Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

by Anita Rau Badami

  Her fear was a monstrous, silent thing that often woke her, sweating and shaking, from troubled sleep. It made her suspicious of everyone, even neighbours she had now known for many years, the woman who sold her mangoes in summer and cauliflowers in winter, the milkman, the owner of the bidi shop, the electrician, the policeman— every single one of them was a threat to her security, her peace of mind.

  “Sometime in your life you have to let the fear go, Nimmo,” Satpal had once said. “It is not good for your blood pressure otherwise.”

  He had read an article in the papers about the dangers of high blood pressure and for a while found a reason to work it into everything he said. This gentle, unimaginative person she had married had no idea of the meaning of terror, Nimmo reflected. His greatest fear was illness leading to a doctor’s visit. How could she explain to him what it was like to have your life pulled out from under your feet, to wake up one day and find you have no family or home in the land your people had tilled for a hundred years? How could he understand the pain of not knowing whether these memories were in fact memories or only figments of her imagination? Of relying on unconnected bits and pieces to tell him who he was? Of knowing only half your story?

  She had smiled up at her husband that morning, loving him for his sunny nature, his certainty that he could protect her. But inside her own heart she carried other, darker certainties: that she would never be able to rid herself of the dying-dog sound that a woman had made one night while a child sat uncomprehending and cramped in a bin of grain. And much as she tried, Nimmo could not rid herself of the memory of a pair of feet dangling above a dusty floor, their clean pink soles smelling delicately of lavender soap.

  I have searched for many years for some trace of Kanwar and her family. But nobody could tell me anything about her. Then by great coincidence, the woman I mentioned earlier, Leela Bhat, recently come from Delhi, gave me your address. I believe in things such as coincidence and chance and therefore I am hoping that you are indeed Kanwar’s daughter and my niece.

  Nimmo had no idea how long she had stood there, holding the letter pressed against herself. She would reply to this. She would be honest, and she would tell this Bibi-ji that she did not know for sure if her mother’s name was Kanwar. She would tell her, “I called my mother Amma, I did not know her name.” She would show her the postcard and tell her that she had found the name there but did not know how she came to have it. It had not been much to keep—a pair of names that might or might not have belonged to her parents.

  Nimmo took a sheet of paper from her son’s notebook and found a pen. In a neat hand, she wrote: “Respected Bibi-ji, My regards to you and hope you are well. I am writing in response to your letter. I was very surprised to receive it and cautiously happy. I do not know whether we are indeed related, for I was a child when the sorrows occurred and I do not remember much. That my name is Nirmaljeet Kaur is the only thing I know for sure about myself …”

  Nimmo wrote slowly, considering each sentence before committing it to paper, her hand cramping from the unaccustomed exercise, her back hurting from sitting hunched over the pad on her lap. She wrote about all the fragments she remembered and the bits she thought were true. She wrote every detail of that last terrifying night in Dauri Kalan, except for her memory of a pair of lavender-fragrant feet suspended above the floor. At last she was done. Bibi-ji might or might not be related to her. It did not matter, really. By the simple act of writing to her, Nimmo realized, she had gathered up those shards of memory and looked straight at them for the first time.

  ELEVEN

  GIVE-AND-TAKE

  New Delhi

  September 1967

  Three months later. The early autumn sunshine fell gently over the city. Asha could be heard arguing with the banana vendor, the chickens in Kaushalya’s yard were clucking contentment and, as usual, chaos reigned in Nimmo’s home.

  “Come on, what are you doing? You want a caning from the headmaster or what?” Jasbeer shouted to his younger brother, who was hurriedly tying his long hair, which his mother had braided, into a topknot. He swung his satchel over his shoulder. “Pappu always makes me late,” he grumbled, stalking out of the front door.

  “Wait for me!” Pappu yelled, struggling to clamp a rubber band over the white square of cloth he used to cover his topknot. Finally he was done, although it sat slightly askew over the fat ball of hair. He turned to face his mother.

  “Is it okay?” he asked anxiously.

