Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, page 7
There was one concession that my father did wrest from my grandfather: we would have our own house. No, not in New Delhi, a respectable distance away, as my father had wanted, but just across the street from my grandfather, on the inner corner of that same road named after my grandfather, a much smaller, rough-and-ready house, one of two my grandfather had built as rental properties, Number 5. We could live there, but we would still have to eat all our main meals in Number 7.
TEN
Spellbinding Shibbudada • Two Tragic
Marriages • Sadness and a Conspiracy of Silence
Our lives in Delhi, during the eight years when we were also in Kanpur, had continued apace but had an entirely different flavor.
If there was one man around whom the sun and the moon rose and set in our joint family, it was Shibbudada, my father's middle brother, who lived at Number 7. If he smiled upon you, you swelled with confidence and security. If he ignored you or looked down on you, you withered on the vine. If his gaze and generosity flowed in your direction, you thawed immediately. If it did not, you would have to depend upon your own inner resources. Some invariably fared better than others. We all felt only as good as the benediction he bestowed on us.
As an infant, he had suffered a strange accident. My grandmother Bari Bauwa was transporting him from one town to another in a bullock cart and had fallen asleep, holding him in her arms. As her grip loosened slightly, one of the baby's feet, which had been dangling outside, began scraping against a wheel. Over the course of the journey, most of his arch got rubbed away. He healed, but was saddled with one oddly shaped foot.
He was not as tall or as good-looking as my father or his eldest brother, Chand—the tallest of them all, who was an engineer by profession, and usually away in the Eastern states of Orissa and Bihar. What endeared Shibbudada to most of our world was his vivacity and ebullience, which he could turn on and off.
He had grown up to be his mother's darling—indeed, the darling of his brothers and sisters and the whole town. He wooed those he favored with overly generous gestures and a determined intensity, charming them with his deep and genuine passion for Indian classical music, Persian and Urdu poetry, and his well-honed raconteurial skills. He could hold you spellbound.
As a young man he had come across a beautiful, delicately framed Kayastha girl and fallen passionately in love with her. I never met her or saw any photographs of her, but could well imagine what she might have looked like, as this same uncle, tidal force that he was, continually made plans to bind her family to ours with irrevocable ties by arranging marriages between her relatives and members of our family. Her youngest sister would marry a cousin, and her niece is now married to my eldest brother, both marriages arranged courtesy of Shibbudada.
He was determined to marry his love, but there was the slight matter of the horoscopes. They did not match. Though priests were cajoled, they would not budge. They predicted not the usual vague “seven years of bad luck,” but a disastrous marriage ending in the quick death of the bride.
Shibbudada was too deeply in love and unstoppable. The marriage took place, and six months later the bride died of typhoid. Shibbudada was still a young man, and after the few years allowed for bereavement, his family began suggesting that he marry again. He kept saying no. They kept asking until they wore him out, and he told them to go ahead and arrange it.
In those days marriages were nearly always arranged, and it was the bride's side that sent offers to the families of eligible young men. Shibbudada was highly eligible—he was a very successful lawyer then—and marriage offers were pouring in. One offer from a family in Agra looked promising, and my aunts, my father's sisters, were sent on the delicate mission of checking out the young lady in question. They so wanted to get it right and make their adored brother happy again.
The story gets a bit hazy here. This is the version provided by an eyewitness, my aunt Saran Bhua (my father's second-youngest sister): She and some of her sisters were asked to go to a house in the Old City of Agra and to climb the stairs to the roof. The possible bride-to-be would be on an adjacent roof, or on a roof just across a narrow lane (there is some confusion here), and available for viewing. The possible bride-to-be appeared and was dazzling. According to my aunt, dusk was approaching, the sun was just setting behind the possible bride-to-be, and perhaps they mis-saw. Or were they deliberately deceived by the old bait-and-switch trick? No one dared assign any blame, as it could have fallen anywhere.
