Cracking India

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  Gandhijee certainly is ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world.

  Mother and I sit in a circle with Gita and the women from Daulatram’s house. A pink-satin bow dangling from the tip of her stout braid, Gita looks ethereal and content—as if washed of all desire. I notice the same look on the faces of the other women. Whatever his physical shortcomings, Gandhijee must have some concealed attractions to inspire such purified expressions.

  Lean young women flank Gandhijee. They look different from Lahori women and are obviously a part of his entourage. The pleasantly plump Punjabi women, in shalwar-kamizes and saris, shuffle from spot to spot. Barely standing up, they hold their veils so that the edges don’t slip off their heads as they go to and from Gandhijee. The women are subdued, receptive; as when one sits with mourners.

  Someone takes Mother’s hand, and hand in hand we go to Gandhijee. Butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths. Gandhijee politely puts aside his knitting and increases his disgruntled scowl; and with an irrelevance I find alarming, says softly, “Sluggish stomachs are the scourge of the Punjabis... too much rich food and too little exercise. The cause of India’s ailments lies in our clogged alimentary canals. The hungry stomach is the scourge of the poor and the full stomach of the rich.”

  Beneath her blue-tinted and rimless glasses Mother’s eyes are downcast, her head bowed, her bobbed hair—and what I assume is her consternation—concealed beneath her sari. But when Gandhijee pauses, she gives him a sidelong look of rapt and reverent interest. And two minutes later, not the least bit alarmed, she earnestly furnishes him with the odor, consistency, time and frequency of her bowel movements. When she is finished she bows her head again, and Gandhijee passes his hand over her head: and then, absently, as if it were a tiresome afterthought, over mine.

  “Flush your system with an enema, daughter,” says Gandhijee, directing his sage counsel at my mother. “Use plain, lukewarm water. Do it for thirty days... every morning. You will feel like a new woman.

  “Look at these girls,” says Gandhijee, indicating the lean women flanking him. “I give them enemas myself—there is no shame in it—I am like their mother. You can see how smooth and moist their skin is. Look at their shining eyes!”

  The enema-emaciated women have faint shadows beneath their limpid eyes and, moist-skinned or not, they are much too pale, their brown skins tinged by a clayish pallor.

  Gandhijee reaches out and suddenly seizes my arm in a startling vise. “What a sickly-looking child,” he announces, avoiding my eye. “Flush her stomach! Her skin will bloom like roses.”

  Considering he has not looked my way even once, I am enraged by his observation. “An enema a day keeps the doctor away,” he crows feebly, chortling in an elderly and ghoulish way, his slight body twitching with glee, his eyes riveted upon my mother.

  I consider all this talk about enemas and clogged intestines in shocking taste, and I take a dim and bitter view of his concern for my health and welfare. Turning up my nose and looking down severely at this improbable toss-up between a clown and a demon, I am puzzled why he’s so famous—and suddenly his eyes turn to me. My brain, heart and stomach melt. The pure shaft of humor, compassion, tolerance and understanding he directs at me fuses me to everything that is feminine, funny, gentle, loving. He is a man who loves women. And lame children. And the untouchable sweeper—so he will love the untouchable sweeper’s constipated girl-child best. I know just where to look for such a child. He touches my face, and in a burst of shyness I lower my eyes. This is the first time I have lowered my eyes before man.

  It wasn’t until some years later—when I realized the full scope and dimension of the massacres—that I comprehended the concealed nature of the ice lurking deep beneath the hypnotic and dynamic femininity of Gandhi’s non-violent exterior.

  And then, when I raised my head again, the men lowered their eyes.

  Chapter 11

  The April days are lengthening, beginning to get warm. The Queen’s Park is packed. Groups of men and women sit in circles on the grass and children run about them. Ice-candy-man, lean as his popsicles and as affable, swarming with children, is going from group to group doing good business.

  Masseur, too, is going from group to group; handsome, reserved, competent, assured, massaging balding heads, kneading knotty shoulders and soothing aching limbs.

