River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  “Wish we could have the pheras around the telephone, it would solve a lot of logistical problems for us settlers in America,” Chandra mused aloud.

  “He will return to London with his bride early next month.” After this exit line, Kamal declared an Interval.

  Champa came in from the garden, said a general goodbye, and left.

  “Roshan told me before she sailed for Karachi that she was marrying a CSP officer chosen for her by her parents. On the one hand there was security, on the other the Security Act.2 She was opting for the former, she said.”

  “Now she will spend her life attending cocktail parties and cutting ribbons at flower shows,” said Surekha. “I’ve been imagining how all of us will end up in the future—Champa as a retired, shattered school marm, me as a faded dancer, forgotten by the public, Talat as a . . . as a . . .”

  “As an unsuccessful author?” Talat put in helpfully.

  “Maybe. Then how different would we be from Roshan? Old age is a great leveller, especially for women celebrities.”

  “Girls are a tricky proposition, yaar,” Hari said to Kamal. “It’s so easy to break their hearts, they’re so fragile. They ought to be treated like goddesses and handled like Dresden dolls. How could Bhaiya Saheb be so insensitive about Roshan? She’s a great girl.”

  Hari was exaggerating as usual. Talat remembered him as a young bully who used to smash up her dolls. She turned towards him. “Mian Hari Shankar, economic independence is the real thing. Dolls and goddesses, indeed!” she fumed.

  “Champa Baji is economically independent,” Hari argued, “but look at the mess she’s in . . .”

  “Amir Reza, Gautam, Cyril Ashley, Bill Craig, Gautam again in the second round—why she’s been merrily playing musical chairs,” Talat replied. “Kora Jamal Shahi, peechhe dekha, maar khai . . .”

  “Talat, you’ll always remain Tatterwalla Girls’ High School, Barrow Road, Lucknow,” Kamal said sternly. “It’s her life, let her be. However, would you like to play such musical chairs?”

  “Good heavens, no,” Talat replied primly.

  “Being financially independent doesn’t solve women’s emotional problems,” Hari repeated.

  Talat was frowning. Hari Shankar pacified her. “Look, Bibi, I quite agree with you. You study some more, do your Ph.D. as well. Economic freedom is certainly the main thing.”

  Talat was in no mood to be pacified “A Ph.D. will give me ladoos to eat? Just a measly lectureship—Rs 300 a month!!! Only three hundred!” She waved three fingers in front of Hari’s nose.

  After Talat returned to the kitchen, Kamal said to Hari on the quiet, “I didn’t tell these good ladies what Bhaiya Saheb told me before leaving, that he never wanted to feel threatened by his wife—which just goes to show.”

  “Yeah, which goes to show,” Hari agreed. “To tell you the truth, I can see his point of view.”

  They shook hands.

  1 I am in Delhi, you in Agra. How can we play a duet on the flute?

  2 A law in Pakistan under which a person could be arrested for political dissent.

  60. The Garden Room

  It had started snowing. The Anglo-Saxon lama looked out of Mrs. Shunila Mukerji’s drawing-room window, then turned round and fixed his gaze on his Anglo-Saxon audience. He was a clean-shaven middle-aged man with a shorn head which he covered with a ski cap. He wore the maroon robe of a Tibetan monk and held a prayer wheel in his right hand. He looked enormously picturesque. He was the same Englishman who had fled Lucknow fifteen years earlier, and Kamal and Hari Shankar had gone to Hardwar to look for him. He had returned to the mundane world as an ordained lama, author of a best-selling paperback titled Himalayas of the Soul.

  Gautam arrived at Nell Gwen Court and found a heap of snow-boots outside the door of Mrs. Mukerji’s posh flat. He looked in through the half-open door and surveyed the crowd. He was about to go back when Nargis Cowasjee saw him and came forward, grinning. She carried a bundle of burning joss sticks, English fiancé in tow.

  “Nargis, what’s all the racket for?” he asked, peeved.

  “Shsh—” she whispered. “All for the sake of Culture, Gautam, all for the sake of Culture. I am told he has been engaged by the Congress of Cultural Freedom to lecture on Buddhism in the West. Isn’t he cute? It’s such fun listening to him—his yak talks to him in English and so on. You only have to discover your own Inner Himalayas—I say, Gautam you look distraught. Is Nirmal all right?”

