Land of Five Rivers (15 page)

My one thought was to save the voice of Soorma Singh. I leapt out of bed and went to the door. I saw the two Nihangs in the kitchen sipping tea out of their porcelain mugs. ‘What is the racket?’ I asked them.

They paused and listened. I ran down the steps. The noise was coming from Soorma Singh’s room. A small crowd had collected there. I looked in. A fat, ugly woman of about thirty-four was squatting on a charpoy with Soorma Singh on his knees on the floor beside her. A Sikh with a goatee was slapping Soorma Singh about the face.

This fellow was an urban type — short, pot-bellied, flabby, with small thin arms and hands like squirrel’s claws.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded a chorus of voices.

The Sikh with the goatee panted, ‘This man was staring at my wife...even after I told him to look the other way.’

In short, Soorma Singh’s crime was to have stared at the loathsome creature with eyes like hard-boiled eggs and a skin the colour of mud.

Gyaniji
threaded his way through the crowd and came up to the man with the goatee. He put out his inflamed proboscis and protested. ‘Sir, this is Soorma Singh, he has no eyes. How could he have been gaping at anyone? There was no other room vacant, that is why I put you in his room. Where else can the poor fellow go?...’

Soorma Singh’s glasses had fallen off but his assailant had not bothered to look at his eyes. His wife was very cross and scolded her husband — ‘You never wait to find out anything before you get down to fisticuffs.’

The Sardarji was like a deflated balloon; he looked exactly like a squirrel with a beard. It was obvious that he was dominated by his wife. Some explanations were offered; the Sardarji picked up his bag and slipped out to go to the
bazaar
to buy vegetables,
Gyaniji
went to the door and spoke to the onlookers, ‘Gentlemen go and do your own work... this is not juggler’s performance.’

Gyaniji’s
thin nasal voice commanded respect. The crowd dispersed.
Gyaniji
turned and admonished the woman with the bulging eyes, ‘Sister, Soorma Singh has a golden voice. You have arrived today; come to the service tomorrow morning and listen to him singing hymns. There is such magic in his voice that many who have gone astray, have been brought back to the path of righteousness.’

Just then the parrot made a few uncomplimentary remarks about Soorma Singh.
Gyaniji
glowered at the bird. His nose was as red as the parrot’s beak.

Gyaniji
explained to the woman that this was the Nihang’s handiwork. Soorma Singh’s cup of sorrow brimmed over. He voiced a whole catalogue of the misdeeds of the Nihangs. The woman asked, ‘Soorma Singhji, whose word shall I accept, the
Gyaniji’s
or the parrot’s?’

‘That’s a very odd question to ask,’ protested
Gyaniji
and left the room still mauling his nose.

A small multi-coloured bird landed on the window sill and danced a pirouette.

There was tenderness, humility and sweetness in the woman’s voice; it pierced through the deep dark of Soorma Singh’s world like a shaft, making a silver track as it went — a path which appeared to Soorma Singh to be leading to his goal.

t
he nuptial bed

Upendra Nath Ashk

        K
eshi looked up from his newly-wedded wife’s eyes to the head-board of the old-fashioned bed, in which was framed a miniature of his mother. She was a lovely woman, fine-featured with large eyes and curling lashes; a smile hovered on her slightly parted lips, revealing a row of pearl-white teeth. Unconsciously his mother’s image was projected on that of his bride’s. How closely the two women resembled each other! His head went into a whirl; a shiver ran down his body. He shook his head vigorously and tried to take his eyes off the picture. It was of no avail.

Till a few years ago, he had lain on his mother’s bosom just as he was now lying on his wife’s. The memories of those years came flooding back into his mind. Instead of kissing his bride’s almond eyes and eager lips, he slid off her body and lay down beside her like one utterly exhausted. He stared at the long strings of jasmine beads which hung like a canopy over his bed. His hand fell on the jasmine petals which were spread like a thick counterpane over the bed sheets. He wanted to leap from his bed and break out of the fragrant nuptial room in which he found himself imprisoned.

Keshi did not jump off the bed. He lay where he was, still and silent. What would his bride think! That fear alone kept him on the nuptial bed. He shook his head again, even more violently than before. But instead of ridding his mind of his mother’s image, it produced a myriad more, which came tumbling down through the spate.

...It is the same bed in the same room. His parents are lying side by side. He is staring at them from his cot in the verandah. How petite and pretty his mother looks beside his father.

...His mother is doing her hair in front of the mirror. He stares at her from behind the door. She is as beautiful as the fairy that his
ayah
tells of in her stories. His mother, seeing his reflection in the mirror, asks him to come to her. He goes to her and buries his face in her lap. She ruffles his hair with one hand and continues to comb her own with the other.

