The formality continued. Was some grim announcement about to be made? Had some unspoken taboo been violated? Had I inadvertently committed an outrage on some religiously held custom or belief? If so, how had that involved Tej, who now appeared to share my lonely status?
April arrived all of a sudden one day, and the wheat crop ripened with it. Tej’s birthday was on the tenth, and for a week I pored over a cookbook I had found in my big red steamer trunk. I was looking for a cake recipe that could be adapted to the materials at hand: coarse whole wheat flour for fine cake flour, an improvised contraption for an oven, a small tin of baking powder of doubtful age got with difficulty from Ladopur at a shop recommended by the Mission ladies. It was going to be a surprise.
I thought I had taken care of everything and got together all the necessary ingredients and utensils beforehand. But when I went into the kitchen that morning ready to get started, I could see at a glance that the services of Udmi Ram and Chotu were not going to be available to me. They were both busier than usual, trying to fulfill the instructions of two or three women at a time and getting little done in the process.
Giant cauldrons had been gotten out from the storeroom, and ladles to match. Mounds of wheat flour, raw rice, dal, and spices were being measured out by Dilraj Kaur (dressed at that early hour in red, bridal finery!) while Mataji was seeing to the lighting of fires in big stoves made of mud and cow dung that had sprung into being overnight. Outside, under a mango tree, the tandoor for baking six chapattis at a time was being got ready. It was a woman’s show. Pitaji and Hari and the cousins from Amritsar had gone off to see to the harvesting, while in the kitchen, there was an inspired purposefulness—that and a kind of sober gaiety—to the proceedings. Something big was going on. For Tej’s birthday? Nobody had bothered to tell me about it. Was I supposed, somehow, to know without being told? Was it one of those things so taken for granted that no one saw fit to enlighten me? Or was it, as it appeared, that everyone was too busy, and I was in the way? Rano in passing breathed something about the feast being given “for Bhaji’s long life,” and then hurried away to help Goodi supervise the readying of brass trays for serving a multitude, judging from the stacks being brought out of the storeroom and rinsed off by Ram Piari.
Onto this busy scene I made my cautious way, found a small mud stove in a corner, one which was for everyday use, and decided to manage the cake somehow on my own, no matter how long it took me to locate a big pan, hunt for some sand to heat in it, find a lid that fitted and some hot coals to put on top, all to create oven-like conditions. Eventually I acquired all the material on my own and through my own exertions the singed fingers, blackened nails, smoke-reddened eyes, and sweaty forehead that testified to my industry. But it somehow seemed selfish, one-sided, lonely, diminished, taking place as it did in the shadow of the larger, communal effort led by Dilraj Kaur. Mataji and the girls and the entire battery of house servants, joined by others loaned for the occasion from other houses with whom the family had close relations, awaited her instructions like a disciplined army platoon.
They began arriving early that morning, Majra’s poor, the birthday guests, as it slowly became clear to me. Children first, each carrying an aluminum plate; then their parents. Landless peasants. Not happy ones with cheery faces, but destitute and ill-clad and sullen in faded, earth-colored clothes. Drab dupattas, rags and hand-me-downs for turbans, frayed hems, lined faces, dirt-clogged fingernails; rough, gnarled hands; big, splay-toed, bare feet; burnt-out eyes in which curiosity and anticipation of the meal flickered. They lined up, sat down on the ground, smiled white-toothed, obsequious smiles. And waited.
Dilraj Kaur emerged from the kitchen to order them all in military tones to arrange themselves according to caste. She wanted the potters, the water carriers, the carpenters, and the leather workers, all to sit in separate groups and be counted. Children who had arrived together with their friends, split up to sit with their parents.
After that the food was plentifully if hastily served by Dilraj Kaur herself, aided by the girls and Mataji. Within minutes the whole of it was consumed. From somewhere someone produced a drum, and a desultory shuffling of feet began. Dust got kicked up. The rhythm got faster, and some of the girls and women started to dance. Caught up in the fun of it, they forgot momentarily who they were in the presence of. Giggled, laughed, shouted! Kicked up more dust. The words of the songs must have got too racy for the family’s chaste ears, as Mataji told them to sing something else, and Dilraj Kaur abruptly ordered them all off. I glimpsed Tej in the veranda in front of the door to the living room. He was acknowledging in an embarrassed, self-conscious way (so untypical of him) the salaams of the guests as they silently filed out of our compound, the children seeking out their friends, the castes getting all mixed up again in the process. Nobody in the family had said “happy birthday” to Tej. I supposed that was a Western thing to do, just as feasting the poor on a son’s birthday was Punjabi.
