‘Who knows what house Kusum must be in—how can I go see her without Amma finding out?’ Aliya desperately wanted to see Kusum.
‘Don’t you go see her, or Amma will kill you!’ Tehmina objected, but Aliya continued to plot: if she could find out where the house was, she could definitely go see her on the way to school.
That night Tehmina was extremely anxious. There was such silence at Ray Sahib’s house that one couldn’t even hear anyone speaking. Tehmina must not have slept that night; in the morning her eyes were red.
When the maid came to work she again relayed startling news: that man had left Kusum in the dead of night! Kusum had wept for the rest of the night. All the people nearby had gathered around. He had brought her there on the pretext of visiting her parents and asking their forgiveness. Ray Sahib had refused to see her, but his wife had gone to Kusum’s house this morning when it was still dark.
‘This is the punishment for such vixens! It was quite right of him to leave her and go away; after all, she had been dreaming of running away and becoming a wife. She did it and now she’s paying the price,’ declared Amma venomously. Tehmina looked like she was in shock.
‘I’ll tell Abba to make Ray Sahib understand that he must bring Kusum home. Oh dear, what will she do alone?’ asked Aliya excitedly. She was feeling such intense hatred towards that man. What calamity he had unleashed in bringing her here! If he had left her far off in some strange place, she could have beaten her head in and died, but at least she wouldn’t have to be insulted by her own people.
‘What will you say to your Abba? That Ray Sahib should take his runaway daughter back in? Won’t you be ashamed of yourself saying such things?’ asked Amma, enraged.
‘Yes, that’s what I’ll say!’ cried Aliya as she ran away from her mother.
That evening, when Abba came home from the office, she went and stood before him. ‘Abba, Kusum is crying alone in her house. Please go talk to Ray Sahib—tell him to bring her home. Someone has run off and left her there!’
‘I know everything—I would have reasoned with Ray Sahib before you said so, but you’re very intelligent, my dear.’ Abba patted her on the head and smiled.
‘Why must she take part in such shameful things?’ asked Amma, livid with rage.
‘Why shouldn’t she? You have her study at the mission school but you don’t even give her the right to speak.’
‘Why don’t you just come out and say that you think the English are shameless?’ Amma was spoiling for a fight so Abba rushed off to the sitting room.
That night Abba quietly told Aliya that Ray Sahib had agreed, that he’d bring Kusum back home, and perhaps he already had. She was very pleased at Abba’s handling of the situation, and got a sense of her own importance that day. All the same she was not able to go see Kusum despite her best efforts.
10
That night dragged on and on. Aliya couldn’t get to sleep. When would morning come, so that she could go to school and visit Kusum on the way? The barking of stray dogs rendered the night all the more bleak. The next morning, she went to Kusum’s house before going to school. Kusum’s mother was in the kitchen. Ray Sahib was reclining in his easy chair, his eyes closed. He pointed towards the room where she would find Kusum.
She went into the room but Kusum was not there. She peeped into a small room, and saw her lying there, dishevelled, on a bare string bed. When Kusum saw Aliya she shrank back. Aliya went over and hugged her.
‘I missed you, Kusum,’ she said, examining her closely. The crop had been harvested and the field lay empty.
Aliya grabbed Kusum’s hand and tried to pull her up. ‘Why did you sneak into this dark little room? Why don’t you come on out and sit with me?’
‘When I sit out there, everyone comes to look at me. Mother says to hide myself, and then Father feels depressed when he sees my face. I’ve been dishonoured, after all. How is Tehmina?’
‘Come to our house and see her, Kusum.’
‘I can’t go anywhere now.’ Her haunted eyes filled with tears.
‘Then I’ll take you myself.’
It was nearly time for school, so Aliya promised to come back in the evening and then left. The whole way there she kept cursing Kusum’s lover. When she returned home Tehmina grabbed her and asked her all sorts of questions about Kusum, but what could she say? She had hardly talked to her at all.
‘You should go over there and see her, Tehmina.’
‘Now if I see her, people will point at me; she’s become a famous runaway.’
‘But why don’t people say that man who ran off and left her is bad?’
