THE ORACLE

I made some tea for myself next morning and waited for Fauzia who had been with our family for some years. We had hired her when mother fell seriously ill, never to recover. She did not turn up. At night there was a knock again—too much of a good thing I thought, two bloody nights in a row. What were things coming to? This time I was bold, hadn’t been listening to the BBC. Ironic commentary on our times, isn’t it Mama? I opened the door heroically. It was Aslam, Fauzia’s husband, with their daughter who must have just moved into her teens. He looked shaken. ‘What has happened, Aslam?’ I asked.

‘They have taken Fauzia away, Mem Sahib.’

‘They’ had become the standard pronoun for Police recently. I took them in and made them sit on two slightly tattered poufs. ‘There were two women with the party.’ Witnesses, I said to myself. Our advanced Uttar Pradesh still didn’t have a policewoman in its ranks. That meant they had come for Fauzia specifically. Quite intriguing. What could she have done to invite this?

‘Is she at the police station?’

‘I went there, but no one was willing to talk to me, Mem Sahib.’

‘Why have they taken her away, answer me, Aslam Mian? I can’t think of a reason. Is it a criminal case?’ I suddenly thought of someone plonking stolen property at their ramshackle hutment in Gola Ganj, next to the Baroodkhana. There was no answer, he was confused, he said. So was I, but I read his eyes and didn’t like what I saw. He was hiding something. He said my daughter will work for you. A child working for me! I politely declined. ‘I will wait for Fauzia,’ I told him. He insisted. ‘Keep her with you,’he said. ‘She can’t stay alone in an outhouse, Aslam Mian. What is wrong with you?’

‘She’ll sleep in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘What’s her name?’ I asked. ‘Elham’ he answered. She will not work, I made it clear to him. ‘But I want her books, she will study, you understand?’ He smiled, she has brought her books, they are in this basta, the school bag.

I took a good look at Elam, she stared back, unafraid— black tresses, big brown eyes, no ornament of any kind around her wrist or neck, no colyrium, no nail polish. She spoke to my heart. I took her to the guest room. Next morning I found her asleep on the living room carpet. When I came out after a shower, I found her with a broom cleaning up a termite trail extending from a window sill. How come I had not noticed the termites? No, I wasn’t going to give her back to Fauzia easily. Remember Mama I asked you once what ‘Ton’ means and you gave me a weird look which seemed to ask what was wrong with me?Well I had heard the mother shout at Elham, ‘Haiza, Ton khaye tujhe!’ May cholera and plague eat you up. That’s how they curse.

I got the store room cleaned, put a cot there and she was housed, if I may put it that way. I went out to Hazrat Ganj and bought some interesting books for children, ones with pictures and diagrams—they would speak to her. I was soon to discover she was torn between Urdu and Hindi and did not know either well enough. Next morning, against the shrill advice of Shilpa, I phoned the police station. ‘I have heard that you have arrested my maid servant Fauzia, Aslam Khan’s wife.’ He interrupted me saying, ‘Aapne galat suna hai’, you have been informed wrongly. I persisted, ‘Under which sections have you arrested her?’‘We just told you no one by that name has been arrested.’

Me:‘You could have brought her in for interrogation, pooch taach. Her husband told me.’

Police Station: ‘Madam, he must have divorced her, or sent her back to her parents, or killed her. Who knows?’And the guy put the phone down.

The next evening Shilpa phoned. Apparently a delegation of foreign correspondents met Minister V. C. Shukla of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, concerned over the disappearance of Alfie. Shukla stoutly denied that there had been any move to arrest ‘the accredited correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, Mr Alfred Hemming.’ But he went on to warn ‘certain misguided visiting pressmen to be careful about what they report, and not believe rumours spread by anonymous, mischievous anti-national elements.’ They were anonymous, these sources, because they didn’t have the courage to speak up. They chose instead ‘the nefarious route of the whispering gallery to serve their malicious ends.’ He warned the pressmen that they should not take the kindness and hospitality of the Indian government for granted, and ‘action would be taken at the first hint of malice and falsity discovered in any despatch.’ When asked about the whereabouts of Mr Alfred Hemming, the minister, tall fair and handsome V. C. Shukla, stated that the ‘I&B Ministry did not keep tabs on the locations of foreign or local correspondents. India was a free country. You could walk where you liked and talk what you liked.’ ‘He could have added that the ministry would sock you where and when it liked, I thought,’ said Shilpa over the phone. At the end of the minister’s speech there was a flutter of applause which sounded like a wet bird taking reluctant flight at the approach of a luminously speckled cobra. Shilpa could be nasty. She had heard all this on the BBC, and as she was putting the phone down, said ‘Thank God’. Now where did that come from?

