It seems to me that, running deep in the veins of my mother, perhaps deeper than she knew, the supernatural conceits of Naseem Aziz had begun to influence her thoughts and behavior—those conceits which persuaded Reverend Mother that aeroplanes were inventions of the devil, and that cameras could steal your soul, and that ghosts were as obvious a part of reality as Paradise, and that it was nothing less than a sin to place certain sanctified ears between one’s thumb and forefinger, were now whispering in her daughter’s darkling head. “Even if we’re sitting in the middle of all this English garbage,” my mother was beginning to think, “this is still India, and people like Ramram Seth know what they know.” In this way the scepticism of her beloved father was replaced by the credulity of my grandmother; and, at the same time, the adventurous spark which Amina had inherited from Doctor Aziz was being snuffed out by another, and equally heavy, weight.
By the time the rains came at the end of June, the fetus was fully formed inside her womb. Knees and nose were present; and as many heads as would grow were already in position. What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book—perhaps an encyclopedia—even a whole language … which is to say that the lump in the middle of my mother grew so large, and became so heavy, that while Warden Road at the foot of our two-storey hillock became flooded with dirty yellow rainwater and stranded buses began to rust and children swam in the liquid road and newspapers sank soggily beneath the surface, Amina found herself in a circular first-floor tower room, scarcely able to move beneath the weight of her leaden balloon.
Endless rain. Water seeping in under windows in which stained-glass tulips danced along leaded panes. Towels, jammed against window-frames, soaked up water until they became heavy, saturated, useless. The sea: gray and ponderous and stretching out to meet the rainclouds at a narrowed horizon. Rain drumming against my mother’s ears, adding to the confusion of fortune-teller and maternal credulity and the dislocating presence of strangers’ possessions, making her imagine all manner of strange things. Trapped beneath her growing child, Amina pictured herself as a convicted murderer in Mughal times, when death by crushing beneath a boulder had been a common punishment … and in the years to come, whenever she looked back at that time which was the end of the time before she became a mother, that time in which the ticktock of countdown calendars was rushing everyone towards August 15th, she would say: “I don’t know about any of that. To me, it was like time had come to a complete stop. The baby in my stomach stopped the clocks. I’m sure of that. Don’t laugh: you remember the clocktower at the end of the hill? I’m telling you, after that monsoon it never worked again.”
… And Musa, my father’s old servant, who had accompanied the couple to Bombay, went off to tell the other servants, in the kitchens of the red-tiled palaces, in the servants’ quarters at the backs of Versailles and Escorial and Sans Souci: “It’s going to be a real ten-rupee baby; yes, sir! A whopper of a ten-chip pomfret, wait and see!” The servants were pleased; because a birth is a fine thing and a good big baby is best of all …
… And Amina whose belly had stopped the clocks sat immobilized in a room in a tower and told her husband, “Put your hand there and feel him … there, did you feel? … such a big strong boy; our little piece-of-the-moon.”
Not until the rains ended, and Amina became so heavy that two manservants had to make a chair with their hands to lift her, did Wee Willie Winkie return to sing in the circus-ring between the four houses; and only then did Amina realize that she had not one, but two serious rivals (two that she knew of) for the Times of India’s prize, and that, prophecy or no prophecy, it was going to be a very close-run finish.
“Wee Willie Winkie is my name; to sing for my supper is my fame!”
Ex-conjurers and peepshow-men and singers … even before I was born, the mold was set. Entertainers would orchestrate my life.
“I hope you are com-for-table! … Or are you come-for-tea? Oh, joke-joke, ladies and ladahs, let me see you laugh now!”
Talldarkhandsome, a clown with an accordion, he stood in the circus-ring. In the garden of Buckingham Villa, my father’s big toe strolled (with its nine colleagues) beside and beneath the center-parting of William Methwold … sandalled, bulbous, a toe unaware of its coming doom. And Wee Willie Winkie (whose real name we never knew) cracked jokes and sang. From a first-floor verandah, Amina watched and listened; and from the neighboring verandah, felt the prick of the envious competitive gaze of Nussie-the-duck.
