TOWARDS THE END of summer, as every year, Dinu’s uncle Brijen set off for the station in their Dodge, which was washed and polished with wax by Dinu’s driver the day before so that its blue-black body became as shiny as beetle wings. Dinu and I stroked the long line of the bonnet and the two round headlights that turned the car into a frowning man in glasses. We caressed the case of the spare tire mounted by one of the doors, spat on the winged Dodge logo and rubbed it with our sleeves. We put our noses in through the window to smell the leather of the seats. Opening the doors was forbidden.
The next morning we woke early and sat on the wall waiting for Brijen Chacha to come back from the station. He had gone to receive a troupe of musicians.
Dada used to say Old Monk and Old Musicians were the only two things in Brijen’s life. Barely out of his nappies, he had sung his first flawless song one fine day to his wonderstruck audience of cook, coachman, and ayah, after which, at the age of nine, he had sung an entire thumri, following that at the age of eleven with a quart of rum before he fell down in a stupor. He had stopped neither singing nor drinking ever since. As if to prove my grandfather right, Brijen Chacha sat in the front row at concerts with his bottle of Old Monk beside him, drinking it down from full to empty through the evening.
We spotted the car on its way back from the station when it rounded the corner and reached the wilderness around the pir’s grave. We stood on the wall for a glimpse of the chief singer, but the back seat appeared to have only a bundle of cloth in it, the end of which flew like a banner from the open window. After the car had swept into Dinu’s drive and out of sight under their portico, there was a period of quiet. Then, with the clopping of horses’ hooves, a tonga appeared, piled with a confusion of boxes, trunks, harmoniums, and hookahs, and the long stems of tanpuras sticking out between luggage and people. The singer’s party would stay for a few days.
Every year we hung around the performers throughout the day but this time we were not allowed anywhere near the singer’s quarters. We could not fathom why until we heard Arjun Chacha take Brijen Chacha aside and hiss, “A woman! A singing, dancing girl? Take her to the mango orchards! Invite your other drunk friends for the show. Not here. Not in front of our women. Even our mother! God! Has the liquor addled you completely?”
The quarrels between Brijen and Arjun were legendary. They were as opposed to each other as water and oil, people said. Brijen was the drop of cold water that made smoking-hot oil explode.
Almost every wealthy family of our acquaintance had a brother or uncle, usually single, more often than not the younger sibling, who laid waste any inheritance and then fell back on his family, a lifelong burden. Here the situation was different in one detail. Brijen was younger than Arjun by a decade; yet, unusually for that time, their father (who doted on his younger child) had divided his wealth in half between both sons. Knowing he was no good at managing industries and farms, Brijen had made over almost all of his money to his older brother in one grand—doubtless inebriated—gesture saying he owned nothing but music and nothing and nobody would own him but music. This was not strictly true, because he made a sort of living by writing. Somewhere between his drinking and music, he managed to concoct novels in Hindi featuring an alcoholic detective with perfect pitch and a flawless memory for melodies. These novels, with titles like Silenced Anklets and Killer at the Concert, were published serially in a magazine devoted to detective fiction, and to my high-minded father’s endless annoyance his students waited agog for each installment, as did my mother.
Brijen’s female relatives adored him. He listened when they needed to talk, he laid down no rules, his eyes danced, his voice melted every bone in a woman’s body. He only had to sit down in the inner quarters, narrate the next chapter of his book, make up a funny poem, or call for a harmonium and a bottle, and the room lit up with laughter and singing. There was a boyish carelessness about his good looks and all over Muntazir, it was said, were smitten women who waited on their verandahs praying that Brijen would walk past, that their eyes would meet. Arjun could only gnash his teeth and suffer Brijen’s effortless popularity. This was how it had always been. What set him apart from other layabouts was not only his writing, it was that his gift for music was undeniable. He was widely accepted as an authority, famous singers counted him as a friend.
Every woman who sang or danced was not a whore, it was time to understand that, Brijen said to his brother in as patient a voice as he could muster. Akhtari Bai was a renowned and dazzling singer and you had to be a special kind of philistine not to be on your knees thanking your luck she had agreed to come. So what if she had been a courtesan, so what if she had acted in movies, there was nobody who sang with such purity. It was only because she had found a kindred soul in Brijen many years ago that she had agreed to come and it was their duty to make her feel as luxuriously sheltered as a pearl in a cushion of silk.
