Cracking India (36 page)

“It's only when you put your hands here and there and everywhere.”

“Even before you grew your breasts you didn't love me,” says Cousin bitterly. “You find everybody but me attractive!”

“I can't help it. If that's the way I feel—that's how it is.”

The next day, angrily hauling me by my organdy sleeve before Godmother, Cousin complains, “She loves approximately half of Lahore ... Why can't she love me?”

Godmother, in her wisdom, says: “It's simply a case of
Ghar ki murg; dal barabar.
A neighbor's beans are tastier than household chickens.”

“But she's just a household chicken, too! Still I love her!” wails Cousin, his nasal voice cracking and squeaking. Passion does make one silly... I should know! I feel awfully sorry for him.

“Don't worry,” says the slave, waddling up and mussing his hair. “It's only puppy love. Wait'll you start noticing your neighboring chicks!”

“So?” demands Godmother. “What about the young cocks Lenny will notice?”

“Yes? What about them?” I repeat.

If Cousin wasn't trying so hard to be manful, he'd be crying.

 

We arrive at a compromise, a finely delineated covenant: I will keep an open mind and let bygones be bygones, and Cousin will stop wooing me and wait a couple of years before touching my breasts again. We shall see how I feel about it then.

In the meantime Cousin sensibly sets about becoming indispensable. Knowing the way to my heart, he scurries about trying to find out the whereabouts of Ayah. He brings me rumors, and acting on the misleading leads, wastes energy on futile forays into the remotest, seediest and most dangerous parts of the congested city.

And then, late one evening, I, too, see Ayah. It doesn't register at once. It is only after the taxi has driven past, slowing at the corner of Mozang Chawk and Temple Road, that I realize that the flashy woman with the blazing lipstick and chalky powder and a huge pink hibiscus in her hair, and unseeing eyes enlarged like an actress's with kohl and mascaraed eyelashes, sitting squashed between two thin poets, was Ayah.

In the evening I pester Hamida to take me to the Queen's Garden. She has never taken us there. She says she feels shy sitting among all those strangers.

When I finally get her to agree to take us, Mother announces that Godmother wants Adi and me to spend the night with her.

Dr. Manek Mody is visiting again, and he wishes to see us.

“It's the third time I've told you to put the water to boil!” scolds Godmother from her bed. “What's the matter with you? The Demon of Laziness finally get you?”

“I'm going, I'm going.” Slavesister's string-bed creaks as she stands up in her crumpled nightie. “Rodabai, you are so impatient. Really... ”

“I'm impatient? Do you know what time it is? Do you know Manek attended to the milkman while your Lazyship snored?”

Dr. Manek Mody peeps alertly from behind his rustling newspaper. Having been awake for an hour, he's ready for excitement.

Adi stirs beside me and sits up sleepily. I prop myself up on my elbows.

“Even the children awake before you,” says Godmother sternly.

“Shame, shame,” says Dr. Mody fastidiously holding the tip of
his nose. “Poppy shame!”

Slavesister's rat-tail braid has come loose and untidy strands of graying hair plaster her neck and back. Although it is only the middle of April we require the ceiling fan that is groaning round and round. Slavesister wipes her moist face on her sleeve.

“I think the demon has found permanent lodging in her!” mutters Godmother.

Abandoning the newspaper, the doctor springs out of his chair, saying, “I'll exorcise the demon. I know how!”

Tilting forward and extending his index finger he says to Mini Aunty: “Here, pull it.”

“Don't be silly, Manek,” says Mini Aunty.

“Come on, pull,” coaxes the doctor, looking like a brown-domed elf. “I swear, you'll hear the demon leave.”

The flaps of Adi's ears move forward. He's that curious.

So am I.

Godmother, propped on her pillows, displays a solemn face. But curiosity and amusement quiver in the tension of her restrained muscles.

“Do as Manek says,” she orders, as if instructing a child to drink Milk of Magnesia.

Ignoring her and shaking her head, Slavesister carries her drowsy, martyr's smile into the kitchen.

Dr. Mody rushes in after her and, listing forward once again, points his finger.

“Please, Mini Aunty, please pull it,” Adi and I clamor, crowding into the kitchen.

Godmother lowers her feet to the floor and, sitting forward on her cot, peers at us. “Your hand won't fall off you know,” she calls. “Here's someone perfectly willing to exorcise your demons and what do you do? Insult him!”

“He's a doctor, not a magician!” says Slavesister.

“I practise exorcism in my spare time—didn't you know? Try it... My finger won't explode.”

“Stubborn as a donkey!” decrees Godmother through the door.

“Please, Mini Aunty, be a sport,” I beg. Adi is so excited, and
so nervous that the exorcism may not materialize—or take place in his absence—that he dances from foot to foot and has tears in his eyes.

