A Thousand Yearnings Read online

  One day I saw his honour teaching our elder son how to fly a kite—‘Turn it like this, dip it like this, pull it like this, let it out like this.’ He was putting all he had into his teaching, as if he were a guru teaching mantras. That day I gave him a telling off he’s not likely to forget. I told him straight, ‘Who do you think you are, ruining my children? If you’ve got no interest in our home, alright. But don’t ruin my children; don’t encourage them in idle pursuits. If you can’t improve them, at any rate don’t ruin them.’ He tried to make excuses. My dad would never take any of his boys to any fair or to see any show. No matter how much fuss the boy created he would never relent. But this good man not only takes them but asks every one of them if they’d like to go.‘Come on! It’ll be great there! There’ll be fireworks, and balloons, and English big wheels. You’ll enjoy going on them!’As though that were not enough he lets them play hockey. These English games frighten me. Cricket, football, hockey, each more fatal than the last. If the ball hits you it can practically kill you. But he thinks these games are great. When one of the boys comes home and tells him his side has won he’s as happy as if they’d taken a fort. He’s not in the least afraid—never thinks of what might happen if one of them gets hurt. If they break an arm or a leg, what sort of life will they have, poor boys?

  Last year we got our daughter married. He was determined he wouldn’t spend so much as a penny on a dowry, not even if the girl had to stay unmarried all her life. He sees every day how mean people are, but nothing gives him eyes to see. So long as our social system lasts and people point the finger at any girl who is left unmarried long after puberty, this convention won’t disappear. You’ll be lucky to find three or four people enlightened enough to forego a dowry. But the impact they make is very small, and the bad old ways continue as usual. It’s only when the time comes when girls, like boys, can still be unmarried at twenty or twenty-five without getting a bad name, that this custom will disappear of its own accord. Wherever I tried to get a match for her the question of a dowry came up; and every time he dug his heels in. After this had gone on for a whole year, and the girl was nearly seventeen, I found someone who was willing. His honour too consented to it, because the people concerned hadn’t made any formal agreement about it, although they felt sure in their own minds that they’d get a sizeable amount, and I too had made up my mind to do my very best to see to it that nothing was lacking. I felt sure that the wedding would go off without a hitch. But his holiness opposed me in everything. ‘This custom is absurd, that custom is meaningless. Why need we spend money on that? Why do we need singers?’ He got on my nerves. ‘Why this? Why that? That’s exactly the same as giving dowry. You’ve disgraced me. You’ve ruined my good name.’ Just think of it, the bridegroom’s party is waiting at the door and we’re arguing over every little thing. The appointed time for the marriage was twelve o’clock at night. That day the girl’s parents fast. I did, but he would have none of it.‘We don’t need to fast. When the groom’s parents don’t fast why should the bride’s parents fast?’ Not only I, but the whole family tried to stop him, but no, he had his breakfast and his other meals as usual. Well, night came, and it was time for the kanyadan. He’s always objected to this ceremony. ‘A girl isn’t something that you give away. Money you give away; animals you can give away, but “giving away” a girl is a lot of nonsense.’ I did my utmost to persuade him.‘It’s an ancient custom. The shastras clearly prescribe it.’ His relatives and friends tried to persuade him, but he was absolutely unmoved. I said to him,‘What will people say? They’ll think we’ve abandoned our religion.’ But he just wouldn’t listen. I fell at his feet and pleaded with him—went so far as to say, ‘All right, don’t you do anything. All there is to do I’ll do myself. But just come and sit in the pavilion next to the girl and give her your blessing.’ But this man of God simply turned a deaf ear. In the end I burst out crying. I couldn’t stomach the idea that when the girl’s father was there his brother or my brother should give her away. So I did it all on my own. He never even glanced that way. And the best of it is that he was cross with me. For months after the bridegroom’s party had left he wouldn’t speak to me. And in the end it was I who had to climb down.

