A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

  Eighteen and a half rupees in three months—and the rent of her place alone was twenty a month. Her landlord called it a ‘flat’, using the English word. In this flat there was a toilet in which when you pulled a chain the water immediately carried all the filth away into the sewer. It made a tremendous noise, and at first she’d felt very scared at this noise. On the first day there when she’d gone to the toilet she’d felt a sharp pain in her waist, and when she stood up she’d got hold of this hanging chain to help her up. She’d noticed this chain and had thought that since the flat had been specially fitted out for them‡ it had been put there to make it easier for them and give them some support when they got up from the toilet. But no sooner had she taken hold of the chain to get up than she heard a sort of clanking sound above her and all of a sudden water came out with a rush, and she was so frightened that she let out a shriek. Khuda Bakhsh had been in the next room seeing to his photographic equipment and pouring hydroquinine into a clean bottle when he heard Sultana shriek. He came running and asked her, ‘What’s the matter? Was that you shrieking?’ Sultana’s heart was beating fast. ‘What’s this wretched toilet up to?’ she said. ‘What’s this chain hanging down like the chain in a railway carriage? I had a pain in my waist and I thought I’d support myself by it, but I’d no sooner touched it than there was a sort of great explosion, so loud that...

  Khuda Bakhsh had laughed his head off. Then he’d told Sultana all about it. ‘It’s a new-style toilet. You pull the chain and all the filth goes down into the ground.’

  How Khuda Bakhsh and Sultana had got together is a long story. He came from Rawalpindi. After he’d passed his entrance exam he’d learnt to drive a lorry, and for four years worked as a lorry driver on the Rawalpindi-Kashmir run. Then he took up with a woman in Kashmir and carried her off with him to Lahore. He couldn’t get work in Lahore, so he set this woman to work as a prostitute. This went on for two or three years, and then the woman ran off with someone else. Khuda Bakhsh learnt that she was in Ambala and went there to look for her. There he met Sultana. Sultana liked him, and that’s how they got together.

  From the time when Khuda Bakhsh joined her, trade began to look up. She was a superstitious woman and concluded that Khuda Bakhsh was a man of great spiritual power, and that this was why things had improved so much with his arrival. And this enhanced Khuda Bakhsh’s standing in her eyes even more.

  Khuda Bakhsh was a hard worker. He didn’t like sitting about all day doing nothing. So he made friends with a photographer who used to take photos with a polaroid camera outside the railway station. This man taught Khuda Bakhsh how to take photos, and then he took sixty rupees from Sultana and bought a camera. Gradually he got together a screen, two chairs, and equipment for developing film, and set up on his own. He did well, and in no time at all had established himself in Ambala Cantonment. There he’d take photos of the British Tommies. Within a month he had a wide circle of acquaintances in the cantonment. So he moved Sultana there too, and thanks to him a number of British Tommies became Sultana’s regular clients and she made twice as much as she’d been making before.

  Sultana bought herself earrings and got eight gold bracelets made, each weighing five and a half tolas. She accumulated ten to fifteen good quality sarees, and furniture for their home. In short, in Ambala she was very well off. Then suddenly—God knows why—Khuda Bakhsh took it into his head to move to Delhi. How could Sultana refuse? She thought that Khuda Bakhsh brought her good luck. She gladly agreed. She thought that in a big city like that, where the Big Lord Sahib lived, her trade would prosper even more. She’d heard her friends singing the praises of Delhi. And the shrine of Nizam-ud-Din was there, and he was a saint for whom she felt a great devotion. So she quickly sold off all her heavy possessions and went off with Khuda Bakhsh to Delhi. Here he got a flat for twenty rupees a month and both of them moved into it.

  It was one in a long line of new houses lining the road. The municipal committee had designated this part of the city as the prostitutes’ quarter so that they would not establish themselves all over the city. On the ground floor were shops, and the two storeys above the shops were flats. Because all were built to the same design Sultana at first had great difficulty in working out which flat was hers. But then a laundryman took the shop on the floor below and put up his signboard above it, and that gave her a sure landmark. ‘Clothes Washed Here’, it said, and she at once located her flat. In the same way she established many other landmarks for herself. For example, her friend Hira Bai, who sometimes sang on the radio, lived above the shop which announced in great big letters that it sold coal. Above ‘Excellent Cuisine for Gentlemen’ another friend, Mukhtar, lived. Above the workshop that made the broad tape for beds, Nuri lived. She was in the regular service of the man who owned the workshop, and since he needed to keep an eye on it at nights he used to spend the nights with her.

  When you first set up shop you can’t expect customers to start coming right away, and when for the first month Sultana had no customers she comforted herself with this thought. But when two months had gone by and no one had approached her she got very worried. She said to Khuda Bakhsh, ‘Why is it, Khuda Bakhsh? Today we’ve been here a full two months and no one has come our way. I know that trade is slack these days, but it’s not so slack that throughout the month no one even looks at you.’ Khuda Bakhsh too had been getting troubled about this for a long time, but he hadn’t said anything. But now that Sultana herself had raised the matter he said,‘I’ve been thinking about it for some days. All that I can think is that people have taken up war work and can’t think of anything else. Or maybe it’s that...’ But before he could say any more they heard someone coming up the stairs. Khuda Bakhsh and Sultana both pricked up their ears. Shortly there was a knock at the door. Khuda Bakhsh rushed to open it and a man came in. This was their first customer and they settled for three rupees. After that five more came—that meant six in three months; and Sultana got eighteen and a half rupees from them.

