Cracking India

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  “Then there is this Hindu-Muslim trouble,” he says, after a pause. “Ugly trouble ... It is spreading. Sikh-Muslim trouble also...”

  The villagers, Sikh and Muslim, erupt in protest.

  “Brother,” the Sikh granthi says when the tumult subsides, “our villages come from the same racial stock. Muslim or Sikh, we are basically Jats. We are brothers. How can we fight each other?”

  “Barey Mian,” says the chaudhry, giving Imam Din his due as a respected elder, “I’m alert to what’s happening... I have a radio. But our relationships with the Hindus are bound by strong ties. The city folk can afford to fight... we can’t. We are dependent on each other: bound by our toil; by Mandi prices set by the Banyas—they’re our common enemy—those city Hindus. To us villagers, what does it matter if a peasant is a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Sikh?”

  Imam Din nods. There is a subtle change in his face; he looks calmer. “As long as our Sikh brothers are with us, what have we to fear?” he says, speaking to the granthi, and including the other Sikhs with a glance. “I think you are right, brothers, the madness will not infect the villages.”

  “If needs be, we’ll protect our Muslim brothers with our lives!” says Jagjeet Singh.

  “I am prepared to take an oath on the Holy Koran,” declares the chaudhry, “that every man in this village will guard his Sikh brothers with no regard for his own life!”

  “We have no need for oaths and such,” says the mullah in a fragile elderly voice. “Brothers don’t require oaths to fulfil their duty.”

  Later, when the mullah’s voice calls the evening prayer, and the Sikhs have begun to saunter across the fields to their village, Dost Mohammad carries his son to a small brick mosque with a green dome in the center of Pir Pindo. I stay back with the women.

  We are due to leave in an hour. Chidda has awakened early to prepare breakfast. I sit on the floor crosslegged, eating my paratha and omelette. Parveen shuffles closer to me. With extreme delicacy, her face flushed and confiding, she whispers into my ear. It takes me a while to realize, she is asking if my hair was cut on account of lice.

  “Of course not!” I say. I don’t care who hears me. “It’s the city fashion.” I glare at her. “Even my mother’s hair is short.”

  Chidda, squatting by the hearth, summons her daughter. Rapping her on the head she says: “Who told you to be uncivil? Who told you to ask questions? Haven’t I taught you to mind your tongue? Go! Get out of my sight!” she says. Ranna quickly grabs his sister’s share of the breakfast.

  A bunch of villagers accompanies us for a mile, wheeling Imam Din’s bicycle for him as we walk. I leave Pir Pindo with a heavy heart and a guilty conscience.

  Chapter 8

  When I return from Imam Din’s village to the elevated world of chairs, tables and toilet seats, Imam Din continues his efforts to keep on the right side of Ayah. She is the greatest involuntary teacher ever. He plies her with beautifully swollen phulkas hot off the griddle, slathered with butterfat and sprinkled with brown sugar. He prepares separate and delicious vegetarian dishes for her. In fact he is, to a large extent, responsible for her spherical attractions. Where would she be without his extra servings of butter, yogurt, curry and chapatti? Wouldn’t she look like all the other stringy, half-starved women in India whom one looks at only once —and never turns around to look at twice?

  He continues to appease Adi and me with dizzying inhalations from his hookah; and chicken giblets and liver, turn by turn, on those occasions when my parents have guests and he cooks chicken.

  My parents entertain often: and when guests are expected we are fed early. Adi and I sit across the oilcloth on a small table against the wall, away from the silver cutlery and embroidered dinner cloth. Yousaf folds the starched white napkins into fancy peacocks and stuffs their props into long-stemmed crystal glasses. Flowers blaze in silver vases.

  Glitter and glory, but very little food. We know the guests will be served delectable but small portions.

  We have already shared the chicken liver, and today it is my turn for the single giblet. I place it on a side plate, saving it for the end when I can chew and suck on it for long uninterrupted moments. I notice the movement of Adi’s eyeballs under his lids as they sneak to the corners, peer at the giblet and slip back. This only enhances the quality of my possession. I am at peace—there is honor even among thieves—and the fear of reprisal. I casually place my left hand above the plate and maneuver it to shield the giblet. I don’t wish to put undue strain on Adi’s honor.

