by Bapsi Sidhwa
I won’t mention her fall ever again. I can’t bear to hurt her: I’d rather bite my tongue than cause pain to her grief-wounded eye.
But this resolve, too, goes the way of all resolutions.
“What’s a fallen woman?” I ask Godmother.
“A woman who falls off an airplane.”
Godmother can be like that sometimes. Exasperating. She can’t help it.
“Wouldn’t she break her head and die?” I say patiently.
“Maybe.”
“But Hamida didn’t break her head ... She says she’s a fallen woman.”
“Oh?” Godmother’s expression changes.
As I tell her of my conversation with Hamida, Slavesister loiters about the room. She pretends to arrange papers on the desk. The letters and papers are already sorted out and neatly stacked. Although she has her back to me, I can tell her ears are switched on.
“Hamida was kidnapped by the Sikhs,” says Godmother seriously. On serious matters I can always trust her to level with me. “She was taken away to Amritsar. Once that happens, sometimes, the husband—or his family—won’t take her back.”
“Why? It isn’t her fault she was kidnapped!”
“Some folk feel that way—they can’t stand their women being touched by other men.”
It’s monstrously unfair: but Godmother’s tone is accepting. I think of what Himat-Ali-alias-Hari once told me when I reached to lift a tiny sparrow that had tumbled from its nest on our veranda.
“Let it be,” he’d stopped me. “The mother will take care of it. If our hands touch it, the other sparrows will peck it to death.”
“Even the mother?” I asked.
“Even the mother!” he’d said.
It doesn’t make sense—but if that’s how it is, it is.
“That’s why your mummy tells you to stay with Hamida all the time—or with us,” says Slavesister unctuously. “When your mother tells you something, it’s for your own good.”
There she goes again: butting in and making serious matters trivial.
“Her mother’s not here,” says Godmother. “It won’t do you any good buttering her up in her absence.”
“And I’m not married either! It doesn’t matter if I’m kidnapped,” I speak up.
“Oh yes? And who’ll marry you then? It’ll be hard enough finding someone for you as it is.”
“Mummy says: my husband will search the world with a candle to find me!”
“Poor fellow... He won’t know you the way we do, will he? Your husband will clutch his head in his hands and weep!”
“Cousin wants to marry me!” I’m surprised how smug I feel saying it. I don’t think I particularly want to marry Cousin—but though he has not actually asked me to, I think he has implied it. It’s a comforting thought. If only as a last resort.
“He hasn’t seen any girls besides our Lame Lenny, Three For a Penny. Wait till he sees the world!” says Mini Aunty.
What an asinine thing to say about my worldly Cousin! Even Godmother suppresses a smile.
“Kindly go about your business,” she tells her sister. “And stop messing with those papers! As it is, I can’t find anything when I want it.”
“What is the matter with you?” Cousin asks.
“Nothing.”
I’m feeling despondent. When something upsets me this much I find it impossible to talk. It used not to be so. I wonder: am I growing up? At least I’ve stopped babbling all my thoughts.
This idiocy of bottled-up emotions can’t be a symptom of growing up, surely! More likely I’m reverting to infancy the way old people do. I feel so sorry for myself—and for Cousin—and for all the senile, lame and hurt people and fallen women—and the condition of the world—in which countries can be broken, people slaughtered and cities burned—that I burst into tears. I feel I will never stop crying.
“Is your stomach hurting?” Cousin asks cautiously, afraid of a rebuff.
I’m grateful that he has stayed his ground at least and not gone tearing off on some pretext to avoid my irrational outburst.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not hurting.”
And then, of its own accord, my mouth blurts, “No one will marry me. I limp!” Almost at once I feel less aggrieved.
“But I’ll marry you,” volunteers my gallant cousin.
I search his face through my tears. Thank God, he doesn’t sound the least martyred. I couldn’t bear it. He looks fond and sincere. I find it hard to recall my multitudinous anguishes of a moment before. I even feel a little foolish. And alarmed—lest I irrevocably commit myself to Cousin.
