RABIA

It is early morning, a lingering dawn-light still visible when I get up, throw open the living room windows and step out, observe the damp on the grass, rain drops still lingering on the bougain vine. I had almost forgotten the almond tree, the leaves would turn into crinkled ochre, now and then even the colour of oxblood as they drifted down one by one at the slightest touch of breeze in March. I once asked, you had woken up late, how old the tree was, when was it planted, and you answered ‘in the past’. How old is the past, Mama? Can I turn into a child again and ask you this?

The rain must have stopped quite some time earlier because I watch morning joggers huffing and puffing, and splashing in a puddle or two. Then I spot Rabia and Zaira, old school friends and classmates; I wave to them, a cup of chai in one hand. They are thrilled to see me. We can hardly believe it’s you, they say, as they walk in and squat on the cane chairs in the veranda.

‘No pea fowl?’ asks Rabia, laughing. That’s the past again, but the near past.

‘They don’t know I am back, word hasn’t got through. I haven’t seen any koels either in the last three days. ’

‘I remember a peahen which foraged around picking up insects. She had gawky legs, an awkward sort of a bird.’ That was Zaira. Rabia got her chance. ‘There was a peacock here too but he has shifted to Delhi.’ Much laughter, I notice.

‘Yes, would love some of Fauzia’s cardamom tea,’ says Zaira in answer to my query. On cue, Fauzia brings in the ilaichi chai in steaming mugs. We start reminiscing, happens when old friends from school are together. We were a gang, Shilpa, Rabia, Daksha and I. Zaira was on the fringes. Rabia was completely laid back, not bothered about exams, coming late to class often because she had overslept. Her house was too close to a mosque and she used to tell us that the 4 a. m. call to prayer, the azaan, would not just wake her up but even rattle the glass in her window panes. I always stood up for the azaan, it sounded sonorous, almost musical. You say that because you have never heard it at four in the morning, she would shout back. Her one ambition was to move out of the house, and out of Golaganj. Her grandfather was a wastrel and blew away all the family money gambling. She told us that he once lost a bet of one thousand silver coins on a single cock fight. She always pronounced it as a ‘rooster fight’ and we would rag her. ‘Why not a cock fight, Rabia?’ And she would blush. The father was sedate and ran an optics shop in the Qaiserbagh Chowk.

‘Remember when we were taken to see an English film at the Novelty Cinema in Lalbagh. Our English mistress was chaperoning us. Each time the “fuck” word was uttered, almost before it was uttered, she’d shout “Beep!” We couldn’t stop giggling.’

I want to test the waters. ‘Has it been as bad in Lucknow as it is in Delhi? I am talking of the Emergency.’ Zaira answers, ‘It is the worst in Haryana.’

I probe further. ‘If Raj Narayan had not filed that election petition, nothing of the kind would have happened. There would have been no forced sterilization, no firing at Turkman Gate, no jail for politicians. What do you say?’

Rabia couldn’t restrain herself. ‘O, so Indira would have kept ruling for ever, is it? No setback, no disqualification.’ Then she whispered, ‘Do you know Raj Narayan was paid by Sanjay Gandhi to file an election petition? Don’t laugh, his logic was that when Mrs Gandhi is disqualified, she can declare an Emergency and lock up all her enemies or opponents (they mean the same thing in politics). That was the scheme. ’

I was laughing but Zaira piped up. ‘There could be something in this rumour. Indira would be disqualified, so Sanjay could have calculated that he takes over from her, simple. How else can he become PM? Such things can happen in our country.’

Rabia was a great believer in conspiracies. I remember her vociferous defence of Lee Harvey Oswald in school. He was either hired or forced by Vice President Lyndon Johnson to kill JFK. What else could the poor fellow do, things of that sort. And she had said Oswald was merely a scapegoat. We never let her live that down. Children can be cruel and our gang and I were no exceptions. I was wondering why they hadn’t mentioned my time in the cooler. They haven’t been in touch with Shilpa, I think to myself, for they don’t mention a thing about my jail sortie. ‘You’ve been living apart for a year now, haven’t you?’ Rabia’s tone was concerned, slightly accusatory, as if it was my fault.