  As it happens, the precaution is unnecessary. I raise a glass of water to my lips and Adi’s swift hand strikes. The giblet is jammed into his mouth and swallowed whole. His throat works like a boa constrictor’s and his face turns red. I grab at his mouth and he opens it wide, saying “Aaaaaa!”

  There is nothing left to retrieve.

  What hurts me most is him swallowing my giblet like a pill. Not even tasting it. It is an affront to my sense of fair play. I grab his hair and let out a blood-curdling shriek that brings Mother rushing from the drawing room and Yousaf, Imam Din and Ayah from the kitchen.

  Mother spanks Adi, and Adi, cursing and fighting back, is picked up by Yousaf and spirited away into the darkness outside.

  Ayah carries me screaming into the kitchen and proceeds to splash my face at the sink. Imam Din pops a chicken heart into my mouth. Yousaf carries Adi back to the kitchen. Adi’s mouth is working. It too has had something popped into it. I wonder what? An uneasy truce is contemplated as we scrutinize each other’s ruminating mouths. A short while later when everyone is busy preparing dinner we slip unobserved beneath the dinner table, friends again.

  We have done this innumerable times. One would imagine that someone might think to look under the table and chase us away before dinner is served.

  The table is supported by stands of polished wood. The stands are held to by a beam which runs six inches above the floor. We roost quietly on the beam in cloth-screened twilight, amidst a display of trouser cuffs, sari borders, ankles, shoes and a medley of fragrance.

  Rosy and Peter’s parents are present: we can tell by their legs. His are crossed at the ankles, smell frankly of cow dung and are prone to shake in and out at the knees. Hers are planted solidly side by side beneath her sari. Peter’s father is a turbaned and bearded Sikh. He is not permitted to cut his hair or shave—not even the hair of his armpits or crotch. Peter has told us this.

  Their mother is American. She ties her blond hair back in a severe knot and always wears a white cotton sari with wide borders. Sometimes I feel she doubles as one of the marching Salvation Army band-women. She is green-eyed and very white and placid and otherworldly. She carries on with whatever she is doing—which is for the most part a mystery—and pays scant attention to the world. Nothing that her children, or her husband, do can wipe the placid look from her face or disturb her unhurried movements.

  Her husband is not a bad man. Mr. Singh does not beat her or white-slave traffic in her. But he has habits that would drive Mother up the wall... I’ve heard her say so. He roams on long hairy legs in loose cotton drawers, barefoot. He milks his water buffalo himself. He converses loudly in vituperative Punjabi and he clears his throat and spits around—generally conducting himself like a coarse Jat in a village. Mother expects more refined conduct from a man married to an American woman.

  They are infrequent guests.

  This appears to be an evening dedicated to neighborly brotherliness. The other guests are from the Birdwood Barracks: Inspector General of Police and Mrs. Rogers. He is tall, colorless, hefty-moustached, pale-eyebrowed; and she, soft, pretty, plump and submissive—with a fascinating proclivity to clean out and around her children’s ears with a handkerchief dampened with spit.

  Their two children are younger than us. The only reason we countenance them at all is because of their glowing ears.

  There are only four guests to dinner tonight, plus my parents—which makes six. Father calculates six portions
to a chicken. Hence the single giblet.

  Meanwhile Father has launched his emergency-measures joke.

  A British soldier and a turbaned native find themselves sharing a compartment. They are traveling by the Khyber Mail to Peshawar. The Indian lifts a bottle of Scotch to his mouth frequently. He does not offer any to the soldier. When the Indian leaves the compartment for a moment the soldier steals a hasty draught from the bottle.

  Again the Indian goes out, and the tommy sneaks another swig.

  They get to talking. The soldier confides he took a draw or two from the Indian’s bottle of Scotch. “Since you didn’t offer it to me, old chap, I helped myself!” he says companionably.

  The native is aghast.

  “But that is my urine in the bottle!” he exclaims. “My hakim prescribed it as a cure for syphilis... ”

  Poor soldier.

  Father and Mother hoot with laughter. Their Sikh guest is in guffaws. And twice, unable to constrain his appreciation, Mr. Singh inserts two fingers in his mouth and emits piercing whistles. His American wife, I think, titters.