  Twenty a month went in rent for the flat. Water rates and electricity bill on top of that. And all the other household expenses—food, drink, clothes and medicines. And no income. You can’t call it income when all you get in three months is eighteen and a half rupees. Sultana was worried. One by one, the eight bracelets of five tolas each that she’d had made in Ambala were sold off. When only one was left she said to Khuda Bakhsh,‘Listen to me. Let’s go back to Ambala. There’s nothing here for us. And even if there is, I don’t like it here. You too used to do well there. Come on, let’s go back, and cut our losses. This is my last bracelet. Go and sell it. Meanwhile I’ll pack, and we’ll leave by tonight’s train.’

  Khuda Bakhsh took the bracelet from her and said, ‘No, my love. We’re not going back to Ambala. We’ll make our living here in Delhi. You’ll get back all your bracelets right here. Trust in God. He provides, and here too He’ll provide us with some means.’

  Sultana said nothing, and took the last bracelet off her arm. It made her sad when she looked at her bare arm, but what could she do? They had to find some way to fill their bellies.

  When five months had gone by and income still didn’t cover even a quarter of their expenditure, Sultana grew all the more anxious. And now Khuda Bakhsh was out all day, and this upset her all the more. True, there were two or three of her neighbours she could go to see, and she could pass the time with them. But she didn’t like going there every day to sit with them for hours together; so gradually she stopped going altogether. She would sit all day in her empty house, sometimes slicing betel nut and sometimes mending her old clothes. And sometimes she would go out onto the balcony and stand by the railings and aimlessly watch the moving and stationary engines in the railway sheds opposite.

  On the other side of the road there was a warehouse, reaching from one corner to the other. To the right, under the metal roof lay some big bales, along with piles of all sorts of goods. To the left there was an open space, criss-crossed by innumerable ra
ilway lines. When Sultana saw how these iron rails shone in the sun she would look at her hands, on which the blue veins stood out just like the railway lines. In this long, open space engines and trucks were moving all the time this way and that, puffing and clattering. When she got up early in the morning and went out onto the balcony a strange sight confronted her. Thick smoke rising from the engines through the mist, rising to the overcast sky like fat, burly men. Great clouds of steam too, rising noisily from the rails, and gradually dispersing into the air. Sometimes when she saw a carriage shunted and left to run on its own along the line she thought of herself, thought how she too had been shunted onto a line and left to run on her own. Others would change the points and she would move on, not knowing where she was going. And a day would come when the impetus would gradually exhaust itself and she would come to a halt somewhere, in some place she had never before seen.

  She would stand for hours, aimlessly watching these vivid, lively railway lines and the engines standing on them or moving along them. But all sorts of thoughts would come and go in her mind. When she had lived in Ambala, there too her house had been quite near the station, but thoughts like these had never occurred to her. Now she sometimes thought of this network of railway lines, from which steam and smoke were always rising, as a huge brothel—lots of trucks being shunted hither and thither by a few fat engines. Sometimes she felt that these engines were like the businessmen who sometimes used to visit her in Ambala. And sometimes when she watched an engine moving slowly past the lines of trucks she thought it was like a man walking slowly through the red light quarter looking up at the balconies where the prostitutes sat.

  Sultana thought that thoughts like these would lead to some sort of mental disorder. So when she began to think like this she stopped going out onto the balcony.

  She asked Khuda Bakhsh repeatedly to take pity on her and stay at home, and not leave her alone in the house lying there like someone ill. But every time she did he would tell her,‘My love, I go out to try and earn something. God willing, in a little while all our problems will be solved.’ But five full months had gone by and both Sultana’s problems and his were still unsolved.

  The month of Muharram* was drawing near, and Sultana had no means of getting black clothes made for herself. Her friend Mukhtar had had a fashionable Lady Hamilton qamis made, with black georgette sleeves. And to match it she had a black satin shalwar that shone like black eyeliner. Anwari had bought herself a fine silk georgette saree. She told Sultana she would wear a white petticoat underneath it. This was the latest fashion, she said. And she had got herself black velvet shoes to wear with it—very dainty ones. When Sultana saw all these things it grieved her very much that she couldn’t afford clothes like these for Muharram.

  When she got back home after being shown Anwari’s and Mukhtar’s clothes she felt extremely depressed—as though a boil had begun to swell up inside her. The house was empty. Khuda Bakhsh, as usual, was out. She put a bolster under her head and lay down on the carpet. She lay there until the height of the bolster began to make her neck stiff. Then she got up and went out onto the balcony, hoping to get these painful thoughts out of her head.

