When She Was Queen (22 page)

Pyari, are you living or dead now, can you see me? May God preserve you on your journey to Bombay, may you see all the big film stars and may He make you one of them! Lord preserve Anand Chacha and Durga Chachi and little Kuntu and Jahan Bibi and Sheru and Kassam
and Noorali and Naseem Banu and Jalalu and my pyari pyari Khatija….

April 25, 1947

Pyari…

Quickly I must confess before shame makes me forget and bury this sin. I confess that for a moment, for the briefest little pul of time, I felt relief you’d be gone, before grief overtook me again. You know I was always a little jealous of you, Khati, tall and slim and fair, and I short and plump. There, judge me as you will. Remember that day how we spied on your brother Kassam trying on his hat in front of the mirror and strutting about like an English Sahab! I always thought I would marry him…. And that afternoon when your Bau-ji hurried inside from the shop, we were sitting on the bed with your mother and laughing, and he told us to leave the room and closed the door … and we heard him speaking inside and his voice became soft, and her exclaiming, and whispers and strange sounds. How we blushed. And you said, I so much want to give my milk to someone, and I said, Come, I will be your baby. I feel like that now.

So many memories come back. We were together all our lives. Now suddenly a wall has fallen between us and there is no door or window to look through … no sound even, so one may hear and be reassured. Where are you?…

This street of smithies is back to normal, but for your home which stands padlocked, silent. It has not seen such solitude in a hundred years, it has never looked so sad; if
it could weep, it would. A window upstairs is broken, there are things written on the wall. Someone’s left the remains of a mango outside. It can say nothing. It will now be allocated to a refugee family from the other side. The Darbar Sahab is full of refugees and at night we hear the singing of the holy kirtans. Chandra Kaka has visitors who’ve come from Rawalpindi. They came by train and partly by foot. The man’s name is Om Prakash-ji and his wife died on the road. There are two sons, Ramu and Balraj, and a girl Lata who is dying. Her hip is broken and she passes blood all the time. They took her shame on the road, she was tortured repeatedly … the story is so terrible, I shudder, and thank God for having saved me, for not making us leave our home.

Will I see you again, my friend? Will you send me a note from Bombay, will you even recognize me when you’ve become another Noorjehan or Suraiya and the world falls at your feet? Go on, become a heroine of the silver screen, Khati, so that one day I may see you larger than life, with long black hair, and full lips, large black eyes and long eyelashes … in the arms of a Prithviraj … and how ek-dum thrilled I would be!

May 21, 1947

Dear Khatija,

A chitthi arrived, at someone or other’s house from someone else who was on the train with you all, that you arrived in Bombay, safe. So I know you are alive—Hé
Rabba, what fears and nightmares have I carried inside me!—and I only await a chitthi from you. Now it seems as if you have simply moved town, though I know you all took only what you could carry and left your life’s possessions behind. The door to your place was opened and everything inside taken away. But listen, pyari, I went inside the house while the police and government people were there and I took your green dupatta with the gold spots; you left it behind and it was your favourite, they let me take it, it still carries your own sweet smell, I would know it anywhere, Khati, in any corner of the world and after a hundred years. I also extracted your notebook in which you would write poems. So I have your writing and your words and your love.

Will you return, Khati, when times are better?

We have a new maid downstairs in the kitchen. Her name is Anasuya. She says she lost her husband and one son in riots last year, and she has no one except her little Pintu, three years old. Bi-ji took pity on her and told her she could sleep in the kitchen. She is a little older than us, Khati, though not more than twenty. Now the strangest thing happened this afternoon after lunch. Anasuya was washing the vessels when she saw little Pintu playing outside the kitchen on the floor. He was naked, as was Bhabhi’s little Kishan. As soon as she saw her boy, Anasuya made a dash for him and quickly put his little pyjama back on him which he had dropped off, perhaps to look like his friend. We all stared in amazement, and the girl stared back frightened and with not a word of explanation. Then Bi-ji, Bhabhi, and I looked at each other in silence. We knew.

