House of the Sun (2 page)

Early on, Mr Bhagwandas had secured a sea-facing flat on a corner of the third floor. His knowledge of
gems had served him well in both Sukkur and Bombay. Throughout the business of fleeing and refugeeing, there had been no dearth of clients in camps or upon trains, anxious to part with their jewels to restart life, or continue its meagre flow. It seemed as if all the women of Sind had fled their homes with their jewellery knotted into handkerchiefs, and hidden beneath their saris. Many such bundles had been unknotted in desperation before Mr Bhagwandas, on his journey southwards from Sind. In Bombay he had established himself in the jewellery market, Zaveri Bazaar. He had prospered through the years.

Mrs Bhagwandas vanished into her kitchen and soon reappeared with a servant, who offered a drink of
lemonade
and some cashew nuts upon a greasy plate. ‘He is still sleeping after his lunch,’ Mrs Bhagwandas said of her husband. ‘But soon he will come.’ She sat down beside Mrs Hathiramani, who began to speak about Saturn in the House of the Sun. Mrs Bhagwandas listened, her head to one side, nodding in concern. She was a loose-fleshed woman, with flowing, grey hair tied back in a rubber band. Her teeth protruded in a
good-natured
smile to rest upon her lower lip. She offered some cashew nuts to Mrs Hathiramani, and then a plate of cheese crackers she had ordered the servant to bring in. Mrs Hathiramani surveyed the two plates. In her own home she offered at least three or four plates of edibles to guests, and always something sweet, not just salty things – it did not show enough respect. Mrs Bhagwandas played up too much the matter of simple living. The sun refracted on her diamond ear studs, smaller in size than Mrs Bhagwandas’ gems. The flash of light sparked off both women.

Mr Bhagwandas appeared suddenly in the room, smiling and rubbing his hands together. ‘What can I do for you, sister?’ he asked. He was a stout,
smooth-faced
man with narrow, liquid eyes creased in a
permanent
smile. His hair was dyed an immaculate ebony.

‘Bhai Sahib is indeed correct. A sapphire can
overcome
the evil of Saturn,’ Mr Bhagwandas confirmed when Mrs Hathiramani had finished explaining. ‘Leave it to me. I will find the right one.’

Unlocking a metal cupboard, he threw open the doors to reveal shelves of boxes and leather pouches. Sitting down at a table with a small suede bag, he fitted his jeweller’s glass to his eye, spilled out a pile of translucent stones, and poked about amongst them with a pair of tweezers.

‘Any cheap quality will do,’ Mrs Hathiramani assured him as casually as she could.

Mr Bhagwandas chuckled. The glass protruded like a growth from his eye. He sat back and picked up a small stone with the tweezers.

‘This will be the correct one for its job,’ he decided.

Mrs Hathiramani heaved a sigh of relief as Mr
Bhagwandas
wrapped it up in crisp, magenta tissue paper. She pushed it down the front of her sari blouse into her cleavage, on top of some one-rupee notes.

*

She had to ring her own door bell on the fourth floor several times before the servant boy Raju appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Usually the door stood wide open.

‘Donkey,’ she shouted. ‘How long must I ring? Why was the door shut? What were you doing?’ She knew he had been sleeping, as was permitted, after his lunch.

‘Memsahib, I was sleeping.’ He yawned and scratched an armpit. He wore dirty drawstring shorts and a ragged vest of indeterminate colour.

‘Sleeping?’ Mrs Hathiramani lumbered up the
hallway
to her living room. ‘Where is Sahib?’

‘Sleeping, Memsahib,’ Raju replied.

‘Sleeping, sleeping?’ Mrs Hathiramani exploded. ‘Why are people only sleeping in this house?’

‘Memsahib, at this time of afternoon, we are always sleeping,’ Raju reasoned and slipped quickly behind Mrs Hathiramani as she raised an arm in a menacing manner. Mrs Hathiramani began to feel suddenly weak before the tribulations of audacious planets, servants and liftmen.

‘Tea, get me tea,’ she demanded.

‘I have not slept yet,’ Raju reminded her, standing back a safe distance. He was twelve years old and had no fear of Mrs Hathiramani. He was quicker in mind and body than she, and there were other jobs to be had in the building.