“A slight limp is attractive,” says Cousin, solemn and authoritative.
“Oh yes?” I say, airing my doubt.
“I like the way it makes your bottom wiggle.” He waves two fingers back and forth.
I twist strenuously and, tugging my short dress taut across my buttocks, peer down. There is very little bottom to see.
“When you grow up, you’ll have a much bigger bottom,” asserts my solicitous and perceptive cousin. “It will look very attractive, then ... ,” he says somewhat uncertainly.
My deepening skepticism has infected him too.
“I read a story,” he continues gravely, “in which the heroine limped. Her one leg was shorter. She didn’t even have a pretty face. But her limp was so sexy, everybody wanted to marry her!”
I don’t care for Cousin’s secondhand consolations. In any case, I don’t want him harping on my limp.
“Colonel Bharucha says I’ll stop limping by the time I grow up.”
“A pity,” says Cousin. “I find it attractive.”
“I can always keep it, if you like,” I say politely, and further guarding my options, I add: “Let’s see how I feel about marrying you when I grow up.”
“Do you find me attractive?” Cousin suddenly asks, gazing compellingly into my eyes.
“Yes,” I say courteously, and avert my eyes.
“How attractive?” Cousin is insistent. “Do you think you could love me passionately? Die for me?”
I reflect a moment. Cousin certainly does not arouse in me the rapture Masseur aroused in Ayah ... I recall the bewildering longings the look on Masseur’s face stirred in me when he looked at Ayah ... And other stirrings ...
“I don’t find you that attractive,” I say truthfully.
“I suppose you’re too young,” says Cousin. “You haven’t known passion.”
I open my eyes wide and look demurely at Cousin, and let it pass.
But Cousin can’t: “Do you find anyone more attractive than me?”
“Yes,” I say, “I think I found Masseur more attractive ... ”
I surprise myself. Mouthing the words articulates my feelings and reveals myself to me.
“But he was old!” says Cousin, equally surprised.
I suddenly feel shy and Cousin looks unutterably defeated. I think my sudden shyness convinces him of my wayward heart more than any protestations would.
“Who else do you find attractive?” Cousin asks, managing to wipe his face and voice of all expression.
“Oh I don’t know ... There was a little Sikh boy ... ”
“Do me a favor,” Cousin says. “Think about all the people you find more attractive than me—and let me know.”
I have been so engaged by my reaction to the names named that I fail to notice the bitterness and sarcasm that have crept into his voice.
I look about me with new eyes. The world is athrob with men. As long as they have some pleasing attribute—height, width or beauty of face—no man is too old to attract me. Or too young. Tongawallahs, knife-sharpeners, shopkeepers, policemen, schoolboys, Father’s friends, all exert their compelling pull on my runaway fantasies in which I am recurringly spirited away to remote Himalayan hideouts; there to be worshipped, fought over, died for, importuned and wooed until, aroused to a passion that tingles from my scalp into the very tips of my fingers, I finally permit my lover to lay his hands upo
n my chest. It is no small bestowal of favor, for my chest is no longer flat.
Two little bumps have erupted beneath my nipples. Flesh of my flesh, exclusively mine. And I am hard put to protect them. I guard them with a possessive passion beside which my passion for possessing Rosy’s little glass jars pales. Only I may touch them. Not Cousin. Not Imam Din. Not Adi. Not anybody. I can’t trust anyone.
Not even Mother who has taken to bathing me; and with her characteristic prim and solemn expression bunches her fingers round them and goes: “Pom-pom.”
“Let me, let me ... ,” says Cousin and pokes his hand out every-which-way every chance he gets. I find it fatiguing to maintain my distance from him.
