Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, page 12
EIGHTEEN
Learning to Swim and Dance • A Haven
for Musicians • Temple Dancers and Tap-Dancers •
Dressing as Milkmaids • An Unhappy Teenager •
The Drama of the Monsoons • Shibbudada's
Quiet Cruelty • The Spring Festival of Colors
I was settling into my life in Delhi. My father had joined the Chelmsford Club, the only advantage of which for me was its swimming pool. Rajesh and I would hop onto a bus at Alipur Road and slowly make our way there on most weekends. He would disappear into the men's changing room, I into the ladies', then we would meet to jump into the pool. Here he continued his swimming lessons, teaching me how to float and then to do the crawl. With my thin, weak ankles and wrists, I was indifferent at all sports. My body lacked muscular tone and strength. Physically, I was a weakling. At school, I had already been nicknamed the dreaded “bookworm.” The only strength I possessed lay in my single-mindedness and in my dogged determination. The brain just pulled the body along. I managed not only to learn how to swim, but to love being in the water. I still do.
Something similar had happened with dance. Because of Shib-budada's deep love for Indian classical music, Number 7 had turned into a haven for India's foremost singers, sitar players, sarangi, sarod, and shehnai players. Shibbudada was an old-fashioned patron of the arts whose money went to support his passions. The artists were encouraged to stay with us, evenings were set up for private recitals, and all of Delhi's music-loving glitterati were invited to attend.
Some summer evenings, if there was a full moon and the light reflecting off the Yamuna River could add its own special brilliance, the recitals were held on the roof, but normally they were in the drawing room. Overstuffed chairs and sofas were pushed against the wall, and large white sheets spread across the Persian carpet for most people to sit on. A special area was set up at the fireplace end for the musician of the day to sit like a monarch— on the floor, of course—and pour out his enchantment. As these recitals generally started after dinner—musicians preferred to start late and then, if they were inspired enough, play into the early hours of the morning, ending with morning ragas—tea, cigarettes, whiskey, juices, ice cream, and betel leaves were served. Interrupting the music for anything more than that was considered déclassé.
At Number 7, music teachers had always been available to anyone wishing for them. I could not sing at all and gave up early. My older sisters had sweet voices and could carry a tune and so had been cast in every convent musical, whereas I, after a stint at the age of five as the Brown Mouse in The Pied Piper of Hamelin, had given up on the theater. All that St. Mary's Convent did in Kanpur were musicals, and I was not good at them. Out of all my grandfather's grandchildren, the most musical turned out to be the three that Shibbudada had produced.
They were angrily, passionately musical. Raghudada, the oldest son, played the violin. He was going to end up as a renowned statistician at the University of Chicago, but his love of both classical Indian and Western music would continue through his life.
Indeed, when my American husband, then a violinist with the New York Philharmonic, visited India, it was Raghudada who guided him in his purchases of classical Indian recordings. Rajesh, the youngest, played the tabla (hand drums). Sheila sang. Sheila may have reminded her father of her mother in her looks, but he must surely have been startled by her singing. He began to notice her for the first time.
Shibbudada's interest in music had not extended to dance, but one year, when I was thirteen, a South Indian troupe that performed temple dances, Bharata Natyam, an energetic, devotional form of dancing that North India had never before seen, was to perform in Delhi for the first time. The unknown dancers, with their troupe leader, Ram Gopal, needed a place to stay, and Number 7 was offered. I saw them practice each day and was entranced. I fell in love with Bharata Natyam.
It just so happened that some American tap-dancers were staying with us at the same time. At Number 7, a system of open hospitality was the norm. Poor relatives and artists (who were generally equally poor) could stay as long as they wished. One blind uncle—I never did understand exactly how he was related to us—came to us with his five daughters and did not leave until each of his daughters had been married off on our premises. Counting his blessings, he had married off two of them at one go. He lived in the same room that I once used for my Hindi lessons.
One magical summer night, while the Bharata Natyam troupe was still staying with us, we—and I mean the youngsters, as all those of my parents' generation were in bed—were all sitting outside on a lawn perfumed heavily with jasmine and Queen of the Night flowers, when an American tap-dancer, speaking to a South Indian drum (mridangam) player, said, “I am sure I can tap to any rhythm you can play.” To which the mridangam player replied, “And I am sure I can play anything you can tap.” And so began a night of friendly East-West competition that was to last until dawn. This was around 1945-46, well before Yehudi Menuhin came to India and any rapport between Eastern and Western music was established. The large takht (divan) outside was cleared of its mattress and sheets, exposing the bare wood, and the two “competitors” jumped up on top. It was an exhilarating, inspiring night. As the two goaded each other towards even more complicated rhythms and greater glory, all I knew in my heart was that I just had to learn how to dance.
And I did. Unfortunately, no one in the Delhi of that time could teach me Bharata Natyam. I had to settle for one of the two styles performed commonly in North India: Kathak, a dance form that developed in the Moghul court, and Manipuri, a soft, rhythmic, almost folk form that had developed in the Far Eastern Indian state of Manipur.
In the end, I learned both, one in school and the other through a private teacher at home. Once again, I was plagued by a lack of strength and stamina, but I learned enough to perform in minor recitals and to love dance forever.