‘We have been meeting though, we stayed together for a week in Kangra. He took some leave. Will be tough now, though.’ Rabia questions with her big lustrous eyes, the eyebrows lifted and the gaze unremitting. ‘He has moved to the PM’s Secretariat.’ Normally people would have jumped at the news and there would have been a lot of hugs, eyes teary with emotion. How times change. Rabia’s eyes turned serious, they were always a mirror to her soul. ‘Someone needs to talk to you seriously, Seema, for an entire morning. You need a session with a counsellor.’ Zaira was always good at adding her two bits. ‘Someone who will talk to you for a week and put sense in your head.’

‘Oh, so you have heard from Shilpa,’ I said. They were non-committal. Rabia said, ‘I thought you were still in the cooler.’ Zaira added, ‘That’s why we were so delighted to see you here, in your house.’ Hmm. I prepared for being lectured to. Rabia spoke. ‘The earlier you get out of this place the better. At the moment there’s nothing for you here. It’s another thing that there’s nothing here for anyone, but that shouldn’t worry you. Just get out, and don’t head for Kangra this time. Take the train to Delhi. Kya rakha hai Kangra main? Some rocks, an old fort, Pahari paintings older than the fort, what’s in it for you? You leave Nishant alone for a year! You think there are no girls in Delhi?’ Zaira was not slow to add, ‘Delhi is full of such girls.’

Hmm, so that was the spin, I found myself nodding. Take care of husband’s hormones—prime wifely duty, must be a chapter in the shastras on the subject, or certainly in Manu Smriti, the one which tells us, along with chamars and sundry SCs, not to ever recite the sacred Gayatri.

‘And you have to look after his job’—that was Zaira.

‘I thought he was paid to look after his job. Salry and purk, as Punjabis put it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Seema. You can’t go speaking out against the Emergency with Nishant in Delhi.’ I butted in, ‘But you do the same, Rabia. If we can’t speak openly, at least we can amongst ourselves.’

‘You are being stubborn, by which I mean stupid! Once word gets around, Nishant will be in trouble. And if he is in trouble, so are you. The two of you are not going to find it easy.’ Rabia was done, but Zaira had to speak up as always. ‘First Shilpa gets involved and now you.’ I found Rabia looking daggers at Zaira. What was all this? What did they want to keep from me?

‘Who or what is Shilpa involved with?’ There was silence from both, but I could not forget the accusatory glance Rabia had given her friend. I persisted and after much persuasion got them to come out with something. ‘She is involved with a journalist.’

‘Not a foreign journalist?’ I asked almost intuitively. There was no answer. ‘Not involved with Alfie, is she?’

‘Who is Alfie?’

‘Alfred Hemmings of the Christian Science Monitor.’

‘How do you know about him Seema?’

‘Do I? I know this guy very cursorily. And is Shilpa involved with him politically or you know what…?’

‘Tobah, tobah! What dirty thoughts, Seema.’

‘Is she sleeping with him?’

At this they got up and left without even giving me a hug. I would never get an answer to that one. But the maali told me in the afternoon that the police had visited Shilpaji. Well well.

