Among the human beings whom I came to know then were, of course, my little brother Prithvi, my brother Ganesh and my eldest brother Harish.
My earliest recollections of Prithvi were of a pale, shrivelled-up creature lying asleep on a small string cot, while my mother fanned the flies off him with a hand fan. His angular face with the high cheekbones was very frightening to me, as his eyes remained half open even while he was asleep. And his withered, wrinkled flesh, like that of an old man, seemed disgusting. I was not told why he was always asleep. Only, I was asked not to make any noise which might disturb him. Occasionally, he would open his eyes and stare at me while he sucked at my mother’s breasts, as though he were saying to me: ‘Hands off my mother’s breasts!’ Mostly I was too frightened by the uncanny look in his face to come near him. But sometimes, while he sucked at the teat with his eyes shut, I would begin to suck at the other teat. And then he would wake and stretch his hands to scratch me and drive me off his preserves. I was nothing if not persistent and would craftily steal into mother’s lap and begin to suck, until Prithvi began to scratch more furiously and hurt me. Then I desisted for a little time. But I soon forgot and reverted to the charge.
Now, however, with the two of us sucking hard at her breasts, mother got very tired and irritable. She began soon to paint chilli powder on her teats to keep us both off. Even this could not keep me off. I remember she had to use very drastic methods indeed in subsequent years to make me give up this habit.
If my attitude towards my little brother Prithvi was a mixture of fear, disgust and jealousy, my attitude to my elder brother, Ganesh, was jealousy pure and simple. I could not bear him to come near my mother at all. And I would see to it that father never picked him up in his arms, because I would make it a point to run out and be the first to greet father. And as both father and mother showed an obvious partiality towards me, I think Ganesh was warned off my monopoly interests and amused himself by sulking or by creeping out to play with the children from the followers’ lines.
Docile, calm and unperturbed by anything father or mother said, Ganesh seemed to have developed an extraordinarily tough skin to guard himself against being ignored, and this was obvious through the strange hard mask which was his flat, Mongoloid, snub-nosed face—a face which developed a deceptive gentleness in later years and successfully hid the virulence of a fiery temperament behind the outer facade of the saint. His ears were triangular at the tips, and the legend ran that he had been given as a gift to my mother by a Sadhu who came to beg for alms. The dry heat-spots on his cheeks and his absurd ears made him seem diabolical in my eyes. And as he generally ignored me when he went out to play with the bigger boys, I was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to tell upon him, so that father could shout at him or smack him and take my revenge on him.
Especially did I dislike the put-on, calm, ever meek and mild expression on his face and the seeming gentleness it betokened, which bluffed everyone into believing him to be a gentleman when I was nicknamed Bully the Budmash. Only Owen Sahib seemed to have the right instinct when, as against my appellation ‘Bully’, he called him ‘Brute’, and Prithvi ‘Bitti’, because the baby was so small. I resented the fact that every member of the brotherhood who came brought offers of betrothals for Ganesh, with tokens of sweets and dried fruit, and he alone was allowed to eat them when we all begged for ‘Oh Kuch’, meaning something tasty to eat, which mother kept in a big wooden box in the bedroom. Besides, he had arrogated to himself the ownership and care of the family cat and would never so much as allow me to touch her. And as he was always on the side of the angels and could so successfully hide his malice behind the facade of saintliness, he roused my undying hatred for his person.
Towards my eldest brother, Harish, I felt more idolatrous. For Harish was tall and lanky and came riding his steel horse in the afternoons all the way from the city of Lahore, laden with gifts of fruit and toys for me. And he always kept promising to take me to his school hockey match, riding astride the bar of his bicycle. Also, I envied him his sleight of hand when he beat the boys from the followers’ lines playing marbles at Khuti, the little hole in the ground. And I admired his proficiency at bat and ball, and the tricks he could perform on his cycle, making it stand absolutely still for half an hour. Also, when he was called upon to play hockey in the regimental eleven, he appeared in a magnificent striped shirt and blue shorts. And as he treated me to milk and sweets at the shop of the confectioner in the regimental bazaar, I was completely won over. I remember how bitterly I cried and sobbed out of sympathy when my father once beat him with a cricket stump for straying and playing about with the bhangi boys when he ought to have been studying and doing his home tasks.
As, however, Harish lived with my aunt Aqqi in town in order to be near his school, and came very rarely to visit us, I could not develop any deep friendship with him. The difference in our respective ages helped to keep us apart and to sustain my idolatry of him. Certainly, after my father, Harish was the hero of the early years of my life.