House of the Sun (3 page)

He reached for his diary and, opening it, retraced the recent movements of everyone in the building. It had become clear there was a need for extra vigilance. Two days ago Sham Pumnani had returned home after losing his job in Japan. He had been accused in that faraway place of embezzling office funds. A man of so few scruples must be watched, Mr Hathiramani noted. No one in Sadhbela, in the trauma of Partition and the flight to Bombay, had fallen so far into misery or failed so utterly to recover themselves, as the wretched
Pumnani
family. Mr Hathiramani underlined again the note to watch Sham Pumnani.

Apart from Sham there was the problem of Mohan Watumal, who must also now be watched. Only the night before Mr Hathiramani had described Mohan
Watumal as a waster, who did nothing to help his ageing father, but sat about in coffee shops, discussing impossible schemes. Distant cousins of Mrs
Hathiramani
had unwittingly offered their daughter in
marriage
to Mohan, not knowing he lived in Sadhbela. At this revelation they had promptly appeared to seek Mr Hathiramani’s opinion. Mr Hathiramani had not minced his words, and opened his diary to reveal Mohan’s layabout traits, clearly shown by his irregular comings and goings. Mrs Hathiramani’s cousins
expressed
gratitude for such frankness and left to call off the engagement. Mr Hathiramani had closed his diary with a satisfied smile, but Mrs Hathiramani was worried. She spoke of the vengeance his mischief would arouse in the Watumals. Mr Hathiramani remained
unperturbed
, but made a note now, under the one about Sham Pumnani, to observe Mohan Watumal as a precaution.

A thief and a waster. Mr Hathiramani sighed. Such now was the calibre of young Sindhi men. Impossible to think of a Sham Pumnani or a Mohan Watumal ever finding the courage to wound Alexander the Great. Mr Hathiramani turned once more to
Miscellaneous
Past
in his diary, and the immortal Shah Adbul Latif. At his feet his wife snored lightly.

‘You’ve hardly eaten anything.’ Jyoti Devnani pushed bowls of food over the table towards her husband’s already well-heaped plate. Then she looked across the living-room to her father-in-law’s bedroom door, from which a servant had just emerged with a tray of empty lunch dishes. The closed door faced them again.

‘I had hoped it wouldn’t upset him so much,’ she sighed.

‘What did you expect?’ Prakash demanded. Since the tainting of the kitchen with the cooking of meat, Lokumal Devnani had eaten all his meals in his room, refusing to sit with them at the table.

‘My mother has only been dead a year,’ Prakash continued, spooning up curds. ‘It’s enough that already you’ve cut off your hair.’

‘Why should I not have the style of hair I want? I waited until after the ceremonies for the first
anniversary
of your mother’s death.’ Jyoti’s long, narrow eyes glittered.

‘Your hair is very nice,’ Prakash said hurriedly, although he missed the heavy look and the feel of it. ‘But you should have left cooking meat in the house until later. You’re rushing things too much,’ he added, not meeting her eye.

‘Why don’t you look at me when you say these things,’ Jyoti demanded. ‘We discussed everything. You agreed we should live as we’ve wanted to for so many years and couldn’t, because of your mother. I was very fond of her, but you know how traditional she was.’

‘My father is not yet dead,’ Prakash reminded her.

‘He has retired and handed over the business to you. It is as if he is living in our house now, instead of we in his. The balance of things has changed.’ Jyoti presented this image of change to him often.

‘I don’t know if he would agree,’ Prakash protested.

‘How can you move forward in the business world if you live as your father does?’ Jyoti complained.

‘He has done all right,’ Prakash replied.

‘He’s a man of a different era. My father saw the world we would live in and prepared me for it. Yours shut himself off in tradition, and thought in that way he would stop any change. In business, contacts are everything. All your associates eat meat and drink whisky, and until now you have never been able to entertain at home without appearing backward by
serving
only soft drinks,’ Jyoti answered.

Prakash stared morosely at his father’s closed door. Jyoti picked up an apple and began to peel it, the skin curling over the knife in a tail. ‘You must tell him about the bar today. If you don’t the workmen will be here, and he won’t take it well if you tell him then.’ Jyoti reassessed the corner of the room where they had decided to build a small bar.

‘He won’t take it well under any conditions.’ Prakash leaned back in his chair and kicked the table leg.

‘You’ve got to prepare him,’ Jyoti insisted.

‘How do you prepare someone to give up the beliefs of a lifetime? Meat and alcohol, all in one week; it’s too much,’ Prakash replied.

‘Just be firm. The storm will blow over, as it is already about the meat,’ Jyoti encouraged.

‘Is it?’ queried Prakash.

‘He has eaten quietly in his room; he has made no fuss today. He is gaining equilibrium,’ Jyoti reasoned. She called to the servant to clear away the dirty plates.

Prakash nodded; probably Jyoti was right, she
usually
was. He was looking forward to offering his friends
drinks from his own bar. He had already ordered his whisky on the black market and a whole range of
liqueurs
, including several of different colours which were to be poured slowly, in rainbowed layers, into one glass. Prakash swallowed apprehensively at the thought of explaining it to his father. He wished Jyoti would do it for him; she was clever at such things.