It was quite sticky when I went to the mango grove. Word had spread. Mushtaq Mian was waiting for me, an umbrella in his hand to shield me from the sun which had come out for a few hours. He handed me hundred-odd rupees—the poor sales of the langra mangoes. I didn’t argue, asked about the Fazri crop, yes I could see them drooping from the branches. He plucked a few and put them in a cane basket padded with straw. I asked him why the Bhishti wasn’t paid. No money. Pesticides were needed for the mango trees, he said. In fact, that was why the langra crop was poor. Send these mangoes home, I told him as I asked for an auto rickshaw and visited the Residency. In any case, if you live in Qaiserbagh, you can’t keep away from the Residency. A city changes in a year, I found it crowded with ochre coloured Vespa scooters, newly named as Bajaj scooters. Why the ochre colour? What hold had our swamis on Italy? They were all emitting a fairly foul smoke. A hoarding or two I found interesting. One read, ‘Are you in problem? Call and get solution.’ Yet, most things remained the same. People, both the well-to-do through their car windows and the common man, spat out their sepia dribble as if from a soda siphon. At the Imambara, I found the three-domed Asifi mosque looking a muddy grey without plaster or paint. In the Residency grounds couples were cuddling and kissing away, as always,where else could they go? In the museum there wasn’t a word on Havelock and almost nothing on Henry Lawrence except the spot where he was shot. The write-ups both in the museum and on pillars were a disappointment. On the Brits standing up to the besieging Indian soldiers, there wasn’t a word. I am no historian but can confidently say that one of our eternal passions is to play with history. I went past a roofless Banqueting Hall constructed by Nawab Sadat Ali Khan—spacious saloons, silk dewans, chandeliers, mirrors. Found a stucco fireplace somewhere. Was surprised to find that Indian soldiers had also fought for the British here. There was a memorial to them which talked of soldiers from ‘Guzerat, Mysore and Punjab’ and the ‘devoted gallantry and fidelity of the native officers and sepoys of the Hon. Companies 13^th Battalion Native Infantry who fell during the defence of Lucknow.’

Bipin Kumar came over in the evening. My fatigue disappeared. Bipin was a classmate of Nishant’s in college. They were quite close then. He never tried for the services, went into law, did a stint with a solicitor in London after his LLM and practised at the Lucknow branch of the Allahabad High Court. But Delhi was the place where you made a name—and money. He started with a small khoka in the High court next to the Jaipur House and was now mostly practising there, though he had been also sited at Tees Hazari courts infrequently. He could crack a good joke, good sincere friend of Nishant. ‘What a pleasure Bipin! What brings you here?’

‘What a pleasure Seema, what brings you here? Some of us would wish you were in Kangra?’

‘Who is us?’

‘Me and Nishant.’

‘Hmm, so you are not happy seeing me, want me tucked away in the hills.’

‘Away from the law, Seema. ’And he laughed.

‘Yes, the bloody law is trying to bind me down, I’ll soon suffer from rope-burn.’

‘Not any more. You are free from the ropes now. In fact, if I could pun a little, we had to pull ropes.’

‘Who’s we, Bipin? Your pronouns confuse me at times.’

‘Same old team Seema, Nishant and me.’

‘Not you alone?’

He shook his head. ‘He phones people and you do the foot slog?’

‘That’s about it. Someone has to make the physical approach before such things are put to rest. Verbal orders followed by paper which moves from police to prosecutor to magistrate who finally discharges the accused. A bit circumlocutory.’

‘You were always good with words Bipin, that circumlocutory bit sounded nice, thanks a lot. I owe you something better than this chai but I never offer drinks when Nishant is not around.’

‘I didn’t come for a drink, just came around to tell you the good news.’

‘Yes it’s a great relief. You are in Delhi now most of the time, I hear. Are you practising at Tees Hazari?’ I wanted to put him down a bit. He wasn’t happy. ‘I practise at the High Court, Seema. Tees Hazari has Sessions courts, District judges and the like.’ I apologized dutifully but I was now off to tease him. ‘What is the world coming to Bipin, doctors and police ganging up to commit forcible vasectomies; and one can’t even slap a constable!’ I laughed to indicate I was joking. He didn’t laugh.

‘Don’t try it again Seema, or you could be in the cooler for three years. And this time we may not be able to bail you out.’

‘Bail? Am I out on bail?’

‘No, Seema, for heaven’s sake. The case has been dropped, you are free.’

‘You mean till I slap the next cop. ’We both laughed as he took his leave.