Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

by Anita Rau Badami

  She shook her head in disgust. “If that is the case, why are you sending your own son to school?”

  Lalloo shrugged. “It is not my idea, it is my wife’s. Sometimes for the sake of homely harmony, one must go against one’s principles.” Homely harmony was another of Lalloo’s pet themes, probably because his wife was known for her ferocious temper, her rich father and her six ruffianly brothers who had warned Lalloo, in a straightforward way, that if their sister was unhappy, it was he who would suffer. Excruciatingly. Lalloo had no difficulty believing them.

  Later, when the house was quiet and their many house guests had retired for the night to the bedrooms and the basement, which had been turned into a large living area, and Jasbeer too had fallen asleep, Bibi-ji walked across the corridor from her bedroom to Pa-ji’s office to tackle him about the letter. It was a large room lined with bookshelves. In the middle of it was his desk, which had papers stacked so high on, under and around it that sometimes even Pa-ji’s bulk was not entirely visible. This was where he conducted his business, sent out petitions to fellow Sikhs for funds for this or that charitable cause and worked on his book, The Popular and True History of the Sikh Diaspora.

  On one long wall of his office were pictures of Gandhi and Nehru and lithographic prints of the ten gurus of Sikhism. There was an enormous, gaudy painting of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who had created a united Punjab for the first time in history, in royal regalia. On another wall were a dozen framed photographs of people who Pa-ji claimed, to all those visiting or passing through the house, as his relatives.

  “You have so many relatives?” a naïve young Bibi-ji had asked when she had first arrived in Canada and seen this photo gallery on the wall of their old apartment above the grocery shop. She had been deeply impressed by this fine record of her new husband’s past, and not a little jealous. There was no one in her family she could point to and say, “That is my grandmother, famous for her sarson-da-saag,” or “This is my grandfather, whose dreams brought me here.” It was hard enough that her own father had simply vanished.

  Pa-ji had consoled her by pointing to a copy of a picture of about twenty turbaned men standing on the deck of a ship with the name Komagata Maru painted on its side. One of those men, he said, would definitely have been Bibi-ji’s father. Bibi-ji peered at the photograph often but couldn’t see anyone who resembled the man who had slept on a string cot. A few faces were blurred or partially obscured by somebody else’s head. Perhaps, Bibi-ji thought, one of those hidden men was her dream-ridden father.

  “And now I will tell you a secret,” Pa-ji had said, in thrall to her supple youth, her lovely eyes, willing to yield every single bit of himself, warts and secrets and all, to her. “These people are strangers. I don’t know even one of them.”

  “Not even that one?” Bibi-ji looked at her husband with round eyes and pointed to a particularly impressive photograph of a young man in the uniform of the British Sikh Regiment. He looked brave and dignified with his long nose and dark beard, his sharp eyes staring out at posterity while posterity in the shape of the Singhs gazed reverently back. On his head was an enormous striped turban with a circular metal pin on the front, and he wore a uniform decorated with a row of medals. Only the day before, she had heard Pa-ji tell some of their house guests that this was his father, Theka Singh, who had fought valiantly for the British and then just as valiantly fought against them. “Rattray’s Regiment,” he had said. “And then Rebel Regiment.”

  Pa-ji had laughed. “No, not even that one,” he had said. “I found him in a junk shop in Steveston.” Three others had been retrieved from a shop in Petticoat Lane in London when Pa-ji was returning to India in search of a bride. Six had been purchased for a ridiculously low sum of money from an old man in an Amritsari gully, right beside the walls of the Golden Temple.

  It was true that Pa-ji’s father, Theka Singh, had once been in the British army. But he had not fought in any wars either for them or against them. There were no medals, no tales of heroism, no independence-related heroics: a week after signing on, he had died of jaundice. Pa-ji’s mother died soon after, and he was brought up by a distant relative in Amritsar along with a dozen other children, all fighting for a space in the sun. Pa-ji was unhappy, lost in the crowd of children, longing for his dead parents. And he confessed to his lovely young wife that to make himself feel better, he had cooked up an entirely imaginary father who was tall and handsome and alive, a famous soldier who had won many decorations fighting for the British, who would return one day and carry Pa-ji away from his foster home. From a brave soldier who had fought for the British, the absent father became one of the heroic men who had fought against them for India’s independence.

