Half a Rupee: Stories (15 page)

Dadaji sauntered towards the settee, tapping across the courtyard with his walking stick, and sank into it.

Pulling Jaswant’s son down from the tree and thrashing him was the cause of Dadaji’s grief. And you could hardly call it a thrashing—a few slaps on his buttocks, a scolding, that was all.

Since Bunty had come to the village, he was always up to something—he was always pulling a prank, or picking a fight. He just couldn’t keep still. Just the other day, he was skipping stones across the pond with that village kid, Beru. Now he could not have learnt this in the city. The stones can only skip in a village pond, you can’t make them skip on the waters of the sea. To pick up a light, fat stone—or a broken pot rim ground into a round fat shape—and throw it across the pond so that it bounces off the surface of the water 3-4 times before
sinking, is an art. Beru proudly proclaimed that he could make the stone bounce at least five times before it sank, sometimes six, even seven. Bunty had a brainwave; he broke some porcelain plates and brought the shards to contest with Beru. Because they were so smooth, he thought they would skip far across the pond.

Beru was the washerman’s son. He would come every day to the house to pick up laundry. He was the one who helped Dadaji solve the mystery of the broken plates. Dadaji tried to drill a lesson into Bunty, ‘Son, you don’t break your china for a skipping-stones game!’ It was not difficult for Bunty to guess the name of his betrayer. He pushed Beru into the lake. Beru was a village kid—he swam right back to the shore. But Bunty hadn’t learnt to swim—he couldn’t even paddle in shallow water. In the fracas he had fallen in the water himself; he barely managed to keep himself afloat, and somehow managed to avoid drowning.

But Bunty was angry at Dadaji over this morning’s thrashing.

Nobody these days stayed in touch through letters. Jaswant had installed a phone for his father’s use. Bunty rang up his father and asked him to come and pick him up immediately. He had had enough of the village. He would rather spend the rest of the holidays in the city itself.

Dadaji was worried, and a little heartbroken too. It is true that when you have children of your own, your attachment with your parents grows a little less. You become more attached to your kids. Jaswant would
certainly not be able to remember the time when he had wanted to step out barefoot in the rain and had got scolded, ‘Go! Wear your boots first!’ Mother couldn’t bear to see Jaswant being yelled at. She would scoop him up in her arms and run out.

Anything could have happened … How was he to tell Jaswant that his younger sister had run barefoot in the rain and had been stricken with polio? Her right leg had just dried up. Dadaji had witnessed how difficult it was for his parents to marry his polio-stricken sister off. Over the years Dadaji had collected so many memories that every incident would unravel yet another story. Now if you did not share your experiences, if you did not talk about them, then what were they for? Wasn’t this what growing old and wise was all about?

It was his growing old that Jaswant was worried about. When he had retired from the Bank of Baroda, he had thought of the old family house in the village. Jaswant was the one who had said that they had kept going to the old house when he was in school, to visit his grandfather. But now, nobody lived in the house.

‘Why don’t you go and have a look at it?’ Jaswant had said. ‘Do whatever you deem ft—renovate it, sell it, whatever. Anyway it will not be easy for you to live on your pension in the city. And now that Bunty has started school, the expenditures are mounting.’

Dadaji had understood what his son had left unsaid. But he had grown pretty attached to Bunty. Since the time his wife had died he had been spending more and more time with his grandson. Grandfather and grandson
made an excellent pair of raconteurs—they would regale each other with their stories; Bunty would tell his tales of cricket and Dadaji would talk of his adventures with gilli-danda.

When Jaswant’s wife became pregnant for the second time, Dadaji had left for the village. His heart had sort of wilted. But once he was in the village, it sprouted new greens, as if a plant plucked out of the earth had struck new roots. The floodgates of memories opened. He began to think about his own days with his grandfather. If truth be told, the love and affection he had got from his elders while growing up, his own children could never get. His father used to walk four kos to the madrasa. He himself used to cycle to high school. And even when he had begun to stay in the college hostel, every month his grandfather would arrive with a fresh supply of homemade ghee and pinni. This old house had been built by his grandfather. He had seen the house grow—some room or veranda constantly being added to it, by his grandfather, by his father. The concrete roof was laid while he was in college. It was in the newly built barsati that he had puffed his first cigarette and it was there that he had been caught. It was on that very roof that he had been caned, with a supple branch freshly snapped off the tamarind tree. It was on the roof that he had fallen in love. And it was the drainpipe off the roof that he had climbed down to elope.