  But it’s a strange thing that in spite of all these things I can’t bear to be parted from him for a single day. With all his faults, I love him. What there is about him that makes me crazy about him I don’t know myself. But there’s certainly something that makes me a slave to him. If ever he’s a bit later than usual in coming home I get anxious. If he gets so much as a headache I go frantic. If fate today were to offer me in exchange for him a man who was the very embodiment of learning and intelligence and as rich and handsome as a god, I wouldn’t so much as look at him. And it’s not just that I’m doing my duty. Not at all. And it’s not conventional loyalty either. It’s just that something has happened to both of us, something that’s given us an ability to adjust to, and harmonise with each other like the moving parts of a machine which long use has adapted to working together so perfectly that no new part, however well-formed and beautiful, could ever take their place. We walk along a familiar road, without fear, without looking, because our eyes have taken in all its ups and downs and twists and turns. Think how difficult it would be to walk along some strange road, afraid at every step of losing our way, afraid all the time of thieves and robbers. In fact, I think today that I wouldn’t even want to exchange his faults for virtues.

  * Tahsildar: Indian states are divided into districts and districts into tahsils. A tahsil usually comprises a town and an area of surrounding countryside, and the tahsildar is the administrative officer in charge of it.

  Tiny’s Granny

  ISMAT CHUGHTAI

  God knows what her real name was. No one had ever called her by it. When she was a little snotty-nosed girl roaming about the alleys, people used to call her ‘Bafatan’s kid’. Then she was ‘Bashira’s daughter-in-law,’ and then ‘Bismillah’s mother’; and when Bismillah died in childbirth leaving Tiny an orphan, she become ‘Tiny’s Granny’ to her dying day.

  There was no occupation which Tiny’s Granny had not tried at some stage of her life. From the time she was old enough to hold her own cup she had started working at odd jobs in people’s houses in return for her two meals a day and cast-off clothes. Exactly what the words ‘odd jobs’ mean, only those know who have been kept at them at an age when they ought to have been laughing and playing with other children. Anything from the uninteresting duty of shaking the baby’s rattle to massaging the master’s head comes under the category of ‘odd jobs’. As she grew older she learnt to do a bit of cooking, and she spent some years of her life as a cook. But when her sight began to fail and she began to cook lizards in the lentils and knead flies into the bread, she had to retire. All she was fit for after that was gossiping and tale-telling. But that also was a fairly paying trade. In every muhalla there is always some quarrel going on, and one who has the wit to carry information to the enemy camp can be sure of a hospitable reception. But it’s a game that doesn’t last. People began to call her tell-tale, and when she saw that there was no future there, she took up her last and most profitable profession: she became a polished and accomplished beggar.

  At meal times Granny would dilate her nostrils to smell what was cooking, single out the smell she liked best and be off on its track until she reached the house it was coming from.

  ‘Lady, are you cooking arbi with the meat?’ she would ask with a disinterested air.

  ‘No, Granny. The arbi you get these days doesn’t get soft. I’m cooking potatoes with it.’

  ‘Potatoes! What a lovely smell! Bismillah’s father, God rest him, used to love meat and potatoes. Every day it was the same thing: “Let’s have meat and potatoes,” and now (she would heave a sigh), I don’t see meat and potatoes for months together.’ Then, suddenly getting anxious,‘Lady, have you put any coriander leaf in the meat?’

  ‘No, Granny. All our coriander wa
s ruined. The confounded water carrier’s dog got into the garden and rolled all over it.’

  ‘That’s a pity. A bit of coriander leaf in with the meat and potatoes makes all the difference. Hakimji’s* got any amount in his garden.’

  ‘That’s no good to me, Granny. Yesterday his boy cut my Shabban Mian’s kite string and I told him that if he showed his face again he’d better look out for himself.’

  ‘Good heavens, I shan’t say it’s for you.’ And Granny would gather her burqa around her and be off with slippers clacking to Hakimji’s. She’d get into the garden on the plea of wanting to sit in the sun, and then edge towards the coriander bed. Then she’d pluck a leaf and crush it between her finger and thumb and savour the pleasant smell and, as soon as the Hakimji’s daughter-in-law turned her back, Granny would make a grab. And obviously,when she had provided the coriander leaf, she could hardly be refused a bite to eat.

