Memory of light, p.1
Memory of Light, page 1
RUTH VANITA
MEMORY OF LIGHT
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Historical characters
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
for Sujata Raghubir
न हि विचलति मैत्रि दूरतु अपि स्थितानम्
1
I absorb every word she says, leaning in slightly, a snake following the piper’s swaying head. She’s in my sister’s room—is it now mine? Light slants in from the terrace, and I hear my mother moving about outside.
A little restless, a little sad, back from one of her journeys, she talks to me. I take her hand and stroke it lightly. If two lines of lightning touch the same spot on earth do they merge or fizzle out?
My eyes stir. Still here, after all. Past and present stone walls, future a window of air. Between us now, Chapla, is the fourth wall, a wall of light, without windows. Dreaming, I pass through it. I close my eyes, hoping to return to the place where I was a moment ago, but the wall refuses to melt . . .
Anyone can interrupt my writing, and everyone does. Nadira pokes her head through the curtains. ‘Come with me to Ram Awadh Johri? I have to order a necklace for Bhajju’s wedding and also pick up that locket you gave me. I’d better do it before he gives it to someone else the way he did my ring; luckily, it was Bakhshi he gave it to, and she recognized it.’
‘He’s been seeing you two together for years,’ I say, covering up my papers and standing up to stretch. ‘He probably knew she would give it to you.’
‘No, he often gives things to the wrong people these days; he’s beginning to lose his memory with age. I don’t think I should wait for him to send it.’
‘I told you not to leave your jewellery with him. Why don’t you give him just the small jobs that he can do in your presence, and give the important stuff to that clever son of his who’s fought with him and set up his own shop?’
‘What? How cruel that would be—after the years and years that he’s done all our work. So what if he’s losing his memory—none of us is growing any younger. And I don’t like that son of his—he thinks he’s descended from heaven just because his name is Hanuman and he’s built a big house and painted it an ugly blue. I’d rather Ram Awadh lose my stuff than Hanuman find it.’
‘Very good—then don’t complain, pigeon. May he lose many more of your things to make you happy. I’ll be down in a minute.’ I pinch her plump, comfortable cheek on my way up to the roof.
In the late afternoon warmth, the winged ones surround me, whirring. Sleepy winter sunshine in an unusually quiet moment—the girls are dozing away last evening’s pleasures, work, quarrels, the night’s fatigue. Frail clouds, sky almost indigo deep. Beyond our neighbourhood stretches the city, white, gleaming, with touches of pink, trees like bunchy green flowers between the buildings.
Guddu settles on my shoulder and nibbles the top of my ear. She’s ageing, her rose-brown face starting to lose its lustre. Feathered beings should not age. Like pari, fairies, they should appear, disappear, but stay forever young. Like young poets, young dancers I remember, who melted, radiant, ice on a summer afternoon. Not slowly into a puddle like the rest of us. I try to run lightly down the steps as I used to, but my knees refuse.
I lift the curtain at my mother’s door to see if she wants us to bring her anything. She’s reading the life of a saint and looks up querulously. ‘No, what do I need? Sitting here alone all the time.’
‘Alone, alone!’ Mitthu chimes in, head on one side, as if to point out how often he hears this word. Reproachful eyes, black, beady, fixed on me, he pushes a half-eaten green chili towards the bars. I wish I could smack him, but I bite my lip, take the cage out and hang it in the gallery so that he can see the sky. Taking a deep breath, I look back in.
‘Eat on time, don’t wait for us, Ammi. I’ll tell Shabbo.’
‘Arey, that girl has no sense of time. She’s too busy adorning herself and expecting admirers to come to the kitchen door.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. You’re so taken up with your scribbling you don’t notice. Why do you think that errand boy from Sandela—what’s his name with the big earrings . . .?’
‘Mangu?’
‘Yes, Mangat Ram—why do you think he’s always standing at the back door calling for water to drink? So that she’ll bring it out, what else?’
‘Oh, Ammi, it’s winter’s end, one gets thirsty. And water from inside is colder than water kept outside.’