And from Adi, who resolutely materializes whenever I’m bathing and glues his eye to a crack in the bathroom door. When Hamida blocks it, Adi shifts to another crack: and when that too is plugged, he jumps up and down on a ledge outside the bathroom window with a rapt determination that is like an elemental force. Hearing Hamida’s twittering remonstrances and my shrill screams, Imam Din emerges roaring: “Wait till I catch you, you shameless bugger,” and carries Adi, wiggling and kicking, towards the kitchen. I peer out of the window and Adi’s face, flushed with a cold rage, bodes ill for any ideas Imam Din might have of sitting him on his lap. Even Imam Din could not handle that frustrated cobra fury.
As the mounds beneath my nipples grow, my confidence grows. I tell Imam Din to hold Adi in the kitchen, push Hamida out of the bathroom and lock the door. I examine my chest in the small mirror hanging at an angle from the wall and play with them as with cuddly toys. What with my limp and my burgeoning breasts—and the projected girth and wiggle of my future bottom—I feel assured that I will be quite attractive when I’m grown up.
Cousin walks with me and Hamida to the bazaars and gardens, rides with us in tongas, and I dutifully point out to him all the men and boys I find appealing. “See the boy with the cute little buck teeth?” I ask. “I could die for him!” and “Look-look-look,” I say physically turning Cousin’s head. “Look at that fellow in the tonga with his feet up!”
“I’m keeping tabs,” says Cousin mournfully after this has gone on for some days. “You are attracted by roughly ten percent of the male population in Lahore.”
“Is that too much?” I enquire.
“Why not me?” Cousin demands, ignoring my question. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re too young, maybe.”
“But some of the boys you liked are younger... I’ll grow up!”
My heart sinks sadly for my cousin. Why don’t I feel all suffocated and shy when I’m with him? I try to fathom my emotions.
“Maybe I don’t need to attract you. You’re already attracted,” I say.
It is like that with Cousin. He even shows me ME!
I’ve admitted it before: I have a wayward heart. Weak. Susceptible and fickle. But why do I call it my heart? And blame my blameless heart? And not blame instead the incandescence of my womb?
Chapter 27
I spend hours on the servants’ quarters’ roof looking down on the fallen women. The turnover, as they are rescued, sorted out and restored to their families, is so rapid that I can barely keep track of the new faces that appear and so soon disappear. The camp is getting crowded. If this is where they bring kidnapped women, this is where I’ll find my Ayah.
Hamida knows where to find me when Mother asks for me—or when someone is going to Godmother’s on an errand and thinks of taking me along. Sometimes, furtively climbing the stairs, Hamida sits quietly with me and together we look at the dazed and dull faces. If they look up we smile, and Hamida makes little reassuring gestures; but the women only look bewildered and rarely smile back.
I wonder about the women’s children. Don’t they miss their mothers? I pray that their husbands and families will take them back. Hamida seldom mentions her children. All I’ve been able to get out of her is that she has two teenage sons and two daughters, one as old as me and one younger.
“The youngest was just beginning to walk,” says Hamida one crisp afternoon as we sun ourselves on the roof. Hamida has come to fetch me for lunch, but she is willing to stay for a while.
“Don’t you miss your children?” I ask.
“Of course,” says Hamida.
“Then why don’t you go to see them?”
“Their father won’t like it.”
“They must miss you. You could see them secretly, couldn’t you?”
“No,” says Hamida, turning her face away. “They’re better off as they are. My sister-in-law will look after them. If their father gets to know I’ve met them, he will only get angry, and the children will suffer.”
“I don’t like your husband,” I say.
“He’s a good man,” says Hamida, hiding her face bashfully in her chuddar. “It’s my kismet that’s no good ... we are khut-putli, puppets, in the hands of fate.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. “Cousin says we can change our kismet if we want to. The lines on our palms can also change!”
Hamida gives me a queer quizzical look. “Have you heard of the prince who was eaten by a tiger?” she asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head and settling comfortably against the roof wall to listen.
It is the perfect day for a story. The sun is warm on our skins, casting a quiet, lazy spell on the afternoon. It is the first story Hamida tells me. Later I discover she has a fund of unusual and depressing little tales.
