Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

by Anita Rau Badami

“And who is to pay for this?” Bibi-ji demanded as they walked up the long driveway—lined with pine trees and bordered by a garden in which, she noted, her favourite roses had already been planted—to the front door.

  “We have the restaurant, the apartment—and now the other house. We will rent that out, just like we did with our apartment. Everything you wanted is coming true, enh, my Bebby?”

  She had squeezed his hand and nodded. Yes, everything she had wanted in her life she had found, except for her sister and her family.

  The door of The Delhi Junction swung open, letting in a draft of cool spring air and, with it, Hafeez Ali, one of the Saturday regulars, dressed impeccably as always in a beautifully cut achkan, his hair brushed back from his high, bony forehead. Bibi-ji snapped out of her thoughts and slid off her stool to welcome him as he touched a hand to his forehead and offered her the traditional Muslim gesture of greeting: “ Salaam-alai-kum, Bibi-ji!”

  She smiled warmly at him. “Salaam, Hafeez Bhai, how are you today? How is your beautiful wife? And the children? I heard that your son won a prize in mathematics at school—clever like his father, eh?”

  Hafeez laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Bibi-ji. I am not much good with numbers, you know. It is my wife who is the financial manager at home. Like you, it seems. You women are taking over the world!”

  “Yes, and a good thing too!” Bibi-ji remarked. She enjoyed listening to the elegant Urdu that the Pakistani man spoke, more formal than Hindi and richer than the village Punjabi she knew, though occasionally she could not understand some of his words. “And what can I do for you today? The usual? Two tandoori chicken and five naan?”

  “Yes, the usual.” Hafeez nodded. “And I will be ordering some food to eat here. Alibhai will be joining me. And our families too.”

  With a wave of her hand, Bibi-ji signalled a waiter to take Hafeez to the table that he and his friend Alibhai usually occupied. It was across the room from the table beside the window closest to the cash counter, which was reserved, on Saturdays, for the Indian regulars—Dr. Majumdar, a tall, suave Bengali with a sardonic face; portly, balding Menon, who spoke English with a heavy Malayali accent; the Gujarati doctor Harish Shah, also rotund and balding; and the new arrival from South India who had shortened his complicated name, which Bibi-ji could never remember, to the more manageable Balu Bhat.

  In the early years of the restaurant’s life, the Indians and the Pakistanis had sat hunched around the same table, fuelling their conversations with samosas and endless cups of boiling sugary chai tinged with ginger and cardamom, discussing their lives, their families, cricket matches, their work and, most of all, the politics of their country of origin. A taut rope tied them all to “home,” whether India or Pakistan. They saw their distant homes as if through a telescope, every small wound or scar or flare back there exaggerated, exciting their imaginations and their emotions, bringing tears to their eyes. They were like obsessed stargazers, whose distance from the thing they observed made it all the brighter, all the more important.

  When China invaded India in 1962, not long after the two nations had declared undying friendship, and then India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died a year later, The Delhi Junction’s regulars were unanimous in their belief that the Chinese invasion had killed him.

  “The Chinese betrayal!” round-faced Shah had declared, thumping a fist on the table.

  “It broke Nehru’s heart!” Menon had agreed. And for a few months they all refused to patronize Mrs. Wu’s vegetable shop. And when Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India in 1967, Bibi-ji marked the day by distributing free sweets to everyone who came to The Delhi Junction, for by now she had decided that her loyalties lay with India, not Pakistan. She was proud of—no, she identified with—this young woman who was almost the same age as her, for having taken on a job of such magnitude. Although she was now only a visitor to that country, Bibi-ji knew that India was no easy nation to manage, that it was not like Canada, so quiet and nice and well behaved, so good about following rules.

  Pa-ji contributed to the celebrations by acquiring a framed portrait of the young prime minister. He hung it on the wall of The Delhi Junction, adding a new star to the firmament of heroes and heroines, political and popular. Indira Gandhi, eyebrows sharply angled over heavy-lidded eyes, stared arrogantly out of her frame, and every time she passed the portrait Bibi-ji gave her an affectionate smile.