  “Yes putthar, even I couldn’t have done it better.” Nimmo gazed at him fondly. He insisted on performing this part of his toilette himself, though it would have been faster if his mother had done it for him. In a few more years, he and Jasbeer would be winding turbans around their heads just like their father, Nimmo thought.

  She patted Pappu’s cheek and pushed him out of the door. He broke into a run to catch up with his brother, who was already marching resolutely ahead. Nimmo watched from the alley until they reached the main road and were swallowed up by the rush of people and vehicles. A small worm of worry crawled through her mind. Jasbeer was too sensitive, he took things too seriously. Perhaps she would make him a treat for dinner tonight, maybe buy him one of those brightly coloured tops that she had seen in the big shop two roads away. Only for him, not for his brother—although she couldn’t see how she could get something for one child and not for the other.

  The sun threw a slant of light on the tulasi bush that Nimmo had planted in the tiny paved area in front of the house. Her Hindu neighbours believed that the tulasi brought peace and prosperity to the house. She wasn’t one to scorn other people’s beliefs, so she had taken Kaushalya’s advice and planted the bush the year Pappu was born. Her reverie was interrupted when, in the distance, she heard the tragic wail of an ambulance. There had been an accident, her boys were hurt, she thought. For all her memories, how little she had understood of fear until she had given life to these children. The wailing passed, headed in the opposite direction, and her heart stopped its thundering.

  Satpal wheeled his bicycle out of the house. He had sold the taxi in an effort to reduce their debts, and no longer worked the night shift.

  “You are leaving early?” Nimmo said, surprised to see him heading off so soon.

  Satpal avoided her eyes. “Mohan Lal and I have to meet the bank manager.”

  “Again?” Nimmo exclaimed. “Why?” She had never been inside a bank. All her transactions were in cash. Banks were intimidating places and she felt the people who worked in them were faceless and frightening and could ruin your life.

  Satpal grimaced. “I told you months ago we might need to take another mortgage on our house. Besides, I have to ask the bank to extend the deadline on our current loan.”

  “But I thought after selling the taxi we would be all right.”

  “That money barely covered the taxi loan,” Satpal said.

  “If the bank doesn’t give, then what do we do?” Nimmo asked.

  “I will ask Girish Jain,” Satpal said.

  “That moneylender? Ji, why? We could pawn my jewellery, no?” Nimmo was ready to weep. Everyone knew that you went to the moneylender only when matters were desperate.

  “Your jewellery is for our daughter—if we have one,” Satpal said. “Don’t worry, it is only until business picks up at the shop. I hear they are building a new housing colony near by. We will have more customers then, I know it. And Mohan Lal might be able to get a bit of money from his wife’s brother. Now, enough money talk … Do you want me to pick up some vegetables or fruit from the market?”

  “No, I can buy some from the fellow near the gurudwara on my way back from the Ram-Leela field.”

  “Why, what is happening there?” Satpal asked.

  “Arrey, ji, how many times do I have to tell you? Our Indira Gandhi is coming to give a speech. Especially for women. All of us are going, Kaushalya, Geetha, Preetam …”

  “What do you get out of these speeches, enh?” Satpal wanted to know.
“Your Indira Gandhi is just a politician like all the others, makes promises to do this and that, but nothing happens.”

  “It takes time to run a country this big, and she has been in power for just a few months, ji,” Nimmo said indignantly. “I am beginning to think that you don’t like her because she is a woman!”

  “But I love women,” Satpal teased, stroking Nimmo’s backside.

  She tutted and whacked his hand away. “Don’t do that! What will our neighbours think?” she said. “I like Indira-ji, she is smart and she gives us women courage. If we have a daughter, I want her to grow up into an Indira Gandhi!”

  “Okay, okay, but be careful. In your condition—in a crowd—is that good?”

  Nimmo laughed. “You don’t worry, I will be fine. Go now, or you will be late for work.” She leaned against the faded wooden door frame, her hands linked around her swollen belly.