I noticed that Fauzia’s daughter was unhappy stirring out. When the vegetable vendor came and squatted on the veranda, a Kachi by the name of Purshotam, Elham would not come out to carry the veggies to the kitchen. I let it pass. Then the maali, the part time gardener, wanted to buy some seedlings—rains were the time to sow—and she was reluctant to come out and hand him the money I gave her. The gardener was a Kahar, people who carried the village brides in palkis or palanquins as the Brits termed them. Village brides now went by bus to the husband’s mud-and-thatch homestead. Kahars had to look for other occupations. It was the maali who told me later that Fauzia would soon be released. He knew a Kahar constable at the police station. They had caught the wrong woman.

Next morning Rabia dropped by, Rabia of lustrous eyes that darted right and left as if to warn her of an attack. She was startled to see Elham. I want to tell you something, she whispered in English—didn’t want Elham to listen. She asked Elham what her name meant, and the girl didn’t know. She turned to me and said ‘inspired’, that’s what the name means in Arabic. Then she came out with the story. There was a reading of the Qoran at Afreeda’s house. Qorankhwani, it is called. They had a son born in the family. The maids and servants were welcome. And as the reading was near ending this chit of a girl with dazed eyes and her torso swinging this way and that shouted ‘Indira Gandhi will be in jail next year!’ She said a few other things too, but most of it was unintelligible. Imagine the shock! The Qorankhwani broke up and there were people who didn’t even wait for the halwa and the eats, as they moved off! They ran for ekka, auto, car—anything to get away fast. A bit of a disaster for Afreeda’s family and she laughed. ‘Elham fainted and they had to carry her home.’

‘It was a fit, wasn’t it?’

‘Of course it was, Seema. You say the most obvious things sometimes.’

It made sense. So whoever ‘sang’ to the cops was not present in the room, and garbled information reached the police station. Mother got arrested and threatened instead of the daughter. ‘Keep her safe,’said Rabia, as she walked away. ‘Hope what she said comes true,’ and we both laughed.

Fauzia was let off and I expected her anytime. She walked in at twilight. Before opening the door I looked out of the window and didn’t like what I saw. Aslam was peeping over the wall. Why couldn’t he come in with her? ‘Sorry Fauzia, you’ve had a rough time. I hope you were not treated too badly at the police station. I didn’t come there personally but I phoned them up.’

‘I was near the phone then Mem Sahib, shukriya.’ I noticed the child had not come out to greet her mother. I wanted to ask Fauzia how she wanted to go about things now, but refrained. ‘Mem Sahib I will take Elham back, thanks for keeping her.’ I was not sure I wanted to part with the kid. Why had Aslam stayed back outside the compound? What if Fauzia handed over the girl to the cops? Had Fauzia made a deal with them? The police must be bloody worried—an oracular utterance, a vaani, sending the prime minister to jail!

‘What are you going to do with her, Fauzia, bring her in touch with the police?’

‘Never! Lakwa maar jaye mujhe [May paralysis hit me] before a thing like that happens. She’s my daughter, born off my womb!’ The excitement in her voice drained off suddenly as she added, ‘I will show her to a peer. ’

I didn’t want any of that, a peer meant an exorcist. I sensed what could happen, some long haired fake from a dargah in Lucknow, if not farther off from Bansa or Dewa Sharif, the two Muslim shrines in nearby Barabanki, muttering mumbo jumbo in Arabic, accompanied by bad music and perhaps even a drum. And he would give the kid a good thrashing—how else would the demon that possessed her be excised?

‘No Fauzia, I know what your peer and everyone else in the lane will inflict on her. She will become a spectacle, with people watching as if they were in a cinema theatre. Some rogue will make a fool of you all, strip you of money, brush the child with a whisk or a broom, mumble a fake prayer perhaps in fake Arabic and give her a beating. Can’t let that happen. I will show her to a doctor, she needs care, not blows. There is no bhoot (spirit) inhabiting her.’ Of course there were recriminations, tears, loud protestations, the saving grace being she did not tear her hair. I made the daughter meet the mother, gave Fauzia some money and sent her off.

Doctor Sushima Misra of the Balrampur Hospital said it is puberty, onset of the hormonal swirl, as she dubbed it. It will pass in another year hopefully she said. Give her a sedative when she gets a fit like this. I wasn’t there, doctor. I am not fully certain if it was a fit. But I verified from those who were there that she did not froth at the mouth. Doctor nodded, keep me informed she said and sent us off.