Jaswant had not even needed to run away. One fine day, when he fell in love, he just walked into the house with the girl, introduced her to his mother and simply
declared his love for her and his intention to marry her. That was all. Yes, he did get yelled at. But Dadaji could not remember ever raising his hand on Jaswant. Then … how come he had thrashed Bunty today?

With Jaswant’s arrival, Bunty grew more distant. He stopped talking to Dadaji altogether. Jaswant tried to instil some sense into him, but Bunty was adamant. In the morning when they were leaving, Jaswant told Bunty, ‘Go touch Dadaji’s feet.’ Bunty turned his face away.

Dadaji walked up to him and ruffed his hair. Tears welled up in his eyes.

‘So, you are not going to talk to me, eh?’

‘No. Never!’

‘Why?’

‘Why did you pull me down from the tree and hit me?’

‘It wasn’t you I hit, son. I hit someone else.’

Bunty looked at Dadaji through tear-filled eyes.

‘Yes, son … I hit that boy who had fallen from the tree a long time ago and broken his leg. Look here …’

And Dadaji sat down on the settee and pulled his trouser-leg up and showed Bunty the scar on his shin.

‘See! I was your age then. And look at me … how I limp to this very day.’

And limping, he walked his son and grandson to the waiting taxi.

It was a mistake not to take Nana, our grandfather, to the funeral of our grandmother, our Nani.

A few months ago, Nana had suffered a stroke. We were scared for his health and did not want him to be exposed to further trauma. He had lived with Nani for over half a century, seen her radiant face every day of those years. Must he see her face in death? Must he see her put atop a funeral pyre and set afire? He too agreed, ‘Go, take her away … whisper into her ears that I too am on the way, not far behind; tell her I will see her in the beyond.’

With heavy hearts we hoisted Nani’s bier over our shoulders. I turned to look, just once, and found Nana stepping away from the balcony into the room, pulling the door shut after him.

Nani was about three years younger than Nana and she passed away three years before he did. Nana was
very old and weak at the time Nani died. He must have been what, about eighty-five, and yet he would find something to cavil at everything Nani did. He would keep quibbling with her, as if they were two people who had just married in the first flush of love and were still discovering each other. At times a spat spiralling out of hand would push them into silence. They would stop talking to each other for days together. When we would try to intervene, all Nana would do was quip, ‘It happens son, it happens … it takes time to adjust to each other.’

How much longer would he need to adjust? He must have been not more than twenty-five when they got married. He had now spent nearly sixty years with her. ‘How do you think it went?’ he would say. ‘The first twenty years, she stayed sterile. And then when she became fertile, she gave me a daughter and chopped away her womb.’

It was fun listening to him talk. Mother would always reprimand us, ‘You people provoke him and my mother has to bear the brunt.’ Her mother, meaning our Nani. And Nani would whoosh out a few words together from her toothless mouth, ‘Be grateful that I gave you two grandsons … now for the love of God, just shut up!’

Nana would shut up, but would manage to somehow say something with his eyes in a language that only Nani could understand, scalding, scorching her to her core. We could only make a feeble attempt to hear the unspoken words through the occasional deep-seated sighs that escaped Nani’s lips.

My brother and I were at a very young, impressionable age when our father married a second time. He would often strut into the house with his new wife. Mother was helpless. There was nothing she could do about it, but Nani fought with her, and scooped the two of us into her arms and brought us into her house, saying, ‘You want to rot here, do so … but I am not letting my grandchildren stay here to get thrashed by their stepmother.’

Perhaps this did not make Nana happy.

‘Couldn’t birth sons herself and now she has gone and brought over somebody else’s … who’s going to raise them?’

A few years down the line when our stepmother became pregnant, Mother too came over to Nana’s for good. Nana got further irritated. He would turn his face away whenever he saw Mother. Nani did her best to make him understand. But he stayed put, adamant in his thinking. If there was something to be done, his opinion to be sought, it was us two brothers who would go to him as Mother’s emissary. If anyone got her way with Nana, it was Nani. She would tell it to his face, ‘You will regret it the day I die. You don’t speak with the mother of these two children. They are also not going to talk to you. You will sit all by yourself in the balcony and bathe in the sun and your own loneliness.’

Nana would say, barely audibly, ‘I am older than you. You just wait and watch who’s going to go first, you or I?’

Nani would neither cluck her tongue nor touch her ears, like other old women do to shoo the mention of
death away. She would simply say, ‘Yes, you will see. Just watch!’