Ammi sniffs and returns to her reading.
She was once the best performer in the city, I remind myself, pushing down the black fog that rises in my chest. Only mothers and sisters, or those who become like mothers or sisters, can irritate one in this precisely disproportionate way. She once had scores of men at her feet—our own noblemen, courtiers, magnates, and also the English officers with their presents of jewels, money, clothes—she still has those French shoes from Herbert Sahib—no wonder she feels neglected now.
Neither of her two daughters inherited her gift. My sister Shirin sings—or sang—adequately. More important, she knows how to get what she wants. That’s how she became Nawab Ghaziuddin’s umpteenth wife. I was considered too clumsy to dance, my voice, though pleasant, had no staying power, and worst of all, I generally thought of a witty response after the moment had passed. Nor was I beautiful; my looks were just good enough to make one wish for more. Starting to read at the age of three was not much use, it turned out. I scribble passable verse, but that is not a particularly valuable skill because there are poets in every lane and alley, and several great ones. Then again, Sharad says, many who are thought great now won’t be remembered in fifty years, let alone a hundred.
Ammi is from Shahjahanabad, the hub of the world. She never tires of listing the noblemen who gathered at her grandmother’s home in Delhi. She names their wives too, at whose homes her young mother sometimes performed. I notice her listeners sighing inwardly when she repeats these stories, and sometimes I try to change the subject. Nani was so fair, Ammi says, that her skin was transparent. When she drank, you could see the water flow down her throat. I grow more and more embarrassed because Ammi herself is dark and has never been considered beautiful, and all this leads up to her hinting that her own father was none other than the Emperor himself, the Mughal lord of the world, actually lord of not much more than Delhi. If he was, it was of little use to you, I sometimes feel like snapping, because you had to run away to Banaras when that cruel traitor who called himself Imad-ul Mulk blinded the Emperor and his mother. She was one of us, his mother, a dancer before she became a queen, and they say she had an affair with a khwajasarai. She’d have been better off remaining one of us—she’d have kept her eyes.
I go down the next flight of stairs. Despite my annoyance with Ammi’s complaints I check on Shabbo who turns out to be industriously grinding mint chatni just outside the kitchen, keeping one eye on the crowd of children in the yard and one on a simmering pot. Winter sunlight filters through a haze of smoke from the chulha. Why is it still smoking so late in the day? Oddly, I like the smell of smoke on a declining winter afternoon, a time of day Chapla used to find depressing. In the back alley, an urchin is riding a street dog he’s trying to adopt against his mother’s wishes. The women above leading the life of art, the men and the workers below, their life spilling out on to the streets. I hear the girls upstairs practising, the steady hum of the tanpura, feet stamping, ankle bells ringing.
In the gallery, Mahtab Baji is painting her nails, applying each tiny stroke just as meticulously as when her hands were unwrinkled. To tell the truth, they are still remarkably smooth for her age. I ask if she wants anything. ‘Yes, Nafis,’ she says in her slow, creamy voice, a bit like a contented purr, ‘Please get me some imartis. I don’t know why but since yesterday I’ve been longing for them. I was going to send Shabbo but I haven’t been able to get hold of her.’ Shabbo, hidden by the gallery’s overhang, pretends not to hear and I smile to myself; Mahtab Baji daintily consumes large quantities of sweets yet manages to stay sleek and milk-white while I, trying to control what I eat, break out in spots and put on weight.
Mangu bows as I emerge from the front door and get into the palanquin. I give him a note for Sharad. What huge dark eyes the boy has, and what long lashes. We’re not going far but the streets are crowded and the palanquin bearers are bored so we have to devise work for them.
Nadira, waiting in the palanquin, is counting coins she extracts from her bodice pocket. As she concentrates, her tongue flicks each corner of her mouth and her forehead twitches, movements I’ve seen almost every day for years, the same yet different as her face ages.