‘Donkey,’ Mrs Hathiramani roared. ‘Tomorrow I will throw you out. Like a rotten onion from the window, I will throw you out. Tea.’ She turned towards the bedroom where she knew she would find her husband.

She stood by the bed looking down at Mr
Hathiramani’s
slumbering form. His grey hair was greasily askew, and the bridge of his large nose carried a
permanent
groove from the weight of his spectacles. These were now folded upon a side table on top of a magazine. Mrs Hathiramani sat down heavily at the end of the bed, unwinding part of her sari. She stretched and yawned; she too was used to a sleep after her lunch. She spread herself across the width of the bed at right angles to her husband’s feet, and closed her eyes.

‘Memsahib, tea.’ Raju rattled the china on the tray.

‘Tea? Who is asking for tea?’ Mrs Hathiramani sat up. ‘It is only three o’clock. This is the time for sleep. Get away.’ She closed her eyes again.

*

As soon as he saw his wife was asleep, Mr Hathiramani opened his eyes, and reached for his spectacles and the
Illustrated
Weekly
of
India
. The arrival of his wife had
interrupted his reading of an article about a scandal of high-class prostitution in Bombay. He had put down the magazine not for fear she would disapprove of his reading matter, for Mrs Hathiramani could neither read nor write and so had no way of checking on him. He had feigned sleep so that he need have nothing to do with his wife for a further hour of the day; there would be more than enough of her after tea. He had already heard from Raju about Saturn in the House of the Sun. Raju had heard it from the liftman, who had heard it from Bhai Sahib’s servant, who had heard it first hand, as he washed up after Bhai Sahib’s lunch behind the curtain in the temple.

His wife was a disappointment to Mr Hathiramani, both for her lack of education and her inability to bear children. He had known about the education before he married her. He had protested his need for a literate wife, but because of the dowry promised, his pleas went unheard by elders during arrangements for the marriage. At that time an undeniable ripeness had enfolded his wife, in anticipation of which Mr
Hathiramani
, on the one occasion he had been allowed a glimpse of her, had finally agreed to the wedding. But both his anticipation and Mrs Hathiramani’s voluptuousness bloomed and faded quickly, like a
delicate
flower, but without the expected fruit. They waited, but there were no children.

Mr Hathiramani sent his wife to all manner of
doctors
, without success. In the end he considered sending her back to her mother in revenge. Soon the old lady arrived on their doorstep, bringing things to a head. Mrs Hathiramani had sat on a tin truck, which was covered by a pink and white checked cloth and
contained
most of their belongings, and sobbed. Mr
Hathiramani
strode up and down, yelling about the mistake of educated men marrying uneducated women, and the fate of the Hathiramani family line without an heir.
During this outburst his mother-in-law did an unusual thing; she kept quiet. Mr Hathiramani wondered about this even as he strode about. When he stopped yelling and his wife ceased sobbing, and all three sat in silence, the mother-in-law spoke at last, a crafty light in her eye.

‘If that is what you want, we will take her back. But what shall we tell everyone? How will we face them when they know her husband was impotent? What will everyone say?’ Mr Hathiramani had opened and shut his mouth, his wife looked at her mother in admiration, and the old lady stared demurely at her feet.

Soon after this event, they had been forced by
Partition
to flee their home in Rohri. In Bombay Mr
Hathiramani
had no choice but to abandon the intellectual life he had led until then as a journalist, and to establish Hathiramani Electricals, a dark, greasy but successful repair shop on Grant Road. They moved into Sadhbela and settled themselves into its few rooms with several tin trunks, and an armada of jars in which Mrs
Hathiramani
stored everything from chutney to biscuits, mothballs, buttons and thread. Mr Hathiramani had made his presence in the building felt and he was soon the co-operative committee’s secretary.

Mr Hathiramani considered himself above the
superstitions
of his uneducated wife. The three mechanics he employed in Hathiramani Electricals worked with such unusual diligence that Mr Hathiramani was able to spend much of his day at home. He lay upon his bed in his vest and wide-legged pyjamas, reading newspapers, magazines and a worn copy of
The
Oxford
Dictionary
of
Quotations,
of which he had memorized much. A recently acquired
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
of the year 1948 was piled beside his bed. Mr
Hathiramani
had taken several days off from work to read to the end of CER. But many pages were missing, or obliterated by graffiti, and his faith in the project was
shaken. He returned to the newspapers stacked about the room, filling the air with their musty smell. He enjoyed diving into piles to extract news of forgotten years, contemplating the progress of things. Mr
Hathiramani
also put aside a part of each day for the writing of his diary.

