Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  In the evenings all of us strolled down to the Taj which was not far away. Nasir Chacha bought me stacks of Mickey Mouse comics. Nasir Chacha had a habit of saying: ‘So, Sahib, this too has come to pass.’ In the mornings, as he went through the newspapers, he would suddenly look up. address nobody in particular and announce: ‘So, Sahib, this too has come to pass....’

  Once in a while I slipped down to the flat on the ground floor where Chacha’s Jewish assistant lived with his wife and many children. There, on a Friday or Saturday evening, I watched, in fascination, as the kashta-clad Mrs David Khandekar (the whole thing was very mixed up: they were Jews but also a kind of Marathas) lighted a lamp while a pictured Moses led a motley crowd across what I thought was a dried-up Suez Canal.

  The same day I happened to read in a book upstairs: ‘You were good to me like Moses but I was ungrateful to you like a Pharaoh and was lost in the desert....’

  I asked Nasir Chacha what it meant.

  ‘You will understand when you grow up,’ he said casually. I used to pester my father with all manner of questions which he always patiently answered. But not Nasir Chacha. Once he said, rattled: ‘Don’t ask too many questions. Their answers will sadden you.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  The world certainly was most intriguing. The fire temple with its Assyrian bulls. The bearded men in longcoats and golden turbans. The ancient, hawk-nosed Parsi who sold ice cream in a roadside kiosk. The distant lighthouse of Colaba...

  I stumbled upon Gracie’s little mystery quite accidentally.

  One morning, as I went to her room to call her for some errand, I had to stop outside as the door was half closed and she was angrily talking to someone. ‘Look here, you Virgin Mother, if you not find me storeroom keys by eight o’clock Indian Standard Time, breakfast late, Nawab Sahib cut off my head. What do you know. You never done work as ayah.’

  Gracie, I discovered, was actually quarrelling with a statuette which she kept by her bedside.

  Gracie is mad, I decided. How can she talk to a statue and expect it to find her the lost keys?

  Then I remembered that only last week, when Nasir Chacha went out on a tour of inspection, Gracie had rushed to her room, quickly lighted a candle and mumbled before the china figurine of the Virgin.

  The mysteries deepened. One morning three equally hefty ladies came up the stairs, panting, and entered the drawing room with great solemnity. Their Lucknow-style ghararas trailed behind them. They carried velvet boxes like the Three Kings of the East bearing myrrh and gold and frankincense.

  Nasir Chacha came into the drawing room. The leader of the delegation opened a velvet case and, with a flourish, produced a photograph. He glanced at it indifferently. Whereupon all three ladies said in a chorus that the engagement ceremony was to take place the next evening at the girl’s place. Thereafter, one of the Three Wise Women opened a jewel box and produced a ring they had bought on Nasir Chacha’s behalf.

  Gracie was ordered to go to the market and buy eleven seers each of sweetmeat and fresh and dry fruit. She was also told to be ready with everything by five o’clock next evening. After which they left.

  The three ladies were the wives of Nasir Chacha’s colleagues and friends. They had finally persuaded him – for the sake of Asghar’s proper upbringing – to get married again. And for the purpose of reforming poor Asghar’s deplorable language, they had selected a beautiful girl whose wealthy family was not only of Persian extraction but had lived for many generations in Lucknow.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Nasir Chacha growled when my mother came home after shopping at Whiteway’s. ‘Jamila Bhabi insists on performing all the stupid rites....’ Then he noticed me and chuckled. ‘So, Sahib, this too has come to pass...!’

  The next morning my parents left for Poona to visit some friends. In the afternoon Gracie went to the market and brought home the required stuff. Then she asked me to come to the boxroom.

  Inside the boxroom she opened a Chinese chest and brought out an engraved, Moghal-style seeni or round silver tray. Next, she unlocked another trunk and took out round tray covers of silver and gold work. ‘My Memsahib had made these herself,’ she sniffed. ‘I have locked up everything for my Asghar’s bride. (She was always saving things for Asghar’s bride.) After selecting a red khwanposh Gracie went to her own room and put on a sari of printed georgette. (‘My Memsahib given it to me.’) Then she adorned her jet-black hair with a fresh veni and plastered her shiny black face with white powder. Our Gracie was ready for the engagement party.

  Gracie dressed me up in one of my frilled party frocks of pink organdy, tied a big pink bow on my hair and made me wear my socks and shoes with the expertise of a born nanny.

