by Meira Chand
Early on, Mr Bhagwandas had secured a sea-facing flat on a corner of the third floor. His knowledge of gems had served him well in both Sukkur and Bombay. Throughout the business of fleeing and refugeeing, there had been no dearth of clients in camps or upon trains, anxious to part with their jewels to restart life, or continue its meagre flow. It seemed as if all the women of Sind had fled their homes with their jewellery knotted into handkerchiefs, and hidden beneath their saris. Many such bundles had been unknotted in desperation before Mr Bhagwandas, on his journey southwards from Sind. In Bombay he had established himself in the jewellery market, Zaveri Bazaar. He had prospered through the years.
Mrs Bhagwandas vanished into her kitchen and soon reappeared with a servant, who offered a drink of lemonade and some cashew nuts upon a greasy plate. ‘He is still sleeping after his lunch,’ Mrs Bhagwandas said of her husband. ‘But soon he will come.’ She sat down beside Mrs Hathiramani, who began to speak about Saturn in the House of the Sun. Mrs Bhagwandas listened, her head to one side, nodding in concern. She was a loose-fleshed woman, with flowing, grey hair tied back in a rubber band. Her teeth protruded in a good-natured smile to rest upon her lower lip. She offered some cashew nuts to Mrs Hathiramani, and then a plate of cheese crackers she had ordered the servant to bring in. Mrs Hathiramani surveyed the two plates. In her own home she offered at least three or four plates of edibles to guests, and always something sweet, not just salty things – it did not show enough respect. Mrs Bhagwandas played up too much the matter of simple living. The sun refracted on her diamond ear studs, smaller in size than Mrs Bhagwandas’ gems. The flash of light sparked off both women.
Mr Bhagwandas appeared suddenly in the room, smiling and rubbing his hands together. ‘What can I do for you, sister?’ he asked. He was a stout, smooth-faced man with narrow, liquid eyes creased in a permanent smile. His hair was dyed an immaculate ebony.
‘Bhai Sahib is indeed correct. A sapphire can overcome the evil of Saturn,’ Mr Bhagwandas confirmed when Mrs Hathiramani had finished explaining. ‘Leave it to me. I will find the right one.’
Unlocking a metal cupboard, he threw open the doors to reveal shelves of boxes and leather pouches. Sitting down at a table with a small suede bag, he fitted his jeweller’s glass to his eye, spilled out a pile of translucent stones, and poked about amongst them with a pair of tweezers.
‘Any cheap quality will do,’ Mrs Hathiramani assured him as casually as she could.
Mr Bhagwandas chuckled. The glass protruded like a growth from his eye. He sat back and picked up a small stone with the tweezers.
‘This will be the correct one for its job,’ he decided.
Mrs Hathiramani heaved a sigh of relief as Mr Bhagwandas wrapped it up in crisp, magenta tissue paper. She pushed it down the front of her sari blouse into her cleavage, on top of some one-rupee notes.
*
She had to ring her own door bell on the fourth floor several times before the servant boy Raju appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Usually the door stood wide open.
‘Donkey,’ she shouted. ‘How long must I ring? Why was the door shut? What were you doing?’ She knew he had been sleeping, as was permitted, after his lunch.
‘Memsahib, I was sleeping.’ He yawned and scratched an armpit. He wore dirty drawstring shorts and a ragged vest of indeterminate colour.
‘Sleeping?’ Mrs Hathiramani lumbered up the hallway to her living room. ‘Where is Sahib?’
‘Sleeping, Memsahib,’ Raju replied.
‘Sleeping, sleeping?’ Mrs Hathiramani exploded. ‘Why are people only sleeping in this house?’
‘Memsahib, at this time of afternoon, we are always sleeping,’ Raju reasoned and slipped quickly behind Mrs Hathiramani as she raised an arm in a menacing manner. Mrs Hathiramani began to feel suddenly weak before the tribulations of audacious planets, servants and liftmen.
‘Tea, get me tea,’ she demanded.
‘I have not slept yet,’ Raju reminded her, standing back a safe distance. He was twelve years old and had no fear of Mrs Hathiramani. He was quicker in mind and body than she, and there were other jobs to be had in the building.
