Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 1

by Khushwant Singh

  The window overlooked the adjoining house. Its walled front garden was lined with jasmines and pomegranates and had a fountain in the middle. That was the domain of Aziz Khan, the cousin to whom Shamshad Begum had been engaged to marry. Once in a while, Aziz Khan sauntered down to the main entrance of the zenana and shouted – in a special tone of voice meant only for her: ‘I say, will someone send us more tea and hot pakoras.’ That was enough. Shamshed ran hotfoot to the kitchen across the spacious zenana courtyard; Aziz Khan returned to his cronies and his pigeons and his paper kites. He was an only son and had been thoroughly pampered by his parents. And Shamshad adored him.

  They led a peaceful life in Shahjahanpur. Their ancestors, like the other Rohilla Pathans, had come, many centuries ago, from Afghanistan. The entire region in western United Provinces was known after them as Rohilkhand.

  Shamshad Begum lived in a traditional joint family. Both her father and his cousin were landowners.

  The Pathans of Rohilkhand were proud of their Afghan ancestry. They had retained their pink-and-white complexions, robustness and good looks. Shamshad Begum was also tall and pretty. She lived in strict purdah, had never been to school and had been taught Urdu, Arabic and Persian at home. She, too, was an only child.

  The date of marriage had been fixed when disaster struck. Cholera broke out in Shahjahanpur. Within a few days, both her parents were dead. Shamshad was stunned. She was consoled by her future parents-in-law. The wedding was postponed. After a while she resumed peeping out of the green window.

  One night Aziz’s father had a heart attack. He died in a few hours. Shamshad began to believe that she was an abhagin – bringer of misfortune. After some days, Aziz told his mother that he must attend to some court cases in Allahabad. They were affluent landowners forever involved in litigation which had been a favourite pastime of both her father and her uncle.

  Aziz went away to Allahabad. In the autumn afternoons, the wind rustled in the empty, walled garden. Everybody had suddenly vanished: Father, Uncle, Aziz. A year went by and Aziz did not come back. Shamshad took to hiding in the dark bathroom where she buried her face in soft muslin dupattas, stacked on a clotheshorse, and cried.

  It was uncanny: the aunt followed her husband – she died of pneumonia. But Shamshad knew that, more than pneumonia, it was a broken heart.

  After her father’s death, Shamshad Begum had become heir to a vast fortune with Aziz as her legal guardian. Where was he? Lucknow...Calcutta...Mussoorie...Nainital? The rumours said he was busy squandering the money that had come to him after his father’s death.

  Shamshad Begum was a minor. In the absence of Aziz, her other relatives cheated her out of most of her inheritance. The years went by with amazing speed. She was thirty. And still waiting for Aziz Khan. She had been an arrogant young girl. Age and misfortune had mellowed her. But she remained inordinately proud of her family. As a noble Rohila maiden, she would remain true to the pledge her abba had given to his cousin. She was the only remaining custodian of the family honour.

  Shamshad’s hair turned grey. She fortified herself in the mansion and stopped meeting people. Every Friday she went to the men’s quarters and had the place swept, the rooms aired and the Victorian furniture dusted. She tended the trees and flowering shrubs in the courtyard and cleaned the fountain clogged with yellow leaves. He might turn up any time. You never know.

  In the heavy silence of long summer afternoons, she lay on a divan in the arched verandah, dozing or staring at the tamarind which towered above the zenana courtyard. Salamat, the old cook, sat on a cot under the tree, chewing tobacco. Often, she muttered to herself: ‘The Good Lord laughs only twice: once when He bestows honours on someone whom another wants to undo; and a second time when He decides to destroy someone trying to improve his lot.’

  ‘Stop it, Salamat Bua,’ Shamshad Begum would say. But the old woman was deaf and cussed and continued to mutter her ominous forebodings.

  It was a cold and misty winter morning. Shamshad Begum had just finished taking her bath when Salamat’s idiot daughter knocked on the door.

  ‘Apa...Apa...come out.... Hurry up....’ she shouted, jumping up and down.

  ‘What is it, idiot?’ Shamshad Begum asked from inside as she wrapped a towel round her hair.

  ‘Apa...for God’s sake.... The Master has come. He wants you to send him tea and hot pakoras.’