  We piled into Nasir Chacha’s chauffeur-driven old Buick and set out for Omar Park. The Three Wise Kings followed in their own cars.

  On reaching the double-storeyed house of the bride-to-be, we ascended the broad wooden staircase in the form of a procession. We were led by Jamila Bhabi. Gracie came in the rear, carrying the silver tray. Two servants carried the baskets of fruit and sweetmeat.

  We were received at the door by our hosts. After much salaaming and social pleasantries they led us inside.

  The drawing room was stacked with furniture, photographs, vases and embroidered cushions. In a corner stood a tall showcase which proudly displayed a tiny Taj Mahal. Japanese dolls, bidriware, cups and trophies and other bric-a-brac. On the top stood an elongated saqi pouring wine into the cup of a lecherous-looking Omar Khayyam. The walls were adorned with framed parrots, swans and tigers embroidered on black velvet by the Daughter of the House.

  In no time the room overflowed with gorgeously attired guests and their wailing infants. I began to feel suffocated in the strange surroundings and looked for Gracie. She stood outside in the gallery, along with the other ayahs. I wondered why she looked so grim.

  Suddenly, the electricity failed and the ceiling fans stopped whirling. The overcrowded room became unbearably stuffy. But I bore it all courageously, waiting eagerly for the bride-to-be.

  After half an hour Nasir Chacha’s fiancée was ushered in. She was a tall, ungainly looking lady of about thirty. Her face was chalk-white. She almost hopped into the room and sat down with a thud on the sofa. Then she glanced around rather foolishly.

  I was sorely disappointed. The brides I had seen were always very young and shy and never lifted the ghunghat from their blushing faces.

  Jamila Bhabi and the other two ladies looked a bit unnerved. However, Jamila Bhabi quickly took control of the situation and ordered Gracie to bring in the tray.

  Arjumand Apa uncovered the tray with great finesse, gingerly picked up a piece of rock sugar and placed it in the girl’s mouth. The girl began to chew the rock sugar with considerable gusto.

  Jamila Bhabi tied the velvet band of ‘Imam Zamin’ to the girl’s arm, entrusting her to Imam Hussain’s care, and slipped the diamond ring on her finger. The girl watched the proceedings with keen interest. Suddenly she began to giggle uncontrollably, got up and strode out of the room.

  Her mother and aunt quickly followed her out. The room was too crowded for the guests to notice anything.

  The Three Wise Women of the East began a hurried whispered conference.

  ‘We have been duped.’

  ‘Bland like a turnip

  ‘Can’t be less than forty.’

  ‘How she giggles! Shameless woman!’

  ‘Can’t be less than forty-five.’

  ‘Are you daft? She is only twenty-four. I know for certain,’ whispered Arjumand Apa who was mainly responsible for arranging the match. She looked very upset.

  ‘And anyway,’ Jamila Bhabi tried to be an optimist, ‘our Nasir Bhai is not a kid. He is past fifty. She is all right for him. He is a good man. He’ll treat her like a rani.’

  The girl’s mother and aunt returned to the room and tea was served rather hastily. The terms of meher (dower money) were discussed.

  ‘We always
fix rupees one lakh,’ declared the girl’s aggressive aunt.

  ‘Whereas we always fix the sum strictly according to the rules of the Shariat,’ Jamila Bhabi replied sweetly.

  This led to a general discussion in which all the ladies present vigorously took part. The infants began to howl with greater might. The fans were still stationary. I suddenly felt dizzy and terrified.

  Gracie noticed my plight and marched forward: ‘Memsahib,’ she announced in a firm voice, ‘my Baba want to go home.’

  The Three Wise Women had got so deeply involved in the controversy over meher that they too thought it best to make an escape. The discussion was postponed to another date.

  We returned home.

  Nasir Chacha sat in his armchair engrossed in a Persian classic. The three ladies swept in and brazenly announced:

  ‘Congratulations, Bhaijan. The bride is like Chaudvin ka Chand (the moon on the fourteenth day)!’

  ‘And so accomplished! Did you see her embroidery, Arjumand Apa?’

  ‘They’ll give a brand-new Opel in the dowry.’

  ‘There is a little hitch about the meher, but they’ll come round. They can’t get a boy like our Bhaijan here.’

  Nasir Chacha flicked the ash off his cigar and smiled. As usual he seemed greatly amused. Gracie had gone straight to the boxroom to put the silver back.