For my first public dance recital, a school friend, Promila, and I were to do a duet in the Manipuri form. What should we wear? I suggested that we dress as local milkmaids. I, for one, knew exactly what they wore. After all, I crossed the Yamuna River in the same wooden boat they used, and many of them came to work in Number 7's cowshed or could be seen squatting on the lawns, weeding and cutting our grass with scythes in the monsoon season. They were earthly apparitions, with their topknot-ted hair, over which they flung a bright veil that fell to the back, their short, equally bright forty-yard skirts that came to mid-calf, and their masses of silver jewelry that covered their wrists, arms, ankles, necks, and hair. These were our local village women. Much of their personal wealth was in the silver they wore about their bodies.
We started to dress for our recital. I opened up the large bundle of silver loot I had borrowed from our own rather large gwalan (female cowherd). As I began putting it on, Promila ventured a quiet remark: “Are you sure you can dance with so much jewelry?” “Of course I can,” I replied, determined to dazzle. I danced well enough. But as I spun and flung my arms around, first my bracelets, then my anklets, all too large for my thin bones, began to fly off, one at a time. As we danced faster, there were bracelets flying all over the stage. I hardly knew if I should stop and retrieve them, carry on, stepping on the jewelry as I did, or fall down in a heap and burst into tears. I carried on, but wept buckets at my own foolishness as soon as I was home.
Twelve and thirteen were not easy ages for me. I was struggling at school and, without my older sisters, struggling at home. There was no niche I fit into with any comfort. I was not pretty, I excelled at nothing, and I sighed a lot. Quite naturally, I had developed pathetic crushes on my cousins' friends, all to no purpose, as I was too shy to say anything. I spent my time wrapping myself around Number 7's elegant white pillars and moping. Or weeping. The monsoon season in particular brought out all my deepest despair.
Monsoons in India are a romantic time. Just as literature in the West suggests that it is with the arrival of spring that all thoughts turn to love, Indian literature, music, local customs, and even food all make a similar case for the monsoon season. With good reason.
The monsoons arrive with such drama, especially in the North. The summer starts in April with the hot loo desert winds, blowing hot air and sand with cruel ferocity. Temperatures rise to 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit. If you get into a car, the leather burns your skin; if you touch metal, you get a rash or blister. The trees are subjected daily to such thick coatings of dust that you want to disown them. The grass turns brown and then starts to disappear. The earth cakes and cracks. You drink cooling green mango juice or lime juice with salt or sugar, or with both, or try to decompress with the juice from the watermelon-rind pickles that sit in large round terra-cotta pots. Nothing cools you down for long.
My sister Veena and I would run the distance between Number 5 and Number 7 in the summers as if demons were chasing us. Number 5 had air conditioners. Number 7 had thick vetiver (khas) curtains on the outside of every door or window, which were constantly kept wet. Hot winds blowing through them magically cooled down, picking up the remarkable perfume of these prized roots as they did so. But between Number 5 and Number 7 there was only a roiling hell.
The summer seemed endless. It went on through May, June, and part of July. Mangoes that could be eaten out of hand came and went, as did cherries from Kashmir and litchees from Dehradun. Summer vegetable gardens yielded only soft marrows and squashes, the bowling-pin-like ghiyas, the tennis-ball-shaped tindas, and the slightly glutinous toris, and we tired of them easily. The earth and sky remained broiling and menacing. After lunch we all tried sleeping through the long hot afternoons. There was a
Veena plays in the well-equipped garden at Number 7. Part of the annex is in the background.
takht (divan) covered by a giant white sheet (chandini) in the big east-facing room at Number 7. With pillows placed all down its center, it was large enough to sleep about twenty people lying in two rows, side by side. But our sleep was restless, since chirping birds, seeking respite in all our verandas, kept up a noisy chatter. Then, one day, quite suddenly, there was a change in the air. A hint of some momentous possibility went through it like an electric charge, though the heat remained. Far, far in the distance, dark clouds began appearing on the horizon. Majestic and threatening, like a dark army on the move, they got closer and closer. We all rushed to the veranda and began to inhale that anticipated smell of freshly wet earth, the one that Indians have tried to capture in an attar called, rather simply, “earth” (mini). It was a faraway smell, almost as if we were imagining it. Soon the entire sky was dark with black clouds. Thunder boomed from all sides, accompanied by zigzags of lightning. The earth seemed hotter than ever. First one or two fat drops of rain fell, then more and more, until there was a deluge. Suddenly the heat broke, as if some shell encasing us had been cracked open. We all rushed out onto the paved driveway just outside Number 7's front veranda, held our faces up to the sky, and allowed ourselves to get thoroughly soaked. The monsoon season had finally arrived. We could now feast on monsoon sweets, the squiggly pretzel-shaped jalebis, dunking them in glasses of cold milk as we gazed dreamily at the downpour.