  “Nirmal?” he gasped.

  “Half her lung was removed last week . . . successfully . . .” she added as she saw Gautam blanch. “She’s fine, I visited her yesterday. I’m thinking of taking the lama to her for her Enlightenment!”

  “I . . . I was away in Moscow all this time . . . And now I am looking for Kamal—this envelope arrived addressed to him c/o India House. I found it this morning. He had applied for a post in the National Physical Laboratory and he has been called for the interview. At the earliest. I’ve phoned him everywhere but can’t locate him. So I dropped by here—Mrs. Mukerji may know.”

  “Oh.” Nargis tiptoed out to the gallery, followed by the hostess who had recently taken to spiritualism. Gautam told her why he was looking for Kamal.

  “Come in, come in. The lama is in touch with Hidden Masters and Unseen Yogis, he’ll tell us Kamal’s whereabouts in a jiffy. So, Kamal is also leaving? Cyril has gone away to East Pakistan, Michael is emigrating to Israel . . .”

  “Sujata di, this is the way of the world. People come and go,” Gautam said wearily.

  “Yes, indeed. As Gurudev has said, Traveller, you must—”

  “Excuse me, Sujata di, I’ll see the reverend lama some other time,” and he ran towards the lift.

  “Try the BBC canteen and the Chicken Inn,” Nargis shouted after him, anxiously.

  The Chicken Inn was unusually quiet. A solitary girl in a powder-blue cardigan and black skirt sat at the counter, drinking coffee. It was Champa. “Hello,” she said, “you done a Houdini again.”

  “Look, Champa, Kamal has been called for an interview. He is bound to be selected—he must airdash to Delhi.”

  “That’s jolly good news. But why are you so glum?”

  “Nirmal underwent major surgery last week . . . Didn’t you know? I didn’t, because I was away in Moscow.”

  He rang Surekha from the telephone on the counter. Gulshan answered: “Yes, yes. Nirmal is fine. Kamal has gone to Sir Roger’s to get her reports . . . Surekha will come home late from RADA . . . Kamal said he would come straight to our house from Harley Street, to collect some books for Nirmal. You go there and wait for him. I have to rush to college, but I’ll leave the keys with Asha.”

  They came out of the restaurant. “Can I tag along with you?” Champa asked. She seemed to be concerned, too.

  “Yes, sure. Where have you parked your Mayflower?”

  “Sold it to Roshan Kazmi. I needed the money and she wanted to chase and impress Commander Amir Reza. Since I had no one to chase, what was the bloody use of maintaining a motor car?”

  “So back to London and the ever-moving stairs!” He quoted Louise MacNiece absently.

  They reached the Aroras’ house in St. John’s Wood, took the key from Asha and went directly into Surekha’s garden room. Champa opened the plate-glass door. He made for the phone and dialled several numbers to locate Kamal. Then he sat down resignedly on a sofa, and began the wait for his elusive friend.

  Outside, the hollyhocks were lit up by a dim winter sun. Music rose from across the garden wall, the day was comfort giving and pleasant. Champa lit the fire. Surekha’s unfriendly black Persian who was fast asleep on the rug, woke up and miaowed sullenly.

  Gautam glanced around. Objets d’art. A huge Nataraj. Hungarian and Spanish dolls. A Russian balalaika. Autographed portraits of Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpman. A sewing-machine on the floor along with a basket of fresh vegetables. “She is a world famous dancer, but basically a housewife . . . And thank god for it . . .
Actually, a dwelling reveals the character of its occupants.” He began to elaborate on his Theory of Rooms. In order to overcome his anxiety and tension about Kamal and Nirmala, he obviously wanted to just go on talking.

  “Now, Sujata Debi’s place, where everything is so arty-crafty . . .”

  “How,” Champa interrupted him, “can you detect the subtle difference between pose and non-pose? I’ve always said that you’re a bit contrived, too!”

  “Maybe I am. But, on the whole, we can hardly ever tear ourselves away completely from our real background.” He paused for a moment and added, “Isn’t it odd, that sitting on the stool in that Oxford Street restaurant you did not seem to have come from Banaras.”

