by Moni Mohsin
‘How? Kill himself?’ asked Laila.
‘No, Baba, there are other ways of leaving. He became a yogi. He gave up his home, his fine clothes, even his people. He wrapped a yellow sarong around him and wandered the world barefoot, homeless and broken. There was only one word on his lips, “Heer.”’
‘Did Heer marry her cousin then?’
‘Marry?’ Bua snorted. ‘On the eve of her wedding, as the groom’s party was approaching with blazing torches and prancing horses and dancing guests, Heer swallowed poison. If she couldn’t marry Ranjha, she decided, she wouldn’t marry at all. When they came to fetch her, she was dressed in her bridal clothes, covered in jewels and lying on her bed. She had never looked more beautiful, for her soul had gone to meet Ranjha.’
‘What did her parents do?’
‘Her mother cried, and her father hung his head in shame.’
‘He felt guilty?’
‘Oh, no, not guilty.’ Bua shook her head. ‘He wasn’t ashamed of his behaviour but of hers. Good girls don’t make up their own minds about whom they want to marry and who not. They have to bow to the wishes of their parents, who know best. Heer was naughty. She knew her father had promised her to his kinsman. But still she went her own way. Also, when she killed herself on the night of her wedding, it was a slap in her father’s face, because with a house full of guests and each one eager to see the bride, he couldn’t cover it up. So she made him lose face in front of everyone.’
‘What became of Ranjha?’
‘Now, I’m forgetting that bit of the story, but I think he came to Heer’s house dressed as a yogi and tried to tell them that he was from good family, but would they listen? Anyway, it was too late. Heer was dead. After that, Ranjha was also heard of no more.’ Bua yawned. ‘So sad. You’ll see for yourself when you see the film tomorrow.’
The Heer that Laila had imagined had been a slender girl, with elongated, gazelle eyes, dimples and rippling brown hair. But the Heer who appeared on the screen was a hefty woman with a thick neck and traces of a moustache. Her eyes were slathered with kohl, and crimson lipstick was smeared over her fat lips. When she ran through the orchard, she reminded Laila of a galumphing cow, her rope-like plait thudding against her bottom. Ranjha was not much better. True, he had big sleepy eyes. But his moustache drooped, and he had a double chin.
Bua hadn’t said what they did when they became inseparable. Laila had not thought about it either. But, in the film, all they did was dance and sing and sigh and embrace. At the slightest excuse, they would burst into song. Heer would drape herself against a tree trunk or flop to the ground panting as if she’d done a hundred-yard sprint. Ranjha would come and loom over her with a slimy smile.
Bored, Laila looked sideways at Rani. Rani sat bolt upright, transfixed. Her hands gripped the armrests of her seat. Laila glanced at her grandmother. Sardar Begum was frowning at the screen and shaking her head slightly, like Laila sometimes did when she was watching a scary film and the heroine was about to open a door behind which lurked a terrible secret. Leaning out further, Laila saw that Bua had unpinned her handkerchief and was weeping copiously into it. Only Kaneez seemed unaffected. When Laila looked at her, she returned her gaze steadily.
The intermission was as unceremonious as the start of the film had been. All thirty of the 200-watt bulbs were switched on abruptly, almost blinding the nine occupants of the hall. The screen went white, and the door into the auditorium was flung open. The flunkeys reappeared, preceded by the manager, who sauntered in smiling like a groom at the head of a wedding party. The boys carried large trays weighed down with rattling crockery. Standing in the centre of the hall, the manager waved one boy towards Sardar Begum and the other towards the army wives. With his hands behind his back, he bowed first to Sardar Begum and then to the other party.
There was a bowl of hard-boiled eggs and a plate of Nice biscuits on Sardar Begum’s tray. Spicy chickpeas were rolled up in newspaper cones. A steel teapot held milky tea. The boy was about to pour out the tea, when Sardar Begum stopped him.
‘I’ve got my own,’ she declared, holding aloft her flask. As an afterthought, she added: ‘But you can give to them if you want.’ She nodded towards her servants.
According to the rules governing Sardar Begum’s household, it was not seemly for servants to eat in front of their employer. So when the tea boy handed Rani a steaming cup, she hesitated, glancing covertly at Sardar Begum. Was she meant to accept?
