. He was right, it had all happened seven hundred years ago when the world was a different place. Still, it got to her somewhere inside. At such moments she understood the demands of the Nationalist party and even the f
anatical NSS, the so-called National Service Scheme. It was the NSS, after all, that had helped the Hindu refugees who had come over from the new Pakistan, among whom were her parents and grandparents. She had heard their stories, witnessed their bitterness and grief. They had not forgotten. You only had to get her bau-ji started, how at the hour of the morning prayer, four a.m., they sneaked out of their house in Sargodha, the azaan sounding out from the nearby mosque…Allahu Akbar. Bau-ji knew that azaan by heart; for some strange reason he even liked to recite it, and Ma would cut him off sharply.
How different from other men she’d known was this one sitting beside her, their hips touching, their arms squeezed against each other. Ravi had his DNA theory of Muslims. “Over the course of generations, after some centuries, the DNA changes. And so these people are different. Violence and sensuality is in their DNA, since the time of Mahmud of Ghazni and Muizzuddin Ghori, and Alauddin Khilji and Nadir Shah…and Babur. All mass murderers. Now they are into terrorism.” And she had asked, “Then what about Delhi 1984, and Gujarat 2002, what about Ashoka and his river of blood?” “Those were responses, my dear. And Ashoka repented and became a Buddhist. But they—the Muslims—always instigate. Their blood is hot. It’s the meat they love to eat.”
“But you eat chicken now,” she said. Caught out, he said, “Not beef.”
Her father and mother had agreed wholeheartedly.
“But what about your neighbours in Sargodha, Bau-ji, weren’t they your friends? Didn’t they send you presents for Diwali and you sent them gifts for Eid? Didn’t Ma visit the grave of a Sufi to ask for children…after which you had me, Ma?”
“Then you are half Muslim,” Ravi joked pointedly.
Her father, the professor of statistics, responded, “Exceptions don’t disprove the rule, Mohini. Statistical trends are there.”
Recently, with all the talk of terrorism and Pakistan, and memories of the Partition still alive, her parents’ position had hardened. Ravi had become cruder in his prejudices. And she herself had not remained untainted by the hatred and suspicion in the air.
Now here she was next to Munir Khan. Another exception? The Sufi who begot me must be laughing in his grave.
“There’s a concert at the Siri Fort,” she said to him. “The Mishra brothers. They are excellent—classical vocalists. It’s time you learned about Indian music.”
“Yes, let’s go,” he said with a smile.
“I’m going with Ravi. But you should go. Hire a taxi and tell it to wait for you.”
“I’ll do that.”
He would do anything for her, she thought. And she for him. He had brought two opera DVDs for her. She should watch The Marriage of Figaro first, he said. She wasn’t sure she would like it, what with all that screeching, but he said why not give it a try, she would enjoy the comedy and even the singing when she got used to it. The plots of operas were like those of Bollywood. Okay, she would give it a try, she said. The other one was based on a novel by Goethe, called Werther. She didn’t know it, but she was intrigued. A bit depressing, was his opinion.
But why had she hidden the DVDs in her drawer among her underclothes? How stupid. Where else?…Why had he been there, put his hands there? He was her husband. He had been looking for his socks and just happened to get into her undies. He smiled when he found the DVDs. “New interest…in music, I see.”
“Mozart—we should know about that, shouldn’t we?” she said. “Munir Khan gave them to me. Nice of him, wasn’t it?”
He could have asked, Then what were they doing among your undies?
“We have classical music of our own,” he said. “Even more ancient than the Europeans’. But I agree, we have to know about Mozart, be more broad-minded, now that we are global.”
The next evening they watched the opera and both enjoyed it. The laughter seemed to bring them back together for a while, like old days. Even Asha was drawn to it and watched it till the end. It was she who commented on the obvious, that in the story the Count philanders shamelessly while the wife remains chaste. Ravi was beaming. He said to his women, “European ladies had values in those days, just like Indian ones.”