  In 1924, sixteen-year-old Pa-ji had run away from his relatives’ home and worked his passage on a Norwegian merchant vessel from Calcutta to Vancouver, where he had jumped ship and stayed on as an illegal immigrant, acquiring valid papers only ten years later. He had found refuge in the gurudwara on Second Avenue, where the small local Sikh community gathered to pray and mingle, and soon, through the contacts he made, had found work in a lumber mill in Abbotsford, not far from Vancouver. In the dank, crowded house that he shared with ten men, all of them working long hours in the mills, his imagination embroidered other colourful details about his father: he was much taller than Pa-ji, almost as large as the Swedish sailors who stopped in Vancouver’s Gastown to drink their shore leave away; he had a booming laugh and a generous heart. In the blank slate of a foreign country, Pa-ji came to understand, you could scribble the truth any way you wanted. You could build entire families out of thin air, turn strangers into brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, use new relationships and stories to patch up the holes created by lost and left-behind ones. You could, like Pa-ji, spin history using longing for yarn and imagination for a loom.

  Armoured by his fictions against the suspicious glances of the Europeans in the city and the fear that the look in their eyes would turn to violence, against the cold that soaked into his bones, against exhaustion and loneliness in a strange land, young Pa-ji had worked hard and saved his earnings. He had moved to Vancouver and with a friend bought a truck which they used to deliver firewood purchased from the lumber mills in surrounding towns to homes across the city. Soon he had enough money to buy a small property on Kingsway Avenue, which he sold at a profit a few years later. Next he bought a two-storey building on Main Street, one of the poorer parts of town. He lived upstairs in one of the rooms, rented the remaining two to other Sikh men and opened a small grocery shop downstairs. When he had saved enough to comfortably support a wife, he had taken himself to India and found Bibi-ji.

  Bibi-ji understood his need to possess a piece of history, she knew all about keeping dreams alive. What harm, she thought, could his small private fictions do in a world where larger truths were reshaped to suit those in power?

  When Bibi-ji entered Pa-ji’s office to discuss Jasbeer, her husband was watching the news on his private television. Beside him on the small table was his favourite double malt Scotch whisky, which he preferred to drink neat. This was something that Bibi-ji did not approve of. She believed that drinking alcohol equalled drunkenness and, as a practising Sikh, Pa-ji had no business imbibing any kind of liquor. But Pa-ji had airily pooh-poohed her doubts and criticisms.

  “This is just to loosen me up, my honey, so that I can be a lion in bed!” he had teased the first time she had objected, hooking his arm about her waist and pulling her down on his lap, his alcohol-flavoured breath making her wrinkle her nose. “I have it in person from the Upper-Wallah that it is okay to take a peg or two once a day. Do I get drunk? Have you seen me lose control? No. Then why are you bothering me about it?” He had cradled his glass of Johnny Walker against his barrel-chest and laughed. “This is my friend. It kept me warm for many years before you came into my life, my jewel.”

  In the end, as a concession to her, Pa-ji gargled heartily and chewed a teaspoon of anise seeds before coming to
bed, and she had to be satisfied with that.

  Now he looked up, surprised to see her in his office at a time when she preferred to be curled up in bed with a stack of magazines. He patted the spot beside him on the couch and she settled down.

  “Listen ji, there is something we need to talk about,” she said. “Jasbeer has done some naughtiness at school again. They sent a letter. We have to go and meet that principal person, Longfellow or Longman or something.”

  “What did he do this time?” Pa-ji asked, his tone indulgent. Like Bibi-ji, he could not easily bring himself to be annoyed with Jasbeer.

  “He took a kitchen knife to school. He said he wanted to be like your father.”

  A guilty look crossed Pa-ji’s face. Bibi-ji narrowed her eyes at him and asked in a sharp voice, as if he were Jasbeer, “Does this have something to do with your history business, your pictures-of-ancestors story? What ideas have you been putting into his head?”

