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Authors: Bapsi Sidhwa

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BOOK: The Crow Eaters
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And his stars, not content with the domestic havoc they wrought, struck blow upon bewildering blow on his business as well. He lost a contract to retail wine to the Lahore Gymkhana Club. An army canteen suddenly switched over to a store in the cantonment for its weekly provision of sugar and wholewheat. His daily inflow of customers dwindled, preferring stores where the salesmen, not having to contend with mothers-in-law, were free to dance attendance on them. A deal to get sole agency for Murree Brewery’s beer, on which Freddy had set his despondent heart, fell through at the very last moment.

Then Freddy made a weird discovery. The intransigence of
his luck was directly related to his squabbles with his mother-in-law. Her hatred for him was palpable and there was no doubt in his mind that she wished him ill. When he discovered that her curses and lachrymose scenes coincided with set-backs in his business, he grew fearfully alarmed. Languishing beneath the gargantuan weight of these conjectures he became desperate.

It was five years since Freddy had come to Lahore.

Chapter 3

HOLLOW-CHEEKED, glazed-eyed, a shadow of his former self, Freddy decided to consult a Mystic.

Late one chilly afternoon (Lahore can be as cold in winter as it is hot in summer) he slipped out of his store and shivering in his overcoat, walked dismally to the seedy tenement in which the Mystic was known to dwell. The Fakir was reputed to be in touch with spirits and well-versed in the arts of his esoteric profession.

Freddy walked through the dingy corridors of the building, too dispirited even to ask directions. He climbed an unlit flight of steps to the first floor. Wandering at random, he finally located the Mystic through the open doors of his dwelling. Wild-haired and long-bearded, he sat cross-legged in his loin cloth upon a grimy mat on the floor.

Covering his head with a handkerchief, Freddy stood deferentially at the threshold of the small, bare room which reeked of incense.

The Mystic was in a yogic trance. Freddy studied the dusky, ash-covered, strong-featured face with its closed eyelids. The Mystic’s upper arms were decorated with silver bracelets and his chest bristled with an assortment of amulets and colourful beads. He sat within a semi-circle of vials, pounding-bowls and scraps of parchment marked with astrological signs. Impressed by what he saw, Freddy drifted into a reverie.

All at once the Mystic opened his huge black eyes. His face gathered itself into a ferocious scowl and glaring at Freddy he thundered:

‘Come in you murderer!’

Freddy’s constitution was in no condition to withstand this greeting. Nearly jumping out of his overcoat, springing erect and bumping his head against the doorpost, he stumbled into the room.

Freddy crumbled to his knees and touched the divine’s dirty toe. The Fakir shied back like a nun pinched by a drunkard. Retracting his toes, fastidiously placing a disturbed tatter of parchment back into line, he shooed Freddy back with a rapid flutter of his fingers.

Freddy staggered back and settled trembling on his haunches. The semi-circle of vials and pounding-bowls stood like a wall, sternly demarcating their territories.

‘Well, murderer?’ asked the Mystic, graciously inviting Freddy to speak his errand.

Freddy blanched and cowered. A thousand thoughts clamoured in his mind. Was the man clairvoyant? No, he thought. The thought of murder had not as much as crossed his mind. Maybe the Fakir saw beyond – into a man’s future – actions that were yet to be. ‘God forbid,’ he said to himself, shuddering. Pulling himself together with a tremendous effort he mumbled, ‘No, not a murderer, but your humble servant who is in distress.’

The Mystic held aloft his jewelled arms and rolled his murky eyeballs heavenward. So effective was this performance that Freddy, convinced of the man’s terrible powers, prostrated himself within the boundaries of his own territory and sobbed, ‘O saint, you must help me. Have mercy on me!’

‘Sit up,’ commanded the Fakir, and Freddy, looking into his dilated, snake-still eyes, was filled with an overpowering urge to unburden his soul, to dig out and spill all the hot and monstrous secrets that sometimes crept even into his consciousness. A faint warning signal flashed in his befuddled mind: what if the man dispossessed him of his soul …?

The Mystic had Freddy exactly where he wanted him. Practised in the psychology and histrionics of his trade, he relied on shock tactics to unnerve a man into taking the tricky leap across the credibility gap. He addressed only the most
respectable looking of his clientele as murderers, scoundrels, thugs and adulterers. He startled ruffians and professional murderers into undying devotion by calling them misunderstood saints or reincarnations of past divines. In either case his tactics worked. And it is to Freddy’s credit that he had called him a murderer.