‘Take it, Rani,’ Laila urged. ‘Here.’ She thrust the cup into Rani’s hand, spilling some tea into the saucer.
Rani sank deep into her seat before she took a sip from her tea. However, despite cajoling from Laila, she declined the food. Kaneez had nothing, not even the tea. But Bua, who was marinated in the more democratic atmosphere of Sabzbagh, readily accepted the tea and even took a biscuit. However, she took the precaution of politely turning her back on Sardar Begum before dunking her biscuit into the cup.
Sardar Begum handed an egg to Laila. ‘Eat!’ she ordered.
‘I’d rather have the chickpeas.’
‘Always eating wrong things,’ complained Sardar Begum.
‘Wasn’t Heer horrid?’ Laila asked Rani. ‘So fat and old.’
‘Heer?’ Rani’s eyebrows soared. ‘She looked like a princess with her gold earrings and satin clothes. And her body was so full, so,’ Rani lowered her voice, ‘womanly.’
‘Womanly?’
‘Hmm. No wonder Ranjha fell in love with her. And as for him, if someone sang and played his flute to me as sweetly as he, I don’t know what I’d do.’
‘Rani!’ squawked Laila. She’d expected to have a chuckle with Rani, to poke fun at that moon-eyed couple, at their quivering lips and their syrupy looks. Instead, Rani was taking their side.
‘Do you know something?’ Rani whispered into Laila’s ear. ‘The actor Ijaz, the one who is Ranjha – well, he’s in love with Firdaus, the actress who is doing Heer’s role. In real life. That’s why they look at each other that way. Because they’re not acting.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I know.’
‘But you said he was married to the famous singer who lives near my Lahore grandmother.’
Rani glanced over her shoulder at Kaneez.
‘Shh, keep your voice down,’ she whispered to Laila. ‘The singer? He is married to her, but she’s old, and he’s in love with Firdaus. I’ve heard they’ve become like a couple.’
‘That’s not fair!’ Laila tried to picture her father in a mango orchard, singing and dancing with a woman other than Fareeda. Actually, she couldn’t even imagine him dancing with Fareeda. She pursed her lips.
‘Why are you looking so cranky?’ Rani nudged Laila.
‘Because you’re being silly. How can you be married to one person and in love with another?’
‘I don’t know. But people are. All the time.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘It’s something you find out when you get older.’ She shrugged. ‘Like I am.’
‘What have you found out?’ Kaneez’s face appeared above Rani’s shoulder. ‘Tell me at once!’
‘Oh, nothing, Amman.’ Rani clicked her tongue in exasperation.
‘Don’t you click your tongue at me!’ Kaneez jerked Rani’s wrist. ‘Just because you’re at a cinema doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.’
Rani prised her wrist out of her grasp. Kaneez glared at her and withdrew into her seat.
‘Why’s she like that today?’ Laila asked Rani.
‘She’s always like that,’ grumbled Rani, rubbing her wrist.
‘Laila baby, toilet?’ Bua trilled across the seats.
The ladies with the high hairdos in the front tittered.
‘I’m not a baby. If I want to go, I’ll go myself,’ Laila hissed back.
‘No, you won’t!’ Sardar Begum wagged a finger at Laila. ‘I won’t have you running around this place by yourself.’
‘I don’t
need to go,’ Laila repeated sullenly.
‘Don’t frown. You’ll get lines on your forehead.’
The boys cleared away the tea, and the film resumed where it had left off. If Laila had found the first half slow, the second half was interminable. Imprisoned in her house, Heer mooned about, singing mournful songs. There was a funny moment when Ranjha appeared in his saffron robes, one plump shoulder bare and a begging bowl slung around his neck. But soon even that diversion palled. Laila peered at Rani in the gloom. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. Laila could hear Bua snuffling, and even Sardar Begum blew her nose twice. The backcombed ladies had been giggling in the first half. Now, they were silent. No doubt they too were weeping.
