“Choti bahu was in labor all night. The whole night,” she said, exaggerating things slightly. “The Mission Miss-Sahib herself came from Ladopur to deliver the child.”
Rano and Goodi took turns dressing and undressing Bawa, giving him oil rubs and combing with a little blue comb the tuft of black hair on the top of his head. Nikku spent long moments watching Bawa sleep, waiting impatiently for this fat infant to grow up so that he would have a permanent playmate. In a letter to Mama and Papa I wrote that Bawa was so appropriated by everyone that Tej and I scarcely got any time with him. “We’re mere custodians,” I wrote.
On the third day relatives started arriving from out of town: the Uncle and Aunt from Amritsar, aged parents of Prem, Sukhdev, and Jeet; a second cousin from Ludhiana who owned a factory which manufactured men’s underwear; and the sister-in-law of Mataji’s real cousin-brother from Bhatinda (the sister-in-law was from Bhatinda, not the cousin-brother) who had been a famous beauty and at seventy-three still dressed in the height of fashion to the delight of some and the disapproval of others.
Two young boys had to be brought in from the village as added help in the kitchen, and they settled down with Udmi Ram and Chotu peeling potatoes and exchanging gossip. Gian and Ram Piari handed out rolls of bedding that had been packed away for just such an occasion in Mataji’s big quilt boxes in the storeroom. Ten charpoys were borrowed from neighbors to put up guests for the several nights they were expected to stay.
On the fourth day after Bawa’s arrival I was brought out ceremoniously and seated on the downstairs veranda outside our room. An upholstered chair from the sitting room had been brought out for the purpose. For a brief moment I felt a chill run through me that could have originated from a Himalayan peak; instead it was Dilraj Kaur watching me from the upstairs balcony outside her room. The next moment, Mataji was seeing to it that I sat straight in my chair, the better to set off the new gold necklace and six bangles she and Pitaji had presented me with, and the new suit she had had stitched for the occasion. It was stiff with gold embroidery and still had the smell of the tailor’s shop—a combination of stale marijuana smoke and sewing machine oil.
“Sit here,” she said to me as a parade of village women entered the compound. Each of them carried a spray of paddy and laid it at my feet.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked Rano.
“Just sit. Smile. They’ve come to sing and dance for you, Bhabi,” she said, “and to see Bawa.” She placed him, wiggly and red-faced and dressed in his finest, on my lap. It was a scene that could not have been possible without Bawa in it, nor me, his mother. It was dismaying to realize I had achieved status at last, not by dint of mastering some exotic skill, but by doing one of the most ordinary things in the world: having a baby.
Uncle Gurnam Singh had the farthest to come and so arrived last, in a swirl of dust, in his jeep, with his retinue. By then I was up and about and was there with the rest of the family to greet them.
I watched the baggage being unloaded from the jeep and passengers piling out, laughing and talking and shouting Sat Sri Akal. Instead of Shiv Kanwar Singh, Brother John, and Santji, there were other people accompanying Uncle Gurnam Singh this time. Two women and a little girl called “Baby” alighted along with Surinder, Uncle’s youngest son. One of the women had to be Aunt Gursharan Kaur, the other perhaps a younger sister or cousin of Aunt’s. The latter stepped down from the jeep and looked circumspectly around. I guessed this was her first visit to Majra. Tej and Hari and Pitaji formed a group in the yard with the other men surrounding the laughing Uncle Gurnam Singh who had just had something witty to say and was appreciating his own joke.
The women were all herded into our room to have a look at Bawa. Aunt Gursharan Kaur, a greying, comfortable woman with heavy-lidded brown eyes and a cheerful smile, stood half a head taller than the others around the cradle. Their talk and laughter woke up Bawa, and he began to cry.
“Na, na, beta,” Aunt Gursharan Kaur said. She picked him up and held him against her ample bosom until he quietened down again. She continued to pat his back long after he stopped crying.
“He looks just like Tej did as a baby,” she declared to the company at large.
“But he has Helen’s eyes,” Mataji said. “Everyone says so.”
Every woman in the room, including Bibi Harminder, as the young woman along with Aunt Gursharan Kaur was called, had her own idea about who Bawa looked like.
“He’s just like Mataji,” the young woman declared. She was short and sturdy, with strong arms, hands used to hard work, a cautious expression, and a discreet sense of rank. It was plain to see from the start that she knew how to make herself useful and accommodating to elders.
Aunt Gursharan was soon at the heart of things. She had a way of busying herself with various small undertakings which consumed time marvelously and provided unending interest to the other women and girls. When she embarked on a cooking project it would take hours, perhaps half a day, and watching Aunt prepare halwa, everybody’s favorite dessert, offered a minor spectacle. She sat in the middle of the kitchen on a squat, brightly painted stool, giving orders to Udmi Ram in her soft, persuasive voice, while Bibi Harminder hulled almonds, ground spices, and stirred concoctions bubbling on two or three fires at a time. Aunt went on unperturbed when the wheat, parching in melted butter, got too brown. As I watched her, I kept thinking she couldn’t possibly be as happy and contented as she appeared to be, given the circumstances of her life with Uncle. And his concubine.
