‘Get hold of the bitch,’ screamed the police officer.
Mataji strode down till she came face to face with the officer. Her face was like a sheet of red hot iron. For a moment time came to a petrified standstill. The constables, the disciples and I gaped spellbound at the confrontation. They glowered at each other. Sparks flew. The trident on Mataji’s forehead shone. Her eyes were like volcano craters.
The officer’s eyes gradually lost their fire. His gaze shifted from Mataji’s face to the setting sun. He stepped back, put his pistol in the holster and said to his men, ‘Release them.’
Mataji walked triumphantly back into her boat. We collected our belongings and followed her. The exhibition of her divine power had us completely spellbound.
Mataji fed us. The sun went down. The dusky soot of twilight mingled in the waters of the Ganga. I asked permission to leave. Mataji replied: ‘It is masya – the moonless night meant for prayer. Stay and join us.’
Mataji took out new earthenware oil lamps and dipped them in the stream. She filled them with coconut oil, rolled wicks, lit them and put them round the image of Shiva. She went out and bathed in the Ganga and came back to us. She was wearing a fresh sari bordered with red and had let down her long hair. She chanted at the top of her voice, ‘Bhum...bhum...bhum.’ Her disciples took up the chant. Mataji said, ‘You go on with the worship. I must go and pay my homage to the Lord of the Burning Ghats. I’ll be back soon.’ The worship continued. The smoke from the lamps and the fumes of ganja filled the boat with acrid vapours.
We waited till midnight. There was no sign of Mataji. Then we heard footsteps come up the gangway. A man stood at the door. We could not see him clearly, only his white muslin shirt and dhoti flapped in the breeze. He came in. He was big and his walrus moustache hung down to his chin. Prem Das asked: ‘Have you come to see Mataji?’
‘Yes,’ replied the man. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you at this hour. Where is she?’
Prem Das growled at the man and said, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’
The stranger smiled and replied: ‘Earlier in the day I was the superintendent of police. Now I come here as just Mangal Singh.’
Prem Das and I exchanged glances. Prem Das asked Mangal Singh to sit down and said: ‘Mataji has been away since 8 o’clock. She said she was going to pay homage to the Lord of the Burning Ghats and would be back soon.’
Mangal Singh appeared startled. A shadow crossed his face and he shook his head and said: ‘She will never come back again.’
(Translated from the Punjabi by Khushwant Singh)
T W E N T Y - O N E
Memories of an Indian
Childhood
QURRATULAIN HYDER
The emaciated old man in the threadbare, shiny black suit arrived punctually at three in the afternoon. With his walking stick he gently tapped the gravel in the front porch till a passing servant – usually Faqira – heard the familiar sound and went inside.
‘Master Sahib has come,’ Baji was informed.
The old man walked down the poplar-lined drive and reached the side verandah. Feeling each step with his cane he carefully climbed the wide flight of stairs and softly called, ‘Resham, Resham.’
Resham came running, followed by Baji who gracefully carried the sitar. The way my fabulous Rehana Baji handled the sitar could teach a thing or two to Ravi Varma – were he alive – or to any Bengal-school artist worth his watercolours who painted dark-eyed, sitar-playing damsels. Graciously she said ‘Adaab’, sat down on the edge of the settee and took the instrument out of its purple kamkhwab cover. The music lesson began....
After a light shower of rain a magical fragrance filled the air. A lone bird whistled through the leafy silence. Or a mountain wind rose and made the trees shed their unripe fruit. Often a dim, cold sun trickled through the rain and the garden turned to gold. On his way out through the orchard the old man sometimes found a peach – partly eaten by a parrot – lying in the wet, intensely green, cool grass. He picked it up, cleaned it carefully with his handkerchief and shoved it in his pocket.
Doglike, Resham always followed him to the gate. Often she vanished in a rose bush looking for prey or deftly climbed a tree. The old man looked up, briefly watched the trembling bough, bent his head again and went out of the gate.
Ever since Mrs Jogmaya Chatterjee of Calcutta took up abode in the bungalow next door, the inhabitants of picturesque, complaisant Dalanwalla had suddenly realized the acute lack of culture in their lives. Every drawing room had its massive gramophone and its Kamala Jharia-Kulu Qawwal records. Wireless sets were still rare and tape recorders had not even been invented. The status symbols consisted mainly of bungalow, car, ‘English’ cook and trained bearer. (There was many an eminent cook and bearer who considered it beneath their dignity to work for Kala Log.) Refrigerators, too, were unknown.