‘Donkey,’ Mrs Hathiramani roared. ‘Tomorrow I will throw you out. Like a rotten onion from the window, I will throw you out. Tea.’ She turned towards the bedroom where she knew she would find her husband.
She stood by the bed looking down at Mr Hathiramani’s slumbering form. His grey hair was greasily askew, and the bridge of his large nose carried a permanent groove from the weight of his spectacles. These were now folded upon a side table on top of a magazine. Mrs Hathiramani sat down heavily at the end of the bed, unwinding part of her sari. She stretched and yawned; she too was used to a sleep after her lunch. She spread herself across the width of the bed at right angles to her husband’s feet, and closed her eyes.
‘Memsahib, tea.’ Raju rattled the china on the tray.
‘Tea? Who is asking for tea?’ Mrs Hathiramani sat up. ‘It is only three o’clock. This is the time for sleep. Get away.’ She closed her eyes again.
*
As soon as he saw his wife was asleep, Mr Hathiramani opened his eyes, and reached for his spectacles and the Illustrated Weekly of India. The arrival of his wife had interrupted his reading of an article about a scandal of high-class prostitution in Bombay. He had put down the magazine not for fear she would disapprove of his reading matter, for Mrs Hathiramani could neither read nor write and so had no way of checking on him. He had feigned sleep so that he need have nothing to do with his wife for a further hour of the day; there would be more than enough of her after tea. He had already heard from Raju about Saturn in the House of the Sun. Raju had heard it from the liftman, who had heard it from Bhai Sahib’s servant, who had heard it first hand, as he washed up after Bhai Sahib’s lunch behind the curtain in the temple.
His wife was a disappointment to Mr Hathiramani, both for her lack of education and her inability to bear children. He had known about the education before he married her. He had protested his need for a literate wife, but because of the dowry promised, his pleas went unheard by elders during arrangements for the marriage. At that time an undeniable ripeness had enfolded his wife, in anticipation of which Mr Hathiramani, on the one occasion he had been allowed a glimpse of her, had finally agreed to the wedding. But both his anticipation and Mrs Hathiramani’s voluptuousness bloomed and faded quickly, like a delicate flower, but without the expected fruit. They waited, but there were no children.
Mr Hathiramani sent his wife to all manner of doctors, without success. In the end he considered sending her back to her mother in revenge. Soon the old lady arrived on their doorstep, bringing things to a head. Mrs Hathiramani had sat on a tin truck, which was covered by a pink and white checked cloth and contained most of their belongings, and sobbed. Mr Hathiramani strode up and down, yelling about the mistake of educated men marrying uneducated women, and the fate of the Hathiramani family line without an heir. During this outburst his mother-in-law did an unusual thing; she kept quiet. Mr Hathiramani wondered about this even as he strode about. When he stopped yelling and his wife ceased sobbing, and all three sat in silence, the mother-in-law spoke at last, a crafty light in her eye.
‘If that is what you want, we will take her back. But what shall we tell everyone? How will we face them when they know her husband was impotent? What will everyone say?’ Mr Hathiramani had opened and shut his mouth, his wife looked at her mother in admiration, and the old lady stared demurely at her feet.
Soon after this event, they had been forced by Partition to flee their home in Rohri. In Bombay Mr Hathiramani had no choice but to abandon the intellectual life he had led until then as a journalist, and to establish Hathiramani Electricals, a dark, greasy but successful repair shop on Grant Road. They moved into Sadhbela and settled themselves into its few rooms with several tin trunks, and an armada of jars in which Mrs Hathiramani stored everything from chutney to biscuits, mothballs, buttons and thread. Mr Hathi
ramani had made his presence in the building felt and he was soon the co-operative committee’s secretary.
Mr Hathiramani considered himself above the superstitions of his uneducated wife. The three mechanics he employed in Hathiramani Electricals worked with such unusual diligence that Mr Hathiramani was able to spend much of his day at home. He lay upon his bed in his vest and wide-legged pyjamas, reading newspapers, magazines and a worn copy of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, of which he had memorized much. A recently acquired Encyclopaedia Britannica of the year 1948 was piled beside his bed. Mr Hathiramani had taken several days off from work to read to the end of CER. But many pages were missing, or obliterated by graffiti, and his faith in the project was shaken. He returned to the newspapers stacked about the room, filling the air with their musty smell. He enjoyed diving into piles to extract news of forgotten years, contemplating the progress of things. Mr Hathiramani also put aside a part of each day for the writing of his diary.