And Nani really did leave before him. Nana became all the more irritable now—as if he had lost a wager. For a few days he took out his anger on his food. He would push away his plate and say, ‘Tell her I don’t want to eat!’

He imprisoned himself in the bedroom. We removed a few of Nani’s belongings to make the room liveable for Nana but he did not let us cart away Nani’s bedstead. In a dry, hollow rasp, he said, ‘Let it be … where else is she going to sleep?’

The day we had to take Nani’s ashes away for immersion, that day too Nana stayed locked in the room. When I went in, I found him sitting on her bed. He just touched the urn and said, ‘Take him away … all my life he just kept fighting with me.’

The shift was gradual. I did not pay much heed to it that first day but later it became more evident.

Another day I caught him taking Nani’s cough syrup. He was measuring it by the capful, exactly the way Nani used to. I asked him, ‘What’s that you are doing?’

‘What am I supposed to do then … this darned cough just doesn’t let up!’

Exactly the same turn of phrase that Nani would have used.

He paused, threw me a look and said, ‘When this bottle gets over, get me a new one.’

I was a little taken aback. I had never heard him coughing. But this was nothing compared to the shock he gave me a few days later.

I told him, ‘Nana, let’s go to a salon. You need a haircut.’

Nana looked at me, scandalized by the idea.

I insisted, ‘If you don’t want to go, then I will call a barber over.’

He did not even deign to look at me this time. He began to shake his head, ‘No, no, he will kill me. He does not like my hair cut short … he will never approve!’

His intonation was nasal, exactly like Nani’s. It seemed as if it was Nani who was speaking. I moved back, a little worried. When I told Mother about it, she said, ‘These days he’s begun to miss Mother too much. I have seen him talking to her photograph. He has even begun to sleep in her bed.’

But Mother was startled the day she prepared Nana’s favourite raita and he returned it without even touching it, saying, ‘Don’t you know that I don’t like raita in the night? It makes my throat sore.’

His entire constitution had begun to morph. He had increasingly begun to talk in a feminine way. I was beginning to get worried about him. I had a friend, Dr K.D. Kamble, a psychiatrist. I called him over.

He talked to Nana at length—for hours. Most of the time, Nana kept quiet. He did not answer most of Dr Kamble’s queries. But when he did, he spoke like Nana normally did and in his own voice. Something else became evident too: to one of the numerous questions that Dr Kamble asked him, he said, ‘This only she can answer. I will ask her when she comes.’

Dr Kamble shot back, ‘Where has she gone?’

The ends of his lips curled up a little in a smile, ‘Oh … she doesn’t really ever tell me her whereabouts.’

When Nana left, Dr Kamble said, ‘He does not perceive your Nani as dead. He has begun to live a double life. In fact there’s more of her and less of him. He has begun to think of himself as Nani. Whatever happens, it happens to her. She is the one who needs to be fed. She is the one who feels thirsty. She is the one who feels the pain. And it is she who takes the medicines. He only swallows the pills on her behalf.’

I drove the good doctor back to his home. He said that Nana was suffering from a sort of dissociative personality disorder. The condition was little understood, he said, and there was no sure cure for it. He said, ‘We will keep at it, do our best. Sometimes, in certain cases, there is some improvement; in some cases, everything returns to normal, without our even doing anything. But at your Nana’s age, that kind of recovery is nearly impossible.’

Dr Kamble invited me in, and fortified my frayed nerves by pouring me a stiff peg of whiskey. We talked for a while, a little of this, a little of that; as I was about to leave, he asked me, ‘Tell me one thing—how does it make any difference to you whether he is Nana or thinks himself to be Nani? How does it change anything whether he eats raita by staying your Nana, or refuses to eat raita by morphing into your Nani? I am not saying that it does not sound a bit strange and a bit awkward—but let him be. Let him live his life any way he wants to.’

I was late coming back home, but I did feel quite unburdened by what Dr Kamble had said, a lot
less worried. I thought the way Nana had made his adjustments with Nani, we too should make our adjustments with him.

When I reached home, I found that Rachna had not yet eaten. When I asked her she said, ‘Even Nana has gone off to sleep without eating anything. Go and ask him at least. I don’t want him to have to wake us when he gets up in the night, hungry.’

When I walked into Nana’s room to wake him up, I found him sleeping in Nani’s bed. I lifted the blanket to wake him up. I was stunned. He was sleeping in Nani’s dhoti and blouse.