Cracking India (25 page)

Statesmen do.

They grant Nehru Gurdaspur and Pathankot, without which Muslim Kashmir cannot be secured.

Nehru wears red carnations in the buttonholes of his ivory jackets. He bandies words with Lady Mountbatten and is presumed to be her lover. He is charming, too, to Lord Mountbatten. Suave,
Cambridge-polished, he carries about him an aura of power and a presence that flatters anyone he compliments tenfold. He doles out promises, smiles, kisses-on-cheeks. He is in the prime of his Brahmin manhood. He is handsome: his cheeks glow pink.

Jinnah is incapable of compliments. Austere, driven, pukka-sahib accented, deathly ill: incapable of cheek-kissing. Instead of carnations he wears a karakuli cap, somber with tight, gray lamb's-wool curls: and instead of pale jackets, black
achkan
coats. He is past the prime of his elegant manhood. Sallow, whip-thin, sharp-tongued, uncompromising. His training at the Old Bailey and practice in English courtrooms has given him faith in constitutional means, and he puts his misplaced hopes into tall standards of upright justice. The fading Empire sacrifices his cause to their shifting allegiances.

 

Mother shows me a photograph: “She is Jinnah's wife,” she says. “She's Parsee.”

The woman in the photograph is astonishingly beautiful. Large eyes, liquid-brown, radiating youth, promising intelligence, declaring innocence, shining from an oval marble-firm face. Full-lipped, delighting in the knowledge of her own loveliness: confident in the knowledge of her generous impulses. Giving—like Ayah. Daring—like Mother. “Plucky!” Mother says.

For the lady in the photograph is daring: an Indian woman baring her handsome shoulders in a strapless gown in an era when such unclothing was considered reprehensible. Defying, at eighteen, her wealthy knighted father, braving the disapproval of their rigid community, excommunicated, she marries a Muslim lawyer twenty-two years older than her. Jinnah was brilliant, elegantly handsome: he had to be to marry such a raving beauty. And cold, too, he had to be—to win such a generous heart.

“Where is she?” I ask Mother.

Mother's eyes turn inwards. Her lips give a twitch: “She died at twenty-nine. Her heart was broken... ”

Her daring to no account. Her defiance humbled. Her energy
extinguished. Only her image in the photograph and her innocence—remain intact.

But didn't Jinnah, too, die of a broken heart? And today, forty years later, in films of Gandhi's and Mountbatten's lives, in books by British and Indian scholars, Jinnah, who for a decade was known as “Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity,” is caricatured, and portrayed as a monster. The man about whom India's poetess Naidu Sarojini wrote:

Hari has had his
bodhi
shaved. He has become a Muslim.

He has also had his penis circumcised. “By a barber,” says Cousin, unbuttoning his fly in Electric-aunt's sitting room. Treating me to a view of his uncircumcised penis, he stretches his foreskin back to show me how Hari's circumcised penis must look.

I recall Hari's dark genitals, partially obscured by the dust and dusk and crumpled with fear as he stood in the circle of his tormentors. My imagination presents unbearable images. I shake my head to dispel them and revert my attention to Cousin's exposed flesh.

His genitals have grown since I last examined them three years ago—after he'd had his hernia operation. The penis is longer and thicker and gracefully arched—and it seems to be breathing.

“Feel it,” offers Cousin.

I like its feel. It is warm and cuddly. As I squeeze the pliant flesh it strengthens and grows in my hand.

“Hey!” I say. “What's this!”

Cousin has a funny look in his eyes that I don't trust.

“I have become a honeycomb,” he says. “Lick me, here, and see what happens.”

I lick the tip gingerly. Nothing. No honey.

“You've got to suck out the honey.” Cousin arches his back and maneuvers his penis to my mouth.

“Suck it yourself!” I say, standing up.

“I can't,” says Cousin.

I see the absurdity of my suggestion. I shrug away.

I like Cousin. I've even thought of marrying him when we grow up, but this is a side of him I'm becoming aware of for the first time, and I don't like it.

“All right, I'll show you anyway,” says Cousin in a conciliatory voice. “Just look: I'll show you something.”

Cousin pumps and pumps his penis and it becomes all red and I think he will tear himself, and I say, “Stop it! You'll bleed,” but he pumps and pumps and I begin to cry.

Cousin, too, is close to crying. He mopes around for the rest of the afternoon with his fly looking stuffed. I haven't been able to keep my eyes off flies since, intrigued by the fleshy machinery.

Hari has adapted his name to his new faith: he wants us to call him Himat Ali. He has also changed his dhoti for the substantial gathers of the drawstring shalwar.

I spend the night after my birthday at Godmother's. Late in the evening her room resembles the barracks dormitory we peep into from the servants' quarters roof. Five cots are laid out at all angles and there is hardly any space to walk.

I lie on my cot, between Godmother and Dr. Manek Mody. Oldhusband is already snoring gently from the direction of our feet. Only the kitchen light is on and Slavesister is softly laying out the cups and saucers for the morning's tea.

“Hurry up and go to sleep, Lenny,” says Dr. Mody, so gleefully that I become suspicious and ask, “Why?”

“Because I want to pounce on your Roda Aunty and eat her up. I'm hungry.”

There he goes again.

Godmother is silent. I reach out my hand and tap the wooden frame of her charpoy in the dark and she holds my hand tight.

Dr. Mody makes a “slurp-slurp” sound and rubs his hands together in the dark.

“Don't be silly. You can't eat people,” I say.

“Go to sleep, can't you?” he says, ignoring my comment. “Now, where do I start? ... Roast leg of Aunty or barbecued ribs? Of course! I'll make a nice jelly from her trotters! Seasoned with
cinnamon and orange juice—slurp-slurp. Just like Imam Din's jelly.”