  She nodded tiredly, “You told me all this the very first time you met me after six long years—when you came to my mews—that I had changed for the worse.”

  “Did I tell you that I wrote you a letter last year from the States? I was holidaying in New Jersey during the Fall, and one day I sat down under a purple tree and composed an epistle to you. I was unusually happy. I have never understood the reason for my elation from time to time. I did write to you but you probably never received my letter. I think I clean forgot to post it and went back to New York.”

  “I have received no letter, ever.”

  “Come, come, you’re being dramatic again!”

  Somebody had started singing a Bengali song in Asha’s semi-detached next door.

  “Gautam, stop being nasty to a poor exile.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Poor exile, says you!” He looked at her expensive black net stockings and her chic dress bought at Liberty’s. “What on earth hinders you from returning home, my dear?”

  Ajit and Taruna were leading the chorus at Asha’s.

  “They’re going to yell and sing far into the night—the entire London Majlis of Indian Students seems to have turned up there,” she commented wryly. “They’re leaving for Budapest tomorrow, for the Youth Festival.”

  He rushed out. “No, Kamal is not here,” he was told. The next moment he had jumped over the wall and joined Asha’s party.

  He returned to Surekha’s garden room after three quarters of an hour. “Did Kamal ring up?” he asked.

  She was lying in front of the fire, reading. “No,” she replied dryly.

  Gautam didn’t apologise for his disappearance. Indian men still take women for granted, she thought unhappily. Or perhaps he has lost all respect for me. He wouldn’t dare behave like this with Talat.

  Gautam found Surekha’s empty Assamese bag lying on a chair and carefully stowed the envelope in it. Then he addressed Champa.

  “You seem very angry with me, for some reason.”

  “You’re a cheap mercenary, Gautam. You started seeing me all of a sudden after six years. You took me for a ride, in order to accomplish a mission on Shanta’s behalf. You asked me to give up Bill. I did. Shanta went back to him, and then you dropped me again like a hot brick. Was that an honourable thing to do?”

  “I always told you I was no good, Champa,” he said stonily. “It’s 2 o’clock. What with one thing and another, I have still not been able to contact Nawab Kamman.”

  “Such are the uncertainties of life,” she remarked cynically.

  “The notes are rising like a storm. They are eternal . . .” he said after some time, listening to the sound of music coming from Asha’s house. “But they seem to stop before they reach total harmony.” He got up and played an arpeggio on the piano. “One note is missing, in lower C. It must be the mice—they often take up abode inside and eat up the felt. Back home in Bahraich a fat old mouse used to play such difficult Wagner pieces, running up and down the chords! At the dead of night, too. My mother was convinced that some ghost had got inside it, till the servants discovered our furry pianist!”

  “It sounds odd, playing Wagner in Bahraich,” she remarked ironically.

  “You see,” he explained “like the Gulfishan folk, I belonged to the Anglicised upper middle class. Father was a high court judge in Allahabad and he engaged an Anglo-Indian pianist to teach me. He taught me up to the 6th grade. Then I went off to Santiniketan . . .” For the first time he was talking to her about his personal life. “Then Father settled down in our home-town, Bahraich, after he retired. I love Bahraich,” he added stoutly. A few minutes earlier he had taunted her for not being faithful to Banaras, but as a diplomat with superior, international airs would he really feel at home in a drab and dusty small town?

  “Would you like to settle down in Bahraich after retirement, like your Dad?” she asked archly. “Wouldn’t you prefer London or New York?”

  He looked at her in amazement. Her mind darted ahead of his with surprising speed.

  Here we are, she and I. At last. At last. He grew nervous and went over to the window. We are living at each other’s mercy, bound down, chained in time. Although this time was unreal, too. He looked at Champa who appeared so unnecessary, sitting there in front of the fire. Unnecessary and absurd, like himself.

  We entered through one door, and now all exits are closed. I have lost the key.

  “So what will you do now?” he asked sombrely.

  “Oh, I’ll eat a few dinners at the Middle Temple.”

