by Farahad Zama
To My Father
Who told me my first stories
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf
- Rabindranath Tagore
1. A Glass of Water
It had been a hot day and the evening breeze was a welcome relief. Mr Ali was, as usual, at the table in the verandah, opening letters and sorting them into piles for Aruna, the assistant, to deal with the next day. Mrs Ali was reading the Indian Express newspaper. She skipped over the depressing fare of theft, murder and suicide that the papers loved to fill their pages with and went to the news of commodity prices like chillies, rice and onions. The way prices were going up on an almost daily basis was dismal too, but at least this news had a direct relevance to her. The newspaper said that a cartel of traders operated an onion mafia to rig the prices paid to poor farmers, hoarded the vegetable and charged end consumers like Mrs Ali (though the newspaper did not actually mention her by name) three or four times as much.
‘We got another cheque!' said Mr Ali, waving it in the air and a big smile on his face.
Her husband ran the Marriage Bureau for Rich People and that at least, was doing fine. Mrs Ali smiled too. The income from the business combined with her husband's pension meant that they didn't have to worry (too much) about money. 'That's good,' she said. In the past, she hadn't shown much appreciation when Mr Ali had announced new members joining the bureau and he had been peeved, which didn't make for a harmonious domestic life.
She wondered what their son was doing. It had been almost a month since he had come home from that village where he was working for the strange water charity. In her mind, charities dug wells and provided water to the people, but the organization that Rehman worked for was trying to convince farmers not to dig wells or use pumps – something about falling water tables. The world has changed, she thought, from when she was a girl. Thank God, the well in their front yard at least was all right; rains a few weeks back had recharged it. All these thoughts of water made her feel thirsty and she got up, wincing as her knees straightened. That was another change – she was no longer a girl who skipped lightly along. Mrs Ali folded the paper neatly and left it on the coffee table and made her way into the house.
The house was long and narrow with rooms one behind the other like carriages on a train. She came into the living room and switched on the light to dispel the gloom. The cushions on the sofa were strewn on the floor and she picked them up. Her husband's niece Pari and Pari's son Vasu had come in earlier and the boy must have been playing with the cushions. Vasu had a young lad’s imagination that could turn soft, tasselled cushions into impregnable crenellated battlements. She arranged the cushions and straightened the sofa cover before moving on.
Next was the bedroom and she sighed when she heard the fan rotating in the empty room. Her husband had, yet again, left the fan running at full speed. How many times had she told him to switch off the fan in their thirty plus years of marriage? She switched it off and noticed that her husband had left his clothes, yet again, on the bed when he had changed earlier in the evening. How many times had she talked about that? She picked up the clothes and took them with her. They needed to be washed and she wanted to soak them overnight before Leela, her servant maid, came in the morning. She walked through the kitchen and opened the door to the back yard. The zinc-plated iron pail in which she soaked the clothes was drying, upturned, by the tap. She turned it over and started filling it. The water from the tap came with a rush and the sound as it hit the bottom of the pail was almost musical. Suddenly she felt her feet getting wet and looked down in surprise. Water was seeping through a small hole where the bottom of the bucket joined its sidewall. Mrs Ali grimaced in annoyance. The pail was only a few years old – okay, may be it was a bit older than that. She remembered going with Rehman when he was a schoolboy to buy it. But still, that was no reason for it to start leaking now.
