Authors: Meira Chand
‘Times were bad,’ Kishin answered, as if reading
Sham’s thoughts while removing his glasses, squinting down at them out of rheumy eyes, cleaning them with a handkerchief. ‘This was our destiny. But God has been good. When we needed he provided. You have all been educated. I do not ask more.’
Sham thought of the glitter beyond the Murjanis’ door, the imported cars and foreign travel, the wasted luxuries crammed upon shelves, the throwing away of food for no more than the whim of taste, and felt angry again.
‘Mr Murjani arrived penniless in Bombay, and look at him now,’ Sham insisted.
‘How many could do what he did? In his very blood there is money. In ours there is learning. Our respect in the world is as great as his,’ Kishin answered.
‘That kind of money is power,’ Sham mumbled.
‘Cease this line of thinking. It is corrupting,’ Kishin Pumnani ordered.
Yet his father had cried when it was confirmed that Sham had the job in Japan. His mother had cried too, in a different way from nowadays. She produced a plate of sweetmeats and fed him forcibly. ‘Eat son, eat,’ she had said, and pushed the sweet crumbs between his teeth, laughing and pushing the more he pulled his head away. And his father, emaciated and stooped, diminishing beneath a large bony head, had returned from tutoring wealthy children and banged some
mathematics
books down on the table. ‘Well done, sir.
Well
done
,’
he repeated, slapping Sham’s back. Then immediately the building knew, for his mother rushed out to tell Gopal the liftman, and Gopal told them all.
*
Behind the screen, straightening the covers on her
husband’s
bed, Rekha listened to the quarrelling in the room beyond. Even as children, Meena and Sham always fought. Money, money, money. The word passed again and again through the screen. Before that
long ago, terrible flight to Bombay, the word held little meaning for her. It was something taken for granted, like the glass of milk, thick and frothing, fresh from their own cow, that as a child had always waited with her breakfast. Now the word produced in her a leaden feeling, lived with like a chronic illness. The pain never left her and had drawn lines of suffering and resignation in her face. Sometimes now, catching sight of herself in a mirror, she stared at the elderly, white-haired woman, cheeks pouched and soft, eyes drooping sadly, and wondered at the change.
Kishin gave a groan, indicating the need to turn on his side. She put her arms about him, pulling the slack, bony weight of him forwards until he was comfortable. His body felt to her now like those chickens, plucked and bare, that the school cook had flung down, one after another, on to the kitchen table in preparation for lunch at Sind Model High School. They lay in an anaemic pile of flesh, all stringy muscle and poking bones beneath a thin, loose layer of skin. And this was now her Kishin.
Their marriage had not been arranged. She had loved him from the beginning, and stood fast through all opposition. The suitability of a match between their families had never been questioned. Both were from Sukkur, both intellectual
Amil
peoples of equivalent and substantial financial standing; marriages between the families had been made before.
Kishin was teaching in a college when she met him. She was a student in his class; her father believed in the education of women. Kishin’s wife of two years had recently killed herself and their new baby, in a bout of insanity. For all the brilliance of his lecturing, he had a haggard, haunted look. She found herself drawn immediately to him. Soon, their mutual feelings were apparent to everyone. The fourteen-year age gap was insurmountable, said the elders, but more than
this, it was certain that a man whose wife had hung herself must have a curse upon him. He would blight any life he touched. No one would consider the match. They were forced to elope, and lived their first year together in scandalous disgrace. Then Kishin’s father died, principal of Sind Model High School, and willed the premises to his son. They had moved in, already with a first child, and things went smoothly from then on.
She remembered the sound of the bell echoing across the school compound, and the rush of boys to their lunch; always hungry, always noisy, always with grazed knees or splinters in their fingers. She smiled at the memory, at the happiness then that had filled her days, between the boys, between her own babies, between the tending and the teaching and the instructing of servants.
Then, and later, there seemed to be always a baby on the way. She bore them easily and they never thought to stop them. ‘Children are from God,’ Kishin always said. Later, she wondered how to stop them. It was said to be possible by modern ways, but the process appeared mysterious, its knowledge removed from her reach. And Kishin still said, ‘Children are from God,’ even without food to feed them.