… While I, at my desk, feel the sting of Padma’s impatience. (I wish, at times, for a more discerning audience, someone who would understand the need for rhythm, pacing, the subtle introduction of minor chords which will later rise, swell, seize the melody; who would know, for instance, that although baby-weight and monsoons have silenced the clock on the Estate clocktower, the steady beat of Mount-batten’s ticktock is still there, soft but inexorable, and that it’s only a matter of time before it fills our ears with its metronomic, drumming music.) Padma says: “I don’t want to know about this Winkie now; days and nights I’ve waited and still you won’t get to being born!” But I counsel patience; everything in its proper place, I admonish my dung-lotus, because Winkie, too, has his purpose and his place, here he is now teasing the pregnant ladies on their verandahs, pausing from singing to say, “You’ve heard about the prize, ladies? Me, too. My Vanita will have her time soon, soon-soon; maybe she and not you will have her picture in the paper!” … and Amina is frowning, and Methwold is smiling (is that a forced smile? Why?) beneath his center-parting, and my father’s lip is jutting judiciously as his big toe strolls and he says, “That’s a cheeky fellow; he goes too far.” But now Methwold in what looks very like embarrassment—even guilt!—reproves Ahmed Sinai, “Nonsense, old chap. The tradition of the fool, you know. Licensed to provoke and tease. Important social safety-valve.” And my father, shrugging, “Hm.” But he’s a clever type, this Winkie, because he’s pouring oil on the waters now, saying, “A birth is a fine thing; two births are two fine! Too fine, madams, joke, you see?” And a switch of mood as he introduces a dramatic notion, an overpowering, crucial thought: “Ladies, gentlemen, how can you feel comfortable here, in the middle of Mr. Methwold Sahib’s long past? I tell you: it must be strange; not real; but now it is a new place here, ladies, ladahs, and no new place is real until it has seen a birth. The first birth will make you feel at home.” After which, a song: “Daisy, Daisy …” And Mr. Methwold, joining in, but still there’s something dark staining his brow …
… And here’s the point: yes, it is guilt, because our Winkie may be clever and funny but he’s not clever enough, and now it’s time to reveal the first secret of the center-parting of William Methwold, because it had dripped down to stain his face: one day, long before ticktock and lockstockandbarrel sales, Mr. Methwold invited Winkie and his Vanita to sing for him, privately, in what is now my parents’ main reception room; and after a while he said, “Look here, Wee Willie, do me a favor, man: I need this prescription filling, terrible headaches, take it to Kemp’s Corner and get the chemist to give you the pills, the servants are all down with colds.” Winkie, being a poor man, said Yes Sahib at once Sahib and left; and then Vanita was alone with the center-parting, feeling it exert a pull on her fingers that was impossible to resist, and as Methwold sat immobile in a cane chair, wearing a lightweight cream suit with a single rose in the lapel, she found herself approaching him, fingers outstretched, felt fingers touching hair; found center-parting; and began to rumple it up.
So that now, nine months later, Wee Willie Winkie joked about his wife’s imminent baby and a stain appeared on an Englishman’s forehead.
“So?” Padma says. “So what do I care about this Winkie and his wife whom you haven’t even told me about?”
Some people are never satisifed; but Padma will be, soon.
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sp; And now she’s about to get: even more frustrated; because, pulling away in a long rising spiral from the events at Methwold’s Estate—away from goldfish and dogs and baby contests and center-partings, away from big toes and tiled roofs—I am flying across the city which is fresh and clean in the aftermath of the rains; leaving Ahmed and Amina to the songs of Wee Willie Winkie, I’m winging towards the Old Fort district, past Flora Fountain, and arriving at a large building filled with dim fustian light and the perfume of swinging censers … because here, in St. Thomas’s Cathedral, Miss Mary Pereira is learning about the color of God.
“Blue,” the young priest said earnestly. “All available evidence, my daughter, suggests that Our Lord Christ Jesus was the most beauteous, crystal shade of pale sky blue.”
The little woman behind the wooden latticed window of the confession fell silent for a moment. An anxious, cogitating silence. Then: “But how, Father? People are not blue. No people are blue in the whole big world!”