Jyoti had managed the change of diet in the house with cunning, first bringing in cooked meats from the bazaar in the form of mince patties and kebabs that would not offend as much as something of a more definitive nature. Lokumal was at heart a reasonable man; he decided not to notice. The occasional bringing in of such foods from outside, cooked in other kitchens, touched by other knives and pans, was no real taint to his own home, he argued with himself. Young people must be allowed some life of their own; they lived now in modern times. But two days ago there had been upon the table a dish of thick gravy, with fleshy lumps and yellow, hollow, long-cooked bones sticking out of it, that the cook informed Lokumal had been prepared in his own kitchen. Lokumal was aghast and ordered it off the table.

‘Just because I have never asked you to cover your head in respect before me in this house, you think you can now bring these ways into our family? Understand, what you were eating in your father’s house, you cannot eat here,’ Lokumal thundered at Jyoti.

‘The whole of my married life I have not eaten the food of my father’s house. The doctors say my blood has become thin,’ Jyoti protested.

‘I am telling you for your own good,’ Lokumal reasoned, calming himself with an effort. ‘You know these are hot foods, worse than eggs and onions, and are producing all kinds of unclean passions. Is any pure person eating meat? Is any swami or saint eating meat? Therefore India is leading the world in spiritual things,
and all other countries have nothing but fighting and violence. Only because of eating meat,’ Lokumal declared. Jyoti clenched her fists beneath the table, Lokumal sensed trouble.

The next day a succulent aroma drifted through the house, and the irritable hiss of the pressure cooker lasted longer than usual. Informed by the cook that he had lost his battle, Lokumal refused to eat at the table. He sent a servant to the bazaar for a separate set of saucepans and kitchen knives, which were to be kept locked in his bedroom cupboard, and handed to the cook after the preparation of the family meal, for the cooking of his own vegetables. Afterwards they were to be washed and locked up again.

Jyoti cut into the apple. She pointed to a pink
cardboard
box on the table. ‘Those sweets were sent to us this morning by Mrs Murjani, to celebrate the
engagement
of her nephew. Daddy is very fond of that kind; I will take him some. You should have only one, an apple is healthier. You’re getting fat.’

Prakash reached across the table. He took possession of a sticky sweet, and pushed it into his mouth before Jyoti could order him not to.

In the distance the door bell rang; there were
footsteps
down the corridor. The living-room door was opened by a servant for a small, gnome-like man in a soiled white
dhoti
, a saffron silk shawl and a matching saffron knitted hat. He shuffled, eyes half-closed, past the table where Jyoti and Prakash sat eating, towards Lokumal’s door. The mumble of prayer escaped him, his hands were clasped before him and hidden beneath the shawl. The servant opened Lokumal’s door for the old-priest to enter.

‘What is Tunda Maharaj going in and out so often to Daddy for?’ Jyoti asked.

‘For someone of Daddy’s age and spiritual
advancement
there is nothing more in life but to think of godly things,’ Prakash replied.

The door bell rang again. Once more there were footsteps. The servant led in Mrs Hathiramani, wiping sweat from her upper lip with the end of her sari.

‘Oh ho. Still you are eating?’ she said, and unasked took a chair at the table. Jyoti pursed her lips.

‘Bring me water,’ Mrs Hathiramani ordered the
servant
. ‘It is too hot today. Again that donkey liftman is idling downstairs when he is needed for work.
Yesterday
also he did not come when I rang. He is wasting everyone’s money. Every day I must walk, up and down, up and down.’ The servant put a glass of water before Mrs Hathiramani and she drank thirstily. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and squinted at the table.

‘You also have received Mrs Murjani’s sweets? They are for her sister’s son’s engagement, you know. The girl is from Gibraltar. Where is this Gibraltar? Parents from Sukkur originally but now settled in this
Gibraltar
. They brought the girl here to Bombay, to find a boy for her, the way all Sindhis settled in Foreign do. These are not good marriages. Our boys here are pure, and girls brought up in Foreign are all too fast. And other way round too. When our girls from Bombay marry Indian boys from Foreign they get husbands who know only about drinking and bad women. So, now I hear you are eating meat?’ Mrs Hathiramani announced. Jyoti choked upon the apple.

Mrs Hathiramani continued. ‘Mr Hathiramani told me. He heard it from Gopal, the liftman. Only for these things is that donkey any good.’ She reached across to the open box of sweets and helped herself to one. ‘Mrs Murjani has sent you a half-kilo of sweets and to me she has sent only a quarter-kilo. Why does she make these differences? Does she think nobody will come to know? How can Dada Lokumal allow you to eat meat?’
Mrs Hathiramani inquired, sucking syrup from her fingers.

‘It is a matter of health,’ Prakash said, looking at Jyoti. She pulled a face behind Mrs Hathiramani; the cook must have told the liftman.