  I lie on the grass, my head on Ayah’s lap, basking in—and intercepting—the warm flood of stares directed at Ayah by her circle of admirers. The Faletti’s Hotel cook, the Government House gardener, a sleek and arrogant butcher and the zoo attendant, Sher Singh, sit with us.

  “She is scared of your lion,” drawls Ayah, playfully tapping my forehead. “She thinks he’s let loose at night and he will gobble her up from her bed.”

  Sher Singh, wearing an outsize blue turban and a callow beard, sits up. Delighted to be singled out by Ayah, he looks at me earnestly: “Don’t worry. I’ll hang on to his leash,” he boasts, stammering slightly. “He won’t dare eat you!”

  I’m not the least bit reassured. On the contrary, I am terrified. This callow youth with a stem-like neck hold the zoo lion?

  “What kind of leash?” I ask.

  “A-an iron ch-chain!”

  It’s much worse than I’d imagined. A lion roaring behind bars is bad enough. But a lion straining on a stout leash held by this thin, stuttering Sikh is unthinkable. I burst into tears.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” says Ayah in her usual good-natured manner. Gathering me in her arms and hugging me she rocks back and forth. “Don’t be silly,” she tells me. “The lion is never let out of his cage. The cage is so strong a hundred lions couldn’t break it.”

  “And,” says Ramzana the butcher, “I give him a juicy goat every day. Why should he want to eat a dried-up stick like you?”

  The logic is irrefutable during daylight hours as I sit among friends beneath Queen Victoria’s lion-intimidating presence. But alone, at night, the logic will vanish.

  Masseur and Ice-candy-man drift over to us and join the circle. Masseur is raking in money. He has invented an oil that will grow hair on bald heads. It is composed of monkey and fish glands, mustard oil, pearl dust and an assortment of herbs. The men listen intently, but Masseur stops short of revealing the secret recipe. He holds up the bottle and Ayah reaches out to touch the oil.

  “Careful,” says Masseur, whipping the bottle away. “It’ll grow hair on your fingertips.”

  “Hai Ram!” says Ayah, quickly retracting her fingers, and rolling her eyes from one face to the next with fetching consternation.

  We all laugh.

  Not to be outdone, Ice-candy-man says he has developed a first-class fertility pill. He knows it will work but he has yet to try it out.

  “I’ll give it a try,” offers the Government House gardener.

  “Your wife’s already produced children, hasn’t she?”

  “Tch! Not for her, yaar. For myself. I feel old sometimes,” confesses the graying gardener.

  “It is not an aphrodisiac. It’s a fertility pill for women,” explains Ice-candy-man. “It’s so potent it can impregnate men!”

  There is a startled silence.

  “You’re a joker, yaar,” says the butcher.

  “No, honestly,” says Ice-candy-man, neglectful of the cigarette butt that is uncoiling wisps of smoke from his fist. He too will rake in money.

  Masseur clears his throat and, breaking the spell cast by the fertility pill, enquires of the gardener: “What’s the latest from the English Sarkar’s house?”

  The gardener, congenial and hoary, is our prime source of information from the British Empire’s local headquarters.

  “It is rumored,” he says obligingly, rubbing the patches of black and white stubble on his chin, “that Lat Sahib Wavell did not resign his viceroyship.”

  He pauses, dramatically, as if he’s already revealed too much to friends
. And then, as if deciding to consecrate discretion to our friendship, he serves up the choice tidbit.

  “He was sacked!”

  “Oh! Why?” asks Ice-candy-man. We are all excited by a revelation that invites us to share the inside track of the Raj’s doings.

  “Gandhi, Nehru, Patel... they have much influence even in London,” says the gardener mysteriously, as if acknowledging the arbitrary and mischievous nature of antic gods. “They didn’t like the Muslim League’s victory in the Punjab elections.”

  “The bastards!” says Masseur with histrionic fury that conceals a genuine bitterness. “So they sack Wavell Sahib, a fair man! And send for a new Lat Sahib who will favor the Hindus!”