Freddy, meanwhile, was engaged in a desperate struggle to maintain possession of his soul. Bravely, determinedly, he looked straight at the terrible eyes, daring them to deprive him of his psyche. Matching his will against the other’s cunning powers, he fought a pitched and fiendishly lonely battle.

The Fakir, oblivious of all but the smell of money on the man, had not the remotest idea of his client’s qualms on behalf of his soul. He continued glaring mechanically, his ferociously pitted face framed in a stiff tangle of black unkempt hair.

After a full minute, pregnant with unspeakable horrors for Freddy, the Fakir snapped the unholy connection by commanding, ‘Bollo!’ (Speak).

Quaking on his haunches, Freddy’s voice quavered, ‘I have reason to suspect my mother-in-law has sold herself to the devil. She torments me with evil curses and I cannot sustain the loss to my business any longer. She has also worked a spell on my wife and children – even they are turning against me. O Fakir, you must help me,’ he pleaded in hushed agony.

Extending his hand across the boundary of vials, the Mystic held out an incense-burner. Freddy gratefully smeared some ash on his forehead. Discreetly removing a crisp ten rupee note from his pocket, he placed it in the incense tray.

The Fakir’s hypnotic eyes flickered an appreciative second. His demeanour underwent a subtle change. Without any noticeable alteration in his harsh, domineering manners he managed artfully to convey an aura of compassion and sympathy.

‘Go,’ he said gruffly, pointing a stiff finger to the exit. ‘Go now and get me a coil of her hair.’

Freddy stood up and salaaming gratefully, backed towards the door.

‘Be sure to snip the hair yourself,’ added the Fakir in a surprisingly conspiratorial voice.

The moment Freddy emerged from the dank, stifling tenement into the twilit street, his buoyant assurance in the Mystic’s competence vanished. It was as if the chill evening air had lifted the smog of incense and artifice from his confused mind. For an instant his customary commonsense prevailed and he wondered at himself for having visited the charlatan at all. But then he recalled the semi-naked man’s mesmeric glower – why, the fellow had almost sneaked off with his soul! Where would he be now had he not clung to it with all the strength of his will! No, the bedraggled Fakir had something in him. It would be foolish to discredit him entirely.

Perplexed and preoccupied, Freddy bumped into a sauntering, decorated cow. The Brahmin priest accompanying the sacred animal cried, ‘Watch your step,
babooji
,’ and sidestepped nimbly to avoid the preoccupied Parsi’s contaminating touch.

The Fakir was not a phoney, Freddy decided, recollecting the enigmatic display of vials, powders and parchment. The man had almost certainly been in communion with the spirits, unsavoury ones no doubt, when Freddy had looked into the room hesitatingly from the threshold. He never had doubted that black magic and witchcraft existed, and he was convinced a little ordinary ‘magic’ would not be amiss under the calamitous circumstances. Of course, he would take the precaution of counter-balancing any risk to his relationship with God with extra prayer and alms-giving.

He wondered what mysteries would be perpetuated on his mother-in-law’s hair once it was handed over to the Mystic. It might be reduced to grey ashes in the incense-burner, to the accompaniment of appropriate chants and spells, or, wrapped up with abominable magic potions the hair might be buried in some unholy spot. He had noticed
things
strung up with
halved lemons, and dagger-like green peppers dangling from the branches of a banyan tree overhanging a grave.

What then? Freddy shivered, though his part in the whole business was completely innocuous. All he was required to do was snip a bit of hair – a childish prank – and hand it over to the Mystic. What the divine did with it thereafter was not his worry.

Crossing over to his shop, Freddy just missed being impaled by the spokes of a tonga as the cursing driver rammed his two-wheeled horse-carriage into a clangorous, ox-drawn fire engine.

Intent on all the angles and complexities of his mission, Freddy laboured up the stairs of his home and came face to face with the object of his meditations.

‘Oh hello, Mother,’ he cried, with a guilty start.

Jerbanoo blinked at the unaccustomed and vehement greeting. ‘’Ello,’ she mumbled doubtfully. Turning her copious back to him, the frizzled rat-tail of her hair dangled sinfully before his eyes.

