Cracking India Read online

  “Some people are getting too big for their boots... Some people are becoming quite airy-fairy!”

  Slavesister mumbles, “Only my bunion’s getting too big... I’ll cut it off and mail it to the Dungarwadi.”

  “What?” queries Godmother. “What is your Highness mumbling?”

  “Oh! All right, all right! Carry on... you must have everything your way, Rodabai... filling the child’s mind with such notions... mumble, mumble.”

  “Don’t you all right, all right me! I’ll have your carcass flown straight to the vultures!”

  Slavesister doesn’t answer. Only shakes her head and mutters. She will not answer back now. She too has learned from experience.

  “Small mouth, big talk!” grumbles Godmother as if to herself, but loud enough for Slavesister to hear. “Little minds should not attempt to weigh in big fish!”

  Still poised for attack, eyes bright, Godmother waits to see if Slavesister will respond.

  But Slavesister’s insurgence has been effectively squashed. She maintains a strategic silence, suppressing even her mumbles.

  Godmother makes a magically triumphant face. She holds her pointy fingers in a “V” for victory, winks at me and leans back on her concrete pillows.

  I go into the kitchen to finish my curry but I cannot eat. Mr. Rogers’s English toes and kidneys float before my disembodied eyeballs...

  And the vision of a torn Punjab. Will the earth bleed? And what about the sundered rivers? Won’t their water drain into the jagged cracks? Not satisfied by breaking India, they now want to tear the Punjab.

  Yousaf comes to fetch me. The sun has had time to warm the afternoon. It is balmy. “Let’s go through the Lawrence Gardens,” I urge, and Yousaf, unable to deny anyone, makes the detour through the gardens. We stop along a trimmed gardenia hedge to look at the sunken rose garden; and we clamber up the slopes of artificial hills and run down bougainvillea valleys ablaze with winter flowers. Casting long shadows we take a path leading to where Yousaf has parked his cycle.

  Our shadow glides over a Brahmin Pandit. Sitting cross-legged on the grass he is eating out of a leaf-bowl. He looks at Yousaf—and at me—and his face expresses the full range of terror, passion and pain expected of a violated virgin. Our shadow has violated his virtue. The Pandit cringes. His features shrivel into arid little shrimps and his body retracts. The vermillion caste-mark on his forehead glows like an accusing eye. He looks at his food as if it is infected with maggots. Squeamishly picking up the leaf, he tips its contents behind a bush and throws away the leaf.

  I am a diseased maggot. I look at Yousaf. His face is drained of joy, bleak, furious. I know he too feels himself composed of shit, crawling with maggots.

  Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison.

  I experience this feeling of utter degradation, of being an untouchable excrescence, an outcast again, years later when I hold out my hand to a Parsee priest at a wedding and he, thinking I am menstruating beneath my facade of diamonds and a sequined sari, cringes.

  Late that evening there is a familiar pattern of sound.

  Again they’re after Hari’s dhoti. But instead of the light, quick patter of bare feet there is the harsh scrape and drag of leather on frozen earth.

  It doesn’t seem quite right to toy with a man’s dhoti when it is so cold. It is a summer sport.

  Someone shouts, “Get him before he gets into his quarters!” I hear Imam Din’s bullying, bluff barruk as he bellows: “Aha-hurrr! A-vaaaaaaay!” And, closer to his quarry, Yousaf’s provocative bubbly “Vo-vo-vo-vo-vo-vo,” as running he taps his mouth in quick succession. Curses! Hair all over my body creeps aslant as I hear Hari’s alarmed cry.

  Snatching me up and straddling me on her hip Ayah flings open the bathroom door and runs out. I am struck by the cold, and the approach of night casts uneasy shadows over a scene I have witnessed only in daylight. Something else too is incongruous. The winter shawl wrapped around Hari.

  Yousaf is twirling his plume of hair and tugging at it as if he’s trying to lift him. I feel a great swell of fear for Hari, and a surge of loathing for his bodhi. Why must he persist in growing it? And flaunt his Hinduism? And invite ridicule?

  And that preposterous and obscene dhoti! Worn like a diaper between his stringy legs—just begging to be taken off!

  My dread assuming a violent and cruel shape, I tear away from Ayah and fling myself on the human tangle and fight to claw at Hari’s dhoti.