  I cannot see them but I doubt if the Rogers manage even a smile. All I see—and barely escape—is a vicious little kick the Inspector General of Police gives the beam. His boots, smelling faintly of horse dung and strongly of shoe polish, keep stabbing the wood.

  Father adds a postscript: “You know—I learned the other day—there was no syphilis in India until the British came... ”

  “You won’t be able to blame everything on us for long, old chap,” says Inspector General Rogers. “That old bugger, Gandhi, is up to his old bag of tricks.”

  “We will have Swaraj!” declaims Mr. Singh in deafening belligerence. As if the Englishman, instead of hinting at the premature departure of the British, has just denied him Home Rule.

  “You think you’ll be up to it, old chap?” says Mr. Rogers snidely.

  “Why not?” shouts Mr. Singh as if he is arguing with the Inspector of Police across a hockey field. “I am up to ruling you and your Empire! You recruit all our Sikh soldiers into your World War Number Two and we win the war for you! Whyfore then you think we cannot do Home Rule?”

  Mr. Singh’s broad Punjabi accent and loud voice never fail to annoy Mother. She must have indicated her displeasure with some gesture because Mrs. Singh placidly says, “Don’t shout, dear.”

  “I am not shouting!” hollers Mr. Singh. “I’m telling this man: Quit India! Gandhijee is on a fast,” he warns the police officer. “If he dies, his blood will be on your head!”

  “That wily Banya is an expert on fasting unto death without dying,” says the heftily moustached policeman demurely.

  “And what if he dies?” questions Mr. Singh righteously. “You mark my word. One day he will die! Then what you will do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll celebrate!” says the Inspector General, losing his patience.

  “You will not celebrate! You know why? Because rivers of your blood will flow in our gutters!” says Mr. Singh in a sarcastic singsong. He shakes his knees in and out in an engaging rhythm and bangs his fist on the table. I can tell by the swift little stabs of the Inspector General’s shoe on the wood that he too is angry.

  “Rivers of blood will flow all right!” he shouts, almost as loudly as Mr. Singh. “Nehru and the Congress will not have everything their way! They will have to reckon with the Muslim League and Jinnah. If we quit India today, old chap, you’ll bloody fall at each other’s throats!”

  “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh: we all want the same thing! We want independence!”

  Inspector General Rogers recovers his Imperial phlegm. “My dear man,” he intones, “Don’t you know the Congress won’t agree on a single issue with the Muslim League? The Cabinet Mission proposed a Federation of the Hindu and Muslim majority provinces. Jinnah accepted it; Gandhi and Nehru didn’t!

  “They even rejected Lord Wavell’s suggestion for an interim government with a majority Congress representation! They’re like the three bloody monkeys! They refuse to hear, or see that Jinnah has the backing of seventy million Indian Muslims! Those arrogant Hindus have blown the last chance for an undivided India... Gandhi and Nehru are forcing the League to push for Pakistan!”

  “And where will this so-called Pakistan be?” enquires our Sikh neighbor with withering and snickering sarcasm.

  “They want the Muslim majority provinces: Punjab, Sind, Kashmir, the North West and Bengal,” replies the police officer, as if coaching a backward child. I can imagine the haughty flare of his English nostrils.

  “They are only saying that to be in a better bargaining position and you are stringing them along because of your divide-and-rule monkey tricks!” accuses Mr. Singh. “You always set one up against the other...You just give Home Rule and see. We will settle our differences and everything!”

  “Who will? Master Tara Singh?” It is a contemptuous, curl-of-the-lip tone of voice.

  “Yes. He is my leader. I will obey him!” Mr. Singh says this so quietly and firmly that for a moment I wonder if someone else has spoken in his stead.

  The Inspector General makes a very peculiar sound. Then he says, “The Akalis are a bloody bunch of murdering fanatics!”

  Even I can tell it’s a tactless thing to say.

  Mr. Singh’s rhythmically knocking knees grow perfectly still. In one quick movement, drawing his legs to his chair, almost knocking it over, he stands up. Everybody’s feet make erratic moves. Adi and I, terrified of discovery, retract our legs and cower in hunched-up bundles.

