The Complete Stories

by Anita Desai

  How I loved my mother’s sweetmeats, too – rather more, I’m sure, than I did the nondescript, mumbling, bald woman who made them. She never came to life for me, she lived some obscure, indoor life, unhealthy and curtained, undemanding and uninviting. But what halwa she made, what jalebis. I ate them so hot that I burnt the skin off my tongue. I stole my brothers’ and sisters’ share and was beaten and cursed by the whole family.

  Then, when I was older, there was a time when only the cinema mattered. I saw four, five, as many as six cinema shows a week, creeping out of my room at night barefoot, for silence, with money stolen from my father, or mother, or anyone, clutched in my hand, then racing through the night-wild bazaar in time for the last show. Meena Kumari and Nargis were to me the queens of heaven, I put myself in the place of their screen lovers and felt myself grow great, hirsute, active and aggressive as I sat on the straw-stuffed seat, my feet tucked up under me, a cone of salted gram in my hand, uneaten, as I stared at these glistening, sequined queens with my mouth open. Their attractions, their graces filled up the empty spaces of my life and gave it new colours, new rhythms. So then I became aware of the women of our mohalla as women: ripe matrons who stood in their doorways, hands on hips, in that hour of the afternoon when life paused and presented possibilities before evening duties choked them off, and the younger girls, always moving, never still, eluding touch. They were like reeds in dirty water for however shabby they were, however unlike the screen heroines, they never quite lacked the enticements of subtle smiles, sly glances and bits of gold braid and lace. Some answered the look in my eyes, promised me what I wanted, later perhaps, after the late show, not now.

  But all fell away from me, all disappeared in the shadows, on the side, when I met my Ustad and began to play for him. He took the place of my mother’s sweet halwa, the cinema heroines, the street beauties, marbles and stolen money, all the pleasures and riches I had so far contrived to extract from the hard stones of existence in my father’s house in the music lane. I did not need such toys any more, such toys and dreams. I had found my purpose in life and, by following it without hesitation and without holding back any part of myself, I found such satisfaction that I no longer wished for anything else.

  It is true I made a little money on these concert tours of ours, enough to take care of my father during his last years and his illness. I even married. That is, my mother managed to marry me off to some neighbour’s daughter of whom she was fond. The girl lived with her. I seldom visited her. I can barely remember her name, her face. She is safe with my mother and does not bother me. I remain free to follow my Ustad and play for him.

  I believe he has the same attitude to his family and the rest of the world. At all events I have not seen him show the faintest interest in anything but our music, our concerts. Perhaps he is married. I have heard something of the sort but not seen his wife or known him to visit her. Perhaps he has children and one day a son will appear onstage and be taught to accompany his father. So far it has not happened. It is true that in between tours we do occasionally go home for a few days of rest. Inevitably the Ustad and I both cut short these ‘holidays’ and return to his house in the city for practice. When I return, he does not question or even talk to me. But when he hears my step, he recognizes it, I know, for he smiles a half-smile, as if mocking himself and me, then he rolls back his muslin sleeve, lifts his sitar and nods in my direction. ‘The Raga Desh,’ he may announce, or ‘Malhar,’ or ‘Megh’, and I sit down behind him, on the bare floor, and play for him the notes he needs for the construction of the raga.