  Someone pulls off his shawl and it is trampled underfoot. Hands stretch and pull his unraveling mauve lady’s cardigan (Mother’s hand-me-down) and rip off his shirt. His dhoti is hanging in ragged edges and, suddenly, it’s off!

  Like a withered tree frozen in a winter landscape Hari stands isolated in the bleak center of our violence: prickly with goose bumps, sooty genitals on display.

  With heavy, old-man’s movements, Imam Din wrenches the shawl from under our feet and throws it at the gardener, and the tattered rag that was his dhoti. “Cover up, you shameless bugger,” he says, attempting his usual bantering manner, but there is a gruff uncontrollable edge to his voice. He is not at ease with cruelty.

  I look back. The Shankars stand on their veranda like fat shadows. Ayah has turned her face away. I run to her. I dig my face in her sari and stretch up my hands. Ayah tries to lift me but her fluid strength is gone. Her grip is weak. I hug her fiercely. Her heart beneath her springy breasts is fluttering like Ice-candy-man’s nervous sparrows. She raises frightened eyes from my face and, turning to follow her gaze, I see an obscured shape standing by the compound wall. Stirred by a breeze, the shadows cast by a eucalyptus tree shift and splinter, and define the still figure of a man.

  The man moves out of the darkness, and as he approaches I am relieved. It is only Ice-candy-man.

  Chapter 14

  Ayah is seeing more of Masseur. So, so am I. When Ayah’s work is done, and she stretches out in the afternoon sun, massaging butter into her calves and smooth shins, she hums a new tune and sighs: “Siski hawa ne lee: Har pati Kanp oothi. The breeze sucked in his breath... The leaves trembled, breathless.” It’s Masseur’s song. He sings it in a rumbling, soulful baritone, and he sings often.

  I am seeing more of Lahore, too. Ayah and I roam on foot and by bus: from Emperor Jehangir’s tomb at Shahdara to Shahjehan’s Shalimar Gardens. From the outskirts of the slaughterhouse to the banks of the Ravi in low flood. We amble through the tall pampas grass—purposefully purposeless—and sniffing the attar of roses, happen upon Masseur: his creamy bosky-silk shirt, his strong forearms and broad ankles stretched out on a dhurrie on the gray sand.

  His cruet set of oils beside him, Masseur turns, making room for Ayah, and his eyes, full of honey, shower her with his maddening dreams. They lie, side by side, a stalk of grass stuck at a thoughtful angle between Masseur’s teeth as he traces with a skill-full finger Ayah’s parted lips.

  I get up and Masseur says, “Lenny baby, don’t go far.” His voice is gravelly with desire and it makes something happen in my stomach, as when Sharbat Khan, radiant with love, ogles Ayah.

  I know Ayah is beyond speech—her will given over to a maestro’s virtuosity. Masseur’s consummate arm circles Ayah...

  Caressing me through the pampas, the breeze moans with love—and brings to me Masseur’s song:“Spring bloomed in moonlit wildernesses-

  Heady with sap the flowers swayed—

  And a rose, bubbling,

  Dancing in the breeze,

  Attracted a bumblebee—

  Floating, frolicking, the bumblebee came—

  Strutting among the flowers, strumming love.”

  And so, the bumblebee courts the rose. I listen to the words unfolding the rose’s tragic story and wait intently for the change in Masseur’s voice.

  “And then one day [he sings in a very low and urgent key]

  When all was hushed—

  No stars, and in the sky no moon—

  The bee stole the ros
e’s youth—”

  There it is. The fearful and tragic climax! The rose awakens, weeps, shrivels, swoons! And nature, in all its marvelous tenderness, commiserates:“The breeze sucked in his breath—

  The leaves trembled breathless—

  Moist-eyed the stars winked out—”

  I wait a while, watching the shallow boats drift sluggishly on the shallow Ravi. The men in them, still as the dead, remain comatose as the boats, bumping along the shoals, right themselves and float slowly downstream.

  We hear Masseur’s song calling from the fountains, cypresses and marble terraces of the Shalimar Gardens. We hear him singing from the giddy heights of the minarets looming above Emperor Jehangir’s tomb—directing his voice like a shower of petals to summon Ayah.

  Ayah comes. And with her, like a lame limpet, come I.

