Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

by Anita Rau Badami

  “Hooh! Thank the Ooper-Wallah that you have arrived!” exclaimed the woman in a posh BBC accent bizarrely at odds with her flamboyant, heavily made-up, Hindi film star looks. “I knocked a few times on the back door, but no one answered. I was becoming worried, you know! Were you asleep? Can we come in?”

  “But who are you?” Leela asked, ready to slam the door shut if necessary.

  “Sorry, no introductions, what must you think of me …” The woman smiled at her. “I am Bibi-ji, your landlady. And this is our Lalloo, almost like a son to Pa-ji and me. I brought him along to help with all these heavy bags.”

  “Oh?” Leela said, still suspicious. She wasn’t sure she liked the look of the young man, who had the most bizarre sideburns—long and cut sharply at an angle just below his cheekbones, making him look vaguely like Dracula.

  “Balu did not tell you? I said I would come over and say hello. Ah, these men are very forgetful creatures. No sense either. Now, are you going to let me in or what?”

  “Yes, of course, come in.” Leela stepped aside to let her visitors into the house.

  Bibi-ji handed a bag to Leela.

  “What is all this?” Leela asked. “You really shouldn’t have …”

  “I have brought thirty parathas.” Bibi-ji ignored Leela’s protests and waved her hands at the plastic-covered cornucopia that Lalloo had deposited on the kitchen counter. “That should last for two days at least. Balu told us that you have children. They eat all the time, so you will need the lot.” She glanced around. “Where are they, anyway?”

  “Upstairs, asleep, I think. We’ve crossed so many time zones …”

  Bibi-ji nodded. “Yes of course, I’d forgotten how it feels. It’s what, three o’clock in the morning India time now?” She settled with a deep sigh on the blue-and-white-checked sofa and passed a critical eye over the rest of the furniture. “You like the furniture? No? Yes? If you wish, we can bring other pieces.”

  Leela shook her head vehemently, but Bibi-ji was off before she could say anything.

  “No, no, don’t be formal, don’t be shy,” the older woman urged. “We have many kinds of sofas, neh Lalloo? Ask him, he knows everything about our house. Lalloo, putthar, tell our Leela how many sofas Pa-ji has put in the Taj Mahal?”

  Taj Mahal? Was that the name of the restaurant this Bibi-ji owned? “Would you like some tea?” she asked politely.

  “Lalloo can make it. You sit here and tell me how your journey was.” Bibi-ji patted a spot beside herself on the sofa.

  “No, Lalloo can sit with you,” Leela said firmly, trying to regain control. “I will make the tea.”

  When Leela returned bearing a tray with teacups and biscuits, she found Bibi-ji and Lalloo browsing through one of the photo albums. Bibi-ji smiled at Leela. “Your family?” she asked, tapping the album.

  “Yes, mostly Balu’s relatives. They like taking photographs, his family.”

  “And these people? Who are they?” Bibi-ji pointed with her plump manicured finger at a black-and-white photograph of Hari Shastri and Rosa Schweers carrying an infant Leela.

  Leela’s heart clenched painfully. “My parents,” she said. It was the only picture she had of herself with them.

  “But this woman looks like a gori,” Bibi-ji said, bringing the album close to her face and frowning at it. “Your mother is a white woman?”

  Leela bit her lip and thought, why should it matter here in this country where I know nobody other than Balu, and now this strange pair in my living room, and nobody knows me? “Yes,” she said. “Yes, she was. She died when I was very young.”

  “Oh, I am sorry to hear that,” Bibi-ji said. She stared at the photograph for a bit longer. “I wondered about your eyes, now I see where you got them from.” She closed the album and accepted a cup of tea from Leela. “You will fit in without a problem, then, eh Leela? With eyes that see just the way the goras do?”

  Leela nodded briskly and tried to steer the talk away from herself. “And you, Bibi-ji? What about your family? Are they here? Or in India?”

  “My mother died soon after I came here, and my father went away when I was six or seven years old.” Bibi-ji sipped her tea. “And your father? Is he alive?”

  “No,” Leela replied. She busied herself with the tea things, rattling the spoon in her cup with more vigour than necessary. She racked her brains for a way to change the topic of conversation.