  There were carriages standing on the rails, but not a single engine. It was evening. Water had already been sprinkled in the street and there was no dust in the air. People had begun to pass along the street, people who looked about them as they went silently home. One of them raised his head and looked at Sultana. She smiled at him and then forgot about him, because an engine had appeared on the lines opposite and she had begun to give it all her attention. Gradually the idea came into her head that the engine too was wearing black. To banish this weird idea from her mind she looked down again at the street, and saw that the same man was standing there by an ox-cart, the one who had been staring at her greedily. She beckoned to him. He looked around him and gestured to ask her the way up to her flat. She showed him. He stood there for a moment, but then quickly came upstairs.

  Sultana invited him to sit down on the carpet, and when he had sat down, she said, to get the conversation going,‘You were afraid to come up.’ He smiled.‘What made you think that?—what is there to be afraid of?’ Whereupon Sultana said, ‘I thought that because you waited there a little while before you decided you would come up.’ He smiled again and said, ‘You were mistaken. I was looking at the flat above you. There was a woman standing there taunting some man. I was interested. Then a green light went on on the balcony, and I waited a bit longer, because I like green light.’ He began to size up the room. Then he got up. Sultana said,‘Are you going?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to see your flat. Come on, show me all the rooms.’

  Sultana showed him all three rooms, and he looked over them without saying a word. When they went back into the room where they had been sitting he said,‘My name is Shankar.’

  Now for the first time Sultana looked at him attentively. He was of medium height, and nothing special to look at. But his eyes were unusually clear and bright, with an occasional strange twinkle in them. A well-knit, little body. Hair greying at the temples. Trousers of warm cloth. A white shirt, with a stand-up collar.

  He sat there on the carpet as though not he but Sultana was the client, and this worried her a little. So she said,‘What can I do for you?’

  He lay back and said,‘What can you do for me? What can I do for you? It was you who invited me up.’When Sultana made no reply he sat up again.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘Now listen to me. Whatever you were thinking, you thought wrong. I’m not one of those who come up here, give you something and go away again. I expect a fee, like a doctor does. When people send for me they have to pay a fee.’

  Sultana was flabbergasted, but she couldn’t help laughing.‘What do you do?’ she asked him.

  ‘I do what you lot do,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I... I... I don’t do anything.’

  ‘I too don’t do anything.’

  Sultana said crossly, ‘That doesn’t make sense. There must be something you do.’

  ‘And there must be something you do,’ Shankar calmly replied.

  ‘Yes, I waste my time.’

  ‘I too waste my time.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s waste time together.’

  ‘I’m at your service. But I never pay to waste time. ’

  ‘Use your head...This isn’t a charity.’

  ‘No, and I’m not a volunteer.’

  Sultana hesitated.‘Who are these volunteers?’ she said.

  ‘Bloody fools,’ said Shankar.

  ‘Well, I’m not a bloody fool.’

  ‘No; but that Khuda Bakhsh who lives with you—he’s a bloody fool.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s been going for days to a holy man, hoping that he’ll change his fortunes—when he hasn’t a hope of changing even his own...like trying to open a lock that’s rusted fast.’ And he laughed.

  Sultana said,‘You’re a Hindu. That’s why you ridicule our holy men.’

  He smiled, ‘In places like this the Hindu-Muslim question doesn’t arise. If Pandit Malaviya and Mr Jinnah were to come here they’d both behave like gentlemen.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about... Well, then, are you staying or not?’

  ‘Only on the condition I told you.’

  Sultana got up.‘On your way, then,’ she said.

  Shankar got up, entirely at ease, and thrusting his hands in his trouser pockets said as he left,‘I come this way every now and then. Whenever you need me, call me. I can do a lot for you.’

  Shankar went off and Sultana forgot all about her black dress and thought about all this for a long time. What he had said had lightened her grief considerably. If he’d come to her in Ambala, when she was well off, she’d have looked at him in quite another light, and would probably have pushed him out. But here she was depressed, and she had liked the way he talked.
r />   When Khuda Bakhsh got home in the evening Sultana asked where he’d been all day. Khuda Bakhsh was exhausted. He said,‘I’ve been to the Old Fort. There’s a holy man who’s been staying there some days. It’s him I’m going to every day, so that our fortunes may change.’

  ‘Has he said anything to you?’

  ‘No, so far he hasn’t deigned to. But Sultana, my waiting upon him won’t be for nothing. If God is gracious we’ll be in clover.’

  Sultana’s head was full of Muharram. She said in a mournful voice,‘You’re out all day and every day. And I’m here like a prisoner in a cage. I can’t go anywhere. And Muharram will soon be here. Have you thought about that? Has it occurred to you that I need black clothes? We haven’t got a farthing in the house, I had my bracelets, but one by one we’ve sold them. How much longer are you going to be trailing behind these holy men? It looks to me as if God Himself has turned His back on us since we came to Delhi. If you take my advice you’ll get started on your work here. It’ll bring in something at any rate.’

  Khuda Bakhsh lay down on the carpet. ‘But to get started I need a bit of capital,’he said.‘For God’s sake don’t say such painful things. I can’t bear it. You’re right; it was a really bad mistake to leave Ambala. But everything that happens happens by God’s will, and happens for our good. Who knows? We’ll have to put up with all this for a while, and then...’