  We find Masseur waiting for us on the artificial hill behind the zoo lion’s cage and by the chattering monkeys and among the peacocks. The heavy pleats of his Multanisilk lungi fall in slender folds to his ankles as leaning against the paling he waits for Ayah. And when she comes, the peacocks spread their tail feathers. And Masseur’s movements unfold the rich pleats in his checked lungi.

  Where Masseur is, Ayah is. And where Ayah is, is Ice-candy-man.

  I sense his presence.

  While Masseur’s voice lures Ayah to the dizzy eminence of one minaret, it compels Ice-candy-man to climb the winding stairs to the other minaret. On the riverbank I sense his stealthy presence in the tall clumps of pampas grass. He lurks in the dense shade of mangoes in the Shalimar Gardens and in the fearsome smells skirting the slaughterhouse... He prowls on the other side of the artificial hill behind the zoo lion’s cage, and conceals himself behind the peacocks when they spread their tail feathers and open their turquoise eyes: he has as many eyes, and they follow us.

  In the evenings he visits Ayah and squatting like an ungainly bird in his cotton shawl astounds her with his knowledge of our wanderings. And when his driven toes are too weary to perform their amazing seduction, his glib tongue takes over. Ayah, wide-eyed, wrapped in the silken web of his gossip, draws closer...

  Ice-candy-man has an inexhaustible fund of gossip.

  “Our lion tamer got rid of his tenants at last!” he announces one sultry afternoon in Electric-aunt’s garden. He has followed us there. My aunt is busy inside filing her accounts in neat figures beneath the credit and debit columns. We are sitting outside so as not to disturb her while we wait for Cousin to return from school.

  “How did he get rid of them? Did he win a case?” asks Ayah. “Did he get the police to throw them out?”

  “If you await court decisions, you wait forever,” says Ice-candy-man with such contempt and authority that my faith in the judicial system is forever shattered.

  “I told Sher Singh to take matters in hand,” he continues. “I told him: Why go through all the rigmarole of courts and notices when we have time-honored remedies at hand?”

  Ayah and I lean closer. Ayah is positively within striking distance. Ice-candy-man’s toe twitches, but it is a weary, footsore little twitch and its impulse easily checked. I merely glance its way sternly and the twitch ceases.

  “At first Sher Singh hemmed and hedged,” says Ice-candy-man. “Then he said: ‘You’re a Mussulman... The tenants are Mussulmans... Why should you help a Sikh?’ ”

  His raconteur’s gift places us in Sher Singh’s shoes and we look at him with the same questions in our eyes.

  “ ‘Oye, you donkey,’ I told him. ‘So what if you’re a Sikh? I’m first a friend to my friends... And an enemy to their enemies... And then a Mussulman! God and the politicians have enough servers. So, I serve my friends.’ ”

  Now he has us in his shoes. Ayah has an animated look on her rapt face. “Tell us... what happened then?” she asks breathlessly.

  “Lenny child, be a good girl,” says Ice-candy-man, snapping his fingers to flick the ash from his cigarette. “Ask the cook to make me a strong cup of tea. Go: putch-putch.” (Kissing noises used to wheedle children dispatched on trivial errands.)

  “No,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere: I also want to listen to you.”

  He glances at Ayah. Since Ayah appears content to have me stay, he says: “Well, Sher Singh, his brothers Prem and Pratab, and one or two cousins—all strapping fellows... and I. Armed with hockey sticks we went to their tenants’ house while the men were at work. We made a bit of hulla-goolla outside the building. Waved our hockey sticks and shouted: ‘Come to your windows, pretty ladies: don’t hide. We have something to show you.’ ”

  Ayah and I, our eyes round, our lips parted, scarcely breathe.

  “We attracted a crowd. There were quite a few dazzling eyes at some of the other windows in the building... But the ladies for whose benefit we were staging the show were more bashful.

  “When I was sure we had their attention—and they were peeping at us through their reed blinds—as one man we opened our lungis! In such a way as to shield our rears: and in front our dangling dingdongs!”

  Taking my cue from Ayah, I too wear a faintly scandalized, faintly amused expression.

  “We exposed ourselves so that only they could see us. The crowd behind us guessed what was happening. There were one or two curses—one or two coarse remarks—but no interference. We made a few suggestive gestures... you know... It lasted only five minutes...