Chapter 4

FREDDY was a patient and meticulous man. He bided his time and three days later an opportunity to implement his mission rewarded his patience.

It was Friday. Putli would spend the afternoon in a little washroom on the roof of the building scrubbing linen. The servant boy, who kept an eye on the flat while Jerbanoo had her afternoon siesta, had gone off in a huff. She had boxed his ears that morning for dipping into her jar of boiled sweets.

Freddy was sure his victim was blithely snoring her head off in her room.

Down below in the store the Hindu clerk idly browsed through some bills. Few customers came at this hour and Freddy, knowing that the moment had come, steeled himself for his task. Telling the clerk he would be back shortly, he mounted the wooden stairway.

Freddy slipped past the kitchen that opened directly on the landing, and tiptoed through the dining room into his own room. Quietly he opened the drawers of the carved walnut sewing-chest, selected an efficient-looking pair of scissors and tried them out by snipping off a bit of thread from the tasselled ends of his bedspread. Next he removed his shoes.

Stepping cautiously in his stockinged feet on floors that vibrated at the slightest movement, he stood outside the teak door to Jerbanoo’s room. He paused, breathing softly, listening to the reassuring rumble of snores that filtered through the solid teak.

Freddy had taken the precaution of oiling all the hinges the day after his visit with the Mystic.

Patiently, soundlessly, he lifted the latch. When the door gave a bit he let his breath go. Luckily Jerbanoo had not shot the bolts. The door eased open on its well-oiled hinges, and closing it carefully behind him, Freddy tiptoed to her bed. The taut strings of the charpoy sagged like a hammock beneath her weight.

The square, darkened room was bare except for a rickety clothes-stand, a large almirah and the charpoy. A high-backed chair to one side of the closet was untidily draped with the sari Jerbanoo had removed before retiring. A coal fire hissed gently in a small grate by her feet.

Jerbanoo lay flat on her back: the precious rat-tail of braided hair buried beneath mounds of heaving, snoring flesh.

Freddy leaned over gingerly, fascinated by the slumbering body. The room was warm and the blanket Jerbanoo had kicked off lay crumpled at her feet. She slept in a tight-sleeved, scoop-necked blouse and sari petticoat (a long cotton skirt gathered at the waist with a tape). A film of moisture gleamed between the fat folds of her neck. Freddy studied the hated face intently. The well-defined, strongly-arched eyebrows dominating the narrow forehead epitomised for him the menace and treachery of her nature. Anyone less prejudiced than Freddy would have found Jerbanoo’s rounded jaws and small features rather attractive or interesting. Her skin was smooth, her slightly parted, fluttering mouth small and full-lipped. The braid Freddy was after, was nowhere in sight.

Hanging helplessly over her, Freddy wondered what to do, when an angry snort exploded in his face. Jerbanoo had no more than brought to order a recalcitrant bit of air attempting to sneak out through the wrong nostril. Another snort followed and Freddy, who was often scolded by Putli for staring at the babies and so disturbing their sleep, ducked with a terrified start. Like a drop of water in a desert, he disappeared beneath her charpoy. The bare brick floor was icy.

The snorting and whistling stopped. There was a moan. A laborious upheaval took place on the hammock above him as
Jerbanoo turned. The four slender legs of the string-bed creaked and groaned.

Faredoon broke out in an icy sweat. What if she got out of bed? He felt as exposed beneath the spindly-legged bed as a coy hippopotamus trying to hide behind a sapling. For the first time in his life he wished he were a smaller man. He thought his cramped limbs were sticking out in twenty directions. Any moment now his elephantine mother-in-law would let go a trumpeting shriek.

Holding his breath, and interlocking his trembling fingers, Freddy prayed. The charpoy creaked again. Freddy let his breath out only when the volcano had resumed its rumble.

A little after, bobbing up for a quick reconnaissance, Freddy peeked over the edge of the bed. Jerbanoo lay to one side, and the enormous white expanse of her hips and shoulders rose like a wall before his glance.

There it was! Long and thin as a snake, the black braid nestled in the trough between her back and the sagging mattress. Pathetic ends of hair, tied with a red ribbon, curled like patterns plastered to her blouse. Crouching, scissors poised, Freddy caught the ends and gingerly prised the hair clear of the cloth.