When his reasoning failed, Brijen Chacha stalked off to our house, to my mother. We were used to him turning up at odd hours to give her magazines, examine her new paintings, read out from his stories, but this time his visit was charged with purpose. Could my mother come and tend to the singer? Arjun would let no woman from their family take care of her, but she needed someone. She had a tempestuous personality, she could go from calm to distraught in minutes, and Brijen was afraid she would be offended at being put into a guest room and left alone there with nobody to make a fuss of her. “You will understand her,” he begged my mother, “you too are an artist. You paint, you sing.”
Over time, I came to hear the many stories about the singer, Akhtari Bai, as she was known until she married a barrister about a decade later and came to be called Begum Akhtar. It was well known that a poet in Lucknow, who had gone mad for her beauty and her voice, had roamed the city robbed of every word other than her name, writing it on the walls in chalk, wandering dementedly until one day he was found dead in the street. It was said that the Nawab of Rampur was so infatuated by her that he wrapped her in gold, swore her smile was brighter than the sparkle of diamonds, and worshipped her every whisper. She grew tired of the gilded cage. She devised ingenious ways to infuriate him to her heart’s content, then ran away, taking with her all the jewelry he had draped her with.
The day before the concert at Dinu’s, Akhtari Bai turned melancholic and she dredged up old stories about false promises, broken hearts, and dark conspiracies to my mother, who spent the entire day in her room, emerging in the evening smelling of cigarette smoke and rum, oddly bright-eyed, tired and so distracted she talked of nothing else at dinner. Akhtari Bai was convinced a rival was trying to feed her herbs that would permanently ruin her voice, she could feel her voice going and the world crashing down. She had been poisoned once as a child and her sister had died of it, but she had lived and swore she knew how poison slithered through your blood to suck your veins dry. Between her spells of grief and suspicion she burst into uncontrollable, loud laughter. She laughed until her stomach ached, but she could not stop. My mother listened and sympathized and Brijen Chacha sent in bottle after bottle of rum and packs of Capstan cigarettes to her room while his brother fumed.
“Sometimes you simply have to have something. You feel something pulling you towards it. You can’t fight it,” my mother had said to my father once. It occurred to me much later that she was talking about herself. When was it that the thought of leaving first crossed her mind? I have so often tried to work it out. Did she start dreaming of escape soon after she met Mr. Spies and Beryl? Did it happen on the train ride down from our mountain holiday? Perhaps it was after she met the singer that it became inescapable—the sense that she too was made for a different life.
I speculate about what Akhtari Bai told her in that room over the hours they spent together, when they shared stories of lost opportunities and rash chance-taking. A young, beautiful singer living as she pleased, loving as her fancy took her, throwing tantrums, earning fame and money from her own gifts. In my mind’s eye I have often seen my mother trying one of Akhtari Bai’s Capstans, then her first sip of rum. When we played our hunting games, my grandfather called his sips of whisky doses of Dutch courage. I think Akhtari Bai was my mother’s dose of Dutch courage. The days with the singer gave her the final push towards a decision.
The evening of the concert, gaslights buzzed with insects in the front verandah, where a spotless white cloth had been spread over a big carpet. Bolsters and cushions covered with snowy white linen had been laid there for the singer and her troupe. This was to be the stage. Everything shone in the brilliance of the new lights. The rest of the garden was in darkness but for the flickering of a hundred earthen lamps. Incense sticks had been lit to perfume the evening and drive away mosquitoes. There was an air of throbbing excitement in the people streaming in for the concert: nobody could believe that a singer of this eminence, notoriety, and allure was in our staid neighborhood.
A quarter of an hour before the concert, I saw shadowy figures scurrying around searching for Akhtari Bai, and when Brijen Chacha cross-examined one of the accompanists, the man confessed that nobody knew where the singer was; she had not been seen for the past hour or more. Brijen Chacha roared at the watchman, Kharak Singh, who had put a dented pair of binoculars to his eyes and was peering over the wall in search of the singer. “Are you watching birds with that thing? Where is she?”
On the other side of the house, you could hear the guests chatter while we fanned out as a search party. Some went to the roof, others scoured the front garden, one determined enthusiast who seemed experienced in the ways of tracking down lost maestros walked through the rooms of the house checking the beds and shaking out the curtains as if nothing could be put past singers afflicted by gloom. But there was nobody in the house, only Dinu’s mother, grandmother, and aunts, who had been warned against stepping out, huddled listlessly together. In the end it was Rikki who spotted her, and barked the way she did when she was half-afraid: soft, tentative woofs.