Once upon a time there was a king who had no children, says Hamida. Night and day the king and his queen prayed for a son. They traveled afar, visiting one holy-man after another, and visited all the shrines of saints in their kingdom. The queen wove temple saris for the various goddesses, stuck flowers in their images and covered the goddesses with gold.
One night the king had a dream. In his dream a ragged holyman with wild hair said: “O, king, your dearest wish will be granted. Before the year is out you will have a son. But you have accumulated an unfavorable karma. In your past life you were disobedient to your guru and, at times, even irreverent. You will be punished for your insolence. Your son will be eaten by a tiger in his sixteenth year.”
As foretold, the royal couple was blessed with a beautiful son. The king and queen rejoiced and diligently distributed food and money among their poorer subjects to improve the condition of their karmas and earn blessings.
The king decreed that all tigers be hunted and killed. He organized tiger hunts and rode at the head of the elephant cavalry to decimate the beasts rounded up by the drummers. He offered handsome rewards for the pelts brought by the hunters.
The prince grew tall and beautiful. He was compassionate and filled with laughter. The more they loved him the more his subjects feared the prophecy.
By the time the prince was ten years old they had killed all the tigers and, as an added precaution, all the domestic and alley cats: for what is a cat if not a miniature tiger? The tigers in the surrounding kingdoms were also killed.
As the prince grew older he yearned to hunt: and at last the king was satisfied that it was safe for the prince to venture into the forest. Most people had forgotten what a tiger even looked like!
The fateful year dawned. The prince turned sixteen.
Once again the wild-haired holy-man appeared in the king’s dream. “The tiger who will eat the prince is already near,” he said to the trembling king.
Again the hunters beat the bushes and searched the woods. There were no pug marks or droppings even—no trace to show that tigers had once inhabited the forests.
The prince was confined to the palace. He was never left unattended. Huntsmen patrolled the forests and armed guards the palace gates.
The king and queen prayed more, fasted oftener and did all manner of penance. The king gave his fine robes to the beggars and wore the coarse garments of the fakirs. He distributed large portions of his wealth among the poor and donated fortunes to shrines, mosques, temples and churches
. He undertook vows and oaths that would bind him to a lifetime of penitence if his son was spared.
The year was almost past. The king, in his penitent’s sack-cloth, was discussing affairs of state in the darbar when the prince walked in. The king made room for his son on the marble takth, covered with silk rugs. The assembly bowed till the prince settled amidst the velvet cushions and signaled them to sit. He lay back on the bolsters and after a while he fell asleep.
The darbar was almost over when the prince awakened from a terrifying dream. His frightened eyes opened on a finely wrought hunting scene painted on the ceiling. Royal huntsmen, spears poised in varying attitudes of attack, surrounded a fierce tiger, bare-fanged and richly striped. Suddenly the prince screamed and cried: “Oh! The tiger! The tiger! He’s got me!” He fell back and writhing in agony died.
In the pandemonium that followed, the king’s eyes quickly traced the path of his son’s congealed stare: and, horrified, he saw the lifelike glow on the rich pelt dim, and the tiger’s shining eyes revert to yellow paint!
Hamida, who has been gawking skywards like the horrified monarch, returns halfway to earth and looks at me.
But I’m in no mood to countenance tragedy. Despite the unnatural angle of my upended hairs, despite the accelerated beat of my heart, despite the gloaming images of the screaming prince and the chill on my skin, I rend the story with savage logic. If the king’s karma was so lousy how come he was king? And why should the poor prince suffer for his father’s ... ? And how can a painted tiger ... ?
“Perhaps it’s not so unreal as it is unfair!” I conclude.
“What does Fate care?” says Hamida with placid and omniscient certainty. “That’s why it is fate!”
We become still: cocking our ears to a din and uproar coming from the kitchen.
“Imam Din’s caught the billa!” says Hamida, her narrow face lighting up. And just as Ayah and I ran to the back at the sounds of struggle with Hari’s dhoti, we now run towards the kitchen: Hamida holding me by the hand and my feet flying to match her long strides.