Throughout the wedding ceremony, the bride had her face covered by her ghoonghat (veil), as was customary. When the ghoonghat was lifted, it revealed a decidedly plain, slow-gaited, heavy woman. It did not reveal the wit and intelligence the woman possessed in plenty, but, whatever he saw, it was enough to make my poetry-spouting, beauty-loving middle uncle hate her for life.
He hated her enough to shift to his own separate quarters. As far back as I can remember, his wife, Taiji, was left to find solace in the middle room, between our northeast room in Number 7 and that of my grandfather's southeast room. My middle uncle, meanwhile, lived in the annex across the south courtyard. He hated her but he still had four children with her, one of them a harelipped baby that neither one of them could stomach. My dear, softhearted mother breastfed this baby until he died.
Shibbudada's children, who seemed initially to take after their mother, did not appeal to him. He ignored them. It was as if they did not exist. In a joint family, this was hard to do and easy to do. As he was the self-designated Pied Piper for the family's young hordes, he could, in general terms, be arranging fun and games for all of them while actually showering his loving glance on just a chosen few. Like a magician drawing a rabbit out of a hat, he did magical deeds for all the children, eliciting from them whoops of delight.
Nothing excited me more than an announcement by Shibbudada that he had asked the khomcha-wallah over for our Saturday tea. That was akin to telling a Western child that he could have a whole candy shop for the entire afternoon.
A khomcha-wallah, as it happened, had nothing sweet to offer. His normal habitat was the street, usually busy thoroughfares. Here he would wander eternally, or so it seemed to me, a basket balanced on his sturdy head, a cane stool tucked into the crook of his free arm. Whenever the crowd seemed promising, he set his stool down, lowered his basket to rest on it, and then began hawking his wares.
The basket was a mini-shop, containing a category of food unknown in the West—hot sour-and-savory snacks known through much of North India as chaat. The food was half prepared, and many permutations—of ingredients, seasonings, sauces, and dressings—were possible. If one asked, say, for dahi baras, the khomcha-wallah would take split-pea patties (they had already been fried and soaked in warm water, which also got rid of their oiliness) and put them on a “plate” of semi-dried leaves. Then he took some plain yogurt beaten to a creamy consistency, and spread it over the top. Over the yogurt went the salt and one or more of the yellow, red, or black spice mixtures that sat in wide bowls. Those who wanted a mild cumin-black pepper-dried mango flavor got only the black mixture. Those who said gleefully, as I did, “Make it very hot,” also got the yellow and red mixtures, filled with several varieties of chilies. If we had an extra craving for a sweet-and-sour taste, we would ask for a tamarind chutney. A wooden spoon would disappear into the depths of a brown sauce as thick as melted chocolate. It would emerge only to drop a dark, satiny swirl over our dahi baras. As we ate them, the dahi baras would melt in our mouths with the minimum of resistance, the hot spices would bring tears to our eyes, the yogurt would cool us down, and the tamarind would perk up our taste buds as nothing else could. This to us was heaven.
It was a taste of heaven with many emotional ifs and buts. We would watch our three cousins, Shibbudada's two sons and daughter, jumping around in general glee with the rest of us, but every now and then they would throw a quick glance at their father, their large dark eyes begging for another kind of crumb. Perhaps a hug, a touch of the hand. They never got it. The worst part was that we were all Shibbudada's unwitting accomplices. Because he made himself indispensable, we all wanted a piece of the Pied Piper. The children joined what the elders, perhaps burdened
Pied Piper-like, Shibbudada gathers together his own children and many of us cousins in the lovingly cultivated garden of Number 7. I am hiding behind the chrysanthemums, busily chatting.
with the responsibility of having arranged the match at all, had already established, a conspiracy of silence on the subject of Shibbudada's behavior towards his family The chaat was heavenly for sure, but the aftertaste was slightly bitter.
Every now and then Taiji, Shibbudada's wife, would send one of her children to their father to wish him good day or ask for something they needed. It was, at times, just her desperate way of trying to reach him. She seemed to love him and want him to the end. The child would stand uncomfortably, like a stranger, at his annex door. Sometimes the child would be asked in, and sometimes there would be a summary dismissal.
