by M G Vassanji
“You’ve got yourself into a fine pickle, Dad. She won’t divorce or anything?”
“They don’t do such things.”
“Anything else?”
“She’s a Hindu.”
“That makes no difference, does it?”
“Over there it does. It’s in their genes.”
“Just let it go, Dad. You’ll find many women here with the same values as you. No hang-ups.”
He smiles at her. Inanely, as only a bout with Scotch can make you do.
She gets up, comes over to kiss him goodnight.
“Look after yourself, Dad. And talk to me.”
And she goes up.
Mohini
THEY HAD LIVED IN TERROR for two days, her father Chand would say, as mobs roamed the streets in their Minto Close neighbourhood of Sargodha. India had declared independence, Sargodha was in Pakistan, which would soon declare its independence, and the Hindus of the city had begun to flee. His father Nathu Lal had declared flatly that he was not leaving. We have lived here for generations, Nathu Lal said. Since Mahabharata…my own grandfather traded in Kabul and Peshawar. There was substantial stock in his men’s clothing store and the tailors were dependent on him. Muslim tailors. One of whom, Hassan, had said he would take them to the railway station if they desired. I will let you know, Nathu Lal told him, but I don’t think that will be necessary. The sarkar is sending troops all across, and Gandhi-ji is exhorting the nation to peace. Have you heard that he plans to visit our Pakistan? The two nations will be like sisters. People will come and go. What border, what partition? There are temples and gurudwaras over here and mosques over there. Ajmer Sharif is in India, Nizamuddin Dargah is in India. In vain Chand exhorted, Bau-ji, there is already violence in the streets! We have two girls in the house and your daughter-in-law, we have our mother! Chand’s mother was all for packing up and going. What can Gandhi-ji do from there? she said. Let’s go and at least save our lives. Would the old man but listen. Then one afternoon Hassan came back from his lunch with a long face. Things don’t look good, Babu-ji, I’ve heard this street is next on the list, and this shop is a target. You must close it now and stay indoors. Only then did Nathu Lal relent. Post-haste the shop was closed. I will bring news for you, Babu-ji, and some food, if you don’t mind. Yes, my son, you do that; and look after yours. Meanwhile complete that kurta we promised Sirtaj and that one for the English sahab that he wants to take to England. Tell Nuruddin and Afzal to complete their orders too…when the violence is over…
Hassan opened the door a wedge and slipped out into the dark. Closing the door shut, he shot the bolt, inserted the padlock, and turned the key. The resulting sound was terrifying. They were prisoners. Are you sure you trust him? Dadi asked. I trust him, Nathu Lal said. If I don’t trust Hassan, who is left to trust? They sat in silence, behind the door. Their two daughters, Madhu and Suman, brought tea. They ate the stale chapattis which had been set aside for the street dogs. And then, in the distance, a few shouts in the absolute stillness; and if you breathed in deeply, the faint whiff of burning. Dadi hastened to the family shrine, praying frantically. Save us from the fiends, she prayed; save us from those murderous mlechhas and I promise I will visit the tirthas and the dhamas and the holy cities across the land…
The next morning the looting and shouting was closer, just down the street. The screaming. Their front door broke open with a crash, and they, who were at the back of the house, escaped to the yard, then behind the storage shed against the wooden fence. Peeping out from the side, his mother tugging his arm, Chand saw looters coming away with bolts of cloth, the two mannequins, shirts and ties. His father never swore, but this time, as he saw his precious cashmere stock disappear, he swore, kutte ki awlaad, haramkhor. Sons of bitches, bastards.
In the evening, Hassan arrived, calling out softly, Babu-ji…Nathu Lal-ji…it is I, Hassan…And Nathu Lal came out into the yard, checked there was no one with Hassan, and the family emerged, dishevelled and dirty. Hunger and fatigue. Their house now only broken walls, smoke and cinders. There is a train at night, Hassan said. Delhi-bound. I will take you to the station. There are soldiers there. But meanwhile stay still. Any movement and they’ll be here. Do you have money I can use to bribe? He left a bag of pakodas and some mangoes behind.
