Silent Winds, Dry Seas

by Vinod Busjeet

  “He fears you’re stealing from him,” I said. “And yet you’re the one who’s there for him, always.”

  When we reached my rented townhouse, close to midnight, my mother called and asked for Shankar. As he put down the phone, he screamed a series of expletives at his sisters and brothers-in-law. They were moving Uncle Roshan to a nursing home and had done Mama the courtesy of informing her beforehand, earlier in the day. Shankar was extended no such courtesy. Nor was he consulted.

  “What makes them believe the nursing home will take better care of Pa than I can? I love him.”

  “But you’re not there now,” I said.

  Shankar insisted that the nurse’s aide would have taken good care of Uncle Roshan until his return and that the sisters were heartless. “We can afford two nurse’s aides, if that’s what it takes to keep him home.”

  “Why don’t you look at it positively? They’ve freed you from a heavy burden. You can now visit Europe.”

  “He wanted to die in his bed, at home. No one bothers about his wishes,” Shankar said.

  I suspect he didn’t sleep that night.

  Shankar advanced his return and left for home two days later. The District Court rejected his petition to have his father nursed at home. Over the next three months, Uncle Roshan’s health deteriorated fast (“His fate was sealed when they dumped him in that damn facility,” said Shankar) and I rushed to Mauritius, mostly to give support to my mother and to Shankar.

  I was greeted at the nursing home by quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu sacred text, posted on a pillar in the lobby. One caught my eye, the gist of which is “Even God cannot forgive one’s transgressions, for the laws of karma are immutable and inescapable.” As I went up the staircase, I thought of an interview Elie Wiesel gave on the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust. “It’s not for me to forgive; only God can,” he had said. I thought that was stark, but the message at the nursing home was much starker. It was grim.

  Upstairs in his room, Maréchal Rommel was now lying in a fetal position, trembling. It was not a shiver occasioned by feeling cold or from poor blood circulation. It was a tremor triggered by the fear of death. “Don’t let me die, Shankar. I’m counting on you.” He was ninety-one years old.

  As Shankar massaged him, Uncle Roshan grew still and chanted “Om” (ॐ).

  * * *

  —

  It is true, Shankar was trained by his father to be the person who was going to work for him, take care of him in his old age. But that alone could not explain what I witnessed. Shankar loved his father; it was in his nature to love his father that way. When Uncle Roshan died, Shankar asked me to oversee the wake. We took his body to the orchard where father and son had confronted each other years ago, and we washed him while prayers were chanted. His wake was subdued compared with Uncle Ram’s. Rum was notable by its absence, and the group that gathered was reverential, not rambunctious. In other respects it was a grander affair. I arranged for a huge tent to be set up to welcome the expected crowd and for coffee, tea, biscuits, and snacks to be delivered by a caterer. At the wake and at the funeral the following day, people praised Uncle Roshan’s contributions to society—defending the rights of small planters against the sugar estate, promoting girls’ education, electoral canvassing for the Labour Party. Even Puranic priests, his theological foes, came to pay their last respects. “Sri Roshan set high moral standards for the Hindu community,” eulogized a swami whose feet Shankar had massaged in his teenage years.

  After the funeral, Shankar discovered that his father had transferred ownership of the ancestral home and the choicest land to his younger brother, the one who challenged and dishonored him by eloping with a Muslim woman; the one who, according to a servant, had hit Uncle Roshan when the latter had complained about his care. His father also held joint bank accounts with the other siblings. When Shankar told me this, I thought back on how, almost three decades earlier, the Bhushan family had been torn apart by the court case over Uncle Ram’s inheritance. I wondered if we were going to see a similar fracas in Shankar’s family.

  “I don’t understand why my beloved brother has acted so unfairly,” Mama said. “Those children must have pressured him into signing away his property to them while Shankar was away in America.”