  Father has stood up also. I hear him say in Punjabi: “Oye, sit down, Sardarjee ... I say, yaar, don’t mind the Angrez Sahib. He doesn’t know... ”

  But before Father can finish the sentence Mr. Singh cuts in: “Oh yes? He knows very well!” and one of his legs completely disappears. There is a clatter of crockery, a heavy thump over our heads, and three variously pitched feminine “Oh”s! Mr. Singh must have leaned clear across the table.

  “Jana! Take the fork away!” Mother shouts.

  “Don’t you dare touch him!” screams Mrs. Rogers hysterically. “Oh! He’ll blind him!”

  “Put that fork away, dear,” says Mrs. Singh, her voice quavering in the effort to sound firm.

  I realize with a little thrill of excitement running up my spine that Mr. Singh has tried to stab the Englishman’s eyes with a fork: and since Mr. Rogers has not cried out, the attempt has failed. No blood has so far been shed.

  Father’s legs skittle behind Mr. Singh’s solitary leg. There is a brief scuffling sound. A piece of cutlery falls clattering on the tabletop. Mr. Rogers remains disappointingly quiet. Obviously Mr. Singh has been de-forked. Then Mr. Singh’s wide butt pounds down on the cane-bottomed dining chair.

  “Tell him to apologize!” He roars, almost wailing, shuffling on his seat.

  “Go to hell, you fat hairy slob!” spits the police officer, his short breath betraying his jolted nerves.

  “Please,” pleads Mother. “Please apologize.”

  I can visualize Mother’s hand on the Inspector’s arm. None, except Father, can resist her touch.

  There is a tense pause.

  “Oh, all right... I’m sorry, old boy! I shouldn’t have said that,” says the Englishman gruffly.

  In sandaled feet Father toddles back to his own seat, and Mr. Singh’s muscular thighs commence their rhythmic twitching with renewed vigor.

  Mother and Mrs. Rogers chatter excessively about the weather. Suddenly they become quiet.

  “You know, old chap,” Inspector General Rogers has just said to Mr. Singh, “if you Sikhs plan to keep your lands in Lyallpur and Montgomery, you’d better start fraternizing with the Muslim League. If you don’t, the Muslims will throw you off your rich lands.”

  “That motherfucker isn’t born who can throw us out! We will throw them out! and you out!” Mr. Singh bashes his fist on the table with such force that the cutlery and crockery jangle.

  “Who wants pudding?” trills
Mother shrilly, loudly banging a spoon against her glass.

  In the startled silence that follows, Mrs. Rogers enthusiastically warbles: “Oh, I’d love some pudding!”

  And Mrs. Singh, mustering all the emphasis of which she is capable, says, “Me too!”

  In a determined effort to flood with oil the precariously tranquilized waters, Mother tells Father, “Janoo, you must tell everybody that joke about the cannibals and the padre’s wife that you told me! About breakfast in bed... ”

  Since when did Father start telling Mother jokes? Mother has this habit of voicing her fantasies ... If she persists in her visions of conjugal bliss, I’m afraid she will lose touch with reality.

  There are other jokes. Father and Mother crack up with hoots that I’m sure can be heard by the lion in his zoo. Beneath the table Adi and I mimic their laughter, taking care to time the whoops and blend our voices. Mr. Singh is breathless with laughing. He stamps his feet, here and there, unaware of the havoc he is causing beneath the table.

  After they are through with the pudding, and the thimblefuls of liqueurs, Adi pinches Mrs. Singh’s calf and I pinch Mrs. Rogers’s. Even the imperturbable Mrs. Singh shrieks. Their feet fly up to our chests and chins. The tablecloth is raised and six bewildered faces poke under.

  We emerge. Mother is angry. Apprehensive. She glances at Father and, taking her cue from his amused countenance, relaxes. She beams at us in that way I have begun to notice and resent: her “other-people-are-around” way. Father looks pleasant and even makes indulgent sounds. Yousaf gathers us by the ears and propels us to bed.

  Father’s dinner party jokes never fail. The Rogers have scarcely eaten. Over the years it saves thousands of rupees’ worth of chicken, lamb, caramel custard and other party fare.

  Half asleep I can still hear them laugh. Was that really Father? that communicative person making “pooch-pooch” noises with his lips and kindly saying, “Get along you two!” as Yousaf took us from the room? and that hooting, rollicking woman my remote and solemn mother?