  Late that night, long after Nasir Chacha and Asghar had gone to bed, I was awakened by a strange inhuman voice coming from across the corridor. I got up and rushed up to call Gracie.

  The voice was coming from her own room. I went to the window which opened in the back verandah and looked in.

  Gracie squatted on the floor and addressed the holy image hoarsely: ‘I made the Novena and broke my legs climbing your shrine. Telling the rosary my head turned round and round. Praying – praying – my bheja became pilpila. And you done this four-twenty with me.... You never become widow at twenty. You never slept in lonely verandahs.... Your son never got a stepmother.... Deva che Mai...Deva che Mai.

  All of which convinced me that our Gracie was batty.

  The next morning my parents came back. I told them about the hilarious engagement party. Gracie sulked and remained busy in her work. She never spoke a word.

  A couple of days later the three good ladies arrived again, panting. They sat down on the cane chairs in the verandah and called Gracie to give them some water. Nasir Chacha strolled up and down, cigar in hand. He didn’t look amused.

  Arjumand Apa was saying: ‘Thank God we wasted only one-two thousand rupees. I hope they would return the diamond ring. Disaster has been averted. Suppose the nikaah had been solemnized? Then?’

  ‘Now I understand,’ Jamila Bhabi put in, ‘why her mother insisted on rupees one lakh. Would have made the divorce so difficult.’

  And they gave us a ten-year-old photo!’ Arjumand Apa wailed.

  ‘Thank God,’ repeated Jamila Bhabi, shuddering. ‘We happened to discover this only today. Through a neighbour of theirs.... And she did look odd, didn’t she? Chronic hysteria! Good God!’

  ‘Bland like a turnip. Walked like a camel,’ said the third lady.

  All three continued to cluck like fat Leghorn hens.

  In the evening my parents and Nasir Chacha went out for dinner. Gracie decided to entertain me. After putting Asghar to bed she took me to her little room and opened an old suitcase. It was full of knick-knacks and trinkets her steward brother Patrick used to bring for her from various ports of call. Toby mugs and willow-pattern dishes of Staffordshire. Holy souvenirs from Rome. Also a print -bought in a backstreet of Liverpool – of an early nineteenth-century painting. It showed a moonlit graveyard with a slanting tombstone which read ‘Good times and bad times and all times get over’.

  Gracie showed me the Woolworth trinkets she had carefully stored away for ‘Asghar’s bride’. Then, with great tenderness, she took out a musical box. ‘Patrick brang it for me from Glasgow,’ she said, winding it. I recognized the tune as ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’.

  While I listened to the musical box Gracie looked at her wristwatch and announced: ‘Ten o’clock, Indian Standard Time.... Now I pray.’

  ‘Shall I go, Gracie?’ I asked politely.

  ‘No, no, Baba. You sit rig there and see this album.’ She passed on to me her brother Pat’s Nestlé chocolate pictures of old Hollywood film stars. While I got lost in the world of Tyrone Powers and Bette Davises, Gracie lit a candle and began mumbling her prayer in Konkani.

  Then in a sudden burst of confidence she turned to me and said: ‘Baba, in Mahim there is big Dewal. There is photo of Our Lady. It does miracles. I made Novena there. Our Lady heard me....’ As quickly she checked herself and said: ‘It is very late now. Go to bed.’ She escorted me back to my bedroom and said a happy ‘good night’. Her pearly white teeth flashed as she vanished in the dark corridor.

  Many years after Partition I met Nasir Chacha in Lahore. As soon as he came to know that I was in town, he sent Asghar to my cousin’s place to fetch me.

  Asghar arrived in a huge car borrowed from a friend. He had not studied beyond Senior Cambridge and was trying to ‘do business’. He dropped me at the gate of a small, desolate-looking bungalow in Model Town and whizzed off, whistling.

  Nasir Chacha sat in the sun under a bare tree. A few books and Urdu magazines lay before him on an unpolished table.

  He looked up and blinked. Somehow, I expected him to say: ‘So, Sahib this too has come to pass!’ But he merely pointed to a wicker chair, indicating that I sit down.

  After some minutes he looked at me and said accusingly: ‘You father let me down.’ Then he hung down his head again. The wind rustled in the poplars. An enormous Persian cat appeared on the verandah and began sunning itself.