  Shamshad Begum couldn’t quite believe her ears. In the semi-darkness of the bathroom, she frantically groped her way to the window, stood on tiptoe and peeped out. The courtyard had come to life. Servants bustled around. Suitcases and holdalls were being carried in. Somebody haggled with the driver of the horse carriage drawn outside the entrance. And then her eyes fell on a woman! A dark, sour-faced slut in a red georgette sari. The next moment he came in...more handsome than ever. He went up to the woman and said something. They laughed....

  Ali Baba’s Cave turned into a deep dark well into which Shamshad Begum fell headlong, feeling dizzy and suffocated like in a nightmare. She swayed and fell and passed out in a swoon.

  Late in the evening, Aziz brought his wife inside. A little self-consciously, he came near the main door, cleared his throat and said: ‘I say, Chhammi, come here. Meet your new relative.’

  Shamshad Begum stood in the inner verandah. She trembled, felt dizzy again and shot back into the bathroom. She bolted the door from inside. In the verandah the couple stood about awkwardly for some minutes, then went back to their house.

  Shamshad Begum had come to know about the woman. She was shocked – not so much because Aziz had betrayed her and married someone else as because he had married a whore and brought disgrace to the family honour.

  Aziz’s wife tried to meet her again. (Formerly she was known as ‘Miss Kallo Bai of Lucknow, Gramophone & Radio Singer’.) She desperately wanted to be accepted as the daughter-in-law of the family. But Shamshad Begum had ordered the doorman, Dhammu Khan: ‘If you are a real Pathan, break the legs of anyone – man or woman – who dares to enter my house!’

  She began to wear white like a widow and let her relatives cheat her out of her remaining property. Aziz sensed the situation. He was stricken with guilt. He resolved to fight court cases on her behalf and sent her a large sum of money through an aunt. Shamshad Begum was livid. She strode down to the gatehouse, from where her voice could be heard in the men’s quarters, and declaimed: ‘Dhammu Khan, let it be known that I, daughter of Jumma Khan and niece of Shabbu Khan, would prefer to starve rather than accept any money touched by the inmates of brothels...’

  She had to sell her jewellery in order to run the large house and support hordes of retainers and good-for-nothing relatives. When the ornaments were gone, she opened a little school for the girls of the neighbourhood and took in sewing. The hangers-on left her. Only the two old faithfuls remained: Dhammu Khan and Salamat Bua.

  Shamshad Begum fell ill. The fever rose and she became delirious. Salamat panicked and sent for Aziz Khan and his wife. Aziz called the family doctor. Husband and wife sat by her bedside and nursed her. When she opened her eyes, she saw the couple hovering over her. She gave Kallo Bai a withering look and closed her eyes again. Kallo was terrified of her husband’s strange and imperious cousin. Quietly she slipped back to her house.

  Shamshad Begum recovered.

  It was the summer of 1947. There were Hindu-Muslim riots and talk of abolishing the zamindari system. Aziz, who had already run through most of his inheritance, went to Delhi to see a lawyer. There, one day in September, he was killed in a riot.

  The day the news came of his death Shamshad Begum was fast asleep on her ottoman in the verandah. It was late afternoon. Kallo came running to the gatehouse and banged on the closed door. ‘Open the door!’ she screamed hysterically. ‘Please open the door! A terrible thing has happened! We are ruined!’

  Shamshad Begum woke up with a start. The courtyard was desolate as ever. The leaves of the tamarind rustled in the breeze. The scream pierced through her sl
eepy haze and hit her again. She got up and looked around. Kallo was pounding the door with her fists. Shamshad Begum took the key off a hook in the wall and ambled down to the entrance. Grumbling to herself, she opened the deorhi.

  There stood Kallo, her long hair spread over her shoulders. She looked terrible, like a black witch. Her face was contorted, she had injured her wrists trying to break her glass bangles against the door. For a few seconds she stared at her husband’s haughty cousin. Then she lurched forward and tried to embrace her. Shamshad Begum stepped back. Kallo broke into a long and loud wail: ‘Apa... I have lost my kingdom.... My crown has fallen into the dust.... I have become a widow.... He is dead!’

  Shamshad Begum was still drugged with sleep. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the frenzied woman. Slowly, the truth dawned on her. Then she sat down on the threshold and covered her face with her white muslin dupatta. Her sobs mingled with Kallo’s hysterical jabbering.