‘They just don’t, that’s all, they only think of the girl as bad. You’re a big girl now, so don’t go over to her house or people will start talking.’
That evening, Aliya felt herself in a quandary for the first time. She felt bewildered by the emotions of love and romance. What is this thing called love for which humans were willing to lose so much, and why? She just couldn’t understand, and became exhausted thinking about it. She’d eaten dinner before anyone else and then gone and lain down on her bed and got caught up in her course books. She had no idea when she fell asleep after that.
She woke up once during the night. Outside she could hear dogs barking and wailing. The night was truly filled with foreboding. Suddenly she looked up. The rooftop room at Ray Sahib’s house was clearly illuminated in the moonlight, and she could see the flames of clay lamps moving about up there. Then she saw a figure covered in white clothing from head to toe. She closed her eyes with fear. No one stayed in that room at all. Kusum herself had told her that the room had been locked ever since her grandfather had died in it. Everyone was afraid to go in there.
She worried that perhaps the soul of Kusum’s grandfather had returned, but then she remembered that in Hindu homes, they had ghosts instead. She cried out to Tehmina in fear, but Tehmina had turned over and gone back to sleep.
A little while later, when the light went out and the wraith-like figure had disappeared, she heaved a sigh of relief. The next morning, everyone was drinking tea when the sound of weeping and wailing came from Ray Sahib’s house.
‘I bet that Kusum has run away again,’ declared Amma. The maid ran outside with great excitement, and Abba rushed out at the same time. Abba came back a few minutes later and fell into his chair.
‘What a tragedy! Kusum drowned in the pond, no one knows when she went out last night,’ he told them. All day long people came to see her and find out what had happened. Perhaps they were eager to learn if the runaway had grown horns.
‘Bring me my clothes, I need to go to Ray Sahib’s,’ said Abba.
Amma was totally dumbstruck. Tehmina was weeping and Aliya sat shaking from head to toe as she leant on her father’s shoulder. Abba stroked her head. Despite his consoling her, she was unable to even weep for some reason.
Kusum had already been brought home on a cot. Aliya pushed through the crowd of women. When she saw Kusum’s uncovered face, she shrieked. Her blue, swollen face was devoid of emotion. Everyone was staring at Kusum, but she refused to return their gazes. Her mouth was curved in an odd smile, as though she were just about to sing the song ‘Oh, where has my Shyam gone, will nobody tell me?’ before she had died. The end of her white sari hung from the cot, as the last drops of water dripped into the dirt of the courtyard.
11
It was the month of October. It had started to get a bit cold. The veranda had been shut up and people were now sleeping indoors. Aliya usually slept wonderfully in winter, but for some reason Tehmina was spending most of her nights awake. Her health was poor—her colour was dull and the skin on her face was dry. Amma monitored her nutrition closely: in the mornings she fed her sweet almond milk instead of tea.
Tehmina’s dowry was all sewn and Amma was anxious that the date of the wedding be fixed. In the meantime, Big Aunty had also been sending letter after letter asking to set the date quickly, but Abba was stalling. ‘When Tehmina i
s doing better, we’ll see,’ he said.
Once, when a letter came from Big Aunty, there was a picture in it of cousin Jameel. Aliya took the picture to show Tehmina, but Tehmina looked away.
‘One can only belong to one person,’ she said angrily, then burst out laughing. ‘And anyway, I will see Jameel in person once I marry him.’ There was something so helpless about her laughter.
‘Tehmina, do you miss Safdar?’ asked Aliya anxiously.
‘Of course not! Why would I?’ Tehmina picked up the book at the head of her bed.
When Abba came home from the office, he seemed very upset. The maid set out the tea things on the table but Abba just lay back in his easy chair.
‘Won’t you take any tea? It’s getting cold. Also, you must find a good date for the wedding today; your sister-in-law is sending letter after letter.’ Amma dragged her chair over to Abba.
‘It was because of you that he left this house. Now he’s joined the wrong sort of party and ruined himself. You’re the one responsible for his ruin.’
Tehmina’s face went white. Everyone realized whom Abba was talking about.
‘Which scoundrel have I ruined?’ demanded Amma.