  “With all due respect, malijee,” says Ice-candy-man, surveying the gardener through a blue mist of exhaled smoke, “but aren’t you Hindus expert at just this kind of thing? Twisting tails behind the scene... and getting someone else to slaughter your goats?”

  “What’s the new Lat Sahib like? This Mountbatten Sahib?” asks Ayah.

  She, like Mother, is an oil pourer. “I saw his photo. He is handsome! But I don’t like his wife, baba. She looks a choorail!”

  “Ah, but Jawaharlal Nehru likes her. He likes her vaaary much!” says Ice-candy-man, luridly dragging out the last two words of English.

  “Nehru and the Mountbattens are like this!” the gardener concurs, holding up two entwined fingers. His expression, an attractive blend of sheepishness and vanity, reinforces the image of a seasoned inside tracker.

  “If Nehru and Mountbatten are like this,” says Masseur, “then who’s going to hold our Jinnah Sahib’s hand? Master Tara Singh?”

  Masseur says this in a way that makes us smile.

  “Ah-ha!” says Ice-candy-man as if suddenly enlightened. “So that’s who!” He slaps his thigh and beams at us as if Masseur has proposed a brilliant solution. “That’s who!” he repeats.

  The butcher snorts and aims a contemptuous gob of spit some yards away from us. He has been quiet all this while and as we turn our faces to him he gathers his stylish cotton shawl over one shoulder and says: “That non-violent violence-monger—your precious Gandhijee—first declares the Sikhs fanatics! Now suddenly he says: ‘Oh dear, the poor Sikhs cannot live with the Muslims if there is a Pakistan!’ What does he think we are—some kind of beast? Aren’t they living with us now?”

  “He’s a politician, yaar,” says Masseur soothingly. “It’s his business to suit his tongue to the moment.”

  “If it was only his tongue I wouldn’t mind,” says the butcher. “But the Sikhs are already supporting some trumped-up Muslim party the Congress favors.” He has a deadpan way of speaking which is very effective.

  The Government House gardener, his expression wary and sympathetic, gives a loud sigh, and says: “It is the English’s mischief... They are past masters at intrigue. It suits them to have us all fight.”

  “Just the English?” asks Butcher. “Haven’t the Hindus connived with the Angrez to ignore the Muslim League, and support a party that didn’t win a single seat in the Punjab? It’s just the kind of thing we fear. They manipulate one or two Muslims against the interests of the larger community. And now they have manipulated Master Tara Singh and his bleating herd of Sikhs!” He glances at Sher Singh, his handsome, smooth-shaven face almost expressionless.

  Sher Singh shifts uncomfortably and, looking as completely innocent of Master Tara Singh’s doings as he can, frowns at the grass.

  “Arrey, you foolish Sikh! You fell right into the Hindus’ trap!” says Ice-candy-man so facetiously that Sher Singh loses part of his nervousness and smiles back.

  The afternoon is drawing to a close. The grass feels damp. Ayah stands up, smoothing the pleats in her limp cotton sari. “If all you talk of is nothing but this Hindu-Muslim business, I’ll stop coming to the park,” she says pertly.

  “It’s just a discussion among friends,” says Ice-candy-man, uncoiling his frame from the grass to sit up. “Such talk helps clear the air... but for your sake, we won’t bring it up again.”

  The rest of us look at him gratefully.

  There is much disturbing talk. India is going to be broken. Can one break a country? And what happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further up on Warris Road? How will I ever get to Godmother’s then?

  I ask Cousin.

  “Rubbish,” he says, “no one’s going to break India. It’s not made of glass!”

  I ask Ayah.

  “They’ll dig a canal...,” she ventures. “This side for Hindustan and this side for Pakistan. If they want two countries, that’s what they’ll have to do—crack India with a long, long canal.”

  Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Iqbal, Tara Singh, Mountbatten are names I hear.

  And I become aware of religious differences.

  It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all-encompassing Ayah—she is also a token. A Hindu. Carried away by a renewed devotional fervor she expends a small fortune in joss-sticks, flowers and sweets on the gods and goddesses in the temples.