Freddy could have sworn there was no untoward touch from his fingers, no pressure at all on the roots of her hair, yet Jerbanoo suddenly shot up and emitting a quack like a duck, swinging blindly, struck Freddy a mighty blow across his face. Freddy staggered back. Jerbanoo’s jaws dropped open. Sleep-glazed eyes popping, she looked at Freddy in amazement.

From some mysterious reserve of his addled wits, Freddy hoisted an apologetic simper. He could have wept instead. Nursing his cheek with his left hand, he cautiously pumped the other in a gesture intended to reassure the astonished woman. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s only me,’ he cooed, fearing Jerbanoo would scream.

But Jerbanoo had followed the quick movement of his hand when Freddy hid the scissors in the waist-band of his
pyjamas. She didn’t see what was in the hand – perhaps a thin-bladed knife intended for her throat … She was on the verge of screaming when the scissors slipped into the fork of Freddy’s pyjamas and, plummeting down the inside of his leg, tinkled to the floor.

Jerbanoo’s mind whirled ominously. She recalled the slight pressure on her hair and a glimmer of understanding dawned. The awful knowledge gripped her heart in terror. The man had been monkeying around with her hair and she knew what that meant! Bringing her plait forward she scrutinised the ragged ends anxiously. A quiver of triumph danced through her.

‘Now, now, don’t go getting any silly notions into your head,’ warned Freddy hastily, once again pumping a conciliatory arm. ‘I only looked in to see if you were quite all right and …’

But before Freddy could explain the benevolent motives for his visit, Jerbanoo let off a curdled bellow that shook the house. The clerk and salesman came bounding up the stairs, and Putli flying from the terrace.

In the ensuing chaos Freddy tried desperately to clear himself.

‘She was making a noise like a thunderstorm; how was I to know she was only snoring? I thought something was terribly wrong with her – her breath was choking her or something – I merely came to help, and look at the thanks I get. I might as well have left her to die unattended!’

He explained this in turn to Putli, the store attendants and a curious customer, while Jerbanoo brayed her woes at everyone collectively.

‘Oh God, I cannot stand it any longer! Take me in Your arms and lift me up to Your heavenly abode!’ she stormed, glaring at Freddy with accusing, malevolent eyes.

Putli shooed the customer and attendants back to the store, packed Freddy off to his room and after a good deal of clucking and commiseration, succeeded in quietening her hysterical mother.

This episode brought Jerbanoo’s halcyon reign to an end. Putli felt things had been allowed to drift too far. She had noticed Freddy’s deteriorating and gloomy state for some time, but the scene in her mother’s room brought home the magnitude of the change in him. His behaviour had certainly not been normal and she was concerned for his sanity. Although she pretended not to credit Jerbanoo’s version of the tale, Putli suspected that her husband, pushed beyond endurance, had staged the performance to scare her silly. For her husband’s welfare, Putli prudently took the domestic reins into her hands. She put an end to Jerbanoo’s extravagant gossip sessions and firmly controlled her ransacking of the store.

Jerbanoo padded about her former domain listlesly, sour-faced and as surly as a deposed monarch. Freddy had succeeded, if in nothing else, in terrorising her. She threw nervous little glances over her shoulders like someone who expected a bee to sting her. She took to wearing her
mathabana
at all times; even during her afternoon siestas. Each millimetre of hair, combed back in a tight knot, was tucked away beneath the square white kerchief as in a steel safe. She blackened her eyes and pressed two large spots of soot on her temples to protect herself from the envious and evil eye. Putli, who diligently blackened her children’s eyes, protested, ‘Mother, no one’s going to evil-eye you at your age!’

‘You’d be surprised,’ rejoined Jerbanoo, and in full view of Freddy, handed Putli a tattered bit of meat membrane, dipped in turmeric, commanding, ‘Here, protect me from evil spells!’

Putli resignedly circled the membrane seven times over her mother’s head and flung it out of the window to the crows.

Freddy knew there was no hope for his mission. He wondered what would have happened had he actually succeeded in snipping Jerbanoo’s hair – and the chilling result of his speculations made him thankful he had not succeeded. As it was, she reserved for him a special code of conduct. He could not creep into her range of vision without inspiring the
most mournful, suspicious and unforgiving look in her reproachful eyes. The moment he stepped in, she would waddle out of a room. When compelled to tolerate his presence, as at mealtimes, Jerbanoo would sidle in with shifty eyes and crinkled nose, as if she was in the most infectious ward of a hospital.

