Home To India

by Jacquelin Singh

  “Will you get married,” I said into the darkness. “When you get home?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “I thought all Indians got married.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because …” He hesitated while the wind through the pine trees filled the empty spaces where his words should have been.

  “Go on,” I said, not wanting to listen, but having to.

  When he spoke again, his voice came from the other side of Saturn. “I don’t know what to say,” he said, looking straight at me.

  “Just say why not,” I said. “Tell me why you don’t think you’ll get married.”

  “Because I already am,” he said. “I already have a wife.”

  I awoke from sleep with a start if indeed I had been asleep. Had I been talking to myself? The rain had stopped. A puff of steamy, sulphur-laden air came blowing through the Ranikaran ashram window as the boiling springs rebounded from the cold river water into which they plunged. I turned over, pulled the blanket close around myself, and closed my eyes.

  “Ho! Over there! Look!” Tej cried out in his sleep.

  9

  All night I dreamt I was awake. Maybe I was. I never lost conscious contact with the slant of the floor and kept flinging my arms outside the blanket when I felt hot, tucking the blanket around myself when I felt cold. It was always damp; I was always listening for the restless presences that whirled and stomped through our space. The sulphurous sighs and breathings. Were they from underground? From the boiling powerhouse below us? What grand events were going on beneath Earth’s mild crust to send these forces to the surface? What busyness? Down there, whole continental plates were shifting and sliding like moveable burners slammed around by a cosmic hand. Down there, it was molten rock, furnace-fiery. Volcanic torrents struggling to break through: A soup cauldron set over a fire. What a miracle we tread on it, this earth, I thought; dare lie down to rest on it, without fear of going up in flames, without terror at losing our balance on the shifting crust!

  Or were these beings made of the air above us? Did they sweep down from the wild range of icicle peaks that loomed on the northern horizon? We had held them before us in our vision as we trudged up to Ranikaran through the rain. They had been just visible between the clouds and the steep rock walls of the lower range of mountains that closed off the northern end of the valley. Miles away. They had stood, substantial and three-dimensional, behind the veil of gathering mist and spray from the river like jagged sentinels guarding the edge of the world.

  It was later than we thought next morning when we got ourselves together to leave. All around us were the sounds of the others rushing to pack, and running down to the pool for a perfunctory bath before going back down the hill to the bus stop. The frail old man was busy again, this time collecting the bedding that had been borrowed from the ashram by the other pilgrims. The Aggarwal youngsters, their bare feet thudding on the hollow-sounding floor boards, raced up and down, taking a last look at the place.

  The adults were down by the pool, all lined up, drinking tea on the veranda. The Malgaonkar girl, neither adult nor child, sat reading a Nick Carter thriller. A little shadow of downy hair darkened her upper lip as she pronounced each word silently to herself. From time to time she looked up from her reading with quick black eyes and took a sip of tea.

  The sky had cleared, and the morning was cloud-free bright. The three women sat appraising each others’ saris and jewelry and exchanging addresses. The men were taking on the problems of the planet and were already up to their waving arms in a political argument in English. Fresh American troops had landed in Korea! The news was just now coming over the Babaji’s radio. It diverted everyone’s attention momentarily away from Tej and me as we all strained to hear the details of this two-month-old war over All-India Radio, Jullundur. The news came in crackles and spurts like one of Admiral Byrd’s nightly broadcasts from Antarctica of more than a decade earlier. There was a sense of something historic and momentous taking place, but we couldn’t pinpoint what. I leaned toward the set for more facts, but by then the news bulletin was over, and Tej and I were being offered tea by a little girl from Ranikaran village who had come to help the hefty Sikh with the job.

  By morning light, he looked even more carelessly thrown together than he had the night before. His wiry grey hair sprang out from under his hastily wrapped turban, and his beard bristled every which way as he went about the business of preparing for lunch, now that morning tea was taken care of.