Bewilderment of little woman, matched by perplexity of the priest … because this is not how she’s supposed to react. The Bishop had said, “Problems with recent converts … when they ask about color they’re almost always that … important to build bridges, my son. Remember,” thus spake the Bishop, “God is love; and the Hindu love-god, Krishna, is always depicted with blue skin. Tell them blue; it will be a sort of bridge between the faiths; gently does it, you follow; and besides blue is a neutral sort of color, avoids the usual color problems, gets you away from black and white: yes, on the whole I’m sure it’s the one to choose.” Even bishops can be wrong, the young father is thinking, but meanwhile he’s in quite a spot, because the little woman is clearly getting into a state, has begun issuing a severe reprimand through the wooden grille: “What type of answer is blue, Father, how to believe such a thing? You should write to Holy Father Pope in Rome, he will surely put you straight; but one does not have to be Pope to know that the mens are not ever blue!” The young father closes his eyes; breathes deeply; counter-attacks. “Skins have been dyed blue,” he stumbles. “The Picts; the blue Arab nomads; with the benefits of education, my daughter, you would see …” But now a violent snort echoes in the confessional. “What, Father? You are comparing Our Lord to junglee wild men? O Lord, I must catch my ears for shame!” … And there is more, much more, while the young father whose stomach is giving him hell suddenly has the inspiration that there is something more important lurking behind this blue business, and asks the question; whereupon tirade gives way to tears, and the young father says panickily, “Come, come, surely the Divine Radiance of Our Lord is not a matter of mere pigment?” … And a voice through the flooding salt water: “Yes, Father, you’re not so bad after all; I told him just that, exactly that very thing only, but he said many rude words and would not listen …” So there it is, him has entered the story, and now it all tumbles out, and Miss Mary Pereira, tiny virginal distraught, makes a confession which gives us a crucial clue about her motives when, on the night of my birth, she made the last and most important contribution to the entire history of twentieth-century India from the time of my grandfather’s nose-bump until the time of my adulthood.
Mary Pereira’s confession: like every Mary she had her Joseph. Joseph D’Costa, an orderly at a Pedder Road clinic called Dr. Narlikar’s Nursing Home (“Oho!” Padma sees a connection at last), where she worked as a midwife. Things had been very good at first; he had taken her for cups of tea or lassi or falooda and told her sweet things. He had eyes like road-drills, hard and full of ratatat, but he spoke softly and well. Mary, tiny, plump, virginal, had revelled in his attentions; but now everything had changed.
“Suddenly suddenly he’s sniffing the air all the time. In a funny way, nose high up. I ask, ‘You got a cold or what, Joe?’ But he says no; no, he says, he’s sniffing the wind from the north. But I tell him, Joe, in Bombay the wind comes off the sea, from the west, Joe …” In a fragile voice Mary Pereira describes the ensuing rage of Joseph D’Costa, who told her, “You don’t know nothing, Mary, the air comes from the north now, and it’s full of dying. This independence is for the rich only; the poor are being made to kill each other like flies. In Punjab, in Bengal. Riots riots, poor against poor. It’s in the wind.”
And Mary: “You talking crazy, Joe, why you worrying with those so-bad things? We can live quietly still, no?”
“Never mind, you don’t know one thing.”
“But Joseph, even if it’s true about the killing, they’re Hindu and Muslim people only; why get good Christian folk mixed up in their fight? Those ones have killed each other for ever and ever.”
“You and your Christ. You can’t get it into your head that that’s the white people’s religion? Leave white gods for white men. Just now our own people are dying. We got to fight back; show the people who to fight instead of each other, you see?”
And Mary, “That’s why I asked about color, Father … and I told Joseph, I told and told, fighting is bad, leave off these wild ideas; but then he stops talking with me, and starts hanging about with dangerous types, and there are rumors starting up about him, Father, how he’s throwing bricks at big cars apparently, and burning bottles also, he’s going crazy, Father, they say he helps to burn buses and blow up trams, and I don’t know what. What to do, Father, I tell my sister about it all. My sister Alice, a good girl really, Father. I said: ‘That Joe, he lives near a slaughterhouse, maybe that’s the smell that got into his nose and muddled him all up.’ So Alice went to find him, ‘I will talk for you,’ she says; but then, O God what is happening to the world … I tell you truly, Father … O baba …” And the floods are drowning her words, her secrets are leaking saltily out of her eyes, because Alice came back to say that in her opinion Mary was the one to blame, for haranguing Joseph until he wanted no more of her, instead of giving him support in his patriotic cause of awakening the people. Alice was younger than Mary; and prettier; and after that there were more rumors, Alice-and-Joseph stories, and Mary came to her wits’ end.
