Uncles, Aunts and Elephants

by Ruskin Bond

  After the peacock, perhaps the most popular bird in rural India is the sarus crane — a familiar sight around the jheels and riverbanks of northern India and Gujarat. The sarus pairs for life and is seldom seen without his mate. When one bird dies, the other often pines away and seemingly dies of grief. It is this near-human quality of devotion that has earned the birds their popularity with the villagers of the plains.

  As a result, they are well protected.

  *

  In the long run, it is the ‘common man’, and not the scientist or conservationist, who can best give protection to the birds and animals living around him. Religious sentiment has helped preserve the peacock and a few other birds. It is a pity that so many other equally beautiful birds do not enjoy the same protection.

  But the wily crow, the cheeky sparrow, and the sensible myna will always be with us. Quite possibly they will survive the human species.

  And it is the same with other animals. While the cringing jackal has learnt the art of survival, his master, the magnificent tiger, is on his way to extinction.

  Bhabiji’s House

  (My neighbours in Rajouri Garden back in the 1960s were the Kamal family. This entry from my journal, which I wrote on one of my later visits, describes a typical day in that household.)

  At first light there is a tremendous burst of birdsong from the guava tree in the little garden. Over a hundred sparrows wake up all at once and give tongue to whatever it is that sparrows have to say to each other at five o’clock on a foggy winter’s morning in Delhi.

  In the small house, people sleep on, that is, everyone except Bhabiji — Granny — the head of the lively Punjabi middle-class family with whom I nearly always stay when I am in Delhi.

  She coughs, stirs, groans, grumbles and gets out of bed. The fire has to be lit, and food prepared for two of her sons to take to work. There is a daughter-in-law, Shobha, to help her; but the girl is not very good at getting up in the morning. Actually, it is this way: Bhabiji wants to show up her daughter-in-law; so, no matter how hard Shobha tries to be up first, Bhabiji forestalls her. The old lady does not sleep well, anyway; her eyes are open long before the first sparrow chirps, and as soon as she sees her daughter-in-law stirring, she scrambles out of bed and hurries to the kitchen. This gives her the opportunity to say: ‘What good is a daughter-in-law when I have to get up to prepare her husband’s food?’

  The truth is that Bhabiji does not like anyone else preparing her sons’ food.

  She looks no older than when I first saw her ten years ago. She still has complete control over a large family and, with tremendous confidence and enthusiasm, presides over the lives of three sons, a daughter, two daughters-in-law and fourteen grandchildren. This is a joint family (there are not many left in a big city like Delhi), in which the sons and their families all live together as one unit under their mother’s benevolent (and sometimes slightly malevolent) autocracy. Even when her husband was alive, Bhabiji dominated the household.

  The eldest son, Shiv, has a separate kitchen, but his wife and children participate in all the family celebrations and quarrels. It is a small miracle how everyone (including myself when I visit) manages to fit into the house; and a stranger might be forgiven for wondering where everyone sleeps, for no beds are visible during the day. That is because the beds — light wooden frames with rough string across — are brought in only at night, and are taken out first thing in the morning and kept in the garden shed.

  As Bhabiji lights the kitchen fire, the household begins to stir, and Shobha joins her mother-in-law in the kitchen. As a guest I am privileged and may get up last. But my bed soon becomes an island battered by waves of scurrying, shouting children, eager to bathe, dress, eat and find their school books. Before I can get up, someone brings me a tumbler of hot sweet tea. It is a brass tumbler and burns my fingers; I have yet to learn how to hold one properly. Punjabis like their tea with lots of milk and sugar — so much so that I often wonder why they bother to add any tea.

  Ten years ago, ‘bed tea’ was unheard of in Bhabiji’s house. Then, the first time I came to stay, Kamal, the youngest son, told Bhabiji: ‘My friend is angrez. He must have tea in bed.’ Kamal forgot to mention that I usually took my morning cup at seven; they gave it to me at five. I gulped it down and went to sleep again. Then, slowly, others in the household began indulging in morning cups of tea. Now everyone, including the older children, has ‘bed tea’. They bless my English forebears for instituting the custom; I bless the Punjabis for perpetuating it.