  “How did your mother die? She must have been young, na? Was she sick?” persisted Bibi-ji.

  “You could say that,” Leela nodded. “Biscuit?”

  “They call it cookie here,” Bibi-ji said. “You will find many things like that which they say differently. But you will learn. I did, and I was just from a small village.” She laughed, displaying perfect white teeth, and not for the first time Leela thought that she was a remarkably handsome woman.

  “Do you go home often, then?” Leela asked. “Do you have sisters or brothers or other relatives back there still?”

  “My home is here now. Down the road, to be precise! I came before Partition. My village disappeared during that time. It was right on the new border, but God knows where its people are now.” Bibi-ji fell into a brooding silence. “I had a sister, but she too … I have looked all these years for her and her family, but no luck.”

  “I am sorry,” Leela murmured.

  Bibi-ji picked up one of the framed photos Leela had piled haphazardly on the coffee table. “Are those your children?” she asked.

  “Yes, that is Preethi, our daughter, and that is Arjun, our son. Do you have any children?”

  “No,” said Bibi-ji. She did not elaborate. “Lalloo will help you with school admissions and all that sort of thing. I will take you to the shops.”

  “No, no,” Leela replied. “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “No bother. If we desis do not help each other, who will?” She peered at the photographs of the children again. “So sweet, so young. How old is this little girl?”

  “Preethi? She is six this year and Arjun is ten.”

  “My sister’s daughter, Nimmo, was the same age as your little girl when I last saw her,” Bibi-ji said. “That was the year before Partition. We used to call her Nirmaljeet.”

  The name seemed oddly familiar to Leela. She struggled to think why but couldn’t remember, and a moment later Lalloo’s voice distracted her.

  “Bibi-ji, it is getting late,” Lalloo reminded the older woman. “You have to take over from Pa-ji at the restaurant, remember?” He tapped his large golden watch. “He has a meeting with the temple committee members tonight.”

  Bibi-ji rose to her feet. “Ever since this new gurudwara was built there are only meetings-meetings-meetings,” she remarked. She leaned forward and patted Leela’s arm. “Now you listen to me. If you want anything at all, any help, you call me right away. Don’t be shy now. Okay? This is my phone number at home, and if I am not there I will be in our restaurant. The Delhi Junction. Balu can bring you there tomorrow for lunch.” She searched in her handbag for a pen and scribbled a number inside the telephone directory. “Oh, and by the way,” she added as she started moving towards the door, “the rent cheque is due on the first of every month. You can drop it off at our house.” Bibi-ji pointed in the direction of the big white house at the end of the road. “That is where I live—the Taj Mahal. That’s what we have named it. Come any time you want, it is an open house every day at our place. Even if I am at work there will definitely be somebody there to make you a cup of tea.”

  Leela looked out at the white house, the “Taj Mahal,” shimmering in the early evening light like a frosted cake, and nodded, not quite able to imagine a prolonged friendship with this big, noisy woman, and not sure she wanted it either.

  EIGHT

  INTRODUCTIONS

  Vancouver

  1967

  That Saturday Balu kept his promise and took Leela and the children around the city before bringing them to The Delhi Junction Café for lunch.
It was already full when they entered. An elderly white man, seated alone at a table in the middle of the café, was shaking a copy of the Vancouver Sun newspaper and making annoyed noises.

  “That’s Colonel Samuel Hunt,” Balu murmured in Leela’s ear. “A real character. You will see. Endless stories about native rebellions and British bravery.”

  “Ridiculous! Intolerable!” the old man spluttered.

  From his station behind the cash counter, a large Sikh with a turquoise turban and a grey beard called out, “What is the matter, Colonel-ji? What is bothering you today?”

  “That’s Pa-ji, our landlord,” Balu informed Leela, leading her and the children to a table beside the cash desk. “And this is my good friend Dr. Alok Majumdar.”

  A tall, lean man scraped his chair back and rose to his feet. His clothes, Leela noticed, were very elegant. She remembered that Balu had told her that he had never seen Majumdar wear anything other than a suit, a tie and highly polished shoes, and that he couldn’t even imagine him in bed wearing anything else.