  “But what a hulla-goolla! The women screamed and cursed... You’d have thought we’d raped them!

  “We got wind the police were coming. By the time they appeared we’d wrapped our lungis back on and cleared out!” Ice-candy-man, half standing, moves his body and his arms like a magician conjuring images.

  “I hear the men swore vengeance and what not. But this morning they cleared out!”

  The triumph on his face is infectious: he sees it reflected in ours, and his teeth show increasingly white as his lips stretch and stretch into a smile in his narrow face. He crushes the stub of his cigarette into the grass—and I hear the school bus squeak to a halt as it deposits my cousin outside the gate.

  Next evening when Ice-candy-man comes to our house I notice his toe is more vigorous. It is rested. We didn’t wander far today. Only went to Godmother’s.

  Masseur massages Oldhusband every Thursday. Ayah was content to sit on her haunches and watch as, before our very eyes, beneath his supple fingers, Oldhusband acquired a youthful glow!

  Later, when Electric-aunt and Cousin also came to Godmother’s, Cousin informed me that Ice-candy-man’s bicycle was parked outside Godmother’s gate. In fact Cousin had purchased and devoured a raspberry popsicle. He showed me the inside of his raspberry-stained lower lip and drew my attention to a pale red stain on his khaki shorts.

  Cousin is like that. Even when I believe him, he shows me, shows me, shows me things...

  “Did you hear about Bhagwandas the tailor?” Ice-candy-man asks, settling down cross-legged on a mat on the servants’ veranda outside Ayah’s quarters. Ayah has just washed her long hair and, having brought it forward over her shoulder, is running a combative wooden comb through the wet tangles.

  “Lenny baby,” Ice-candy-man tells me, almost burying his head in his cupped hands as he lights one of his smelly cigarettes, “get me a glass of water. Tell Imam Din it’s for me and he will put a bit of ice in it.”

  “No,” I say, leaning firmly on his toe. “I’m not going anywhere. I also want to know about the tailor. Tell me!”

  “Let her be,” says Ayah, who is as curious as me. Bhagwandas is her tailor too.

  “Well, he ran off with the Mission padre’s wife!” Ice-candy-man pushes his pillbox cap forward rakishly and looks at Ayah out of the corners of his gleaming light brown eyes.

  “Hai! No!” says Ayah, looking appropriately grave and scandalized and for a moment permitting the comb to cease its struggle with the tangles.

  “Yes,” says Ice-candy-man, grinning into our avid faces. “You know how it is when you women visit
tailors... This is loose, that is tight. Alter this, alter that. The tailor’s fingers touch here, smooth the cloth there...” Ice-candy-man’s hand strays to Ayah’s knees, and as he raises it to her shoulder his fingers brush her bosom. Ayah’s eyes flash a warning and Ice-candy-man’s serpentine arm floats away. He shifts his eyes from us and stares ingenuously into the fading day.

  “The padre, poor fellow, still doesn’t know what happened,” he says dreamily. “He’s a man of God. You know how they are. Simple. But the tailors are a sly lot. Never trust them, Lenny baby, with their measuring tapes, needles and threads—and smoothing fingers.”

  “Where’s your wife?” I ask. I’ve never thought to ask him before.

  “In the village, with her mother.”

  “What if she runs away?”

  “She won’t. They have no tailors in the village. No masseurs either... with their cunning fingers taking liberties!”

  Ayah looks startled. So do I. This is the first time he has openly expressed his jealousy of Masseur. Although we have been conscious of the undercurrent of hostility between them, neither Ayah nor I realized its development into the acrimony Ice-candy-man’s bitter voice has just expressed.

  It changes the complexion of the evening. I become aware of the dusk that has gathered in shadows on the dung-plastered veranda and is thick behind the open door of Ayah’s quarters. The earth floor, compressed and sprinkled with water and swept clean, and her small string-cot, large tin trunk, and pictures and statues of gods and goddesses in the niches are all obscured.

  “Why don’t you ever bring your wife here? I want to see her. Please bring her here,” I plead, fretting him, trying to talk away my misgivings.

  And, having at the same time to restrain his refreshed toes, I sit on them.

  “What’ll she do here, Lenny baby?” says Ice-candy-man, once again far-away-eyed and in control. “She’s used to village ways, and to her folk there... She doesn’t like to stay in the city... so I leave her there.”