Black British (26 page)

The time came when the telephone was switched off. It was an ugly, heavy contraption housed in my father's library and was either out of order or menaced us at the terrible hour of two in the morning, calling out in strident tones that demanded immediate obsequence.

At first my father rushed to answer, believing, like anyone would, that a telephone call at an ungodly hour would convey urgent news. But it was either a wrong number or a person seeking information about a night train. Our telephone number must have been similar to that of the railway station.

Answering the telephone in our home in the middle of the night was never easy. Multiple dark rooms had to be negotiated because the general idiosyncrasies of the house meant light switches were never in convenient places. Furniture that was familiar during daylight hours acquired a Mr Hyde personality by night, and moved around to effect vicious attacks on unsuspecting shinbones.

After the
seventh
time in one night of outmanoeuvring this treacherous path, my father put all his frustrations into the single action of snatching up the receiver. Expecting to hear the usual
koun hi
or “who's there”, followed by questions about train arrivals, he was floored instead by King's English with Received Pronunciation.

“My dear fellow,” it said, “If you insist on taking
quite
so long to answer the telephone, it's reasonable to suppose my train will come and go while I await your pleasure. I really
must
ask you to smarten up your act.” Whether my father maintained his cool or his manners, we never discovered.

The following day there was another telephone incident.

“A man telephoned for you today,” Lily informed my father.

The atmosphere said,
Elucidate. What else?
Obviously a little prompting was required.

“What was his name?”

“I don't know. I didn't catch it.” Said earnestly to ensure my father got an accurate picture.

“So what did you say?”

“I said nothing.”

“You didn't ask him to repeat it?”

“No, I said nothing.”

“I see. Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He asked if he could speak to you.”

“A-a-and?…?”

“I said nothing.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He asked if he could leave a message for you.”

“And…?”

“I said nothing.”

“Did he leave the message?'

“Yes.”

“And…? What was the message?”

“I don't know. I can't remember.”

The vagaries of the Indian telephone system combined with the taciturnity of my sister meant that the phone was either out of order, not in use or unknown callers left forgettable messages.

“You know,” my father was in one of his occasional lofty moods, “I can probably afford to hire a spacecraft and join the Apollo missions to the moon but I cannot get the Indian telephone exchange to give me an instrument that consistently works. I cannot persuade them. I cannot cajole them. I can't even
bribe
them.” The last part was said with mock, deep distress and sorrowful shakes of his head. Civilisation as we knew it was breaking down around us and there wasn't a dashed thing we could do to halt or slow the destruction.

These were facts of life for us and we adjusted with ingenuity bordering on the fatalistic.

But in spite of all our efforts, a frightening situation had occurred the previous May when a little before seven in the morning my father was driving us along Canal Road to drop Lily at her city college. Without warning, a rickshaw turned in front of our car, causing my father to come to a screaming halt.

Without the dramatic entertainment of injury to life or limb, or damage to either vehicle, a crowd collected. As anyone who has been in a foreign country knows, the lack of appropriate language skills is a distinct disadvantage, especially in times of trouble. That it was the land of his birth was of no help to my father. He was outnumbered by a babbling, hassling horde.

In an attempt to help I turned to a young man standing near my car window. “Tell him –” I got no further.

“Understand me, I am not your friend,” was spat back at me in a harsh, unyielding tone accompanied by hatred in obsidian black eyes.

My heart thumped with shock and fear.

I've never seen you before, done you no harm so why would you hate me?

It was my first inkling that the situation was turning sour, the crowd aggressive. I looked at Lily who had lost all colour, her eyebrows a startling contrast to her face. My father remained outwardly calm but I knew he was frightened for us.

Having first-hand experience of the massacres of the India–Pakistan partition, his first act was to remove Lily and me, two young girls, from a potentially dangerous zone. Reluctant though we were to leave him to face the throng alone, we both realised the inadvisability of arguing at such an inopportune moment. Hailing rickshaws, the only mode of public transport, Lily and I deserted our father. She left for her college and I for home.

As good luck would have it, there was a tame end to the matter. Once Lily and I were out of the picture, a Mr George who lived nearby recognised my father in the midst of the angry mob and came along to help. He paid off the rickshaw man with Rs30, more money than the poor man had ever seen in his life, and with that the crowd was satisfied.

I hadn't been so fortunate. Trembling internally and sweating like a pig, I sat rigid as I was pedalled towards home in the cool morning air. Suddenly I felt a strong tug on the back seat and a voice I had heard before, saying in broken English, “I love you, darling. Marry me,” and making insulting, kissing sounds towards me –
pwoch pwoch
. A second voice joined him in a high-pitched mocking laugh.

I knew who it was but before I could react two bicycles sped past the rickshaw, turned and swooped back, all the time hollering loudly about my face, my breasts and more that I didn't hear, as the fear-based thudding of my heart obliterated all sound.

Their performance continued with calls to the driver to stop “
Rickshaw wallah rokho
,” while singing love songs from a Hindi movie.

My belief in Guardian Angels was vindicated that morning as the puny old man, who was no match for two youngsters, ignored them and kept his pace steady. Though I could feel my armpits were soaking wet and my palms were clammy I made sure I looked straight ahead and pointedly ignored the capers around me.

Even a pea-sized brain has a threshold for monotony. Fed up with getting no reaction, my tormentors turned off at an intersection close to home, calling out,
Chinta muth karo
– don't worry, no more
tuklief
, trouble for you.