Don’t ask, Mohini’s father would say, don’t ask how we reached the station, how we got into the train.
“It was terrible,” Ravi said sympathetically. “We know your generation suffered a lot. But—we can proudly say—you’ve pulled yourselves up and brought us where we are now. Where the nation is.”
There was a moment’s silence. Bau-ji finally said, “What a price.”
Ma silent, just a stream of tears on her face.
When the train had gone some distance, just outside Lahore, Mohan went down the compartment to report on the condition of the toilet. He was never seen again.
“Bau-ji,” Mohini said. “No need to dwell on it. That was a long time ago, and it’s over now…”
“Butchered,” Bau-ji muttered. “A gang of Pathans had got on the train, we heard afterwards. There were many dead bodies that arrived in Delhi on that train. Not my brother.”
“He’s with God.”
“Who knows? Maybe they kidnapped him, converted him into some Abdullah or Mohamad Khan…that happened too…”
There was a photo in their album of the two brothers, close together in what might be an actors’ pose, hair slicked, wearing sports blazers. Smiling, almost laughing. Two stage comedians before a gig, perhaps.
Mohini and Ravi had come to see her parents at their flat in Gurgaon. It was a two-bedroom government flat on the ground floor. Two girls came to help part-time each day. Now, for some reason, Bau-ji was losing weight. It was a worry.
Countless times now she had heard of the family’s escape from Sargodha. A wound that never healed. No point telling him that there was killing on both sides. The family whose house they came to occupy in Delhi had escaped or been murdered. It was to control such violence in Delhi that Gandhi had gone on his fast at Birla House—and paid with his life. She could not even imagine what it must be like to lose your family home and town, never to see them again.
Bau-ji never spoke more of Hassan, who had saved the family, except that shake of the head and the brief, “Not Hassan,” when the subject arose. Hassan must be Bau-ji’s age, somewhere in Pakistan.
She felt sick. Who had prompted Bau-ji this time? Was it Ravi, who was beaming? She was being unfair to him. He was her husband. They had tied the knot before the gods. It was her guilt that made her sick.
They were discussing the family vacation that they had been planning for a few weeks now. She said, “What do you think, Ravi? We fly to Bhubaneswar, tour the city—”
“See the temples. It’s a city of temples.”
“Yes. That’s the whole purpose of going there in the first place. Then we take a car to Puri, visit Jagannath temple, stay the night, and go to Konark. The sun temple.”
“But that’s a defunct temple. Ma would not be interested.”
“Ma, would you be interested in the sun temple in Konark? It is dedicated to Surya.”
“I don’t know—can I get prasad there?”
“Konark is a must,” put in Bau-ji firmly. “How can we go to Odisha and not go to Konark?”
“And Dhauli, site of the Kalinga war,” Mohini put in. “It is now a Buddhist pilgrimage site.”
Bau-ji nodded. Ravi was noncommittal. Ma was blank. Her agenda was clear, an impossible itinerary of shrine visits following Puri: Varanasi, Dwarka, Somnath, Shirdi. Vaishno Devi. The last one should perhaps have been the first, the journey up the hills was so long and arduous.
“These days we can rent a helicopter to take us to Devi’s shrine,” Ravi said with a smile. “No need for old folks to suffer.”
“No heli-beli copter for
me,” Ma said firmly, “if I have to see Devi, I’ll go on these two legs. And with her power coursing through me, I will make it to the top!”
Everyone looked at her indulgently. Normally quiet, but when she spoke up you listened.
“Ma, now tea. I’ve brought dhokla. These Gujarati farsaans are all the rage now, thanks to the prime minister.”