...What’s wrong with Papa? A man comes in to see him everyday. He has a pair of snakes hanging round his neck. He puts the tails of the serpents in his ears and feels Papa’s chest with their head. Then he sticks long needles in Papa’s arms. Papa does not cry but Keshi begins to howl. His mother clasps him to bosom and takes him to the next room.

...Papa is lying on the floor. He does not move. Everyone is crying. His mother is crying; she kisses him and continues to cry. Women help his mother to break all her bangles and then wipe off the vermillion in the parting of her hair. They drag Keshi out of her lap. He shrieks and howls but no one bothers to comfort him.

...It is the same bed. He lies where his Papa had lain before him. His mother is beside him. She is dressed in a plain, white sari. The morning sun is streaming through the fanlight but she sleeps on, without a care in the world. He stares at her face. Her features are truly as delicate as a fairy’s. Her eyes are closed, her hair scattered about her shoulders. She is like the princess who was woken out of her spell by Prince Charming. He edges towards her and kisses her on the cheek. She opens her eyes, stretches her arms and takes him in her embrace. She kisses him on his forehead, eyes and lips.

...He lies with his head on his mother’s bosom. She tells him the story of the prince who crossed the seven seas to marry the princess of his heart’s desire. She finishes the story and asks him. ‘Will you marry a princess?’

‘I will marry you.’

‘Silly boy! Whoever heard of a son marrying his mother!’

She promises him that she will find him a bride just like herself.

‘Then I will have this bed as well,’ he says looking at his mother’s beautiful portrait in the head-rest.

‘Yes, of course! This bed will be my wedding present to you and your bride.’

‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’ His bride turns over, feels his forehead and runs her fingers through his hair.

‘It’s nothing at all,’ he answers shaking his head to snap the chain of thought. He tries to laugh, it turns into a long sigh.

His mother had been true to her word. The bride that she had chosen for him was an exact image of herself — slender and comely. Her eyes were large, her features clear cut, het lips soft and her teeth glistened like a row of pearls. A large bed had been sent with the dowry; but his mother had fulfilled her old vow and laid out her own precious bed for him to consummate his wedlock. She had even given up her own bedroom to the bridal pair.

The bride bent over her groom. She gazed into his eyes to see if she could find out why his ardour had cooled so suddenly; but she got no closer to the truth. She hesitated a little; then began to fondle his hair.

For a while Keshi lay still; then he put his arms round his bride’s neck and drew her close to him. He stroked her hair, her cheeks and her lips. The cobwebs were swept out of his mind. The soft, fair body of the woman imparted some of its warmth to him and hot blood began to course in his veins. He kissed her, laid her beside him and buried his face in her warm breasts. It was time he made love to his newly wedded wife, he thought, but he could not bring himself to face the picture. Without raising his head he pushed his pillow against the head-board. Then he looked up. His mother’s face still peered at him from behind the pillow. ‘No, no, no,’ he cried within himself and again lay on his back like one defeated. Angry with himself he leapt out of the nuptial bed.

The full moon sieved through the
chick
-curtain; and lit the verandah with a soft silvery light. Keshi paused by the niche and looked at the moon-beams playing on the lawn. The cool breeze soothed his overwrought nerves. He went out into the garden amongst the beds of phlox and verbena. Dahlias, heavy with their own weight swayed in the breeze. Bordering the lawn was a neatly pruned hedge of
henna,
and beyond it a bed of marigolds. A rambler rose climbed in spirals over a cluster of nasturtiums. Keshi examined some of the flowers, smelt some and caressed the others. In the daylight these flowers dazzled the eyes with their gaudy colours; now they were soft in the moonlight, like a balm for strained nerves. The bright yellows and pinks had turned pale whites; the deep crimsons, the blues and the mauves were repainted in sombre hues.

Keshi came to the cottage wall where the jasmine blossomed. In the dark shadow of the wall, the jasmine flowers gleamed like petalled pearls. Jasmines in moonlight reminded him of the lines of a song:

‘After a long time the jasmine has blossomed

My courtyard is filled with fragrance,

A heavenly fragrance.’

Now that his courtyard was in fact fragrant, the words of the song were lost in a pit of oblivion. Keshi walked stiffly up and down between the cottage and the gate. When he was walking back to the cottage for the second time he noticed a light in the window of the corner room. His mother had obviously not gone to bed. Perhaps his aunt and other kinswomen were also awake discussing him and his bride. What infinite pains his mother had taken in decorating his nuptial bed! The women had cleared the dining room of the table and chairs and adorned it to receive the bride. They had carried out the ceremonial connected with the reception of a new bride, lifting her veil with infinite care. While he sat amongst his friends, they were arranging the wedding presents, and the furniture, which had been received in the dowry, in his room and also decorating his mother’s room for the first night of the married couple. The innumerable guests and the hundred odds and ends to attend to, had given his mother little time for sleep. He had seen her going in and out of her bedroom with his aunt and a young woman who was a distant cousin of his mother’s, busy in their task of beautifying the bridal suite. His mother’s face was lit with joyful radiance. It seemed that the sleepless nights, the running about and the endless bother about everything were in fact all centred round the embellishment of that one room. Many a time he went in on some pretext or the other to see what his mother and aunt were up to, but each time they bustled him out: even a casual glance at the room was forbidden till the nuptial night.