  Abruptly, my uncle Nasir announced to nobody in particular: ‘Left without prior notice. Must be happily living in Heaven.’

  ‘Is there a Heaven, Chacha?’ I asked, trying to make conversation.

  He slipped his horn-rimmed glasses on to his forehead and squinted at me. ‘You continue to ask questions. Don’t ask questions,’ he growled angrily.

  He had grown very old and grouchy.

  It was a dreary winter morning. The wind was chilly and an anaemic sun floated listlessly over the clouds. Nasir Chacha looked ill. He had covered his legs with a worn-out blanket. I was vastly depressed.

  All of a sudden he grunted again and said: ‘I hear you have become a writer. Do you also write this?. This balderdash – this piffle...this...’ he pointed angrily at an Urdu magazine which published terribly contemporary literature. ‘Remember,’ he continued grumpily, ‘your father never wrote such...such...’ He became too angry for words. In the same breath he shouted: ‘Gracie, come here! See who has come.’ The next moment a grey-haired old woman came out of the bungalow wiping her hands on a duster. She came closer, bent a little and opened her eyes very wide.

  ‘Stupid woman. Can’t you recognize this child?’ Nasir Chacha roared.

  ‘O my goodness gracious me...my little Baba grown big lady....’ Gracie started sniffling and broke into her fantastic English which had not improved with the years.

  She took me into her neat little kitchen and began lighting the stove. She seemed house-proud as ever, although there was nothing much in the cold, bleak cottage to be proud about. It was obvious that Nasir Chacha was in a bad way. Also, Asghar had been a bitter disappointment to him.

  ‘Gracie, you have become old,’ I said.

  Gracie turned towards me and said; ‘Call me Aunt Gracie, please, my bachcha....’

  ‘Oh,’ I said happily. ‘Oh, Gracie, I mean...Aunt Gracie, you really deserved this!’

  ‘Yes, dear. God has been good to me.’ She got busy preparing the lunch and continued: ‘We banoed marriage when we came here. Nawab Sahib in strange land. No friends. No sagawalla. Only me to look after him. My Asghar got into bad company. Nawab Sahib’s pension still phansoed in India. His property and all lost in his muluk... after pe
nsion. But because of Asghar Baba we had to come here.

  ‘Big big ghotala going on here in this country. But what to do? And your uncle’s health very bad. He become very short-tempered on account of he has high blood pressure. This pressure. That pressure. Asghar got into real bad company. All kind of worries. I have promised Imam Hussain to present one silver candlestick in his Imambara, and told the Virgin also. One candlestick to Her, one to Imam Hussain....’

  ‘Grace Chachi, you are incorrigible!’ I said, laughing.

  That was the last time I saw the sad old couple. The very next year I came to know that Nasir Chacha was dead. After his death Asghar started some kind of shady business in which he prospered in no time and married a society girl. His wife was deeply ashamed of acknowledging an ordinary Goan ayah as her mother-in-law, Asghar was embarrassed too. He shipped her back to India.

  It was impossible to hunt for my Aunt Gracie in Bombay. But I thought of her especially when I went to the Mahim Church to take photographs for an illustrated article. The church was empty except for a few worshippers who dotted the pews.

  A bedraggled old man was whispering his Hail Marys:

  Ave Maria

  Cheia de graça,

  O Senhor é convosco,

  Bendita sois vós entre as mulheres...

  A humble woman knelt before the holy image and muttered tearfully: ’Santa Morye Deva che Mai, ami papiya khatir vinti kar....’ (‘Pray for us sinners...Amen!’)

  Perhaps her husband had died. Perhaps she had been turned out by her stepson. She made the sign of the Cross: ‘Bapache navem putrachem ani Spirita santache...Amen!’

  Perhaps she had nowhere to go to and no roof over her head...

  As she got up, I looked around, unconsciously searching for my Aunt Gracie. The devout started pouring in. So Sahib, this too had come to pass.

  (Translated from the Urdu by the author)

  T W E N T Y - F O U R

  Honour

  QURRATULAIN HYDER

  The bathroom was like the Forty Thieves’ Cave: dark, damp, cool and full of massive gleaming things: Hamams, engraved wash basins, tall brass jugs with slender spouts. The clotheshorses looked like mysterious brigands. Shamshad Begum had to make her way through all this before she could get to the window. She had scraped a little paint off one of the panes so that she could peep at her rakish, handsome fiancé flitting in and out of the outer courtyard.