From a very young age, I lived with this constant possibility of emotional havoc. After every such destabilizing incident, I would need to bury my head in my mother's starchy saree or my father's tweedy coat. Most of the time, my father was not there. He would travel with us on the train to drop us off in Delhi, say salaam to all, and return to his work in Kanpur. Besides, Shibbudada was his worshipped, godlike older brother. Dadaji never, ever, questioned him. My mother's position on the joint-family totem pole was lowly. She was the youngest daughter-in-law in a household where the only women who were expansively comfortable were my all-powerful grandmother and her visiting daughters. This was not my unassertive mother's turf. She merely watched and felt a lot, but was too restrained to speak. I could not say anything, either. I had to learn to live as if this mayhem were not happening at all.
ELEVEN
My Gang • Fishing, Shooting, and
Swimming • The Watermelon Fields •
Ear-Piercing Antiseptic
My cousin Rajesh, the one who rushed for his air gun after my toast was snatched away by the kite, was Shibbu-dada's youngest child. He was just a little bit older than me, and as he always lived in Delhi, I spent nearly all my time with him whenever I was there, especially after Brijesh's death. I also played with other visiting cousins my age, who all happened to be boys. Mahesh was the eldest in our gang. He had soft greenish brown eyes, was the son of my father's youngest sister, Kiran Bhua, and was to grow up to be a very prominent nuclear scientist. Then there was Lovy (Ravi, actually), my aunt Saran Bhua's oldest, who was to become a geologist, and his younger brother Shashi, who seemed to resemble my strapping grandfather, according to old photographs that I had seen. There was Suresh, the youngest son of my third aunt, Prem Bhua, and, of course, Rajesh. This was my gang.
It was Rajesh who taught me how to fish and shoot and swim. These were, supposedly, boys' activities, but as I hung around only with boy cousins—the girl cousins and my sisters being
A family group gathers for a formal portrait, complete with couch, on a picnic in about 1940. My grandparents sit in the center. I am in the front row with my “gang” (left to right): Suresh, Lovy, me, Rajesh, Mahesh, and Shashi. A turbaned bearer stands top right, waiting on us all.
much older—I seemed destined for the periphery. I could watch the boys play cricket and sometimes, as an indulgence, be allowed to bowl underhanded or even bat. But when the boys had their matches, I could only watch.
While I was still little, fishing, too, was out of my reach. It seemed to be an exotic male ritual in which I could play no part. Oh yes, I could stand around as the boys went under the beri (jujube tree) to dig for their earthworms. I was not allowed to dig them up myself. I could watch them attach lead weights to their fishing lines to make them sink, and pieces of cane to make them float. But when I said, “I can do that,” no one listened.
The year I turned five, all this changed, thanks to Rajesh. “May I come with you this time, please?” I had asked him.
“No,” was his initial reply.
The Yamuna River was just across the street below us, and our little world was considered quite safe for children to wander about in, as long as we did not actually go into the water. The boys would pack their gear, and off they would go whenever the sun relented.
“Why?” I had persisted.
“Because you are a girl.”
I hated being unfairly limited. “But I can do everything you can.”
“No, you can't. Why did you scream so much yesterday when we were digging up earthworms?”
“Because you cut an earthworm in half with your spade and both halves were wriggling.”
“The boys didn't scream.”
“I'll get used to it. Please let me come fishing with you.”
In the end he relented, and I donned my boy's shorts. Rajesh even threaded a worm on my hook for me, and when I caught my first fish, a freshwater eel so snakelike that I dropped my rod and ran in fear, he put his arm around me and calmed me down. It would be easier the next time, he said.
It was Rajesh who taught me to shoot as well: since I could fish, perhaps I could shoot, too. “Hold the gun up. Higher, higher. Now close one eye. No, not that eye, silly, the other one. Arey … that… wasn't… bad.” It turned out that I was “not a bad” shot.