Often while talking to his friends during the wedding ceremonies, or listening to women’s banter, Keshi’s eyes would settle on his mother. Although she was nearing forty and the twenty-two years of widowhood had hardened her expression and etched dark rings around her eyes, the wedding of her only child seemed to have wrought a miracle in her. Not a trace of fatigue showed on her face; the circles around her eyes had vanished. She looked exquisite in her white sari. To Keshi she was the most beautiful of all women he had ever seen.

Keshi feared that the fatigue and the sleepless nights would make his mother ill. Every night before he retired he would go to her and plead, ‘Mother, go to bed now!’ Far from resting herself she would instead come to his bed, gently rub oil on his temples and brow till he fell asleep. Then she would go back to her work.

Keshi had formed a habit of having oil rubbed into his scalp. During his examinations when he stayed up all night and wanted a couple of hours of sleep during the day, his mother would rub oil on his head. Even then Keshi, unable to stop gazing at her, would refuse to fall asleep. His mother would press the palms of her hands on his eyes and kiss them; she would run her fingers across his forehead, their soft silken touch laden with love that gradually made his lids heavy with sleep and at last he would fall into a deep slumber.

Keshi had learnt this art from her. Whenever his mother had insomnia because she was tired or worried, he would sit by her pillow and rub oil behind her ears till she fell asleep. When he was younger — thirteen or fourteen — his mother would often pull his head down and kiss him on his lips. When he grew into manhood, got his bachelor’s and then his master’s degree and was appointed professor of psychology in the local college, his mother began kissing his forehead instead of his lips.

All through the festivities Keshi wished he could rescue his mother from the crowd of women who had come to the wedding, lift her up bodily and force her to go to bed. But there she was as busy as ever, weaving garlands around the nuptial bed. When the flowers ran out she sent out people all over the town to bring more. She squandered money as it were of no value. He wanted to say to her, ‘
Ma,
why take all this trouble at the expense of your health? Your love means more to me than these ceremonial festivities, more than all these festoons and garlands. You mean more to me than such things. You will make yourself ill.’ But he knew that she would pay no heed to what he said. ‘Son, my own wedding was a non-descript sort of affair,’ she had told him when he tried to protest. ‘Your father was only a low-paid clerk; he hadn’t yet taken the competitive examination for the covenanted service. I do not want your bride to have any regrets. You just wait and see how lavishly I shall decorate the nuptial-bed for your bride!’

His aunt had pushed him on to the bed and said with a laugh, ‘Don’t you waste your time expounding philosophy!’ It took him some time to catch the insinuation.

He had had this room for a long time and he was familiar with everything in it — the bed and the rest of the furniture. His mother’s dressing table, her vanity case, her papier mache bangle box, her table lamp for which she had paid a tidy sum in Bombay, had been left just as they always had been. What made it look brighter were the garlands of jasmine buds — the first of the season. They were hung in long strings round a canopy frame to look like a floral mosquito net. They were also spread thick over the bed sheets. His bride lay on them like the goddess Flora. Her face was half-covered by her veil. The bed sheet was a virginal white.

Keshi imagined the scene of his mother’s wedding. She was the bride of a low grade clerk in the canal department. It must have been in a hovel, on a coarse stringed charpoy
;
in the dim light of a hurricane lantern. It all seemed so hazy and dreamlike. Later, his father had risen to the post of an executive engineer, and then his mother had had everything she wanted. But she never forgot the disappointment of her wedding night. She had adorned her son’s nuptial-bed as she would have liked her own to have been. In this way she was fulfilling a desire which had been frustrated. But in so doing she had unwittingly wrought instruments of torture for her son. Whichever way he turned in that bedroom, memories of past days came crowding into his mind.

‘Be sure not to waste your time expounding philosophy.’ His aunt’s words and her laughter echoed in his brain...Was he caught up in a web of his own fancy? What was his bride thinking? He thought of the many lives which he had heard were tragically destroyed by the groom’s impotence on the first night. But was it necessary for a man to prove his manhood on the first night of his marriage? Why did women set such store by it? Did they take a vicarious pleasure in preparing the bed, and live their own nuptial night over again? Did his mother also...?

The trouble she was taking in decorating the bed giving up her own for the purpose... bedecking it with flowers to demonstrate what her own nuptial-bed should have looked like — if her husband’s poverty and other obligations had not robbed her of the pleasure... Keshi beat his head violently with his fist. What was wrong with him? Why had he asked his mother for that bed? Yet he was only a child when he had asked. His mother should have known better.