  Granny was famed throughout the muhalla for her sleight of hand. You couldn’t leave food and drink lying unwatched when Granny was about. She would pick up the children’s milk and drink it straight from the pan: two swallows and it would be gone. She’d put a little sugar in the palm of her hand and toss it straight into her mouth. Or press a lump of gur to her palate, and sit in the sun sucking it at her ease. She made good use of her waistband too. She would whip up an areca nut and tuck it in. Or stuff in a couple of chapatis, half in and half out,but with her thick kurta concealing them from view, and hobble away, groaning and grunting in her usual style. Everyone knew all about these things but no one had the courage to say anything, firstly because her old hands were as quick as lightning, and moreover when in a tight corner she had no objection to swallowing whole whatever was in her mouth; and secondly, because if anyone expressed the slightest suspicion of her she made such a fuss that they soon thought better of it. She would swear her innocence by all that was sacred, and threaten to take an oath on the Holy Quran. And who would disgrace himself in the next world by directly inviting her to swear a false oath on the Quran?

  Granny was not only a tale-bearer, thief, and cheat. She was also a first-rate liar. And her biggest lie was her burqa which she always wore.

  At one time it had had a veil, but when one by one the old men of the muhalla died off, or their eyesight failed, Granny said goodbye to her veil. But you never saw her without the cap of her burqa, with its fashionably serrated pattern on her head, as though it were stuck to her skull, and though she might leave it open down the front (even when she was wearing a transparent kurta with no vest underneath) it would billow out behind her like a king’s robe. This burqa was not simply for keeping her head modestly covered. She put it to every possible and impossible use. It served her as bedclothes: bundled up, it became a pillow. On the rare occasions when she bathed, she used it as a towel. At the five times of prayer, it was her prayer mat. When the local dogs bared their teeth at her, it became a serviceable shield for her protection. As the dog leapt at her calves it would find the voluminous folds of Granny’s burqa hissing in its face. Granny was exceedingly fond of her burqa, and in her spare moments would sit and lament with the keenest regret over its advancing old age. To forestall further wear and tear, she would patch it with any scrap of cloth that came her way, and she trembled at the very thought of the day when it would be no more. Where would she get eight yards of white cloth to make another one? She would be lucky if she could get as much together for her shroud.

  Granny had no permanent headquarters. Like a soldier, she was always on the march—today in someone’s verandah, tomorrow in someone else’s back yard, the next day in some abandoned room. Wherever she spied a suitable site she would pitch camp and, when they turned her out, would move on. With half her burqa laid out under her and the other half wrapped over her, she would lie down and take her ease.

  But even more than she worried about her burqa, she worried about her only grand-daughter Tiny. Like a broody old hen, she would always keep her safe under her sheltering wing, and never let her out of her sight. But a time came when Granny could no longer get about so easily, and when the people of the muhalla had got wise to her ways—as soon as they heard the shuffle of her slippers approaching they sounded the alert and took up positions of defence: and then all Granny’s broad hints and suggestions would fall on deaf ears. So there was nothing that Granny could do except put Tiny to her ancestral trade, doing odd jobs in people’s houses. She thought about it for a long time, and then got her a job at the Deputy Sahib’s* for her food, clothing, and one and a half rupees a month. She was never far away though, and stuck to Tiny like a shadow. The moment Tiny was out of sight she would kick up a hullabaloo.

  But a pair of old hands cannot wipe out what is inscribed in a person’s fate. It was midday. The Deputy’s wife had gone off to her brother’s to discuss the possibility of marrying her son to his daughter. Granny was sitting at the edge of the garden taking a nap under the shade of a tree. The lord and master was taking his siesta in a room enclosed by water-cooled screens. And Tiny, who was supposed to be pulling the rope of the ceiling fan, was dozing with the rope in her hand. The fan stopped moving, the lord and master woke up, his animality was aroused, and Tiny’s fate was sealed.

  They say that to ward off the failing powers of old age the hakims and vaids,* besides all the medicine and ointments which they employ, also prescribe chicken broth—well, the nine-year-old Tiny was no more than a chicken herself.