  Breakfast is by rota, in the kitchen. It is a tiny room and accommodates only four adults at a time. The children have eaten first; but the smallest children, Shobha’s toddlers, keep coming in and climbing over us. Says Bhabiji of the youngest and most mischievous: ‘He lives only because God keeps a special eye on him.’

  Kamal, his elder brother Arun and I sit cross-legged and barefooted on the floor while Bhabiji serves us hot parathas stuffed with potatoes and onions, along with omelettes, an excellent dish. Arun then goes to work on his scooter, while Kamal catches a bus for the city, where he attends an art college. After they have gone, Bhabiji and Shobha have their breakfast.

  By nine o’clock everyone who is still in the house is busy doing something. Shobha is washing clothes. Bhabiji has settled down on a cot with a huge pile of spinach, which she methodically cleans and chops up. Madhu, her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, who attends school only in the afternoons, is washing down the sitting-room floor. Madhu’s mother is a teacher in a primary school in Delhi, and earns a pittance of Rs 150 a month. Her husband went to England ten years ago, and never returned; he does not send any money home.

  Madhu is made attractive by the gravity of her countenance. She is always thoughtful, reflective, seldom speaks, smiles rarely (but looks very pretty when she does). I wonder what she thinks about as she scrubs floors, prepares meals with Bhabiji, washes dishes and even finds a few hard-pressed moments for her school work. She is the Cinderella of the house. Not that she has to put up with anything like a cruel stepmother. Madhu is Bhabiji’s favourite. She has made herself so useful that she is above all reproach. Apart from that, there is a certain measure of aloofness about her — she does not get involved in domestic squabbles — and this is foreign to a household in which everyone has something to say for himself or herself. Her two young brothers are constantly being reprimanded; but no one says anything to Madhu. Only yesterday morning, when clothes were being washed and Madhu was scrubbing the floor, the following dialogue took place.

  Madhu’s mother (picking up a schoolbook left in the courtyard): ‘Where’s that boy Popat? See how careless he is with his books! Popat! He’s run off. Just wait till he gets back. I’ll give him a good beating.’

  Vinod’s mother: ‘It’s not Popat’s book. It’s Vinod’s. Where’s Vinod?’

  Vinod (grumpily): ‘It’s Madhu’s book.’

  Silence for a minute or two. Madhu continues scrubbing the floor; she does not bother to look up. Vinod picks up the book and takes it indoors. The women return to their chores.

  Manju, daughter of Shiv and sister of Vinod, is averse to housework and, as a result, is always being scolded — by her parents, grandmother, uncles and aunts.

  Now, she is engaged in the unwelcome chore of sweeping the front yard. She does this with a sulky look, ignoring my cheerful remarks. I have been sitting under the guava tree, but Manju soon sweeps me away from this spot. She creates a drifting cloud of dust, and seems satisfied only when the dust settles on the clothes that have just been hung up to dry. Manju is a sensuous creature and, like most sensuous people, is lazy by nature. She does not like sweeping because the boy next door can see her at it, and she wants to appear before him in a more glamorous light. Her first action every morning is to turn to the cinema advertisements in the newspaper. Bombay’s movie moguls cater to girls like Manju who long to be tragic heroines. Life is so very dull for middle-class teenagers in Delhi that it is only natural that they
should lean so heavily on escapist entertainment. Every residential area has a cinema.

  But there is not a single bookshop in this particular suburb, although it has a population of over twenty thousand literate people. Few children read books; but they are adept at swotting up examination ‘guides’; and students of, say, Hardy or Dickens read the guides and not the novels.

  Bhabiji is now grinding onions and chillies in a mortar. Her eyes are watering but she is in a good mood. Shobha sits quietly in the kitchen. A little while ago she was complaining to me of a backache. I am the only one who lends a sympathetic ear to complaints of aches and pains. But since last night, my sympathies have been under severe strain. When I got into bed at about ten o’clock, I found the sheets wet. Apparently Shobha had put her baby to sleep in my bed during the afternoon.

