When She Was Queen (24 page)

Amritsar

November 1965

Sometimes there’s the crack of a gunshot far away in the night, the heart races, and then I sense that he too is awake, beside me, and lying still, waiting. The border is some twenty miles away, all sorts of visions about terrible, violent happenings come to spook the mind. But then the insects begin their clamorous music again, as though a throng of little people were banging on their pots and pans (you taught me this), and nothing has happened to threaten our lives. The fighting has stayed away from us so far. But we hear Ambala was bombed, and Adampur.

War! Our two countries are now at war!

Why do I speak of two countries—is this not your city, Amritsar, couldn’t you find my home from your old home in the coppersmiths’ alley even blindfolded? The children sing songs of patriotism and bring back flags, the radio plays “vande mataram” no end. The streets are full of soldier-jawans and people say let the war go on a few more days and we will be in Lahore drinking chai in Anarkali Bazaar. I tremble at the thought and I pray it will happen and that I will come over there in Ganesh-face’s car and see you there, but please don’t hide behind a burqa when it happens. Lahore is Lahore, they say, the unfortunate who has not set eyes on Lahore has not seen the world … you were my world, Khati, where are you now?

But your Pakistani army is not full of weaklings either, they are our same Punjabi jawans after all! India may be
big, but the Tamils and Malayalis are not going to come over and defend us, Ganesh-face says, and forget about the Bengalis, who would talk away Hindustan! God preserve my Lakshmi and Mohan and also you and yours, from bombs dropped from aeroplanes, from atom bombs, and from marauding soldiers and cutthroats, and let all our shame and modesty be preserved, we who have seen too much in the past.

My mother wrote to me regu
larly when I was in college, first in Chandigarh, then, after I got married, when I was with my husband in Boston. We returned from the United States in 1979 with a baby girl. Not long afterwards Punjab was in the midst of another conflict, this time with the Sikhs demanding an independent homeland. We left to live in Los Angeles. Mother’s letters were now longer, reflective and confessional, and I recall wondering at this talent of hers, which had lain hidden for so long, when she seemed to have time for nothing but her family’s welfare. Now I know she had perfected that gift on someone else, who had some earlier.
She never forgot about her friend, pyari Khatija, how could she. She did not write in the book because duty always called; and it must often have seemed futile and risky. The girlish habit of confiding in a private book was no longer compelling. I recall her muttering to herself in frustration, as mothers do; but I must be right when I imagine her speaking not just to herself but also to that
other, perhaps more intimate presence in her life. And then, after a long respite, unable to resist, Madhu would pick up her pen and book and address her at length; tell her what she told no one else.

September 1983

Tell me this was not a dream I dreamt and let me follow you, beckon to me again from that door, say “come,” once more … “there’s a safe place I’ll take you to where there’s no strife … a place far away from madmen whose lust for blood will never be satisfied….” Perhaps your lot turned out better after all, wherever you are. In this Punjab you left behind we yearn for peace once more. Do you know what is happening in your old city? Blood flows again, terror stalks the streets. A wedding party robbed and murdered the other day, a bus stopped and passengers butchered. The army patrols the street, Darbar Sahab, the Golden Temple, is surrounded on all sides. From the terrace of the old house you can see the jawans with guns at the ready pointed at the temple. There are frequent searches in the streets. But in our coppersmiths’ alley the soldier-jawans are the heroes. It is said the Golden Temple is full of weapons, but Indira Gandhi is afraid to send the soldiers in. We don’t have Sikh friends anymore, there is no trust left. Some of our friends have left the state, and our Lakshmi and Mohan are in America from where they may never return. I will never know my grandchildren.

Iman-se, as you might say, Lakshmi looks just like you—what a twist of fate! And when I saw you in that dream, perhaps it was because I had been staring at her photo and was reminded of you. One day when she was twelve or so, she asked me, Bi-ji, do you know anyone on the other side? Then I told her about you and where you had lived. I don’t know for sure if she is on the other side, I said. Then Bi-ji, she told me, Mohan simply can’t be allowed to bomb Pakistan, can he? This was at a time when my son had the ambition to become an air force pilot and serve the country. Come over, Ma, she says in her last letter. We’ve been to America two times now but our heart always yearns for home—and when we are here in beloved Punjab, the crown of Hindustan as our poet Waris Shah said, we live in terror and long to see the grandchildren.

Lakshmi lives in San Francisco, in California, where she is married to an engineer. IIT graduate and working with computers. They have two daughters, Kantala and Indira, six and four years old. Our son Mohan lives in Dallas. He is a professor of English. He is married to an American and has one son, Varun. Perhaps you have seen Dallas on television, in that show that goes by that name. When you see it, please think of me.

May 1991

Ah happiness, laughter! I weep tears of joy. How can I explain, who would understand? I catch myself singing!
Finally Ganesh-face said, Mohan’s mother, you were not as happy even at your son’s wedding!

She looks not the least bit like you, yet your light was shining in her eyes! I could see you in her face. I weep as I think of you, dear Khatija—you didn’t write, you didn’t come, but finally you sent this lovely angel to bring us together again! O the glory of the gods! O Lord, can this be true, I whisper, that I held
her
flesh and blood in my arms—let her be my daughter, Khati. I am asking this of you, and I have written to her father, your brother.

All this time, for tens of years, you were right next door, in Lahore! I could have come to you on ox cart or train or car, the skies that brought you rain showered on us also, and daily we saw the same moon smiling upon us here as it did on you there … every day we could hear Lahore on radio and see its wonderful shairs reciting their Urdu ghazals on television. I don’t have your address, Khati—the girl didn’t have it with her and she had no idea anyone such as I existed, who knew her grandfather’s family so closely and was attached to her phupi since childhood! And let me tell you this, Khati, the girl also wept—why would she cry, she who was not even born in this country? Because of the cloud of grief that hangs over us.