She shut the tap off and emptied the bucket into a round-bottomed steel vessel so as not to waste the water. She felt carefully around the edge of the pail until she could see the gap between the bottom and the round wall. It had rusted through. Would she have to get a new one? Then she remembered that there was a bit of plumber's putty left from when the tap in the kitchen had been repaired. Over the years, Mrs Ali had picked up some rudimentary DIY skills. It was easier to do simple repairs herself than to coax Mr Ali into doing them. He wouldn't do it the first time she told him and if she reminded him again, he would say that she was nagging him. She would get angry and say something and he would sulk... no, it was usually best if she did as much as possible herself. Of course, she never touched any electrical stuff or anything complicated but a hole in a bucket? She should be able to patch that herself. Mrs Ali went to a wooden chest in the kitchen that was the sole thing in that room that belonged to Mr Ali. It was a beautiful old chest that Mr Ali had inherited from his father. She stroked the well-seasoned teak wood and the wrought iron bands that were both functional and attractive. Her mother-in-law had told her that it had originally come from Burma when her father-in-law had gone to Rangoon to build the railway line there. Mrs Ali remembered the old lady – her immense wisdom and patience. She had treated her daughters and daughters-in-law with absolute equality, except that she never took a single paisa from her daughters even after her husband died. Why should she anyway, when she had four sons to look after her? She had ruled her family from her house in the village, summoning them to visit her when she wished to see them. Twice a year, she came into town and stayed a week at each of her children's houses in strict rotation; never overstaying at any of their houses. In the summer, she came bearing bottles of ghee. Her mother-in-law would buy butter from the cowherds in the village and then heat it until it clarified into long-preserving ghee. At the bottom of the vessel a dark sediment would remain and Rehman had loved eating that mixed with sugar. Today, of course, doctors would be horrified of somebody eating so much saturated fat and sugar in one dish. But, oh, it smelt and tasted divine. On her winter trip into town, Mrs Ali’s mother-in-law brought rich masala powder in earthen jars. Indira Gandhi's plans could be changed but not her mother-in-law's, they would all joke. Rehman had been a boy of six when she passed away. On her deathbed she left instructions that the money they got from selling the ancestral home should be equally divided among all her children, sons and daughters alike. She had been a woman far ahead of her time and it was a pity that Rehman had not gotten to know his grandmother better.
Mrs Ali sighed and slid the bolt aside on the chest. It squeaked and caught halfway and Mrs Ali had to force it. She had better tell her husband to oil it, she thought. She could do it herself, of course, but he could get a bit funny if a tiny bit of oil dripped on to the wood, so it would be best if he oiled it and made it drip himself. In the box there were screwdrivers, a drill, chisels, nails, screws and various other pieces of ironmongery. She took out a black, cylindrical photo film container with the word Kodak written on it. A few months ago, she had to call in a plumber to fix a leaking tap and he had left behind a piece of plumber's putty. She had almost thrown it away but she had seen how he had used it and she didn't like to throw anything potentially useful away, so she had stored it away in the airproof container to keep it from drying. She hoped it would still work. She broke a piece of the putty and kneaded it between her fingers like the dough she made for rotis. Once it felt soft enough, and here she was going by her cooking skills rather than knowledge of plumbing, she stretched the putty and covered the hole in the pail, pressing it in with her fingers. Once she was satisfied with the way it held, she thought back to what the plumber had told her. Half an hour, he had said, before getting it wet.
When she returned the Kodak box with the remaining
putty in it to the toolbox, she took out a screwdriver and tightened the handles on all the pressure cookers in the kitchen. She had four different shapes and sizes of pressure cookers and their Bakelite handles were held against the metal by a single bolt that kept getting loose with regular frequency. It was one nightmare that Mrs Ali was paranoid about – a handle coming apart when she picked up a hot pressure cooker and spilling its boiling contents all over her.
Thoughts of her mother-in-law had reminded Mrs Ali that the masala in the bottle was running low. She had learnt the art of making masala from the old lady – selecting and buying the best Bandar Mirchi when it was in season, drying the blood-red chillies in the sun for at least a week before getting them ground and then mixing the powder with precise quantities of dried garlic, ginger and poppy-seed powders to get the taste of the masala right. After her mother-in-law passed away, she had had to do this herself in the city rather than getting a jar from the village, readymade. The masala was in an old Horlicks bottle. She was feeling nostalgic today and tried to remember how old the bottle was. Rehman had been a little boy when she had started buying Horlicks after a doctor had recommended a daily drink to build up the skinny boy. He must have been, what? Six? No, a bit more than that… probably eight or nine years old, which made the bottle almost twenty years old. She felt proud that she had kept it for so long. In other households that she could mention, but wasn't going to, nothing lasted more than a couple of years.