Mr Hathiramani did not choose to spend his day stretched upon his bed for comfort, but because it was the most strategic spot in his home. The bedroom faced a short corridor to the front door, which was usually left open to reveal the lift shaft and the stairs beyond. In this way it was possible for Mr Hathiramani, from his bed, to keep an eye on all the comings and goings in the tenement. Those ascending or descending in the lift were viewed and timed by Mr Hathiramani, and anything of importance was noted in his diary. What he could not see below the fourth floor or during his absenses was reported to him by the liftman, Gopal. For this service he paid Gopal a monthly wage. Mr Hathiramani’s diligence was appreciated in the building. It had prevented some thefts or determined the culprits, and had once decided Mr Bhagwandas not to give his daughter in marriage to Bhai Sahib’s son. By tracing the boy’s movements through the pages of the diary, it was clear to Mr Hathiramani and Mr Bhagwandas that he was not of reliable character.
It was as if he had two businesses: Hathiramani Electricals, a lowbrow, bread and butter affair, and his diary, a true vocation. In Sind he had run for a time his own literary publication with a group of friends, but after Partition, in Bombay, his opinions seemed unwanted and a frost settled upon his life. Necessity had dictated the establishing of Hathiramani Electricals, but Mr Hathiramani considered he had betrayed himself and had suffered from depression and outbursts of temper until, moving into Sadhbela, he had begun his diary.
Mr Hathiramani used a large, blue ledger for his diary. Each double page was divided; the left-hand page had three columns, two narrow ones headed Arrivals and Departures, and a wider one for Comments. The right-hand page was divided into Miscellaneous Past, and Miscellaneous Present. Its writings had little to do with the life of Sadhbela but consisted, in Miscellaneous Present, of Mr Hathiramani’s thoughts upon life and copied fragments from the newspapers he read upon his bed for a large part of each day. In Miscellaneous Past, he compiled from mildewing books of Sindhi script his own English translations of the history and culture of his homeland, which had flowered in the Indus valley two thousand years before the Aryans invaded India with their primitive ways. In 300 B.C., the great city of Mohenjo Daro already stood on the banks of the Indus, or Sindu, river. There were references to Sind in the Greek histories of Herodotus, Hecateaus, and Arrian. Sindhu soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes in Greece, and again against Alexander the Great, providing men and elephants to the Persians, and fierce resistance again when Alexander invaded Sind. It was a Sindhu soldier who eventually wounded Alexander the Great, and caused his retreat from the land. The Vedas emerged from Sind composed on the banks of Sind’s mighty river. Even the esteemed Emperor Akbar was born in Sind of a Sindhi mother. Sind was the cradle of all ancient civilization.
When he pondered these facts, Mr Hathiramani was saddened further by exile. Pride in this heritage was lacking in Sadhbela, resettlement had eroded identity. There were young people now who knew nothing of Sind, and who found their only heritage in a language spoken but never written, a few regional foods, and their distinctive names. Mr Hathiramani considered himself alone in Sadhbela in intellectual prowess, and weighed down by the responsibility this placed upon him. Sometimes, waking at night with the moon on his face and the roll of waves in his ears, it seemed he had been chosen to lead his people back to a knowledge of themselves. It was for this reason he had recently begun, in Miscellaneous Past, a translation of the work of Shah Abdul Latif, medieval Sufi poet of Sind, mystic bard of their heritage. A knowledge of this heritage, thought Mr Hathiramani, implanted into every exiled Sindhi, was the only homeland they could now ever know. He alone, Mr Hathiramani was sure, was the sole instrument by which there could be an expatriate, Sindhi renaissance.
*
Mr Hathiramani finished the article on prostitution; his wife still slept at his feet. It was as he had thought; all high-class prostitutes nowadays were college-educated girls. It did no good to educate a woman. In middle age he had come to agree with the views of his parents. He dreaded now to think of his position without the lever of education to hold over his wife. Mr Hathiramani leaned back and stared at the ceiling; at his feet his wife snored.