  Pa-ji looked acutely uncomfortable. “A few days ago he wanted a kirpan, like the one in my father’s photograph.”

  “Your fake father’s photo,” corrected Bibi-ji.

  “Yes, madam, if you wish to put it that way,” Pa-ji said. “But I told him that it was worn only by baptized Sikhs, that even I did not carry one. I promise, Bibi-ji, I did not encourage him.”

  For the first time Pa-ji had an inkling of the trouble that he had perhaps started with his youthful fictions. He had believed then, as he did now, that a man needed such a thing as a history. Without history you were nothing, a nobody, one of those fluffy seed-heads floating in the summer breeze, unaware of your origins, careless of your destination. Meaningless, mythless, shapeless. He had not thought there could be harm in fostering in this boy who had come into their lives a sense of the people he belonged to, a pride in his Sikh roots, so that he would never feel anything less than a healthy respect for himself. A man who respects himself, Pa-ji believed, is a man who is always respected by others. He spread out his hands helplessly. “I swear on my own head, I told him he could not carry knives and swords at this age.”

  “You did not say it clearly enough, it seems,” Bibi-ji said. “We have an appointment tomorrow. And you will come with me too, if you please.”

  Pa-ji nodded humbly. He hated going to the school and listening to the principal lecture him about the boy, but he knew the look on Bibi-ji’s face; it meant he had no choice.

  “I will ask Leela what she does to bring up her children so nicely.” Bibi-ji batted away Pa-ji’s hands, which were now trying to find their way up under the hemline of her nightdress. They paused briefly at her deeply dimpled knees, before inching upwards towards the velvet crease between her thighs.

  “Stop that,” Bibi-ji giggled. “I am trying to discuss important things and here you are …”

  Pa-ji’s right hand reached its intended destination and Bibi-ji gave in with a sigh. Tonight was Pa-ji’s. Tomorrow she would begin to worry about the child she had stolen.

  Getting ready to visit Jasbeer’s school the next morning, Bibi-ji wound her heavy sheet of hair into a large bun and screwed a pair of gold earrings into her ears. As she powdered her face, she gave Pa-ji instructions on how to behave with the principal.

  “You sit there quietly, you understand?” she said. “ I will do the talking.”

  “Why? Have I lost my voice or what?”

  “You lose your temper, that’s why. And remember, even though Jasbeer has been very naughty, it is our duty to support him.” It offended Bibi-ji that she had to explain the boy so frequently—couldn’t that gora principal see what a bright child this was? She inspected Pa-ji’s clothes and tuttutted her displeasure. “And please to wear your suit and tie, this shirt pant will not do.”

  Bibi-ji herself was arrayed in a shiny purple silk salwar kameez that lovingly followed every bulge of her body. The neckline of the kameez was breezy with white lace.

  “So if I am to sit there quietly, why do I have to come with you, enh?” Pa-ji asked. He struggled into a cream and brown checked jacket. It clashed with his blue turban. Bibi-ji was tempted to ask him to change one or the other but held her tongue. Enough trouble getting him to wear something formal, enough irritation getting him to accompany her. If he managed to stop himself from being rude and disrespectful to the principal, Bibi-ji would be happy.

  “And I will not wear a tie,” Pa-ji said rebelliously. “It isn’t as if I am going to meet the prime minister!”

  They drove in silence, except for the music from the car stereo that Bibi-ji barely heard. She was busy composing the speeches she would deliver to the principal, reprimanding him for not understanding Jasbeer. She would inform him about their martial culture, that although it was indeed wrong of the boy to take a kitchen knife to school, he was merely following the call of his ancestors. He was a warrior at heart. She turned around and gazed fondly at Jasbeer as he sat in the back seat, his face disarmingly innocent.

  Jasbeer’s class teacher, a young woman with a pleasant smile and a nest of light brown hair, waited for them near the principal’s office. She looked apologetic about the whole affair.

  “But I couldn’t let it go. Jasbeer was very naughty,” she said after shaking hands with them.