But the strains of Rabindra Sangeet emanating from Mrs Jogmaya Chatterjee’s house changed all that. Mrs Goswami, wife of a high-ranking (Survey of India) official, said to Begum Faruqui, wife of another high-ranking (Department of Forests) official, ‘Behenji, we all are really backward. Look at these Bengalis. So advanced in everything.’
‘I have even heard it said, Behenji, that their daughters cannot get married unless they know music,’ said Mrs Jaswant Singh, wife of a high-ranking (Royal Military Academy) officer.
‘We Muslims disapprove of decent girls singing and dancing. But times have changed. I said to “him” the other day, I said, our Rashida must learn how to play the harmonium,’ Begum Faruqui firmly announced.
This was how the winds of Art and Culture began to blow across Dalanwalla. A seedy, beedi-smoking guruji was acquired from somewhere and Dr Sinha’s daughters dutifully learned the Kathak. Sardar Amarjit Singh, whose father owned a large business in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, took up the violin.
The young Sardar also bought from Mr Peter Robert Fazal Masih, the pheriwalla, yards and yards of printed georgette for his turbans. With one of his colourful turbans on his head, his jet black beard rolled with enormous finesse, the Sardar sallied forth, armed with his violin, and headed straight for the Rispana. Rumour had it that he went every evening to meet Mrs Feroza Khan, the lovely Afghan widow who lived in a Christmas-card cottage by the stream. Evening after evening he informed his young Sardarni, Bibi Charanjit Kaur, that he was going for his violin lessons. But Mrs Goswami, Mrs Jaswant Singh, Begum Faruqui and my mother knew.
Such were the stirring times when my cousin, too, decided to take up music – partly because a sitar was handy, lying in its dusty cover in the store room. (My pioneering mother had learned and – forgotten – how to play it several years ago.)
A lot of things happened that winter. Resham broke her leg. Miss Zohra Derby, the Daredevil, arrived in town. Diana Becket was declared the Ravishing Beauty of London. Dr (Miss) Zubeida Siddiqui saw a black dog the size of a donkey at two in the morning. And Faqira’s sister-in-law became a sparrow.
I must tell you about these important events in their chronological order.
My beautiful and brilliant cousin Rehana Khatoon had passed her B.A. that year – breaking a lot of records at Aligarh University – and was spending a few months with us. One afternoon as she sat drinking coffee with Mother and Mrs Goswami in the front verandah, somebody tapped the pebbles in the portico and a feeble voice asked, ‘Excuse me, I am told that a lady here wishes to learn the sitar.’
He was Mr Simon. He said that Mr Peter Robert Fazal Masih, the pheriwalla (he grandly called himself a travelling salesman and travelled in cloth and gossip), had told him about Baji’s musical intentions. He said that he lived alone in the outhouses of the late Rev. Scott’s empty bungalow, and earned ten to twenty rupees a month if he was lucky enough to get one or two pupils. That was all he told us about himself, but being an ardent left-wing intellectual, Baji was greatly dismayed. Mr Simon, however, never accepted any help beyond his fees, he had that kind of dignity.
Mr Simon a
lways wore a waistcoat – complete with an ancient watch-and-chain – a round black cap and round, thick glasses.
He never entered the house (people like tradesmen and tutors were supposed to stay in the verandah) except on the first day of his employment when Baji asked Faqira to send him down to the back garden where she sat in the sun. It was a bitterly cold day. Led by Faqira, Mr Simon passed through my room where I played by the fireplace. He hesitated and stopped for a second, for a brief moment spread his hands towards the fire and quickly went out.
Resham, our otherwise arrogant Persian, became his great friend. ‘Funny, how a snob like Resham has befriended poor Master Sahib,’ Baji remarked and added the observation in a typically feminine P.S. in her letter to Muzzaffer Bhai. She was allowed, as a gesture of modernity, to correspond with our cousin and her fiancé, Muzzaffer, who was that time engaged in the pursuit of knowledge at the University of Bombay.