We pass Roshan-ud Daula’s sweetshop, always obscured by a crowd, some devouring hot sweets, others shouting their orders over many heads. The present-day Roshan, imperturbable as his father and grandfather, proceeds with his work, unmoved by the hubbub. The faces have changed, the shop is bigger, but the scene is the same. Familiarity, one of the small consolations of ageing, I think, but don’t say. Such sententious thoughts are best kept to oneself. I hope Sharad, retired to his childhood village, finds such markers there, and has stopped missing the ones accumulated here.
Food is another consolation, to my mind. While Nadira argues with the jewel ler (she’s a skilful bargainer, which he enjoys; I, on the other hand, am no fun for him), I pick up nankhatai from the Surati Bania three shops down. Madanmohan is coming to see me tonight, and he has the oddest taste in snacks to accompany his drinks. He wants the actual sweetmeat, not a sweet young thing. I don’t see him much since he moved to Faizabad, so it’s a special occasion.
On the way back, I listen with half an ear to Nadira’s repetitive worries about her granddaughter Sona. ‘Such a dreamer she is—doesn’t want to read or write or dance or sing. All she wants to do is run around or lie on the swing, gazing at the sky, or play with the deer and the pigeons. She’s behaving like a good-for-nothing boy. We may as well have had a boy.’ Nadira can’t believe that her precious heir, her only daughter Azzo’s only daughter Sona may not turn out to be a star. We have other potential stars, I could remind her. But that usually upsets her even more so I refrain.
The sun is setting when we get back. As my foot touches the ground I realize I’ve forgotten the imratis—how annoying—I was right next-door to the shop, and was even thinking about how it hasn’t changed much. Dreamers and grandmothers of dreamers! Mangu is back, and Sharad has actually written a note. He doesn’t always reply right away. It depends on his mood. I go up to the roof and read it, in the hush of the pigeons’ flutterings as they prepare to roost and the tumult of birds wheeling in great circles and ovals above, before they settle, twittering, in the trees that flow down to the rooftops. A line of screaming green cuts through the circles, parrots on their way to rest. Nothing much in the letter—the usual little goings-on. The new breed of tomatoes he’s growing, his niece’s marriage, his back pain. This niece was his housekeeper, but a younger one is going to take her place. He may come to the city to consult the surgeon at the Residency who also attends on the Nawab. He’ll hear the new singers at the impending ceremony—one of our girls, Bhajju, already under prince Nasiruddin’s protection, is going to become his next wife. And visit his friends at court. And see me. I look up and across the rooftop; I’ve always liked the way my shadow makes me look in the evening—tall and slender instead of short and inclined to dumpiness.
A pinprick in my heart as I roll up the note to put in my basket full of many such little rolls. A nudge, like the ache in my knees as I descend the rickety stairs. I must remember to have them repaired. Shabbo hasn’t yet lit the lamp in my room. When I call, she yells back something unintelligible and I hear her anklets jingling as she takes off in the opposite direction. Perhaps there’s something to Ammi’s complaints. My nurse, Dadda, comes in, muttering, and lights the lamp, the tremor in her hands endangering the cushions. Hard to recall her as that sprightly busybody running in and out with her little girl at her heels.
By the time I hear Madan’s voice downstairs, the lamp has found its tempo, and down the gallery Nadira’s daughter and granddaughter are singing, their voices rising and falling as if with the flame. An unusual lot they seem to me, my men friends. Or perhaps I’m the unusual one, having refused a patron, refused to travel, refused childbirth. And embraced instead these interrupted conversations, scribblings, memories.
Madan, Sharad, the poet Insha—I saw each one for the first time by lamplight. That’s not unusual, because it’s at the lamp-lighting hour that men visit us, after the day’s work, to shake off money-counting, the stratagems of court and business, the demands and schemings of parents, siblings, wives, children, aunts, uncles. To live briefly in the eternal youth of conversation, poetry, music, dance. In the shadows thrown by lamps, wayward, whimsical, almost anyone seems alluring—at least for a while. We sleep much of the day but how do the men continue their daily routines after staying awake most of the night? I suppose they manage because they don’t visit us every night.