  While the housework is still in progress, cousin Kishore arrives. He is an itinerant musician who makes a living by arranging performances at marriages. He visits Bhabiji’s house frequently and at odd hours, often a little tipsy, always brimming over with goodwill and grandiose plans for the future. It was once his ambition to be a film producer, and some years back he lost a lot of Bhabiji’s money in producing a film that was never completed. He still talks of finishing it.

  ‘Brother,’ he says, taking me into his confidence for the hundredth time, ‘do you know anyone who has a movie camera?’

  ‘No,’ I say, knowing only too well how these admissions can lead me into a morass of complicated manoeuvres. But Kishore is not easily put off, especially when he has been fortified with country liquor.

  ‘But you knew someone with a movie camera?’ He asks.

  ‘That was long ago.’

  ‘How long ago?’ (I have got him going now.)

  ‘About five years back.’

  ‘Only five years? Find him, find him!’

  ‘It’s no use. He doesn’t have the movie camera any more. He sold it.’

  ‘Sold it!’ Kishore looks at me as though I have done him an injury. ‘But why didn’t you buy it? All we need is a movie camera, and our fortune is made. I will produce the film, I will direct it, I will write the music. Two in one, Charlie Chaplin and Raj Kapoor. Why didn’t you buy the camera?’

  ‘Because I didn’t have the money.’

  ‘But we could have borrowed the money.’

  ‘If you are in a position to borrow money, you can go out and buy another movie camera.’

  ‘We could have borrowed the camera. Do you know anyone else who has one?’

  ‘Not a soul.’ I am firm this time; I will not be led into another maze.

  ‘Very sad, very sad,’ mutters Kishore. And with a dejected, hang-dog expression designed to make me feel that I am responsible for all his failures, he moves off.

  Bhabiji had expressed some annoyance at Kishore’s arrival, but he softens her up by leaving behind an invitation to a marriage party this evening. No one in the house knows the bride’s or bridegroom’s family, but that does not matter; knowing one of the musicians is just as good. Almost everyone will go.

  While Bhabiji, Shobha and Madhu are preparing lunch, Bhabiji engages in one of her favourite subjects of conversation, Kamal’s marriage, which she hopes she will be able to arrange in the near future. She freely acknowledges that she made grave blunders in selecting wives for her other sons — this is meant to be heard by Shobha — and promises not to repeat her mistakes. According to Bhabiji, Kamal’s bride should be both educated and domesticated; and of course she must be fair.

  ‘What if he likes a dark girl?’ I ask teasingly.

  Bhabiji looks horrified. ‘He cannot marry a dark girl,’ she declares.

  ‘But dark girls are beautiful,’ I tell her.

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Do you want him to marry a European girl?’

  ‘No foreigners! I know them, they’ll take my son away. He shall have a good Punjabi girl, with a complexion the colour of wheat.’

  *

  Noon. The shadows shift and cross the road. I sit beneath the guava tree and watch the women at work. They will not let me do anything, but they like talking to me and they love to hear my broken Punjabi. Sparrows flit about at their feet, snapping up the grain that runs away from their busy fingers. A crow looks speculatively at the empty kitchen, sidles towards the open door; but Bhabiji has only to glance up and the experienced crow flies away. He knows he will not be able to make off with anything from this house.

  One by one the children return home, demanding food. Now it is Madhu’s turn to go to school. Her younger brother Popat, an intelligent but undersized boy of thirteen, appears in the doorway and asks for lunch.

  ‘Be off!’ says Bhabiji. ‘It isn’t ready yet.’

  Actually the food is ready and only the chapatis remain to be made. Shobha will attend to them. Bhabiji lies down on her cot in the sun, complaining of a pain in her back and ringing noises in her ears.

  ‘I’ll press your back,’ says Popat. He has been out of Bhabiji’s favour lately, and is looking for an opportunity to be rehabilitated.

  Barefooted he stands on Bhabiji’s back and treads her weary flesh and bones with a gentle walking-in-one-spot movement. Bhabiji grunts with relief. Every day she has new pains in new places. Her age, and the daily business of feeding the family and running everyone’s affairs, are beginning to tell on her. But she would sooner die than give up her position of dominance in the house. Her working sons still hand over their pay to her, and she dispenses the money as she sees fit.