‘I’m talking about Safdar; now do you understand?’ Abba snapped back.
‘Mercy, even after leaving the house, he’s not really gone—we’ll never be rid of him!’ Amma wept, her tears a ruse.
‘Rest assured, now he’ll never return,’ said Abba softly, and he went into his sitting room without drinking tea. When Aliya brought him his tea, he was lying on his takht with his eyes closed. He sat up when he saw her, and smiled. ‘How can I explain to your mother that she’s ruined your cousin Safdar? A friend of his has come from Calcutta, he told me all about it. Safdar was asking after you quite a bit too.’
‘Abba, which party did he join?’
‘Daughter, it’s a party of atheists,’ Abba sighed. ‘And I thought of him as my own son.’
But clearly he never considered anyone to be his father—he hasn’t written a single letter after he left; he doesn’t value our love, thought Aliya. She felt that Abba was needlessly losing his head over him, but she couldn’t say anything to him.
‘How are your studies going?’ Abba asked her.
‘They’re going well, Abba.’
‘And you’re not being influenced at all by the religion of the British?’
‘God forbid!’
‘Excellent! You’re very intelligent. All my hopes are pinned on you. You do know, don’t you, that I loathe those dishonest businessmen. They’ve made slaves of us.’
‘I loathe them too, Abba!’ she said, to make him happy.
Abba watched her as he placed his cup on the teapoy. His eyes sparkled with happiness. She was wondering why Abba hated all the English. Her own headmistress at the school was kind and sweet. How exactly was she ruling their country?
‘God willing, they’ll all go back to their own country some day; I can’t do anything out of concern for all of you, but we have such a great country, don’t we?’
‘Yes, Abba, it’s a very large country!’ she replied foolishly, making her father smile as well. Just then someone knocked on the sitting-room door, so she took the tray and went quickly back into the house.
‘I know what’s going on, I know why he’s ruining himself,’ Tehmina whispered to Aliya that night. Aliya didn’t reply. Kusum’s gone and drowned, but Tehmina still misses Safdar, she thought with revulsion.
The next evening, when Abba came in to eat dinner, Amma was sitting in the veranda writing a response to Big Aunty’s letter.
‘I’ve written to your sister-in-law to set the date for the tenth of Eid month,’ Amma announced. Abba was silent. He didn’t respond at all. He looked rather sad in the dim yellow light of the lantern.
12
The wedding date was drawing nearer. Amma was getting busier and busier. At around twelve or one o’clock in the afternoon, the chaprasi’s wife would wrap herself in a burqa and come over to pick the unhusked rice from the clean. And there were seers of dry fruits and nuts to be chopped! Amma looked quite merciless when overseeing the chaprasi’s wife. The exhausted woman would be limping when she headed home after a full day at their house.
It was the end of January. The day before, the rain had been mixed with hail. That night was so cold they felt like they were sitting on icicles. The temple bells fairly shivered as they rang. They talked until late that night, and then Tehmina turned away from her. Aliya was just about to fall asleep, when Tehmina began talking again. Somehow her sleepiness had disappeared.
‘It feels as though I am sitting in wait, like a traveller,’ she murmured in a faraway voice.
‘Well, you are a traveller—in just a few days, you’ll become a bride and then leave. You’ll be such a beautiful bride!’
‘And don’t my hands look lovely?’ Tehmina took her tiny hands out from under the quilt and waved them about. ‘They’ll be decorated with mehndi then; this was the day I watered that small mehndi plant for, and now it’s grown so large—I wish I could lie in its shadow and sleep. And isn’t mehndi such a strange thing too? It carries the fragrance of a blissful marriage, the coolness of love, and from its red colour, you do get the sense of the death of desires.’
‘Oh my! What are you even talking about, Tehmina!’ Aliya stared at her sister in confusion. At that moment she realized that Amma was right when she said that Safdar had ruined Tehmina by giving her trashy books.
‘What am I talking about?’ Tehmina smiled. ‘All sorts of things—such things made me a traveller in the first place, and they can end my journey too.’
‘Tehmina, are you missing Safdar? Tell the truth.’