‘Do I smell like a dead rat?’

‘No,’ said Putli, perplexedly, sniffing Freddy’s Baby Johnson-powdered armpit.

‘Then why does the old woman wrinkle up her nose every time she sees me?’

‘Oh, come now,’ said poor little Putli, wondering when all this nonsense would come to an end.

And it became natural to Freddy to say ‘old woman’ and equally natural to Putli to hear him say so; for Jerbanoo, unabashed by the usurpation of her empire, resiliently shifted gears, and within a matter of months, adopted the role of the proverbial ‘little-old-lady’.

This politic switchover fitted Jerbanoo’s indolent nature like a sweater. There she was; naive, frail, unschooled in the ways of a changed world. How helpless she became; how delicate. The slightest exertion exhausted her. She was no longer able to do for herself or for others those little things she was used to. It suddenly broke her back to bathe the baby. She got dizzy spells if she so much as stepped into the smoky little kitchen, and palpitations threatened when she attempted to tidy her room or almirah. All she could do was spoon-feed the kiddies, shell peas and pry out tiny stones from rice and lentils.

Of course, when it suited her fanciful little heart, she would run up and down the stairs and shift heavy pieces of furniture. If someone noticed these bursts of energy or commended her vitality, she explained how she suffered later for these impulsive actions – after all she was getting on to sixty – she had been a hard-working woman all her life and was not yet used to the frailty of her aged body.

Jerbanoo was no closer to sixty than any woman of forty-
two. But very few in India keep track of their age. People are as young or as old as they wish, depending on their health and circumstance. There are gracious old grandmothers of thirty and virile young fathers of seventy. And, if Jerbanoo chose to declare herself sixty, sixty she was! Jerbanoo could no longer bathe by herself and a maid came for two hours every morning. The maid poured mugs of water over her rigid body, lifted the soap when it slipped and soaped those parts that Jerbanoo couldn’t reach. She rubbed her dry with towels, powdered her and supporting her by the arm led her to roost on her charpoy. After putting things in order, the maid squatted before the bed and pressed Jerbanoo’s plump, dangling legs. Jerbanoo spent a good part of the day at her roost on the charpoy, brooding like a philosophical fowl.

The part of an ‘old lady’ provided a lot of subsidiary joys. Jerbanoo turned excessively religious. All at once she recalled the death anniversaries of her departed relatives and ordered costly masses for each of them. She prayed five times a day and each time, imitating the example of temple priests, plied their kitchen-fire with sandalwood. Every morning and evening she trudged piously from room to room with the family fire-altar, fragrant with lavish offerings of sandalwood and frankincense. Freddy supposed this was good for his family, but as far as he was concerned, the good was countered by the damage to his pocket.

Another interesting offshoot of her chosen role was her martyrdom. It surged up and bubbled to the surface. If Freddy so much as looked at Jerbanoo, she cowered visibly. If he looked at her censoriously, she added a visibly trembling hand to her cowering bosom – and if he dared reprimand her she sank to the floor in a clumsy swoon.

Freddy, terrified lest she really damage herself with her clownish collapses, rarely spoke. However, once he risked making a suggestion or issuing a reprimand, Jerbanoo made a point of obeying him.

She carried her unforgiving obedience and martyred docility so far that even Putli was irritated.

And her trump card: Imminent Death! Age brought her closer to heaven and the prospect of death opened exquisite new vistas to Jerbanoo’s ingenious virtuosity. It was always, ‘Ah well, now that I’m to die soon – what does it matter?’ or, ‘You can do as you wish when I’m dead: you’ll all be rid of me soon enough. All I wish is a little peace and respect in the few years left me.’

Freddy watched the dismal transformation with amazement. It was like the shifting of a burden from his left to his right shoulder.

That Jerbanoo had not forgiven him was obvious. She worried him with a new and dangerous subtlety. He was compelled to put on a show of concern and commiseration. Jerbanoo would talk of death and dismals until Freddy felt a superstitious dread creep up his spine and shroud his existence.

Within a month Freddy was looking back nostalgically upon bygone days. He definitely preferred the riotous, hedonistic hooligan of the pre-hair-snipping episode era to this lachrymose and jinxed monster.

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