  While Tej and I and the others sat there drinking tea, I tried to imagine what was happening in Los Angeles or San Francisco or wherever my friends might be—the ones who still remained to live their lives out on familiar ground—as news of the Korean war flashed. What supermarket turnstiles would they be passing through at that moment? Zooming out which freeway offramp? Going through which revolving door? Mama and Papa, Nicoletta and Gloria and Julia would be going across the street to Aunt Teresa’s to watch the news because she was the only one with a television set. Lots of people in motion, going somewhere, on the move, not sitting still long enough for me to catch them in my mind’s grip. Was there really going to be a Third World War after just five years of peace?

  For the others in Ranikaran, the news had come as a brief, bright interlude between tea and leaving to catch the bus. For the makers and servers of tea it hadn’t even been that. There was a war underway. Fresh troops had arrived this morning. It was all taking place in our part of the world. Yet Korea seemed more remote than the moon and the events there no more relevant to the people around me than a lunar event.

  Someone had turned off the Babaji’s radio. Perhaps it was the server of tea, because he was sitting outside the cave entrance now with a small crowd of pilgrims and Ranikaran villagers around him while he pounded mint and dried pomegranate seed into the chutney that was to be eaten with the rice and curry at lunch. His pestle was a rough, well-worn deodar branch, and the mortar a hollowed-out stump. A helper from the village had already tied raw rice in a bundle of muslin cloth and had placed the raw lentils, water, and spices in a tight-lidded brass utensil and set both preparations in a shallow bed of the boiling springs to cook.

  “It takes exactly half an hour,” the cook said in broken English for the benefit of the Subramaniams, who would not have been able to understand Hindi or Punjabi, and perhaps for my benefit as well. “It’s always the same. Never varies,” he went on. “Chapattis and rice and potatoes are all cooked in exactly half an hour. Rice pudding takes one hour, and sweet rice two.”

  “Tell us about this place,” Mr. Malgaonkar said.

  The cook stopped grinding the chutney to give the man his full attention. He sat resting one arm on a wooden stand where he kept drinking water, and supported his left ankle on his right knee. He gripped his left foot with his left hand as he talked. “The tank—this pool here—is completely emptied every five days,” he said solemnly.

  He went on to recite (with his eyes half shut) how long it took for a complete turnover of water to renew the pool as it flowed in constantly. Amidst the flood of facts, he told of how the Kumbh River originated in the fabled Mansarover Lake that India shared with China, flowed underground for many miles and emerged at a point upstream which Shiva and Parvati were known to inhabit. It was Guru Nanakji, the first Sikh guru, who discovered the hot springs under a rock during a visit he made to Ranikaran. “This has always been a sacred place, you see,” he wound up.

  “Are there any interesting plants or animals here about?” Mr. Malgaonkar wanted to know, his curiosity apparently still unslaked.

  “There are walnuts and wild almonds,” the grinder of chutney replied. “Mushrooms, too. And besides, many medicinal plants grow here. We even find wild rice growing near the village and a tree whose bark is used for making paper.”

  “How long have you been here?” Mr. Aggarwal asked.

  “A long time,” the cook said
. “I wandered around the plains of the Punjab for thirty years before coming here. I’ve been here ever since. Right here,” he said.

  “In Ranikaran?” Mrs. Aggarwal asked.

  “No, I mean right here.”

  “Not even upstairs?” Mr. Aggarwal asked in disbelief. “But here? Just this veranda and all?”

  “Within sight of the pool,” the man replied with a broad smile.

  “And the famous Babaji?” somebody asked. “Where is he?”

  “The Babaji?” he repeated, his smile breaking into laughter. “I don’t know. It’s what the village people call me. Every old man is Babaji to them, isn’t it? I suppose I’m a Babaji.” The idea appeared to delight him.

  Just then the wall clock struck eight solemn notes, and everybody looked at their watches to check the time. All at once hurried good-byes were being said, donations were being pressed into the hands of the Babaji, and there was a rush to gather up baggage and head for the bus stop. Each tried to get ahead of the others to secure a window seat on the bus.

  On the way down the hill, Tej and I overheard Mr. Aggarwal and his family.