* * *
—
How easy it seemed to put him out of her mind with her daily worries, she thought, as Ravi drove them home. But he was always there, somewhere in her being. He was in the pain in the pit of her stomach, he was in her guilty heartbeat. He was her secret solace that she could turn to in the middle of the night whenever the thought occurred, Mohini, you are alone—no one to talk to, no one to confide in. But she was not alone anymore. He was an essential part of her even in his absence. She wished she could tell him about her bau-ji and Ma, how painful it was to watch them grow older and more helpless by the day. Would he understand why Bau-ji hated them—sometimes it was the Pathans, other times the Muslims or the Pakistanis—? He had lost his beloved younger brother. Yes, Munir would understand—not the hatred but the pain. Perhaps even the hatred.
Back home in the washroom she wrote a quick text to him: Thinking of you. She sent it then erased it from the phone. He couldn’t resist and wrote back, Me too. She forced herself to erase that one too.
In bed Ravi turned frisky but she warded him off. I’m tired. But then she quizzed him about those zealots at DRC, how they had frightened her.
“They were just being rambunctious, Moi, they were excited about standing guard over the temple at Ayodhya.”
“Do you think that was right? There was a mosque there, five hundred years old, which they destroyed.”
“What’s five hundred years? Our history, the time of Ram, goes back thousands of years. The Muslim presence is just a blemish on the surface—and can be…”
“Wiped off?”
“Not so easy, I’ve told you. Now that I have answered your question…” He raised himself over her, “I must have my baksheesh…”
She resisted mildly, but she had no choice and cried silently afterwards. She missed Munir.
In the old days, a Hindu wife joined her husband on his funeral pyre. She followed her husband from janam to janam, from one birth to the next. Sita stayed chaste even in captivity for years. Sita the ideal.
Mohini slept.
Munir
HAVING SETTLED ON THE three-legged folding stool he’d brought with him, he placed his phone on the edge of her headstone and with a little effort turned on the music, keeping it down. All around him the distorted Cartesian geometry of the headstones, uneven rows and columns, imposed upon the lush greenery of Mount Pleasant Cemetery. This is where I want to be buried, she’d said a few times when they’d passed here; she couldn’t have known the time would come too soon. A few rows down from him, a pickup was parked, its back loaded with tools. Into this still life now punctured the treble of the singer, the chorus, and the ecstatic clang of percussion. Amir Khusrau rendered into song.
I thought, Aileen, you should know what’s happening to me currently. This is the poet I’ve discovered in India. I left a book of his poems here for you last time, but it’s disappeared. No doubt some vandal. I know you didn’t care for Indian music or poetry, neither did I very much, I just thought to tell you of this new interest of mine in medieval Delhi. Are you surprised? Who can tell, it could lead to something…fingers crossed, and so on. I know I haven’t told you about what else in India; about her. What she looks like, what attracts me about her. Who exactly she is. If she’s attractive, younger. Yes, she is both. And very bright. Too perfect? I’m very fond of her, Aileen. You would like to know if someone like her would have been better for me, but that question has no answer, does it? Or maybe it has, but does it matter? How do we know it would be the right answer anyway. But yes, I’ve been transported, recently. My heart aches for her presence…her voice…I won’t say more. Passion, Razia called it, about her own love life, and I dismissed the thought. But for me this is it, I know, though muted by life’s experiences. It’s not that I don’t also miss you…
Something bothers me about this poet and his friend the historian, though—
There came a step to his right and a figure loomed, startling him. It was the same man he’d run into at the gate the last time he came. Tall, with a deep brow and thin grey hair combed to a side, in a well-worn tweed jacket. Why was he here, with that expressionless face (but hardly the attire) of an undertaker?
“Hello,” Munir said.
“Hello.”
They became quiet, contemplating the grave, before Munir asked, “Did you know Aileen?”
“From way back.”
The man bent down and placed a bouquet of roses on the grave. An awkward moment followed, then Munir said, “I was telling her about the poet I discovered in India. From the late thirteenth century. These are his poems set to music.”
“Indeed.”