  I felt that Uncle Roshan had known what he was doing, that he respected people who dared challenge him. Shankar’s younger brother had stood up to him, and though this behavior may have upset him initially, it reminded him of his younger days. “In his youth, Uncle challenged the Puranic priests and his father. He challenged the sugar estate management. He accumulated authority through acts of rebellion,” I told Mama.

  “You’ve read too many books, Vishnu,” Mama said.

  A week after the final funeral rites, I bade good-bye to Shankar and encouraged him to visit me again in the United States.

  In the months that followed, the thought that I had been too harsh in my judgment of Shankar nagged at me. In many respects he had done right, being there for his father all those years. I, however, stayed overseas, pursuing my dreams, leaving my parents behind. A feeling of being selfish crept up on me, and I phoned my mother and told her so. “You shouldn’t feel that way. Your father and I are happy the way things happened. Look at all the Bhushans who are in America because of you. Counting their families, around twenty. You financed the education of some, housed them, helped them adjust.”

  Two or three years later, I watched the movie The Crying Game. It has an anecdote taken from the fables of Aesop and Persia that reminded me of Shankar and his father. A scorpion convinced a frog to let him ride on his back as the latter swam across a river. The scorpion stung the frog before they could reach the other shore. The frog asked the scorpion why he had done something that would drown them both. The scorpion replied that he couldn’t help it. It was in his nature.

  IX

  Saturday Ritual

  That evening, Papa skipped his favorite meal.

  Mama said, “I’m too weak today to deplume the rooster and cut its throat.”

  Papa walked out to the backyard towards the chopping block.

  “Meanwhile, I’ll blend the spices and prepare the curry paste.”

  Mama said, “I’m too weak today to deplume the rooster and cut its throat.”

  She beckoned me, pointed to the coop.

  “Meanwhile, I’ll blend the spices and prepare the curry paste.”

  I grabbed the fattest rooster with the proudest red-crested head.

  Mama beckoned me, pointed to the coop.

  Gripping the rooster’s legs, I pinned it down on the wooden block.

  I grabbed the fattest rooster with the proudest red-crested head.

  Mama handed Papa a sharp knife. “Chop it off with one stroke.”

  Gripping the rooster’s legs, I pinned it down on the wooden block.

  Papa raised the knife, took aim at the neck, the rooster’s eyelids fluttered.

  Mama handed Papa a sharp knife. “Chop it off with one stroke.”

  Sweat dotted Papa’s brow, his hand shook. “I can’t do this.”

  Papa raised the knife, took aim at the neck, the rooster’s eyelids fluttered.

  Mama wrested the knife from him. “It will escape if we wait too long.”

  Sweat dotted Papa’s brow, his hand shook. “I can’t do this.”

  Mama put the knife in my right hand, fourteen years old.

  Mama wrested the knife from him. “It will escape if we wait too long.”

  Wielding that knife for the first time, I delivered a clean blow.

  Mama put the knife in my right hand, fourteen years old.

  The rooster’s body twitched, blood spattered.

  Wielding that knife for the first time, I delivered a clean blow.

  “Papa, do you realize how strong Mama is
?”

  The rooster’s body twitched, blood spattered.

  “She’s done it all these years. And she’s vegetarian.”

  “Papa, do you realize how strong Mama is?

  She raises our chickens, chops and cooks them.

  She’s done it all these years. And she’s vegetarian.”

  That evening, Papa skipped his favorite meal.

  X

  Conclave of Goons

  1964

  “I went to an attorney today,” Papa said. “He insists that Ram’s land should now revert to me, not to his widow. Ram was not my brother but my cousin, and so was never entitled to any part of my parents’ property.”

  He pulled out an envelope from his jacket pocket.

  Six months had elapsed since Uncle Ram’s death.

  “All these years you’ve said he’s your brother,” I said.

  We had almost finished dinner. Mama had plunged her spoon into the halwah dessert but left it there. Blood rushed to her ears and cheeks.

  “Birth certificates don’t lie,” my father continued as he opened the envelope. “Vishnu, read this to Mama.”

  I was stunned. The names of Uncle Ram’s parents were those of Papa’s paternal uncle and aunt.