  Apa, I have become a widow....’ Kallo screamed again.

  Shamshad Begum wiped her tears and pulled herself together. She stood up, erect and imperious as ever. She said firmly: ‘Wretch! You have become a widow today, I have always been a widow. Go away; go back to where you belong!’

  She slammed the door, bolted it from the inside and returned to her divan.

  After a few days, Kallo disappeared – along with Aziz’s costly belongings. Through the bathroom window Shamshad Begum watched the woman pack up and leave with cartloads of expensive stuff: carpets and paintings and silver and crockery. Shamshad Begum did not feel anything. She merely watched, stony-eyed, another scene of the passing show....

  The Government Custodian put a seal on the adjoining house. Shamshad Begum was unable to prove that Aziz Khan had been killed in the riots and had not migrated to Pakistan. The house was declared evacuee property. Shamshad Begum could not care less.

  After a few weeks, a Sikh refugee doctor from Lahore and his family took up residence in Aziz’s house. The Sardarni became friendly with Shamshad Begum. Dhammu Khan died after a long illness. Salamat had become a cripple. Most of Shamshad Begum’s relatives and servants left for Pakistan.

  The refugee doctor’s daughter was married to a minor official in New Delhi. When the girl came to Shahjahanpur to visit her parents, she met Shamshad Begum. The girl told her parents that her husband’s Muslim boss was looking for a needy lady from a good family to teach Urdu to his children. The doctor’s wife persuaded Shamshad Begum to accept the position. ‘Behenji, how long can you live like this, all by yourself, with no income? Swallow your pride. There is no harm in working for one’s living.’

  Shamshad Begum agreed. It suddenly occurred to her that when she grew old and died, there must be someone by her bedside to read the Quran and perform the last rites.

  Shamshad Begum packed a few clothes, put on her burqa and stepped out of the threshold of her forefather’s haveli which had now been reduced to a magnificent ruin. Zamindar Jumma Khan’s daughter had become a genteel, impoverished teacher going out into a strange, unknown world.

  Shamshad Begum spent twelve long years in New Delhi with the Sabihuddins. They were good to her and treated her as one of the family. But their children grew up and Mr Sabihuddin retired and decided to go back to his home town. They passed Shamshad Begum on to the Rashid Alis, with whom she spent five years as housekeeper. The Rashid Alis also treated her well and called her ‘Aunt Shamshad’.

  Mr Rashid Ali was transferred to the Indian Embassy in Washington and did not know what to do with the aunt. Was she to be left alone once again?

  One day Mrs Rashid Ali went to Roshanara Club to attend a farewell lunch. She had asked Shamshad Begum to follow with the youngest child. After the lunch, she planned to visit some relatives in Old Delhi.

  Shamshad Begum arrived at the club and waited on the lawn. She always wore a white sari and looked like an upper-class nanny. As she walked up and down, waiting for her mistress, she saw a stylish lady staring at her from under a garden umbrella. She was playing cards with some equally stylish men. She was very beautiful and sophisticated – like you see in fashion magazines. Shamshad Begum had lived for seventeen years in New Delhi and had got accustomed to modern affluent women. She noticed the lady looking at her again. Soon, a bearer came up to her and said that the Memsahib wanted to speak to her.

  Shamshad Begum went over to the bridge table. The lady smiled and said that she was looking for a respectable but needy woman who could stay with her in Bombay as a sort of housekeeper. She had too many servants and really there was no work to do. She just wanted a motherly old woman around. Did she know anybody?

  Shamshad Begum whispered her thanks to the merciful God who closed one door but always opened another. She told the lady that she was about to be relieved of her present job and would she please speak to her mistress.

  Mrs Rashid Ali came out. The lady introduced herself as Razia Bano from Bombay and asked her about Shamshad Begum. Razia Bano was flying to Bombay the next morning. Shamshad Begum could follow by train whenever it was convenient. Mrs Rashid Ali looked as relieved. But she asked Shamshad Begum anxiously: ‘Auntie, can you travel all alone to Bombay?’