Imam Din makes a delicious jelly—but out of sheep's trotters.

Dr. Mody's cot creaks as he sits up, and I see his pajama-suited silhouette and bald head shining menacingly in the faint light from the kitchen. I spring out of bed and wrap my limbs about Godmother. She lies within my small arms and legs like a trusting and tremulous whale in her white garments. “If you touch her, I will kill you!” I scream. “I have a double-barreled gun!”

“I think I will start with crumbed chops à la Roda,” says the doctor undeterred.

The light is blocked briefly as Slavesister comes through the door, carefully balancing a saucer of hot tea for Godmother. She notices the seated doctor and asks, “Can I get you a nightcap?”

“Yes, please. I'd love a hot cup of blood à la Roda: with salt and pepper.”

I have a brilliant idea. “You can have Mini Aunty. She is fatter.”

“Thank you very much!” says Mini Aunty.

“I don't want Mini. I'm in the mood for a tough old thing I can chew on.”

“You're a ghoul!” I screech sternly.

“Oh, no. I'm only a vampire.”

“Now, now. No more of that,” intervenes Slavesister. “Someone will have nightmares ... And then someone might wet her bed.”

“Someone will not wet her bed!” I say firmly, using the tone Godmother uses to squash her.

“Never mind your cheek. Get back to your charpoy. You should be fast asleep,” says Slavesister, completely unabashed, and patiently holding out Godmother's saucer of hot tea.

“Chi, chi, chi! She wets her bed?” says Dr. Mody, holding his nose. “Chi, chi, chi! Don't sleep next to me.”

“She does not wet the bed,” says Godmother, rising gallantly to the occasion—and to take her saucer of tea.

“You wouldn't know. You don't wash the sheets,” says Slavesister recklessly. She's probably counting on the inch Godmother
allowed her when, bemused by the events of that historic day, she let Slavesister get away with insubordination on my birthday. But her lucky break has gone the way of all such breaks and Godmother, rearing up on her pillows, retaliates: “Don't think I've not been observing your tongue of late! If you're not careful, I'll snip it off! Then you'll probably learn not to be rude in front of guests. I hate to think what Manek will tell our middle sister about your behavior before your elders!”

“Really, Rodabai! How long will you treat me like a child?”

“Till you grow up! God knows, you've grown older and fatter—but not up! This child here has more sense than you. Now stop eating our heads. Say your prayers and go to sleep.”

Slavesister retreats to the kitchen and commences mumbling.

Dr. Manek Mody represses his cannibalistic prowling and lies down quietly.

It's lovely to have someone fight your battles for you. Specially when you're little. I adore Godmother. I latch on to her tighter, and kiss her rough khaddar nightgown. The pantry light goes out. Slavesister gropes her way to her sagging charpoy and continues her mumbles in the vicinity of our heads.

“Um! Um!” warns Godmother.

The mumbles stop.

I know Dr. Mody is only teasing. After all, I'm eight!

When will they stop treating me like a baby? And I'm fed up of being called Lenny baby, Lenny baby, Lenny baby ...

 

When Godmother comes out of her bath the next morning, clattering into the kitchen on wooden thongs, her dolphin shape wrapped in only her sari, one shoulder bare, hair dripping—all dewy and fresh—she looks like a dainty young thing. As if the water has whittled away her age.

By the time Slavesister emerges from her bath, looking like melting tallow and oozing moisture from powdered pores, Godmother has put on her bodice and blouse and velvet slippers and pumped alive the hissing Primus stove. She appears accepting of life. Conscious of her irrepressibly youthful spirit—raring to go.

“What took you so long in the bath?” she says, getting the day off to a flying start. “You know Manek has to go out early. You know there's so much to be done—the boys are coming in the evening—and you retire to splash from the bucket like Cleopatra!”

Slavesister is too sedated from her bath to react. Oozing moisture, she moves about gathering the ingredients for the omelettes and begins chopping the onions and green peppers.

Dr. Mody, anxious not to miss the chatter, bursts into the kitchen in his striped pajamas. And as if his loud voice were not enough, he claps hands to gain attention: “Where's breakfast? Where's breakfast? I'm so hungry I could eat Rodabai! Such a pity Lenny's here...,” he says, grinning from ear to ear—and nicely fanning banked fires.

“If Bathing Beauty didn't take hours wallowing in her bath like Cleopatra, you'd have breakfast! Come on. Come on. Move your fingers!”

“Yes, Mini! Move it. Move it,” says the doctor, putting his short arms round Slavesister's heavy shoulders and hugging her affectionately.

“Mind you don't cut yourself,” cautions Godmother.

“It's not the first time I'm using a knife, Rodabai,” says Aunt Mini reasonably.

“I said ‘mind.' I have enough worries without your adding to them!”

“Yes, yes! Mind you don't chop off your fat little fingers,” says Dr. Manek Mody, echoing Godmother.

“Now, don't you go joining hands with her,” says Mini Aunty.

“Her? Her?” asks Godmother, looking confusedly at her brother-in-law and at me. “Who's her? Where's her?”

Slavesister chops the tomatoes silently.

“Yes? Who's her?” asks her brother-in-law.

Oldhusband emerges from the bathroom. He is, as always, dry and brittle, and irritated.

“His Sourship's had his bath. Manek, you'd better take your turn before Cleopatra decides to settle down to her business on the commode.”

“Really, Rodabai ... I hate to say it, but you really are going too far,” says Slavesister.

“Oh? Where to? Where am I going?”

“Don't make me say something you'll regret ... ”