  You may think I exaggerate our relationship, his need of me, his reliance on my tanpura. You may point out that there are other members of his band who play more important roles. And I will confess you may be right, but only in a very superficial way. It is quite obvious that the tabla player who accompanies him plays an ‘important’ role – a very loud and aggressive, at times thunderous one. But what is this ‘importance’ of his? It is not indispensable. As even the foremost critics agree, my Ustad is at his best when he is playing the introductory passage, the unaccompanied alap. This he plays slowly, thoughtfully, with such purity and sensibility that I can never hear it without tears coming to my eyes. But once Ram Nath has joined in with a tap and a run of his fingers on the tablas, the music becomes quick, bold and competitive and, not only in my opinion but also in that of many critics, of diminished value. The audience certainly enjoys the gat more than the quiet alap, and it pays more attention to Ram Nath than to me. At times he even draws applause for his performance, during a particularly brilliant passage when he manages to match or even outshine my Ustad. Then my Ustad will turn to him and smile, faintly, in approval, or even nod silently for he is so greathearted and generous, my Ustad. He never does this to me. I sit at the back, almost concealed behind my master and his accompanist. I have no solo passage to play. I neither follow my Ustad’s raga nor enter into any kind of competition. Throughout the playing of the raga I run my fingers over the three strings of my tanpura, again and again, merely producing a kind of drone to fill up any interval in sound, to form a kind of road, or track, for my Ustad to keep to so he may not stray from the basic notes of the raga by which I hold him. Since I never compete, never ask for attention to be diverted from him to me, never try to rival him in his play, I maintain I am his true accompanist, certainly his truer friend. He may never smile and nod in approval of me. But he cannot do without me. This is all the reward I need to keep me with him like a shadow. It does not bother me at all when Ram Nath, who is coarse and hairy and scratches his big stomach under his shirt and wears gold rings in his ears like a washerman, puts out his foot and trips me as I am getting onto the stage, or when I see him helping himself to all the pulao on the table and leave me only some cold, unleavened bread. I know his true worth, or lack of it, and merely give him a look that will convey this to him.

  Only once was I shaken out of my contentment, my complacency. I am ashamed to reveal it to you, it was so foolish of me. It only lasted a very little while but I still feel embarrassed and stupid when I think of it. It was of course those empty-headed, marble-playing friends of my childhood who led me into it. Once I had put them behind me, I should never have looked back. But they came up to me, after a rehearsal in our home city, a few hours before the concert. They had stolen into the dark hall and sat in the back row, smoking and cracking jokes and laughing in a secret, muffled way which nevertheless drifted up to the stage, distracting those who were not sufficiently immersed in the music to be unaware of the outside world. Of course the Ustad and I never allowed our attention to stray and continued to attend to the music. Our ability to simply shut out all distraction from our minds when we play is a similarity between us of which I am very proud.

  As I was leaving the hall I saw they were still standing in the doorway, a jumbled stack of coloured shirts and oiled locks and garish shoes. They clustered around me and it was only because of the things they said, referring to our boyhood games in the alley, that I recognized them. In every other matter they differed totally from me, it was plain to see we had travelled in opposite directions. The colours of their cheap bush-shirts and their loud voices immediately gave me a headache and I found it hard to keep smiling although I knew I ought to be modest and affectionate to them as my art and my position called for such behaviour from me. I let them take me to the tea shop adjoining the concert hall and order tea for me. For a while we spoke of home, of games, of our families and friends. Then one of them – Ajit, I think – said, ‘Bhai, you used to play so well. Your father was so proud of you, he thought you would be a great Ustad. He used to tell us what a great musician you would be one day. What are you doing, sitting at the back of the stage, and playing the tanpura for Rahim Khan?’

  No one had ever spoken to me in this manner, in this voice, since my father died. I spilt tea down my lap. My head gave an uncontrolled jerk, I was so shocked. I half-stood up and thought I would catch him by his throat
and press till all those ugly words and ugly thoughts of his were choked, bled, white and incapable of moving again. Only I am not that sort of a man. I know myself to be weak, very weak. I only brushed the tea from my clothes and stood there, staring at my feet. I stared at my broken old sandals, streaked with tea, at my loose clothes of white homespun. I told myself I lived so differently from them, my aim and purpose in life were so different from anything those gaudy street vagabonds could comprehend that I should not be surprised or take it ill if there were such a lack of understanding between us.

  ‘What sort of instrument is the tanpura?’ Ajit was saying, still loudly. ‘Not even an accompaniment. It is nothing. Anyone could play it. Just three notes, over and over again. Even I could play it,’ he ended with a shout, making the others clap his back and lean forwards in laughter at his wit.

  Then Bhola leant towards me. He was the quietest of them, although he wore a shirt of purple and white flowers and had dyed his moustache ginger. I knew he had been to jail twice already for housebreaking and theft. Yet he dared to lean close to me, almost touching me, and to say, ‘Bhai, go back to the sitar. You even know how to play the sarod and the vina. You could be a great Ustad yourself, with some practice. We are telling you this for your own good. When you become famous and go to America, you will thank us for this advice. Why do you spend your life sitting at the back of the stage and playing that idiot tanpura while someone else takes all the fame and all the money from you?’