  Shamshad Begum nodded. There was no longer any need in life to say ‘no’ to anything. She did not even negotiate for her salary. She had settled for herself forty rupees with food and did not need more. She did not mind wearing the cast-off clothes. Long ago she had realized that fancy clothes, ornaments, property, money, relationships, love and affection were all meaningless, shadowy and transitory. Only Allah’s Name is eternal everlasting.

  From her huge bag, Razia Bano fished out one hundred and fifty rupees, along with her address. ‘Your fare to Bombay and other expenses,’ she said casually. Mrs Rashid Ali was amazed. Shamshad Begum remained nonchalant. She knew that Bombay was the city of tycoons. Life had ceased to surprise her anyway.

  But at Bombay Central, Shamshad Begum got a little unnerved. The crowds scared her. She came out, clutching at her little casket of betel leaves and got into a taxi.

  The taxi stopped at a gleaming block of flats on Warden Road. Shamshad Begum stepped out. A Gurkha watchman sat stoically on his stool. She went into the foyer and was baffled by the automatic lift. ‘Son,’ she called timidly, ‘how does this thing work?’ A liftman materialized and took her up to the eleventh floor. He carried her luggage up to a double-leaved door and left. She rang the bell. An eye peeped from inside. Then the door opened. Another Gurkha came out and eyed her with suspicion. She became nervous again. She reminded herself that she was a brave Pathan. With great dignity she said: ‘Please tell the Begum Sahiba that Shamshad Begum has arrived from Delhi.’

  ‘I know. Come in,’ he said curtly and opened the door. He picked up her little trunk and bedroll. She followed him, still clutching at her paandaan and fan. They crossed a large drawing room which had a bar at one end and a little cinema screen on a wall. Then they entered a gallery which had closed doors on either side. The Gurkha led her to a small, bare servant’s room and dumped the luggage on the floor.

  ‘Is the Begum Sahiba in?’ Shamshad Begum asked politely.

  ‘Yes. Sleeping.’

  ‘And Sahib?’

  The Gurkha did not answer and strode away.

  The room was bare and stuffy. There was a small wooden bed with no mattress. ‘It will give a backache,’ she thought simply, and opened the window.

  She was confronted by a shimmering, blue-green sea. She had never seen the sea before. It fascinated her. Then, suddenly, it occurred to her that Mecca and Medina were somewhere there, across these shining waters. ‘God, in His great goodness and mercy, has brought me all the way to Bombay. Some day soon He will take me on the Haj pilgrimage as well.’ The thought brought tears to her eyes. She moved away from the window.

  The flat was eerily quiet. She decided that the Sahib must be in his office, the children away at school. ‘Let me see if the Begum has got up from her siesta.’ She walked down to the end of the corr
idor and saw a half-open door. She knocked on it.

  ‘Come in.’

  She entered a luxurious airconditioned bedroom. Razia Bano lolled on a four-poster. She wore a fluffy peignoir and was smoking a cigarette. A white telephone and a golden notebook lay beside her on the silken eiderdown.

  ‘So you have come, Bua. Sit down, sit down.’ She indicated the floor.

  Shamshad Begum was taken aback. She had never been called a ‘Bua’. Only servant maids were called that. She had never sat on the floor. She pursed her lips and sat down on the edge of the sofa. She wanted tea. She did not approve of her new mistress’s revealing dress and her smoking. But then she thought to herself: ‘Every place has its own customs. Such must be the custom of Bombay.’

  Razia Bano eyed her with amusement and said: ‘Bua, I am glad you have come. I did want someone like you -innocent and God-fearing. I can judge people, you know. I had guessed at once that you were a decent old woman. Now, look, I must tell you a few things. You do not have to do any work. Just stay in your room and pray. I always want some elderly lady to stay in the house and recite the Holy Book every morning and pray for my well-being. I had a pious old Hyderabadi lady who lived here. The poor thing died last year.

  ‘We have two Goan ayahs to look after our wardrobes, etc. You may, once in a while, supervise the kitchen or prepare a special Moghal dish or two.’

  A smartly dressed young girl with a cigarette in her mouth entered the room. Razia Bano said something to her in English. She giggled and went out.

  ‘Your daughter? Masha Allah, how many children do you have?’ Shamshad Begum asked with sudden interest.

  ‘My niece. I have no children.’

  And your Sahib? Does he do business?’ She had heard that everybody in Bombay did business.