  Mama rose from the table. “Vishnu doesn’t have to read me anything. You know, and all the family elders know, that your uncle and aunt were childless. They begged your parents to have themselves named as Ram’s parents on his birth certificate, and your parents agreed as a goodwill gesture to them.”

  “The attorney has filed a case in court,” Papa said. “It’s time to correct an injustice.”

  “How can you have a clear conscience when you’re depriving Auntie Ranee and their daughters of their livelihood?” I said.

  “They’ll have enough to live on,” Papa replied, cold and matter-of-fact. “They have Uncle Ram’s pension and a beautiful house in a quiet neighborhood.”

  I had grown close to Uncle Ram: he was the one who took me to the horse races and regattas where I caught a glimpse of the island’s high society; to weddings and fairs. I loved my books and aspired to be a laureate, and my father’s intellectual guidance was inestimable. But now girls interested me as well—if only I had the guts to approach them. I saw in Uncle Ram my favorite Shakespearean character—a Falstaff who could help me get rid of my shyness. On more than one occasion, gregarious Uncle Ram had taken me for lunch at his favorite tavern and gotten the barmaid to befriend me. When he died, a month after he had last taken me to the bar, it was a tragedy.

  The following Saturday, while my father was away in his sugarcane fields and I was doing my homework, a group of Bhushan elders showed up. In those days, much more so than now, relatives and friends just dropped in unannounced and uninvited. As it was an hour before lunchtime, Mama abandoned her embroidery work to prepare a large meal.

  After the usual compliments on her hospitality and cooking, one of them asked, “Isn’t Shiv ashamed of not acknowledging a blood brother as a brother, whatever the birth certificate states?”

  “You should go ask him that yourself,” Mama said. The elders frowned, not pleased with what they viewed as Mama’s disrespectful tone.

  “Beti, you should try harder to persuade Shiv that he is wrong. Once this case is heard in court, with the public watching, the honor of the Bhushans will be in shreds,” a second elder said.

  To emphasize the gravity of the matter, another elder rephrased these words in a mix of Hindi and Kreol: “Ghar ke izzat bahot important hai.” Then he turned to me: “As you proceed in life, we hope you also understand the importance of our family’s honor.”

  When Papa returned in the evening, Mama complained that she was fed up with cooking for all his relatives only to be blamed by them for his behavior.

  “These are emissaries sent by Ram’s wife. She thinks I’ll change my mind simply out of respect for their old age. The law is the law.”

  “Whatever the law says, you’re wrong,” I said.

  “Vishnu, let the adults deal with this,” Mama said.

  Three or four more visits from the elders took place in the following two or three weeks while I was at secondary school and Papa was teaching in his primary school. When it was clear that my father would not budge, Auntie Ranee asked Mama’s help in arranging a meeting of the Bhushans at our house—all the adults, male and female, not just the elders. Mama agreed. She knew that not everyone invited would show up for a confrontation where sides had to be taken. She hoped this meeting would stop the steady onslaught of emissaries. Feeding them and cleaning up after them were taking a toll on her, and taking her away from her embroidery and lace making. After each emissary visit, a bitter fight erupted between her and Papa, father insisting on his legal rights and Mama talking about moral obligations.

  Mama ensured that my father stayed home one Saturday by reminding him of work that had to be done around the house. She asked me and Cousin Shankar, who lived some two hundred yards away, to be on the veranda to welcome the relatives. When Shankar arrived, my father was uprooting weeds in the small mango and lychee orchard at the back of the house—weeds whose evocative English names he enjoyed repeating to Shankar and to himself: blue panic grass, black nightshade, purple nutsedge, and pigweed. He had no idea what was brewing.