  Imam Din and Yousaf, turning into religious zealots, warn Mother they will take Friday afternoons off for the Jumha prayers. On Fridays they set about preparing themselves ostentatiously. Squatting atop the cement wall of the garden tank they hold their feet out beneath the tap and diligently scrub between their toes. They wash their heads, arms, necks and ears and noisily clear their throats and noses. All in white check prayer scarves thrown over their shoulders, stepping uncomfortably in stiff black Bata shoes worn without socks, they walk out of the gates to the small mosque at the back of Queens Road. Sometimes, at odd hours of the day, they spread their mats on the front lawn and pray when the muezzin calls. Crammed into a narrow religious slot they too are diminished, as are Jinnah and Iqbal, Ice-candy-man and Masseur.

  Hari and Moti-the-sweeper and his wife Muccho, and their untouchable daughter Papoo, become ever more untouchable as they are entrenched deeper in their low Hindu caste. While the Sharmas and the Daulatrams, Brahmins like Nehru, are dehumanized by their lofty caste and caste-marks.

  The Rogers of Birdwood Barracks, Queen Victoria and King George are English Christians: they look down their noses upon the Pens who are Anglo-Indian, who look down theirs on the Phailbuses who are Indian-Christian, who look down upon all non-Christians.

  Godmother, Slavesister, Electric-aunt and my nuclear family are reduced to irrelevant nomenclatures—we are Parsee.

  What is God?

  All morning we hear Muccho screeching at Papoo. “I turn my back; the bitch slacks off! I say something; she becomes a deaf-mute. I’ll thrash the wickedness out of you!”

  “I don’t know what jinn’s gotten into that woman,” says Ayah. “She can’t leave the girl alone!”

  I have made several trips to the back, hanging around the quarters on some pretext or other, and with my presence protecting Papoo.

  Papoo hardly ever plays with me now. She is forever slapping the dough into chapatties, or washing, or collecting dung from the road and plastering it on the walls of their quarters. The dried dung cakes provide fuel.

  In the evening she sweeps our compound with a stiff reed jharoo, spending an hour in a little cloud of dust, an infant stuck to her hip like a growth.

  Though she looks more ragged—and thin—her face and hands splotched with pale dry patches and her lips cracked, she is as cheeky as ever with her mother. And forever smiling her handsome roguish smile at us.

  Late that evening Ayah tells me that Muccho is arranging Papoo’s marriage.

  I am seven now, so Papoo must be eleven.

  My perception of people has changed.

  I still see through to their hearts and minds, but their exteriors superimpose a new set of distracting impressions.

  The tuft of bodhi-hair rising like a tail from Hari’s shaven head suddenly appears fiendish and ludicro
us.

  “Why do you shave your head like that?” I say disparagingly.

  “Because we’ve always done so, Lenny baby, from the time of my grandfather’s grandfathers... it’s the way of our caste.”

  I’m not satisfied with his answer.

  When Cousin visits that evening I tell him what I think. “Just because his grandfathers shaved their heads and grew stupid tails is no reason why Hari should.”

  “Not as stupid as you think,” says Cousin. “It keeps his head cool and his brain fresh.”

  “If that’s so,” I say, challenging him, “why don’t you shave your head? Why don’t Mother and Father and Godmother and Electric-aunt and...”

  Cousin stops my mouth with his hand and as I try to bite his fingers and wiggle free, he shouts into my ears and tells me about the Sikhs.

  I stop wiggling. He has informed me that the Sikhs become mentally deficient at noon. My mouth grows slack under his palm. He carefully removes his hand from my gaping mouth and, resuming his normal speaking voice, further informs me: “All that hair not only drains away their gray matter, it also warms their heads like a tea cozy. And at twelve o’clock, when the heat from the sun is at its craziest, it addles their brains!”

  It is some hours before I can close my gaping mouth. Immediately I rush to Imam Din and ask if what Cousin says is true.

  “Sure,” he says, pushing his hookah away and standing up to rake the ashes.

  “Just the other day Mr. Singh milked his cow without a bucket. He didn’t even notice the puddle of milk on the ground ...It was exactly two seconds past twelve!”