  In 1965, when war broke out between India and Pakistan, the battle came to The Delhi Junction as well. The seating maps altered, and Hafeez and Alibhai moved defensively over to a separate table across the room from the Indian group. The linoleum floor between them turned into the Line of Control—an unseen barrier of barbed wire stretching across it, hot lights blazing warnings as soldiers stood guard with guns cocked. Anger, hurt and loss simmered on both sides. As the war across the world went on and casualties mounted on both sides, conversation between the two factions in The Junction ceased altogether, and when Pa-ji began to vocally support the Indian side, Hafeez and Alibhai stopped coming to the café. But when the war ended a few months later, they reappeared as if nothing had occurred. A good meal, with familiar spices in a foreign country, meant more than the enmities generated by distant homelands.

  An elderly customer with a bright yellow turban entered the café. It was one of Pa-ji’s friends from his logging days.

  “Sat-Sri Akal, Bibi-ji!” he said. “I hear that you have a grand new house?”

  “Yes, a Taj Mahal, no less.” She felt flattered and absurdly spoiled.

  “So what are you going to do with your old one? If you are selling, let me know. I am looking for investment property in this area.”

  “No, we are planning to rent it out for now,” Bibi-ji said. “Do you know anyone in need of a place? We are looking for a decent family.”

  “Decent family for what, Mrs. Singh?” Majumdar came through the door, followed by his friend Menon. He was the only one of her customers who did not call her Bibi-ji. She could set her clock by him, for he always showed up on Saturday mornings at eleven o’clock sharp.

  “Your table is waiting for you,” Bibi-ji smiled and nodded at the two men. “And we are looking for a decent family to rent our house.”

  “What about you? Are you moving somewhere? Please don’t say you are! What will we do without you and The Junction?” Majumdar, elegant and sardonic, threw up his arms in mock horror.

  Bibi-ji laughed. “No, no, we aren’t going anywhere! We have a new house, that’s all. So if any of you gentlemen know of someone in search of a place to rent …”

  “Wasn’t Balu looking for something? Didn’t he say that his family is arriving soon?” Menon asked. He looked at Bibi-ji. “You know our friend, the one who recently arrived from India?”

  “The fellow with the name as long as the Fraser River?” Bibi-ji asked. “The one who shakes his head like this, like this, when he talks?” She waggled her head in imitation of Balu Bhat. “Of course I know him, and here he is—in person!”

  A short, pleasant-looking man with large, dark eyes entered the café. He called a greeting to his friends, caught Bibi-ji’s eye and smiled at her.

  “We were just talking about you, Bhat-ji,” she said. “Your friends tell me that you are looking for a place to rent?”

  Balu wobbled his head to indicate either a yes or a no, Bibi-ji could not tell. “Yes I am, Bibi-ji,” he said.

  “I have a place, if you are interested.”

  “Ask her the rent first, Balu,” Majumdar interjected.

  “Rent is very reasonable and the house comes fully furnished,” Bibi-ji said. She studied Balu, wondering whether he would be able to pay even the low amount that she and Pa-ji had settled on. He worked only part-time at a local community college, and she knew that teachers did not make big salaries. “We don’t want money, only a good tenant who will take care of our property and pay us on time.”

  “You don’t wan
t money, Bibi-ji?” Menon laughed. He shared with Balu a tendency to rotate his head when he spoke, in that same indeterminate movement, which led Bibi-ji to believe that he too was a South Indian, a breed as foreign to her as the goras, or Mrs. Wu, or Majid the barber. “Then how about free chai and samosas today?” Menon grinned, his moustache moving upwards and touching the tips of his flaring nostrils.

  “Why not?” Bibi-ji said, surprising herself by her sudden generosity. Later, when she went over the conversation, she would add this impulsive act to the list of Good Deeds that were earning her a golden star from the Ooper-Wallah, or the Upper-Wallah, as Pa-ji preferred to call him. The One Up There, God, Allah, Krishna, whoever, would be pleased with her. “Now about our house, Bhat-ji. Are you interested?”