  “Imagine, wasting our time with that talk about boiling rice and all,” his wife exclaimed. “How long it takes to cook dal in the hot springs, and all about the fruit trees. Medicinal plants! I don’t know what all. No discourse, hardly a mention of Shiva and Parvati, no speech about the gods or the sacredness of the surroundings.”

  “It’s a funny place,” her husband said.

  “He’s an odd Babaji,” she said.

  “We don’t have to come here again, do we?” one of the boys asked.

  10

  The whole of Majra was hot and flooded with muddy water when we got back from Ranikaran. After continual rains, the pond had spilled over its banks, and happy black water buffaloes sloshed and bobbed in its depths. Flies and mosquitoes were busy recreating themselves in geometric progression. The landscape kept tossing up grass and slime, gushing a tide of mould, shrubs, and hedges, while mangoes continued to drop from the trees. The sudden greening was awe-inspiring and complete. A tubewell was being sunk, a tractor bought. Paddy nurseries, great patches of chartreuse on the landscape, were being readied for transplanting.

  “It’s been raining here almost every day,” Mataji declared with smiles and hugs for both of us. She had come back from Bikaner sooner than expected in order to be there to welcome us home, and had brought Nikku with her. “But we were expecting you three days ago,” she said to Tej. “What happened? Never mind. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.” She popped ceremonial sweets into our mouths and exclaimed, “So you are married now.”

  The rest of the family gathered round, and we distributed the souvenirs we’d brought everybody from Kulu town on the way down from Ranikaran. Nikku came up to receive a hug and a present from Tej, and smiled shyly at me, wondering whether he should come closer or not; then, deciding against it, he ran off to play with the toy truck we had given him.

  “I wish you’d have a religious ceremony as well,” Mataji said as she had Udmi Ram bring us some tea. “What is a civil ceremony after all? It’s hardly a wedding. Nobody there to witness it, no friends to entertain, no blessing from God. No …”

  “Whatever suits the young couple suits us,” Pitaji said, cutting her off. Then he turned to us to give his blessing. “May you have a long, happy married life. Always be good to each other,” he said, giving each word its weight as he clasped our hands together.

  “But Bhaji, we feel cheated out of some new clothes,” Goodi said, lightly enough, yet I had the feeling she wasn’t joking. “In a proper wedding we’re supposed to get some presents from Bhabi’s parents—like salwar-kameezes and chiffon dupattas for our brother’s wedding.” Rano gave her an ungentle nudge and Pitaji frowned.

  Hari was still in Bikaner, helping Uncle Gurnam Singh establish his political base, and Dilraj Kaur was not due back from Faridkot for another two weeks.

  I felt I had come home, finally. I allowed myself to take heart. Things would be different now that Tej and I were married. Majra was my place. I belonged. Tej and I spent hours at the building site, where work had come to a standstill with the onset of the monsoon. The plastered brick walls, the cement floors, and the roof were in place and stood awaiting completion, like a half-finished movie set. Work had begun on the cabinets too, but nothing had been finished.

  One afternoon Tej and I sat together on a woven mat spread down in the room that was to be ours, planning furniture arrangements. The room faced the east from where the cool monsoon winds came. Tej had brought his sitar and began a raga especially for barsat: the time of year for lovers and poets. The sitar itself responded to the humid, fecund season with a new, full-throated richness, free of needle sharpness and “stringness.” He began with an alap whose low, slow notes were more tentative than assertive and voluptuous without being syrupy. Something was going on inside me that was in harmony with the raga, and I came to understand what it was only five days later: I was pregnant.

  The kitchen once again became the hub of the women’s lives. Mataji was brimming with gossip from Bikaner. “He’s so stubborn,” she began on Uncle Gurnam Singh. “I tried all the time I was there to make him promise to stop seeing that woman. For Bhabiji Gursharan Kaur’s sake.”

  “What did he say, Mataji?” Goodi wanted to know.