Can you guess, Khatija? Yes, Anasuya, or whatever her
name is, is a Muslim and she doesn’t want little Pintu’s circumcision to be seen. But how long can she keep her secret, Khati?

May 30, 1947

Oh Khati…

I do not wish to live.

Bi-ji has screamed for me, Bau-ji has grumbled outside the door; but I will not get up. For me this dark prison, like Anarkali’s tomb.

A most awful discovery.

Yesterday Bi-ji asked me to go clean up Kishore and Raj’s room. The maid leaves dust under the beds, so I took a jharu in my hand and went down on my knees to sweep there. No sooner had I stuck in the broom than out rolled a stick. It was a cane for walking, with brass bands going around, and it was covered with dust. Kishore! Raj!—I called as I wiped it with my hands, when Kishore came in and snatched it away from me, almost pulling my arms off. How can I describe what happened next? Such anger in his eyes! My hands were pink from the stains I had uncovered, a strand of grey hair was caught between my fingers. If you speak about this, I will kill you, he said. Such evil words from him! He couldn’t have meant them…. Now I can’t help thinking, my own brother could be a murderer … or was he just hiding the stick for someone else? I dare not look into those eyes again.

Now here comes Bi-ji.

June 7, 1947

It had to happen and it happened, the most awful thing. First little Pintu went missing. It was four in the afternoon, his mother had not seen him since noon. She went hither and thither in the street asking about Pintu. Where is my Pintu, have you seen my Pintu, arré where is my little boy …? Wasn’t he just here, they told her, he was playing, he must be about somewhere. But a mother knows, they say, deep inside her body she knows. She was frantic and she got others worried. She’s bad luck only, Bau-ji grumbled to Bi-ji in exasperation, she carries darkness around her wherever she goes. Then finally someone came to the shop and brought news to Bau-ji. Bau-ji came inside to the back, stood for a few moments at the threshold, silently watched us women in the yard, and then he announced, He’s been found. Before Bau-ji had quite finished adding, He’s dead, Anasuya had rushed to the outside door and uttered such a piercing cry in the alley … it cut through my entrails, Khati. Poor Pintu’s head was discovered on a pole outside the Darbar Sahab.

Anasuya did not get to see her Pintu again. She sat whimpering in the yard, outside the kitchen, her mind quite gone. The boy’s head had been removed by the police and his body found in a ditch. But now everyone knew she was a Muslim. What could we do? She spent the night here, but people came to see Bau-ji in the evening, in the shop, and I could hear the murmurs from where I lay trying to sleep. This morning two policemen and a third
man came and demanded to take away Anasuya. Bau-ji said all right, though he was not happy. Anasuya left, pulled roughly by the man who was not a policeman. One of the men in uniform turned and gave first Bau-ji, then the others who had gathered, an obscene grin with his dirty teeth, saying, “We’ll take care of her, don’t worry.”

O Khatija, let this nightmare end.

These three are from your book, Khatija—

July 1, 1947

To the unwary, everything looks normal. Children are playing in the yard, from the empty store down the street comes the sound of boys playing cricket. Really, it is as if
nothing untoward happened, except there are holes in our vision where people and sounds are absent. You are absent; your store is locked up and silent. But otherwise business proceeds apace; the sound of hammer on metal tells us so. Two vendors came by today, mountain women, selling apricots and apples. What a treat.

This morning I went to the Darbar Sahab to help with the langar. It had rained earlier and the mist was lifting, and the golden temple shone so brilliantly, it had to make you happy. At the gates two men were polishing the silver doors which you told me your grandfather had worked on. The food was bhindi and baingan, and the halwa had almonds in it. It seems as if we are determined to be happy despite all that has happened.

After we had cut the vegetables and cleaned the rice, and when we sat down for the food and tasted it and praised it, the women of our group suddenly fell silent. Then a girl called Joya started crying, silent tears; and then we all were crying, silently. There was another group of people who were refugees from Pakistan, who had lost much, including family, and they too were silent. After a while one of them came to us, an older woman named Nandini, and comforted us. Mahabharata has happened, she said. The gods have played their game. Now we must go on. We must not insult the temple food. And so we ate.