  “I would like to see it first,” Balu said. “I am definitely looking for a place, but my wife, Leela, can be a little fussy, you know. She and the children are arriving in a month, so I don’t have much time to look around. Not that she wants a palace, nothing like that, but still it should be a comfortable size. At a reasonable rent, of course. But before I say anything, what I mean is—”

  “I understand,” Bibi-ji interrupted. “I will call Pa-ji, and you can go and see the house after you have had your chai and samosas.”

  By the time Balu was done with tea, Pa-ji had arrived at the café to help with the rush of customers. So it was Bibi-ji who took Balu to see the home in which he would live for the next several years. After some haggling over the rent, which Bibi-ji reduced just a bit more (yet another brownie point from God), Balu signed the lease for the two-bedroom house with the oversized couches and bright floral curtains. He would move in the following Saturday, a few weeks before Leela and their children, Preethi and Arjun, arrived.

  For years after, Bibi-ji would thank her stars that she had followed her more generous instincts. She would look back to the moment when she had offered the house to Balu Bhat, and she would find herself grateful to The One Up There. But that was before events in distant India poisoned her life, before bitter anger wiped out the gratitude and her friends became her enemies.

  “Your wife will be happy with your choice, I hope, Bhat-ji,” she said as she handed Balu the keys. She wondered what kind of woman Leela Bhat was. Pretty? Gentle? Bossy and opinionated, like Dr. Majumdar’s wife, whom she had only met twice and disliked thoroughly?

  “Yes, I hope so too,” Balu replied. He smiled and held up his hand with fingers crossed. “I very much hope so.”

  PART TWO

  LEELA

  FIVE

  HALF-AND-HALF

  Bangalore

  1946

  There were those who called Leela Bhat a snob, a difficult woman, with a too great sense of her worth in the world. Her cousins Narayana and Vishnu and their spouses were among the people who portrayed her thus. It could be argued that their animosity had deep roots, extending to the time when they were children growing up together in their ancestral home in Balepur, which had now been gobbled up by and assimilated into the super-high-tech city of Bangalore. It could also be argued, as Leela did, that people who said she was difficult and a snob were just plain envious.

  To be fair to Leela, it must be acknowledged that her cousins, in particular, could not help feeling peeved whenever they saw her sharp, wheat-complexioned face, with its peppering of dark freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks, her grey eyes and her small, bustling person always dressed so well—whether in starched cotton saris, light printed silk ones or the Canjeevarams heavy with gold embroidery, as the occasion demanded—ordering, bossing, arguing, correcting and generally queening it around as Mrs. Bhat, the wife of Balachandra Bhat, daughter-in-law (the only one) of the famous Gundoor Bhats. They found it difficult to forget that she had once been Leela Shastri, the pale-eyed, thin daughter of Hari Shastri and Rosa Schweers, a half-and-half hovering on the outskirts of their family’s circle of love. It was a time that Leela herself had shoved to the remotest corner of her mind, although she could never really forget that day in February 1946 when, as a child of eight, she had watched her mother die.

  The day had begun well enough. A photographer had arrived to take pictures of the entire extended family that lived in the Shastri home: Akka the matriarch, Hari Shastri, his brothers Cheenu and Rama, and their wives and children. They had all arranged themselves in the sunny central courtyard of the house in various groupings and poses. Only Leela’s mother, Rosa Schweers, was not in the picture, for she had refused to come downstairs from her room.

  Now the photo session was long done. Leela finished her lunch and washed her hands. She looked over at her cousins Vishnu and Narayana, who still had mounds of rice piled on their plates, and decided she had enough time to go outside the house and see if the custard apples hanging on the tree in the backyard were ready for picking, and get back in before the two boys finished their meal. The house was quiet. Her two uncles had retreated into the cool, shuttered bedrooms surrounding the large courtyard for much-needed rest with their wives.