  “Never mind,” she answered. For a moment she busied herself with giving instructions to Udmi Ram about lunch. Then she said, taking up her theme once more, “He didn’t say anything! Just laughed, the way he does, as if it were a big joke!” She spread her open palms in front of her and shrugged her shoulders in a gesture of helpless incomprehension.

  “What about Aunt Gursharan Kaur?” Rano asked.

  “I can’t understand her,” Mataji exclaimed. “She’s too good. A saint. She doesn’t say anything, and tries to stop me from saying anything to that man. I’m ashamed to say he’s my brother.”

  I too wondered about Aunt. Self-effacing? Self-sacrificing? Loath to assert herself? A clinging vine? A doormat? What made her that way? And if she was all that everyone said she was and Uncle all that he was purported to be, what was Aunt Gursharan Kaur getting out of life?

  “He’s under that woman’s spell,” Mataji continued. “The money he squanders on her! Dilraj Kaur has always said it. She’s evil, greedy, a drain on everyone.” There followed a Punjabi saying I had come to recognize because Mataji used it so often—whenever she was on the subject of a destructive woman: “A little cloud looking like the feathers of a partridge; a woman eating cream on the sly: one brings down rain, the other the ruination of her family. The wisdom of this saying can be depended upon.”

  “I can’t understand this about Mamaji Gurnam Singh,” I remembered Dilraj Kaur saying on an earlier occasion, in this same kitchen, this beehive buzzing with female malice as long as she was present. “How he fails to recognize the true worth of Mamiji, his real wife, his first wife?” She paused then to allow the words to take hold. “Her goodness is there for all the world to see. Only he’s blind.”

  It became clear that Mataji had not been able to open his eyes to his folly. Her mission had failed. There had been nothing for her to do but return home.

  The rains continued through days of mango eating, paddy transplanting, and playing on the swing that had been hung from the neem tree in the yard. Goodi, her pigtails flying in the wind, would squeal like a child the higher Rano and I pushed her. Because I was a bride and this was my first rainy season with the family, I was given extra turns, higher pushes, more dizzying heights to swoop down from. And all this accompanied by songs about brides, about me! The artificial breeze stirred up by the movement of the swing disturbed the leaves and shook from them their pungent, penetrating odor. On nights we could spend outside, spotted owls on the prowl cooed us to sleep amidst a chorus of frogs and the lullabies of crickets. Barnyard smells mingled with the fragrance of jasmine. Now that we were married, at least in
the eyes of the law if not in Mataji’s, and with parenthood only months away, the future all at once became something to seriously plan for.

  “I have to look for a job,” Tej announced one evening to the company at large.

  “Where’s the need, beta?” Mataji was quick to ask.

  “I’ve got to do something with myself,” he said. “Make use of the degree I have.”

  The others looked at him as if he’d momentarily lost his reason. But I knew he hadn’t. He had said nothing further to me since that day in Bhakra, but his desperation about the future was never far from the surface and erupted in momentary bursts of temper with the way things were going on the farm, his preoccupation with trivia, his sudden retreats into silence or long hours spent in Ladopur with musician friends he’d made, ragis from the gurdwara, or occasional performers passing through.

  Later that night, as we lay on our charpoys under the mosquito nets, Tej said to me, “They didn’t even hear me.”

  “I guess they never thought about your going away and getting a job,” I said.

  “Well, I have. Especially now, with the baby coming.” He drew the mosquito nets aside and rested his hand firmly but gently on my stomach. My eyes were inside his head, and I could see the warring images that thronged there: the months and years devoted to music, placed like offerings before a shrine and all these at odds with the demands of farm and family and his need to make a living, especially now, as he said.

  “Yes,” I said again, and felt for his hand. It was warm and I could feel the pulse in his fingertips.

  “You know as well as I do that I never could have made it as a musician,” he said, almost to himself.

  “You wanted to have a shot at it, though.”

  “That’s another thing.” He hesitated. I could hear him draw in his breath.

  “What?”

  “To have spent so much time on it. So many years. So much effort. I’m not a child any more. It’s taken me this long to know I’m good. But not good enough.”