My hands were shaking as I paid off the rickshaw man.

I had never tasted brandy before but as its reviving properties burnt my throat I resorted to pointless, incoherent fury.

“How dare they!” I spluttered. “How dare they!”

But my parents were uninterested. Instead they wanted to ascertain that I hadn't been followed home, asking repeatedly, worriedly, “Are you sure they turned off before you reached the house?” They were afraid a gang of thugs would return at a later stage intent on causing mayhem.

A few days later, when feelings had subsided, I asked my parents, “Why do they hate us so much? What have we ever done to them?”

“They don't hate you personally,” was the tart reply. “Don't flatter yourself that they even notice you. Their lives are so hard and their prospects so poor that they hate, and rightly so, the oppressive regime that kept them subjugated for so long. They see you as a representative of that regime.”

My father looked me straight in the eye and without rancour, without mirth, in fact with a deadpan expression, he made his profound statement:

“That's what happens when you are left over from an Empire gone to pot.”

CHAPTER 17

CABIN TRUNKS

My final school exams were done so come January there would be nothing to hold us in Kanpur. It was a foregone conclusion that I'd leave for a college education.

“Try and coax you sister to go with you,” my father asked of me, adding persuasively, “then you won't be alone.” But I held no sway over Lily so I didn't bother to try.

“You'll have to go at some stage,” he told her. “There's no future for you here. What will you do if you stay?” Lily was dabbling in a few college subjects and spent most of her time at home helping our mother around the house. She was enjoying a lifestyle that suited her but our father kept muttering to himself, “She can't continue on this glorious loaf.”

“Things will only get worse.” Fear made him unusually sharp. “There'll be more power cuts, water shortages will become more acute and your home will crumble around you.”

Though Lorraine wrote rapturous letters about her new and exciting life, Lily had seen the devastation her absence had wrought on our mother and didn't want to be responsible for added loss.

“You plan to stay and cope so why can't I?” Lily's reply had ultimate logic, but my father had his answer ready. “I'm too old to start again but you have your whole life ahead of you. I'd be failing in my duty as your father if I didn't persuade you to leave.”

He considered for a moment longer, then added thoughtfully, “If you don't go, I'll have to marry you off. Agarwal in the office tells me there are two Goan boys in Saharanpur who are looking for wives. They are our
jaath
so that's ok. They own department shops and have quite good prospects.”

We looked at our father in disbelief. Arranged marriages are an age-old institution around the world and generally work well in India. The few that don't are highlighted to give the practice a bad name. We knew our Indian school friends expected to have arranged marriages, some even welcomed them, but we had been reared to be strong-minded people. Besides, any prospect of marriage at that time was abhorrent. We had seas to sail, mountains to scale, a life to be lived!

Since I wasn't in the firing line I could afford to laugh. I hugged myself with silent glee and turned to Lily with a bland voice that I knew irritated her. “Who's going to be Mrs Agarwal? Or will it be Mrs Ba-a-ajpie?” exaggerating the syllable to imitate the sound of a sheep. “Or,” and I added the most ridiculous name I could think of, “You could be Mrs Buumamanalum,” knowing she could neither pronounce nor spell the name.

Recognising that Lily was speechless with fury encouraged me to add insult to injury and add helpfully: “You could shorten it to Mrs Bum.”

My father pretended to consider my suggestion but before Lily could, my mother erupted. “Leave my daughters alone!” she almost yelled. “Let Agarwal look after his own daughters! Leave my girls be!”

Clearly my father hadn't anticipated such a vehement response because he held his hands up in a placatory manner. “Agarwal means well. Those are his customs so he's trying to help. I didn't take his suggestion seriously.”

Later, softly, gently, I asked Lily, “Who's going to live in a shop?” Adding, to make her explosion seismic, “Who's going to have a husband
who tells her what to do?
”

For many days I had lots of fun at Lily's expense until she turned the tables on me, hissing like an angry cobra, “Be careful. One day it'll be your turn and
you'll
be living in a shop.”

That sobered me immediately. The joke didn't seem so funny. We both looked around our beloved home, awestruck anew at our luck in living there. It wasn't the arranged marriage that bothered us. We knew that would never happen. Prospective suitors would have to get past our parents and that was a joke we thoroughly enjoyed. But the future was uncertain. I knew Lily was caught in a hard place. She wanted to leave…and she wanted to stay.

My plight was simple. I didn't know what I wanted.

“I'll leave if you and Mum come with us.” Lily was chirpy one morning as though this idea had just popped into her head. It must have been her body language because suddenly I recognised her strategy. We knew we didn't have to work on our mother. She was attached to nothing but her daughters, no pile of bricks would hold her. We also knew she'd never leave our father.

Warfare of three to one can have only one outcome. Especially when the armour is stacked in favour of the majority. The decision was made. We would leave the following February.

“We've got to pack this house.” My mother sounded grim as she looked at the detritus from previous generations of my father's family. “That's going to be
fun
,” she said, with sarcastic emphasis.

But Lily and I tingled with excitement. There were all those mysterious cupboards to empty and cabin trunks to explore. Who knew what exhilarating secrets we'd discover? “We'll help, Mum, and it'll be fun,” we sang.

It must have been the power of the moment that overrode her reticence because she added in a heartfelt tone, “I'm so glad I have daughters.”