And then, of course, the plain truth bubbled up and boiled over like a pan of milk forgotten on the stove. Bibi Harminder was the concubine! I wanted to laugh. At my own dull-wittedness for not recognizing her in the first place, her and her little girl. At Uncle’s audacity in bringing them along. At the two women themselves, neatly complementing each other, dividing up the work and the responsibilities in the kitchen; sharing the man between them, whatever little time he had for them. They had more to do with each other than either of them had to do with Uncle, preoccupied as he was with his farm, his political career, and his tours around the countryside. Bibi Harminder must have come as a welcome pair of extra hands in the running of his overburdened household.
And it had worked. They succeeded where Dilraj Kaur and I had failed. They shared the same values, had the same expectations, were propped up by the same underlying beliefs. Dilraj Kaur and I were like bits of matter spun off stars from different galaxies. Neither of us knew where the other was coming from as we whizzed toward each other on a calamitous course. I knew in that instant that, much as she had tried to force the comparison between me and Uncle’s concubine, she could not make me out to be Tej’s concubine. It had been foolish of me to fear that she could.
But here in this kitchen, watching this world of women in whose orbit I myself was spinning, I wanted to sing out in celebration. To cheer Mataji most of all! I remembered her earlier expressions of disapproval and outrage at Uncle bringing his concubine into the house. Now she accepted Bibi Harminder and her daughter “Baby” as a matter of fact. Uncle had seen fit to bring them along, and so they were guests, welcome, but with not quite the same fervor, perhaps, as the others were. Mataji’s about-face had to do with something indefinable, with the way each person’s thread is woven into the complex fabric of life, once that fabric is on the weaving frame and the shuttle in motion. No questions asked. No more than one would “question” the pattern of a particular shawl on a loom.
The halwa for tea was ready now. Aunt Gursharan Kaur had lifted the big cooking vessel off the stove and handed it over to Bibi Harminder, who ladled out the sweet. No one remarked about Dilraj Kaur’s absence from an activity she’d normally be part of until Goodi ran breathlessly into the kitchen, swinging wide the screen door and allowing it to bang shut.
“Bawa’s hair’s been cut!” she exclaimed. “Rano Didi and I were going to comb his hair, and the little bit on top is missing!”
“Just snipped off!” Ran
o said, hurrying in after Goodi.
Epilogue
There’s talk of Tej and me moving to Delhi with Bawa. To start a new life on our own, just the three of us. Tej says Majra will always be home, and he’s right, in a sense. But then again it may be that Delhi will be home. Or somewhere else. It may be that home is a state of mind where repose holds sway, where the series of stills we perceive as motion ceases, where wonder at the constancy of things lies at the heart of a sure feeling of having arrived finally.
Mataji and Pitaji have become reconciled to the idea of our going, and they’re already talking about finding a bride for Hari. Majra continues to be a place where only deaths occasionally occur suddenly. Everything else takes time. Dilraj Kaur left for Faridkot a week ago, a full fortnight after Bawa’s lock of hair, tied up in a red cloth, was discovered in her room. She took Nikku with her. Her brother Arjun Singh came to escort her to his village. She took a lot of baggage—almost all her belongings—as her stay there is to be indefinite. Nikku cried when he said good-bye to Tej. As they passed through the gate that Gian swung open for them and started out onto the road to Abdullapur, Nikku cast me a look over his shoulder that was half appeal, half apology. For what? On whose behalf? Mataji called him back for one final hug. She wiped the tears from her eyes with her dupatta as she sent him hurrying after his mother and uncle.
Each day Pitaji scans the skies for signs of rain clouds. The air is heavy and laden with moisture, the white heat clamped down under a lid of dust haze. It is that time of year again. The leaves on the trees and in the hedges have turned crisp in the hot winds of summer and wear a layer of fine dust. The fields have become dry, cracked tracts of land covered with stubble left after the wheat harvest. The hours from dawn to dusk are spent indoors, listening to the wind and breathing in dust particles that find their way through the smallest cracks in the doorjambs and window frames. Inside the thick walls of the house, we try to keep cool as we wait for the monsoon.
If Tej and I and Bawa go to live in Delhi, it will be like this: We will leave some hot night, in the middle of the night, to catch the 2 A.M. train from Abdullapur station. My red steamer trunk, boxes of kitchen utensils and crockery from Mataji’s storeroom, suitcases of clothes, thermoses, and bedrolls will be piled high onto the bullock cart. Hari and the Amritsar cousins will walk with us the four miles, taking turns carrying Bawa and stopping to lift the cart out of a rut when its wheels get stuck in the mud.
Good-byes will have to be quick, because the train to Delhi stops for only five minutes.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Jacquelin Singh
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2842-4
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