We approached swimming quite another way. When winter winds blowing down from the northern Himalayas gave way to hot desert blasts from the south, we had three months to go into the river before the monsoon rains would make its waters rage and rise. Morning, before breakfast, was the best time. We would roll our bathing suits into our towels and start walking.
In the early years, when we were still small and threatening to go into the water, not just fish on its edges, the women came along. Sometimes it was Shibbudada who took us. Later, an older cousin was considered adequate.
We were all so familiar with the two miles or so of the Yamuna River that meandered just beyond our house. After all, we had grown up there and developed a proprietary passion for this stretch of sand, scrub, and water. We had charted every detail of its topography, felt it with our feet. Our patch of the river started to the north with the Bund, a stone embankment that tried, quite fruitlessly, to prevent the river from flooding in our direction during the monsoon season, and ended, south of our house, with a small temple that had steps leading down to the water. Between the Bund and the temple were stretches of sand and rock we felt we owned.
It seemed to be the tradition in Delhi that, although the men and boys could swim in the river, the women and girls could only bathe and “dip.” When the women came with us, they wore their sarees, soft summer greens and pinks and yellows. They would take off their chappal s as soon as they hit the sand and then walk into the river fully clothed. Here they would sit down in the water, their heads disappearing beneath the gentle waves. All that could be seen were their sarees, greens and yellows and pinks, billowing and puffing up around them. This was a “dip” and about as far as the women went. They would take one or two or three dips. If the day was really hot, they might sit around in the water for a while and then just walk out, their sarees now clinging to their plump, voluptuous bodies. All this time the boys swam and the girls splashed about.
There was no formal place for ladies to undress, and it was not expected. Centuries of custom had taught the women to improvise individual tents around themselves with their fresh, dry sarees. Inside this handheld enclosure, they could slip out of their wet clothes, their modesty fully guarded. Moving arms, elbows, legs, and knees kept the outlines of the tents in constant motion. Heads would emerge, followed by arms and clad torsos. Soon the dry sarees, having performed their changing-room functions, would be wound around the body—once, twice, and, with a flick of the hand, the heavily embroidered ends would be flung over their left shoulders.
The wet hair would be unwound. The ladies would then bend their bodies forward so their hair would fall over their faces and almost touch the ground. With towels stretched between two hands, the wetness would be beaten out and the hair flung back again. Then the call would come, “Out of the water. Time to go home.” After a brief stop at the temple to have cooling sandal-wood paste smeared on our foreheads, the group would amble back.
I knew that I would never be content with “dips,” so I turned again to my cousin Rajesh. He had studied swimming at Modern School, the same school where my brothers had gone. He streaked through the water like a torpedo, and I wanted to do the same.
We started with the watermelon.
Across the river from the Bund, up beyond a sand embankment, were the watermelon fields. Most summer mornings, we would lie together in our beds and talk to each other through the mosquito netting. As indoor ceiling fans barely made a dent in the relentless heat, we were all driven out of our rooms to sleep at night on the front lawn. Twenty or so beds would be lined up between the jujube tree and the hedge near the tamarind tree in two or three rows, gauzy rectangular containers, each holding a prone body. The first rays of the sun and the incessant chattering of birds would bring the prone bodies to life. We would begin making plans for the day. “Let's go and get a watermelon,” a cousin would suggest. Someone's mother, overhearing us from another row of beds, would add, “Take Jai Singh with you. He will help you carry it back.”
Jai Singh was Shibbudada's personal manservant, whose accrued special status resulted directly from the special status of his master. Because Shibbudada's say carried weight, so did Jai Singh's. Like most of our servants, he was from “the hills.” “The hills,” a British euphemism for the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world, had, scattered across them, thousands of small, picturesque, but impoverished villages where farmers' children walked barefoot in the snow and families kept warm in winter by huddling on the floor just above their animals. Some family members stayed behind to tend the fields, but most of the young men came down in droves looking for work on “the plains.”