Laila tried to sympathize with the lovers, so she too could claim to have relished the film. She tried to put herself in Heer’s place, to understand her distress. But it didn’t seem right to kill yourself because you could no longer sing and dance with a shepherd. Laila tried to think of other sad things to make herself cry. She recalled the painful humiliation of exclusion from Rani and Sara’s gossip sessions. How they turned their backs on her and dropped their voices, how they communicated with muffled laughs and twitching eyebrows, and how awful she felt. She felt a prickling sensation behind her lids and narrowed her eyes to squeeze out a tear. One slid out of her right eye just as the movie ended and the lights came on.
She turned eagerly to Rani, to exult in their shared tears. But Rani seemed sapped. When Laila pointed to her own tear, she smiled weakly. She ran her hands down her wet cheeks and pulled her dupatta over her head. With a loud sigh, Sardar Begum hoisted herself out of her seat. It was their signal to depart. At the exit, they met the women from the cantonment. Once again, they greeted Sardar Begum. To Laila’s relief, this time, her grandmother acknowledged their salutation – albeit with a cool nod.
‘I hope you enjoyed the film,’ the manager beamed at them all. ‘So sad it was.’
A cantonment lady fished out two ten-rupee notes from her orange handbag and handed them to the manager.
‘Oh, please, no, no. There’s no need for this.’ He shook his head and took a step backwards.
‘We insist.’ The woman stepped forward with the money held out.
‘Well, if it pleases you …’ The manager smoothly palmed the money.
Sardar Begum immediately motioned to Kaneez to pass her her handbag. Counting out three ten-rupee notes, she held them out in a fan to the manager. He demurred again.
‘It is our pleasure and you will accept.’ Sardar Begum thrust the money at him and sailed out.
On the way home they were all quiet, mulling in their different ways on the film. Sardar Begum was the first to speak.
‘Oh-ho, what a pity that Heer became wayward! What need had she? She had a pretty face, a good name, money, family. What a waste!’
‘Waste of what?’ queried Laila. Being menials, the other occupants of the car could not question Sardar Begum’s opinions. Kaneez, due to her long years with Sardar Begum, could perhaps have voiced a view but, sunk in her own thoughts, she stared glassily out of her window.
‘Waste of a life, what else?’ replied Sardar Begum. ‘She should have married her cousin, as her parents had arranged. Instead, she threw away her reputation and her life. For what?’
‘For love?’ Laila ventured doubtfully. That’s what Bua had said, hadn’t she?
‘Love!’ snorted Sardar Begum. ‘This love-shove is also nonsense. It doesn’t last two days. What lasts is duty. Obligation. Respect. Regard. I feel sorry for Heer. Don’t think I have a stone for a heart. But if she had been dutiful, she wouldn’t have had to poison herself. That’s where love leads, see? To shame and disgrace. That’s why good marriages are never built on love.’
‘But my parents love each other,’ protested Laila. ‘Ammi told me they married because she was in love with Aba and he with her.’
‘No, they didn’t!’ snapped Sardar Begum. ‘Your Ammi married my son because she respected him. As she should. And as for Tariq,’ she murmured, ‘only Allah knows why he does what he does.’
‘But I love my parents,’ cried Laila. ‘And Sara and Rani and Bua. There’s nothing shameful in that.’
‘And me?’ Sardar Begum glared at Laila. ‘Don’t you love me?’
‘Of course. But if I love you all, how can that be wrong?’
‘I’m not talking about that love,’ chuckled Sardar Begum, delighted with her granddaughter’s innocence. ‘That love is your duty. In the holy Koran it is written you must love your parents, your children, even your distant relatives. The love I meant is a different sort of love – the kind that Heer felt for Ranjha, the kind that tears you away from your family, that makes you forget your duty. That’s a dangerous love. It’s not allowed. No girl must love like that.’
‘What’s the point of telling them that now?’ asked Kaneez. ‘After you’ve shown them the film. It’s too late.’ Her words hung in the car, like a thick miasma.
Sardar Begum spun around to skewer her with a Look. But Kaneez was gazing out of the window. All she could see in the gathering darkness was her own furrowed face reflected in the glass.
2
The next day, Laila came down with fever. Fearing a relapse of typhoid, Fareeda confined her to bed. And there she stayed for five days, being fed chicken soup and medicines, until the fever subsided. It had been, it seemed, a passing cold, but Fareeda was not a woman who took such things lightly.