He reached for his diary and, opening it, retraced the recent movements of everyone in the building. It had become clear there was a need for extra vigilance. Two days ago Sham Pumnani had returned home after losing his job in Japan. He had been accused in that faraway place of embezzling office funds. A man of so few scruples must be watched, Mr Hathiramani noted. No one in Sadhbela, in the trauma of Partition and the flight to Bombay, had fallen so far into misery or failed so utterly to recover themselves, as the wretched Pumnani family. Mr Hathiramani underlined again the note to watch Sham Pumnani.
Apart from Sham there was the problem of Mohan Watumal, who must also now be watched. Only the night before Mr Hathiramani had described Mohan Watumal as a waster, who did nothing to help his ageing father, but sat about in coffee shops, discussing impossible schemes. Distant cousins of Mrs Hathiramani had unwittingly offered their daughter in marriage to Mohan, not knowing he lived in Sadhbela. At this revelation they had promptly appeared to seek Mr Hathiramani’s opinion. Mr Hathiramani had not minced his words, and opened his diary to reveal Mohan’s layabout traits, clearly shown by his irregular comings and goings. Mrs Hathiramani’s cousins expressed gratitude for such frankness and left to call off the engagement. Mr Hathiramani had closed his diary with a satisfied smile, but Mrs Hathiramani was worried. She spoke of the vengeance his mischief would arouse in the Watumals. Mr Hathiramani remained unperturbed, but made a note now, under the one about Sham Pumnani, to observe Mohan Watumal as a precaution.
A thief and a waster. Mr Hathiramani sighed. Such now was the calibre of young Sindhi men. Impossible to think of a Sham Pumnani or a Mohan Watumal ever finding the courage to wound Alexander the Great. Mr Hathiramani turned once more to Miscellaneous Past in his diary, and the immortal Shah Adbul Latif. At his feet his wife snored lightly.
2
‘You’ve hardly eaten anything.’ Jyoti Devnani pushed bowls of food over the table towards her husband’s already well-heaped plate. Then she looked across the living-room to her father-in-law’s bedroom door, from which a servant had just emerged with a tray of empty lunch dishes. The closed door faced them again.
‘I had hoped it wouldn’t upset him so much,’ she sighed.
‘What did you expect?’ Prakash demanded. Since the tainting of the kitchen with the cooking of meat, Lokumal Devnani had eaten all his meals in his room, refusing to sit with them at the table.
‘My mother has only been dead a year,’ Prakash continued, spooning up curds. ‘It’s enough that already you’ve cut off your hair.’
‘Why should I not have the style of hair I want? I waited until after the ceremonies for the first anniversary of your mother’s death.’ Jyoti’s long, narrow eyes glittered.
‘Your hair is very nice,’ Prakash said hurriedly, although he missed the heavy look and the feel of it. ‘But you sho
uld have left cooking meat in the house until later. You’re rushing things too much,’ he added, not meeting her eye.
‘Why don’t you look at me when you say these things,’ Jyoti demanded. ‘We discussed everything. You agreed we should live as we’ve wanted to for so many years and couldn’t, because of your mother. I was very fond of her, but you know how traditional she was.’
‘My father is not yet dead,’ Prakash reminded her.
‘He has retired and handed over the business to you. It is as if he is living in our house now, instead of we in his. The balance of things has changed.’ Jyoti presented this image of change to him often.
‘I don’t know if he would agree,’ Prakash protested.
‘How can you move forward in the business world if you live as your father does?’ Jyoti complained.
‘He has done all right,’ Prakash replied.
‘He’s a man of a different era. My father saw the world we would live in and prepared me for it. Yours shut himself off in tradition, and thought in that way he would stop any change. In business, contacts are everything. All your associates eat meat and drink whisky, and until now you have never been able to entertain at home without appearing backward by serving only soft drinks,’ Jyoti answered.
Prakash stared morosely at his father’s closed door. Jyoti picked up an apple and began to peel it, the skin curling over the knife in a tail. ‘You must tell him about the bar today. If you don’t the workmen will be here, and he won’t take it well if you tell him then.’ Jyoti reassessed the corner of the room where they had decided to build a small bar.
‘He won’t take it well under any conditions.’ Prakash leaned back in his chair and kicked the table leg.
‘You’ve got to prepare him,’ Jyoti insisted.
‘How do you prepare someone to give up the beliefs of a lifetime? Meat and alcohol, all in one week; it’s too much,’ Prakash replied.