She had given birth to Anu, her fifth child, on a refugee train out of Karachi. They left the school
quietly
one night. It had already been closed some weeks, because of the tense situation. Everyone was leaving, and they did not wish to flee in terror before a mob as Lokumal had. At that time they felt sure of soon
returning
, to open the school again. Their children marched in a crocodile, as if off to a picnic, each with a satchel on its back. At the bend in the road she had turned to look back at the school. The white walls were strangely luminous in the moonlight, and the old carved chair before their quarters lustrous on the verandah. Her
mind made a quick inventory of their spacious, well furnished rooms; the covers on the bed she had twitched neatly into place before leaving, the silver bowls and trays hidden in bins of grain, the tea set of English bone china, recently bought from Mr
Watumal
, that she had stacked in a chest and pushed into a cupboard beneath the stairs. Soon she would return to retrieve these things. She tried not to notice, as she turned away, the heaviness of her heart. She placed a hand on her swollen belly and blamed the child for such feelings.
They were forced to go further than intended, to think of distances and trains. She had given thanks then for a talent of easy birthing, holding Anu in her arms, in a swaying railway carriage. In another coach a woman died as her child emerged feet first. Their journey had eventually ended in Bombay on the advice of Lokumal, whom they had met again in a soup kitchen queue in Delhi. They had arrived in Bombay without their eldest son, eight-year-old Haresh, who had died of a fever as they reached Nasik. Even now that memory brought tears. Rekha bit her lips and wiped a damp cloth over Kishin’s brow.
Above the bed there hung a photo of Kishin, taken soon after reaching Bombay. He stood proud and tall, in spite of recent trauma, hope for the future still at full tide. But soon Kishin no longer looked as in the photograph. Gradually flesh was whittled away, his shoulders stooped, his expression changed and his plump cheeks vanished, throwing his nose into greater prominence.
‘Ssh,’ Rekha soothed, patting his back as he moaned again. Once more Meena’s loud voice disturbed her thoughts. Anger rose suddenly in her and she pushed back the screen, tears welling into her eyes again.
‘Why please are you disturbing your father with quarrels? Brothers and sisters should love, not quarrel.’
Meena drew back sulkily before her mother’s anger. Sham sat with his head in his hands. Rekha stared at him sadly. She had already cried out her
disappointment
; she had forgiven him. Of shame and facing neighbours she had a lifetime of experience. Things passed; soon a new scandal appeared to take
precedence
and people forgot. So it would be with Sham. He would find work eventually. He was back with them safely; nothing else mattered. She went into the kitchen and returned with a plate of rice and a bowl of thin watery
dal.
‘Eat, son, eat now.’ She put the plate before him. ‘It is late; you are hungry. Meena, bring that mango
chutney
Mrs Hathiramani has made for us. Give some to your brother.’
Meena glared at her mother but said nothing and fetched the chutney, banging the jar down on the table before Sham.
‘Why are you so angry, daughter?’ Rekha asked. ‘He must eat. We must keep him strong. He will find work, he will give us money soon.’
‘He knows only how to bring shame upon us. I cannot face my husband’s family.’ Meena drew herself up, thrusting out ample breasts. ‘You know how they are in that house, how I suffer.’ Her eyes flashed, the hoops of her earrings swung about.
‘Hush,’ said Rekha, her eyes wet again. The end of her cotton sari seemed permanently damp from wiping tears. ‘Shall I make a
paratha
for you, son? A little pure
ghee
is left.’
‘The last
ghee
our Ama will give to you,’ Meena screamed. ‘What a mother’s heart is for her son. Not for a daughter would she give the last
ghee
.’
‘Be quiet. Hold your tongue.’ Rekha raised her voice, but Meena would not be stopped.
‘From Japan he did not send me even one electrical appliance.’ Meena gave a sob, remembering the
derision
of her husband’s family, when the modern gadgets she had boasted her brother would send from Japan never came. Even a single such prestigious,
foreign-made
acquisition would have made all the difference to her life amongst the women of the family.
Rekha disappeared again behind the screen. Meena sat down and ignored her brother. Her children returned to their five-stones.