‘Safdar who? Oh you silly, you don’t have a bit of sense.’ Tehmina slapped her hand, laughing. ‘Come on, let’s go to sleep now; it’s so late.’
There were only a few days left for the wedding. Amma was extremely busy and happy. At times, she also worried that her brother and sister-in-law might not make it for some reason, although they’d written to say they would arrive a week beforehand. She talked of them continuously. ‘The changing seasons of this country don’t agree with my sister-in-law’s health. She gets colds so easily, and her stomach is always bad too. And the poor thing is always having to eat chillies at parties. After all, are chillies really a thing one should eat?’ Amma tried to get Tehmina to respond, but she was silent.
Tehmina had stopped coming out of her room. Whenever Abba came home she’d shut the door. Amma just adored this bashful behaviour of hers. ‘That’s what modesty is like!’ she’d say with pride. Aliya searched Tehmina’s face for modesty, but she didn’t find a drop of it. When Tehmina felt shy, she turned pink, like a Japanese doll, but nowadays she was ashen. There was such depth in her eyes, such darkness, that Aliya felt she was peering deep into a well when she looked at her.
When there were only seven days left for the arrival of the groom’s procession, Tehmina was bathed and scrubbed in turmeric paste and dressed in special yellow clothing. That night, the mirasis and domnis brought drums and sat on dhurries spread out in the veranda and began to sing different songs, all filled with poignant longing and desire. It was as though each and every verse was sung with outstretched hands full of longings that were not fated to ever be fulfilled in the bride’s life.
The songs continued on and Tehmina wiped away her tears with her yellow dupatta. Though Abba’s friends’ wives requested to hear each song twice, the singers’ throats never tired. From time to time during the singing, the audience would drop two- and four-anna coins on the dhurrie in praise.
Amma was taking her afternoon nap, sound asleep after staying up later than usual the night before, and the maid had gone home for two hours, having got some free time for the first time in many days. Tehmina was lying down but she didn’t feel sleepy. She kept tossing and turning. A crow sat on the low wall across the yard, its cawing only deepening the silence of the afternoon.
‘Guests are about to come, that’s why the crow is cawing,’ Aliya told Tehmina happily.
‘And guests are also about to leave.’ Tehmina was starting to look happy and peaceful after quite a while, but then she suddenly thought of something and sat up. ‘What do you know, Aliya? My tiny life has crept by like a tortoise.’ Her face turned red.
‘You’ve always been better off than me, I’ve never been more than a leftover piece of junk, tossed in a closet, Amma always . . .’ Aliya’s lips began to tremble.
‘Amma scolds me as well, but I always stay happy. Everything she’s done has been out of animosity for Safdar. He was in danger because of me, wasn’t he?’
‘But now you will be free, now Safdar won’t come back to make your life difficult. May God take him to task for what he’s done.’
‘Aliya, don’t curse!’ Tehmina left the room on bare feet to get a drink of water.
When she returned, her eyelids were damp. She closed her eyes the moment she lay down.
Enough, Tehmina is still thinking of that rascal. She still hasn’t come to her senses after seeing what happened to Kusum, thought Aliya.
Aliya was trying to fall asleep when the chaprasi came with the mail. Tehmina woke up as well. She picked up one letter and turned it over and looked at it: it was addressed to Amma, and ‘Safdar’ was written in one corner. Tehmina opened the letter with trepidation and after reading it, she held it out to Aliya. What she read made her writhe with fear:
Dear Aunt,
Congratulations on Tehmina’s wedding. It doesn’t matter whom you give her to, she’ll always belong to me. She is mine alone.
An expression of immense peace came over Tehmina’s face, as though she’d just received all the wealth in the universe. She quickly ripped up the letter and threw the scraps into the grate. The other letter was from their mother’s brother; that she placed carefully at the head of the bed.
‘Come on now, let’s go to sleep. I’m feeling really sleepy.’ Tehmina lay down and very craftily acted as though she were asleep, but Aliya lay there cursing Safdar to herself. What would have happened if Amma had got her hands on that letter? The very thought filled her with dread.
The Women's Courtyard Page 5