  When Tiny’s Granny awoke from her nap, Tiny had disappeared. She searched the whole muhalla, but there was no sign of her anywhere. But when she returned tired out to her room at night, there was Tiny in a corner leaning up against the wall, staring about her with listless eyes like a wounded bird. Granny was almost too terrified to speak, but to conceal the weakness she felt she began swearing at Tiny.‘You little whore, so this is where you’ve got to! And I’ve been all over the place looking for you until my poor old legs are all swollen. Just wait till I tell the Master. I’ll get you thrashed within an inch of your life!’

  But Tiny couldn’t conceal what had happened to her for long, and when Granny found out,she beat her head and shrieked. When the woman next door was told, she clutched her head in horror. If the Deputy’s son had done it, then perhaps something might have been said. But the Deputy himself... one of the leading men in the muhalla, grandfather to three grandchildren, a religious man who regularly said his five daily prayers and had only recently provided mats and water-vessels to the local mosque—how could anyone raise a voice against him?

  So Granny, who was used to being at the mercy of others, swallowed her sorrow, applied warm cloths to Tiny’s back, gave her sweets to comfort her, and bore her trouble as best she might. Tiny spent a day or two in bed, and then was up and about again. And in a few days she had forgotten all about it.

  Not so the gentlewomen of the muhalla! They would send for her on the quiet and ask her all about it.

  ‘No, Granny will smack me,’ Tiny would try to get out of it.

  ‘Here take these bangles... Granny won’t know anything about it.’ The eager ladies would coax her.

  ‘What happened? How did it happen?’They would ask for all details, and Tiny who was too young and innocent to understand entirely what it all meant, would tell them as well as she could and they would cover their faces and laugh delightedly.

  Tiny might forget, but nature cannot. If you pluck a flower in the bud and make it bloom before it is ready, its petals fall and only the stump is left. Who knows how many innocent petals Tiny’s face had shed? It acquired a forward, brazen look, a look older than its years. Tiny did not grow from a child into a girl, but at one leap became a woman, and not a fully-fashioned woman moulded by nature’s skilled and practiced hands, but one like a figure on whom some giant with feet two yards long had trodden—squat, fat, puffy, like a clay toy which the potter had knelt on before it had hardened.

  When a rag is all dirty and greasy, no one minds too much if someone wipes his nos
e on it. The boys would pinch her playfully in the open street, and give her sweets to eat. Tiny’s eyes began to dance with an evil light... And now Granny no longer stuffed her with sweets: she beat her black and blue instead. But you can’t shake the dust off a greasy cloth. Tiny was like a rubber ball: hit it and it comes bouncing back at you.

  Within a few years Tiny’s promiscuity had made her the pest of the whole muhalla. It was rumoured that the Deputy Sahib and his son had quarrelled over her...then that Rajva the palanquin-bearer had given the mullah* a thorough thrashing...then that she had taken up regularly with the nephew of Siddiq the wrestler. Every day Tiny came near to losing her nose,* and there was fighting and brawling in the alleys.

  The place became too hot to hold her. There was nowhere she could safely set foot any more. Thanks to Tiny’s youthful charms and Siddiq’s nephew’s youthful strength, life in the muhalla became intolerable. They say that in places like Delhi and Bombay there is an abundant demand for their kind of commodity. Perhaps the two of them migrated there. The day Tiny ran away, Granny had not the slightest suspicion of what was afoot. For several days the little wretch had been unusually quiet. She hadn’t sworn at Granny, but had spent a lot of time sitting quietly on her own, staring into space.

  ‘Come and get your dinner,Tiny,’ Granny would say.

  ‘I’m not hungry, Granny.’

  ‘Tiny, it’s getting late. Go to bed.’

  ‘I don’t feel sleepy, Granny.’

  That night she began to massage Granny’s feet for her.‘Granny... Granny, just hear me recite the Subhanakallahumma †and see if I have got it right.’ Granny heard it:Tiny had it off pat.

  ‘All right, dear. Off you go now. It’s time you were asleep.’And Granny turned over and tried to sleep.