  The first to show up, around 10 a.m., were two couples, the Parsads and the Lokhuns, hardworking proprietors of small plots of land on which they grew sugarcane and vegetables. Shrunk small by age and battered by years of manual labor, Uncles Lokhun and Parsad sported distinctive mustaches. Uncle Parsad’s was a long, waxed handlebar mustache that earned him the ironic nickname Lord Kitchener of Khartoum—for he had none of the military bearing of the British marshal. Uncle Lokhun had a toothbrush mustache, Charlie Chaplin style. On the weekends they worked as traveling barbers, a vanishing breed, serving the Franco-Mauritian managers living on the sugar estates. They were the “keepers of the faith,” the repository of ancient traditions from India. The Bhushan clan looked to them for guidance on rituals to be observed or performed at births, weddings, funerals, and other life-cycle events. To Shankar and me, the westernized younger generation, the Parsads and Lokhuns looked like they had just arrived from the village in Bihar that our ancestors left in the 1800s to come work as indentured laborers on the island. They dressed clumsily in Western suits, their wives in the plainest monochromatic saris. Though they were devout Hindus, their clothes, their gait, their demeanor, and their voices led us to believe they had heard and heeded Jesus’s message that the meek shall inherit the earth. Vishnu and I couldn’t see them changing the mind of my strong-willed father.

  The couple that walked in about fifteen minutes later couldn’t have been more different. Emulating Bombay stars of the era, Uncle Neeraj favored sunglasses, white jacket, pleated pants, and two-toned shoes. Whenever he visited, he surreptitiously handed me magazines with titles like Intimité and Volupté, featuring half-naked women and stories of torrid love affairs. His wife had a trendy dress sense that made us teenagers salivate. She draped her sari hipster style: starting low on her hips, tight fit, with a short clinging blouse, midriff and navel bared. She knew the other uncles called her “vulgar” behind her back, but she didn’t care. Shankar and I had previously heard the older uncles comment in Bhojpuri: “Gaand mein sharam nahin.” She has no shame in her ass. The younger uncles expressed their ambivalence—admiration of her beauty, disapproval of her flaunting it—in Kreol: “Li content montrer so bazaar Bombay!” She loves to trot out her Bombay wares!

  The Neerajs were the only Bhushans who owned a car and lived in a two-story concrete house with fridge and electric stove. Uncle Neeraj always traveled with the latest and most professional photographic equipment. He was a tailor. At the time, we didn’t know he moonlighted as a dollar counterfeiter, though everyone wondered how he could afford his lifestyle. True to his occu
pations, Neeraj was jovial and keen on offending no one, and it was hard for me and Shankar to imagine him taking a position, much less trying to persuade my father to change course.

  When my father came out onto the veranda, he was greeted warmly by the visitors. He sat down, calm and courteous. If he was surprised, he didn’t let it show. While the women were with Mama in the kitchen, the men exchanged notes on the sugarcane harvest—average tonnage of cane per acre, the sucrose content, the price paid to planters by the sugar estate. As usual, Papa encouraged Shankar and me to sit in on adult conversations: he believed we could learn life lessons.

  The ambience changed drastically with the arrival of Uncle Mohan. At six foot four and with a martial bearing, he occupied the veranda. Shankar and I had heard of his reputation. My mother had told us that as one of the very few Hindus recruited into the colonial police force after World War II, Uncle Mohan had an excellent chance of making it to the top of the force, in a country with a majority Hindu population. One night he turned up drunk at the police station and insulted the English Inspector of Police in front of the constables. The Inspector asked him to apologize in the police barracks quadrangle in the presence of everyone, but he was too proud to do so and was fired. Uncle Mohan preferred to switch to the backbreaking work of cutting and transporting sugarcane in the tropical sun. He was known for not backing down whenever he clashed with his neighbors, and that earned him the grudging respect of the other uncles. The uncles sometimes called on him to show up when a threat of physical force was called for in their disputes with neighbors.

  Uncle Mohan’s swagger as he entered and the stench of liquor on his breath suggested that he was itching for a fight. His namasté greeting to my father looked perfunctory, not the respectful namasté to which the head of the clan is entitled.

  Papa rose and went towards the kitchen, perhaps to ask Mama if she had anything to do with what was going on. I looked at him, then at Uncle Mohan, and felt uneasy.