Rabia and Shilpa had started calling Elham ‘Indira Vani’. It became sort of a joke among friends. The first time they thought it up they couldn’t stop giggling. The tirades from my husband had softened. I couldn’t come to Delhi because the house he was going to move into was getting renovated. There was no insistence on me being sent back to Kangra to complete my book.

I had brought interesting books for children and got Elham interested in them. One was a story book on an aquarium, with lovely pictures, except one where an ugly big fish was swallowing a smaller one. There was a full page illustration of a fish skeleton. One story was drenched with our desi sentimentality, the small fish being chased by an ugly blunt-nosed and doubtlessly bigger one gets hold of a mantra that can crack the huge glass aquarium. She could escape, but she refrains from chanting the glass-cracking mantra, thinking of all the other fish that will die or fry, I don’t fully remember Mama. Elham’s eyes had turned watery. The radio had talked of a stampede at a temple. I explained the word stampede as best as I could, and translated it as ‘bhedia dhasan’ (sheep scampering away from wolf). The number of casualties, especially the dead, was not mentioned—nothing bad was supposed to happen during the Emergency, and nothing did, if you were to believe the TV and radio. (Our TV was in Delhi, so I made do with the Philips radio. )

Two days later on a Sunday, Elham brought in drama in the morning, mime, nightmare, a bit of liturgy thrown in, all enacted in a surreal performance, if I could call it that. She mimed the breast stroke that stood for someone swimming. Then in a high-pitched voice, which didn’t sound like her own, she said a huge fish skeleton swam its way to the shore (she couldn’t have an idea what a beach looks like). A crowd had gathered, hawkers, ice cream vendors, boys selling balloons. Fishermen clustered around and argued what fish it could be. Then someone in the crowd spotted its eyes, it still had eyes intact and was watching the crowd, and when some fool stamped hard and threatened her, she shifted her snout towards him. Then the crowd ran screaming, some were crushed while others were drowned in the sea. Her face had turned pale. I slapped her and threw a glass of cold water on her face. She came to. I hugged her.

I tried calling the doctor but she was not there and the operator put me through to the head of the Psychiatry Department of Balrampur Hospital. He had been briefed by Dr Sushima Misra, he said. He must have been busy for as I took time to narrate the entire saga, he butted in saying, ‘She’s your naukrani, isn’t she?’ So much loaded in that one query. She’s just a servant girl, so why are you so het up? ‘She’s not!’ I screamed, but then when he asked so what is she, I had no answer.

Soon I was to find out this was just the first of a series. Dreams or hallucinations also come in series, like M. F. Husain’s paintings on horses. Elham’s dreams came cantering in. A camel skeleton crosses the border by mistake and walks into Pakistan; camel skeleton mind you, hump and bone intact. It terrifies the Rangers, for in the moonlight the camel turns luminescent. The glow can be observed for miles. What’s even more frightening is that there are two large chunks of topaz in its eye sockets. Allah save us, cry the Rangers as they bolt, leaving bunker and armoury unguarded. It was a well thought out plan by the crafty Indians, the glow from the moonlit bones had lit up their post, the Rangers think. They wanted us to be sitting ducks, these Indians! As the Rangers flee, they leave this walking skeleton under a camel thorn tree. When they return next afternoon, they find that half the babul tree has been eaten up! Allah have mercy! Allah raham kar! They cry as they untie this structure of naked bones. The camel returns to India and the Border Security Force is horrified to find that there are drugs—bloody heroin—in the eye sockets! These Pakistanis will get hold of any device to smuggle drugs into India!

‘Haram ki aulad (bastards)!’ they shout at the Rangers, ‘smuggling drugs are you? We won’t touch them! And where are our topaz solitaires, you thieves?’

‘And you were smuggling jewels, what of that? Trading in Kohinoors, you bloody dhotiwalahs.’

The whole day there was heavy artillery bombardment from both sides. Two goats were killed on the Indian side while thatch fires made Pakistani peasants abandon a hamlet. I have added my bit and amazing things get churned out in translations, but this sums up what Elham enacted.

Nothing disappears forever, dregs are dregs and they have a habit of hanging on close to the bottom shelf. Images stamp themselves on the mind. That big blunt nosed fish has stayed with me. She floats in my dreams. And when I get up in the morning, I think of her as a floating object looking for a lost memory.