  “It’s futile, Champa, we’ll never find the key, the password. Forget about it.” He paced around and began examining the bronze statuettes. He rapped them on their heads. “Because,” he said touching the nose of a South Indian goddess, “it is you and nobody else who will get caught every time. You think that you have arrived at a decision and now everything will be all right. But it isn’t so easy, dear Champa. You shall have more trouble.”

  He returned to the window. The moment kept spinning, its whirlpool extending to the ends of the earth. Oceans of eternity drowned in it. Slowly it wound down, shining and dim by turns. Like a lantern on a windy night. Light entered the room, slipping over the garden snow. A perfect pattern. She remained motionless by the fireplace. Outside, cars passed by on Maida Vale, shoppers went in and out of the grocery store, the mossy old church round the corner cast a ghostly shadow on the street.

  All of existence is a book which I have read and will go on reading till my last breath, Champa told herself resignedly.

  Gautam said, “Two distinct worlds are present in me all the time. One of them includes these people,” he pointed towards the room with its photographs and books, “in the other there are only you and me, by ourselves. Both worlds are connected to each other through a bridge. What’ll happen when this flimsy bridge breaks down?”

  “You will blow up the bridge yourself,” she replied.

  “No . . . These people have set up machine-guns everywhere, there are cannons hidden under the bushes. It’s the crudest kind of jungle warfare you can imagine. And clouds are thundering in the sky above. I feel that one of these days this other world will slip into the yawning pit below and I’ll be left outside, struggling to recover myself. It’s a dreadful thought.”

  “You’re hiding in the rafters with your spotlight, and you turn it in the direction of anyone who comes into view,” she said. “And the poor fellow is exposed in that light. You have always done this.” She recollected their conversation in Sita Dixit’s cottage years ago.

  “But I myself am in that light all the time,” he protested.

  “No, you have cleverly camouflaged yourself, lurking in the hollyhocks. What will happen when this searchlight hits you, too? I know what you will do. You’ll jump down from your ambush and run! You’ll knock around, peeping through lighted windows and see us inside, sitting around warm stoves, eating, talking, cooking dinner. You’ll come prowling over the roof tiles, a tramp, nimblefooted tomcat. We’ll see your face against the window-pane by the light of the moon. Bogeyman!”

  “And at that time little will you suspect that I am right there, taking part in discussions near the stove, cooking, eating. No. You will see me peeping through the window. Bog woman!”

  After a whi
le, he said, “Looks like Kamal will never turn up.”

  Now, “afterwards” still remains. An afterwards which will extend till death, till eternity. Which shall remain for evermore, Champa said to herself. He and I have no destiny.

  Gautam strode across and went to the bathroom. Champa stepped out into the garden. The telephone rang, she came back. Gautam was still in the bathroom. She picked up the receiver. It was a nurse from Lidhurst. “May I speak to Mrs. Ahuja,” she asked. Then the line disconnected. Surekha’s black tomcat growled under the table, Gautam rushed in.

  “Who was it?” he asked anxiously.

  She was scared. “I dunno. It was from Lidhurst but the line got disconnected.”

  All of a sudden she saw Gautam transformed into an ashen-faced yogi. Terrible. Terrifying. Like Shiva, about to break into his Dance of Destruction . . .

  “The whole day is gone, and I am still here . . . What am I doing here, talking bloody inanities.” He made a dash for the gallery. Near the door he caught sight of a parcel of books lying on a corner table. It was marked “For Nirmala, with love and prayers for a speedy recovery, from Surekha.”

  He picked it up blindly and zoomed out of the room. He got into his car and drove in a frenzy towards Lidhurst.

  Champa wiped cold perspiration off her face, and sat down weakly. After a few minutes she noticed the Assamese bag in which he had stuffed the envelope addressed to Kamal. He had forgotten to take it along in his tearing hurry.

  The singing in Asha’s flat stopped suddenly. An ominous silence. The black Persian who had got entangled in the telephone cords, freed himself and jumped out. Then he stared malevolently at Champa. She closed the glass door, picked up the Assamese bag and stepped out. She slipped the key in Asha’s mail-box next door and began walking briskly towards the tube station.

  On the platform Champa met June Carter. She was coming from Asha’s party and looked grim. She asked, “Have you heard . . .”