When they had all gone, something made me look at Dilraj Kaur. She was about to faint. Her face was pale, and she was breathing hard. There was an odd, intense look in her eyes. By an act of will, she might make it to her room and lie down. In the excitement of family and servants ensuring that she did just that, a handkerchief soaked in cold water was applied to her head, tea was made, a doctor sent for. Exclamations were heard: “Poor thing. She is fasting to death!” “She’s overworked!” “All for Bhaji.” “His long life.” “She saw to the whole thing today herself.”
And I forgot the cake. When I went to take it out of the “oven,” it was a charred block of dough on the outside, raw inside. I grabbed it up in a towel, and when no one was looking, went outside the courtyard into the area where the cattle were kept. I threw it as far as I could, ran after it and then gave it a fierce kick. Pieces of it landed in the shed where their unexpected appearance caused no show of alarm in the bemused expression of the cow standing there by the feed trough.
20
Word got out that night: Veera Bai “khaid di hai.” Veera Bai was “playing.” News like that got around, somehow, from kitchen to kitchen, via the servants. It spread, a quiet fire, through the village, never lighting a conflagration, but hurrying along from one place to another, like the fiery glow along a slow-burning fuse. Those in Majra who craved messages from the spirit world, hoarded love charms, relied on amulets to ward off disease or to ensure the long life of sons, who burned to do someone in, or were simply curious, would visit Veera Bai’s hut that night. I had heard there would be big gatherings on some occasions, and only two or three people attending at other times. With the coming of summer, and on a night of the full moon like tonight, Veera Bai’s clientele could be expected to pick up, Rano once told me.
I wondered what Veera Bai got out of it. Did she really have any control over when the fit would come on and the spirit of a dead person would enter her? Did the full moon have anything to do with it? It had risen in the early evening, all the more orange because of the dust haze and smoke from village fires. Now it was well overhead and white as I watched it from my window. Shadows in the yard were thrown into bold contrast against the rest of the surroundings on which where conferred the clarity of day.
Tej and Hari and the cousins from Amritsar had left for the fields right after an early dinner. The wheat crop was being harvested round the clock. Tonight the work would be made easier, lighted as it was by the white globe of the moon. The operation had to be completed as quickly as possible, and labor had been contracted on a twenty-four-hour basis. It was going to be a long shift for Tej, since he had to leave for Ambala early the next morning to take care of some affairs for Pitaji at the District Headquarters. There had been barely time before he left for the fields for me to present him with the knitted tie I had made for his birthday, surreptitiously over a period of months, from a kit I had brought with me from California.
A stillness enveloped the house. The dogs, untied from their daytime confinement, had exchanged their noc
turnal greetings and growls and had fallen silent. The sound of the harvesters singing to their task, borne along on the night wind, came clear and strong from fields that were acres away. The light in Dilraj Kaur’s room was on. Her shadow behind the drawn curtain. She had not come out of her room since her near collapse hours earlier. To ensure her a good night’s rest, Mataji had suggested taking Nikku to her own room to sleep after seeing that Dilraj Kaur had had something to eat. As I watched Mataji leading Nikku off, I made a decision that took me less than half a minute to come to.
The night settled down into a moonlit, shadow-splashed calm. Work in the kitchen was finished. The servants had bedded down for the night, the women had retired to their rooms. Yet there was a busyness. It emanated from outside our compound and had to do not only with the singing from far away, but with the electric current in the air that began and ended with Veera Bai “playing.” Her hut was on the village outskirts in the heart of the colony for sweepers and others who performed what was considered lowly tasks. It wouldn’t be hard to find. All I had to do was get into costume and wait for my cue. It came before many minutes had passed.
The light in Dilraj Kaur’s room went out, and I saw her door open. As on earlier occasions, she left the house, keeping to the shadows, walking briskly but lightly across the compound and disappearing through a barely visible gap in the hibiscus hedge beside the gate. I kept a certain distance behind her, hoping the dogs would not be alarmed by my unusual appearance in the yard at that time of night and give me away. Once outside the compound, I came to appreciate the institution of purdah. Covering my head, face, and shoulders and a shawl had rendered me anonymous, especially since I’d thrown it over the dullest colored outfit I had. I could have been any woman, of any age.
