The news of Prithvi’s death brought a stream of visitors to our house. Among them, two whose personality was immediately imprinted on my mind, were my uncle Pratap and my aunt Devaki.
They were a magnificent pair: my uncle Pratap was as handsome as my aunt Devaki was lovely. And under the spell of the charm they radiated, I forgot all the adverse things which had become associated with them in my mind through the legends and stories current in our household. They made a tremendous fuss over me, intoning the nonsense rhyme associated with my nickname again and again, fondling me, kissing me and embracing me and promising to take me with them to Amritsar on their return. And as aunt Devaki gave me a bone out of the meat which she cooked for the midday meal, because my mother seldom cooked meat with her own hands in her kitchen, I was completely won over to them and longed for the time when I would be transported to their house to live in Amritsar which seemed to stretch, like the golden city of the golden temple, beyond the shimmering frontiers of light.
In the afternoon, while uncle Pratap had his siesta under the shade of the singing casuarina trees on the roadside, I pestered aunt Devaki with constant inquiries about the time they were to leave. As she could hardly hear herself speak because of my persistent attempts to engage her attention, she asked me to go and assemble my luggage in order to be ready to leave in the evening. At this I made my mother’s life hell by insisting on her giving me my new clothes so that I could tie them into a bundle in readiness for the departure.
She tried at first to fob me off with the promise that she would give me all I wanted before I left. As I would not wait, she lured me into the inner sanctum of the house and tried to lull me to sleep on the cot on which Prithvi used to sleep. Not only was I frightened of lying down there, but I was never addicted to the habit of having a siesta, for it was well known in my mother’s phrase that ‘sleep never enters the pupils of his eyes’. And on that particular day, I was, of course, too excited to sleep. So mother began to whisper to me, beneath the audible lullabies and sweet nothings which were meant for the ear of Devaki, some of the most awful things about them, purporting to inform me how they ate meat always and drank wine and kept loose company and how unhappy I should be if I ever went to live at their house. This was the surest way of making me more determined than ever to accompany my uncle and aunt, for I had already relished the taste of that bone which I had been given out of the meat that Devaki had cooked. Whereupon my mother smacked me hard and left me to sulk in the corner, enjoining me not to weep, sob or whimper upon pain of her complaining to my father, who would surely apply much sterner remedies to cure me of my stubbornness and mischief.
I was terror-stricken at the punishment which I received at the hands of my mother, one of the first thrashings that I had ever had. But much as I tried to suppress my sobs for fear of the beating with a cricket stump, which my father would inflict on me even as I had once seen him inflict it on my eldest brother because he had been playing with the bandboys all day and wasting his time, I could not restrain myself from weeping.
Aunt Devaki came and, picking me up in her arms, swayed me from side to side to the tune of ‘Bully, bully …’ Then uncle Pratap came and made some lassi of milk and water and gave me a tumblerful. This consoled me somewhat. Of course, I blurted out to him and Devaki in faltering accents all the things my mother had whispered to me to support her refusal to send me to Amritsar. These revelations amused my aunt, but they seemed to hurt uncle Pratap. And though mother tried to cover up her insinuations and sought to bring about a cordial atmosphere, uncle Pratap closed up into a grim kind of taciturnity which was the hallmark of his character, while aunt Devaki began to talk of the time when the train was to leave.
Luckily, just then my father returned from the office and saved the situation by the bluff heartiness which he brought to his treatment of all the guests who came to our house.
Aunt Devaki took it upon herself to clear me of all guilt, for which I might conceivably have been punished, by declaring, from under the jhund of her head-cloth with which she covered the upper part of her face, loudly enough for my father to hear, that she wanted to take me to Amritsar with her and that mother had said ‘No’, and that I was very distressed in consequence.
My father, who always pampered me and spoiled me, laughed to hear this story and took me in his arms, shouting the while:
‘Why ohe, budmash, so you want to go to live with your uncle and aunt!’
I had been too frightened by my mother’s thrashing to confess anything at all. But my brother Ganesh displayed one of those rare bouts of courage and gently whispered that he would like to go to Amritsar with uncle and aunt if he could be sent.
‘He is yours to do what you like with,’ said my father, pushing Ganesh forward to uncle Pratap.
‘He is just about the age when he could be apprenticed to the craft,’ said uncle Pratap.
I liked to imagine that when during the rest of that afternoon aunt Devaki nursed me in her lap and bent over me with her pink white oval face swathed under the jhund, it was me she wanted to take with her to Amritsar and not my brother Ganesh, but that she had accepted the dictates of my father because her own husband had agreed. I bathed in the glow of her beauty, tense and excited and bound up in a deep love for her. And I felt that neither the milk and sugar of my mother, nor the curds of aunt Aqqi, nor even the sweet burnt grass of ‘little mother’ Gurdevi, could surpass the mixed smell of Motia and Molsari flowers which was my aunt Devaki. And while the elders spoke in lowered tones about Prithvi, I remember having made a secret whispered pact with aunt Devaki that one day she would take me to Amritsar. Gentle as the sound of the breeze which stirred the tops of the casuarina trees was her voice when she said this, hard as two mangoes were her breasts as she pressed me to her bosom to soothe me, thrilling as the cool raindrops were the kisses she showered on my face, and never can I forget the singing voice made hoarse by the way she bent her profile over my forehead.