While Baji wrote her letters Ghaffoor Begum, her loyal anna, sat by her chair on the grass with her inseparable paandaan. When Baji went inside Ghaffoor Begum strolled down to the outhouses to chat with Faqira’s sister-in-law or returned to her prayer settee in the back verandah. Ever since her husband (he ran a cycle repair shop at the crossing of Marris Road, Aligarh) had married an eighteen-year-old girl, our Ghaffoor Begum spent her time on the prayer rug or in prescribing home cures for Faqira’s ailing sister-in-law.
A good-natured Garhwali lad, Faqira had been discovered by Abdul, the cook, who found him in rags, knitting a sweater, by the Eastern Canal. For a few days he slogged as Abdul’s mashalchi but was soon promoted to the rank of houseboy and worked under our very superior bearer (customarily called Sardar because he was the doyen of servants). A few months ago Faqira had informed Mother that both his elder brothers had ‘turned to dust’ in a ghastly accident and that he was going to fetch their widows from the mountains.
Tattooed and fair-skinned Jaldhara was an attractive, smiling woman of forty; she wore a gold nose ring and a nose flower and a necklace of Malka Tooria (Queen Victoria to us) coins. Both her coolie husbands had fallen together to their death carrying some Badrinath pilgrims’ luggage. Jaldhara suffered from some incurable disease and Faqira endlessly worried about her health. The day Jaldhara arrived in the outhouse Rehana Baji very knowledgeably discussed, at lunch table, the Institution of Polyandry in the Hills. Baji had obtained a first class first and my father was immensely proud of her.
In the afternoon I dashed off to my friends, Kamala and Vimala Rajpal, to tell them about Faqira’s sister-in-law who was so rich that she wore coins round her neck. Resham followed me to the avenue. Afraid that she might get run over by a car, I picked her up, threw her across the hedge and pedalled off on my little bicycle.
Instead of falling in the garden, poor Resham got entangled in the barbed wire concealed in the tall hedge. Badly bruised and bleeding, she meowed and meowed till Faqira, who had come out to pick chillis for the kitchen, heard her desperate cries.
I returned to a sorrowing household. ‘Resham is dying,’ Baji told me tearfully. ‘I still don’t understand how she got herself entangled in those wires. Must have gone there looking for birds. The vet has just left.’
It was a terrifying realization that I was responsible tor Resham’s terrible pain and possible death. Trying to hide my guilt from the world I hid myself in a cluster of litchis in the back garden. In woodpecker-like Mrs Warbrook’s house the wireless set broadcast music from distant BBC. In the servants’ quarters Ghaffoor Begum was talking to Jaldhara and Abdul’s wife. Baji was in her room writing to Muzaffer Bhai – probably about Resham’s accident. The Persian lay bandaged in her frilled basket in the side verandah.
I lurked in the trees like a criminal and did not quite know what to do next. Finally I sauntered down towards my father’s room and peeped in through the bay window. Father sat in his armchair reading The Pioneer. I tiptoed in and stood behind his chair.
He heard my sobs and turned round. ‘What is the matter, child?’ he asked. I told him all, flopped on the floor and howled and howled till I felt a little better.
Every morning Resham was dressed and bandaged by Faqira and was sent down, once a week, to see the ‘horse doctor’ at the ‘ghora haspatal’. Her leg had been shaved. Shorn of her glorious long hair she was now a humble, subdued and very unhappy cat. A few weeks later she could hobble about a bit and after a month limped all the way down to the gate to see off Mr Simon.
That was when one Sunday morning, as I played hopscotch on the drive, Mr George Becket’s head appeared over the mehendi hedge. A little hesitatingly he beckoned to me and said, ‘Good morning to you, young lady.’
‘Good morning, Pil – Mr Becket,’ I said politely and almost bit my tongue.
‘How is your beautiful pussy cat? Mr Fazal Masih told me that she had had a bad accident.’
This was the first time that Mr George Becket had actually spoken to anyone in the neighbourhood. I thanked him for inquiring after poor Resham. He nodded, shoved his thumbs in the half-torn pockets of his shabby coat and shuffled off.