Lakshmi resumed massaging Chachi’s legs, and watched Padma and Veena begin to collect up
papads
, laid out that morning in a patch of sun, to rid them of mould and pests. The girls brushed each wafer with a cloth before putting them back in a box. Old Chachi’s legs, misshapen by arthritis, had the feel of knotty twigs below the swollen knees, and slack lumpy pillows above. Lakshmi’s fingertips gripped the line of Chachi’s shin, pressing and releasing in a steady rhythm, just as the old woman liked. The worn striped cotton of Chachi’s pyjama was frayed at the hem, the texture of her chiffon scarf had thickened with many washings, and aged to the same indeterminate colour as her long loose tunic, shapeless over shapeless breasts. She groaned with pleasure on her string bed, under Lakshmi’s fingers.
Lakshmi could not remember a time without Chachi, who had lived with them in Sadhbela long before she was born. Chachi’s husband had died of pneumonia on the platform of a Karachi railway station, during the flight from Sukkur. She had heard many times how Chachi and her two grown daughters, and Ama and Papa and their small children, had all camped about the invalid on the platform, missing trains to freedom, unable to move him or leave him. Passing doctors, transient refugees themselves, came to look and give opinions, but medicines were unavailable. Soon he died, and when at last they chugged onwards, not knowing if Muslim mobs would stop the train and knife
them, Ama had given birth on the floor of the carriage to Anu. And before reaching Bombay had lost her eldest son, Haresh. Birth and death had overshadowed the journey, but without the violence most expected at that time.
In Bombay, Papa had eventually found husbands for Chachi’s marriageable daughters. It had not been easy. The whispered network by which suitable candidates were found, verified and matched, had been destroyed in the chaos. Papa had to depend upon his own
judgement
of boys whose families he knew nothing of. Neither marriage in consequence was successful, but Papa was rid of the burden of his nieces, and left only with his widowed sister. Lakshmi revolved the ball of her thumb about the old woman’s ankle. Sham ate silently at the table, eyes on his plate. Meena
maintained
an icy silence, immersed again in a magazine.
Whatever the reason for his return, Lakshmi was glad Sham was back. She did not care about the shame. He was back and everything now would be all right; he would find a way. Awake at night between Padma and Veena, she listened to Sham’s restless breathing and understood the shame, and his anxiety for the future; a future that must now include all of them in this room.
And sooner or later, whether they wished it or not, she and Padma and Veena would, one by one, weigh heavily amongst those anxieties that disturbed his nights. He would be pressured to think of marriages for them. There was no other way. She had dreamed once of going to college and taking a degree, of being a doctor or a teacher like her father, who said she was the brightest of his many girls. His illness had ended all hope of college, and even the means by which to take a typing course. Straight out of school, she could not work like Meena or Anu or her other sisters, who had attained some basic job qualification. As soon as
they could the family would be forced to marry her off, for her own good and theirs.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like in that unknown house of the future, with the unknown man she would call husband. Her heart beat in a
confusion
of emotion, like the bird she had caught as a child with Sham. She remembered the feel of its claws on her flesh, the bony, feathery movement of it within the cage of her hands, the flutter of its pulse. She must not be fussy like the Watumal girls, for then offers would come and go and pass her by, leaving her a burden on them all. She must accept the first candidate produced, it was what was expected of her. Already, she knew, Ama had mentioned the matter to Mrs Hathiramani and Mrs Bhagwandas. Sooner or later they would return with a reply. She must ready herself, thought Lakshmi, it would not be long. Her heart began to beat again. She pressed down hard upon Chachi’s thick knees, the old woman groaned with pleasure.
Sham concentrated on his food, listening to his mother tend his father behind the screen. There was the slop of water in an enamel bowl, and its running back from a squeezed-out cloth. The smell of antiseptic came to him strongly over his rice and pickles. When he had finished eating, he went to sit on his bed, his back to them all.
He lay down, arms crossed behind his head. Above him on the ceiling, mould, grime and grease made a colour of its own. His life had been spent contemplating its peeling patterns and cracks. Once there had been twelve of them crammed into these small rooms, nine children, Chachi and the parents. On the floor and a couple of beds, they had doubled up in sleep each night, head to toe, a roomful of bodies, like an army slain. The close human smell was suffocating under one fan in the hot weather, the small netted windows gave little ventilation. At these times he had dreamed
only of getting away; escape from his home was the recurring fantasy of his childhood.