  Leela had left through the back door and wandered around the yard, humming an improvised song to herself, touching the walls, peering into the well, which was covered with a sheet of tin to prevent nosy parkers like her from falling in, gently squeezing a low-hanging custard apple and finding it still too hard to pick. “This is the house that Rama Shastri built,” she sang. “This is the well in the house that Rama Shastri built. This is the tamarind tree by the well in the house …” She felt overwhelmed by a hazy sense of contentment. She belonged here. She was part of the family of Well-Known People living inside these walls. All this was hers as much as it was her cousin Vishnu’s or Narayana’s, no matter what they said.

  The thought of her cousins sent her hurtling back into the house, to the central courtyard where her grandmother Akka sat in an easy chair. As soon as Vishnu and Narayana arrived at her side, Akka would, as she did every day, start to tell her grandchildren stories from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana or the Panchatantra. This, she said, was how she taught them what was good and bad and how to live a proper life edged with righteousness and decency and goodness. Leela was determined to get to Akka before her cousins did so that she could sit in the favoured spot, right beside the old lady. This way, she hoped she might get a loving pat on her head the way the boys did, or perhaps some of the sugar beads from a silver box on the table beside Akka.

  But it was no use. Moments after she had settled down close to Akka’s chair the two boys strolled into the courtyard, emitting little burps in imitation of the men of the house and thumping their fists against their bare chests as if to beat out a frog stuck there. Akka’s dark eyes, which were stones whenever they looked on Leela, turned to melted tar. She beamed at her grandsons and crooned as if she had not seen them for a year, “Aha Naani my pet, aha Vishnu my monkey, come, come and sit next to me!”

  And somehow, without quite knowing how, Leela discovered that she was no longer right next to her grandmother but off to one side.

  Now Akka began her story: “Many centuries ago, there was a king named Trishanku who wanted to take his body with him to heaven when he died. He went with his absurd request to the great sage Vishwamitra, who agreed to send the king to heaven in his mortal form. He chanted mantras and performed such powerful penances that the three worlds shook with the force of his will. Soon Trishanku began to rise heavenwards. This unnatural occurrence raised such chaos in the three realms that the gods became alarmed and begged Vishwamitra to stop defying the laws of the universe, which decreed that human beings should shed their worldly skin before leaving earth. Vishwamitra gave in to their pleas, but because he had promised Trishanku that he would send him to heaven, he stopped the king in the void between heaven and earth and created another heaven around him. And so the poor king was condemned to hang upside down between worlds, unable to do anything other than wait for the universe to end. And so, when somebody is neither here nor there we say that they have attained Trishanku’s heave
n, not a very pleasant state of being at all!”

  Leela waited for Akka to add an example of a real person who resided in this state of perpetual indecision—this was how she ended each of her story sessions. Yesterday, when she had told the story of Lakshmana, the faithful brother of King Rama, who left his wife and a life of comfort to serve his older brother in exile for fourteen years, Akka had pointed at Leela and said, “Your father is a lucky man to have such devoted younger brothers. Why, if not for them, goodness knows what your father would have done in his time of difficulty.”

  At the mention of her father’s “difficulty,” Leela had blushed. Was it her fault that her father, Hari Shastri, had strolled down the street in London on which Rosa Schweers had lived? That a potted geranium which she had been watering had fallen off the windowsill and hit Hari on his head? That Rosa had come running down the stairs to help the unfortunate young man get up? That Hari, on opening his eyes, had seen a pair of charming breasts threatening to spill out of a lacy nightgown (Rosa had a weakness for that garment), topped by a pretty, anxious young face and, as her mother had often told Leela, had promptly fallen in love? And, carried by that tide of affection, had married Rosa Schweers, a casteless German woman of no known family? Was it Leela’s fault that she was the product of that union? Leela wished that she had the courage to fling these questions at her grandmother. But the old lady terrified her almost as much as she inspired a desperate need for approval in Leela’s small heart. Leela wanted more than anything to see a look of pride in Akka’s eyes.

  Beside her, Narayana nudged Vishnu and whispered something. Vishnu shot Leela a look and giggled.

  Her grandmother’s dark eyes turned to her favourite child. “What is it, Naani, what are you and your brother laughing about? Let us all hear this joke,” she said indulgently, stroking his thick, curly hair.