  Satpal paused at the gate to look back at Nimmo as she stood at the door. He did this every morning, paused to glance back to assure himself that the happiness in the tiny house really did exist, that the tall, handsome woman who had borne him two sons really was a part of his life. He was filled with a vaulting ambition to do huge, generous things for her. He thought anxiously of the debts that were piling up, wishing that business in the little mechanic’s shop that he co-owned with mild-mannered Mohan Lal would pick up soon. Then he could spoil Nimmo and his children with gifts and clothes, perhaps even add a second floor to the house to accommodate their growing family. He wondered whether she was as happy with him as he was with her. She was not a very demonstrative person, silent and solemn. A taut reluctance to trust anyone tightened the skin around her eyes and mouth. Only with Satpal and the children did she relax completely. Only then did her face dissolve into love and laughter.

  Although Nimmo knew that if she didn’t go inside and finish her chores she would be late in getting to the maidan, she continued to stand at the door, staring at the day roaring along, colourful and chaotic, on the dusty road in front of her home. There was a slight chill in the air, the sun shone and dew lay heavy on the leaves of the neem tree. Nimmo played languidly with the long braid that fell over her left shoulder, coiling down her old cotton kameez, almost reaching to the middle of her thigh. She thought of the child growing inside her and, for the first time in years, felt an exultation untainted by fear. If there was one thing that had prevented her from fully enjoying her life, it was the fear that always walked beside her, familiar as her own shadow, until this moment, on this sunlit morning, in the city of New Delhi in a country called India which had, by chance, become hers. The letter she had so painstakingly written three months ago to the woman in Canada named Bibi-ji, and now this new child growing inside her, allowed her to believe that at last she could let go of fear. For though she was not a trusting soul, she was, curiously enough, a hopeful one. It was hope that braced her as she walked through life. And so she stood there, this handsome woman of twenty-seven, neither too young nor too old, languid and full of the brilliance of the day, alight with the knowledge of her fecund body.

  She stroked her belly. Early next year there would be an infant in the house once again. She knew in some mysterious way that this one would be a daughter. She could feel it in the blood that surged with extra strength through her wide-shouldered body. I will always look after you, she murmured to her unborn child, I will give you everything your heart desires. And in exchange, this unborn child would be her talisman against fear and sorrow.

  She touched the door frame gently and turned to enter. From the corner of her eye, she noticed a taxi approaching slowly and then stopping across the road. She paused, wondering who in the neighbourhood had visitors that could afford to take a taxi from the station or the bus depot.

  A heavy woman in a shiny red and white salwar kameez suit emerged from the vehicle, energetically arguing over the fare in ripe Punjabi. Having settled the dispute to her satisfaction and now dragging a bag out after her, the woman walked across the road towards her. As she entered the narrow gate, she saw Nimmo standing at the door and slowed down.

  “Nirmaljeet Kaur?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Nimmo said cautiously.

  “I am Sharanjeet Kaur—Bibi-ji—your mother’s sister!” said the woman. “I couldn’t bear to do this letter-writing business anymore, so I caught a plane and came.”

  Caught a plane, Nimmo thought in awe. As if she did it every day, like catching a bus. Bibi-ji dropped her bag, clasped her hands to her chest and burst into tears. Nimmo glanced around embarrassed, picked up her visitor’s bag and led her into the house before Asha could appear at the wall.

  She opened two of the folded wooden easy chairs and gestured to Bibi-ji. “Please sit,” she said awkwardly, wishing that Satpal was home to help with the conversation. “I will make some tea.”

  Dark lines of eye make-up ran with the tears down Bibi-ji’s cheeks. “No, no, sit with me and let us talk,” she said, mopping her face with a handkerchief she had extracted from the neckline of her kameez. “I have waited so many years, and I don’t want to waste another minute.” She looked appraisingly at Nimmo. “You have my sister’s eyes,” she said finally. “And her build. She was a tall woman. I remember when I was a child she used to carry me around so easily.” Bibi-ji giggled and pointed at her bulk. “Now it would be impossible, neh?”