Mrs Hathiramani stood up. ‘I wish to speak to Dada Lokumal and Tunda Maharaj.’ She lumbered across the room to Lokumal’s door. Jyoti closed her eyes in relief.

*

‘
Hare
Ram
,’
Mrs Hathiramani said in pious greeting as she entered the room. ‘Oh ho, Dada Lokumal, these are bad times.’ Everyone in Sadhbela called Lokumal Devnani, Dada, out of respect for his age and wisdom.

‘Come, daughter,’ Lokumal beckoned from where he reclined in loose, white garments, supported by
bolsters
, upon his bed. ‘What is it? Command us, and Tunda Maharaj will reveal what must be done.’ The priest looked up and grinned, showing toothless gums.

Mrs Hathiramani sat on the end of Lokumal’s divan and explained about Saturn in the House of the Sun. Just being in the presence of Lokumal made her feel better. His room was airy, with blue walls and a view of the sea. It served as Lokumal’s bedroom, his sitting room and his place of worship. All the paraphernalia of a religious life was crowded into it. The walls were hung with garlanded pictures of saints and Gods, two domed wooden house shrines held brass images of Krishna, dressed in scraps of lurex cloth. The esoteric odour of incense infused piles of religious books and pamphlets. It was not only the room but Lokumal himself who exuded an essence people never forgot. He was a man who had cast out of himself anger and desire. He had stepped away from the world’s
limitations
, and talked longingly of life in the ashram of Swamiji, the sage whose teachings he followed. He had retired from his business as a textile agent, handing
over to Prakash, and was free at last to embark on a spiritual path.

His daily routine was severe. He took a cold bath at four each morning, then prayed and meditated. He retained a clean, starched look throughout the day as he sat on his white-sheeted divan, amidst many bolsters and the leafy piles of Swamiji’s writings. And all day people from Sadhbela, and the neighbouring buildings, came in a stream for advice, trapped still in their
secular
lives.

Lokumal listened intently while Mrs Hathiramani explained about Saturn. Tunda Maharaj also listened, withholding for the duration of her speech the soft whine of prayer that usually escaped him. He cocked his head at an angle, like a small bright-eyed bird. His skin was wrinkled as a prune. The chair he sat upon was high and his legs, sticking out of the end of his
dhoti,
did not reach the ground. His feet were toeless and enclosed in black rubber shoes. He swung his legs vigorously about in agitation, as he listened to Mrs Hathiramani.

‘At once, when Bhai Sahib explained, I bought a sapphire from Mr Bhagwandas,’ Mrs Hathiramani said, digging down the front of her blouse to fish up the sapphire, wrapped still in crisp, magenta paper.

‘It cannot harm to do as Bhai Sahib says. He knows about these things,’ Lokumal nodded. ‘But, daughter, if you will put aside fear, nothing can harm you. Faith in God, not in a stone, will help you. In the
Gita
we are told, “The man who is ignorant, who has no faith, who is of a doubting nature, perishes. For the doubting soul there is neither this world nor the world beyond nor any happiness.”’

Mrs Hathiramani nodded. ‘I will not doubt, but I will wear the stone. If I do both these things, then nothing can harm me. Is that not right?’

Lokumal sighed resignedly. ‘Come now, why not
show your hand to Tunda Maharaj? Let us see what he will reveal.’

Tunda Maharaj was Lokumal’s personal
pandit,
and had served the family for years. He came unannounced, at unpredictable times, from a village not far from Nagpur. He returned there as unpredictably, and would answer no summons of urgent need, for
horoscopes
or predictions. Lokumal had accepted these perversities on the part of Tunda Maharaj, as the way of a superior power to curb his own impatience. Tunda Maharaj was the only
pandit
who had been allowed to come and go in this manner. Before him there had been a Kala Maharaj, a Chota Maharaj, a Moti Maharaj and more. All these had lived in the broom cupboard of Lokumal’s home, a windowless recess to the right of the front door. Lokumal had installed an electric light and for air the door was left open. But each of these
pandits
had let Lokumal down in one way or another, absconding with money or foreign-made wristwatches, or fulfilling their duties lethargically. Only Tunda Maharaj had come up to Lokumal’s expectations.

Tunda Maharaj showed his toothless gums in a grin, and stopped swinging his legs about. He peered up at Mrs Hathiramani from beneath his knitted hat, worn through the winter and on those days when his head was newly shaved. Mrs Hathiramani fixed Tunda Maharaj with a look of disapproval, and stared at the bulge of his hands, clasped beneath his shawl. Tunda Maharaj, besides having no toes, had also hands
without
fingers. This sad state of amputation was the result of past leprosy. Tunda Maharaj hid his toeless feet in his rubber shoes and his hands beneath the saffron silk shawl. A single horny claw of nail protruded from one eroded fist. This he used to trace the lines of destiny he was asked to unravel, upon the palms frequently thrust before him. A strong smell of stale clothes and old coconut oil emanated from him. Mrs Hathiramani
braced herself for the moment when he would reveal his twisted nail and trace it over her hand.