Dilraj Kaur hurried off in the direction I knew she’d take. The way led through a mango grove that was adjacent to our house and along a path that skirted the village. She abruptly cut off into a side lane and then headed for the sweepers’ colony where the light from a hut shone dimly in the distance, drawing the villagers on like a lamp attracting flying termites after a rain.
I was only a few yards away now and could hear the sound of cymbals being struck. Six or seven women hung back tentatively on the threshold of the hut, not knowing whether they wanted to go inside or not, while others pressed eagerly on. A few children stood about, expecting to be sent away any moment, and so kept out of the way of adults. When I got to the door a fat woman in a hurry jostled past, and I found myself pushed against the outside wall. A young girl pulled my shawl to get me to sit down. And so I sat—looking into that diorama of a scene, boxed in as it was. The foreground figures melted away into the hazy backdrop of Veera Bai’s hut.
Villagers already inside were conferring with one another. I could scarcely see them, and, as far as I was concerned, they were mere voices speaking out of the darkness made murkier by the smoke rising from incense and from some burning coals that flickered in an earthen pot in front of the seated Veera Bai. “She won’t go through with the session tonight,” a woman said. “Of course she will,” another contradicted her. Yet a third voice, this time a man’s, said, “Whenever she starts playing, it never stops until the spirit has spoken.”
Gradually my eyes got accustomed to the dim light, and I was able to make out some familiar faces: village women who had been present for the feast earlier that day; a young girl who occasionally came to help in our house when we had more than the usual number of guests to deal with. And there was Dilraj Kaur. She had walked in ahead of me without looking right or left, and was allowed to take her place in front of the others. In deference to her caste? Her status as a member of the most important family in the village and the daughter-in-law of the Major-Sahib? Or just because she was Dilraj Kaur? Whatever the reason, she now sat directly in front of Veera Bai. A low stool had materialized especially for her to sit on. It appeared to be the only item of furniture in the room.
I was amazed at myself for being able to sit there and take in the scene without bolting, because I was on the far side of becoming overwhelmed by fear. It was a fear that went beyond my anxiety not to be recognized. It went beyond shaky legs and heart palpitations. Instead, hostile hands held me in their fierce control. They were hands that could neither be seen nor touched, and were all the more terrible because they could be felt. I couldn’t free myself from their grip. The conviction that I couldn’t move was altogether irrational and ran riot along the nerves like some message gone haywire. Besides, the place itself had a bad “feel,” some madness to it older than the human race. Sitting there became an exercise in unmasking that madness and finding my own features behind the false face.
Here was our young sweeperess, Veera Bai, seated on a mat in the center of the room, with ten or fifteen women and men around her. The ground they met her on was not of the everyday world of Majra. Before losing contact with that world myself, I wanted to stand up and say, “Listen to me. That’s just Veera Bai. Why are you all sitting around her as if she were a goddess? She keeps our yards swept clean. She has a smile for us in the morning. She’s the one you shout at when you’re not satisfied with her work. So why this now?” I wanted to say all this, but at the same time I was not sure whether it was the truth exactly. It was this dilemma that made me want to get out of there before I lost the sense of who I was. The purdah had already concealed my identity from others and given the lie to reality. At this moment, I was incognito, even to myself.
Meanwhile, the sweeperess was undergoing a startling change. She stared at the burning coals in the earthen pot in front of her and at some other paraphernalia before her which I couldn’t see from where I sat, but could only guess at. There would be a conch shell, perhaps. Some colored beads or a peacock feather. The flames created a red, low-angle glow that illuminated her deep-set eyes and high cheekbones and projected her shadow against the wall behind her, transforming the girl into a giantess.
Seated cross-legged on the floor, she closed her eyes and began to sway slowly. Not back and forth, but in a circular motion, describing a figure eight. Each configuration was wider than the previous one and was accomplished at a faster speed. Shortly thereafter she began to moan and, before long, Veera Bai’s hair uncoiled from its knot and fell in a coarse, thick rope around her shoulders.