  Nimmo shifted uneasily. Bibi-ji had clearly decided that she was the lost niece, with no evidence to support her belief. She leaned forward and caught Bibi-ji’s hands. “Look,” she began, wanting to say, Let’s wait a bit, let’s talk this through, I’m not sure I am who you think I am. I’m not sure where I came from, I don’t know my mother’s name or my father’s, I was a small child …

  But before she could finish her thought, Bibi-ji pulled her into her own capacious arms as if she were still a child and stroked her head. “No, don’t say anything to spoil this moment for me. I know in my heart that you are my Nimmo, my sister’s child. My heart is never wrong.”

  A faint, familiar fragrance filled Nimmo’s nostrils. She struggled in the older woman’s embrace, wanting to get away from the memory that it evoked. It was the smell of the pale violet soap. It was the smell of death and fear. With a small cry, Nimmo pushed Bibi-ji away and stumbled to her feet.

  “What? What is it?” Bibi-ji asked. Seeing the look in Nimmo’s panic-stricken face she sighed, “It is okay. I shouldn’t have come here like this. You must think, who is this crazy woman? It is okay. You make me some tea, and we will talk about this and that and maybe find a connection.”

  “The scent you are wearing,” Nimmo said. “It seems so familiar. I was surprised, that’s all.”

  “Scent? Oh, my lavender splash,” Bibi-ji said. “I used to send lavender soap to my sister. Perhaps you remember that? I loved it as a child. But I hated it after I lost your mother—I stopped having anything to do with lavender. When I found you, I decided to use it again.”

  Feeling unsettled, Nimmo went into her kitchen to make the tea. Left alone in the living room, Bibi-ji let her eyes wander around the small, neat, sparsely furnished house. She saw how scrubbed and clean it was but noticed the walls that desperately needed painting, the faded and much-darned clothes hanging on the line outside and the cracked floor in the kitchen, and she understood there was not much money here.

  Nimmo brought tea to Bibi-ji, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Bibi-ji started to talk about the childhood she had shared with Kanwar, about their father’s disappearance, about their mother. She talked about everything except how she had stolen Kanwar’s future. She wanted Nimmo to think well of her.

  Nimmo had nothing much to say about her own childhood—despite Bibi-ji’s gentle prodding, she could still barely recall anything other than the images that haunted her. She had described them all in her letter to Bibi-ji, all except the image of a pair of well-washed feet hanging in the air that she still could not bring herself to share. But Bibi-ji made her tell them aga
in, reliving the sound of her mother’s anklets, the handprints on the wall of the house, the smell of wet earth after a monsoon. As for her life with the couple who had adopted her here in Delhi, what could she say, other than that it was happy? And safe-above all, it was safe.

  Then she had an idea. “I have a postcard with me,” she said. “It might be one that you sent to my mother.” She went to the picture of Guru Nanak and reached behind it for the envelope containing the postcard.

  The older woman eagerly took it from her. “Yes, I sent this. I remember picking it out because I thought your brothers would enjoy the picture of the bear. Inder and Gobind, do those names strike a bell?”

  Nimmo shook her head. “Maybe the second name— Gobind. But I can’t say for sure.”

  “There was another one I sent with this postcard—a picture of whales. Do you remember that?” Again Nimmo shook her head. Bibi-ji turned the card over and tapped at the faded writing. “And see, it’s me—Sharan. That’s what your mother used to call me, you know.”

  Taking the card back, Nimmo turned it round and round, trying hard to remember her family the way that Bibi-ji did, and failing. The older woman had claimed the postcard immediately, but was it truly Nimmo’s? Had the card belonged to her mother, or had it been given to her by a stranger?

  Too honest to keep such doubts to herself, she said, “I could be anybody. Where is the proof that I am the Nirmaljeet Kaur that you held in your arms when I was a child, Bibi-ji?”

  “You don’t want me as your aunt?” Bibi-ji asked, her face sagging with disappointment. “You don’t like me?”

  “I do, I do,” Nimmo said. “It’s just that I don’t want to take advantage of your kindness like this. There must be thousands of women my age, from Punjab, who are called Nirmaljeet. Perhaps one of them is your niece. What if I found this card when I was running from my home to join the kafeela?”