“We were married twenty-five-odd years. A long time. Last time I came I placed a book of poems here.” Munir looked inquiringly at the man. “Did you see them?”
“I imagined it was placed there as a joke. I removed it.”
“I see. You threw it away?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.”
“Not easy to find, those volumes.”
The man said nothing. And Munir thought, Why assume it was placed there as a joke? Because the script was Urdu? What gall.
“I was just telling Aileen how the poet bothers me, when he shouldn’t, really. He lived seven hundred years ago, after all. He wrote for his times.”
The man smiled benignly at him. He must think I am crazy, Munir thought.
At that moment he spotted Razia, who had just walked up behind the man.
“What bothers you about the poet, Dad?”
The man turned, and Munir, happy to be rescued, said to him, “My daughter—our daughter, Aileen’s and mine. Razia.” The man shook hands with Razia. “Very pleased to meet you.” He introduced himself, “I’m Ian—Ian Fraser—an old acquaintance of your mother’s.”
With a partial nod and a partial bow, he left.
“Did you know him, Dad?”
“Never met him. Seemed rather presumptuous—as though this were more his territory than mine.”
“Maybe he manages the cemetery.”
Munir didn’t inform her that the man had brought the expensive bouquet of roses that were on the grave. They sat in silence then, he on his folding little stool and she on the ground beside the grave. Finally they got up, Razia placed a blue lily on the roses, saying, “I love you, Mom,” and they left. The girl had tears in her eyes.
“It’s a nice spot you picked for her resting place, Dad,” she said.
“She picked it herself. And the one next to it is mine.”
“You’ve still got an eventful life ahead of you. Remember?”
On the way to the car, Munir asked her, “How are your friends doing? How’s Lucy?”
Razia had retained most of her friends from school, and they had formed an ever-tighter group over the years. He and Aileen had known them as long, ever since kindergarten, and knew everything about them. Who went where to university, who became the lawyer, who the pediatrician, who the banker. And who had the mental breakdown and stayed at home; that was the sad part, it made you thankful for yours, who remained intact.
“They’re doing great, Dad. Lucy’s been promoted senior associate at her firm. June’s still in graduate school at Duke.”
“Meeting them later?”
“At a pub. Downtown.”
“Late night?”
“Not very.”
He was disappointed. She had given short notice to say she was coming to Toronto for the weekend, and he’d said, This is your hom
e, Razia, you don’t have to ask. You know I long to see you. And yet how could he expect her to sacrifice quality time with friends just to be with her old dad? It turned out he was no more than the concierge. You are acting spoilt, Munir.
* * *
—
In the evening after dinner, which he cooked for himself, he watched a movie on television, an old Western, and then sat with his drink trying to read.
Razia returned a little before midnight. She must have left the party early for his sake, he thought gratefully. There was a time when she would return at three and he had stayed awake for her, much to her annoyance. I’m an adult now. Yes you are, dear. It’s just us, who are crazy worried.
“You’re up late,” she said.
He smiled. “I watched TV for a while, now I do my penance.” He indicated the book in his hand.
“And the drink?”
That needed no answer. She went to sit across from him, legs crossed under her, an affectionate smile on her face. She had her winning ways. All his resentment had evaporated at the sight of her. He watched her, tall and angular, the black hair long down to the shoulders, the cheeks only slightly chubby, which for a long time she’d treated as a flaw inherited from him. The black Indian dress she was wearing was one that he had brought for her from Delhi.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
“No need. I’m all right. I’m used to being alone by now.” He smiled his appreciation at her.
“Talking to Mom’s grave? That’s no cause for concern?”
“That’s a nice touch, isn’t it—playing music to her? I believe I was explaining my new interests to her. Perhaps I’m going crazy. But it’s a nice feeling, to be able to do the odd thing now and then.”
Which he wouldn’t have done before. She eyed him, reading the thought.
“Do you really believe she can hear you…from there? Do you believe in the afterlife?”