  The pummelling she gets from Popat puts her in a better mood, and she holds forth on another favourite subject, the respective merits of various dowries. Shiv’s wife (according to Bhabiji) brought nothing with her but a string cot; Kishore’s wife brought only a sharp and clever tongue; Shobha brought a wonderful steel cupboard, fully expecting that it would do all the housework for her.

  This last observation upsets Shobha, and a little later I find her under the guava tree, weeping profusely. I give her the comforting words she obviously expects; but it is her husband Arun who will have to bear the brunt of her outraged feelings when he comes home this evening. He is rather nervous of his wife. Last night he wanted to eat out, at a restaurant, but did not want to be accused of wasting money; so he stuffed fifteen rupees into my pocket and asked me to invite both him and Shobha to dinner, which I did. We had a good dinner. Such unexpected hospitality on my part has further improved my standing with Shobha. Now, in spite of other chores, she sees that I get cups of tea and coffee at odd hours of the day.

  Bhabiji knows Arun is soft with his wife, and taunts him about it. She was saying this morning that whenever there is any work to be done Shobha retires to bed with a headache (partly true). Bhabhaji says even Manju does more housework (not true). Bhabiji has certain talents as an actress, and does a good take-off of Shobha sulking and grumbling at having too much to do.

  While Bhabiji talks, Popat sneaks off and goes for a ride on the bicycle. It is a very old bicycle and is constantly undergoing repairs. ‘The soul has gone out of it,’ says Vinod philosophically and makes his way on to the roof, where he keeps a store of pornographic literature. Up there, he cannot be seen and cannot be remembered, and so avoids being sent out on errands.

  One of the boys is bathing at the hand pump. Manju, who should have gone to school with Madhu, is stretched out on a cot, complaining of fever. But she will be up in time to attend the marriage party ...

  Towards evening, as the birds return to roost in the guava tree, their chatter is challenged by the tumult of people in the house getting ready for the marriage party.

  Manju presses her tight pyjamas but neglects to dam them. She wears a loose-fitting, diaphanous shirt. She keeps flitting in and out of the front room so that I can admire the way she glitters. Shobha has used too much powder and lipstick in an effort to look like the femme fatale which she indubitably is not. Shiv’s more conservative wife floats around in loose, old-fashioned pyjamas. Bhabiji is sober an
d austere in a white sari. Madhu looks neat. The men wear their suits.

  Popat is holding up a mirror for his Uncle Kishore, who is combing his long hair. (Kishore kept his hair long, like a court musician at the time of Akbar, before the hippies had been heard of.) He is nodding benevolently, having fortified himself from a bottle labelled ‘Som Ras’ (‘Nectar of the Gods’), obtained cheaply from an illicit seller.

  Kishore: ‘Don’t shake the mirror, boy!’

  Popat: ‘Uncle, it’s your head that’s shaking.’

  Shobha is happy. She loves going out, especially to marriages, and she always takes her two small boys with her, although they invariably spoil the carpets.

  Only Kamal, Popat and I remain behind. I have had more than my share of marriage parties.

  The house is strangely quiet. It does not seem so small now, with only three people left in it. The kitchen has been locked (Bhabiji will not leave it open while Popat is still in the house), so we visit the dhaba, the wayside restaurant near the main road, and this time I pay the bill with my own money. We have kababs and chicken curry.

  Yesterday Kamal and I took our lunch on the grass of the Buddha Jayanti Gardens. There was no college for Kamal, as the majority of Delhi’s students had hijacked a number of corporation buses and headed for the Pakistan High Commission, with every intention of levelling it to the ground if possible, as a protest against the hijacking of an Indian plane from Srinagar to Lahore. The students were met by the Delhi police in full strength, and a pitched battle took place, in which stones from the students and tear gas shells from the police were the favoured missiles. There were two shells fired every minute, according to a newspaper report. And this went on all day. A number of students and policemen were injured, but by some miracle no one was killed. The police held their ground, and the Pakistan High Commission remained inviolate. But the Australian High Commission, situated to the rear of the student brigade, received most of the tear gas shells, and had to close down for the day.