It was in Mir Insha’s entourage that I met Sharad. Cool as his name, the son of a trader in cloth whose wealth tripled, then quadrupled when fabrics from Kalkatta and Dhaka poured into the market during those years before and after the drought when the city kept growing, sprouting markets, shops, inns. Enough to allow Sharad to pursue his interest in designing and decorating homes and palaces. There was a restraint to Sharad that coexisted with a peacock-like awareness of his looks. A taut discipline held in balance those gazelle eyes, arched brows, flowing locks. When I first met him, Sharad was one of Mir Insha’s few students, in his shadow. Then they drifted apart as so many do, sooner or later.
Madan is about as different from both of them as it’s possible to be—a tradesman with a tradesman’s canniness that manages to be quick and obtuse at the same time. Him I first saw hesitantly entering Ammi’s room with a group of businessmen. A bit like a turtle slowly venturing out of its shell.
Here he is now, and he’s lost some weight, I notice, but still has a paunch. He tells Dadda there’s a sack of rice and a bunch of sugarcane downstairs, and she summons the boys to carry them to the storeroom. Mitthu announces Madan’s arrival with a cackle, and Madan stops to feed him a shred of the sugarcane that he’s brought up for him. I’ve always preferred the pigeons’ cooing to the parrots’ gabble so I draw the curtain across my doorway and call out to Shabbo to put the cage inside and cover it for the night. That will silence Mitthu. Not for the first time I wish I could release him to join his tribe in the sky but I can’t because they would tear him to bits.
‘Where’s that piece of your heart?’ Madan teases, as he settles into the cushions with a sigh.
‘Nadira? She’s gone to the palace; Shirin is having a session for the lal pari. Nadira is much nicer than I am; thank God she keeps up with everyone so I don’t have to.’
‘Ah, she’s a lucky one—that Nadira Bai. Well, I’m happy she’s out so I get some time alone with my girl.’ He’s joking, of course—odd that it’s pleasant to have once been desired, even by someone for whom desire never so much as flickered. ‘By the way, how’s Shirin’s feud with the other begams going?’
‘No idea. Perhaps that’s why she’s summoning the red fairy—to defeat the others and become chief among the junior wives. But there’s no way she can win that battle.’ I find the ups and downs of my sister’s marriage to the Nawab and her rivalries with his wives exhausting, not least because my mother gets so animated talking about them. Wives by courtesy; only the first four are really married to him.
‘Speaking of which, have you heard that the prince’s next big marriage may be to a firangin? They call her Vilayati Begam. She looks something like the one your Chapla Bai may have had a bit of a crush on. What was her name—the one you met at Martin Sahib’s house?’
My body seems to constrict, a trick it has when that name is spoken. But I respond calmly, as I have for so many years.
‘The wife of Plowden Sahib. Her name was Sufia but Chapla called her Lizbeth. I don’t think it meant anything, though. Some people just have a flirtatious manner; it’s part of their charm. Or perhaps that’s what charm is.’
‘No, charm is the art of listening. Chapla Bai was perfect at that. She would get everything out of you, and hardly tell you anything, but ever after you would feel as if you were one of her intimates. You’re not so bad at weaving that sort of spell yourself, my dear.’
‘She’s certainly cast a spell on Kashi.’ I hand him the platter with the nankhatai and nuts, and start making paan.
‘Yes, quite the reigning queen. I hear whoever she promotes has it made. But no daughters or granddaughters?’
‘No, just a son.’
‘That’s a pity. No one to inherit all those gifts.’
‘Well, our Azzo—Nadira’s daughter, you know—spent a couple of years with her in Kashi and learnt a lot.’ Madan doesn’t visit often now, and I’m not sure how many details he remembers.
‘Of course, of course.’ He chuckles. ‘And acquired her own daughter there. Don’t tell Nadira Bai I said this but her daughter Azizan is not a patch on her sister, the first Azizan.’
‘Chhath, you always had strange tastes.’ He gives me a look, and I giggle. ‘Also, things we remember from when we were young shine brighter. I think our Azzo is more attractive.’
‘Where did the first Azizan come from, by the way?’