* * *
—
At Siri the place was flooded with lights. Dust, cars hooting, the crowds. The bheed. The night air was thick and moist, a full moon was out. And hundreds of devoted fans filling the seats. The Mishra brothers began with a lovely thumri, a single-line love song to Krishna, repeated over and over in variations. Kya karun sajani, aaye na baalam…What to do, beloved, he doesn’t come…Then a couple of khayals. A bhajan by Meera. Paga ghungaru bandh…She wished he were there to share the music, for her to explain it to him.
Discreetly she had cast around for a sight of him. When Ravi stood up to walk around and chat with people he knew, she had looked with some concentration and saw him near the front. He was in a red polo shirt and white linen pants. Poor fellow, he must have come early, like a true Westerner just on time, but here nothing started on time. To wait, then sit through the Mishra brothers, listen for a few hours to a kind of music he was not used to! He had to learn, regain at least a part of the Indian-ness he had lost. Kya karun sajani…A tender feeling came over her.
Ravi came over.
“I saw your friend Khan out there in front. You seem to have had an influence on him!”
“I told him about the concert. He should learn about his roots.”
“Roots. He has no roots left here.” Then he cocked an eye at her: “You want to call him over?”
“No, let him be.”
Her heart was beating fast. Where lay the trap? Did he see through her thinly shrouded nonchalance, into her eagerness to call him over and be near him again, hear his voice? Ask him how he liked the music, explain it to him? In her responses to her husband she did not know how real she was, how truthful.
The two of them were playing games now.
* * *
—
The next day she was hesitant about calling him, or responding to his many calls. She did not know what to say to him. How to proceed. She had committed herself, now what? How to behave in such a circumstance? More lies? She had told Ravi she would be home. There was to be delivery of a dresser, imported from Italy. A designer was finally coming with ideas for the kitchen. Ravi said he would come for lunch and meet the designer. Life proceeding normally, with plans they had made, decisions to be made.
The following morning she picked up the phone immediately when Munir called. It was ten a.m. and Ravi was already gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Are you well? I thought you might be sick…or your daughter. Or that you had changed your mind.”
“About what?”
“About us.”
“How could I? I missed you. There were things to do. I was confused…Did you enjoy the concert? I saw you.”
“I saw you too. It was too long. I thought I was late, it turned out I was early by an hour. I’m still aching from those hard seats.”
She couldn’t help laughing.
He said, “I could have joined you up there, where you were sitting.”
“I’m sorry. But I didn’t want to share you.”
“I feel the same way. Today, then? Can we meet?”
“I am so busy. I have my lecture today…Then I am back home to prepare dinner. And write my column. An Indian woman works three jobs, you know.”
“The day after?”
“He’s home and my parents will visit.”
“And I am leaving the next day.”
“So soon?”
“I’ve been here two weeks.”
But you’ll be back. He had to come back. For how long, this precarious arrangement? She had been in tears, but she didn’t show it.
“I’ll come in the morning. You are leaving at night, aren’t you?”
* * *
—
She picked him up at twelve and Bahadur dropped them off at Khan Market nearby, where he shopped for a gift for his daughter. She bought him a CD; he bought her earrings. They browsed through the bookstore, where she bought a new book for her father on the partition of India.
“The same thing, I know. Endless stories about the Partition. But Bau-ji will like it. He never tires comparing his story with others’.”
They were having lunch at a trendy restaurant, the atmosphere there cool and fragrant, smart young business people discussing their projects.
They returned to the Club and discreetly took different routes. He went to his room via the reception entrance; she went to the lounge, went up the stairs and crossed the balcony. They met in his room and embraced with relief. They made love. She cried. They both had taken wine and fell asleep.
At about five they came down together, feeling emboldened, to go to the lounge. On the way out, they were suddenly surrounded by a swarm of noisy young men clad all in white. Jostled by this sweaty, unshaven crew that had appeared like a bunch of jackals from nowhere, they couldn’t move, they couldn’t hear themselves, until Mohini screamed, “Let us through, you people!” Only then the swarm parted, with good-natured pretence: “Oh, let Madam go, she’s on important business!” “Sorry, Madam!” “And this gentleman, are you her driver, Sir?” “Heh-heh…” “Oh, excuse us!”
It was a frightening experience. As they crossed over to the lounge, he remarked, to break the silence, “What was that about?”
“No manners,” she said. “Why do they admit this kind of riffraff at the Club? Used to be so exclusive.”