She opened the brown pottery jar that held the year's supply of masala and making sure that the wooden spoon was absolutely dry she scooped the red powder into the bottle. As usual, the deep rich aroma of the chillies overlaid with hints of other spices made her close her eyes for a moment and take a deep breath. The masala was running low in the jar as well. She sealed the jar properly to keep moisture out and got her mobile phone out.
The merchant answered on the second ring. 'Namaskaram Amma. What can I do for you?'
'Have the Bandar chillies come in yet?' she asked. The best chillies, as far as she was concerned, came from the villages around Masulipatnam – the historic port town on the east coast of India – about a hundred miles from Vizag. Known to the Greeks – Ptolemy called it Maisolos – and Arab traders, the British East India Company's first factory in India was in Masulipatnam. Muslims like her still called it Bandar, the Arab word for Port, rather than by its actual name. As far as she was concerned, that town was famous for two things – Bandar Laddoo, a sweet ball about the size of a plum that was juicy, sticky and very tasty and out of bounds for her now with her incipient diabetes, and Bandar Mirchi, the red chillies that the doctor hadn't yet forbidden her from using. When the quacks told her not to use salt and chilli powder, she might as well give up life, she thought. What was the point of leading a long existence with all taste and flavour leached from it?
The merchant's voice on the phone broke her reverie. 'Not yet, madam. Other varieties have come in but I am expecting the Bandar variety next week. I'll call you as soon as it comes in. By the way, the Sona Masoori rice has come in. Would you like to buy it?'
'I want to see a sample first.' She had been using the merchant for years and trusted him, but she would never buy something without checking it out first.
'Of course, madam. I'll send a sample over with the boy and if you like it, I'll arrange for the rice to be delivered.'
'How much is it?'
'Twenty one rupees a kilo, amma.'
'Twenty one rupees! It was only eighteen a few weeks ago.'
'That was the old stock, madam. This is the new stock and prices have gone up. The rains weren't very good last year if you remember and the price of fertilizer has gone up. So naturally the price of rice has gone up.'
'You always have a story for everything. Last year you said it had rained too much the year before and because of floods the price had gone up.'
The merchant laughed. 'What can I do madam? Prices keep going up and I have to pass them on. But since you are such an old customer, I'll give you a special rate – twenty rupees a kilo, but you cannot tell anybody that you got it from me for this rate, madam, or they'll all ask for that rate and it won't be viable for me.'
'I am sure you say that to all your customers,' she said, but felt pleased nonetheless. She'd have to tell her brother Azhar about the offer, she thought, so he could get the rice for that price too. 'All right, send the sample over and if I like it, I want twenty-five kilos.'
She put the phone down and decided to make idlis for breakfast tomorrow. The steamed rice-and-lentil cakes were healthy and tasty. She poured a cup each of cracked rice and Maash ki Dal, the black lentils in a steel vessel and filled it to the brim with water. She went out of the kitchen into the back yard and called out, 'Lakshmi, are you there?'
She had to call a couple of times before Lakshmi, the widow who live in the house behind theirs, answered.
Mrs Ali said, 'I need idli batter.'
'Sure, madam. I'll do it after dinner.'
Mrs Ali nodded and returned to the kitchen to cover the vessel with the dal and rice in it. By dinnertime, the water would be all soaked up and the rice and lentils puffed up and soft. Lakshmi had a motorized stone grinder that, for a small payment, she would use to grind the mix into a coarse batter that would ferment overnight for the idlis in the morning.
She heard Lakshmi calling to her and went out back. Lakshmi asked, 'Do you want a coconut for the chutney, madam?'