  “And you must be Leela,” Majumdar greeted her, smiling and offering his hand.

  Leela took it diffidently, unused to touching a strange man’s hand.

  He patted the children on their heads. “And you are Arjun, and this little one must be Preethi, right? Come, come sit down and join the fun.”

  “What is our Colonel getting so worked up about?” Balu asked.

  “This piece in today’s paper,” Majumdar said, holding out his copy of the newspaper and pointing to an article. “It’s about a young man from East Pakistan.” The man, Majumdar said, filling them in quickly, was the second son of a farmer who had tilled his small square of land until there was no life left in it. Finally, unable to bear the annual catastrophes that struck—cyclones, floods, droughts and disease—he had smuggled himself to London, where he had tucked himself into the wheel well of an airplane scheduled to fly to Toronto. While the passengers munched peanuts, while they dozed, drank, played cards and read books, the second son clung to the leg of the giant metal bird, starved of oxygen and frozen to the marrow. He managed to hold on through the long flight across the Atlantic, but as the plane circled the sky above Toronto preparing for landing, his frozen arms released their grip and his long-dead body fell through the frigid night air to hit the tarmac.

  “The poor bastard was hungry, so he took a plane across the world to look for food,” Majumdar said, raising his voice and looking across at Sam Hunt. “What’s wrong with that, Colonel?”

  Samuel Hunt, who met every stereotype of the old British India army officer—bottle-brush moustache, staccato speech, stiff-backed gait—glowered back at Majumdar. “Bloody cheek, that’s what!” he said. “All these people coming in. Too many of them. Messing up the place. Don’t know why we let them in!”

  “Yes, of course, Colonel Sahib,” soothed Pa-ji, used by now to the contradictions in the old army man’s nature— his love of Indian food and his nostalgia for India coexisting with his dislike for Indians. “But we all need a place in this world, don’t we? You and me and the cook in the kitchen who makes your curry.”

  “Without permission! Illegal immigrants, breaking the laws of this land!” huffed Sam Hunt, ignoring Pa-ji’s comment.

  “Well, Colonel, this is a country of immigrants, no?” Pa-ji said. “We are all from elsewhere.”

  Samuel Hunt gave Pa-ji his most offended look and said, “Yes, but I am legal. These are riff-raff thugs who come with no passports, no visas, no papers. And my wife’s people came on the first boat that arrived on these shores.”

  “Ah, so one might say that she is one of those boat people, Colonel? Wouldn’t you agree?” Majumdar suggested mischievously.

  The old soldier bristled at the implication of the Bengali’s words. He didn’t approve of Majumdar. The man was too clever by half, had something devilish about him, come to think of it. “No, I wouldn’t agree!” he snapped, and rustled his paper.

  At the till, Pa-ji suppressed a smile.

  “Taking away our jobs, taking away our land, taking away the view.” Samuel Hunt stabbed at a piece of mutton with his fork.

  Majumdar did not rise to the bait. “I must leave now; I’ve piles of class assignments to correct,” he replied.

  “What do you teach, Dr. Majumdar?” Leela asked politely.

  “Women’s studies,” Majumdar said. “And do call me Alok—this doctor business sounds too formal.”

  “I told you, remember?” Balu said. “We teach at the same college. In fact it was Majumdar here who informed me about the vacancy in chemistry.”

  “I must have forgotten.” Leela smiled apologetically at Majumdar. “Balu has told me so many things recently that it is difficult to remember everything, you know.”

  Majumdar waved his hand. “No problem, it is only natural.”

  “But I was wondering,” Leela continued. “What exactly is Women’s studies? I mean, what do you teach your students?”

  “I tell them about the condition of women in Third World countries and all that. They love hearing about dowry deaths and sati and child brides and such things,” Majumdar said.

  “Sati? Child marriages? Wasn’t all that abolished a century ago? These things do not still exist in India, do they? Is this a history course?”