“That one,” Mary said, “What does she know about this politics-politics? Only to get her nails into my Joseph she will repeat any rubbish he talks, like one stupid mynah bird. I swear, Father …”
“Careful, daughter. You are close to blasphemy …”
“No, Father, I swear to God, I don’t know what I won’t do to get me back that man. Yes: in spite of … never mind what he … ai-o-ai-ooo!”
Salt water washes the confessional floor … and now, is there a new dilemma for the young father? Is he, despite the agonies of an unsettled stomach, weighing in invisible scales the sanctity of the confessional against the danger to civilized society of a man like Joseph D’Costa? Will he, in fact, ask Mary for her Joseph’s address, and then reveal … In short, would this bishop-ridden, stomach-churned young father have behaved like, or unlike, Montgomery Clift in I Confess? (Watching it some years ago at the New Empire cinema, I couldn’t decide.)—But no; once again, I must stifle my baseless suspicions. What happened to Joseph would probably have happened anyway. And in all likelihood the young father’s only relevance to my history is that he was the first outsider to hear about Joseph D’Costa’s virulent hatred of the rich, and of Mary Pereira’s desperate grief.
Tomorrow I’ll have a bath and shave; I am going to put on a brand new kurta, shining and starched, and pajamas to match. I’ll wear mirrorworked slippers curling up at the toes, my hair will be neatly brushed (though not parted in the center), my teeth gleaming … in a phrase, I’ll look my best. (“Thank God” from pouting Padma.)
Tomorrow, at last, there will be an end to stories which I (not having been present at their birth) have to drag out of the whirling recesses of my mind; because the metronome music of Mountbatten’s countdown calendar can be ignored no longer. At Methwold’s Estate, old Musa is still ticking like a timebomb; but he can’t be heard, because another sound is swelling now, deafening, insistent; the sound of seconds passing, of an approaching, inevitable midnight. r />
Tick, Tock
PADMA CAN HEAR IT: there’s nothing like a countdown for building suspense. I watched my dung-flower at work today, stirring vats like a whirlwind, as if that would make the time go faster. (And perhaps it did; time, in my experience, has been as variable and inconstant as Bombay’s electric power supply. Just telephone the speaking clock if you don’t believe me—tied to electricity, it’s usually a few hours wrong. Unless we’re the ones who are wrong … no people whose word for “yesterday” is the same as their word for “tomorrow” can be said to have a firm grip on the time.)
But today, Padma heard Mountbatten’s ticktock … English-made, it beats with relentless accuracy. And now the factory is empty; fumes linger, but the vats are still; and I’ve kept my word. Dressed up to the nines, I greet Padma as she rushes to my desk, flounces down on the floor beside me, commands: “Begin.” I give a little satisfied smile; feel the children of midnight queueing up in my head, pushing and jostling like Koli fishwives; I tell them to wait, it won’t be long now; I clear my throat, give my pen a little shake; and start.
Thirty-two years before the transfer of power, my grandfather bumped his nose against Kashmiri earth. There were rubies and diamonds. There was the ice of the future, waiting beneath the water’s skin. There was an oath: not to bow down before god or man. The oath created a hole, which would temporarily be filled by a woman behind a perforated sheet. A boatman who had once prophesied dynasties lurking in my grandfather’s nose ferried him angrily across a lake. There were blind landowners and lady wrestlers. And there was a sheet in a gloomy room. On that day, my inheritance began to form—the blue of Kashmiri sky which dripped into my grandfather’s eyes; the long sufferings of my great-grandmother which would become the forbearance of my own mother and the late steeliness of Naseem Aziz; my great-grandfather’s gift of conversing with birds which would descend through meandering bloodlines into the veins of my sister the Brass Monkey; the conflict between grandpaternal scepticism and grandmaternal credulity; and above all the ghostly essence of that perforated sheet, which doomed my mother to learn to love a man in segments, and which condemned me to see my own life—its meanings, its structures—in fragments also; so that by the time I understood it, it was far too late.