'Good idea,' said Mrs Ali. 'It'll go well with the idlis.'
'Okay, madam. I'll bring one when I come to collect the rice and dal.' The widow had six coconut trees on her land and she sold the fruit to supplement her income.
With the next day's breakfast arranged, Mrs Ali finally had the chance to drink the glass of water that she had come into the house for. The liquid refreshed her parched mouth and she could almost feel its life-giving coolness spread through her body.
She went back out into the verandah where Mr Ali was still busy at the table. He was now typing something on the computer. 'Where have you been?' he asked. 'What took you so long?'
'Oh,' she replied, 'I just went in to get a glass of water.'
He looked at her and shook his head. 'In the time you've been gone, I've finished dealing with the letters and I am now typing a list of brides. Why do you take so long to do one simple task?'
~ ~ ~
2. The Edge of Time
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortune must attract a gaggle of unsuitable friends. Father Martin, the well-read priest apologised silently to Jane Austen for mangling her words. The Great War that had had chomped through the flower of European youth, like Kronos consuming his children, was only a few years old, but Father Martin, unlike most of his countrymen, was able to distinguish between the English culture, such as it was, and the English political and military establishment that had caused the War. He didn't hate the British. If he disliked anybody, it was the old men who ruled his beloved Fatherland and, having lost their nerve, had surrendered without a single significant loss on the actual battlefield.
But thoughts of the War were far from the priest's mind as he watched Otto Hoenger and his companions cavorting in the house. It was a crisp evening and the cottage was well lit by the new-fangled electric lights in an unnaturally steady glow. The priest couldn't help thinking that the light appeared cold and dead, unlike the organic flickering illumination of a gas lamp. There was nothing cold or dead about the scene inside the house, however. There were five men in there – Otto Hoenger, the owner of the house, and his four 'friends' – leeches was probably a more appropriate name – who had attached themselves to Otto as soon as he had inherited his father's fortune. There was alcohol in the house – as there always was wherever Otto and his companions were. Dear God - they must have consumed more than two crates given the number of brown beer bottles that were strewn about the place. There was a pail on the table with more bottles sticking out of it like
sentries in a foxhole on the Western front. They'd be completely inebriated if they drank all that. Not that they were anything like ebriated at the moment; the people in the house were extremely merry.
Father Martin knew why he was concentrating on the bottles. He was trying to keep his eyes away from the women. There were six young women with Otto and his friends. One of them – a woman, not a male friend – was sitting on Otto's lap. The laces of her blouse were loosened and her bosom was spilling out of her dress. Otto reached around her and took her breasts in his hands and squeezed. She tried to get up but he wouldn't let her and she sank back into his lap, laughing wildly. Otto pulled down her blouse, exposing her milky breasts completely to everybody in the room – and Martin beyond the window.
One of the other men gave a whoop so loud that even Martin could hear it, but the priest's eyes were drawn as if by a strong magnetic force to the sight of the woman's jiggling breasts. He had never seen a woman in a state of undress, except an old crone on a French battlefield in 1916. It had been easy to avert his eyes then from the sight of the hag's dried up milk sacks, but this was different. The woman was youthful and healthy – probably in her twenties, with dark blonde hair and rosy cheeks, and a proud bosom that stood pert and defiant against gravity. Martin's mouth went dry.
Feminine laughter pulled his eyes away from the woman and Otto. There was another woman lying on the sofa with her legs splayed wide. One man was attempting to kiss her while a second had pulled her skirt up and Martin could see the dark red of her bloomers contrasting with her pale thighs. She kicked her legs, but only half-heartedly, and made no attempt to get away from either of the men fondling her. Father Martin watched the revels for a long time, feeling seedy and sinful but unable to tear himself away. The noise of a door opening reached him and he hurriedly moved away from the window, feeling as guilty as if he was one of the participants.
