The next morning Mumbles’ wife returned the Seths’ washed and ironed clothes. She sat outside the front door, undid a knot, freed her bag and lifted fresh sheets out. She passed them to Gitanjali, who approved them. The clean sheets were folded on top of each other, and the shirts and trousers and dresses were starched. While the sheets were to be given away, the shirts and trousers and dresses were to be kept carefully and taken to Australia. Govinda said nothing; he watched the dhobi, in her old maroon sari hunched over, as his mother paid her. The sound of the constantly busy crows and mynas filled the trees outside. Meanwhile, servants laboured with mops and buckets, brooms and paints, shovels and garden-shears, fixing the mishaps of the party and the carnival.
Govinda followed his mother into the kitchen. Mumbles was making sweets. ‘Life in a happy kitchen is a comfortable thing,’ Mumbles said to Gitanjali. ‘You know I like my sweets just right. Cooked to a delicacy.’
Gitanjali had recently expressed a desire for Mumbles to cook only vegetarian food, but Sunil Seth said he would have to consider this, and now was not the time. Everyone was busy. Ashok and Nitesh were out. The headmaster was working in his study. Govinda complained. ‘I am so bored,’ he said to his father, ‘I wish I could go away from here.’
‘Where would you like to go, Govinda?’
‘I want to go out and eat some food. I don’t like the way Mumbles prepares food.’
‘I’ll take you,’ his father said. The muscles along his neck were tense.
‘No, I want to go with Mum,’ Govinda said quickly, and went to the kitchen, where his mother was busy making kul kuls with Mumbles. He looked at his mother laughing. It seemed as though all the sunshine was on her for a moment. The air in the room tasted of sugar and dough.
‘There shall never be a lover in the world like the Lord Krishna,’ Gitanjali whispered to Mumbles. Her comment made Govinda’s face burn. They had grown very intimate. She looked up at Mumbles and smiled, her eyes glittered as she explained. Govinda saw a new brightness about her. Why was his mother speaking so openly? Nor did he like this talk about Krishna.
Mumbles and Gitanjali kneaded the dough slowly. Mostly they took no heed of Govinda, though they were making his favourite. He could already taste them, so he stayed in the kitchen and continued to observe his mother and Mumbles laughing, flaming with blushes: occasionally their hands would brush up against each other while they cooked and neither would appear to notice. He’d also observed of late that Mumbles’ beard had grown and he looked like he was becoming more serious, more devout.
Gitanjali continued, ‘Krishna had more than 16,000 lovers. His lovers worked all day taking care of their homes and families, and after dark they sneaked out and made love to him.’
‘I am not a Hindu. I am a Sikh,’ protested Mumbles, wide-eyed. ‘We Sikhs have not been treated fairly in this country. Hindus have Hindustan. Muslims have Pakistan. We have nothing even though we fought hardest for independence,’ Mumbles proclaimed.
Gitanjali and Mumbles rolled patches of dough against the back of their forks until there were hundreds of little doughy shells ready to be deep fried. They layered icing on the kul kuls that were already cooked and cooled. After preparing the kul kuls, Gitanjali tipped her head back and squeezed some icing on her tongue.
She looked at Govinda. ‘Mumbles is a Sikh. He is not a Hindu. He doesn’t understand what I am saying.’
Mumbles put his fingers on the hot stove accidentally and cried aloud.
‘I am concerned for my family,’ complained Mumbles. ‘I have saved some money. I had planned to take them to the Golden Temple so we could celebrate with the other pilgrims, but now all this trouble is starting we can’t go.’
‘Would you like some tea, Govinda?’ His mother put water on the fire to boil. Mumbles continued to glaze the kul kuls with the sugary syrup. He seemed annoyed. His fingers looked sore.
Later, Mumbles said he wanted to write a letter. Govinda reluctantly walked with him to the scribe; he wished he was invisible and would not make eye contact with him. Each year they would go to an old scribe and ask him to write a letter but this year Govinda was suspicious of the cook and simply wanted to keep him in sight. He was so overwhelmed with the new feeling he could not think properly. He went along as if he was being directed by some other power apart from himself. Every year the scribe failed to remember they had done the same thing the previous year. To Govinda the scribe, who had a big beard, bad teeth and wide eyes, seemed to be either really stupid or really old or both. ‘Yes, yes, I remember,’ he would murmur under his breath. But Govinda knew he didn’t. The scribe never listened properly to anything anyone said. He was always distracted, lost in his own thoughts. It was as if he had more important conversations going on internally while he spoke to other people.
The scribe and the other letter writers usually set up shop against the school wall in the lane. The old scribe with his moist eyes and vast grey beard was the most conspicuous. Govinda observed his appearance with suspicion and wondered what the scribe thought about as he stroked his beard.
Mumbles asked the scribe, ‘Will you write a letter for me?’
Little tufts of hair grew out of his ears and nose. As the old man played with his beard, he said, ‘You have come to the best man.’
Mumbles enquired, ‘I want to send a letter to the Golden Temple. How much will it cost me?’
‘Sorry, who is this Golden Temple?’
‘To Bhindranwale, you know Bhindranwale?’ Govinda demanded hastily.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ the old scribe said. ‘For that I have the best reputation. All my petitions are received as soon as possible. You have come to the best man. I have the highest success rate.’
‘Hurry up, then,’ Mumbles urged. ‘It is a matter of importance.’
The lane was as crowded and noisy and smelly as ever. Nearby a wireless played ye Akashvani hai, the sound of All India Radio. It ran the same news it always seemed to run. There had been more fighting in the Punjab and now the militants, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, were accused of amassing weapons in the Sikh temple, which was being used as a fort by a large number of militants. Govinda could hear bits and pieces from the radio.
‘Sikh Separatists…armed uprising…widely contested…Sikh scholar.’ He tried to listen carefully but it became increasingly confusing.
Govinda wondered what Mumbles meant as he spoke to the scribe about human rights and why foreign media were being banned in the Punjab. The scribe wrote as Mumbles spoke.
Mumbles said, ‘The fact is there are armed troops outside the temple. The Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, is trying to provoke Sikhs and present herself as a great hero in order to win the elections. There will be a disaster if the army is called in.’
Govinda thought he heard the man on the wireless say that people would be killed. His stomach felt tight. His mouth suddenly seemed full of saliva. There were other recurrent items – fighting in Lebanon, famine in Ethiopia, sectarian skirmishes in Kashmir, a Ghurkha uprising in West Bengal. But mostly it was about the arming of the Golden Temple and how the Prime Minister and the rest of the community would react. Somehow Govinda learned from the welter of information thrown at him that there were horrors to come. Floating corpses, tanks, flesh raked with gunfire, burning buildings. He knew how the world worked. There was violence and there was evil, people wanting to hurt each other, they were hurting each other at that very moment. He knew the world was not as he had once believed. People did bad things to other people.
Under the sun, the stench of fish was overwhelming. Mumbles and Govinda walked back on the road as there were too many people and large potholes on the footpath that no one appeared willing to repair. Walking absent-mindedly in the lane had many hazards. You could slip on rotting fruit, or go skidding on a pile of dog shit. You might walk into a wayward cow.