Mr Hathiramani did not choose to spend his day stretched upon his bed for comfort, but because it was the most strategic spot in his home. The bedroom faced a short corridor to the front door, which was usually left open to reveal the lift shaft and the stairs beyond. In this way it was possible for Mr Hathiramani, from his bed, to keep an eye on all the comings and goings in the tenement. Those ascending or descending in the lift were viewed and timed by Mr Hathiramani, and anything of importance was noted in his diary. What he could not see below the fourth floor or during his absenses was reported to him by the liftman, Gopal. For this service he paid Gopal a monthly wage. Mr Hathiramani’s diligence was appreciated in the
building
. It had prevented some thefts or determined the culprits, and had once decided Mr Bhagwandas not to give his daughter in marriage to Bhai Sahib’s son. By tracing the boy’s movements through the pages of the diary, it was clear to Mr Hathiramani and Mr
Bhagwandas
that he was not of reliable character.

It was as if he had two businesses: Hathiramani Electricals, a lowbrow, bread and butter affair, and his diary, a true vocation. In Sind he had run for a time his own literary publication with a group of friends, but after Partition, in Bombay, his opinions seemed unwanted and a frost settled upon his life. Necessity had dictated the establishing of Hathiramani
Electricals
, but Mr Hathiramani considered he had betrayed himself and had suffered from depression and outbursts of temper until, moving into Sadhbela, he had begun his diary.

Mr Hathiramani used a large, blue ledger for his diary. Each double page was divided; the left-hand page had three columns, two narrow ones headed
Arrivals
and
Departures,
and a wider one for
Comments.
The right-hand page was divided into
Miscellaneous
Past,
and
Miscellaneous
Present.
Its writings had little to do with the life of Sadhbela but consisted, in
Miscellaneous
Present,
of Mr Hathiramani’s thoughts upon life and copied fragments from the newspapers he read upon his bed for a large part of each day. In
Miscellaneous
Past,
he compiled from mildewing books of Sindhi script his own English translations of the history and culture of his homeland, which had flowered in the Indus valley two thousand years before the Aryans invaded India with their primitive ways. In 300
B
.
C
., the great city of Mohenjo Daro already stood on the banks of the Indus, or Sindu, river. There were
references
to Sind in the Greek histories of Herodotus,
Hecateaus
, and Arrian. Sindhu soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes in Greece, and again against Alexander the Great, providing men and elephants to the Persians, and fierce resistance again when Alexander invaded Sind. It was a Sindhu soldier who eventually wounded Alexander the Great, and caused his retreat from the land. The Vedas emerged from Sind composed on the banks of Sind’s mighty river. Even the esteemed Emperor Akbar was born in Sind of a Sindhi mother. Sind was the cradle of all ancient civilization.

When he pondered these facts, Mr Hathiramani was saddened further by exile. Pride in this heritage was lacking in Sadhbela, resettlement had eroded identity. There were young people now who knew nothing of Sind, and who found their only heritage in a language spoken but never written, a few regional foods, and their distinctive names. Mr Hathiramani considered himself alone in Sadhbela in intellectual prowess, and weighed down by the responsibility this placed upon
him. Sometimes, waking at night with the moon on his face and the roll of waves in his ears, it seemed he had been chosen to lead his people back to a knowledge of themselves. It was for this reason he had recently begun, in
Miscellaneous
Past,
a translation of the work of Shah Abdul Latif, medieval Sufi poet of Sind, mystic bard of their heritage. A knowledge of this heritage, thought Mr Hathiramani, implanted into every exiled Sindhi, was the only homeland they could now ever know. He alone, Mr Hathiramani was sure, was the sole instrument by which there could be an expatriate, Sindhi renaissance.

*

Mr Hathiramani finished the article on prostitution; his wife still slept at his feet. It was as he had thought; all high-class prostitutes nowadays were college-
educated
girls. It did no good to educate a woman. In middle age he had come to agree with the views of his parents. He dreaded now to think of his position
without
the lever of education to hold over his wife. Mr Hathiramani leaned back and stared at the ceiling; at his feet his wife snored.