  Bibi-ji smiled sympathetically. She was a good and patient woman, this teacher, she thought, fond of Jasbeer, and she took a lot of nonsense from him. Bibi-ji knew it was Jasbeer who was at fault, picking at trouble as if it were a scab, but it hurt to see him chastened.

  The teacher ushered them into the principal’s office, where Bibi-ji and Pa-ji wedged themselves gingerly into the spindly legged chairs. In the solemn dullness of the room, Bibi-ji thought, they must look like brightly coloured pictures. She noticed, as she did on every visit, that the principal appeared to have only one tie—a striped navy blue and red one. She also saw that the chair in which she sat had a large tear in its fabric. Would this be a good time to donate a new chair to the school, she wondered, or would it be perceived as a bribe? These goras were strange people, Bibi-ji had discovered in her twenty-five years here: everything had to mean something. Although in this case, if she did decide to donate a chair, she would certainly expect the school to stop complaining about Jasbeer. A gift was not something bestowed lightly and without thought; it signalled the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Naturally it was expected that the gift would be returned in some way— though not necessarily, of course. But to call it a bribe was to impose western notions of morality on the matter of give-and-take.

  “So, Mr. and Mrs. Singh,” the principal said. He steepled his fingers and tapped the whole tower against his little pink mouth. “So here we are again!”

  Yes indeed, Bibi-ji thought, pursing her lips and looking righteous. They had been summoned to this brown and white room so often she had lost track of the number of times. Sometimes it was about unfinished homework, but more often it concerned a fight with another child.

  “But he started it,” Jasbeer would protest when Bibi-ji received one of the principal’s loathed letters. “He hit me first!”

  “Yes, Jasbeer,” Bibi-ji would reply crossly. “But did you have to hit back hard enough to break his nose?”

  Jasbeer could not understand why he was always the one in trouble—he was merely following his Uncle Lalloo’s instructions: In a quarrel make sure that the beating you give is worse than the one you receive. That way you will never get beaten by the same idiot again. Don’t get angry, get even. If you lose your temper, you have lost the war.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Singh,” the principal said sternly, “we do not tolerate violence in this school. It is a firm policy.”

  “One we approve of very much, very much indeed,” Pa-ji replied.

  The principal tried again. “I understand that in your part of the world it is okay to carry swords, but—”

  “Our part of the world?” interrupted Bibi-ji. “No, there you have made a mistake, Mr. Longman.”

  “Longbottom,” the pr
incipal corrected her.

  “Mr. Longbottom. On Main Street we are very law-abiding citizens. Nobody carries weapons. Only religious leaders are permitted to carry the kirpan, and baptized Sikhs. Of course for children it is not allowed.”

  “No, Mrs. Singh. I don’t mean Main Street.” The prinicipal sounded weary.

  Jasbeer kicked the leg of the principal’s table. He recognized that tone of voice. It made him helplessly furious. Too young to know that the word to best describe that tone was patronizing, he was not too young to understand the thread of meaning that ran through it.

  “Not Main Street? Then what are you meaning exactly, Mr. Longmantle?”

  “Longbottom, Mrs. Singh. Why, the Poonjab, of course,” the principal’s left eye twitched. “I realize it is part of the Sikh religion to carry swords—or is it knives—and grow long hair and …”

  Bibi-ji watched him discreetly consult a sheet of paper on his desk. Clearly a man who liked to be well prepared for his meetings with parents. He checked his notes and forged on: “… wear a steel bracelet and underwear.” Another look at his notes to be sure that it was indeed underwear—possibly steel underwear—that a true believer wore.

  Bibi-ji glared at the principal. “ Punjab,” she said. “As in fun, as in sun, as in bun.”

  She had decided, the very first time she met him, that this milk-faced man with his prissy mouth and the chin of a horse was not worth liking, and she realized she had not been wrong. “I don’t know where you obtained such incorrect information. We are a peace-loving people and take up our swords only when we have to protect the weak. In our scriptures, Guru Nanak-ji, our first guru, may he rest in peace, says, and I will quote first in Gurbani and then in English for your benefit—”

  Longbottom raised his hand. “I believe you, Mrs. Singh, and I apologize for my misinterpretation. But that is what Jasbeer led us to understand.”