  It was as if they had decided to assault me. I felt as if they were climbing on top of me, choking me, grabbing me by my hair and dragging me down. Their words were blows, the idea they were throwing at me an assault. I felt beaten, destroyed, and with my last bit of strength shook them off, threw them off and, pushing aside the table and cups and plates, ran out of the tea shop. I think they followed me because I could hear voices calling me as I went running down the street, pushing against people and only just escaping from under the rickshaws, tongas and buses. It was afternoon, there were crowds on the street, dust and smoke blotted out the natural light of day. I saw everything as vile, as debased, as something amoral and ugly, and pushed it aside, pushed through as I ran.

  And all the time I thought, Are they right? Could I have played the sitar myself? Or the sarod, or the vina? And become an Ustad myself? This had never before occurred to me. My father had taught me to play all these instruments and disciplined me severely, but he had never praised me or suggested I could become a front-rank musician. I had learnt to play these instruments as the son of a carpenter would naturally have learnt to make beds and tables and shelves, or the son of a shopkeeper learnt to weigh grain and sell and make money. But I had practised on these instruments and played the ragas he taught me to play without thinking of it as an art or of myself as artist. Perhaps I was a stupid, backward boy. My father always said so. Now these boys, who had heard me play in the dark hall of our house in the music lane, told me I could have been an Ustad myself, sat in the centre of the stage, played for great audiences and been applauded for my performance. Were they right? Was this true? Had I wasted my life?

  As I ran and pushed, half-crying, I thought these things for the first time in my life, and they were frightening thoughts – large, heavy, dark ones that threatened to crush and destroy me. I found myself pushed up against an iron railing. Holding onto its bars, looking through tears at the beds of flowering cannas and rows of imperial palms of a dusty city park, I hung against those railings, sobbing, till I heard someone address me – possibly a policeman, or a beggar, or perhaps just a kindly passer-by. ‘In trouble?’ he asked me. ‘Got into trouble, boy?’ I did not want to speak to anyone and shook him off without looking at him and found the gate and went into the park, trying to control myself and order my thoughts.

  I found a path between some tall bushes, and walked up and down here, alone, trying to think. Having cried, I felt calmer now. I had a bad headache but I was calmer. I talked to myself.

  When I first met my Ustad, I was a boy of fifteen – a stupid, backward boy as my father had often told me I was. When I walked up to the stage to give him the tanpura he had ordered from my father, I saw greatness in his face, the calm and wisdom and kindness of a true leader. Immediately I wished to deliver not only my tanpura but my whole life into his hands. Take me, I wanted to say, take me and lead me. Show me how to live. Let me live with you, by you, and help me, be kind to me. Of course I did not say these words. He took the tanpura from me and asked me to play it for him. This was his answer to the words I had not spoken but which he had nevertheless heard. ‘Play for me’ – and with these words he created me, created my life, gave it form and distinction and purpose. It was the moment of my birth and he was both my father and my mother to me. He gave birth to me – Bhaiyya, the tanpura player.

  Before that I had no life. I was nothing: a dirty, hungry street urchin, knocking about in the lane with other idlers and vagrants. I had played music only because my father made me, teaching me by striking me across the knuckles and pulling my ears for every mistake I made. I had stolen money and sweets from my mother. I was nothing. And no one cared that I was nothing. It was Ustad Rahim Khan who saw me, hiding awkwardly in the shadows of an empty hall with a tanpura in my hands, and called me to come to him and showed me what to do with my life. I owe everything to him, my very life to him.

  Yes, it was my destiny to play the tanpura for a great Ustad, to sit behind him where he cannot even see me, and play the notes he needs so that he may not stray from the bounds of his composition when gripped by inspiration. I give him, quietly and unobtrusively, the materials upon which he works, with which he constructs the great music for which the whole world loves him. Yes, anyone could play the tanpura for him, do what I do. But he did not take anyone else, he chose me. He gave me my destiny, my life. Could I have refused him? Does a mortal refuse God?