Mr George Becket was a destitute Anglo-Indian, generally known as Pilpili Sahib. He lived down the avenue in a broken-down cottage and was so poor that he went to the municipal water tap himself to fetch water. His only daughter, Diana Rose, sold tickets at an English cinema hall at the parade ground, and often passed by our house on her bicycle. She had golden, windswept hair and only four dresses which she washed at night at the water tap and wore with extreme care. But Mrs Goswami, Mrs Jaswant Singh and Begum Faruqui firmly maintained that Diana gadded about in such fineries because the Tommies gave her money. But if the Tommies gave her money (and I saw no reason why they should) why didn’t her poor papa engage a bhishti?
Dalanwalla was mostly inhabited by well-to-do, retired Englishmen who lived quietly in their secluded, exquisitely furnished bungalows. Inside these peaceful houses walnut tables displayed piles of Illustrated London News, Tatler, Country Life and Punch. Bundles of The Times and the Daily Telegraph arrived by sea mail. In the mornings the ladies sat in their morning rooms, writing Home. In the afternoons they had their high tea in the verandahs. The mantelpieces were crowded with silver-framed portraits of sons who were engaged in further brightening up the Empire sun over such places as Kenya, Ceylon, Malaya and so forth.
Although these dear old people belonged to the twilight world of Koi Hai and Chhota Hazri, there were dedicated, self-effacing Orientalists and scholars, too, among them. Mr Hardcastle was an expert on Tibeto-Burman dialects. Mr Green wrote learned papers on the Khasi tribes of Assam. Colonel Whitehead, who had lost a leg fighting the Pathans on the Frontier, was quite an authority on Pushtu poetry. Apart from these, Major Shelton wrote shikar notes in upcountry newspapers. Mr Marchman was a chess fiend. Horsey Miss Drinkwater called spirits on the planchette and woodpecker-like Mrs Warbrook painted lovely watercolours.
One of the bungalows housed the British Stores. Owned and run by a tall, hawk-nosed and very ancient Parsi, this was the historic place where the ladies met for shopping and gossip while their children hung about its Toys, Toffee and Lemonade counters (Coca Cola, too, had not come to the country).
In this comfortably smug and very English locality (Indians were accepted as upper class and civilized enough to live in bungalows) Mr George Becket of the pale blue eyes was the only Anglo-Indian. Nevertheless, he considered himself a proper Englishman and rumour had it that when some years ago, George V, King Emperor, died, Mr Becket solemnly wore a black armband and attended the Slow March Past at Kolagarh along with the mourning English gentry.
But with characteristic heartlessness of children we referred to him as Pilpili Sahib and Vimala’s teenage, Doon School-going brother, Swarn, had devised a novel way of teasing poor Diana. When she passed by the Rajpals’ house Swarn placed the gramophone in the front window of his room and it blared out the following zany song:
There was a rich merchant in London did stay,
&nb
sp; Who had for his daughter an uncommon liking,
Her name, it was Diana, she was sixteen-year-old,
And had a large fortune in silver and gold.
As Diana was walking in the garden one day,
Her father came to her and thus did he say:
Go dress yourself up in gorgeous array,
For you will have a husband both gallant and gay.
O father, dear father, I’ve made up my mind,
To marry at present I don’t feel inclined.
And all my large fortune every day adore,
If you let live me single a year or two more.
Then gave the father a gallant reply:
If you don’t be this young man’s bride,
I’ll leave all your fortune to the fearest of things,
And you shan’t reap the benefit of a single farthing.
As Wilikins was walking in the garden one day,
He found his dear Diana lying dead on the way.
A cup so fearful that lay by her side,
And Wilikins doth fainteth with a cry in his eye.
As soon as the song started poor Diana flushed deeply and bicycled away as fast as she could.
The winter’s second important event was the arrival of the Great East India Circus and Carnival Company Ltd., which pitched its Big Top at the parade ground. The handbills announced:
The Greatest Marvel of Century
The Lion-hearted Beauty
Miss Zohra Derby
In the Well of Death
Tonight and Every Night.
Faqira took Jaldhara to see the circus and came back in raptures. ‘Begum Sahib, Bitya, Bibi,’ he said, thrilled, ‘This zenani who rides the phat-phati in the death of well...hare Ram, hare Ram!...
Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1 Page 16