The first cooling breezes went through the hearts of most young people, awakening or intensifying their yearnings and joys. Whether we were just following the suggestions of an ancient tradition that had proclaimed the monsoon season to be the most “romantic” one, or whether there really was a collection of elements that provoked and egged on the romantic spirit, is hard to say. All I know is that around the ages of twelve and thirteen I was a self-conscious, bespectacled bundle of misery, and the monsoon just made it worse. It set before me all the possibilities without offering any hope.
Nothing in school interested me enough. I did well by dint of hard work, but my heart was not in it. I knew, I just knew that a world existed into which I would fit some day. It just was not the world I was in right then. Boys I had crushes on, boys at the swimming pool, completely ignored me, mostly because I could not summon up the nerve to say one word to them. The irony was that I was not really shy: I could be quite bold when I wanted to be. I lacked tact and softness, I was too much a mixture of insecurity and arrogance to flirt, and had the awful habit of watching and instantly analyzing myself and all others around me, so that I allowed no action to be entirely carefree or spontaneous.
Shibbudada, whose validation, however contrary that seemed, we all craved, did not seem to care much, but he did notice. Once he complained, “Why are your eyes so dull? At your age they should be shining like those of a wild animal, like those of your cousin D——.” I wanted to shout back, “But Cousin D—— does not read all day or write all day or THINK. Cousin D—— is an idiot.” But I said nothing. Cousin D—— was pretty. I was overcome with insecurity.
Another time, during the winter, I just happened to be sitting by the fire in the drawing room next to Shibbudada when my boy cousins walked in with a particularly good-looking friend. My heart began to beat so fast I thought it would pop out of my mouth. To cover my confusion, I turned away towards Shibbudada and started up some innocuous conversation, but he saw right through me and stopped me in my tracks, saying, “You don't really want to talk to me right now. Why don't you keep your eyes where your interest really lies?” I could have died of shame and inadequacy.
As I grew older, I had begun to tolerate Shibbudada's behavior less and less. He sensed this and began to return the favor with a regimen of quiet cruelty. He demanded nothing short of adoration, and I was not providing it. Always of two minds about him, Shibbudada's children seemed to be getting ever more prickly, contrary, and unpredictable. I never uttered a word against their father to them, especially not to Rajesh, who was my friend, as I suspected it would only lead to a spirited defense. I could never talk to my parents or brothers and sisters, who all seemed either to adore or to forgive Shibbudada much more easily than I could. I berated myself endlessly for being hardhearted, not “deserving” and “good” like my sisters Kamal and Lalit. Even in our very large joint family, where we were rarely physically alone, I felt very alone.
(I have now, almost sixty years later, found out that I had company. As I was going around collecting photographs from cousins for this book, we began recounting old times, and I discovered that Shibbudada had tormented most of them. “You, too? You, too?” I said to each one of them in disbelief. He was their god, too, family-anointed and permanent. They had all hungered for his approval, just as I had, and hardly ever received it. They, too, had been subjected to the games he played with his favors and his power. What if we had just talked to each other? Not one of us knew what the others were feeling. For some reason, we had all held our separate tongues.)
To add to my woes, I soon came down with a severe case of chicken pox. This happened at Holi, the Spring Festival of Colors. We had always celebrated our Holi holidays in Delhi, even when we were living in Kanpur. The women of the house would start off the Holi season with the preparation of bara pickles. These were rather like Jewish cucumber pickles, except that instead of cucumbers it was dumplings that were pickled, in a spicy brine flecked with plenty of crushed mustard seeds.
It was an uncommon pickle. We knew no other community that pickled dumplings. But we did, and delicious they were, too. Urad dal, the most ancient of Indian legumes, was soaked, seasoned, ground into a paste, beaten to allow the infiltration of air bubbles, and then formed into patties on a piece of muslin with a wetted hand. Each patty was carefully transferred to a karhai (wok) filled with hot oil and fried before it was dropped into the pickling solution. The combination of liquid and dumplings was then ladled into mutkas, round-bottomed—and rounded—terracotta pots with narrow necks. These were covered with terracotta lids and left in Number 7's northern courtyard on wooden stands to “mature” in the sun. If my grandmother, who gave it a swish and a taste now and then, declared that it was not quite ready, this just meant that it had not soured sufficiently for her taste.
Once the baras were firmly ensconced in their brine, the family's collective attention turned to other Holi foods: there were papris, crisp chickpea-flour poppadums nicely spiced but hard to roll out, as the dough needed to be really hard; goojas, turnovers filled with coconut and sweetened nuts; and of course there were thosepakoris, fritters that had to be made at the last minute. They were certainly not ordinary fritters—laced as they were with bhang, or hashish.
Some aspects of my life in India seem, in retrospect, difficult to reconcile. We were a conservative, buttoned-down Kayastha family but with forward-looking, intellectually liberal leanings. We could question anything we wanted to, and did, but we followed family Hindu traditions to the letter, almost by rote, as if they were some form of indelible background musical beat. We even took full advantage of the license these traditions allowed on certain days without much thought. For example, on the other major religious festival, Diwali, tradition suggested we gamble, so that the clinking of money would entice the goddess of wealth into our homes. Thus we, grown-ups and children, gambled and loved it. We never gambled or played the pokerlike card game Flash at any other time. It did not have a seal of approval at any other time.