At first the voice only lapped at the edges of our ears. It was a quiet voice, trying itself out, cracks at its edges. There were pauses for coughs; the clearing of a hoarse throat; fresh starts. By degrees the voice gathered power until it spilled from the back of the garden to where we stood. Who knows why your very name fills my eyes with tears today, she sang, and the darkness around the trees brimmed over with anguish. The air was laden with the powerful scent of Raat-ki-rani, the night jasmine that flowered in a great big bush at the edges, beyond the tree. Akhtari Bai was sitting in front of the perfumed shrub, eyes closed, lost to the world, one hand on an ear to shut out all other sound as she sang, dupatta off her head, nosepin sparkling in the light of our lanterns.
What is it about the evening that fills my eyes with tears today?
She was in shimmering white clothes and a pearl-and-gold tikli covered one side of her forehead. We could see Beryl de Zoete sitting beside her, back very straight, eyes never leaving the singer’s face. Next to them stood my mother, leaning against a tree. She wore a soft white muslin sari and no jewelry other than her usual gold earrings and a chain of twisted gold around her neck. Her hair was up in a bun that had loosened in all her running around. It was studded with crimson champa flowers. She saw us and came to me to whisper, “Quiet—tell Rikki to be quiet.” But at that moment, Rikki, ever obliging, let out a shrill volley of barks.
Akhtari Bai stopped and stumbled to her feet. She put her dupatta back on her head and shook out the folds of her clothes. “Don’t get up, please,” Brijen implored her. “You must sing wherever you want, whenever you want. We will come and listen wherever you choose to sing.” He turned and, with a dramatic change in tone, yelled ferociously at nobody in particular, “Gag that bloody cur!”
My mother stroked Rikki and said to Brijen, “Please don’t lose your temper. I’ll take her away.”
“Stay where you are,” he growled. “You are not to go anywhere.”
Akhtari Bai was not smiling when she turned to him. “Why won’t the dog bark? I’m no more than the village cockerel imitating a koel, the dog knows that. But this Englishwoman says she has spent one whole month here in this town and heard nothing worth listening to.” Her eyes glowed in the dark. “I told Gayatri, let me show the memsahib what real music is! The scent of these flowers, this sky cut with lightning, a head crammed with memories, and suddenly this ghazal came to me and filled me. The funny thing is that for once I was singing just for two women, not a roomful of men.” She broke into a merry laugh. “Women are nicer to sing to, Brijen Bhai! They are listening, not looking.”
Her voice rich with the liquids she had been drinking, she took a few steps towards the front garden. She swayed. Maybe she could not see in the half-dark, and she was very likely a little drunk. She reached out for Beryl de Zoete and held her elbow as she stumbled over clods of earth and tufts of grass. There was something tender and moving about the way a woman so small and unsteady placed her trust in a stranger from another country who towered over her. Beryl’s sweeping black dress was getting tangled underfoot, the feather she had stuck into a jeweled band around her head floated away, but she did not let go of the singer’s hand, propelling her slowly to safety.
When she reached the front garden, Akhtari Bai turned her face to the sky. Rapid lines of lightning shot across it, disappeared, returned. A low rumble came towards us through the trees. “Who knows if this is the end of the summer or the start of the rains? Who knows if anything is the end or the beginning?” she said with a wide general smile. Her lips were dark red, her eyes thickly lined with kajal.
“Well, your singer appears to have recovered her spirits,” my father said to Brijen Chacha. “With the help of a barrelful, no doubt.”
We progressed towards the verandah, and an immense wind came, blowing out the lamps and tugging bedsheets away to the corner of the garden in unruly bundles, sending some people fleeing for cover while others turned their faces up to the sky to feel the first rain of the monsoon. The shower set free the scents stored in the dry, hot earth and Akhtari Bai took a deep breath and cried, “Now I will sing!” She let go of Beryl and ran across the garden and into the verandah calling out, “Come, come, we will all sit on the verandah. I’ll sing a monsoon song.” Everyone stumbled towards the verandah to find places to sit, etiquette thrown to the gusty winds.
In the middle of the shuffling and scurrying and finding of places to sit, I saw my mother. Her hair cascaded to her waist and red flowers were trapped in its strands as if she had walked through a shower of blossoms. Gold glinted at her neck and ears, her sari trailed the grass. Her face was bright in the gaslights. In that split second, I saw a man’s hand reach out and place some fallen flowers into her palm and close it. I saw the hand, and the sleeve of a shirt or kurta, I could not tell which. For an instant her face shone with sweat and rain, then she disappeared into shadow.
This is the most vivid image I have of her in my head.