In a few months I will go to California and I will write to you from there and I will telephone you also. A crow can fly from your place to mine, yet we could not shout to each other across the border. This is what’s become of us who would spend nights huddled in bed together exchanging secrets and dreams.

Toronto

3 April 1992

Dear Lakshmi,

It was so good to speak to you on the phone and also to your mother. She did sound rather dispirited compared to when I saw her last year. I was sorry to learn your father passed away—that must have been quite a blow to her. He seemed so gentle and devoted to her when I met them.

Our meeting was the most heart-wrenching and of course at the same time a happy occasion. And what a fortunate one! One reads so much about the Partition of India, and yet to come face to face with it, in one’s own life and so close! In a strange way that I cannot quite explain, I too feel a victim of the Partition.

My father never went back to Amritsar, though he visited India many times, from East Africa, where I was born. But a few years ago Dad (whom I never thought of as nostalgic) got it into him that he wanted a photograph of the house he was born in, or even of the site, in case the house had been destroyed. When a certain Sikh professor from Guru Nanak University came to Toronto on a lecture tour, Dad went to meet him and asked him if upon his return to Amritsar he could take a photo of the old house or neighbourhood and send it to him. The professor duly did so—the house stood there, but in ruins. Then last year when I told my father I was planning to visit his hometown with my family during our trip to
India, he gave me Professor Hardev’s name and address. The rest you know. We visited the coppersmiths’ alley in the old city (which is such a maze of narrow streets, we couldn’t have found our way inside without our guide Professor Hardev); we saw my grandfather’s house, then stopped to inquire at the shop across the street, which turned out to belong to your uncle! We had tea at his house and telephoned your mother, who we learned from your uncle had been my aunt Khati’s dearest friend as a child. When I spoke to your mum on the phone, we both broke down. How cruel, fate—and yet surely a touch of kindness there? I had a feeling that I was reaching out to a long-lost and very dear relation; of course your mother broke down first, but still. Not only had I not met her yet, I had not (and have not) met my aunt (though I had heard about her).

Later my family and I visited Jallianwala Bagh (the site of the 1919 massacre and a walking distance from my grandfather’s old home) which, with bullet holes and all, impressed my son no end and turned him into an ardent anti-imperialist; and we went to the Darbar Sahab, or Golden Temple, with its memories of a more recent bloodshed. The Temple is visible from my grandfather’s house, from the terrace, over all the neighbouring houses. Then, in the afternoon, we went to see your parents.

I cannot forget how she (your mum) cupped my face in her hands and stared at me. She recalled everyone in my father’s family and asked about them. And how she laughed when I told her my Khati Phupi has twelve children!

Khati Phupi is at present in Dubai with one of her
numerous children. Did your mum get to speak to her on the phone? Perhaps we can get the two ladies to meet when Khati Phupi goes to Phoenix to see her daughter (who is a doctor).

I will call your mother before she leaves. And now that the two of us have established contact, we should remain in touch. Please accept my heartfelt best wishes for you and your family.

Yours sincerely,

Fatima

San Francisco

5 August 1992

Dear Fatima:

Yes, they met finally. It was not what one would expect—but what
can
we expect! As if such reunions happened every day!

We did not know that your Khatija Phupi was recovering from an eye operation. She stayed two nights, at our place—we insisted. But her son Latif had come with his family and put up in a hotel.

And now the details.

Khatija was dropped off at the door by Latif, who said he would stay longer when he came to pick his mother up. She was big—wide and tall—and wore a light cardigan over the shalwar kameez. She walked slowly, has problems with her knees and is contemplating surgery. I
simply couldn’t help staring at her as she came, you see I had heard about her even as a child. I had always imagined her as beautiful as a screen actress, and what I was seeing now was a much older, yet very striking, woman. Her face had the kind of irritated, pained look that the elderly tend to have, through which she gave a shy, uncertain smile, and her eyes quickly swept through the room. My mother was in the kitchen and before I called out she made her entrance. Briefly the two women stood and watched each other across the distance, then without a word uttered they started walking toward each other—slowly at first, then in a hurry. They embraced, quietly, wiped tears from their eyes—but not too many. They sat down on a couch, next to each other. Khatija was the first to speak. “You look well,” she said. “But you were the pretty one.”

“How are you, Khati?” my mother asked, in a tremulous voice.

“Almost blind in one eye, but inshallah another operation has been scheduled.”

They spoke quietly, one voice softer than the other; quite a contrast, the two of them, as they must always have been. I kept out of their way for some time, making the tea and so on, and fetching the kids from school. It was the strangest feeling for me—I wished I could read their minds. In that first hour they spoke only of their lives
now
—like two strangers—and then there would be some “inside” remark like “you would always …” or “like that Shahniji’s son….”

Over the next two days they spoke a little about the past, about their experiences since they parted that morning in
Amritsar. Khati and her family arrived in Bombay with nothing—their train had been so crowded, they had to give away the only suitcase they had between them, to be placed in storage and make room for one more passenger, and they never saw it again. Fortunately they knew people in Bombay. In August 1947 they took a ship to Karachi. Your father was already in East Africa, having left two years before. The following year Khati was given in marriage to a man from Lahore. Her husband, Ashfaq, was a dealer in carpets, which is what Latif Bhai does in Phoenix.