With each completion of the ever-widening, ever-faster circle, her hair flew about more wildly until it became a swirling, whipping mass of black about her head; the moan rose to a wail. The crowd ceased to breathe. This is what they had been waiting for. When it became clear that no flesh and blood could endure more ecstasy, Veera Bai slumped forward without warning and became perfectly still. All the while, Dilraj Kaur, like everyone else there, sat rigid with anticipation.
When the girl sat upright again, she was no longer Veera Bai, but a human vessel containing the spirit of a dead person and brimful of its messages. Her pupils were rolled back. The whites were laced with red. Drugs? Delirium? Rapture? Or the sheer exquisiteness of being possessed?
“The spirit has entered her,” a woman mumbled.
“How will we know when it leaves?” a small girl beside her asked in a loud voice.
“Shsh!” an old woman sitting in front of them hissed.
From somewhere in the darkened room a voice came: “You will come to know, all right. The earthen pot on the shelf there will fall and break into pieces,” it said.
Everyone looked around, but no one could tell who had spoken. No one moved for a full minute. The sorceress sat impassive, in a trance.
Then Loverheard one of the women near me whisper, “I once saw a sorceress in another village take a lock of baby’s hair that a woman had handed her. She tied it up in a scrap of red cloth and gave it back to the woman.”
“Must have been a lock of a male child’s hair. To do him harm. To bring him bad luck. Death,” her companion said in an undertone.
“The woman was told to leave the baby’s hair wrapped up in the same cloth at a crossr
oads,” the first woman whispered.
“Yes. Always at a crossroads,” said the other. “And whoever picks it up will also be cursed with bad luck.”
The sorceress continued to sit, her head thrown back, red-eyed, staring at nothing. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, the voice was not Veera Bai’s nor anyone else’s the Majra villagers had ever heard. They listened with their entire bodies, heads nodding, eyes intense, waiting to be called, to receive from her magic hands the charms sealed in metal lockets and strung on black threads that, tied around the loins of a male child, would ensure his survival into adulthood. There would be short mantras whispered into the ears of jealous wives, chants that would win back a wayward husband from his mistress; phials of love potions to start romances.
Dilraj Kaur signaled that she had a request. She drew closer to the sorceress and said something in a low voice. This time the spirit was heard only by Dilraj Kaur. She asked question after question, and the answers came pouring out of the mouth of the sorceress, in hoarse whispers. Dilraj Kaur’s face was turned toward the door now, as she bent to hear the words from the spirit. I thought she had caught sight of me. Had recognized me. But she was only staring in the direction of the door, I decided, while concentrating on the message she had come to hear. It was almost possible for me to read the answers in Dilraj Kaur’s expression. She was frowning, her eyes wild and bright with purpose. Once or twice she appeared to ask for further directions or explanations about whatever it was she was being advised to do. At length the sorceress, her bloodshot eyes still fixed on another world, held up an amulet on a black string, tied it ceremoniously in a piece of blood-red cloth, and handed it to Dilraj Kaur: literally pressed it into her palm and closed Dilraj Kaur’s fingers over it.
Then everything happened at once. There was one last rough whisper from the spirit before the earthen pot on the shelf crashed to the mud floor. It was as if an alarm had gone off. Astonished cries went up from the crowd, followed by groans of disappointment. The spirit would speak no more that night. Meanwhile, Dilraj Kaur had gotten up hurriedly and made for the door of the hut. In my rush to get a head start on her, I dropped my shawl. It slipped from my head and fell around my shoulders. A small boy beside me looked up in surprise. “It’s the Mem!” he cried. “The Memsahib from the big house!” His eyes danced with excitement, and a smile lit his face as he turned to get the attention of others he could share the news with. In an instant, a cluster of curious faces stared into mine, and exclamations of disbelief, shock, and amusement arose. I covered my face again as fast as I could, but not before Dilraj Kaur had shot me a startled look of recognition as she rushed past me without saying a word. Once home, I turned off the kerosene lantern and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Dilraj Kaur’s bright glance as she took note of my unexpected presence at the door of Veera Bai’s hut. I got up, and the full moon followed me as I paced back and forth. I went to draw the curtain and looked out of the window. Dilraj Kaur’s light was on, and she was standing on the veranda outside her room. I watched her a long moment. She seemed to be beckoning to someone below. And then I saw Tej, back from the harvesting, crossing the yard. Instead of coming straight to our room on the ground floor, he climbed the stairway to her veranda, and the two of them went inside.
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