“Oh, all right!” says Slavesister, suddenly capitulating. She tugs at the doctor's finger and, acquiring an air of intense concentration, the gifted doctor farts.

He stands up straight and looks as startled as us. “Some demon! Did you hear him? He almost tore my ass!”

“Much obliged to you, Manek,” calls Godmother from her bed.

“What d'you have in your stomach? Atom bombs?” enquires Mini Aunty, giving the doctor a whack on his chest.

“That's no way to treat an exorciser,” the doctor says, staggering back a step and looking at her with a slighted countenance.

“It is,” says Mini Aunty, giving him another whack.

“Behave yourself, Mini!” shouts Godmother from the bedroom. “The poor man risked his life for you!”

“How did you do that?” asks Adi, his legs perfectly still, his face agog.

“Prayer and practice,” says Dr. Mody. “Here, pull my finger.”

He tilts forward and Adi tugs at his pointing finger. With compressed lips and quivering chill the doctor lets loose a crackling battery of crisp wind. Again Adi pulls and again he farts.

“Me too,” I clamor.

The doctor obligingly directs his finger at me. When I pull nothing happens. I'm disappointed.

“Too bad,” says the doctor. “You have no demons today. We'll try tomorrow.”

In the next three days Cousin, Adi and I are possessed by a posse of demons so numerous that the doctor is hard-pressed to exorcise them. He directs Mini Aunty to feed him huge quantities of what he calls anti-demon potions: and Godmother's rooms reek of cabbage, beans and hard-boiled eggs.

Since we all ingest the same nourishment, I fall asleep to a medley of winds: the doctor's magnificent explosions, Godmother's and Slavesister's muted put-putterings, Oldhusband's bass bubblings and Adi's and my high-pitched and protracted eeeeeeeps.

Oldhusband? He's still inhabiting the pages?

Clearly, he has not, as I'd thought, passed away.

Let him stay, as we all stay, in Godmother's talcum-powdered and intrusive wake.

I cannot believe my eyes. The Queen has gone! The space between the marble canopy and the marble platform is empty. A group of children, playing knuckles, squat where the gunmetal queen sat enthroned. Bereft of her presence, the structure looks unwomaned.

The garden scene has depressingly altered. Muslim families who added color when scattered among the Hindus and Sikhs, now monopolize the garden, depriving it of color. Even the children, covered in brocades and satins, cannot alleviate the austerity of the black burkas and white
chuddars
that shroud the women. It is astonishing. The absence of the brown skin that showed through the fine veils of Hindu and Sikh women, and beneath the dhoties and shorts of the men, has changed the complexion of the queenless garden. There are fewer women. More men.

Hamida, her head and torso modestly covered by her coarse
chuddar,
holding her lank limbs close, sits self-consciously on the grass by herself. There is little comfort in laying my head on her rigid lap.

Adi and I wander from group to group, peering into faces beneath white skullcaps and above ascetic beards. The Azan must have sounded. Some women spread prayer mats on the grass and kneeling start to pray. I feel uneasy. Like Hamida, I do not fit. I know we will not find familiar faces here.

“I saw Ayah! It was her!”

It is cool outside. The sun has set—and in the protracted dusk I am straddling Godmother and clutching her face in my hands. My legs have grown so long I can touch the ground with my toes.

“It must be someone who looks like Ayah. With all that makeup on it's hard to tell.”

Godmother is being intractable.

“I saw her with my own eyes,” I say, pulling down the skin beneath my eyes.

“Sometimes we only see what we wish to see,” says Mini Aunty, issuing the nugget of wisdom as if she's an oracle. “And don't do that,” she adds, “you'll grow pouches under your eyes.”

“I know the difference between what I see and what I only want to see,” I shout. I wish she wouldn't intrude. As it is, it's harder to convince Godmother than I'd expected. She must believe me. She's the only one who takes me seriously—except Cousin—and he hasn't been able to unearth anything yet.

“But Cousin also saw her,” I say.

“It can't be her. Ayah is with her family in Amritsar!” Godmother conveys a certainty that for an instant undermines mine. It can only mean that her network has failed her. I am dismayed.

“How can you be so sure?” I ask.

Godmother hesitates, then she says, gravely, “Ask your mother.”

“What's she got to do with it?”

I'm surprised. It's not like Godmother to pass the buck. “What's happening?” I cry. “Why isn't anyone telling me anything?”

“Lenny, there's some things best left alone,” says Godmother.

“You should send for the family exorcist, Rodabai,” says Mini Aunty. “Manek will rid her of her stubbornness.”

“If you can't keep your mouth shut, go inside,” Godmother says sharply. Her nostrils are twitching. I've seldom heard her talk to Slavesister like this—totally without her tongue in her cheek.

I feel hopeless. I rub my runny nose and my tears on Godmother's blouse. I'm horribly frightened that Godmother, despite all her canny and uncanny resources, might be misled.