  It made me smile to think anyone could be such a fool. Even I, Bhaiyya, had known when the hour of my destiny had struck. Even a backward, feckless boy from the streets had recognized his god when he met him. I could not have refused. I took up the tanpura and played for my Ustad, and I have played for him since. I could not have wished for a finer destiny.

  Leaving the park, I hailed a tonga and ordered the driver to take me to my Ustad. Never in my life had I spoken so loudly, as surely as I did then. You should have heard me. I wish my Ustad had heard me.

  A Devoted Son

  When the results appeared in the morning papers, Rakesh scanned them, barefoot and in his pyjamas, at the garden gate, then went up the steps to the veranda where his father sat sipping his morning tea and bowed down to touch his feet.

  ‘A first division, son?’ his father asked, beaming, reaching for the papers.

  ‘At the top of the list, Papa,’ Rakesh murmured, as if awed. ‘First in the country.’

  Bedlam broke loose then. The family whooped and danced. The whole day long visitors streamed into the small yellow house at the end of the road, to congratulate the parents of this wunderkind, to slap Rakesh on the back and fill the house and garden with the sounds and colours of a festival. There were garlands and halwa, party clothes and gifts (enough fountain pens to last years, even a watch or two), nerves and temper and joy, all in a multicoloured whirl of pride and great shining vistas newly opened: Rakesh was the first son in the family to receive an education, so much had been sacrificed in order to send him to school and then medical college, and at last the fruits of their sacrifice had arrived, golden and glorious.

  To everyone who came to him to say, ‘Mubarak, Varmaji, your son has brought you glory,’ the father said, ‘Yes, and do you know what is the first thing he did when he saw the results this morning? He came and touched my feet. He bowed down and touched my feet.’ This moved many of the women in the crowd so much that they were seen to raise the ends of their saris and dab at their tears while the men reached out for the betel leaves and sweetmeats that were offered around on trays and shook
their heads in wonder and approval of such exemplary filial behaviour. ‘One does not often see such behaviour in sons any more,’ they all agreed, a little enviously perhaps. Leaving the house, some of the women said, sniffing, ‘At least on such an occasion they might have served pure ghee sweets,’ and some of the men said, ‘Don’t you think old Varma was giving himself airs? He needn’t think we don’t remember that he comes from the vegetable market himself, his father used to sell vegetables, and he has never seen the inside of a school.’ But there was more envy than rancour in their voices and it was, of course, inevitable – not every son in that shabby little colony at the edge of the city was destined to shine as Rakesh shone, and who knew that better than the parents themselves?

  And that was only the beginning, the first step in a great, sweeping ascent to the radiant heights of fame and fortune. The thesis he wrote for his MD brought Rakesh still greater glory, if only in select medical circles. He won a scholarship. He went to the USA (that was what his father learnt to call it and taught the whole family to say – not America, which was what the ignorant neighbours called it, but, with a grand familiarity, ‘the USA’) where he pursued his career in the most prestigious of all hospitals and won encomiums from his American colleagues which were relayed to his admiring and glowing family. What was more, he came back, he actually returned to that small yellow house in the once-new but increasingly shabby colony, right at the end of the road where the rubbish vans tipped out their stinking contents for pigs to nose in and rag-pickers to build their shacks on, all steaming and smoking just outside the neat wire fences and well-tended gardens. To this Rakesh returned and the first thing he did on entering the house was to slip out of the embraces of his sisters and brothers and bow down and touch his father’s feet.

  As for his mother, she gloated chiefly over the strange fact that he had not married in America, had not brought home a foreign wife as all her neighbours had warned her he would, for wasn’t that what all Indian boys went abroad for? Instead he agreed, almost without argument, to marry a girl she had picked out for him in her own village, the daughter of a childhood friend, a plump and uneducated girl, it was true, but so old-fashioned, so placid, so complaisant that she slipped into the household and settled in like a charm, seemingly too lazy and too good-natured to even try and make Rakesh leave home and set up independently, as any other girl might have done. What was more, she was pretty – really pretty, in a plump, pudding way that only gave way to fat – soft, spreading fat, like warm wax – after the birth of their first baby, a son, and then what did it matter?