On the fifth day, Laila kicked aside her bed coverings. She glanced at the pile of books at her bedside. On top of the pile lay The Castle of Adventure. It was her favourite among Enid Blyton’s books, but having read it for the third time recently, she did not pick it up. She wished Fareeda would let her get up. Far off, beyond the hedge that separated her house from the servants’ quarters, she heard a dog bark.
That was another thing Fareeda wouldn’t let her do – keep a dog. For years, Laila had yearned for a dog that would sleep at the foot of her bed as Timmy did with George in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. Big and shaggy like Timmy, her dog would reach up to her waist. But while his powerful jaws and ferocious bark would terrorize strangers, he would adore her. He’d follow her everywhere and alert her to the slightest hint of danger with his protective growl. With Timmy beside her, she would be free to roam far beyond Sabzbagh, unencumbered by Bua.
‘Oh, no need to worry about Laila,’ her parents would say airily. ‘She has Timmy to look after her.’
Together they’d have splendid adventures, eliciting high praise and heartfelt gratitude from grown-ups. They would solve mysteries, rescue people in trouble, warn unwary adults of looming danger. Laila could see herself tensed on the very edge of the huge canal that flowed past Sabzbagh, gripping one end of a rope while Timmy swam into the middle with the other end clenched between his teeth to the flailing adult floundering in the water. As soon as the drowning man got the rope in his hands, Laila would pull him in, tugging with all her might, while Timmy swam beside him, ensuring his safety.
Flopping at Laila’s feet on the canal bank, the exhausted man would cough up all the water he’d swallowed. Then he’d take Laila’s hand in a gesture of infinite gratitude. She’d tell nobody, but of course everyone would find out, and Timmy and she would be garlanded at a public ceremony with balloons, streamers and a loudspeaker – perhaps even a military band. There’d be a picture in the paper of the Fearless Girl Heroine and Her Courageous Dog. Sara would not feature in the picture or the accompanying article.
Laila had begged her parents repeatedly for a dog, but they always refused. It would be unfair on the dog, they said, to leave it behind for the seven months of the year she spent in Lahore attending school. ‘No, darling, it would get lonely and pine.’ End of discussion.
‘I want to get up now,’ Laila demanded, as Fareeda entered her bedroom, holding a thermometer. Fareeda’s clothes were crisp, her hair glossy. As always, she reminded Laila of a freshly unwrapped mint, clean, sm
ooth and dry. Feeling scruffy in her limp pyjamas, Laila said: ‘I want to take off these silly pyjamas and go outside and play.’
‘What, in your vest?’ joked Fareeda, shaking the thermometer.
‘You know what I mean. I’m bored of staying in bed with Bua and you fussing over me.’
‘Open your mouth.’ Fareeda inserted the thermometer in Laila’s mouth. ‘If you don’t have a fever, you can get up, but no playing just yet.’
‘I don’t have a fever, do I?’ challenged Laila, as Fareeda removed the thermometer.
Fareeda peered at the glass tube. ‘Looks like it’s gone.’
‘See! Told you so.’ Laila swung her bare feet to the floor.
‘Put on your dressing gown and slippers and come out with me to the veranda.’
‘And do what? Stare at the garden?’
When Laila pushed open the hallway door and stepped grudgingly on to the veranda, she whooped with joy. Perched on a stool was Rani. On seeing Fareeda, the girl jumped to her feet and raised a hand to her forehead in greeting.
‘When did you come?’ squealed Laila.
‘Just now. Your mother sent for me in the car,’ said Rani in a low, shy voice.
Fareeda rumpled Laila’s hair. ‘As a treat for you.’
As Fareeda turned to go, Rani lifted a basket lying by her feet and said, ‘Umm, there’s this. Big Begum Sahiba sent these for Laila Bibi. She said to give them to you.’
Fareeda looked inside the basket. A dozen eggs nestled on a folded towel. Suspicious that Fareeda fed her daughters on a diet of battery eggs, Sardar Begum had taken to sending them eggs from her own hens.
‘Oh, desi eggs. Again!’ remarked Fareeda dryly. ‘Please thank Begum Sahiba for her generosity. But what’s this?’ Fareeda lifted out a damp handkerchief folded in on itself.