  “Everything still exists and coexists in India, don’t you think?” Majumdar replied. “And no, I don’t teach history, although I used to be a history teacher back home. But when I came here, it turned out that nobody was interested in the history of India. So what to do? I decided to remake myself, create a new-model Majumdar. My dissertation in India was on the role of women in India’s independence movement, Sarojini Naidu, Madame Cama, you know … I took a few courses here because they said the usual things about my degrees not being as good as the ones they have here, and voila, I am now a teacher of women’s studies. The thing is to give them what they want. They need to feel a righteous indignation about heathens. It’s their upbringing, you know, Christian, save-the-world, missionary, that sort of thing. I am simply using it to make a living.”

  Leela wasn’t sure whether he was joking.

  Majumdar laughed at her expression. “You see, Leela, if I may call you that, here you are on your own—no ma-baba to bail you out or uncle-aunty-friend to pull strings and find you a job. You have to do whatever is necessary. And I am not hurting anyone, am I?”

  “Well, your students must have a very odd notion of India and its women,” Leela said.

  Majumdar shrugged. “Do the women in India care about the opinions of others thousands of miles away? Most of them are more concerned about making sure they have food for their children.” He paused and grinned mischievously. “Now, if my students met Mrs. Majumdar, they would all know I am a liar through and through. There is an Indian woman for you! She would make most men commit hara-kiri, I can tell you that.”

  Balu decided to take his family for a drive around the city before heading home. As he drove he told Leela the details of his friendship with Dr. Majumdar, whom he had first met right there in the restaurant. A few months after his arrival, Balu had been wandering around the area, unemployed and beginning to feel that he might never find a job, might never bring his family over, might even have to go back home to India, when he had smelled the delicious and familiar smells of cumin and coriander and cardamom. As if in a trance, he had followed the tantalizing aromas and found himself standing in front of an Indian restaurant. He had gone inside to find Pa-ji perched behind the counter, Bibi-ji ordering two young waiters around, and a dozen Indian men—it was almost always men on weekdays, he discovered—seated at various tables. Majumdar was at his usual seat by the window, and when Balu entered he had given him a curious look, smiled and waved him over to his own table. The friendship had deepened as the year wore on, and when the job became available he had helped Balu to rework his résumé.

  “Don’t you have any extracurricular interests?” he had asked in irritation whe
n he saw the half-page CV that Balu had typed up. “You need to show them that you are an all-rounder, a well-developed fellow.”

  “Well,” said Balu doubtfully, “I read when I have time.”

  “So does half the world, Balu. Do you sing, dance, play cricket?”

  “I like listening to music. Classical Carnatic, some Hindustani, old Hindi films. I received a prize in high school for the best essay on Gandhi. Nehru gave me my trophy and shook my hand. I have a photo.”

  “Keep going, all this can be used.” Majumdar had taken out his pen, carefully uncapped it and written on a piece of paper: Interests: Classical music, reading, prose writing. (See list of prizes won.)

  Other qualities: Enthusiastic, quick learner, communicates effectively in written and spoken English. (“They think we Indians don’t know any English,” Majumdar said with fine scorn. “What did they think we were doing when we were in bed with the likes of Sam Hunt for three hundred years? Playing gilli-danda?”)

  “Anything else you would like to add?” By now the résumé had expanded satisfyingly to three sheets of paper.

  “A photograph, perhaps?” Balu had asked sarcastically.

  Majumdar had grinned and capped his pen with satisfaction. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Balu. You aren’t exactly Gregory Peck.”

  To his surprise, Balu got the job. It was only part-time and his contract had to be renewed every year, but it was a beginning.

  “If not for Alok,” Balu finished, “I might still be looking for a job, and there is no telling when you would have been able to join me here.”

  Leela watched the houses stream past, some with the window blinds up or curtains drawn so that she sometimes caught a quick glimpse of the inside of a room. They seemed opaque, these strangers’ homes, and she wondered if they would ever fall open and reveal to her the lives, the thoughts, the feelings that occurred inside them. Would she ever understand the people who inhabited them? What made them belong, and what made her a foreigner? How long would she remain foreign? Would she eventually become a woman of meaning here, a person who was a somebody, or would she remain without context, tied to a past that meant nothing to anyone except herself? A past, that would, if they lived here long enough, become irrelevant to her children?